Hour 3: ESPN NBA Insider Ramona Shelburne, plus Scorching Hot Sports Takes from 15-Year-Olds

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1:37Rich Eisen:We should have. They dunk however they wish. Wembenyama must dunk flat-footed. Earlier on the show, NFL Network Insider Ian Rappaport. ESPN MLB Insider Jeff Passan. Coming up, ESPN NBA Insider Ramona Shelburne. burn and now it's rich eisen hour number three the rich eisen show is on the air great fun first two hours already with ian rapaport and jeff pass and dispensing information on football and baseball that was awesome and you can catch up if you missed any of it through our podcast all three hours however you get your podcasts uh through the rich eisen podcast network i'm going I say the word podcast one more time.

2:21Rich Eisen:NCW, No Contest Wrestling, is going to be in your inbox or your RSS feeds or the YouTube channel of The Rich Eisen Show on Wednesday. John Cena is going to be the guest of O'Shea Jackson Jr., who may or may not appear in this program in hour number three. Is he going to come in, TJ? Yeah, he'll be in. Fantastic. He will finish up this show. And then it's been a fun day in our neighborhood already to kick off our hour here, our final one of the day here on this Tuesday on ESPN2. Ladies and gentlemen, Ramona Shelburne is joining us here from downtown Los Angeles. Senior writer for ESPN and NBA Insider.

2:55Rich Eisen:Good to see you, Ramona. How are you? Good. How are you, bud? I'm great. Great for seeing you here on the screen and helping us unpack what we saw over the weekend. Generally a success. Do you think the NBA is happy about the All-Star weekend here in the home of the Clippers into a dome? Yeah, listen, I had a lot of time sitting in that arena, you know, looking at some of the empty seats most of the weekend. And then finally by Sunday, it was sort of filled up. And I thought to myself, like, are we are we seeing this through the wrong lens? Like, are we are our bar of is this a good game is has come down to are the guys trying hard?

3:30Are they are we entertained? Are like, oh, look, somebody played defense right there. Oh, I see a real foul that was committed. And I think like if this is our standard, even if we meet that standard, people aren't going to be satisfied. Right. It's sort of what we're really looking for is more of an authentic vibe to this, more of something that doesn't feel forced and corporate and sterile and just like everybody is there and they don't want to be there and they'd rather be on vacation. I think we got that at least like we had a couple of really good moments. Damian Lillard winning the three point contest, I thought, was one of the highlights of All-Star Weekend, not just because he's out with an Achilles injury, but he's back in a Portland Trailblazers jersey like that.

4:10That was awesome for me to see that, to see him home there, to put on a show like that. And then I thought in the game, Kawhi Leonard was unbelievable. I would have voted for him for MVP if I had to vote. I don't know who they chose to vote on that. But that 31 points in a 12-minute game, that's – Klay Thompson has the record for most points in a quarter. It was 37 in an NBA game. And so this was a real – that was a real show that Kawhi put on. I thought, you know, the young guns ended up winning. The last game almost didn't really matter because everyone was just tired. But it was a real game.

4:43There was effort. There was defense being played. And I think that's all people really wanted is just something that felt authentic, that felt real and not like force. And these guys are there just trying to have a good time and make the best of a situation. Like that felt authentic to me.

4:59Rich Eisen:Well, I mean, seeing stars. That's why people put fannies in seats, to use the old Steinbrenner phrase. Like seeing Damian Lillard back again in a Trailblazer jersey shooting threes. And it's great to see, you know, and the NBA slam dunk contest, I think, should be slam dunked on, you know, if not discontinued, which, you know, and again, I have sympathy being from the NFL world. I mean, you know, the Pro Bowl featured very little football for three and a half quarters until the players began to realize, you know, there's money on the line and then started playing football. Pardon me. But here we go with another conversation about whether the players care, whether it's tanking or load management.

5:41Rich Eisen:And then this is a conversation about the NBA All-Star Game. Are players, do they take pride in this conversation where they're kind of pissed, they're bristling at having fans wonder if they care? Is that a conversation amongst players, Ramona? Yeah, and listen, I'll tell you about some of the players I know. Like, you know, Jason Tatum is a guy, I know he's out right now with his Achilles, but he wants to play every night. And I know there are times where they'll look at the schedule and they'll go, you know what, we got five and seven, why don't you sit one of those out? And he's always kind of trying to fight his way back into the games.

6:15There's certain, Giannis, the other day, he was saying, you know, I'm 100%. I feel 100%, but I understand I have to take a little while to ramp up because I have his history of calf injuries. But he wants to play. And you can tell it bothers Victor Banyama, right? When he lost, you saw him. He was, like, getting mad about a defensive adjustment at the end of an All-Star game, right, or the All-Star quarter or whatever it is. Some of them care. But I think the overall question, and something Adam Silver said really resonated with me, Rich, was at the end of his press conference, he was – I forget what the first question was, but he got onto one of his tangents or something that he'd obviously been thinking about for a while.

6:50And he goes, you know, when we first did the lottery, the idea was everybody understood that it's short. You know, you have to put aside sometimes your short term interest for the long term health of the game. And when the NBA was was kind of still not as quite as healthy of a league as it is now, when they were still trying to prove like, hey, we deserve to be on primetime. We deserve these kind of billion dollar TV rights deals. All the partners, the 30 owners, they all kind of understood like we're in this together. we all have to focus on the long-term health of the league. The league is really healthy right now, right?

7:25The league is, they just got this gigantic TV rights deal. Financially, it has probably never been healthier. And so that's when it's harder to focus on the long-term health of the league and the overall quote-unquote good of the game when your short-term matters more to you, right? The long-term has been taken care of. Everybody else, you know, sacrificed and built this league for what it is right now. And so I think Adam's just got to find a way to incentivize people to care about the long term. And to me, fixing the lottery, it's pretty easy. You have to just disincentivize tanking. You have to incentivize competition.

7:57And so I think Adam already gave you a hint in what he said. He said, I'm not so sure the bottom eight teams are actually the worst teams because there's such an incentive to tank. So people are throwing games right there where they're sort of doing the kinds of overt behaviors to lose so that the teams at the very bottom aren't necessarily the worst team. So he kind of already told you, I think they're probably going to flatten the lottery odds. Like it sounds like it's this this idea that you have to have the worst record to get the best pick. They just got to disincentivize that. Just just take that away.

8:30So whether that's the bottom eight teams all have the same amount, whether that's maybe we go back to having just the eight playoff teams in each conference. And so there's 14 lottery teams. Maybe there's maybe that all have the same odds. As long as you disincentivize tanking, then you'll you'll take it away. But if you're if you're trying to punish guy punish teams by fining them, I don't think it's going to work. You know, I mean, it's a carrot and stick situation. Right. I generally think carrots work better than than the stick. And I think in this case, that's where Adam is, too.

9:02Rich Eisen:Wouldn't you say, though, like, I guess then that might fix tanking this early, which is what we're seeing for the first time. Right. Where teams are fined in February pre all star break for tanking. That that's that's a new wrinkle. But if you flatten the odds, Ramona Shelburne here on The Rich Austin Show, if you flatten the odds, Wouldn't a team basically say, I don't want any part of a play-in tournament as being a 10 seed just so I win two games to get my clock cleaned by the Oklahoma City Thunder? You're just going to tank then, right? I mean, just to get your – the flat odds are still better than the odds of just making the playoffs and giving your fans a couple extra reasons to hope for about a week before they're dashed in a five-game series.

9:46Rich Eisen:You know what I'm saying? I don't know what that's about. Yeah, it would disincentivize playing for the play-in, right? Right. Those two spots that they carved out. So, you know, I think there's a there's there is a formula that will work. And I and I think they are debating. Look, if you if you want to talk carrot and stick, the carrot would be, OK, we're going to flatten the odds. And so you're sort of you're disincentivized your incentive to tank, but you're incentivized to keep competing. Right. The stick would be the punishments are not going to be in the dollar amounts. It's going to be in draft picks.

10:15It's going to be in something that's really going to hurt you, whether that maybe that's taking away money from a salary cap. Maybe that's something. Maybe it's taking away a future second-round pick or a future first-round pick. There's other things they can do that doesn't have to be that extreme. Like you could take away the ability to put protections on picks, right? So some of these picks are so highly protected. People go, you know, I like the best one. The best one I love is with the Indiana Pacers and the Clippers, where the Clippers have the Indiana Pacers pick if it falls five through nine in this year's draft, right?

10:48So Indiana keeps it if it's 1-4 and then if it's 10-30. But 5-9, the Clippers get it. So it's so hyper-specific that last week of the season, you're going to be looking at those every single Pacers game, seeing if they're trying to hit the over or the under on that one. I think that's actually pretty bad for the game because it's too obvious what teams are doing. It's too obvious and the incentive for them to lose is too obvious. And so what if you just said, we're not putting protections on picks. It's either giving up a future first or you're not. It's unprotected. And I think that would stop a lot of this.

11:23Plus, it would also make people never want to trade first round picks. But everything is on the table. Everything is on the table. Because I think Adam understands. NBA is 75 years in. Nobody's incentivized to think about the long-term health of the game because it is really healthy. And so that's his job now. Because it's too easy for everyone to just kind of worry about themselves right now.

11:46Rich Eisen:Ramona Shelburne here on the Rich Eisen Show. Okay, so now it's the de facto second half of the season. Or third or whatever you want to call it. The final third, let's put it that way. What's the storyline that we're looking at? What's your favorite storyline and what should we be seeing? I mean, you know, what I look at in the West is really the Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs. The Thunder were kind of running away with things and they've been hit by the injury bug, like most teams generally are. and it allowed the Spurs to come on here and provide this challenge to them where down the stretch, it is not outside of the realm of possibility that the Spurs catch the Thunder for that top seed.

12:29And you know Victor Wemignano, we saw how competitive he is in the All-Star game. You saw how he was in the matchup so far with the Thunder. I think that's something he wants. And none of us thought the Spurs were going to be this good this quickly, but they really are coming and they might already be here. So I'm going to be watching to see how that plays out. Obviously, in the East, Jason Tatum, potential return. I'm about to go on NBA Today and talk about that. I think my general sense is he's done everything possible to put himself in position to return this season. The question becomes, though, is that the right idea for him and for the Celtics?

13:05If he's able to come back, you have to understand he is not going to be the same Jason Tatum we all saw. He's going to be Jason Tatum, who came back very quickly from an Achilles. and is that worth the risk of re-injury? And I talked to him just the other day and he said, I still have not made a decision of whether or not I'm going to come back this season at all. I mean, he's going to be in position to make that decision. He's ramping up to make that decision, but we're not to that point yet. He's still got a few hurdles to clear. I think Boston, surprise team in the Eastern Conference, second overall, nobody saw that with Jason being out, but Jalen Brown's had this MVP caliber year.

13:41I think the Celtics are the story really in the second half. And my other one in the East is the Cleveland Cavaliers. They went out and got James Harden. I don't know how you put a guy who is the system, right? He is assistant in and of himself into your offense with just a third of the season to work on it. But they weren't all that great the first two thirds of the year. So maybe the James Harden system in Cleveland will be good because I think that was a great pickup there at the trade deadline.

14:06Rich Eisen:Well, I'm asking my resident Celtic fan, Chris Brockman, Think it's a good idea for Jason Tatum to try? Yeah, they can win the title with Jason Tatum. They can. I mean, they really can, Ramona. No one saw it coming. But what version of Jason Tatum are you getting, right? I remember when Kobe came back from that Achilles, and like a couple weeks into the comeback, he knocked knees with Tony Allen and broke a kneecap. I mean, you haven't played basketball in like 9, 10 months. He's not going to come back and just be that guy again. Rebound, shoot threes, play a little defense, 25 minutes a game.

14:38he's definitely coming back though why would NBC flex into Celtics Sixers on March 1st and announce that they're releasing this you know rehab doc with Jason Tatum I I know everybody saw that and I know that looks to be what you know everybody I know why people think that it could be that okay but but I'm telling you Jason the last thing anyone in Boston wants to do is put pressure on Jason Tatum to come back until he's not just 100 % ready, but 1 ,000 % ready. If he wakes up three days before whatever day he's targeting, or if he's even targeting a day, if he wakes up and just doesn't feel right or doesn't trust it, nobody wants him to go out there just because there's a documentary coming out or because they flex that game.

15:23This is an Achilles injury. My sense of how this will go is that he will continue to ramp up, He will continue to scrimmage, try to do more. And then one day we'll wake up and he'll be upgraded to questionable on the injury report. There's not going to be a long buildup to whatever he does.

15:42Rich Eisen:Ramona Shelburne here on The Rich Eyes and Show. In the few minutes left I have with you here, let's talk women's hoops, Ramona. I mean, UConn's doing it again. Gino's doing it again. They're undefeated. South Carolina looks awesome. UCLA just up the road. Corey Close has got them working. My Wolverines I'm really excited about as well, not just about the men's side. and we're less than two months away from the WNBA draft. March Madness is going to really put the women's game right there where it deserves again soon. What was the conversation over All-Star Weekend? Are we got a labor situation here?

16:14Rich Eisen:Are we going to have a season? What do we have here? I think we all have had this idea that they are going to figure it out at the 11th hour or whenever they have to because right now, Rich, you know deadlines create action and there's nothing happening right now. If they were to quote-unquote strike, well, what are you striking? They're not missing any games. The only thing a strike would do is make it so they don't get their health benefits anymore. That doesn't do anything, right? There's no pain point or pressure point. The first thing you've really—I guess we've missed free agency. I feel bad for Toronto and Portland.

16:50They don't even have players. They were supposed to have an expansion draft. They need to get some players on their team. Those are inconveniences that can be dealt with. But the only thing you really start to miss is when you get closer and closer to that draft in April. And so we're still a really long ways away from that, from those pressure points. And I think the union knows that, the league knows that. And everybody understands we're getting uncomfortable. Adam Silver used this term, the 11th hour. We're getting very uncomfortable right now because there's things that need to still happen.

17:20But we're not at a place where there can be real pain inflicted on either side by doing a strike or a lockout, etc. So I think we're getting closer from what I've heard in the background. The executive committee of the Players Association, they have now a new proposal from the league to review. I think they're working on submitting a counter proposal from what I understand. There's some internal discussions within that committee and within the league. I know Nekha Goumike has been out at Athletes Unlimited. Brianna Stewart's down at Unrivaled. They're all talking all the time on Zoom calls, etc.

17:54But once we see whatever the Players Association sends back to the WNBA, which I expect any day now, then I'll have a better sense of how far apart those two sides really are. Because they were talking, but they weren't exchanging proposals for about six weeks there. And I think that really slowed everything down.

18:12Rich Eisen:All right. So I remember hosting an NFL draft during a lockout. That's when I lost most of my remaining follicles, Ramona, to be honest with you. um so so once the what's the pressure point is it because i'm looking at the schedule here i mean fever at liberty with a double header is is april 25th so yeah training camps what like what what would it be like when's midnight strike what one is it like 80 of the league are free agents like everyone timed their contracts everybody signed one-year deals and everyone timed their contracts to coincide with this new CBA. So literally there's, there's not even really any teams.

18:52There's only like 20 % of the league that's under contract for next year. So the pressure point is at some point there has to be a reasonable time for free agency. At some point, the two expansion teams need to have an expansion draft. That's really the pressure point. And so I would say, I mean, we're in the middle of February now. It's, it's, it's gotta happen sometime in March because those two things really do need to happen. It's not just the draft and free agent. It's not just the draft and training camps. It's that nobody knows what team they're on right now.

19:23Rich Eisen:That's a problem. Yeah. I don't mean to be flippant. I don't mean to be flippant. But, again, there's a golden goose that's getting more valuable here. And, you know, and stars. I mean, Juju Watkins is going to be healthy. Like, this is rubber meeting the road here, and everybody can actually just – who's going to have everybody sit down and say, what are we doing? You know what I mean? Like, who are those principals? Yeah, I mean, I think it's – to me, it's Neko Gumake. She's been the head of the Players Association for a long time, and she's very well respected in the game and by the league office.

20:01And I think, you know, she's been doing a lot of podcasts. She's been saying what she wants. But I think there might be a point when, you know, Nneka gets in a room with either Kathy Engelbert or maybe even Adam Silver and they hash things out or something to that effect. Because she has a she has a pretty clear idea of what the what the players are asking for that's not being met. And I feel like that at some point is probably going to be where we land. I know Brianna Stewart's been taking a very big leadership role recently as well. So I think somewhere between those two ladies and Nafisa Collier would be also in that mix of who could get something really across the finish line.

20:41But I think we're getting close here, Rich. I mean, I thought it was interesting the league put out a schedule because one of the pressure points I had been hearing was arena dates. You know how this goes. If you don't have your dates on the schedule, they give them away to some concert. They give them away to some circus that comes to town or they give them away to anybody else who wants to use the arena. Arenas cannot have open dates. And if you want those open dates, you've got to lock those in. So the league went forward with the idea of let's do the schedule, even though we don't even know who's on what team.

21:11And I thought that was a blink, at least in my eyes, in terms of how the league is viewing this, because they understand we're not going to be able to have the games we want, to have the matchups we want. Our television partners need dates. Our arenas need dates. That was a blank on the league's part just because I know that was a real pressure point for a lot of teams.

21:32Rich Eisen:Well, I'd rather see locked-in dates than locked-out players, Ramona. Let's put it that way. I look forward to seeing more of you right here in studio. We'll do this setup a little bit better than what I did today. I appreciate your time. You got it. See you on NBA Today at top of the hour, correct? Top of the hour? Anytime, Rich. Ramona Shelburne right here on the Rich Eisen show right here. Lots to talk about right there. was awesome as as always with Ramona um yeah man you don't want a half of Tatum you don't want a Jason Ta you know what I mean I understand how you feel finals and by the way nothing sucks more than labor disputes I mean the WNBA has more people interested in it than ever the women's final the women's March Madness is going to be great again again and um wouldn't you want to see like Juju Watkins getting back out there smiling at an NBA draft holding up a jersey like let's go let's go and I know I know the first the first person when she comes into Los Angeles if you know that would want to see Juju Watkins play is my daughter who wears Juju Watkins attire almost half the time during the week so let's go if you will uh 844-204-RICH number to dial Now, speaking of my kids, I've got a great segment, Hot Takes from 15-Year-Olds.