Haliburton on His Return, Preseason Thoughts, and Most Intriguing Players!

FriedellThey're just They're not good enough. And to your point about, all right, well, we'll throw all these contracts in and we'll make one big move, potentially the deadline, sign somebody in the summer. They're still not good enough. They are trying to do right by Steph, but Steph's 38 years old with a knee problem.

FriedellI mean, I'll give you some anecdotal evidence here. We're in Hawaii. We're in that preseason game. They're playing the Clippers. He comes to the bench for the first time in the first quarter. Immediately, he puts the heating pad on the knee.

FriedellAnd I went, oh no. because it's going to be like that all year long. He knows that the training staff knows that they still want to be competitive around Steph. Joe Lacob is the owner. He wants to win, et cetera, et cetera.

FriedellThis team though, as they're constructed, isn't close enough.

FriedellIf they bring in that one mythical major piece to get back to where they've been. So what, if it were me and I were Mike Dunleavy, and I'm watching all this unfold, I'm saying, all right, we want to keep Steph. He fills the building. He is the franchise, but every single other person, let's talk.

FriedellI mean, they really like Yaxle and they really like pods.

FriedellI wouldn't stop either one of those guys from moving out if you got the right pieces back in place, but that's the issue that they face in that they're not bad enough to, to tank all the way out of it. And they're not good enough to get back to the level that we're used to seeing.