James Jackson: Kevin Durant's Trade Possibly Expanding To Seven Teams Is Bananas

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1:14It shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest croc store today. I'm living my best life. Yeah, yeah. This is The Rich Eisen Show. Here's the other surprising part. With guest host, Brian Weber. Yeah, big shoes to fill. Eisen's a legend. Live from The Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. The Rich Eisen Show. Do you know who I am? I'm a guy on television. I have my own show. And now, sitting in for Rich, here's Brian Weber. Emulating the great Joey Chestnut, we are powering our way into the second hour of the program. We appreciate you. spending part of your Independence Day with us.

2:00Brian Weber with you. We took a phone call, a historic development in the first hour of the program. We're open to doing that with much more regularity as we move forward, but I'll be totally transparent with you. You're hanging on the line at 844-204-7424. I am not going to take a call for at least 40 minutes because the top of the hour is sacred. We're going to jump right in talking baseball in 20 minutes. I'll do a better job with the clock management. I want to be respectful of the time of our first guest, which will be an NBA-focused conversation with James Jackson of The Athletic. And then in 40 minutes, I will use the transcendent brilliance of Joey Chestnut to take you inside the world of competitive eating.

2:51It was like Secretariat coming down the stretch at the Belmont. Chestnut, scarf down, 11 dogs in 59 seconds. He was on a blistering pace prior to the competition. He said the goal was to get to 80. We're talking Wilt Chamberlain going for 100 in Hershey, PA. A reminder, the record was 76 set by the Great One in 2021. The final official tally, 70 and a half. The glorious mustard belt is back where it belongs. I love that 70 and a half is the number. You know why that probably has meaning? Because some of you degenerates bet on this today, and I'm not going to Google what the under over was. Or, because I come to you from Southern California, I don't want to get arrested.

3:51We're now on a path to have daily fantasy sports being outlawed. I could say more or less because most people couldn't figure out more or less was the same thing as under over. I'm not doing two hours on Joey Chestnut, but as a veteran of July 4th and somebody who got into sports because I appreciate greatness. It is so rewarding to have the legend back. I'm Brian Weber. Very mortal, but I am keeping the chair warm for an icon in our business, Rich and the guys, enjoying a well-earned long holiday weekend off next week. And I'll let you know, because Rich is too humble to talk about it with too much frequency, Rich is going to be playing with the biggest names in sports and entertainment, and it's only fitting because this show is the nexus of sports in Hollywood.

4:48Rich is going to be competing in the American Century Celebrity Golf Tournament coming up next weekend in glorious Southlake Town, Nevada. So we'll talk about Rich's prospects. He'll do better than Larry the Cable Guy. And I know that from experience. I had the great opportunity to host a radio show there in back-to-back years, and the stars are accessible. They are willing to sit down, not only talk to radio hacks like me, but sign autographs. Going to be great to see Rich playing with some luminaries on national TV. I am making a content decision that many of you are going to resent. If I was just following a winning blueprint, I'd go to the countdown, the training camps, and the NFL are underway, and I'll do that extensively next week.

5:39But it's July 4th. Just as I enjoyed being here on Memorial Day and talk baseball, I got to talk some baseball. I don't have to. It's not an FCC guideline, but here's how I approach baseball. As someone who had an extraordinary level of passion for the grand old game, it was my motivation to get into the business. Like everybody else, I have gravitated towards football. If you happen to know who I am, it's probably because of the year I spent at NFL Network, where I got to meet Rich, and I think that led to these filling opportunities. And then for three years, I hosted a daily NFL-centric talk show on a platform called TuneIn.

6:23So I was lucky enough to, beyond being there in person for the draft and a full week on Radio Row for the Super Bowl and the Combine, I covered the NFL owners' meetings. So I'm sitting at a card table at a five-star hotel in Boca Raton, Florida. So I now feel defensive that I have to give you my NFL credentials, but I'm talking some baseball today, and we're going to do it in entertaining fashion and focus on star power because even the casuals, I think, can gravitate towards that. Clayton Kershaw, to me, and I've wrestled with this, and some of it comes down to being a prisoner of geography. I'm here in Southern California, as is Rich.

7:05The phone number is international, 844-204-7424. We hit on the Mets and Yankees in compact fashion in the first hour of the show. We'll go in-depth coming up on the Subway Series, renewal of the rivalry, next and final hour, about an hour from now, when we check in with Levi Weaver of The Athletic. But here in Southern California, not to get too deep as a fill-in guy, the Dodgers are part of the fabric of the landscape. The Dodgers are almost, and this is going to sound like I'm being blasphemous, but I'll tell you I went to Catholic school a million years ago and I have a degree of spirituality.

7:46Dodgers have a religious fervor to them. There's a reason why, even when the franchise was run into the ground by the McCourts, millions showed up because there's something about the ritual of going to Chavez Ravine and bonding with thousands of your friends. Now everything has changed when the Guggenheim ownership group came in. And it's going to be fascinating to see what Mark Walter does, who owns the Dodgers, when he takes over the majority stake of the Lakers. Now, I just want to, again, remind you that facts matter. While the deal has been finalized, it hasn't been approved. In fact, the Celtics, who are selling for$6.1 billion, that deal will become official when we get to the next round of owners meetings coming up next week and the next 10 days in Las Vegas.

8:39So as of now, it's still Jeannie Buss and her siblings running the Lakers. But if you think about how the Dodgers have been able to maximize their opportunities in a sport that really is about risk aversion, and this really is boring, but the whole point of baseball is because it's so random, the analytics crowd, and I don't love everything that is data-driven, but it works on Wall Street and you can't argue with the results of the Dodgers so long as you have unlimited resources. is because they can run all their algorithms to tell Dave Roberts what the lineup should look like and when he should go to the bullpen.

9:24But you have to have arm after arm because of all these injuries. And you have to have the ability to get ultra aggressive at the trade deadline. Go back to last year, pick it up, Jack Flaherty. So the Dodgers can always throw money at problems. And it helps that you have Shohei Otani, who's the Babe Ruth of our lifetime. taking all that deferred money and Otani, if you're not tracking what he's doing, back on the mound tomorrow, part of a historic week for the Dodgers that brought everything into focus the other night for Clayton Kershaw. So being somebody who wants to have friends, as much as I sit in a dark room and talk to myself even when I'm not on the air, Clayton Kershaw is ultra popular here in Southern California.

10:12You can understand why. Dodger fans keep telling me he's the best pitcher of his generation. And I want just to be fair with the analysis using his ability to get those three strikeouts against the White Sox. It still counts even when you're playing a team that looks like a triple A club. Remember, the White Sox had more losses last year than the abysmal expansion 1962 Mets. The only reason why they're getting a little bit of a pass now is Colorado somehow is even worse. Baseball is just weird. It happens that way. But Kershaw, who's now running on fumes, but I give him all the credit he deserves for getting the 3 ,000.

10:56I keep hammering this. And this is amazing, but you've got to give it some thought when you're trying to process these numbers. He's just the fourth lefty in baseball history to get to 3 ,000 strikeouts. best winning percentage since 1947 here's a better one lowest era in the live ball era that goes back to 1920 i was just starting at the time wearing a straw hat and taking the trade now all of that including the cy youngs three of them and being the last pitcher to win an mvp in 2014 and probably the last guy to get to 3 000 strikeouts zach rehnke is close but he decided to walk away and I guess he's good sitting on 2 ,900 and change.

11:40So all of that says first ballot Hall of Famer gets a statue outside of Dodger Stadium, arguably the greatest Dodger of them all based on all that. Now I'm not buying that. I'm just giving you objective numbers because I haven't gotten to October. Now this is not fair, but this is what we do, especially in baseball. I keep mentioning, just because I love saying, I'm stealing from Howard Cosell. And yes, another current reference. I'm Brian Weber in for Rich, 844-204-7424. You want to talk Joey Chestnut? Hang on the line. We'll get there in 30 minutes. Coming up in just over 10 minutes, I'm going to respect the clock.

12:23We will be on time to talk more NBA with James Jackson of The Athletic. Reggie Jackson, my hero as a kid. I loved bigger-than-life personalities. My old man thought he was a combination of Reggie and Jimmy Connors. A lot of swagger for no reason, but we were a Reggie family. Well, when your moniker is Mr. October, it tells you something. And we believe in the notion of clutch, and who was more clutch than Reggie against the Dodgers? You contrast that with poor Dave Winfield, who started, what, one for 22 in his postseason career for the Yankees? and he got labeled Mr. May. I'm not saying Clayton Kershaw is Mr.

13:08May, Mr. June, Mr. July, but since I read you all of those positive numbers, I can't overlook a postseason ERA of 449. Now, if you really know baseball, you're going to tell me, don't bring up wins and losses. I know everything changed when Felix Hernandez won that Cy Young with, what, 13 victories, But since I'm old and I just want to make sure that people who aren't CMEDs have a general idea of the background, Kershaw, postseason body of work, 500, 13 and 13. And to give you more context, Greg Maddox, first ballot Hall of Famer, 11 and 14 in the playoffs. But Maddox would show up at least because you can lose without run support.

13:56The ERA, not that much higher than his glorious regular season stats for Maddox postseason ERA of 327. And here's where Kershaw loses me, 449. That is beefy. Now, I am aware that he came through in the 2020 World Series. If I want to be a cynic, I'll hang an asterisk on that because of the 60-game COVID season and the weird format of playing in Texas. But he got the wins and he got the ring. Got a ring for doing nothing last year. It's just going to be very interesting to see how history judges him. And I don't want to be more of a fill-in hack than I normally am. You know the lazy comparison.

14:41He's the Peyton Manning of baseball. Although, as we get further away from Peyton's career, and he's ubiquitous on a big word Friday of the program, Nobody talks about his postseason struggles because he's so charismatic and because he's everywhere. And he walked away with a pair of rings. Now, he didn't do much to win that second ring. And actually, I had the great opportunity to be there because that was Super Bowl 50 at Levi's Stadium. It's coming back to the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Clara to be precise, coming up in February. That Super Bowl, you'll recall, was all about Vaughn Miller and the Broncos defense, completely terrorizing Cam Newton as Denver took care of Carolina.

15:26But most people don't think about minutia. We think about headlines. And Manning walks away with two rings. Kershaw's got two. But because baseball, here's the positive and the negative. It's every freaking day. You have to find a middle ground that says, OK, here's a guy who was sensational every fifth day versus when it mattered the most, had some horrendous meltdowns. So if I'm talking greatest dodger of a mall, Vin Scully, but that's me being a broadcasting geek, Sandy Koufax. And that's where I get into murky territory with Kershaw because I know what those numbers mean, but postseason has to be part of the accounting as well.

16:16So I've evolved maybe just to make some friends in L.A. When I was first arriving on the scene, having grown up in New York and then spending years in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had more than one verbal altercation at a watering hole bashing Clayton Kershaw. Plus, he kept giving me more and more material. Every time we get to October, he's getting lit up by somebody. Still, now that he's in the twilight of his career, certainly have to appreciate also his persistence. The guy didn't have to come back from all these injuries. Now, if you're a young player on the Dodgers, I could understand resentment because you could say he's taking a roster spot from somebody.

16:59It's a 25-man roster. Plenty of room. And because the Dodgers, even with their unlimited resources and depth, cannot avoid a wave of injuries on the mound every year. They actually need him for now. And he's finding a way. He's grinding. He's getting there. So we will say congrats to Clayton. Not doing a Mount Rushmore of the best pitchers of all time. But if you just look at those raw numbers, you'd be a fool not to put them in the conversation for the best pitchers we've seen over the last 25 years at least. I'm Brian Weber in for Rich Eisen. 844-204-7424. We will get you fully lined up for what could occur on the Diamond when the Mets and the Yankees start their Subway Series later today in Queens.

17:54coming up in the next hour of the program, just over an hour from now. We'll take you around the bases with Levi Weaver of The Athletic. NBA conversation is in our immediate future. I went through how things could play out with the potential expansion of the current deal between the Suns and the Rockets with the headline, Kevin Durant going to Houston, according to reports from The Athletic. So it's great we're talking to somebody who works there. That deal is not done, can't become official until Sunday, and could grow to a record-setting seven-team trade. What does it mean? Who could be on the move?

18:38And we'll sum up what has happened so far. Essentially, anything of consequence has already occurred. When we got to DeAndre Ayton, felt like we were hitting the bottom, but the Lakers had to do something. So we'll try to put it all in perspective. What was the most significant move or decision of this week of NBA free agency? Looking forward to my first conversation with James Jackson, staff editor for The Athletic. If you're on the line, stay there. Phone calls coming up in just over 20 minutes. I'm Brian Weber. And for Rich, this is The Rich Eisen Show.

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19:52Rich Eisen here. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire costs time and money, but the right one helps your business grow. The challenge? Finding that person without sorting through resumes. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It screens candidates so you can focus on conversations with qualified talent. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence and build the team you need. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Eisen. Terms and conditions apply. Rich Eisen here with some advice.

20:24If high interest credit card debt is grinding you down, it might be time to call an audible with a SoFi personal loan. It consolidates your debt into one low monthly payment with no fees required. And with as soon as the same day funding, you can make the right play fast. Call an audible on your debt today at SoFi.com slash debt play. Loans originated by SoFi Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891. Fast funds terms apply at SoFi.com slash debt play. Hit me up on the X platform. B.W. Weber. Weber with two B's. Let's get back to the NBA. I am a big advocate of The Athletic.

21:02I am a subscriber and I'm looking forward to chatting with their staff editor, James Jackson, for the first time. James, thanks for taking the time. I had a great conversation with Zach Harper the other day on another radio show. Sam Amick is a legend. David Aldridge, you have a collection of stars on your staff. Yes, we do. We absolutely do, Brian. I appreciate the time. We have a deep, deep, deep roster of NBA legends and know-how, so it's always great to work with them and all the great work that they continue to do, honestly, through a very busy free agency. And I'm glad you said it that way because, James, I'm a huge NBA fan.

21:37I'll bore you. back in the day. I was a Doogie Howser of broadcasting, so I got a job with the Warriors when they were terrible in the early 90s between Run TMC and then the spike later on. So I have deep NBA roots, and I love this week because of all of the marginal moves that people don't pay attention to and the consequence of them. So I want to get into the content that you pushed out about the Achilles crisis coming up, but I am fascinated with the report from The Athletic about the potential of the current deal between the Rockets and the Suns that we know will send Kevin Durant to Houston, or we presume it to be true.

22:20All signs pointing to that when the deal becomes official in a couple days. Fill in the audience about the possibility of this expanding to a seven-team trade. It's just, it's bananas, But honestly, it's far for the course of everything, really. Like, Zach floated the idea of that just getting busier because they have until July 6th, until the cap year and everything transitions. And then the league can continue doing his business for next season. And so that's just enough time for teams to be like, hey, can we get in on this? And now you see Jonathan Kaminga might end up going to the Wizards, just depending on how that pans out, because he's obviously wanted in an expanded role.

23:00Interested in seeing how the Lakers might try to get themselves into that a little bit as well. But all in all, that being centered on Kevin Durant going to Houston, that's been one of my favorite moves. And so if that's an opportunity for teams to get themselves in, maybe get a couple of extra pieces that might help round out their roster, it's honestly par for the course with how free agency has been going, not just this year, really, but seeing how the collective bargaining agreement has changed so much, right? Like, as we've seen with Miles Turner going from Indiana to Milwaukee, it's not really just about if you're a free agent now.

23:29If teams are trying to get under that first or second apron, duck the luxury tax, if they're lucky enough to even have cap room, you get a little bit creative with whatever it is that another team might have. And so 25 % of the league trying to get in on one trade sounds about right. You're right. It's been bonkers, and we look forward to things heating up as we get deeper into the long holiday weekend. I'm Brian Weber, AIM for Rich, talking NBA with James Jackson of The Athletic. Now, James, you're aware of NBA Twitter and all the social media and people working the trade machines. When The Athletic had the report of this potentially expanding to seven teams, people went wild with scenarios like LeBron winds up on the Warriors, Jimmy Butler heads to Phoenix.

24:13Can we just pump the brakes on that? Do you find any substance to those reports? Just because seven teams are talking doesn't mean we're trending that way, does it? Not necessarily, and especially just to the point that you alluded to just now. If anyone's in the business of trying to predict what LeBron's next move is, he's been thinking about it like 10, 20 steps ahead of time already. And so just in the grand scheme, it could be a matter of trying to make cap machinations work. If Jonathan Kaminga, as I alluded to earlier, might find himself getting that star role that he's been wanting, going from the Warriors to a team like the Wizards, who could use a feature guy, feature scorer, and someone that has those chops at least while the rest of the young guys round out their form and get into their roles and whatnot with the team.

24:57But in the grand scheme of things, we're just really going to have to wait and see until that happens, really, until the trades are actually done. Just because, to the point that you make, you're talking about a lot of teams not only necessarily trying to get involved in that trade, but a lot of things can happen in a span of an hour or two. Like when the idea was floated just a couple of days ago, that was just the difference between us reacting to Damian Lewis being waived, you know, and then going on to the pre-agent market and then Miles Turner becoming a buck. and the next thing you know with the trade expanding and such.

25:25But I wouldn't get in the business of predicting what LeBron is necessarily going to do just because at the end of the day, he's going to hold his own cards in a distinct way. As Sam Emick even alluded to earlier this week, it might not necessarily be a rush for the Lakers to end up trading him because they could end up just letting him play out this last season. And then he makes his own move when it is that his contract expires and then he sees what he wants to do to end his career. Talking hoops with James Jackson. Check out his great work at The Athletic along with all of his colleagues. and I think you framed it right.

25:54Nobody can ascertain what LeBron wants to do, and nobody has handled the business side of his career better than LeBron. That said, what did you make of the statement released by his agent, Rich Paul, that alluded to the goal of more championships being LeBron's aim? James, if that was the case, why did he opt in? If he wanted to maximize his chance to go to a contender, Why not opt out and become a free agent and pick a different team? I would say, to be fair, as a few people have noted earlier this week, whether or not LeBron is making 52.6 mil in the option year or 60 mil, 70 mil, whatever, it's typically still going to be below his relative market value relative to how valuable he is to the league.

26:42So I don't think money is necessarily simply moving his decision to necessarily do that. and at the end of the day even if he by opting staying staying with the lakers still going to have luka dongers alongside him still trust jj reddick they had a pretty good report last season ended up as a third seed made a good playoff run and they can still see what it is that they have with that roster if they get a little bit creative at the end of the day he's going to hold his own cards because even if it is that they play throughout this rest of the season and he does what he wants to finish out his laker stint which oddly enough has been the longest stint that he's with a single franchise in his career that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily ascertain.

27:18But in the grand scheme of things, he's going to want to make a run for championships because at the end of the day, that's what we're ultimately judged by. But I still wouldn't be surprised if he finds a way to leverage a situation to his liking without necessarily having to ruffle too many feathers and make things ugly. He's still going to play hard. He's still going to do everything he can to bring everything to the Lakers up until something else is going to happen. But they're just at a little bit of an impasse right now. I think it's just a clash of timelines. He's 40, and he does have things that he wants to do before he closes his career.

27:48The Lakers just got gift for at Luka Doncic earlier this year, of course, but he's 13, 14 years younger. And so it's, to me, a balance of LeBron still wanting to play for championships, and rightly so, but the Lakers still have long-term business decisions that they have to balance out for themselves too. And so it's a little game of chicken, so to speak, but we've seen this from LeBron for a while, and like you said, it's because no one handles the business side of things better or more distinctly than he does. So at the end of the day, he's going to want to play for championships and be able to try to stack the deck as best as he can, but that's the competitive side.