Miami Heat: Dru Star, Dame, and the podcast chronicles | Five on the Floor

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We're here to bring the heat. Y'all can hang it up. Welcome to Five on the Floor, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA, featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Sylvander and Alex Toledo, plus others from the Five Reasons Sports Network. Welcome back to Five on the Floor. Here's today's floor plan. I got Alex Toledo. You can follow him at Tropical Blanket. And if you're a Heat fan and you're on Twitter, you know this guy and we know this guy because I'm always checking for the notifications in the morning. He's been doing the dirty work. He's been doing the stuff that we don't want to do, which is listen to all these Portland podcasts, Boston podcasts, national media podcasts, which actually is the same thing as a Boston podcast. You can find him on Twitter at Drew underscore star. That's all we're telling you. Right. That's it. Right, Drew. That's right, Ethan. OK, well, there you go. All right. So let's start here. You are now a mini celebrity. You've been written up in an article, I believe, in Miami New Times by a guy, Riz McGiz, who actually I did a radio show with way back when. And I just want to ask, why did you take on before we get to some of the crazier things you've seen and all of this? A lot of this is related to the Dame Lillard trade. We're still waiting for that to happen. Why did you take on this assignment exactly? Well, it's something that I've been doing during off seasons and during trade deadlines is just following the transaction talk. Everybody loves transaction talk. I love it more than anybody else. So I go out and I find this stuff. I listen to the podcast. I watch the shows. I'm reading the articles and I don't want to just share, you know, that information with my significant other. You know, she doesn't want to hear that from me. So I bring it to you guys. I bring it to the fans, the Miami Heat fans. So I want to try to, you know, help the discourse along during the day. I know you guys got to produce and you're looking for stuff, so I'm putting it out there. Yeah, we appreciate that because it's been a long summer waiting for this thing to happen. Yes, we do. I mean, I mean, seriously, we are out of ideas. I'm just going to acknowledge that before we continue. I mean, that's one of the reasons we're having you on tonight. Not that we didn't want to have you on, but we are legitimately out of ideas like yesterday, Alex. I think we started the podcast and then realized we'd done it already. Right. Like that was the rotation thing. So I just pivoted to Kyle Lowry and whether or not the Heat actually have a point guard if Dame doesn't show up like we have no ideas. You can still do that rotation part. I'm sure people are like, didn't we just do that two weeks ago? I feel like we did. We did. We discussed starters in one of the one of the podcasts. We could talk about the rotation. OK, I mean, we could also talk about the two ways again. I don't know if we've done that enough times. I mean, we have a lot of pro court players. I do think it will be a good conversation. We might have to have all different stations, but I digress. Well, they don't have Christian Wood and that that's everybody's panicking over that one right now. All right. So, Drew, before we get to some of the crazier things that you heard and you've had to put out there for us so that, again, we can continue with our content during the offseason, how many podcasts are you listening to per day lately? You know, it starts in the morning. I'll wake up in the morning. I'll see the timeline there that refresh with all the pods, Portland pods or Boston pods, national pods, ringer pods, Spotify, everything. And I just kind of start listening at that point, you know, in the morning, the crack of dawn. So I get an early start and I'm listening to whatever's out there, as many as I can a day, three, four or five, you know, trying to speed that along and just clipping the best things possible, listening for any sort of little morsel of information, any quote, no matter how small and just kind of putting it out there. You know, I do it for the fans, for Miami-Dade County. OK, representing. And I want to thank you guys for having me on the most down to the NBA team podcast out there for Greg Sylvander. Yes. Oh, no, that's an accurate report by Greg Sylvander, by the way. We can confirm that particular piece of information that Greg and Greg has put out there. Before I go to Alex on this, I just want to ask, do you have a day job? Like, how are you fitting this in? I do have a day job. I do. That's why I'm waking up that early in the morning. I and you still have a significant other after all this, which, again, I appreciate the commitment on all sides here. Alex, you have any questions for Mr. Starr here before before I go forward? My question is, how do you do it, man? How do you do it? Like just listening to all these other types of personalities like I know you said you do it for everybody. And like I said, we really appreciate it because, you know, shows like us and, you know, our friends over at Lockdown, for example, who are, you know, we're doing daily heat shows or close to daily heat shows. Any more so of kind of, you know, a Dame update or a free agent update is just extremely valuable at this point to us. And, you know, we're trying to keep this thing going until October when the season is back. So my question is, how do you deal with these types of I don't know, these types of hot takes and the amount of kind of garbage that you have to sift through on a daily basis? Well, oddly enough, the more garbage and hot the thing is, the more interaction that it's going to garner, you know, out there. So I'll try to find the worst take possible, the hottest take possible, and just really try to kind of highlight that. Unless somebody is really going out there. I saw that there was like an opening in the market there, you know, for what I'm doing with all these clips and the audio and stuff like that, because usually it would be like these big aggregate accounts, you know, that got a million plus followers on Twitter and stuff. And they'll kind of aggregate something and it'll get out there. And I just wanted something a little bit more concentrated on the magnet. So I said, you know what, I'm listening to these things. I'm reading the articles, I'm watching the shows. Let me just go ahead and put it out there and then just kind of help drive that conversation. And this summer, more than in the past, I don't know, it just kind of really took off with a lot of the local media guys, newspaper guys, local sportscasters, you know, and I just kind of got a big following. I've garnered a lot of guys, you know, a lot of people, a lot of followers. And you guys have been a big part of that there because you're constantly reposting stuff and quote tweeting stuff. And I love to see it. I just kind of love to sit back, throw something out there, throw a hot take out there. I just kind of see everybody, you know, gang up on the person that I'm quoting and stuff. And it's kind of fun seeing that stuff. So I just kind of like driving the help, help driving the conversation, you know, just doing my part to kind of help things move along because it's everything's kind of dried up with the news. You're not hearing shams. Yeah, you're not hearing anything from Mojo Shams anymore. And it's just kind of like, you know, the local guys. And I, I like getting that, that insight from the Portland guys, you know, because we can get everything from national guys, but I kind of like to see where they're coming from their point of view. So I appreciate what they do. And they do great stuff over there. And even, you know, Danny Morang and Sean Hyken and all the usual suspects, you know, I appreciate what they do. And I try to garner, you know, views and stuff toward them, you know, but some of them don't. Some of them might not appreciate that, you know, getting all that attention on them. Yeah, I see. I was going to go. I was going to go there next, actually, because and I'm glad you said that, that you appreciate what they do, because and Sean's a friend of the program. He's been on here. I know he's not thrilled with you, although he's still liking my daughter's pictures on Instagram. So I guess he's not too angry. I am and just curious about sort of how you are towing the line there, because, you know, that heat fans are like rabid at this point, right? Like they just want something to happen. Some of the takes out of Portland have been a little out there, I think, when they start to talk about the heat organization, you know, which I think has been I don't think that's something Sean did as much, but some of the others kind of speculating about how the heat handle things, which is just wrong. Honestly, if you've been around the heat at all, you know that they're not steering anybody, which I think was one of the allegations made by one of the Portland hosts out there. I mean, it is kind of a line because I know you say you appreciate what they do, but some of the stuff that's come out of there, he fans don't appreciate. Right. So so where do you go with that? You know, I don't do this for a living like you guys do and they do. Well, we don't either. At this point, I'd like to say we do, you know, feeling people got to fill a lot of air time and get content out there. So you're doing this for hours. You're going to say some things that maybe you want to take back. And if I find it, I'm going to put it out there. And then we're going to have other heat fans, heat Twitter, you know, coming at you and saying, hey, this is wrong or this is these are the facts. These are the stats. Some of them, you know, more than others. They'll say, OK, yeah, I'm wrong and I'll admit it. But yeah. Well, I'm just glad there's not a Drew star in Portland like aggregating our takes on this podcast on a regular basis. So we appreciate you working on the Miami side here. Let me ask this before we go to break. And I'm going to jump in again. What is the most what has been the hardest listen of any of the podcasts that you've had to listen to? Is it the Portland ones? I mean, Danny Danny Moran has a particular bias, it seems like that came out today with the whole hero saying he's, you know, awful and pick and roll situations. I maybe I'm misquoting him a little bit, but I mean, he combined pick and roll with isolation. We know Tyler's not good in isolation, but also nobody is saying Tyler necessarily is going to go to Portland. I mean, I thought that ship had sailed a long time ago, so I don't even know why Tyler is the issue. It's it's Tyler being Tyler being used to get a first round pick, potentially to send to Portland. That's my understanding where where this is. Right. And nobody is saying that Portland wants Tyler. And again, it's not because Tyler is not a good player. It's because they don't have a positional need there. But what has been the hardest listen out of all of them? Is it the Boston pods? You know, in the early going, the stuff coming out of Boston was just off the wall, just crazy stuff coming out from the all the usual suspects and the ringer KOC and Simmons and Mannix. And you get all these people up there. And that was but that was a long time ago. We're talking about already two months ago when when these they've completely run out of gas. They're just reserved to the fact that they're not getting it. But they thought that there was a chance that they might. I mean, they were talking about our garbage and our picks are going to be terrible and stuff like that. And now, you know, they're not doing that anymore. They know they're not going to get them. But now the stuff coming out of Portland, the only going with them, you know, for us, it's it's like a business transaction. We're getting Dane because we want him for a franchise and we want to do better with him. But it's a business decision. Then it's it's very emotional with them. I mean, they're really tight to this guy. I try to put myself in their shoes, you know, and think about what if we just had four years on his contract and said, yeah, I want to get about a year and a little team. So I understand where they're coming from. And at the beginning, it was really emotional, really a lot of venomous stuff coming out of there about never trade them there. They don't have it. Tyler, he was not going to get it done. And, you know, even their best offers a terrible package, the worst in NBA history. And that stuff, you're not really hearing so much of that anymore. They're kind of going through the different stages of grief. And now even, you know, these guys that we're talking about that, you know, maybe they didn't like the package. They're saying, I just want it to get done. I want it to get done before camp because I don't think they've had that magnifying glass put on them as a franchise, as as media members there in Portland. They heat fans, heat media, heat Twitter. We go through this every year. We're we're I want to say we've been through the fire. We're we're built for this with the big three and all the swing and a miss. Tried a huge free agent acquisitions that we haven't gotten over that are heroes being a name being offered up for all these big names Mitchell and KD and now Dane. So this is just old hat for us. The Miami me that to having eyes on them and stuff like that, like you guys are the most downloaded podcast. So you certainly know what it's like to get that audience. And I don't think that they were ready for this. They just, quite frankly, were not ready to be had that target on their back. And now that they're putting stuff out there, I'm posting the clips. They're getting all this traffic and heat fans and everything that comes with the heat fans, you know, the good and they just some of them maybe are not like not liking what's going on. You know, I can probably block me after I had aggregated one of his tweets that said that Dame is not going to be happy if the third pick is used and not traded. Really pretty innocent tweet. It was his words, but I tweeted that out on a Friday and apparently made a lot, a lot of work for him over the weekend. And he just said, Yeah, I'm going to block this guy. Well, there were a couple. Yeah, there were a couple of the other Portland, you know, to say everything that they're doing is getting aggregated. I mean, unfortunately, I mean, again, there's a plus and minus to that. Like, as long as the quotes are accurate, aggregation and in context, then to me, aggregation is fine. The problem we have with aggregation, it's been done to us at times, not by you, but by others, is when something's taken completely out of context and thrown out there. I mean, it is all about context. And look, aggregation is the game now. I mean, that's, you know, because because of social media, things get out there quickly. And sometimes we talked about it last year, last season. You know, it's a telephone game at this point to a certain degree. And, you know, I kind of ran into that with the Donovan Mitchell thing report that ended up coming back to Donovan three levels away from what I had actually said. And Ingram thing. Yeah, the Ingram thing. I mean, there's been a bunch of them. I mean, it happens a lot. I mean, you know, Mitchell coming at me directly on Twitter X or whatever it is, was a little bit different. And, you know, again, at a certain point, you can't really explain. Nobody wants to hear it when you're like, well, that's not what I said. But, you know, that was that's that's four aggregations ago. And that sort of stuff happens. But I've followed your aggregation pretty closely and I can't say I've listened to all the podcasts, but it does seem like you present full thoughts of quote in quotes, which, you know, in some cases that doesn't happen. And and, you know, when that doesn't happen and you just get like the mini mini soundbite is often when it's not really what the person intended to say or what they were attempting to express. So, you know, I feel like, you know, the aggregation front, you know, again, I know people it's a it does seem like there is some emotion in Portland that is tied into this. They don't want to lose this guy. But and I get it and I get it. But, you know, the organization did not do right by him. And it's just that simple. And, you know, in the same way that the organization did not do right by Duane Wade in 2016. And I think he fans can acknowledge that at this point. And many did at the time, actually, because I remember it being very split. And even in Dwayne's favor at the time. But it doesn't seem like Portland, the Portland media, even more so than Portland fans. It doesn't seem like they have really come around to that thought. All right, we're going to close up here with Drew in a second. I'm going to let Alex jump in here. I do want to mention a couple of great sponsors of the Five Reasons Sports Network and a watch party that we're having on Sunday. Sunday, Dolphins open at four twenty five in Los Angeles against the Chargers will be at Biscayne Bay Brewhouse starting at about three o'clock. This is an independently owned brewery. We talk about Biscayne Bay all the time and all the cool things they do. But they've been we've been waiting for this brew house to open. It's down the street from Casaya Center. And they are the official craft beer of the Miami Marlins. They're also an independent brewing partner of the Miami Heat. They're usually open Wednesday through Sunday. And again, we're going to be there on Sunday starting at about three o'clock. We're going to do a pregame Dolphins show, maybe a postgame Dolphins show as well. But here's the cool thing. If you mention five reasons, the first beer is on us. OK, and so, I mean, that's a pretty good deal. So you go down there, park, come hang out and have a free beer. OK, and then stick around. They got a full food menu as well. So check them out. The Biscayne Bay Brewhouse, it's right in downtown Miami, and we're going to be there starting about three o'clock. Kickoff is scheduled for four twenty five Eastern. I also want to mention prize picks. Use the code five F.I.V.E. You can play the NFL props, obviously coming up this weekend. Thursday night game Chiefs game. You can certainly play that. And also there's a Dak Prescott free square on there that you can check out. Use the code five F.I.V.E. Get that initial deposit matched up to one hundred dollars. You just want to play hoops. The FIBA semifinals are on there right now. You can start to play those with the USA playing against Germany. Alex, go ahead. All right. So kind of after listening to everything you have, you know, for all this time, I guess my question would be, what do you think if you had to bet ends up happening with the thing like does it last into the season and they acquire him before the trade deadline? Do you have any sort of anxiety with that happening or, you know, maybe anxiety with the idea that Joe Cronin would just draw a hard line at trading him to the heat in the first place, you know, whether backed by ownership or not, perhaps. Where are you with the whole thing? And, you know, and also just kind of an open format to let off any takes that you have and just kind of interested to hear where your perspective is on all this. So, you know, a little while ago, I would have said that this was going to get done before training camp, maybe right on the eve of training camp or even maybe, you know, media day. But that's assuming that you're dealing with rational actors up in Portland. And I don't think that we're dealing with rational actors right now. That's a franchise and Joe Cronin that have done everything possible to try to push Dame out the door. But they barred the door on the other side. They've done everything possible to try to get him to be the bad guy, to make the trade demand. They succeeded in that. He made the demand. Cronin said that he'd work with another team to try to find a package that works and try to make Dame happy and get him to where he wants to go. They've said all the right things, but every action that they've done is to push him out the door and they locked the door on him. So that's assuming, you know, yeah, in a rational world, we get him before training camp, they should want to trade him before training camp. They shouldn't want to even bring up the media day of that circus. But as this thing goes further and further, this is not a guy that's Cronin that has a lot of experience as a GM. This would be the biggest movie he's ever made. This is old hat for the heat. We've been around this rodeo. This is literally Joe Cronin's first rodeo. I don't think that they're really acting rationally up there. So I think this could certainly go into the season. Now, if it does, is it going to trade him in December, January? You know, I don't know that that package is going to get any better. I certainly don't think there's going to be another team coming out of the blue to rescue him. I think that Portland fans and that franchise should want to get him to where he wants to go. But you hear these reports that they don't want anything to do with what they're not talking to them. They're not bringing other teams in. And I think if you're Portland, if you know this is going to be a three-team deal, at least, Tyler Hero is going to have to go to another place. You have to get involved in these conversations that he can't just go and trade Tyler Hero. You hear, oh, if Tyler Hero was worth anything, they would have traded him already. And then you can come to us with whatever you've traded Hero for. No, it doesn't work like that. They're not going to trade Tyler Hero unless you've specifically told them, hey, this is what we don't know. Players or teams or picks you want, you know, we can trade them to five different teams. And then we should go to them and say, hey, which one of these teams first round picks do you want since you don't want ours? But they're just not. I mean, at least with the reporting coming out of Portland and Jackson and everything is that they're just not even talking. So if you're not, I mean, they should really be in process. I mean, if you want the best possible return and package, you just have to be involved. So if they're just not staying, you know, the report from Barry Jackson's, oh, we want to hear, we want to know what you want. We don't know what they want. So that's why I'm saying we're not teaming with rational actors. They should want to help him help us get him to where he wants to go. But if they're not going to pick up the phone or answer our calls and we're just going to go into the season with the team that we have, yes, both says we have enough. You know, you really hit on it there because it's just it's it's irrational thinking on a bunch of different levels. I mean, I think we talk about the front office, the Portland front office. I can't understand why Joe Cronin wouldn't want to just turn the team over to scoot right now, get as much as you possibly can and then get the deal done and enter training camp with a clean slate, because my belief is that Cronin will buy himself more time as general manager if he pivots to go young all at once than if it's kind of Dame's sort of in the picture and it's a distraction and they don't even really want to win games. They shouldn't want to win games. They they keep their pick as long as it's in the lottery and they should be trying to get up as high in the lottery as they possibly can. But they're not dealing with irrational actors. And again, I don't I don't want to defame, you know, anybody who's basically pushing it out there for their team does apply to some of the podcast hosts, too, because I think it is some of this argument that's being made, like you talk about, like, just let's just go get something for hero and bring it back to us. And then what? But then you're you're you're stuck with picks you don't want. OK, and you've traded your who currently stands as you're starting to guard or as we talked about on the podcast yesterday. Tyler, here might be they're starting point guard right now for the heat entering training camp. So that makes no sense whatsoever. I think that rational behavior will start to reenter the picture as we get closer to training camp and this becomes more real, you know, for your sake. I hope so, because I can't imagine you having to continue to listen to all of this stuff for the next several months, even though it may help us become, you know, stay as as you keep saying, and we appreciate the advertisement, the most downloaded local NBA podcast in the country. It's certainly good for us. And we also appreciate that your audio isn't great because we're trying to hide you here. So we just want to say that in this case, we're not going to let anybody know who Drew is. I just hope Portland doesn't come out, like I said, doesn't come up with their own Drew star out there to hold us to our takes the way that you've held them to theirs. I guess the parting thought is anybody you've aggregated is welcome to come on the podcast with us as well. So Sean already has. He's a friend. He can certainly come on with us again. Danny Morang wants to come on and explain this whole isolation thing with Tyler Hero. He's welcome to. We'll even take some of the ringer guys. I don't think that they'll do that. Who should we be trying to get on the podcast, Drew, before we close? You know, I think you should try to get Danny Morang. He actually just DM me now. He's a good sport about it. You know, he didn't block me today with all the stuff going on. He doesn't get your attention for his show, you know, like other people should in mind. So I think you should try to get him. He seems to be somebody that's really caught the eye of a few fans. And he's put a lot of stuff out there and he seems to not be backing down from a lot of it. So I think he'd be a great get. And he's a good sport about it. You know, he fans go easy on him. All right, Alex, we're going to get Danny Morang. OK, well, we'll get him at any point. Are you going to reveal your identity or no? Oh, you know what? Maybe here, but no. Maybe when he gets here, I would want to let anybody know I listen to that many podcasts either. All right. We appreciate it. Follow him on Twitter. We know most of you already are, but he should probably have more followers than he actually has at the moment. Follow me, Drew underscore star. That's D.R.U. underscore star on Twitter. We will start working on Danny Morang expeditiously. See if we can get him on the podcast. We were always up for conversation here. In fact, Alex, I think we all map more an invitation, actually. H.P. Bassler. I'll just leave it there. That'll definitely generate some conversation. Sure. I worked with that. I like that. Well, I've had that on before. We'll have them on. So look, it's all fun. It's all fun. It's all good stuff. And it's just I just don't think that the rest of the country really gets the heat. I don't think they really understand how the organization works. It is so different from every organization in the NBA, but also from those in this market. They just do their own thing. They do their own thing. And they're a mystery to people who have not dealt with them for years. They're a mystery to me at times. And I've dealt with them for 27 years. So that's just the way that is. Drew, we appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time. Thanks, Ethan. Appreciate it, guys. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it, man. Thank you for listening to the Five on the Floor on the Five Regional Sports Network.