Roundtable with Jeremy Green and Brenden Whitted!!

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For the ones who get it done. Camelot, it's only a model. Alright, it's exciting. I don't believe this pair has ever been joined before.

Yeah, I don't think so. Alright, Jeremy Green, ESPN draft nerd, ESPN Asheville, our affiliate up on top of the very big mountains here in North Carolina. He joins us and my man, Brendan Wooded, at H.U.

Cosell from Bison Express and other important endeavors. He joins us as well. We've got Brendan, we've got Jeremy, and we've got stuff to talk about. Alright, we're going to start. I want to start with Kaitlin Clark because I do think it's a big deal.

So, Jeremy, I'll start with you up there on the mountains in the rarefied air. What did you make of Kaitlin Clark and the scene last night and the people watching and everything that it might mean? Well, it's great for the sport. It got me to watch the sport. I coached the sport years and years ago.

I don't watch nearly as much basketball now as I used to. If for nothing else because I absolutely detest the NCAA. I would also be remiss if I didn't point out, I wonder if Texas paid like a million of Boo Corrigan's that knew contracts for keeping out Florida State. That's the Florida State fan in me, so I couldn't help but say that.

I think it's great. We did a Super Bowl party up here in Asheville on Sunday and before the game started, they weren't watching the pregame, they were watching Kaitlin Clark in Nebraska. I'm not going to say it caught me off guard.

I was really locked into how many people were locked in. I don't feel like Sabrina Ionescu had that. I don't feel like Kelsey Plum had that.

I don't know what's different this time. I don't think it's just the record. That certainly helped, but what it can do for the sport is fantastic. I had a lot of girls that played for me that I hope they're watching this. I still talk to a few of them and I hope they're watching this and really see that women's basketball is getting into the national landscape and I think that's a positive. Before I bring in Brendan Whitted on this, I would point out that the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, last night tweeted out a congratulatory message to Kaitlin Clark for being the all-time leading scorer in women's college basketball history. And that is actually factually incorrect because she is right now third in women's basketball history, first in NCAA history. Lynette Woodard of Kansas, she played, I think if not all, most of her career before the NCAA actually recognized women's basketball. So she'll catch her in a couple of games. 36-49 and Pearl Moore from Francis Marion played her entire career before NCAA recognized women's basketball. She ain't going to pass her.

4,061 points, I think it was. But yeah, she's not going to get her unless she comes back for another year. Brendan, thoughts on Kaitlin Clark?

Yeah, I think that's part of what you were just mentioning. I didn't know who Lynette Woodard was. She was just actually inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame not that long ago, I believe.

Yeah. And I went to my computer when I started getting more on my timeline because it was Black History Month. And so people started wanting to recognize her and I was just like, I didn't know anything about her. I never heard her name before. It's not like I was a huge women's college basketball fan.

I'm not going to pretend like I was. But that was surprising. And I think that's part of the great stuff. Like you start having these companies, you're starting to have those, those fun, Hey, who's the top five women's college basketball player ball time. You know, it's, it's, it's, you know, kind of Jordan, uh, LeBron and, and like those very dumb sports conversations that I absolutely love to have.

Right. And, and she's, man, she, she's amazing. Just, I was a little late getting in front of the TV last night. I was like, okay, well, I know she needs eight points. Sally can't, she does it sometime in the first quarter, but I was a little late.

She already had 21 by the time I sat down. She scored the front of her. She scored the first eight of the game. Like, well, I think she was, there's like two 32 had gone off the clock if he had already done it like, and it's the way that she's doing it too.

Right. Like it's, it's the only thing that I can kind of liken it to was when Steph was at Davidson. And I know that comparisons have been made a thousand times, but it's hard not to look at her game in the way that she's able to make shots deep off the dribble, um, tech and shoot like that. She's just a great shooter, but she's also a phenomenal passer.

I had not given her enough credit. I sat down really once and I was like, man, you're, he, she's making the transition pads ahead of the, uh, ahead of the play hidden hidden. She's got these ladies in stride, the pick and roll, the way that she's able to manipulate that, get those pocket passes off. Like she's a great, legitimately great player. And it's been nice that so much has been made about her game. Didn't love some of the weird Cheryl Swoop stuff that didn't come from her, but like there was some of that kind of, kind of circling around, but these are like, she's engendering so much conversation, genuine conversation about the game of women's basketball, not having nothing to do with men's basketball, just how much fun she's been to watch. And that's, that's refreshing.

Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the fact that she's not just a shooter. Um, last night she has shot a pretty high percentage. She's a 40% a shooter from three point range this year, just a shade under it and under a 40% shooter from three in her career at Iowa. So it's not like she's shooting 48, 49%.

She's not in the Curry area. Uh, but I mean, she is an incredible passer. She had 11 assists last night, averages about eight and a half assists a game.

So it's, you know, she shoots a lot, but she's also dishing off a lot of assists. So this is what I kept, cause Victoria had asked me about it before, and sometimes you have to remember where we are in our, in our timeline of women's sports as an attraction. And you still get the people who say, well, you know, the NBA props up the WNBA and like, yeah, I mean, okay. Uh, it's not necessarily at this point, a standalone huge moneymaker, which is why the women don't make a ton of money. The WNBA salaries are not, there's a reason why almost all of the women were supplementing their income by playing overseas, right?

Why Brittany? The CBA, right? They get, they, they get a far less, I think it's about 25%. The players association splits with the ownership and that those are some, there were some structural issues that need to change in the WNBA. You know, they talk about expanding, you know, having more teams, but they also need to expand roster. Some first round picks aren't getting signed. Like there are some structural things that still need to go on.

And that's just showing how, how much in your point, how much in the infancy we are in this whole thing. It's totally new, but I, what happened a couple of years ago with the women's European championship in soccer, where they, they did not anticipate it being a big deal and the, the way it was received and viewed and consumed was far beyond their, they could ever imagine. I think it triggered in a lot of people, this notion that, wait a second, maybe women's sports are popular, more popular than we think. And I believe that we're seeing this and I'm not saying it's just because of Kaitlyn Clark, but she made, she might have come on at the right time to help the, you know, women's basketball take another leap forward. Like she's not the greatest women's player we've ever seen.

Like, I don't even know where she would fit on that list to be honest, but there's, she might be the right person at the right time to kind of push all this forward. Let me move on to something else. We don't have like, like we have 30 minutes here to do this. So Jeremy, explain why Steve Wilks can't keep a job despite being great at his job and Cliff Kingsbury keeps getting jobs when he is clearly not good at his. It's easier to explain the Steve Wilks side of that than it is the Cliff Kingsbury side. Cliff Kingsbury to me is like Sasquatch. People keep telling me that they've seen the greatness. I've never seen it. I've seen some fuzzy video that looks like maybe it was competent a couple of times and yet every team in this cycle wanted to hire him.

I'm just not really sure I understand why. The thing in San Francisco with Steve Wilks is he wasn't great at his job. It got better and he's been great at times. I thought that was the weirdest hire I think I've ever seen. When D'Amico Ryans took the Texans job, they bring in Steve Wilks and I'm pretty familiar with this because I have a former 49ers head coach as our head coach with my beloved tortured New York Jets. And I look at the Steve Wilks thing.

I was obviously here around the Panthers when Steve was here and the only thing I kept saying was this is a completely different defense than what they're used to. I've heard things behind closed doors that maybe Kyle Shanahan and Steve Wilks didn't love each other and he became a really convenient fall guy because the offense is Kyle's thing. Kyle can't take the it's my fault.

It had to be somebody else's fault. Do I think that's fair? No. Am I surprised by it?

Also no. I think he wants somebody that falls into that line of we drafted for we have eight defensive linemen. We're going to rotate them. Nobody plays more than 60% of the snaps and Steve Wilks has been in this league so long that he went my way works too. I could go on for 45 minutes about Kyle Shanahan because to me he's kind of a sasquatch too. Every time I want to believe in you and I told you the last time we talked I'll take the AFC and it can be anything you want I will take them against Kyle Shanahan and I have no fear. I'm here to throw shade at Kyle Shanahan as well especially since I think he was probably more culpable in the loss than Dan Campbell was when Detroit lost to them. Brendan? I would agree with that in fairness and I would also say I want Kyle Shanahan to stay around a long time. Sports betting just became legal in the state of North Carolina.

I've done it illegally and now I would really like to be able to gloat about it to the masses. Brendan, Steve Wilks with the same team that Matt Ruhl had and very similar team to Frank Reich won more games than the two of them combined in the last two calendar years yet he's out of work. Does he just have a fireable face?

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. I mean, it's tough. We mentioned, you know, obviously working for defense for San Francisco. They were third in terms of points allowed this regular season and eighth in terms of yards.

So I don't know who you're going to get into. And then there's going to be better than that in one year. You know what I mean?

Like there's, that's the thing. Cause he only got one year in Arizona. He got an interim year in Carolina and now he gets the same with San Francisco. And he's done a good job at these places.

He's been like, you're not getting, you're not getting these head. The head coaching job at Arizona at that point, wasn't great, right? You're not going to get a great job if you're a head coach more than likely because they're, they're looking to make a change in the interim.

You already mentioned he was miles better than that rule who got a much better leash. Um, and it was pretty evident that pepper had no interest in hiring him, even when he announced that he would be the interim head coach. Um, look, it's hard for me to ignore the fact that the NFL was recently sued for discrimination practices as it pertains to head coaches. And he was part of that lawsuit. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's the other part too. Um, I had gave so much credit to those guys that wanted to sign their names to that lawsuit because I felt that they were, essentially, um, submarineing a large part of their career because, you know, NFL owners kind of tried me as little vindictive, shout out to Tepper throwing that drink on that.

Like they just don't come off as like really kind of level headed about this sort of stuff. And, and it's, I look at the results that he had this year and I look at what Santa had didn't do in the Superbowl. I'm like, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, look, there has to be some, some level of accountability here from your head coach. Um, yeah, I, I, I didn't understand that.

Not, not even a little bit. Uh, and as the cliff Kingsbury thing strikes me as kind of the Shawn McVeigh kind of tree, like if you knew Shawn McVeigh at any time, you could get a job. And so you look at Patrick Mahomes and, or the Baker, like he had, he had a few really good college, uh, coaches, which is obviously was a while ago now, but a lot of really good college coaches, I mean, college quarterback that he coached. And so he got a lot of credit for them being really good. And as opposed to them just being him being a good recruiter, which is not super helpful in the NFL. Uh, I guess he'll get another crack at it because he's just the guy that they, you know, he's a younger guy and people like the idea of a young offensive head coach, you know what I mean? Like for whatever reason, there's this, there's an idea about older head coaches, not being able to learn and change.

Cause I look at the enemy. I'm like, well, he's had this, this level of success. The Clifton was supposed to have. Right. But he, he hasn't, he didn't get a, from what I know, he wasn't even getting interviewed for any of these jobs. No, the enemy didn't get interviewed at all. Yeah. Yeah. He's apparently mean. He apparently yells at people.

Yeah. It's never happened before. The players complained that he was me.

I was like, man, that's a classic, classic Washington football team right there. And, uh, Ron Rivera threw him under the bus by saying, yeah, it might be, uh, might be too complicated for our players. He was either, uh, slamming the enemy or slamming his players for being too dumb. I really don't know which one, uh, what he was doing, which obviously worked out.

Well, I'm really surprised that neither of you said the right answer, which is Clif Kingsbury's handsome. And that's that as far as it goes for that, I was in here thinking, you know, the thing I forgot to say is that he is attached to Caleb Williams and Caleb Williams has kind of let it be known behind the scenes that I mean, from the ownership, what wanting ownership. I don't believe any of those things, but I also don't believe they're just coming from thin air. And I think he kind of wants to play in Washington. That's where he's from Chicago has a history of just destroying quarterbacks, kind of like the jets and Cleveland and a few others. I don't think that's absolutely nothing. And Steve Wilkes got hosed in all three of those jobs.

I didn't say that, but I want to make sure I do. Because he did get hosed in all three of those jobs. Maybe, maybe great at his job. I mean, San Francisco had great defensive personnel. So Steve Wilkes essentially just kept it going for the for the most part.

So, Brendan, what do you make? And this might have to be our last thing. So I didn't get to nearly as many things I wanted to. What do you make of Golden State contacting the Lakers about trading for LeBron James at the trade deadline basically a week and a half ago or whatever it was? What do you make of that? Nothing. I can't say nothing. I kept reading that and I was like, no, just no. Like, I just, I don't think that that's something that happens mid-season. Right. If that's something that happens, we know how LeBron likes to work. That's what happened all season. Like that's a conversation that you have been given the level of power that he has displayed in the previously even given his relationship to ownership in with the Lakers like he and busting to have a really, really good relationship.

And so it's just hard for me to believe. Yeah, you're going to trade LeBron for that's the other thing. The Warriors don't really have the kind of roster construction where the Lakers would still be able to be competitive, right?

Unless the ladies were just decided, you know what? We're done. We're just going to going to compete anymore. Who on that team who's going to get traded is going to move the needle for the Lakers in a positive way. Yeah.

You can do future assets and stuff like that. But if you're, I don't, I just don't get the feeling that they're in full rebuild mode and you still have Anthony Davis like that. Just, I just, I, it felt like a whole bunch of nothing.

I could be completely wrong. It could have been like one of those last second, you know, Cuban missile crisis. It was, you know, a few hours away from happening. It just doesn't strike me as the way that LeBron has previously moved. And it just doesn't strike me as how that would be helpful for the Lakers at all. I just want to note for the record that I did not expect Cuban missile crisis to be utilized today on the program. Jeremy, is there a theory because you could, you could spin this as that LeBron is letting it known that if this ended in LA, he would be okay with it.

Uh, I would love to, I would love to say something different than he did, but the, I was going to use the comparison as well, which is I asked out the head cheerleader when I was a singer in high school. The fact that no was neither surprising or unexpected. And that's kind of how I felt about this of, it was a hail Mary from a golden state team that I feel like is the, the it's getting late quick things aren't going well in LA. And they made a call.

A lot of people make a call. Doesn't necessarily mean you expect anything to come from it. And you're pleasantly surprised if it does, I don't think LA is his final destination. I never really have, because it seems like LA has been just hemorrhaging the future to make the present work for so long that eventually that's gonna catch up to you. And I look at how they're built now and I cannot imagine the final, think of a final Kobe game.

Can you imagine a final game with LeBron James that looks that way with this roster? And I keep thinking that of, I get a day, but then where do you go from there? You got the Angela Russell that couldn't defend me. I think even with a bulky knee, I could still score 20 on the Angela Russell.

I don't have any on me, but that doesn't matter. I just can't fathom this being the end. And I feel like there's another move and this was maybe this leaked because Rich Paul wanted it to be known or Draymond wanted it to be known or whoever wanted it to be known. And it kind of opens the door to other teams going, well, maybe we'll make the call in July and that won't be, this won't be the final destination for him. Well, I think LA is home now though. So who knows?

Maybe it wants to go play with the Clippers. It seems like every star ends up there. I don't know how.

The salary gap must just not apply to them. All right. We have to say goodbye to both Jeremy Green at ESPN, draft nerd, ESPN, Asheville, all the way up on the mountains there. I appreciate your time, sir.

And Brendan Wooded at huco cell on Twitter, bison express and, and all other places that he just follow him on Twitter at huco cell. Gentlemen, it was fun. I appreciate it. We'll do it again very soon. Absolutely. Thank you.

All right. We got to take a break. I wish I had more, more time to ask another question, but we didn't.

We didn't have any more. I know it's always good times. I was going to ask him what they thought of my Daytona bets. Oh man.

Yeah. Jeremy would have had some great responses. Jeremy does not strike me as a NASCAR watcher. No, but the comebacks would be great. He'd probably have the same picks as you for the same reasons. He might, he might.

Would he also have called him Michael Bowman as opposed to Alex, Alex Bowman? Right. I don't know. Who get it done?