CLIPS: Picking the NBA's 10 Most Entertaining Non-Contenders

**Ryan Reynolds** (0:00)
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal.
So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:21)
Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only, greater than 50 gigabytes so when network is busy, see terms.

**Wes Goldberg** (0:30)
Let's jump in to our Good Takes. Okay, Mike, you're up first.

**Mike Shearer** (0:40)
Yeah, so, you know, we're here in the downtime, but rosters are mostly set. And I frankly, I don't know about you, but all this like movement around the league has got me really excited for the next season. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the best league past teams, non-contender division. It's like, yeah, we're all excited to see what the next year of Wimby looks like. We're all excited to see if the Knicks can run it back. And like, I'd even include teams like, you know, I'm a contender maximalist. We've had eight different champions in eight years. I don't know that there's such a thing as like a super tight inner circle contenders these days. So like, we're all gonna be excited to see Philly or whatever, but I wanted to take a step back and be like, what about some of these other teams that are just gonna be super fun to watch? So I guess we can alternate if you want, but the first team, the one I think I'm like most excited to watch out of the night.

**Wes Goldberg** (1:26)
Do we want to go five to one or one to five?

**Mike Shearer** (1:29)
Oh, okay.
We could go backwards. We could build up.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:31)
I'm fine with that plan.

**Wes Goldberg** (1:32)
Let's go five to one.

**Mike Shearer** (1:33)
So my number five then is the Indiana Pacers.
And I think this is a team that could rise here as the season goes on because Tyrese Haliburton will be coming back from injury. He's kind of a notoriously slow starter anyway, partially because of health and partially because it just seems to take him some time to find his groove every year. But people, I don't want to say people have forgotten because I don't think people have really forgotten how fun that Pacers team work is. But we're so far removed that I think it's going to be like a slap in the face to see these Pacers sprinting up and down the court, playing full court defense, Haliburton's passing, making magic. They've got some familiar faces from their magical run a couple of years ago. Siakam's still there, Nisman's still there.
But then they've also got some new additions. They've got Kelly Oubre now. They've got Evit Zubat now. They're not quite the same as before, but a lot of the principal pieces are still in place. Obviously, they've still got the same coach, and I think they're going to have the same philosophy. And I am nervous about the Pacers, to be clear. I do think that without Halliburton being at peak Halliburton, this thing falls apart pretty quickly. But I'm also very excited to see them back on the court at something approaching full strength.

**Wes Goldberg** (2:38)
So I'm interested that you had the Pacers here. They were not on my list, only because I put them in my contending team tier. Now, I guess this is a separate sort of sidequest of a question of, like, how many teams would you consider legit contenders that don't count for this exercise? Because, I don't know, my list was pretty big when I was thinking about, okay, this team could realistically make the finals. And so, I mean, the Pacers were there when they were healthy, they're healthy now. So I kind of just put them in that tier. So I didn't include them, although I am extremely excited to watch the Indiana Pacers. They're one of my favorite league pass teams in general, but I just didn't put them on my list.

**Mike Shearer** (3:14)
Now I feel bad because I said I was a contender maximalist and then you put them on your contender list. I am definitely someone, I think I need to see it happen. And I do think that it's going to be rough in the beginning.
That's the way it always seems to go for Halliburton and coming off of the injury that he's had, plus the shingles and stuff like that. Just like it's going to be an adjustment.