Hour 1: Brian Windhorst

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**Michael Kay** (0:41)
Good afternoon, everybody. This is indeed The Michael Kay Show. We thank you for joining us on this Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026 Me and you for two. Those are the rules of engagement. Fastest two hours on Sports Talk Radio, and you know the membership number. If you want to be a co-host, 1-800-919-3776, 1-800-919-3776.
Hope you all are doing well. Mets got rained out last night. The Yankees got outplayed last night. They lose five to three. Their offense is stalling, and it makes sense. It's going to stall there. A lot of people that are important for that offense that are on the aisle. We'll get into that in a couple of moments. We want to start off with the deal for Yanis and Taddecoompo. And listen, I understand why the Heat did it. The Heat are getting a great player who's 31 years old. You could team up with Bam Adebayo, and now you've got that great player that you've been searching for since LeBron left, and you thought that Jimmy Butler could be that player. Certainly got them to the finals, but they didn't get over the top. So you've got Yanis. But what I don't understand, we're going to have Brian Windhorst on at 130 You had a deal with the Celtics, I'm going to ask Brian this, where Jaylen Brown was going to go back or go to Milwaukee. Jaylen Brown, whether you like the cut of his jib or not, is an outstanding player, an MVP level player. So when you look at what Milwaukee chose, they chose all those draft picks in 2031, 2033, first rounders, and the 13th pick in this year's draft, and a pick swap in 2030 Then Tyler Hero, going to be a free agent after this year, so you don't even know if you're going to keep him, you'll probably spin him and trade him. And Kahlel Ware, Jaime Jacquez Jr. and Casper Jacusius. Now, Hero's the best player there, Jacquez Jr. can play, but you can see that by accepting this deal, Milwaukee accepting the fact that they're going to be bad for a number of years as they build up, why? Why would you do that? Why wouldn't you take a great player like Jaylen Brown and be a competitive team? And I know what the answer from a lot of NBA people are going to be, well, they took this deal because if you take Jaylen Brown, well, they'll be in the playoffs and they'll miss out in the first round. Well, first of all, you took a lot of guys that are on expiring contracts at the end of this year, right? That's what you did with Miami. And you picked draft picks in 31 and 33 Now, what they're guessing is that Antetokounmpo, who's in 31 right now in 2026, and he'll be 36 in 2031, that Miami might actually be bad. Well, Pat Riley is getting up there in age. I'm sure that Miami is still going to operate in the same way that it operates, but without Pat Riley.
Are those picks going to be that bad?
And let's say that they're awful, and you get the ninth pick. Again, I always say this about draft picks. They're air until you make the selection and it works out. Wouldn't you rather have Jaylen Brown to build around? You already have a pick in the first round anyway, but now you have the thirteenth pick in the draft in addition to the one that you have. That's for this year. Let's see how quickly Milwaukee gets to be the team that's good enough to be knocked out in the first or second round, which they would have been if you had Jaylen Brown on the team. Maybe they were afraid that Jaylen Brown, who had three years left on his contract, might actually say, you know what, I want out of here and then they've got to deal with that. But I think that Jaylen Brown would bring in more capital than what you have right now. So I give Pat Riley and his group credit. I really do. I give him credit. It's a gutsy move and they got a chance to be a pretty good team. They got a great coach. Now, the one thing that they lose, they lose a lot of support players. So how are they going to fill those positions without draft picks and things like that? But Riley always finds a way and finds hidden gems. We'll see if they do that and they have Antetokounmpo. And they're going to sign Antetokounmpo in all likelihood into a big money contract. Now, yesterday I mentioned, why don't the Nets or why haven't the Nets gone after Antetokounmpo? In all likelihood, again, we'll ask Brian Windhorst this, it's because Antetokounmpo didn't want to go to the Nets. But again, we'll see if they even made an offer. But they did make a deal yesterday. They traded a pretty good defensive center with Nick Clarkson in a three-way deal with Minnesota and Chicago. So Clarkson ends up going to Chicago and the Nets get Julius Randall and the 28th pick tonight in the first round. So they have the sixth pick and they have the 28th pick. So they just keep loading up on first round draft picks. How did the five picks work out last year? Not that great. But they do get a legitimate score in Julius Randall.