CGC Taking On PSA? | PSA's Backlog | LeBron Ruining His Legacy? | This Week In Sports Cards!

Hey, everybody, it is Mike. And I am joined by teapot. Teapot. Happy 4th of July to you. Thank you very much. What a great weekend. 250 years of kicking butt and taking names. I don't know. That's what I imagine some people down in the south are saying fireworks and eat some barbecue and have a good time. Yeah, that's what. We don't really do the fireworks anymore. But you know, we do, we cook out. We do lawn games, which we're excited about. I think we might mini golf tomorrow if the mini golf is open. We got to check that. What's. How's the temperature down there in Atlanta? Right? Yeah, it's super hot. It's. I mean, I'm sure it's hotter other places. It's hot and muggy down here. It's been almost like unbearable to be outside. And we have festivities at a friend's house. I like, I don't like buying fireworks. I see, like I just spent a hundred dollars and just have like a few things and I'm like, and they're not even that great. And your kids, My kids get so excited about them. So the good news is we're going to someone else's house who's buying fireworks to shoot them off, like more out in the country, which should be better. And then. But then on Sunday we're supposed to go out to another family who's actually moving out of state. So it's kind of a send off party. And it's going to be two days out in the Georgia heat and sun. And I am very clear as Larry Bird described or Bill Murray described Larry Bird in Space Jam. So. So we'll see how it goes. I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to have some sunscreens and hats and other things and, and hope I don't perish. Yeah, I don't go anywhere without a hat. I don't have the head of hair to protect my head. Correct, Exactly. We here in Maine, it's been for the past several weeks in the 60s and 70s. And then this week, just actually last couple days, all of a sudden it's 95, which is. I'm pretty sure we've set records for the heat here in Maine for this early in the year. You know, we'll occasionally get to 95 once every few years, but it's rare. And we're seeing 95 for about four straight days, including tomorrow, the fourth. We're recording this on Friday the third. It's. It's gross. And with the humidity they say that the real feel is around 105 to 110. That's what my mom's dealing with in southwest Michigan too. Yeah, it's hotter there than here, which is odd. Yeah, yeah. We're not used to it. I know. I went to Atlanta one time and I think I told you this once, this was in 2010, and they were in the middle of a 100 day streak where it had gone over 100 degrees or some, some crazy thing. Yeah, that sounds right. And it was. I had to walk about, I don't know, a hundred meters from the building I was working in to the restaurant we were eating in after. And I was dripping sweat and I don't sweat a lot. Yeah, yeah. The big difference here, actually, everybody said to me, they're like, oh, you won't, you're, you won't be used to the humidity, like coming to Georgia. And I was like, actually the humidity in west Michigan is very high. Because of the lake, because of Lake Michigan. It's, it's pretty humid. The thing that's, I think it's just like closer to the sun here. I just feel like I'm getting absolutely like microwaved by the sun here. I like the temperature can be the same in both places. And I'm convinced when you're in the actual direct sun, it's something about it maybe it's just, it's just off the dome, just. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, this is this week in Sports Cards where we cover all the big things that have happened in the sports card world in the past week. It is sponsored by Auction Wire. Auction Wire is A Software AuctionWire AI where you can go and search for any card you want across dozens and dozens of marketplaces and auction houses. And it is an awesome service. You can use our code scc, short for Sports Card Clubhouse for two months free on Auction Wire. It searches some of the bigger marketplaces like ash of legacy cards. You can search his and you just search in and it will automatically go and search almost 40 auction houses and marketplaces right now. And it, and it's growing more and more. They have great features, a lot of filters for you to search on amazing stuff. SCC is the code for two months free. So Teapot, here are the things we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about LeBron and Jordan here at the end. LeBron more so because he changed teams. CGC, the national is coming up in four weeks and then the PSA backlog. Let's start with CGC yesterday, on Wednesday, Thursday, Mike Metzler of On Mantle posted an article where he said that CGC is aiming for. Actually I'll read the title to you inside CGC's push for the high end sports card market. It's a really good article and it talks a lot about CGC and there's too many different things to talk about that they're trying to do in, in this video here. But they are pushing for the high end market. They just graded a Jordan. Sorry, not a Jordan. A Gretzky autograph. That was a PSA 10. From what people have found, the actual PSA 10 cracked out. They got Gretzky to autograph it in an amazing place. Actually I'll show it for those people who are, who are able to watch on YouTube or Spotify. And this was an unsigned Gretzky PSA 10. Correct. Cracked and got signed. Correct. And now it's in a CGC 10. You seeing the card here? Yeah, yeah. They. Gretzky signed it in the perfect spot. Usually you see these and they're kind of signed right across the middle. He signed it on the white diagonally. It looks amazing. That looks awesome. And now it's a CGC10 auto 10. Wow. Now where they. And, and here's this CGC8 mantle as well, which we'll talk about in a minute. But where they cracked it out apparently from what I removed Teapot. Such an amateur. All right, onto the fourth where they cracked it out of the PSA 10. Allegedly. Why wouldn't it have gone back into a PSA 10? What are your thoughts? I don't know how these agreements get done to like for these non PSA companies to try to win this market share. But how many times have we seen an example of one of these other companies like SGC did it a couple of different times where they graded a card and somebody bought it on open auction and then like promptly sent it to psa. And I mean the market's gotten really weird to where people seem to even in some cases prefer a lower grade with PSA than like the higher grade. Even on important card like that Gretzky. It's the, you can see all the pricing. Like in Market Movers we have a ratios feature that lets you compare the pricing of all the different grades. So you can look at like how does PSA 10 stack up to all these other you things or vice versa. And it's crazy. The, the, the, the way PSA has just cemented themselves in that space. It's one thing to convince somebody to send their card to your company, and now you've encapsulated it, and it's your marketing showpiece. And you can be like, look at that. You know, they did this. Tag's done. Everybody's done it. It's another thing to try to convince somebody else on the secondary market to pay the price premium to then get your card, like, to. To show that it was worth it. You know what I mean? That's the secondary part of the litmus test. That's actually the more important part. Okay, this card went to auction, not a private broker deal where you convinced one person to pay you the same price or close to it for a PSA 10. No, it went to auction and at least two people, hopefully without any manipulation, took the dance and went back and forth to push this thing up to a price that would be comparable. I don't. I don't know. It's the same thing. Our spitballing guys have been talking about the NBA stickers and how we all think it's a totally ridiculous concept and something we would never pay up for and yet would maybe consider getting on our more expensive cards to increase the value of if people are going to pay for it. So. Yep, absolutely. I agree with that completely. So over on Twitter and on Instagram, a lot of people are looking at the original PSA 10 that they claim. I have no evidence that it's the same card. Of course they believe it's an old PSA 10, Gretzky unsigned. And now they're comparing it to this 1010 because the autograph got a 10 as well with CGC and they're saying that it was damaged coming out of the holder. There was. Who knows what the issues are. And they, they zoom in and they look at the scans, and I, I can't say with confidence that the. They're A, that they're the same card, and B, that there's damage there. Now, that wasn't there before because the scans are by two different companies with different lighting, different everything. And it's impossible to say for sure that, you know, the, the rough edge wasn't there before. So. And that's one of the things that they're pointing to. Of course, it's tops, not opici, so the rough edge shouldn't be there. But, you know, they're zooming in so far on these scans that it's tough to say, but I understand the kind of. The instinct to say, well, they should have gone to psa, so they must have gone to PSA and PSA shot it Down. Yeah, I mean, that would be one. One maybe among a few, like, logical things to suspect, but I don't know. I mean, so there was the other picture where they had the mantle and then some mystery card. Are they like revealing that one at the national or something like that? Yeah, so they talked about it in the article. It's a restored Wagner T206, Hannes Wagner that is restored. Uh, they haven't revealed what it looks like yet or what the restoration is, just that it is a restored Wagner. And Andy Broome, who's the head of grading for cgc, says that in other industries, restoration is completely normal in the art industry, in the comic book industry. And it sounds like maybe CGC is going to try to take that portion of the market and say, bring your restored cards to cgc, which is really interesting. And if they do that, I would imagine that PSA would also say, oh, hey, hey, we can do that too. And then just all you have to do is tell them this is restored. Or maybe they detect it and they say they'll put on the slab restored, and maybe they can put on there how it was restored or what was used. I don't know. Interesting. That'll be. I mean, that's. I guess I was just looking more at that picture. Like, I don't know. I don't know how Andy or others at the company would be connected out trying to convince people like, hey, give us more of your high end stuff. And I do know there are people. I mean, let me say this. The other thing is there are people who don't care about the secondary market value. Like, they just, they may have no intention of selling the card. The person who had that Gretzky and got it signed, maybe, like, this is a keepsake for me. This is a, you know, quote unquote coffin card. This is what, you know, this. I'm going to hand this down to my family and they can decide what to do with it or any number of other possibilities. The guy on Instagram, I'm forgetting his account name now. Ben something. Maybe the one who's been buying all the kabooms. You know this? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He. I mean, he's been sending even cracking PSA tens and sending them to see to Tag, right? So people are like, that's like financial insanity. Obviously, this guy who's buying six figure kabooms left and right and like getting the run of everything doesn't seem particularly concerned about the impact of that. So it's another very plausible explanation. I think it's just somebody wants to support cgc, prefers the aesthetic of their slab. Maybe got a sweet deal somehow as part of a marketing expense to say, hey, send this to us. I don't. Who knows? There's a lot of possibilities. Yeah, it's Benjamin BE13, I think is the. There you go. Yeah, sorry. User Benjamin B. Yeah, I agree. And if you. If you like tag and you want to put all of your cards in tag and you don't care about the resale value, that's great. I. I don't care about the resale value either, but I do want to have my cards in a company that I know has thoroughly authenticated the card. And we know that all these companies have issues with authentication, but for the most part, they do a very good job authenticating. And most of my cards are vintage and. Or if they're ultra modern, they could be a shohei that's highly counterfeited. And I just want to have them in a slab where I know that they've been authenticated. And I don't know that tag does a good job of that. Yeah, I don't feel I can have total confidence in that. That's been my main concern. I've said that for all the newer companies. It's just, I think they need to do more to instill that authentication confidence and to explain to us how can we trust you? How can we trust that you know what you're authenticating? Your tech might be off the charts. Good. And if people want that level of granularity, maybe that is part of the wave of the future for grading. But, you know, from an authentication perspective, I. Who are your experts? How do you know what this card is? How do you know this is faked or, you know, backdoored or all the different things that I have personally had to deal with, so. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And then they've got the PSA. I'm sorry, the CGC8 mantle. And we know that a PSAH is sold for about 1.8 million. Yeah, golden last week. And so it'll be interesting to see. Assuming that they're auctioning that CGC8 off, how close does it get to the PSA8I. 30. Less. 20. We don't know. What are you. What's your guess, though? Well, have you looked on GEM rate to see how many mantles have been graded by cgc? You looked at this? I haven't. I need. We. I need to check that because I just. That one is. That's kind of. That's a big card. And We've been seeing all the PSA copies go crazy. So let's see. I'm going to mute my mic because my keyboard's too loud. So. Yeah, go for it. So pop my screen up here over with our friend at gem rate and you've got eight CGC copies total graded. Wow. And 2100 with PSA. Yeah, that's the wrong. I went the wrong direction. Yeah. And here's the eight. So the next highest graded copy, there's, there's five of them are authentic. There's a one, a three and an eight and five authentics. Wow. I mean that. So like there's not even. I don't know if that helps their cause or hurts it with the eight. Like, like there's no other sales history or anything to comp against. CGC is not known for vintage grading in spite of the fact that Andy Broom knows a lot about vintage. So I don't. That's really, really interesting. I mean this is, this chart kind of says it all up here. So. Yeah, I can't imagine. I don't know. I don't know. And the chart that if anybody's listening Teapot is showing a chart showing PSA with 2000, SGC with 700, Beckett with 150 and CGC with 8 that they have graded and it's. You can't even notice, you can't even see the bar on the chart for cgc. Really. It's so small. Yep. One other difference that they're whoops that they're touting is that on the slab. Am I still here with you here? I can hear you. This is weird. You're punching your mic, Mike. I know I punched my mic. So one other difference that they're doing is putting type one on the 1952 tops mantle, because there is a difference. But none of the other companies actually note that on the slab between type one and type two. I think, and I once researched what the difference was. I don't think most collectors care and maybe they're trying to make collectors of high end care about the differences. But yeah, Andy Broom is of course a longtime vintage expert. Yeah, sounds. Sounds a whole lot like diabetes to me. It does. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see if CGC can start to capture more of the high end market. And of course, if they do well, if that mantle sells well somewhere close to 1.8 million like the other one did for PSA, they're not going to get the credit for it by, by people in the community. A lot of People are going to say, well, CGC must have bought it back themselves. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a tough thing. You gotta move, you gotta. I don't know how you move an entire herd. It's just a tricky thing to do. It's a really tricky thing to do. Yeah, in every aspect. I mean, look, they're known for grading Pokemon cards, of which I have a stack here that, that is one thing they are known for. And the price premium is 2x or higher for a PSA 10 over a CGC 10 on a lot of cards. So I don't know, I, I have yet to hear a really compelling pathway for any of these companies to like, close the gap on the secondary market value. And until that gap closes, they can't increase their supply or their demand for their slabs and, and their submissions. So good luck to them. And I think our SCI team is actually going down to do a video with them pretty soon, which will be really cool. So cool. I like CGC. Yeah, me too. I've got 10 autographed cards with them right now. And they're suffering from the same things that the other companies are suffering from, which is delays, delays, delays. Yeah. Speaking of PSA, their backlog finally changed after four weeks, a little more than four weeks. It went from 14 million, which you can see here, down to 12 million. I'm showing on the screen the PSA backlog tracker, which they just updated in the last 48 hours or so. So they have reduced the backlog by 2 million cards. Teapot. When do we think this is going to be down to the 5 million that they need it to be before they can, you know, reopen. Well, I mean, based on that pace, you would think now doing, doing the math, like four months from now, right? Three to four months from now. They just did two million or so. I did two and a half million. Yeah. So maybe three months. But my big question is when they reopen, like, how are they going to reopen? Because when they made the announcement that you had five days to get your submissions in, they got 2 million more cards, right? There's people waiting. The demand, the 2 plus million card demand per month or whatever, maybe 4 million or whatever they were getting the last few months is just sitting on people's desks right now or in a box or already packaged and ready to go or something with people waiting for that. And they're gonna rush back onto PSA's website and go, let me get this submission in and get it in. So I, I'm. It Looks like three, three months or so. I mean, they, they did it. That's a big chunk to fall off in the last month. And I just don't, I don't. I don't know, I wonder if they have a strategy already or if they're just literally meeting daily or weekly right now, going like, okay, all right, like, what are all our different options here? What kind of tech can we spin up? You know, how could we manage this effectively? I don't know. Yeah, that about a month ago, maybe a little bit longer ago, right after they announced the closure, somebody tweeted @Nat and he responded saying that he expected to be back up around September, which surprised a lot of people because, like, even Jeff on cards on the table was projecting December, January, which made sense. Yeah. And I thought, you know, early January, somewhere into January, based on trends. But we also have to remember that they are increasing their capacity while they do this. So they just went from 2 million to 2 1/2 million. And I'm sure that they're going to be at 3 million probably in, I don't know, August or maybe even July, they'll hit 3 million and then when they open back up again, they'll still build up a backlog. But instead of doing two million a month, are they doing three? Are they doing three and a half million a month? And that makes a huge difference. But, yeah, September kind of makes sense. Even though it's hard to see. You have to think about how much they're increasing their capacity in the meantime. Yeah, yeah. All true. Related to this, did you see the, the announcement about the grading at the national in some of those prices? Yeah, yeah. They're up 25, 30 in some cases. Yeah, there was one that was like, I don't know, it was like the fastest and all the things, and it was like $12,000 or something. I'm gonna go dust off my Mac Jones cards, get them rushed in, you know. Oh, man. My friend James will appreciate that comment because he's a huge Alabama fan and loves Mac Jones and just thinks, just thinks Mac Jones is still going to be the greatest quarterback in history. Shout out James Roll Tide. But, yeah, we'll see. I don't know. I. I do suspect I actually said I think Mac Jones in a football video I did on Market Movers Channel. Like, there's been a pretty predictable trend of former high draft picks or highly touted quarterbacks who, who are overhyped and then whose prices crash when they don't work out, but then who get a trade and become a starter, even if briefly, and their cards will like spike back up. So the whole strategy is go buy Mac Jones Prism Base PSA10s for, you know, 15 to $20. And if he gets traded to a team that doesn't have a good quarterback and gets announced as the starter, those bad boys will pop up to 75 in no time. You know, not everybody's cup of tea, but it's a very low floor, you know, slightly higher ceiling for that type of stuff. Yeah, James probably won't watch this, but if he does, I'll tell him to watch it. He's not a card collector, but I know that he will. He'll be like, he'll go out and buy some Mac Jones PSA 10s now. Dang. So the next topic I want to talk about was the National. You'll be there, obviously, right? Yes, I will. Barring any unforeseen catastrophe. Like last year I got really sick and I had to miss the national and that was brutal. I just got over the stomach flu with my whole family last week. So we knocked it out at start July instead of the end of July. So now I should be locked and loaded. Let's go. And you'll be in the market movers booth. I will for some of it. Well, I'll be doing content. I'll be at the market movers booth. It's. It's all a combined deal, you know, with like the card kids trade zone and, and which is really cool for anybody listening. Really cool. Something that we do with through Sports Card Investor and Cards hq. And this year it'll even be like split. So you're gonna have a half of it that's for the younger children and then half of it that's more for like the teens. And it's just to kind of keep it safe, keep them separated, let you know, kids who are on equal playing field kind of have a good time trading with each other. And it's very popular and a bit of a zoo, but something that has been. We've been trying to push for the national to actually like start sponsoring and like even expand more just to give kids a place, a safe space to come, come trade. So. But I'll be there, be talking about things. We got a Market Movers member happy hour and trade nights and it's going to be a heck of a week. That's awesome. That's great. I feel like. Are we going to the same dinner on Friday night too? Or am I. I might be mistaken. I don't remember. I Don't. I don't know enough details and let's just move on because. Okay. And. And the thing for me is, like, our events team, they're always. I mean, they start planning, like, a year in advance, and they're always planning and doing things and coming, and I just stay out of the way and ride the wave and do what I'm told when it comes to all the event activation, because that's not my half of the house. And so I could get a schedule. I usually get a schedule, like a couple of days before the national, and then that schedule is always changing, and I'm always having to pull levers and commit and decommit to things. And I try. I wish there was more time to not have to be. Sounds bad. Like, working and then to get to connect, because it is the biggest connect opportunity with so many people every year. But I'm there to work. I'm there for my job, and that's my priority. And then I get to have fun talking to people as well. Yeah, I don't. I don't lead anything. I'm very much a follower at the National. And so when Greg said, hey, you should come to this dinner on Friday night, there are a bunch of people who are going to be there. And I said, okay, if you're going and you think I should go, then I'll go, too. It's very easy for me. Keep it simple. Cool. The other thing we wanted to talk about a little bit was LeBron. LeBron is going to change teams. First of all, where do you think he's going to go? I mean, the two things, the two that everybody's been rumoring are Cleveland and Golden State, those two seem like the most obvious. I don't know if that's based on just what seems obvious or there's anything more substantial to that. What LeBron said was that this year, this last year, is going to be about fun and going where he can have fun, which is an interesting thing to say, because if you're going to play with Golden State or with Cleveland, I'm not sure, like, let's have fun is, like, their priority. I think they're like, let's win a championship. Now, those two things can mean the same thing, but it also seems like a bit of a shot back at the Lakers or something. Like, I don't. I don't know. Just an odd. Just an odd thing. Those two things make sense to me. I'm not sure that any other teams make sense. If for some reason he announced he was Going to the Pistons, I would stop rooting for them. Y. I feel the same way about the Celtics. I would, I would, I'd be like, go Heat and just keep following Giannis. I don't know. But yeah, it's, it's. I don't know. What I will say is there's no denying the guy is still playing at an incredibly high level at an old age. And I can say that as somebody who's just a few months younger than him and, and it's impressive. It's really impressive how the longevity thing is going to stack up over time in people's minds, you know, vis a vis, like Jordan's career, who stopped and started and didn't play as long and, and you know, but obviously had, you know, one more championships and just won more MVPs and scored more in the seasons he played. Not total. It's going to be really interesting if LeBron somehow went to Cleveland, back to Cleveland this season or, or to the warriors, but especially I think Cleveland and somehow won a championship on his final season with them. That I'm squarely in the camp of MJ's the goat. But like, that would really make the conversation very, very, very interesting. Like, very interesting. And I don't. Cleveland has a really good team. You got to have team chemistry. I don't know that it could work. It couldn't work. If they still have Harden on the roster too. There's no way that works. Do I think that's gonna happen? No, but the. I think the entire hobby, the implication for like the card market and basketball cards and his cards and the final tour and like the money printer that fanatics would have just as part of this send off tour. And then like, can you imagine that? I just like if he won the NBA finals and they took something from his jersey and cut down the special piece off the net, they'd come up with 15 other ways to create, you know, these iconic game use relics. Like we could be talking about things selling for 10, $20 million. I don't know, like really, really, really big numbers that would just bust the Internet. And I, I don't know. So that's. My mind kind of always goes to like, what's the most outlandish, crazy thing? And I think that would be it on the flip side if he wound up, you know, just like randomly going to play for Washington or something. Have fun with Trey Young. I don't know. Well, that's the thing though is that there's also rumors that he's interested in going to the 76ers. Now, the 76ers look amazing, by the way, which really bothers me as an Atlantic Division foe. They have. They now have Jalen Brown. We have to talk about that, by the way. Keep going. They got for nothing. And then they have Edgecombe. They have Embiid. They have Tyrese Maxey, who is a budding superstar. Correct. They just picked up somebody else, too, that I'm forgetting. Yeah. And then if they. Drummond, yes. Sure. They. They added. If they add LeBron, they become very formidable. But don't you think that that type of move hurts LeBron's career or going to Golden State as well? Not his career, obviously. It hurts his legacy a little bit where he's clearly. He went to Miami to chase titles, he went to LA to chase titles. Now he goes to Golden State warriors or the 76ers to chase titles. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it would hurt, like, if they ultimately won the championship. I don't know if it would hurt his legacy. In some people's eyes, they would have that perception of, like, yeah, yeah. You and I both think, like, he went chasing titles everywhere. He didn't. That's another thing. As you're wearing the Chicago shirt, you know that, like, Jordan stayed there and he won. And, yes, he retired and came back, but he went back to Chicago. And it's also just kind of the paradigm today in the NBA. It's odd almost that, like, you have Steph still with the warriors like, that you just, like, don't have these players bouncing all over the NBA like most of them are. I always appreciate it when guys stay with one team for most or all of their career. I think it's awesome, even if it's not for my team. And, yeah, it would be a little. It would be a little weird. It would be a big shake up in the east if he goes to the Sixers, like, just in terms of the. The power hierarchy and what that means for next year. Be interesting, but I don't know, like, you've got this team that kind of surprised some people already. You're adding Jalen Brown into the mix. If they do it, I think it would wind up much like that season they had with when he went to Miami, where, like, they weren't good to start out. They couldn't figure out how to play with each other. But, like, by the end of the season, they started turning it on. You know, you'd have to says that stuff just doesn't happen overnight. Like, chemistry is a huge Deal in the. In basketball. Yeah. Yeah. You want to talk about Jalen? Yeah. I want your opinion. Like, I saw this trade. Somebody dropped it in our work slack when it happened, and I literally just was like, what? Yeah, yeah, me too. I mean, they were, they were in the mix for Giannis. Yeah. With Jalen Brown and, and to go from Giannis to Paul can't play George. How. How does that happen? Paul George hasn't played a full season since 2018. He missed 25 games due to PEDs last year. He's been injured non stop for the last eight years. And he's 36 years old and has been declining for. For many years. He did tear up the Celtics in the playoffs, which sucked, but Jalen should have. And we expected as homer Celtics fans that he would turn up more than Paul George. And I'm. I watch probably 80% of all Celtics games. 80 to 90%. So I've. I have a very strong familiarity with Jalen Brown's game. When he was, you know, 19 to 23 or so, 24, he was very promising. He made a lot of stupid mistakes. He had a hard time controlling the ball, but he had a lot of promise and he was really, really good the last four years or so. His numbers look good. He, you know, he's hit 29 points a game last year. I don't know, four or five rebounds, four or five assists. But it's infuriating to watch him because those little ball handling mistakes that he was making when he was young, he still makes, in fact, probably makes them more because he has the ball in his hands more. And it's really, really frustrating to watch him. When they have Tatum, who's a great ball handler, they have Payton Pritchard, who's one of the greatest ball handlers maybe in history. They have Derek White, who's a really good ball handler. So why is Jalen Brown, bring the ball up. Controlling the pot, the ball, as much as they do, as much as he does. If the 76ers let Tyrese Maxey continue to control the ball, control the game, and have Jalen Brown as your standard shooting guard, which he should have been all these years, that's. They could be really, really dangerous. Yeah, you're going to get some comments based on that Peyton Pritchard remark, by the way, but if people are saying that's not the case. They're not. You need to be a Peyton Pritchard truther. That guy's unbelievable. There are videos of Pritchard in his garage from when he was in high school and college. Dribbling. Yeah, Doing insane dribbling. It's like when I was a kid, Pete Maravich was the one that. We used to watch VHS videos of Pete Maravich when I was a kid, dribbling and doing all kinds of crazy things. Now it's Pritchard and obviously way more advanced than anybody in the 70s and 80s were. Obviously Maravich wasn't in the 80s, but you know what I'm talking about. And so Jalen has one of the best mid range shots in the league. Yeah. And if he can just focus on the mid range and just be a shooting guard. They're dangerous. Yeah, I, I think they are. I think they're going to be pretty dangerous. You know, the wild card for them is still Embiid's health and, and his availability in that series. I was really impressed by Embiid and how gritty he played in the playoffs. He got hurt a lot of time. Like, he was hurt. He's a big dude and he went down, he got his knee rolled and, you know, he was. He just kept getting up and was out there and it was just like I was all done, you know. But he has the Highest falls per 100 possessions in league history. He falls so much. People would say they're, they're arguing, say it's Shay. But yeah, fair. That's fair. But if the Celtics spin some of those first and second round picks that they got for Jalen into Trey Murphy, then I'm pretty happy. That's, you know, you've got Mitchell Robinson from the Knicks. Stole him away from the world champions. Yeah. And they get Trey Murphy, who is a budding superstar. I really want Trey Murphy on the Pistons. That's what I've been rooting for this whole time. It was like, oh, we're gonna get Tyler here. And I'm like, no, get a guy who can play defense. Jalen Duran was the other one who wanted to come and play for the Celtics. And I thought, oh, that would be really good. He's really good. Oh, dude, we're. The Pistons have the best record in the east last year. And then Duran had. Arguably, I think he had the biggest difference in like overall production and points per game, like, of any player ever between regular season and playoffs. Yeah, he's 22 years old. And I think as much of that had to do with the fact that the Pistons, like, weren't playing confidently even starting in the series with Orlando, and they were having to just give the ball more to Cade. Like, Kate was taking A lot of shots and they needed him to take over like any team superstar does. But like, there were just some weird things the team didn't look like themselves. Their youth and their inexperience in the playoffs kind of showed up and I'm like, the whole identity of the team is literally, was literally Isaiah Stewart and Jalen Duran and USR Thompson and then, and then Cade being their offense with Tobias Harris, like, we just need more offense. Get more offense. We can rotate into this lineup. That's why I thought Trey Murphy like three and D is such a good fit. Like get the. Get another guy who doesn't give you a defensive liability when he comes on the court. Lock teams down, stick to that Detroit culture that's always been there for decades of playing defense and then figure out how to score the ball with somebody else other than Cade. And instead Stewart's now gone. They brought in like, I don't know who was it Quatus or some. Somebody else. And now they're talking about, you know, Durin wanting out and I'm like, come on, this is so stupid. Like, yeah, figure it out. Yeah. So anyway, speaking of basketball, last thing I'll ask you, did you see the, did you see the teased out image of the alter egos main event Cooper Flag card? I did. What do you think? It's cool. It's cool. You know, we don't, we don't get a lot of anything here in Maine. You never see Maine things nationally. So seeing that, people talking about Cooper Flag and how he's from Maine. He's from a little town called Newport, which is in, it's in central Maine. But we here in Maine call it northern Maine because Newport is near Bangor and there's. Really. Bangor is in central Maine. Yeah, but there's nothing north of, of Bangor really. There's Canada. Yeah, there's. There's a long way to go after you've gotten to Bangor, like three more hours of driving, but there's really not much up there. And so it's a, it's a weird place for somebody to become a superstar, like the number one pick. Normally you would expect that to come out of southern Maine where there's a lot of population, there's a lot of training, there's. There's just much more. But Newport, Maine is in the middle of nowhere. And he became the best basketball player under the age of what, 25 and certainly the potential to become the best player in the league. Yeah, yeah, he, he showed a lot of promise last year. And I, I said Going into the season, I. My. My prediction for his career was like, I think his floor is like, Sean Marion. Like, I think he could. He's. He's defensive, he can pass the ball. He can do a little bit of everything. Well rounded. The matrix question. Yeah, the matrix. And so the big question for me was, like, you never know what these guys total upside is how they develop and how they can keep. Like, that takes work ethic. That takes another level to get into the, you know, the highest league and then be able to, like, actually start to figure out how to dominate. Boy, if he didn't start to show some real flashes by the second half of the season and into the end of the season last year, it was like, you see the. You see. You see it? And he's very young and really, really talented. Yeah. So we'll see if. We'll see if Wemby keeps his place as, like, the guy everybody's excited about or if somebody else can steal the spotlight for a bit in the coming years. Yeah, Dallas would need to be a little better as a team. Yeah. Yeah. We started hearing about him here and locally on the news in seventh grade. He's a seventh grader, and he's playing up against varsity teams and dominating. Yeah. And that's when. I don't remember if it was after eighth grade or whatever. They moved down to Florida for some academy where they could train him. And. Yeah, he was good. Yep. Cool. All right, Teapot, thanks for joining me. For those of you listening, make sure you check out auctionwire. AI use the code SCC for two months free. We will see you all very soon.