Thinking basketball podcast. My name is Ben. Welcome back to part two, part two of our 25 under 25 draft that we do every year.

If you miss part one, you got to go back and hear part one, first of all, to get the first

nine picks so you're caught up to date.

And secondly, so you can hear our little preamble about criteria, so I don't have to do it again.

Basically, you have to be 24.87 years old right now to qualify for this episode.

That's everything you need to know, along with the fact that, you know,

we're drafting as if the playoffs started tomorrow. What can a player give us today versus the typical

long-term prognostication? Let's see if I can speak English better than when we recorded

part one. It was an adventure for me. I mean, it is my native language, but who knows? And Cody, I will say, I'll recap where we left off in a second. I don't know if you have any thoughts getting to step away this time and, you know, reflect on the players and the discussions we've had. But to me, the players coming up in part two was just significantly harder.

It gets harder because the players get closer together in a lower tier of impact later on.

But even just this next tier of players, there's going to be a lot of discussion here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think a good way to think of that is if you look at the like the number one guy and then you take like the number 10 guy the the difference between them has to be wider than like the 20th guy and like the 50th guy

that we might be talking about here like the the I don't know the number of guys you can talk

but are so close and equal that it kind of becomes like a preference philosophical

I don't know.

Just stroking our philosophical beards and being like, hmm, I bet you this guy would be quite good in the playoffs.

And I've seen some wonderful things on this team.

And I think that's what's going to happen a lot in the second half of this episode.

Yes, you're going to be stroking the beard quite a bit.

And that's a good way to put it.

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