Welcome on to a mid-January edition of Hollinger and Duncan, and I realize, John, we've been far too positive on this show recently.

And I'm also far too loud on my microphone.

Just turn that down.

And we have not eliminated nearly enough teams for the playoffs.

So we're going to get to a slew of those, which is generally just a vehicle for kind of talking about these teams and where they are and when they might finally emerge from the darkness at some future point.

But first, I wanted to get into just a few things that have happened recently.

Let's start with this trade.

It's actually my first chance to talk about it.

Nick Richards for Josh Akogi.

No brainer for Charlotte, right? Like,

Josh Akogi might be better than Nick Richards in a vacuum. And really? Whoa, okay. All right.

Continue. I'll, we'll think into that more. And you get essentially three seconds. They give up a pick that is likely to be around 50 in the 2025 draft,

get three future seconds that are likely to be more valuable for a player who,

I don't think there was a reasonable expectation that they could have gotten anything for him,

right?

Like to get three seconds out of Nick Richards quasi-expiring deal, I think is a massive win.

Non-guaranteed for $5 million next year.

Now, part of what Phoenix is paying for is the savings going from $8 million down to $5 with Nick Richards.

And there was another element to the savings, too, that nobody has talked about.

By trading a future pick for a pick, it will be again about 50 next year. They have filled next year's 14th roster spot, I believe, with a rookie minimum contract rather than a veteran minimum contract, which between tax and repeater will save them several million on top of the money

they saved this year.

Yeah.

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