James Herbert, CBS Sports NBA Reporter

James, thank you for taking the time, appreciate you.

Thank you for having me. No doubt about it. What a busy week it's been as we head towards the draft. I guess the big news that we got earlier today was that Monty Williams just hit the lottery. What the hell is going on with the Pistons and can Trajan Langdon fix them? Yeah, I think honestly like for Langdon, for whoever the new coach is going to be, I don't think this is such a bad situation.

Like expectations are going to be so low. There's actually quite a bit of talent on the roster. It just hasn't really fit super well, but I think Langdon is not going to, you know, really have that baggage of having brought any of those guys in. I think it's sort of a clean slate situation and I think honestly like yeah, it's a very weird situation just because I mean this is like quite literally unprecedented to pay a coach that much money and to get rid of them after just one season. You're not paying him all this money to not coach, right? Like that is weird, but I do think like going into next season, like I would feel a lot better now as a Pistons fan than I did a year ago and I do think Langdon has some like pretty like decent sort of assets to play with. And like I said, like expectations are just going to be so low after like a disastrous season last year that I think at the end of next season it's going to feel a whole lot better.

Can't get any worse. James Herbert is joining us from CBS Sports. Well, we know another team that does not have a coach.

It's the Los Angeles Lakers. What are they waiting on? Are we in a negotiating period with Redick?

What say you, James? Yeah, I think it's really interesting just because they had that really high-profile chase of Hurley and that would have made sense for a lot of reasons. It also would have been a little bit risky, right? Like we don't know exactly how that transition would have been. And now they're in the scenario where if you believe the reporting, it's like, all right, JJ Redick's the front runner, but we have to see how that plays out.

That again is sort of an unknown. He's obviously a super smart guy. Like if you listen to his podcasts, if you hear him call these games, like I think everybody at basically all levels within the NBA, like respects him as a basketball mind, but he also hasn't done this before. Like he has, and he's not going to take an assistant coaching job first or anything like that. Now, not every coach has done that. Like there have been championship-winning coaches that have just sort of jumped right in there.

Steve Kerr did it right out of the broadcast booth. It can be done, but it's not like he's joining a totally ideal situation where they have all the talent necessary to win right now. And it's also not like you'd be going into a situation where they're rebuilding and it's a bunch of young players and no expectations.

Like, no, it's like simultaneously a ton of expectations without the championship caliber roster. It's like a sort of weird situation for any coach to step into. So I think whether it's Riddick, whether it's James Borrego, whether it's a different candidate, you have to kind of evaluate this through a prism of like, what is this going to look like a few years from now? Like they are going to be navigating kind of like the end of the LeBron era and then something new entirely that like, we really don't know what that will look like. So, I mean, the Lakers have a really interesting kind of decision on on their hands here because they're sort of hiring people for two different jobs. Damn, James Herbert is joining us. One of the jobs is just babysitting LeBron, right?

Carrying his bags around? I don't know babysitting, but I think it's just you have these expectations now that like while you have LeBron and Anthony Davis on the roster, like everything has to be about the present moment, about maximizing those two guys, about giving them a chance to compete for a championship. Not so much about like building a long-term future for the franchise, about coming in and like establishing the foundation and all of this. Like no, like there's going to be immediate pressure and it's not probably unless, you know, Palinkas front office pulls off some miracles in the offseason, it's probably not going to come with a roster that's ready-made to win a title right now. Like I don't know that there's this magic move out there that is going to make it so we're heading into next season thinking they're more likely to win a championship than they are to be in the play-in again.

So it's a tough one, it's a difficult one. It's also, you know, I mean if you're Redick or Borrego, I do think like it is still exciting as a coach to be able to come in and coach LeBron James and work with him. That is, this is, you know, beyond all that, this is like one of the premier franchises in sports. Like it's still a really exciting opportunity.

It's just, it is also a very, very weird job just because of the circumstances. James Herbert is here with us from CBS Sports. We know the NBA draft is next week. There's been a lot of talk about what happens with the LeBron James' son, Bronny. He's working out for two teams, talking to two teams, the Lakers and the Suns.

Should we just hand deliver him to the Lakers? Is this what we're looking at, James? I mean not if you listen to Rich Paul. I mean, Rich Paul had some really interesting on-the-record quotes today to ESPN's Jonathan Gervoni. Honestly, like it is so rare you see an agent speaking this frankly about one of their own clients like this, like at this portion of the draft process.

Like it's kind of wild. He's talking about how Masai Ujiri in Toronto loves Bronny and would maybe take him with a 31st pick sight unseen without Bronny coming in for a workout or anything. He's talking about Minnesota being big fans of him, about Rich Paul himself has some reservations because he doesn't know who's going to be in charge of that organization just from an ownership perspective because of the dispute that they have. So yeah, I mean to hear him tell it, there are a few different teams that have interest in Bronny and beyond just giving him a two-way contract, but he has chosen to only send him to those two places. So we'll have to see. He did leave the door open to say like that might change, he might have a last minute workout somewhere, but he definitely didn't guarantee that he would end up on the Lakers, he didn't guarantee that he would end up on the Suns, but he also said that those might be the only two places that actually get to, you know, have Bronny come into their facility. James, we got a two-day NBA draft next week. Bronny James is dominating the coverage. Are there any other players that we should pay attention to?

Is Sar clinging or should I just wait until October? I mean I think there's a lot of interesting players, but I don't know that Sar, Cling, and Risache, any of these guys who were, you know, in the mix to go number one are like your typical number one picks, right? Like a lot of people who follow this stuff a lot closer, honestly a lot closer than I do because I'm just so consumed with the NBA during the regular season, a lot of those people will say this is sort of like if you just like chopped off the top six picks from an average draft and just started it right at seven, like you can still get a good player, but you're probably not getting a franchise guy, you're probably not getting someone who you're going to build the entire sort of system around or anything like that. Like, excuse me, Alex Sar is a really interesting prospect, has a super high defensive ceiling. Offensively, I mean look, maybe he'll be a shooter at some point, he doesn't seem like he's quite there yet, he's not much of a finisher yet, he doesn't create a ton for himself.

Like he profiles as a guy who could be a high level role player right away and then you sort of see what he develops into. But I mean if you're talking about like looking for the next superstar guy that you're going to think is going to change the league, like I mean maybe that guy is there, but nobody's confident about that right now. Well James, we saw the Boston Celtics win a championship on Monday night, we got to wait for the draft next week, we're going to roll into free agency. What teams have the best chance or the best opportunities to really improve themselves in the offseason to compete for a title next year?

I think the Sixers are the one that I would kind of zero in on. It's really rare for a team with that kind of foundation like with Indeed and Maxi to go into the offseason with Max cap space to go out there and add another star. Daryl Morey has, you know, this is not an accident that the team is in this position, he's been pretty open about the fact they wanted to preserve that optionality. I mean that's why they didn't go and extend Tyrese Maxi last year when they could have.

He's obviously earned an extension like more than ever and I think they would have been happy to pay him the max under different circumstances but they knew, they wanted to keep that flexibility. So they're going to be linked to everybody, they already have been. They've been linked to Paul George who was on that pre-game show sitting next to Embiid during the finals and everybody had a lot of fun with that. They've been linked to Jimmy Butler just because of the sort of trade speculation and the trade rumors swirling around him in the Miami Heat right now. And then even some of the lower level free agents and stuff, like if like Philly could be in the mix for virtually anyone just because they have that money and they're obviously looking to improve the roster on the wing. Daryl Morey has been very upfront about that and they're obviously looking to contend right now for a championship because that's what you do when you have Joel Embiid in his prime.

Yeah well see how healthy Joel Embiid is to pair up with anybody. Well thank you James. Where can people follow you and all your great work with CBS Sports?

Yeah everything's in the NBA section at cbssports.com and I'm on I was going to say Twitter, I guess I'm on X outside the NBA. Thank you for having me. No doubt about it. Enjoy the rest of the, are you going to be in Brooklyn next week? Yes. I live there so I don't have to go anywhere so yeah I can just walk down the street. Oh that's that's good. Enjoy it man. Have fun okay? Absolutely. Thank you.