The Cleveland Browns Want NBA-Style Trades

Coach's breakfast is uh is upon us.

It's in a couple of, uh, a couple of minutes, but we wanted to knock out a quick kind of preview pod, talk a little bit about what we know stemming from owners meetings so far, and, uh, with, with the knowledge that we're gonna come right back then next week when we're both home and, uh, and we'll cover everything, we'll recap everything and, and I had a total 180 last week on like Thursday I was, um, running with my buddy who's a big, um, NBA fan.

And we're talking about the rule change, uh, the Browns, uh, 5 year proposal where they wanna be able to trade or acquire picks up to 5 years and that's something that they're gonna be voting for this week on owners meetings and at first my thought was this is idiotic because it's gonna destroy franchises and then my buddy who's a huge NBA fan is like that's the point, Connor.

It's so good when something is so bad that it destroys a franchise and.

It never occurred to me before that like, and, and he knows way more about the NBA than me, but he was going on about the Milwaukee Bucks and the Damian Lillard trade and twice that the, the Nets traded all of their draft picks for like Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett and then Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and like all these players and all this stuff and.

I did a complete 180 on this and I was like, you're so right.

NFL teams are such a pressure cooker that being able to blow half a decade's worth of draft picks is probably the best thing ever because who you're not gonna stop watching, right?

And how good would it be for us to sit there and watch a trade just implode over and over and over again for half a decade?

Wouldn't that be amazing?

I don't know.

I'm all for it now.

Yeah, I mean, that's the whole reason why they don't want to do it, but.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, so, so quickly, the Cavaliers.

OK, this is like, I, so again, I don't know a lot about the NBA.

In the 80s, the Cavaliers had an owner that traded away, the Steian rule.

Yeah, he traded away so many draft picks that the NBA had to put a rule in place to stop him from doing.

It and I was reading up on this.

They implemented a third party that had to approve all the moves that he was making because he was so irresponsible.

That's what I want.

That's what I want.

So Mannix still like I, when I was doing some reporting on this, like part of the Browns' proposal, and if you read in the agenda in the NFL's like internal agenda, they have the different rules for the different leagues, um.

It's actually in there as the step in rule, and like I, what, but, you know, they had told, they'd take me through it.

Mannix, Mannix explained to me the step-in rule that it was the Cavs, yeah.

It's so amazing.

I mean, it's so amazing that you could be so bad at your job.

That's my dream, is to be.

So scary bad at my job that I can't be fired, but that they have to hire someone to keep an eye on me and to not let me drive the car too far off the ground.

It's amazing.

What's that?

So now you're 100% OK, so picture this, right, um.

And I'm using the Colts as an example, even though I think I've been a little hard on the Colts this offseason.

You have a general manager that is hanging on by, I think, generously the last threads of a rope.

You've gone all in on a team that went 8 and 2 last year but had one win over a quality opponent.

And you're Ballard and you look around and you're starting to be like, OK, we need like three more things .

Let's just blow the rest of the farm on this thing.

I want 2027 1st round draft, 2028, 2029 .

I'm trading them all and we're going all in on Daniel Jones.

Like how hilarious that could look in three years, you know, Ross, Daniel Jones, and Alec Pierce, right.

Those are the three guys that they've really kind of pushed, but then you trade like 2 more first rounders for Miles Garrett.

You trade, you know what I mean, like just, just infinite monopoly money because, here's, here's my thought, and I'm curious what you think about this.

I think the beauty of the NFL is that there are so many guard.

Rails in place that you can't drive the car off a cliff, but there are so many bad owners that given the option, they would totally drive the car off the cliff, and I think we need to let them do it.

That's I don't think it's gonna happen this like I, I, I think the Browns' idea is that this will go through in a year or two maybe.

But, I mean, shoot, like.

I, I do think like it's cause, I mean, essentially what this, that's part of the price of the Sauce Gardner trade for the Colts, is they can't do that again for a while, right?

And now, like you would, maybe it'd be harder to do it because you'd be trading picks so far into the future, but maybe they then would have traded, say a 26 and a 28 1st round pick, and then they traded their 27 and 29 picks for something else, right?

So you'd be looking at more creativity that way.

I'm trying to pull up right now the um Uh, I'm trying to pull up the graphics I saw it in like one handy, um.

I saw it in one handy thing.

OK, so like the Paul George trade, for example, right?

The Clippers got a 32 year old Paul George.

The, the Thunder got Shake SGA, who ended up being the, um, uh, MVP of the NBA of the NBA Finals.

Um, it's probably the, might be the MVP of the league this year.

Yeah.

OK, let me see if I can get it in like a handy, um.

Because it's just so funny, it's so funny that you're allowed to do that.

OK, here we go, um, OK, so the SGA trade was.

They get the they get the future finals MVP.

They get Danilo Gallinari.

They get the 2022 1st round draft pick, the 2024 1st round draft pick, the 2026 1st round draft pick, another team's 2021 1st round draft pick, another team's 2023 1st round draft pick.

Their right to pick swap a 2023 draft, their own first round pick, and then a 2025 pick swap.

It is so good.

Like that is ruinous to a franchise, and you should be able to do it.

Wasn't that sort of just so if I remember right, wasn't that like sort of just so Kawhi Leonard would sign with them?

Isn't that right?

So he would have someone else to play with, basically, right?

Yeah, right.

It was like, how do we, how do we make sure, how do we convince Kawhi to sign with us.

And then have a team that can compete and yeah , what a disaster holy crap but that's, I mean that's wasn't even the centerpiece of that trade that trade, the centerpiece was the picks, right?

Yeah, yeah, but that's the point like, like it, I would say it's not gonna happen in the NFL though.

You like because players, because single players aren't and, and they aren't single players aren't as valuable, yeah , right.

And then, and then the picks are less valuable, right, because like the 14th pick in the draft isn't like the 14th pick in the draft in the NFL is incredibly valuable.

The 14th pick in the NBA draft is like a backup, usually, you know.

Yes, I would say that's true.

Sometimes it's Giannis, but like that's not normal, right?

No, I, I, I, I think that's true, um, but yeah, that's my, um, that's my change of heart.

Like I know that the NFL is not gonna come close to it, but I need them to kind of butt up.

Like Deshaun Watson is probably the most ruinous.

And disastrous trade that we can remember in modern times, right?

And it essentially bankrolled a Texans dynasty, not dynasty, I, you know, so it bankrolled a very strong Texans team that is a consistent competitor, right?

And it's probably a contender for the AFC, for the AFC this year because of, in part because of that.

Um, I need more of that.

That's all I'm saying.

I want that to happen more, and I want teams to get deeper into debt, uh, with draft pick equity, and I want it to be, I want more desperation.

So I think that's my, uh, that's my thought.