James Herbert | CBS Sports NBA Writer

It is the J. R. Sport Reshow here with you coast to coast on the Infiniti Sports Network. The NBA season, it could end in a few hours or it could extend. all the way to Sunday.

Tonight, we got a game six between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers. Even while the NBA Finals is going on, we have so many rumors about what superstars and where they might end up and to have a chat about it all, what we've heard, seen, and what we can expect. Joining us right now is NBA Ryder from CBS Sports. His name is James Herbert. James, how are you, man?

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thank you for taking the time to join us. I fully believe that we'll see Tyrese Halliburton out on the court tonight.

Even if he is the world's biggest decoy or this is the world's biggest hustle, what are your thoughts on what we can expect for the rest of the NBA Finals, whether it concludes tonight or on Sunday? Yeah, I mean, Halliburton's going to play. That's out there. I think it's just an open question as to how effective. He'll be, I mean, what we saw.

Um, throughout most of game five the other night, was a guy who didn't have his normal side-to-side movement. He didn't have his normal ability to change directions, he didn't have his normal, you know, he's not like the fastest guy in the league to begin with. Like, that's not how he operates, but he did look less explosive. To me, now For all of the attention on him, and yeah, he didn't make a field goal. in the game like I didn't think he was out there just playing terribly.

I didn't think he was like making a ton of bad decisions. He was a part of that run. they had to cut it to two in the fourth quarter.

So, I mean, from the Pacers' perspective, they're hoping that with, you know, round the clock treatment the last couple of days, that he'll come into this game feeling a little better. Than he did late in game five, and that he'll be able to be kind of, you know, the guy who he's been for them all year. Maybe it's not a 30-point night, maybe it's not a huge scoring performance, but in terms of the guy who kind of gets them going, gets them organized, who gets their pace going, who's able to kind of set the tone for the way that they play, and even just create advantages like for other people to go and attack a closeout and then make a play. Like that, I think, is what they need from him more than anything. He doesn't have to have.

An enormous individual game, but if he can kind of, you know, gut it out and inspire his teammates, I think they'll take it. It seems, either way, are they cooked? Are they cooked? The paces are done, you think? I've seen them come back from so many situations this year.

Like, I'm not going to say they're cooked. If I had to pick a winner tonight, I would pick OKC. I had Thunder and Six going into this series, and I mean, just. If we know, and we do know, like they are going to have a somewhat diminished version of Halliburton. I mean, I just don't think they have.

A whole ton of room for error going in.

So I would pick OKC, but we have seen. The Pacers come up with all sorts of upsets throughout this run. We've seen them come back from huge deficits and all of that. I'm sure they'll play really hard. I'm sure they'll have the fight.

And I'm hoping that we'll get a good and competitive and tight game. Once it's tight. Down the stretch, Indiana has a track record of pulling rabbits out of their hats.

So I'm not willing to dismiss them, but going in, I wouldn't pick them to win tonight. It will be drawn by NBA Ryder, covers all things basketball for CBS Sports James Herbert. I mean, once we get through this NBA finals, whether it ends tonight or it ends on Sunday, we know that we're staring at the draft. There's so many rumors about some of the stars that might move around. Where do you think Kevin Durant might end up?

Or actually, forget that. We know the options. where is the best place that he can be? Yeah, that's a good question. Minnesota makes sense.

The problem is that, you know, the word is that he has no interest in actually being there.

So I'm not trying to, you know, force some arranged marriage and make KD unhappy. But Um I do think if they're given a chance to make a pitch to him. He should listen because I do think that's a pretty good basketball situation. That is a team that, you know, I mean, we've seen them get to the conference finals now the last couple of years. I think they could need, they could use a bit more scoring punch.

They could use a guy like KD to kind of help them maybe go and actually make the finals next year. I do think that could make sense.

Now, there are a whole bunch of variables in play, right? Like what is the package that is being sent out the other way? Like in one version of this, it's Rudy Gobert that's kind of the headliner in terms of the players that would be going Phoenix's way. In another version, it's Julius Randles. But Randall has a player option that we don't know whether or not he will pick up.

I think for me, if I'm the Wolves, if I could do this trade and make it so, you know, you're giving up some other stuff to upgrade from Julius Randall to Kevin Durant and you still keep the sort of shape of your team intact. I think that would be the idea. Ideal scenario. I think that would be a really, really formidable team. If.

You are sending Gobert the other way, then it's a little bit different. It's a little trickier. I mean, the wolves, maybe, maybe they would still do it. But I think at that point, you have to expect a pretty drastic drop in just how effective they can be on defense going forward. James Herbert is here with us on the JR Sport Reshow covers basketball for CBS Sports.

I want to move over to the Los Angeles Lakers. I mean, last night we heard about the $10 billion acquisition. By Walter and Guggenheim Partners from the Bus family. Is this really going to have an impact on how things change or how the Lakers operate or even the rest of the league? Because we know right now the NBA is not Major League Baseball.

It's almost prohibitive to spend so much money and so much cash, like there are rules in place.

So what do you think this is going to mean for the Lakers? Yeah, I mean, it'll have an impact, but nothing like the Dodgers sale and how they were able to just go and. And spend as much as they wanted in a league with no salary cap. Like, I mean, you can see, like, Matt Ishbio went into Phoenix with his deep pockets and was basically like, we're going to buy talent and we're going to do it immediately. And he goes and makes the KD trade on day one, literally, day one of his.

His ownership tenure, like, how has that worked out for the Sons? I mean, we were just talking about where KD might end up. They have spent wildly. Um, and now everybody's expecting them to try to go and get under the second apron this summer, and that's not because suddenly Matt Ispia is like he wants to save money and he does he's not as committed as he was before, it's because he found out, and I think the team found out that the reason why there aren't teams just going out there spending as much money as humanly possible is because of the restrictions in this relatively new, not that new anymore, I guess, collective bargaining agreement. Like there are roster building restrictions that come when you are one of the leagues.

Highest spending teams. This was designed to curb the spending of teams like the Warriors and the Clippers and now the Suns to the point where. Um If you do go in with that kind of strategy, you'll end up. You know, you might have your draft pick frozen or taken away. There's all sorts of access to different exceptions that just vanish in the summer.

It makes it really, really hard to build a competitive team year after year when you're dealing with all these restrictions. It's not like the Lakers are going to come in and just be able to trade for or sign a whole bunch of superstars. That's not how this works. Where there will be a difference is the stuff that we don't really see: the size of the front office, the money that the Lakers are able to put into off-court stuff, areas that they have had to cut corners over the years because the Lakers have not been. owned by some crazy conglomerate that has Other sources of income.

This has been like an enormously successful family business, but basically a family business forever, or at least not forever, but since Jerry Buss bought the team decades ago. And that means they have not been able to make the same sort of investments in staff and operations and facilities and all of that that some other teams have.

So now the Lakers, they still will have the advantage that they have in terms of their enormous local TV deal. They'll still have the advantage that they play in a huge market and that stars want to go there and play there and they have the brand and the history of all of that. They also won't have that one disadvantage that they had vis-a-vis some of the other teams in the league, where now they're going to have owners that are as deep-pocketed as everyone. And maybe they will go and build their own arena, build a new practice facility, hire a bunch more scouts and analytics people and all of this, and just make a bunch of investments. That's where we'll really see the change with the Lakers going forward.

James Herbert is here with us from CBS Sports.

Well, we know a team that you talk about the draft and being able to analyze and take a look at analytics and add staff. It seems like the Dallas Mavericks have really lucked out after trading Luka Doncich to the Lakers, and now they're going to end up with a Cooper flag by next week. It seems like. What are your thoughts on how that's going to look, given that we have no idea when Kyrie is ever going to return? And then pretty much Anthony Davis is, well, he's Anthony Davis.

So what do you think that's going to look like? Is Jason Kidd even going to be his coach? What are your thoughts there? I kind of think Kidd will be the coach because I feel like the Knicks thing would have been done already if that was going to happen. But as far as what it's going to look like on the court, I mean, I think there's a lot of questions that the front office is going to have to answer the summer because just throwing Cooper flag onto that roster and running it back would make for a really, really weird team.

I mean, like basically all five of their best players are either power forwards or centers. That doesn't make any sense. They need people that can actually, you know, make plays from the perimeter. They need some guards on the team. They need to balance out this roster.

I imagine we will see some sort of movement. Maybe it's Daniel Gafford that goes. Maybe they even look into seeing what Derek Lively's trade value is on the market. I think Flag's best of the four. I think PJ Washington's best of the four.

I don't agree with Anthony Davis that he's best of the four, but they have seemingly committed to playing him there.

So yeah, I mean, it's a really weird. Roster right now. If it were me, I would probably trade AD and completely start over, build this thing around Cooper Flag. But there's no indication that that's what they're going to do.

So let's see what else they do in the summer.

Well, no, absolutely. And you mentioned the New York Knicks and their ongoing disaster. You would think after getting rid of Tom Thibodeau, they would have some type of indication as to what they would do next. What is the most likeliest of outcomes? We heard about Taylor Jenkins, and we heard about them taking a look at Mike Brown.

What the heck do you think is going on with the Knicks? Or is that too impossible to even think about? Yeah. We can think about it, we can speculate, but I don't know what they're going to do. Those are the two names that have come out as far as.

Guys that they're planning to interview, um, but you know, maybe they'll go and um look at some other people who are assistant coaches elsewhere, maybe they'll look at you know guys from the college ranks. I don't know. I think it's a tough one, it's tough to figure out. um what they are going to prioritize because Um, all the reporting so far indicates that they're trying to kind of poach a bunch of Opposing teams had coaches, which is a difficult thing to do in the NBA. It rarely happens.

And it just became sort of a joke quickly that they were getting denied permission to interview. All of these potential coaching candidates for them.

So, I like, I'm curious to see. Um where they land, I think, you know. I wouldn't want to just assume that they're going to mess this up just because it's gotten off to an awkward start. It does like kind of feel like a disaster now, but I caution against just like. Actually, looking at it like this is a disaster and they will fail because you know, all that matters is they make the right hire.

It's not necessarily they make the right hire on everybody else's timeline. I remember you know, this is years ago now, but I remember everybody criticizing the Sixers right when Sam Hinke got there. Um, about like, how can you not have a coach in place by the draft? This is so important. How can you not have a coach at the beginning of free agency?

And they took like months and months to hire Brett Brown. But then Brett Brown had like a pretty long tenure there, was quite popular in Philadelphia. And everybody forgot that it took them, you know, the better part of an offseason to settle on who was going to be their coach. I think if New York makes a great hire and if they have a good year next year, then nobody will care that they tried to interview Jason Kidd and Ime Udoka and all these people. S Yeah, I mean well eventually they gotta they gotta get the guys on the court right.

And we'll see from there. I mean, given the Knicks' history over the past thirty or so years, I don't know if I'd be all of that that confident. We gotta wait and see. Hey, James, thank you so much for the time. Hopefully, we get some more basketball passed tonight.

Please tell everybody where they can follow you and all of your work with CBS Sports. Yeah, all my stuff just goes up on cbsports.com in the NBA section. Thanks so much for having me.