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Episode 92: Donovan Mitchell Welcome to the Land!
13 Plays2 years ago
Alex and Corey chat about the Donovan Mitchell press conference. Amongst NBA expansion team rumors, we also make our picks of the 8 Cavs players we would protect in an expansion draft.
Twitter: @CavsPickandRoll
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Transcript
Arrival of a New Superstar in Cleveland
00:00:16
Speaker
Hey CAS fans, welcome to another episode of the CAS Pick and Roll Podcast, the podcast for diehard CAS fans. Corey here with you as always, along with Alex. Alex, we have a new superstar in Cleveland. Officially, he arrived. Yeah. Are you excited? Oh, man. Are you excited? Of course. I'm pumped. I'm pumped.
00:00:39
Speaker
Uh, did you get to see the uh, the presser, you know, introduction pressure even before that I thought it was cool seeing him actually arrive in cleveland and all the fans gathered at the like the plane hangar the hangar yeah greeting him arriving
00:00:56
Speaker
It was pretty awesome. And him getting off the plane wearing not just a Browns hat, but the actual old school Brownie logo hat. I thought that was kind of a nice touch. And yeah, during his presser, he talked about arriving in Cleveland and all the fans that were there to greet him and just how blown away he was by that reception. So I thought that was cool.
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, the Cavs have been doing that the last couple years now, mainly around their draft picks. And that's a smart play on their part because it's, you know, it's quite a way to welcome the new guy to town. And, you know, it was pretty early in the morning. And I remember even saying during the presser, like, wow, like, I got here like nine in the morning, those people had to get up early and drive out here. And, you know, he's just like, I'm just blown away by the support already and the love that the city has shown. So, yeah.
00:01:48
Speaker
You know, that's a very smart move on the Cavs organization to do things like that. And that brownie hat thing, I always wonder, when you see something like that, it's like, well, does the guy himself think of that? Or was someone on that plane like here wear this? Like a PR person? Yeah, it'll be good PR. Probably. Yeah, I don't know. Probably. Probably. I mean, where's he gonna get that? You know what I mean? Yeah.
00:02:14
Speaker
So did you get a chance to, uh, did you get to see the presser or any of that or, you know, well, back to that real quick, you know, then again, they showed, uh, Donovan Mitchell, you know, as a little kid wearing his LeBron James jersey, even though he was living in New York, you know, he was a cast fan at the time because of LeBron. So that, I thought that was pretty cool too. And they talked about,
00:02:38
Speaker
Uh Donovan, you know, it kind of go in full circle that now he's actually on the Cavs When he was a Cavs fan as a kid Right, right. Yeah, but I love the
Mitchell's Impact and Playoff Experience
00:02:50
Speaker
presser. I thought it was really good. I thought uh, they uh
00:02:55
Speaker
John Michael did an excellent job emceeing. Yeah, and he asked some great questions, questions that we all had. And Donovan Mitchell did a great job answering everything. Boy, you know, it kind of blew blew me away just how I don't know, he was just very well spoken and all of his answers were
00:03:16
Speaker
down to earth and intelligent. And he made, he cracked some jokes that were really funny. And it just seems like a great personality and something this team really needed. He definitely came off as very likable. And, you know, I'll be curious to see, you know, if there are ever bad stretches, you know, kind of if that tone changes at all when there's rough patches of the season or whatever. But no, I mean, it was a great, a great first presser for him.
00:03:45
Speaker
agreed. I thought he was very down to earth and just was very good at answering the questions. One of my favorite things from the pressure was him confirming that yes, he was golfing when he found out he got traded to the Cavs. And yes, he started running around and jumping and screaming because he learned that, you know,
00:04:07
Speaker
Not only did he go to Cleveland, but Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and Jared Allen are still there and he gets to play with them. So I thought that was really cool. And he just came off as very genuinely excited to be here. And as a Cleveland fan, we're historically not used to that when someone of that caliber kind of comes off with that sincerity and is excited to be here. So it's exciting, it is.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, one of my favorite parts was when they asked him about coming to a team that's a very young team and him actually, you know, only being, he just turned 26 last week, him only being 26 years old and yet being one of the older players on the team and he said something like,
00:04:58
Speaker
Well, he said, I might be one of the oldest players on the team and I don't feel like an older player except for physically. And then he said, no, I'm kidding. I was waiting for him to like dis-love or something like that. You know what I mean? Yeah. Love still has like six years on them. Love is like 33. Those are both guys. Yeah, they're like 33, 34 years old and that's like 10 years older than our core.
00:05:25
Speaker
You know what I mean? So that was kind of funny. And one thing I didn't realize, I was kind of surprised John Michael said this actually when he was doing the introduction. I'll have to look up and see if this is true, but did I hear him say that he's never like he's never missed the playoffs? Like since he's been in the league or did I miss hear that? I thought he said that he's been in the playoffs every year. Oh, I didn't catch that.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'll have to go back and relook at that. But that's also kind of nice, too, because he has some, you know, playoff experience, which not a lot of players on this team has, currently, outside of, like, love and Rubio. Like, our core young guys, none of them have playoff experience. So, to have somebody else that has been through that knows what time it is, can be lethal in those situations.
00:06:15
Speaker
And man, the playoffs are going to I can't wait till we get to that point when you just have so many options and how is a team going to guard this team? And it's going to be really fun to watch. And with Mitchell added to the picture, it just it just magnifies all that. It's very easy to get very excited about what's to come here this year. Yeah, Donovan talked about that quite a bit at one point in the press or about his playoff experience and how that how he can bring
00:06:41
Speaker
his experience and share that with the team. And he talked about playing a regular season game versus playing a game in the playoffs where
00:06:51
Speaker
a regular season kind of ebbs and flows, but a playoff game, it's very possession oriented and every possession is do or die. Every possession is the final five seconds, fourth quarter. He talked about the mentality that it takes and just the teamwork and team play that it takes to make it in the playoffs versus the regular season. And I think that's awesome.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that experience is definitely going to help and hopefully rub off on the young guys. And hey, this is going to be the first year where our young guys start to finally get some experience as we hope for a deep playoff run and kind of transitioning a little bit. Now, I think the expectation was already there.
00:07:42
Speaker
prior to the Mitchell trade, that this team needed to take another leap. They took a big, unexpected leap last year and just missed the playoffs. I still just think about that sometimes, Randy, and I'm like, how did that happen? But even before Mitchell came here, it was like the expectation this year was going to be, they have to make it. They have to not only make it, but they have to make some noise when they get in there.
00:08:06
Speaker
now they add Mitchell to this team. This is something we didn't really talk about. What's your expectation for this team? Is it almost to the point where there's pressure on them now? Or is it still, okay, let's take the next path. Let's get in the playoffs. Let's make a run. Let's see what happens. And then the year after that, progress.
00:08:28
Speaker
Or is it like because this feels such like a win now kind of trade and move, does that put extra pressure on everything this year?
00:08:37
Speaker
I think there's definitely extra pressure. I think it was the largest trade of the off season and especially with recency bias. It's in everybody's mind that it's the biggest trade, one of the biggest trades of Cavalier's franchise history and elevates us right towards the top of the Eastern Conference, I think. I was looking through last year's standings
00:09:03
Speaker
And at records, you know, you had Miami Heat at the top, Boston second, Bucks third, 76ers fourth. I gotta thank the 76ers here sweating after this trade. Raptors at fifth, Bulls at sixth, Nets seventh, Hawks eighth. I mean, like I said, Sixers gotta be sweating after they see this trade. I could see the Cavs being in that fourth seed.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Anywhere. I mean, really those, those top four seeds that you just listed, I don't recall any of them making any major changes or additions this off season.
00:09:42
Speaker
And yeah, they have the benefit of, you know, you have the same squad coming back as another year of camaraderie and already being familiar with each other, where the Cavs gotta work Mitchell in and, you know, gel, right? To where those other teams have had time to do that. But it feels like, yeah, it catapults us right into that top four. Like to me, you gotta secure home court advantage in the playoffs. That should be the expectation this year. The expectation should not be to sneak in.
00:10:10
Speaker
as a six seed, you know, as a seven seed and playing some kind of, you know, play in game, you know, since they're doing that again, you got to get in and not only do you got to get in, you got to lock yourself in to one of those, those four, those four seeds and get that home court. So I, I agree. I do feel like it adds a little bit of pressure as well. So, you know, I think it's going to be a very, very fun season, but I also think, because it's just natural, your teams are going to go through ups and downs, you know, an injury happens or they just have a couple of bad games.
00:10:40
Speaker
you're gonna see the fan base be a little bit more ornery than normal because last year the Cavs were great, but it was fun because it wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't expected that the team was gonna take that leap. Now that it's kind of an expectation, that's where I say that added pressure can also bring pockets of the season where like, okay, we lost three games in a row and now Twitter's freaking out.
00:11:05
Speaker
and saying, you gotta trade whoever and blow this thing up. So that's what I'm a little bit hesitant on, but I think there's gonna be much more positive than what there'll be that, but it'll be a little bit of a different flavor potentially this year because of that, I think as well.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I just looked up what you were saying about Donovan Mitchell never missing the playoffs. And you're right, man. Donovan Mitchell playoffs. I wasn't right, John. Michael was right. I was questioning it. Yeah. Five seasons in a row. Donovan Mitchell in the playoffs. His first two seasons in the playoffs, which was the 2017 to 2018 season, he was there with your boy Ricky Rubio. I was going to say Rubio was teammates with him young in his career. That means they would have they would have had a playoff run together.
00:11:51
Speaker
and Rubio was a little bit younger, and I don't recall what that team did. But I wonder how much of a, like, was Rubio starting at that point? Was he, you know, what was his, I almost want to go back and look up like some footage of Rubio and Mitchell together. And I think that's kind of cool that, you know, switching topics real quick, that Rubio is not only here, but he's also playing
00:12:15
Speaker
with two kind of very pivotal players that he played with at one point in his career in Kevin Love and Donovan Mitchell. And on top of it, you know, pretty two good basketball players. It's not just some role player he played with, you know, on the bench or something like that. It's like, you know, during the time it was like,
00:12:31
Speaker
it was Rubio in love for that Timberwolves team. And I don't know if it was necessarily Rubio and Mitchell at the time, but I have to, I'm willing to bet that Rubio, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if he was a starter at that time. I'm, you know, I'm trying to think like, yeah, I haven't been around at that time. So I haven't dug into it too far. But just from looking on basketball reference, the glance real quick, I see Donovan Mitchell started
00:12:55
Speaker
11 playoff games that 2017 season and looking at Rubio Rubio started six playoff games that season so I mean they were starting alongside each other at least half the time there.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and it's good because, again, there's that familiarity. And I think that's why it worked out so great last year with Love coming off the bench, really, because Rubio was there to run the show and there was that just familiarity of playing together at some point in the past. And even though, you know, Rubio won't be starting, there'll be pockets of time where they'll be out on the floor together.
00:13:29
Speaker
And that just presents another scenario of that. So I'm really excited for the season. I'm really excited for when Rubio comes back for those very reasons to be able to run the second show and and and and just making dimes to Mobley and Mitchell and Garland. And it's like, how does a team defend that? Yeah, there's just so many options, even Lavert loves out there. It's just
00:13:54
Speaker
You're five or six, seven deep as far as offensive weapons on this team right now. And when you have a magician like Rubio out there and even Garland who became an excellent passer too with Rubio around, it's gonna be fun to watch. A lot of guys with just high basketball IQ and that can make plays. And yeah, just man, court vision and making the pass that they need to make and shooters, guys that can shoot. I mean, floor spacing is gonna be great.
00:14:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to be exciting. It's going to be difficult for teams to defend this lineup.
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. There's gonna be somebody open. So on any given night, it could be someone different that goes off too, which is nice because if a team is locking up Evan Mobley for whatever, most likely Jared Allen is wide open over there for an alley-oop or Garland's waiting in the corner for a three or Love's waiting on the other side for a three or Mitchell's coming down the middle for a drive to the lane. It's just, yeah, there's just so many weapons from so many different angles. It's gonna be tough to defend.
NBA Expansion Rumors and Draft Strategy
00:15:00
Speaker
So yeah, it's great that Mitchell is officially here. Already had a practice it sounded like with the team and off season in full motion. We're inching closer to those preseason games. Alex just a couple of weeks away, early October. So we'll get to see some, some Cavs basketball here, at least forms of it.
00:15:20
Speaker
And that'll be nice. But I wanted to switch topics here a little bit, a little bit outside of the calves, but we'll make it relatable to the calves. But have you seen some, I've been seeing some rumors pop up, I'm assuming you've seen these two, about the MBA potentially finally doing an expansion?
00:15:41
Speaker
around two areas, Seattle, which never should have went away and should have been back like 15 years ago. Yeah, absolutely. And also Las Vegas, which whatever, I'm not really excited about that. I did want to ask you, I'll put you on the spot here. You know, if Seattle comes back, I'm just assuming it's gonna be the SuperSonics again. Hopefully there's no reality where they can't do that. I'd be really upset if they came back. They came back as like something else. No, I'd love it if they came back as the Sonics.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, you got to. If it was up to you and I'm putting you on the spot, what would you call the Las Vegas team? Just come up with a name? Yeah. What would you call it? What would be your name for Las Vegas? Jeez, I have no idea. I didn't give you a heads up on this before recording. I'd want to know if there's history there. Is there any basketball history in Las Vegas? That I don't know.
00:16:42
Speaker
I feel like whatever it's gonna be, it's just gonna be cringe worthy. It's gonna take a very long time to embrace it, I think. Because it's Las Vegas, it's gambling, it's casinos, it's the desert.
00:16:57
Speaker
You know, I don't I can't think of like a good like animal mascot for out there or you know what I mean? It's just like, I don't know. It's going to be it's going to be interesting to see when that does happen. What what the name of that. It's going to be something really generic judging by some of the latest sports teams name changes.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not throwing shade at the Guardians or the commanders. Guardians. I already feel like the Guardians is going to be 10 times better than whatever they come up for the Vegas team. Yeah. We'll see. It's going to be the Vegas. Las Vegas stars. Yeah. Stars. Come on, get out of here. Flashes or sparkles or glitters. Or sparkles. Oh my God.
00:17:40
Speaker
So corny. So corny. But why I wanted to tie this back into the Cavs, it's been quite a while since the NBA has had expansion teams. I think the Grizzlies, Vancouver Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors are the last ones I recall.
00:17:56
Speaker
And typically when there's an expansion team, you know, they don't just sign players off the street, you know, unfortunately, sorry, Delonte. But that was bad. I shouldn't have done that. But, you know, they have an expansion draft, right? So when that happens, players get plucked from current NBA teams. You just caught on to that.
00:18:18
Speaker
Players get plucked from current NBA teams. And I'm assuming you saw this in an article somewhere, but you told me I've worked the other day that an NBA team would only be able to protect eight players. And I'm like, only eight? Geez, can't you give me 10?
00:18:32
Speaker
And I thought it'd be fun to kind of talk about that and like, let's just pretend that that expansion was happening right now when they were doing the draft, you know, next week before the start of the NBA season, kind of who would your eight players be that you would protect from this current cast franchise? I have mine, I don't know if you have yours yet, I can start if you don't. Well, there's, so it's eight players that are under contract, nobody that's,
00:18:59
Speaker
You know about to be an unrestricted free agent. I think there were there were a few different Disqualifiers as far as the eight If they're if he's 34 years old like Kevin Love we don't want yeah, well Kevin Love is one that whose contract will be up anyway So he's not really he doesn't really qualify as one of the eight. I think it's kind of tough to pick to pick eight
00:19:27
Speaker
Well, I don't know all the contracts nears off the top of my head. Yeah, yeah, that's what I might have to do. I might have to do without that, but I made my list. I'll read off my list. Yeah, go ahead. I'll let you read off yours. And number one, Evan Mobley. Gotta protect the big man, right? Number two, Darius Garland, another given. Any Cows fan is picking those 1A and 1B. Number three, Donovan Mitchell.
00:19:51
Speaker
Another no brainer, number four, Jared Allen. Number five, Isaac Ikuro. Number six, Karis Lavert. Number seven, going Kevin Love. And number eight, I'm going Ricky Rubio. That is the eight CAS players on the current roster that I would protect right now if the NBA was doing an expansion draft next week.
00:20:18
Speaker
Alex, what about you? Is there anybody on that list that you would shuffle out and put somebody else in? That's fair. I mean, like I said, I think Kevin Love would not be one that you could protect. This is why I said I'd have a hard time picking eight because
00:20:36
Speaker
I mean, you named everybody that's part of our young core that we need to keep. Yep. And who else really left? I mean, are we going to protect Jetty Osmond? Sure. Just because we have, you know, an open spot, but it's not like... I ain't protecting him. Well, I mean, you... You were supposed to be part of this trade, Alex. I mean, you'd rather keep Rubio than Osmond?
00:21:00
Speaker
I would. I would rather keep Rubio for Asman because Rubio, to me, he's around for three years. First off, what? Second, we have a hole at the three. And I don't think you named any single player that plays at the three.
00:21:16
Speaker
doesn't matter. We don't have one. I mean, it's going to be a Lavert or a Kuro. Okay. Well, okay. You can say a Kuro. All right. The cast can go trade for one. You know, at some point this season or sign one in the off season, like they could fill that hole whenever they want. It's just not filled today. And because it's not filled, that doesn't mean I'm going to, I'm going to pick, you know, Chetty. And
00:21:38
Speaker
What I thought would be fun too is what if you could do one more? What if you could do nine? Because that's where it really gets interesting. Because you do, you have players like Chetty, you have Dean Wade, you have Lamar Stephens, you know, like Dylan Windler. Like to me, that's where it gets even more challenging. Like if you had to pick one more from that four, you know, who would you pick? I think that's where it really gets tough. I would go Dean Wade personally.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, I'd agree with that. Yeah. No argument for me. Dean Wade's been solid. He really stepped up last season. Yep. I mean, that guy came a long way. He grew a lot. He's a pretty good piece of the team. And yeah, I can't argue with anybody on your list. You're not saving, Windler. That's so tough just because we haven't seen enough of Windler.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, and we're not gonna see very much of him. He's, I mean, between Mitchell and LaVerne. It would hurt to see Lamar Stephens go. I mean, he'd be my number 10. He's kind of a fringe player as it is. Yeah. But he's scrappy. He's very scrappy. He's got that junkyard dog in him. And I like that. Yep. He's gonna be diving for balls. He brings that hustle for that energy.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, luckily that's not happening right now. So this team is intact. And it'll be interesting if first the NBA officially, you know, announces that they're doing these expansions, feels like it's going to happen. And then kind of what happens from there, you know, and it's not only I wonder if it's only eight, because there will be two teams.
00:23:30
Speaker
Like if it was only one team, but it only would still only be eight. I don't know if that number changes or not based on how many expansion teams there are, but whenever that does happen.
00:23:40
Speaker
You know, it's gonna be very interesting to see, you know, what's the roster look like at that point? And, you know, is it kind of straightforward or is it even more difficult than what it is now to protect eight? Yeah, so you get to protect eight, right? But the expansion teams only get to choose, I think, one player from each team. Yeah, so you can only lose potentially two, but they're not gonna pick, there's what, 30 teams in the league, 29 teams, they're not gonna both
00:24:11
Speaker
you only got so many roster spots on your team. So it feels like there's gonna be a team, a couple teams that maybe only get one guy plucked, maybe no guys. I don't know how it gets determined. I guess they could choose anybody, right? So if there's 29 teams, 30 teams, and these are the players available from each team, if they say, oh, you know what, I don't like anybody on the Raptors available players, they just don't pick from them. And we're gonna nab two guys from the Cavs roster instead.
00:24:40
Speaker
Like, I don't know, like I don't remember how that all worked when the Vancouver and Toronto stuff was going on and around because it was quite a while ago, you know, and internet wasn't as what it is today. And just be kind of weird and kind of weird to like experience in the modern era because it feels like we've never really experienced it in our timeframe as actual fans where it can impact us and our team. Yeah, there's still quite a few good free agents out there
00:25:09
Speaker
sitting on the couch waiting for an NBA team to call him too, so. Who's your top free agent out there? Oh, damn, that's a good question. I should have had a name in my head before I said that, huh? Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, good. It's not Colin Sexton anymore, Alex. I can tell you that. It's all good. It's all good.
00:25:34
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, Mitchell in town, Cavs presser, inching close into preseason basketball, top eight, we were protect.
NBA 2K23: Cavs Gameplay and Nostalgia
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's all good. Have you been playing any 2K? 2K23 came out. Cavs team's pretty fun to play with, just saying. Yeah, I've been playing a little bit. Yeah, I started a season with the Cavs.
00:25:57
Speaker
It's fun to play with. I sent you a clip. It's the clip I posted on our Twitter account as well where Mitchell does the spin move, then he does this around the back to himself and just slams it down on the defender. The defender goes flying to the ground.
00:26:15
Speaker
He's not very big, he's not very big in the game, but he's really athletic, and it's really easy to get to the rim and dunk with him and have some fun. That Cavs team has loaded it in 2K. Yeah, he's got a really good first step, really good speed. You can get him to the hoop pretty easy, and at the same time, he can hit three, so double threat on offense for sure.
00:26:39
Speaker
It's really fun. And I've been having fun. 2K has this new mode called My NBA Arrows, where you can basically start a franchise at different time periods, 80s, 90s, 2000s, or current era. And I started with the 80s, the 8384 season, just to check it out. And this is like World B free days and John Bagley days and
00:27:03
Speaker
Phil Hubbard and guys like that and it was more fun than what I thought I was gonna be playing with those guys But after a while I started stimulating and what does suck with that time period The Cavs don't own their first round pick for like the next two seasons. So how well did they recreate those?
00:27:24
Speaker
players from back then, like, their likeness and stats wise. Well, I mean, you know, I mean, I know World Be Free could score at will, but I can't, I haven't watched enough footage on him to know, like, does he dribble like him? You know, does he have his shot? I'm assuming he does, but, you know, it feels- But they got their faces looked right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, like World Be Free, it looks like World Be Free, for sure. And World Be Free's been in 2K games for a while because of the,
00:27:51
Speaker
all-time teams. He's on the Cavs all-time team because he's been in the game for a while. But what I'm curious to see is as the years go on, you know, Cavs players that typically from past that haven't been in 2K, Harold Miner is one I'm looking forward to. Play with the Cavs for a very brief moment was actually the team that he played with last during his NBA career. I'm sure we've talked about this at some point.
00:28:16
Speaker
He only played like five years in the NBA, played like 15 games, 20 games with the Cavs, and then he was done. He retired. But I want to see like, is he in the draft? And can I draft him? Because he's never been in a 2K game where I was able to play with him. You know, he's not even on like the Heat all-time team and stuff like that.
00:28:34
Speaker
And what's fun is, as you play the mode, things change. That year, the draft, the first year is the draft of Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon and stuff like that. Well, in my NBA era, the Bulls didn't win the first seed. So Michael Jordan didn't go to the Bulls. He went to the Philadelphia 76ers and the Bulls got Hakeem Olajuwon.
00:28:59
Speaker
So like that's kind of cool too to kind of see like history rewritten a little bit. And just the teams that you knew growing up are just, they're completely different. Like Chris Mullen is on like Sacramento. Patrick Ewing's also on the Bulls. It's Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon is the center and power forward. Just crazy stuff like that.
00:29:20
Speaker
But I've been having fun playing with it and playing with some old school Cavs teams. And I ended up signing Campy Russell as a free agent. I'm nabbing any former Cavs player I can from that era and throwing them on there. And I'm at the point now where I'm getting ready to go to the offseason where Mark Price and Brad Doherty are in the draft. I'm going to see if I can nab one of those guys. So is Harold Miner actually in the draft on that game?
00:29:47
Speaker
Well, we'll see he's not I'm not Yeah, I think I think he was late 80s like 88 or 89 maybe 90 even 92 92 well later than I thought so I got a while yet. I'm like at like the 86 draft. Okay, so you've gone through a couple drafts then yeah, so I read that I read that they only
00:30:11
Speaker
re-created maybe five to ten players for each of the drafts? Is that accurate? No, it's not. It's more than that. Because the last draft, there was probably at least
00:30:24
Speaker
20 names or so that I recognize. And you had your top, top guys, but then I'm also talking like Kevin Willis, you know, Waidman Tisdale, Del Curry, you know, not your superstars of the NBA at that time, but they're in the draft. I actually drafted Mario Elle in my last draft in a second. He was the second round pick. He was sitting there versus a bunch of CPU generated draft picks. I'm like, sure, I'll get some shooting. I'll take Mario Elle.
00:30:51
Speaker
know what I mean? So I'm curious to see as I continue to go on, you know, our players like that in the game, like a Herald Miner or the players that typically have never been in a 2K game because they weren't part of one of those classic teams. And it's a fun era to check out. If you're a 2K player,
00:31:08
Speaker
and you like nostalgia and old school teams and players and stuff like that. It's been a fun mode to check out and something brand new to 2K. So it's been good. Does the CPU draft based on their ranking at how good they were at the time or how good they know they will eventually be?
00:31:31
Speaker
No, how good they were at the time and there's there's scouting and all that like there has been but like, you know, if you go look at the scouting reports, you know, Jordan, Hakim, you know, the one and two basically, so it's like not yeah, it's like
00:31:46
Speaker
You know, it's faithful in that aspect from like, okay, Jordan didn't go number 10, Jordan went number one, instead of number, what, he went three, I think, in the real draft. But, you know, it wasn't Chicago sitting there, it was Philadelphia sitting there instead. So, it just changed because that's how the seating, that's how the lottery draft. Philadelphia took Berkeley at the time. Yeah, yeah. So, who's not in the game? Berkeley's not in the game again.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reggie Miller? Nope, no Reggie. Get out of town. No, no Reggie. Otis Thorpe.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yes, he was, actually. I just played a game against him. I forget what team he's on. He's not on Houston. That's what I mean, though. It feels weird when you play this team. You're like, okay, the Houston Rockets. I'm gonna see Akim Olajuwon and Otis Thorpe and Kenny Smith. Nope. I'm gonna see someone completely different because of how the drafts have worked out. Cleveland drafted Tim McCormick in that year. Tim McCormick in it.
00:32:50
Speaker
I remember seeing his name. Yeah, I do remember seeing him. Really? Yeah, yeah. I've been impressed so far. There's been more names there than what I thought. Have all of them been there? Probably not, but it's been deeper than what I've thought it would have been so far. All right. My only complaint is that I'm playing games at the Coliseum in Cleveland at the old arena. Yeah. And during the freaking timeouts, I got freaking Moondog out there dancing and clapping his hands. That rubbed me the wrong way because Moondog
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, that's not right. It was about 20 years too early. Moondog, I looked it up. Moondog wasn't our mascot until 2003. That's when he debuted. And in 1983 at the Coliseum during a time out, he's sitting there clapping his hands and trying to get the crowd fired up. Need Sir CC out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I want to see Whammer out there. Whammer, nice. Yeah, yeah.
Condolences and Community Engagement
00:33:47
Speaker
So Alex, I think we should wrap this up, but I wanted to kind of show some love or throw a shout out, whatever you want to call it, to Big Z. I'm kind of going through a tough time right now. I'm sure you saw this, Alex, but his wife, Jennifer, passed away this week, only 50 years old. I was just shocked to see that. Oh, man, it's terrible. It's horrible. They have two sons, and it's got to be a tough time right now for Big Z.
00:34:17
Speaker
trying to show him some love and send some positivity his way for sure. Just crazy. Yeah. All right. Well, with that cast fans want to thank you as always for tuning in and listening and Alex, you want to let them know where they can follow us and connect with us.
00:34:36
Speaker
Follow us on Twitter at Cavs Pick and Roll. We have a Facebook page, Cavs Pick and Roll. Shoot us an email, Cavspickandrollatgmail.com. We'll answer your questions, take your comments on the show. Wherever you're listening, leave us a rating, a review. We'd appreciate it. That we would. And there it is, Cavs fans. We will talk to you again soon. Peace out, Cavs fans.