Speaker 1: What is up, fellow Siko's I am Dan Valley, coming
at you as always with my certified fantabulous co host,
mister Grant Hughes. It's the time you have all been
waiting for. So you're welcome or we're sorry. Maybe you
haven't been waiting for this, maybe you've been dreading it.
Overreactions for every NBA team early into the season. We
are closing out week two as we record this. This episode
will be dropping on Saturday, November two. It is being
courted just prior to games on Friday, November one, so
keep that in mind before we get started. Grant, how
the heck are you doing?
Speaker 2: Ready to overreact to some stuff? I'll tell you that
that's all. Although that's all we can do right now.
I think, as evidenced by the fact that, like I
had we put these together like three days ago, how
many of these overreactions would be like a complete one
to eighty from what they are now, because that's how
quick things are changing.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. On one of them, I had the Wizards
were they were gonna Bobcat and finish last in offense
and defense. Yeah, when I wrote it, they were twenty
ninth in offense and thirtieth in defense. I feel very
confident about where they're gonna end up on defense. Their
offense is jumped to like sixteenth in points per possession
over the course of two games. So that's how much
things are changing. But that's the point. And but I
get tired of having to couch everything with that's the point.
I don't know how you approach this, but I view
overreactions as these aren't necessarily things I believe with absolute conviction.
But if the season ended right now, would these be true?
Is kind of how I approached this, And that's kind
of just the the purpose of this exercise, which will
include at the end, if you submitted via discord, and
I did throw it out on YouTube, your own overreaction.
We picked the fifteen best that we will go through
in a lightning round, and we had a weed out
a few. It wasn't just the fifteen best, but we
had a lot. But a lot of people have some
nuggets opinions.
Speaker 2: Grant Shop, Yeah, I kind of I would frame it
as what's a semi crazy, but let's at least talk
about it. Conclusion that you could draw from the limited
games we've seen so far. You know, like maybe it's
something you suspected before the season starts and you're getting
like verification of it, or maybe it's like a totally
out of the blue thing that like, well, look, I mean,
here's what's happened so far, let's conclude this. So it's yeah,
there's there's a lot of like it's it's kind of
butts up against like a bold prediction slash like hot
take thing where it's like, I'm not saying we're certainly
not saying that we believe all of these things will hold,
but like maybe and at least based on what we've
seen so far, it's this, this is what you would
believe potentially. That's that's the nature of an overreaction. It's
like right in the world, it's right the name, like
we're overreacting to what we've seen.
Speaker 1: There will still be people who mistake this is How
could they say that you know that's coming.
Speaker 2: That's fine.
Speaker 1: We begin, as the alphabet tends to begin with the
Atlanta Hawks. You have the Eastern Conference grant this time
you're gonna take us through I have the West. How
should we do this? Should I be the one reading
what you have or should if the East is yours.
You should read it and throw it to me. I'm
gonna let you decide that as well.
Speaker 2: I'll just read it and then I can either expand
on it or just kind of put it on a
platter for you to react to. We'll keep it loose
so for the Hawks, and this is pretty on brand
for me, So apologies if it's not super based on
these first five games that this team has played. But
I think one thing you could overreact to based on
the Hawks season to this point is there's no point
in continuing with Trey Young as the centerpiece, and the
thinking there is he's basically been as good as ever.
The defense, though in Atlanta, remains terrible. That's just been
a staple other than the one year I think they
were sixth in that twenty twenty one season. Defense is bad. Uh,
You've got all the all the reason in the world
to see if you can turn Trey Young into those
San Antonio owned picks or somebody else's first and just
move forward with Resichet, with Jalen Johnson, with Dyson Daniels,
who's looked very good. I just don't see a high
enough ceiling because of the lack of defense in Atlanta
to continue with the same plan that that's the overreaction. Uh,
where where do you? Where do you take that?
Speaker 1: I would I'd probably be more on board with it
if I saw a pathway to them getting their own
picks back as part of moving Tray Young. And I
think actually they would have been more likely to get
their own picks back. How they never extended Jalen Johnson
and we're willing to trade him to get maybe san
Antonio gives you one or two of those back, And
that's just what I struggle with. I would be I
understand your sentiment, but it's is there a team out
there that is going to give you so many picks
for Trey Young you don't care about your own even
though you still have to care about your own Or
can you go the route of we got someone who's
a different type of all like kind of a challenge trade,
so to speak, like what the Bucks did with Damian
Lillard a little bit along those lines, And that's kind
of what I really struggle with. I would say that
if you wanted to go this direction, it would have
to be you need to make a trade, like a
bigger trade, like you're putting more first round picks on it, say,
can you get Jimmy Butler out of Miami? So I
would go, I just not that they're trapped with Trey Young,
But I don't see the value in trading him when
you don't have your own picks.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, like in my hypothetical, Oh, it's so easy.
You just trade him to the Spurs, they give you
back your picks, and everybody walks away like, no, of
course that's not that simple. But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just sorry, you're running the Hawks and the Lakers
give you their best package, which in terms of picks,
where it's two draft picks, three swaps and maybe they're
giving you Dalton Connect plus salary. As a Hawks team
without your own picks, is that enough to trade Tray Young?
I think you're running them, not the real life Hawks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think that is that illustrates the
issue really well, because you know, you probably should just
do that, except the bottoming out that you might be
in line for just doesn't have the same payoff because
you don't have your own picks. I still think I
think it's there's two things that not having your own
picks is a huge issue. In any kind of rebuild,
Like that's why we lauded Brooklyn for getting those picks back,
and now like everything makes sense again, your incentives are
all aligned. But also there's a piece of it for me,
and this might just be me with Trey Young, and
it's just I I'm still unconvinced that so Trey Young
has to be your centerpiece. I think that's just like
that's the type of player he is, and I'm just
not convinced that unless you have the absolute perfect team
around him, that your ceiling is very high. Now, the
twenty one conference finals thing like that that happened, that
was a real thing, but that's pretty clearly the outlier
so far. So I just am kind of like, I
don't know, I do this too much, but I'm ready
to bail on a situation if if I've got a
no years of data that says like this is just
there's no scenario where this is like a conference finals
again or like championship roster, So like let's just try
something different. Especially it'd be one thing if you were
like the Hawks are winning forty nine games a year,
but it's like they're just in the middle, you know, Like,
so I probably am too ready to pull the ripcord
on stuff like this, but that's kind of just that's
a big factor, I think in my overreaction here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is probably one of our biggest disagreements ever,
and we tend not to disagree too much, which might
be a problem with this podcast. I just don't. I
can't get there. But I think that's the point of
the overreactions.
Speaker 2: There you go mixed up.
Speaker 1: You're a Boston Celtics. That's a good team to take
ownership of. Not gonna lie easy enough.
Speaker 2: The twenty five championship race is already over. The Celtics
look stupid good. They're shooting a million threes. They're on
pace to set the record. I don't, and I actually
do think, like, would you be surprised if they didn't
set the all time record for three point attempts at
this point? Yes, yeah, I would be too, Like, I
think that should be the assumption that they're just gonna
set the record. They don't look like a team that
has like a hangover championship malaise. Both Tatum and Brown
seem pretty motivated. Thanks thanks Team USA for a couple
you know, on both fronts. I guess yeah, like, this
is obviously an overreaction, but because there are other teams
and we're going to talk about a couple of them
that are great, but man like Boston, just with or
without Porzingis just does not look to have missed a
beat and like kind of feels like uncommonly dialed in
and motivated for a team that just came off a title.
That's not always how it goes. So yeah, they're gonna
run away.
Speaker 1: With it there. If you had to even pick a
concern with them. Aside from the existence, I think Dallas
for sure, Cleveland, the way they're playing, we'll get to them.
These are all teams will get to And of course, okay,
see it's just like, okay, they're rim protection. Teams have
shot really well at the rim against them. They've had
some you know, why are you trying to get minutes
with Luke Cornette and Xavier Tilman at the same time
have not necessarily gone too well. Porzingis will come back
at some point, even if he's playing fewer their jut
this this is hyperbole because I think there are other
teams that could win at all. But you can't talk
me out of Boston being the favorites right now. Okay,
see he probably still comes closest, but it's you have
to default. This team is just look at you, right.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know what else we need to say.
Like the other element is like some of the teams
in the East that we thought might be extra frisky
or be a challenger, Like I don't know, Cleveland is
clearly you know right there, but I don't know how
seriously a lot of people take the Cavs as a
playoff team. Won. Oh and then like your Phillies in
Miami's in Indiana's and some of these other teams that
you know, oh well, maybe one of them. It's like,
I don't know. They got as many questions as answers
to this point.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm l If I get a breaking news item,
we'll get to down the line with the team we're onto,
the Brooklyn Netts. In the meantime, what do we got? Grant?
Speaker 2: We got Cam Thomas is going to average over thirty
a game. That's a big deal because it doesn't happen often.
There have been a handful that have done it before
their age twenty four seasons. So that's Bob McAdoo, Oscar Robertson,
Kareem Rick Berry, Walt Bellamy, Wilt Chamberlain. So we're still like,
just write all those guys off because that's a thousand
years ago and the game was different, so more more modern,
and Jerry West to also among more modern modern guys imposterous.
I'm sorry, Michael Jordan, t mak Lebron Durant, Luca So.
Cam Thomas's name is very much one of those which
one of these doesn't belong if you throw him on
the list. But situation in Brooklyn, somebody's got to shoot it.
Cam Johnson loves to shoot it. Dan. I don't know
if you knew that about him and frisky Nets team
so far, by the way, but I think Thomas he's
not He's under thirty at the moment, but not by much,
and he's got a lot more room to start gunning
once the Nets trade people.
Speaker 1: And you know who they need to trade the most.
This was not a been my prediction, and maybe it
should have been based off Olympics. Dennis Shruder needs to
go right.
Speaker 2: Now now that value at getting higher. He had like
fourteen assists the other night, He's had he like thirteen points.
In the opener, and then it's been over twenty he's
got a thirty point game already, just like this trade
him immediately.
Speaker 1: He's been outrageously good, and so he's gotta go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, made more than half his threes on the air.
That's yeah, Yeah, that's a cell high situation.
Speaker 1: I ultimately don't think he Cam Thomas will get here
because of Dennis Shooter. But if you told me the
Nets were either going to put Dennis Shooter on a
minute's cap or he gets traded by let's say, Thanksgiving,
I might kind of be like, you know what, like
Cam Thomas might do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, honestly, this is still a good overreaction.
But like if if we had gotten to this point
in the season and he was averaging like thirty eight
points a game right now, nobody would be like, I
can't believe it. It would just be like, yeah, that's
all right, that's a little more than I would have thought.
But that's about right for what we imagine this NETS
team doing.
Speaker 1: The Charlotte Hornets. This one's spicy.
Speaker 2: This one's spicy. This one though, I mean, I'm just
glad we're talking about it this way. LaMelo ball is
totally gonna make an All NBA team overreaction obviously, But
what I would say is this is kind of where
like you would have expected him to be optimistically, I suppose,
But when you go Rookie of the Year, All Star
in seasons one and two, and then your numbers are
pretty darn good still in year three, but you get
hurt and then year four is lost, Like so now
you're you're in the All NBA running That's like, oh yeah, okay,
that's that's the trajectory that his first two seasons just
like suggested, was coming. So in a weird way, like, yeah,
he's lost two years basically fifty eight games across two
seasons because of ankle injuries that he played in. But
this is like, in a weird way, not shocking that
he's on pace to average twenty five and seven with
sixty percent try shooting with like which nobody does. Basically
like Lebron Harden, Yokich, Dame Luca Jordan Byrd, that's your list.
Speaker 1: That's and that's that's not one of those, okay, LaMelo
is the one that doesn't belong. If you even make
that list once though, that is insane.
Speaker 2: It is and it's like, and the numbers are there
team wise too, because you look at the on again,
take the on off splits with an even bigger grain
of salt because you're slicing the sample in half in
a lot of cases. But the Hornets offense just like,
it's number four in the league right now, and it's
world's better in terms of effective field goal percentage and
turnover rate, like one's up, ones down, and it's easy
to tell which when Lamel is on the floor, and
so it's like he's it's the individual numbers and it's
the driving success at the thing he's supposed to drive
success at, which is like just good efficient offense. So
I mean, you know, all NBA, especially for a guard,
is extremely difficult, is it today? Like he's just he's
he's there, he's playing at that level.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's easier though, because they got rid
of positions for guards now, I'd say it's probably gotten
harder for bigs, right and easy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, not that else stupid. It used to
be harder for guards. I forgot the positionless thing, which
is nuts because it's been like two years of that,
but still for him to crack that group, that's like
that's something to do it coming off to basically lost
seasons and.
Speaker 1: What would you be honest question, what are you more
worried about him not hitting? I would say it's probably
the efficiency, Like seven assists is low for him, right
so they have other ball handlers in there, which helps.
But I don't see him dropping below maybe intermittently, but
he's gonna average over seven assists. He's comfortably over twenty
five points right now. It's the efficiency, and he's taken
so many three's that you could see it pull back.
But I think the biggest difference we've seen in his
game last year's rim pressure isn't technically there, and that
was an abbreviated season because he was dealing with another
ankle injury. But like the downhill attacking has stuck. He's
averaging almost seventeen drives per thirty six minutes, which is
right in line with where he was last year, and
he just seems he doesn't necessarily look a lot stronger.
Maybe people who've watched him more closely, but it feels
like he's playing into through contact better and he shooting
the number of shooting fouls he's drawing is through the
roof and so if you're gonna get easier opportunities at
the foul line, that one, it not only props up
your scoring, it props up your efficiency. And so I
think if you had to predict right now, so the
all NBA thing is what spicy, But if those are
the benchmarks, like if he's averaging twenty five and seven
on sixty plus true shooting, Like if if I had
to predict it right now, I think that's going to hold.
Like I think he's gonna end up with that benchmark
stat line.
Speaker 2: I would say the true shooting is the one I'd
be a little skeptical of. He's he's been in the
like fifty eight to fifty nine range. I think, you know,
a couple times over his career. So it's not like
a huge spike. It's just like he's shooting twelve three
is a game, which is a career high by like
a mile. He's getting to the foul line over six
times a game, which for him, like with his game,
that's maybe the free throw attempts, Maybe the free throw
attempts and the threes, like maybe you lose some accuracy
with that much volume from three, and maybe the free
throw attempts dip and that knocks you down below sixty percent.
But it's like, based on his career numbers, I know
you're adding volume, Like sixty percent isn't way beyond the
realm of like what he could have done in the past. Like,
so it's not a huge leap. I don't think just
to say that he'll hold that twenty five seven and
sixty percent, like that's that's that would be an incredible
but it's not. It's not like beyond him. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I would still say, and I don't know if this
is kind of baked into just the experience, you would
still like to see the turnovers come down. Right now,
he is posting a career high turnover rate. It's almost
on twenty percent of his possession. Liked, yeah, I would
assume that might come down at some point, and even
if it doesn't, this number is definitely coming down. He's
really just been destroying defenses out of the pick and roll.
He's scoring one point one four points per possession out
of the pick and roll. That is in the eighty
second percentile, but like one point one four points as
the scorer out of the pick and roll is just bonkers,
and this is someone who I think is finally I
still worry about his finishing at the rim, Like it
feels like he's getting closer to the basket. And maybe
it's some of that's like the short mid range stuff,
but he feels more of like in every level threat
than ever before when you watch him, And I don't
know if it's because it was a different coaching staff
last year, and I think we're seeing a lot of
the same stuff this year, So I don't know. Is
it have the Charlotte Hornets unlocked him as he unlocked
something within himself. But when I watch him, if you
rewind to a season and a half ago, it feels
like I'm watching a materially different, more lethal player on
the offensive end, and it doesn't feel I know a
lot of people like to think he has a lot
of junk volume. It's almost I'm not comparing the two.
Some of the shots he takes, it's because he makes them.
This is like Steph Curry territory of no most players
shouldn't take those. But when you're looking at Charlotte right now, Okay,
Trey Man going off great, when Brendan Miller's healthy again,
you have him great, Like you're not like, are you
up set because Miles Bridges or Josh Green isn't getting
more certain looks? No, I don't fucking care, So I
just I'm watching him and if the season ended today,
it might just be Raacy, but I'm putting him on
All NBA team.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things I really am appreciating
more about him is like you talk about three level scorers,
like he's one of those guys that almost has a
fourth because he will spot up so far beyond the
line when he's off the ball, and it's like we
I don't know, maybe this is just us or just me,
Like I would always think about, like you know what
I love about Eric Gordon is or like Ryan Anderson
used to do this. It's just like they're like three
steps behind the line and you're just like they will
shoot it, so you have to be out that much farther.
And if you're worried about like no, no, not saying
anyone is still doing this in a serious way, but
like I was, is he gonna is Brandon Miller really
gonna like get an opportunity to do Yeah, yeah he will,
and he might even have a better opportunity than with
most other stars, because like LaMelo off, the ball has
immense value standing still because of where he's willing to
shoot it from. So like that that just makes fits
easier with everyone. Not everyone can run around like Steph
Curry to invoke the name you just mentioned, Like there's
so much offensive juice if you just have someone that
will shoot it from thirty feet like with you know,
like like it's a normal shot, not like a oh
it's a desperation thing, which LaMelo really will do. He
spots up so far behind the arc.
Speaker 1: I think if I had to pick out what might be,
and I don't even know if it's the most unsustainable
because it's already started dropping. Is just the decision making
when it comes to his shots inside the arch, he
is shooting a pretty low percentage again at the rim
after being fairly high, and he's propped up his two
point percentage. If he's hitting fifty percent of his twos,
you're okay with that, Like right now it's propped up.
I think he's ten of eighteen from float range. Yeah,
those if those aren't going to continue to fall at
a ridiculous clip, are you gonna get because the Hornets have.
They're not a finished team, but I think they have
the pathways. You don't look at them. Yeah, the defenses
are overreacting and they're getting after him, but I haven't
watched him and thought, oh, he can't navigate this, And
so I think I'm still that he can be a
better finisher at the rim. But he is wildly inconsistent
when it kind of comes to his takeoff points and
angles around the basket, and that's still something that he
would need to work on. And again, I'm still saying this.
There's been some pullback from where he was at, like
in the first couple games of the season, and I
still think this is someone who's all NBA caliber. I
don't know if you have any additional thoughts on that.
My follow up question would also be how much is
he held back by Charlotte's inevitable record to wherever they are,
because there, whether you think they're going to go for
it or tear it down or eventually lean into development, whatever,
they're probably going to be a playing team at best.
And when you don't kind of have the cachet of
a Lebron or a step can you still make an
All NBA team? Coming off one of those squads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is a hindrance, But I would
also say, like there's a path towards like sort of
kind of recognition you would need for an All NBA
nod if say Charlotte does stick as a top five offense,
which like, actually it could because it's worth now I
think I already mentioned that, but like they're turning the
part of this is LaMelo. They're turning it over seventeen percent,
almost eighteen percent of the time, which is a bottom
three figure in the league. So like cut that to
a league average turnover rate, and then how good is
this offense? So like, if if he's viewed as the
driver of a top five offense.
Speaker 1: Do you know why he's the driver? Because their offense
drops by sixteen point five point hundred posessions when he's
off the floor, So we absolutely is driving.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get a little bit of the Jokic kate.
You know, we love the on off stuff for for like,
awards discussions actually left.
Speaker 1: Them ten games into the season, right, Yeah, it's even better.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, like it'll be harder than it will
be if you're on a top four seed in either conference. Obviously,
but but if he's you know it, like, let's say
this is a weird hypothetical, but let's say Tyre's Haliburton
last year had stayed healthy and the Pacers were first
or second in offense, but they won forty two games.
I think he's you know, that would still be like
an All NBA season because it's just like, oh, this
guy is running one of the best attacks in the league,
and he's clearly the reason it works. Like you could
apply some of that same logic to LaMelo.
Speaker 1: I think I think the only foil to this would
be the claim if you asked me right now to
build my all NBA teams right now, I'm kind of
in the mode of I'm gonna call it's I'm gonna
call fifteen players top ten players right now. Maybe it
is weird at that time of the year, but I
think I would say it's been way more of an
encouraging start for LaMelo than not, especially if you're a maner,
you or the organization absolutely, are you ready to go
to our next team, which is still yours?
Speaker 2: I love this On this early East run, Zach Lavine
Dan has is more tradable than ever following his injured
spreen day seed joint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Do you know how bad that is? How long we're
talking it was.
Speaker 1: I think two weeks it looked like it was gonna
be ten to fourteen days is what I saw. Maybe
I'm misremembering that. I think that probably makes it a
little bit. Oh he's injured again, but he was just
playing so well. I think I would agree. If you're
a team, especially if you're kind of looking at just
like early season panic, if you're the Pelicans, you got
to at least be thinking a little bit about, Wow,
man Zach Will being looked pretty fucking good here right now.
So I think I would agree, and I would just
say that, Okay, the passing and table setting is down.
That's almost a good thing because I don't think you
want him shouldering that responsibility. And so having Josh Gideon,
addition all these other guards has probably helped him in
that regard as well. And I think what we've seen
from him is that, and he's doing it as kind
of the like the one point five, because he's he
is the number one option, but he's not always going
to be driving the offense the way he's playing one.
It's encouraging because he has the same level to me,
at least of just like pre of injuries last year,
like the same level of pop and thrust if he
wants to get up or attack on the ball. But
also just the jumpers are falling on ball off ball,
they're going in and you look at that and you say, well,
what if we made him a decided number two option,
or in some cases the decided number three option.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yeah, no, I think I kind of
thought this was gonna happen because, like I mean just
talking about you know, where his trade value was last year,
six months ago, whatever. It was just like it was
a joke, right, We like we were coming up with
synonyms for like barren and desolate because that was how
the trade market was described for him. This is just
like the ac injury aside, Like this is just Zach
Levine being zach Lavine again and everybody looking at and
be like, yeah, that's not perfect, but man, that guy's
like he's on fifty forty eighty right now, and he's
done that before, by the way, over a full season.
So like he just everybody the downsides are understood, the health,
the defense, the like tunnel vision, like last resort passing
that gets you assists but isn't like a driver of
like oh, this offense is humming because zach Levine is
on the ball, But like elite three point shooter off
the catcher, off movement, good finisher just is gonna get
you twenty three, twenty five a game efficiently, Like that's
that's a commodity, Like that's something you should give up
as to get even if there's one hundred and thirty
eight or whatever a million left over the next three years,
Like that's that's that's like a fair value. I would
say if you're if you need zach Lavine to be
your third best scorer, like that's because who will crush
it at that?
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a question? Yes, So I do
think it's gotten a little harder to maybe spot trade
destinations where Orlando following the band Carro injury. I don't
know if it makes them more or less likely to
make a trade, And we'll get into that in a
little bit, but also the salary match, and they could
still get there, but it's a little bit weirder because
looking at their future books, they're probably gonna be less
inclined to want someone with his size on it after
paying Fronds and Sugs what they did, and those deals
were well, the Sugs deal was fine. It would you
rather have? And also the Lakers, by the way, what
I still think? So I have two questions, would you
just if it's not costing you a shit ton of
draft equity or any at all, would you just take
on Zach Lavine knowing that right now your tenth in
offense and lean all the way into like, if d
Lo's going out, we're just gonna upgrade kind of the
de Lo spot there and we're gonna be the fifth
best offense or something. The defense might drop a spot
or two. Does it Does the Lakers start to the
season make them less in need of I don't know
that he was ever in need, but like, does Zach
Lavine become less of an appealing trade target for them
right now.
Speaker 2: Because they're playing fine on offense or because they're playing their.
Speaker 1: Tenth as we record this? My rationale is no, because
I do think come playoff time, they need to upgrade
over the player that Delo is right now, but also
the player that Delo has been in the postseason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I still just well, the thing is like,
it can't just be Delo, right, so unless it's gonna
also be you can I think for the Lakers for
it to make sense, if you just go Zach Lavine
takes Delos spot, then like I'm on board. I'm good
with that. But if it's if you have to include someone,
I don't think Austin Reeves would be on the table
anymore just because he's like, arguably.
Speaker 1: Ruey can't even be on the table right.
Speaker 2: Ruey's been good, So like, I think from that perspective,
it makes a trade less likely or less potentially beneficial,
just because unless the Bulls are willing to just take
back your Vanderbilts and Vincent's and whatever. And Reddick still does,
by the way, seem to like gave Vincent a lot
even though he hasn't been very good, I think it's
probably less likely. But for Orlando, I mean, we should
just save it for there. But like, I don't know,
there are a lot of teams that I think Levine
would make a lot of sense for this.
Speaker 1: This was my actual question. I didn't anticipate talking about
the Lakers, and I'm sorry to keep a hung up on
the Bulls. Would you rather right now have Zach Levine
or Jamal Murray.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I hate that. That's a good question. And
I'm if I'm the Nuggets.
Speaker 1: Or just like a chance honestly, Like you could do
Zeke Naugy, Jamal Murray smaller salary X if you want to,
you know, take back less than you're sending out. Would
you do it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Picks me if you're in the Bulls, Why would you
do that? Because you've Josh Giddy. But maybe there's a
third team, but in a vacuum.
Speaker 2: Just from Denver, just from Denver's perspective, I don't Well,
I don't First of all, I don't think Denver would
do it because I just think they'll Jamal is gonna
figure it out. He's proven it in the playoffs before
you know, on and on. It's not a ridiculous I
don't think I do it if I'm Denver. But I
don't know if that's the right decision. Does that make sense?
Like I think there's a case to be made that
Levine would just be unless Murray finds it again, Levine
might just be like the safer bet, which is crazy
to say.
Speaker 1: I'm probably with you. I wouldn't do it. I think
there's a case, but playoffs, we just don't have the
Zack Lavine resume in the playoffs to say we've seen
Jamal Murray do it, and then Zaq Lavine isn't more
likely to make a lineup without NIKOLEA. Jokic better than
Jamal Murray.
Speaker 2: I don't think no, But counterpoint, we also have not
seen zach Lavine play with Jokic, Like, who knows what
extra level.
Speaker 1: Of the Bulls have him cutting already? Imagine what Joki
is going to have him doing.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Grant this next team, it's still your team.
Speaker 2: I love this one, hey, Dan. The Cleveland Cavaliers familiar
meet the actual second best team in the East, which,
by the way, was kind of our thought before the season,
right like why it was more of like a why
isn't it them and the five and oh start? Uh
is kind of the validation of like, oh no, it
actually it just is. The defense is amazing. Evan Mobley
is you know, hasn't had like this crazy statistical eruption,
but is playing very differently in all of the best ways. Uh,
doing more on the ball, aggressive, like finishing with like
much more force, just more of an attack mode. You
know mentality. He I like it's funny, like, when's it
ever gonna be enough in terms of like the Evan
Mobley growth for us that have just been begging for
the leap, I think it's just the incremental improvement just
keeps happening and this is where we are now. So
like Darius Garland looks way better. I like, which, by
the way, another easy one, like the guy broke his
jaw and lost a ton of weight because he couldn't
eat for like of course he wasn't himself.
Speaker 1: The roster was just banged up too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you got Dan way back, baby, like everything
everything works? Uh yeah, no, I think did.
Speaker 1: You know I should dd Wade six ' ten? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Man, he's he's huge.
Speaker 1: I don't even six eight.
Speaker 2: No, he's huge. Like it's almost like, uh, you think
of him as a four, but he really can't guard threes,
so like you're so therefore you're a three. Yeah. The
Cavs are really good. I think all the Kenny Atkinson
benefits seem to be manifesting, and their best guys are
healthy and Evan Mobley's better, so like, yeah, there might
be teams with higher playoff ceilings, but just at the moment,
like these guys are these guys are wired tight.
Speaker 1: They I think if you had to say, if I
told you there are only four championship contenders in the
NBA right now, you would go Boston, you would go, Okay, See,
it might be arguable after that, like if you want
to really say the Warriors right now, Grant you can
make it. He would probably be given Eve.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to say that. Yeah, Dallas would
be up there and then Cleveland. Yeah, I mean, well
that that is another question though, like do you now
we're just trying to overreact, so let's not get too
rational here, but like do you do you still hold
reservations about like, Okay, is this gonna work in the playoffs?
Like is there any of that because we always do
that with a team like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm curious to see if defense is are
gonna change, Like they have Jared Allen in the corner
a lot right now, and I'm just wondering, like their
defense is gonna change a lot more and load up
even more aggressively in the playoffs. But we've also seen
that they can close differently if they have to, And
the other thing I will be watching is just Evan Mobley.
So to your point about him playing differently, I think
the biggest difference we've seen it's not like, oh, they're
going to slow it down and throw it to him
down low. It's no, he's averaging eleven point one drives
per thirty six minutes. Grant he was at like four
point seven.
Speaker 2: Like he's just taking it to the basket now, and
I want.
Speaker 1: To see more playmaking out of those drives from him now,
But like, it's not all gonna happen at once. So
I'm I think you still have to be reserved just
because it's it's new, like this is not that this well,
I mean, they were good their first year, but we've
seen them. They were good their first year, fell a
part in the playoff last year, there was all this
stuff going on. They still weren't great in the playoffs.
But I don't I can't remember where we had them
in our Eastern Conference standings. I could probably look it
up really quick to start the year, but they should
have absolutely positively been talked about more as oh, this
team could potentially be the two seed in the East.
And I think as a podcast we did a good
job giving them that respect, But there were way too
many people that were just like, okay, Philly, Milwaukee, New
York and Boston and then everybody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the upside was just there and it
was easy upside. They'll be healthy, they have a better coach,
some of their young guys might get better. Like, that's
just okay, bang bang ba.
Speaker 1: What the team very quickly before we move on, and
now it's going to be my turn. That's unfortunate. What's
the team that is okay? Well, this team might just
catch them. You don't get to say, Philly, I'm not
yelling at you, but I'm yelling at everybody. Philly's not
an option anymore.
Speaker 2: No, I guess you'd say the Knicks probably, like Milwaukee,
looks too bad to be a serious consideration. It's just
got to be the Knicks. I don't know who i'd
even think of.
Speaker 1: Besides, even with the Bank Harrow injury in Orlando, if
you wanted to go spicy, but that doesn't look like
the Pacers, that's for sure. We move on to the
Dallas Mavericks, which a little bit of a repeat. Here
meet the actual second best team in the West. I
don't know if this is an overreaction because they were
certainly in that conversation, but a lot of people were
talking about Minnesota and Denver, and Minnesota certainly had their
moments this season. I'm looking at the MAVs and you
could have made a case probably until like the last game,
that Klay Thompson had been their best player. And then
we see like Kyrie Irving kind of start to go off.
They just lost her rockets before we recorded this, and
they came out flat. They almost came back to win it,
though they put up a fight there. I look at
this team and I'm sort of like anyone who was
concerned that their defense would fall off a cliff. Their
tenth like, that's going to be fine right here, and
their offense is below league average right now. Do you
honestly think Lugudancis is gonna make more shots moving forward?
There's a bunch of guys on this team that are
gonna hit more of their threes. I am so optimist.
The Mavericks are three as we record this, and I
don't know that I could be any higher on them
if they were five, and oh sure, but I look
at them and I say, this team just they are
so deep. They're just so and they're great. They're so big,
Like whenever they have like the Naji Marshall PJ washingteam
plus a big and Luca on the court and it's oh,
Luka Dancic is the second shortest player on the court, right,
what the hell is going up? They are so big.
This team's really good.
Speaker 2: They they kind of have everything. And I watched almost
all of that Houston loss as we're recording this last night,
and like it was just it was Dallas. You want
to credit the like Aman Thompson was a did about
as good a job on Luca for like a long
stretch as anyone you could imagine would do, which is like, yeah,
that's what it does. Houston has a lot of maybe
more guys than anybody that can hold up against Luca,
between like Brooks, Thompson and Tarry Easton, Like they got
all these guys that are like the right size and
level of physicality, and then Dallas still almost came back
and won that game. The Maps kind of have everything,
like they you know, between Lively and Gafford, there's always
gonna be someone one that can defend. Shangoon really took
it to both of those guys. I think if there's
a weakness there, it's like a really physical post up
center can neutralize those type those guys specifically because they're
they're pick and roll cat and mouse defenders, shop blockers,
help defenders. If you just back them down and Shangun
is like uniquely good at this, maybe that's where you
can make Dallas seem vulnerable. I don't know who else
can do that, but yeah, they have so much size,
they have the potential to have so much shooting. They
have multiple shot creators. You bring guys like Quentin Grimes
off the bench, who's just like, you know, I have
no I have no concerns about him in a playoff rotation.
I really don't like, so I get I don't know
what the weakness would be. I suppose it's just like
I mean, between Thompson and Nausei Marshall, there's like you're
not sure that that one of those guys is going
to be like one hundred percent playoff caliber all the time.
But like Dallas is just built to make a deep run.
They just they they're so deep, they're so big, they
have the best player in most series that they like.
It's I don't know what the questions even are.
Speaker 1: Really, I think it's and I don't know that this
should be a problem when you are as big as
you are in theory. They've been really bad on the
defensive glass. So again we're talking five games hample side
weird toward this. It's weird. I mean, you could look
at some of their put like the rockets can be
pretty big for sure, so like that would be and
I think people could point to, Okay, well, is there
defense going to hold up when you're going to play
Luka Danchs, Kyrie Ing and Klay Thompson together. I think they've
staggered that effectively enough and I'm like the rim protection
of the back line is good enough. Opponents are still
shooting under sixty percent from there. I come away from
what I've seen with I get what you were saying
about Shanggun, but I almost view it as, all right,
how many of these guys are actually gonna rebound and
start making shots for Dallas And it's just kind of like,
right now, No, you're never gonna have a ton of
wide open threes because the most of the people taking
your threes are not taking them wide open. When you
look at Luca and then Kyrie to a lesser extent obviously,
and the Mass We're shooting forty percent wide open threes.
That's like probably a little bit above league average. It's
been on the more like the Okay, there's guy coming
on a close out, how are we faring here? They've
not shot too well in those situations. They're at thirty
two point six so on semi open threes. I find
myself when I look at PJ. Washington struggling. I find
myself when you look at Okay. We know Luca is
gonna shoot better, so that's not someone you worry about.
But looking at Naji Marshall, is he you know he
kind of had his first good three point shooting last year.
Can Quentin Grimes tick up from thirty three point three percent?
Those are things I'm a little bit more worried about.
But this is we already spent more time in the
Mass I think we needed to. But I think if
there's a team that would challenge this the most, too,
is it that's the second best team in the West
right now?
Speaker 2: I would lean Minnesota. I guess I'm trying to are
we in Phoenix? Maybe Phoenix? I like Minnesota a little
better than Phoenix. Yeah, that's probably it. Like we were
probably higher on the Lakers than we would have been
a few weeks ago, but I don't know that I
put them at that level yet. And that's yeah, that's
really it.
Speaker 1: We are sticking with me very sadly. Two teams in
a row is a lot. Grant, you don't know this
pain h grant. The Nuggets will be a playing team
if Nicole Jokic does not win the twenty twenty five
scoring title, and by that his career high in points
I think is twenty seven point one and as of
right now, he is averaging thirty one and a half,
which is tied with Tyrese Maxi for the most in
the NBA. Now, I'm gonna lay out my argument to
you Thusly, they have looked at their best when he's
just been fucking aggressive as a scorer. And I think
what's come to bear now is they are more dependent
on him than ever. They are tying more of Jamal
Murray minutes to him than ever. Last year, Jamal Murray
logged seventy seven percent of his minutes next to Jokic.
Right now, that's up there, or possessions, I went by
right now that number is up to like eighty eight percent,
and they are getting absolutely destroyed. In the minutes that
Murray plays without yok The offense grant is in the
zero fixth percentile during that Stritch You can't actually get
any worse than that.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if you knew, I No, it doesn't
seem that way.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of a continuation. We're in the
six percentile when Murray played with at him last year. Now,
what I think I'm most curious about is one, whether
you agree, but how much of this is is there
a better team? And here in the sense that could,
Michael Malone seems to have leaned more into like if
you start to dig into the lineup data, we haven't
seen like a bunch of three star even three starter units,
let alone. We haven't seen the four starters play without
Jokic yet the other four and like you start digging
into the three man combinations without Jokis, those basically don't exist.
A possession here, possession there. Should Michael Malone not be like, well,
I'm just gonna play all my best players at once,
and we're just when Jamal Murray's alone, there's gonna be
a bunch of bench players around him, or is this
really just the flawed makeup of a team manifesting into Okay,
we are now more dependent on the best player in
the world than we've ever been, which is you're always
going to be inextricably reliant on them. But the fact
that we're more reliant on him is as a score,
which is not something that he can do it, but
he's not hardwired to do it. Yeah, where do you
sort of land on this entire discussion.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's it's it's more than they're just
reliant on Jokic to a degree that they haven't been before.
It's that like they were already the team that was
most singularly reliant on one guy right all of the
like on off splits. He just is at the top
of the league every year, and then it's even more
extreme this year. Like you, I think you I don't
know if you said it, but like the offensive ratings split,
it's like forty two points better with Jokic on the
floor than off. So like it's I mean that number
is too big to sustain, like it will it can't
stay in the high thirties or forties. You know, even
Jokic is like in the twenties typically in terms of
you're cleaning the glass on off splits, Like, so can
Malone do something to is there some staggering pattern to
mid gate this? Like I just I guess I'd answer
the question with the question and say, like, Okay, so
who if not Murray is capable of creating enough shots
to like prop up offense without Yokic on the floor,
And they're just that guy's not on the team, right,
It's like it's not Russell Westbrook, it's not Julian Strawther.
It's it's like that's it, right, There's there's nobody else
that you would look to as like can you just
run a pick and roll and you know, create some
kind of looks for us that that guy isn't on
the So it's just a gradual thinning of the rotation
and it's guys like Murray not looking their best and
the team just the team is built to be insanely
reliant on Jokic, and it's just this is just gotten extreme.
So like, yeah, the floor for this team is like
real low. If Yokic misses time or if yokich is
at any point something other than like spectacular, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think what also hurts is when you have
that limited secondary, self sufficient guy, can you at least
prop things up with better spacing and the Nuggets cannot,
especially when Jamal Murray's a wildcard and more importantly, Michael
Porter Junior. As we record this is sub thirty percent
from three this year, and you look at the personnel, like,
forget about what these players are shooting, look at how
often they're shooting. And we make fun of the Pelicans
all the time for this, but the Nuggets are currently
dead last, by the way, for a second straight scene.
Speaker 2: Right, that's the story, right, They're exactly where they were
last year in three point a temperate.
Speaker 1: Well, they're actually taking fewer threes as the percent of
their offense, so they're still thirty so last year grant
thirty two point three percent of their shots coming from three.
This year, that's dropped so far by almost four percentage
points to twenty eight point four. That is probably predictable,
but inexcusable, and it's not here. So I don't know
if you saw the ESPN piece that was published, it
was really good, well done by Ramona Shelburne. I don't
think it did anything to make the vibes any better
around Denver. Calvin Booth is probably gonna get an extension,
and I will say they are so lucky in the
same vein at Golden State, and every team is lucky
to have superstar X. I don't know that there has
been a lower maintenance superstar since Steph Curry, then Nikol Jokich,
and then before Steph Curry. It was what Tim duncan
when you're looking at the consonant like actual superstar MVP types.
If this was anybody else in the league right now
that ranks in the top fifteen of players, grant, which
one are we looking at and saying they're not gonna
request a trade? Probably Steph Curry. And then that is it,
And they are so fucking lucky they have this guy
who doesn't want to meddle. That was part of what
came through in the piece. But I'm almost the sky
isn't falling. They're eleventh in offense, but like their twenty
fifth in effective field goal rate, I still am fairly
optimistic this team will be better than they've shown, but
they just have made It's what I want to throw
out is I don't know if they had Contavious Calbo
Pope right now, if they would be worlds better. I
think the spacing would be easier, It would certainly improve
things that there would be a trickle down. Okay, Christian
Brown is still coming off the bench. How does that
help you. My whole thing is they have repeatedly either
decided not to go after bigger swings. They did poke
around the Paul George market, but I guess we're shocked
to find out that the Clippers didn't want salary with
no Brown or Peyton Watson involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, OK, so you didn't.
Speaker 1: Really poke around for Paul George, that is what you're saying.
My whole thing is you've repeatedly missed. The Reggie Jackson
deal was a farce. The Derek Sarage contract grant, despite
Nuggets fans a plenty of them telling the otherwise, that
was a farce too, relative to his markets, even if
he was working out And guess what grant he's not
working out. He shouldn't twenty two like people came in
thinking he was this floor spacer. He's not even taking them.
Speaker 2: No this year, he was done last year. I think
if you watched Nuggets fans didn't watch Sarage last year
if they thought that he was gonna be a difference picker. Yet,
Like I mean, I would say in addition to like,
if you took the top fifteen guys and then we can
move on. Jokic is like is right there with Curry
among guys who like wouldn't be agitating for something to happen.
I also think if you put literally any other player
on this team, maybe Luca is the exception. Like, I
don't think you could expect the results that Denver gets
with Jokic as the singular driver, you know what I mean?
Like you couldn't if you put Shay or if you
put Jason Tatum, or if you put Anthony Edwards. Like
this team is so much worse, Like Jokic is so
which is the the guy that can hold up a team?
Nobody else can do this?
Speaker 1: Let's really rile up the masses. What if you put
and he has to be fully healthy and play as
many games Joelle embiide on this team.
Speaker 2: I don't think it has It doesn't have the same effect.
They're worse, Yeah, worse.
Speaker 1: That's it. We didn't really rile up. We didn't rile
up us. I don't have any other thoughts on that
other than I do think that they are failing there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, last thing, we didn't mention them as
who might be the second best team in the West,
like they've earned that just because of Jokic. But it's
a tough case to make right now, Like the play
in seems more realistic than the number two seed I would.
Speaker 1: I would get do you think he's gonna stay over
thirty points per game? Which is kind of Let's bring
it back to the actual overre I.
Speaker 2: Mean, how can he not does the pathway to that?
Does it? Yeah? Does it? He have to? I mean
he really doesn't want to, but he will.
Speaker 1: Have to the actual final thing, I'll say, And it's
not something I would predict. And I'm sure he's earned
leeway and I'm sure it helps that. I think Nikole
Jokic would be on board with him. But I think
Michael Malone has a case of just like the front
office in him. If they're still not seeing eye to
eye on this, is he want of the coaches just
to get fired if they really go off the rails?
Speaker 2: Could be let's go back to the east Man, Let's
do the Detroit Pistons next, and I will I will
claim ownership over them. I think a solid overreaction based
on the early season and the jade and Ivy, believe
it or not, actually is the right guy to put
in the backcourt next to Cave Cunningham. And that'll change
if he stops shooting over forty percent from three, which
he is right now on more volume than he's ever had.
But if the three point shot is falling now, like,
Ivy's not a perfect player otherwise, some of the decision
making is not where you need it to be. The
defense comes and goes, he can be real spacey, but
like if he's going to make threes and bring the
athletic drives and the transition play, and if we also
just give him a little bit of grace because it
was a very difficult developmental environment under Monty Williams and
just coming in as a rookie before that, I think
there's a case now where Ivy like can just be
the guy based on the early early going here. And
I do think it's interesting too that the Pistons basically
are giving him enough opportunities to play without cunning him
to sort of expand that part of his game, even
though the most important thing is that he can play
with him. The Pistons have either him or Cunning him
on the floor almost ninety eight percent of the time.
Almost one hundred percent of the time one of those
two is out there, which I would argue further suggests
that Detroit is like, Okay, this is this can be
our guy next to kid. If they're really entrusting him
with basically all the minutes that Caid's not on the floor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to agree with you. We did mention
this after kind of the first game. We had watched
one game of J and IVY and said, Wow, the
process with him looks better both on or off the ball.
Something I am monitoring, and I don't know how much
of this has to do with one I think it's
you put actual floor spacers on this roster. Wow, look
what happens. It opens things up for someone like him,
but he is not, like you haven't seen a dramatic
improvement in his two point efficiency. And I'm wondering if
they lean even more into kind of the Isaiah Stewart
line ups and have him on the court for them,
that could help him. Like he's shot better there's definitely
more room for him to a maneuver mid range. I'm
talking specifically at the rim. We've seen that frequency drop,
and I do when you watch him he could be
a little bit out of control when he gets around there.
But yeah, I'm encouraged. I would agree with you. I
think this is this is the best I've felt about
Jay and Ivy since he entered the IM mean, I
don't even think it's particularly close.
Speaker 2: No, one hundred percent like it was. I mean this
time a year ago, or I mean maybe like this
time like ten months ago. Is probably about when it
got real ugly. It was just like, oh this is
this is never gonna work. And now it's completely flipped
for me.
Speaker 1: God, we're back to me. We're gonna talk about you're
a Golden State Warriors actually, and we won't spend too
much time on this because we did a deeper dive
into the Golden State Warriors. Go check out that a
couple of days ago. YouTube channel, podcasts, wherever you get us.
We're all across across every platform. We'd appreciate it. Jonathan
kaminga grant should not have bet on himself and this
comes on the heels this is a nice, little happy accident.
But there was reporting today from Sam Amick. I believe
that the Warriors are more determined and or willing than
ever to trade Jonathan KAMINGA.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, if thirty million a year was on the
table or something close to that, he should have taken it.
And that's because we've talked about this plenty. The market
out there not great in terms of capspased teams that
you'd actually want to play for that might pay you
more than that in restrictive free agency, and it's pretty
clear that he's not going to have the kind of
role that allows for the statistical production that you would
just look at after the season and say like, oh
my god, the guy averaged twenty five seven and four
and he's twenty three years old, Like, okay, let's maxim
he's just not going to have that kind of role,
even if you just rule out the efficiency stuff, like
the opportunity for him to do better than thirty million
a year. Just I don't think it's there.
Speaker 1: I did, and but I really think people have overthought
this where I was. I've been criticized for maybe being
too low by him, including by you, which I think
is fine, but we're talking about someone who is so
predicated on getting downhill and maybe not always being able
to do so on his own, like he might need
to catch it with a running start, And we're talking about, oh,
there's too much traffic for him. And yet he's still
not a good passer, still not a good rebounder, not
a reliable jump shooter. Why was it even he should
just get Jalen Johnson money. Why should he even just
get Jalen Suggs money? What is he even? I know
he had a strong clothes to the year, but like,
this isn't someone who is particularly dynamic? Is what am
I missing before we move on? Cause we didn't want
to spend a ton of time on them since we
just covered them? Am I missing something that makes him
so tantalizing other than oh, like he kind of has
like some nasty footwork sometimes on the ball.
Speaker 2: It's just the flashes. I think the flashes are so
spectacular and stand out so much, even like just the athleticism,
the physicality when he's right, Like, it's just he has
like legitimately like top flight A plus athletic qualities that
if you see him a few times, you can't get
him out of your head, and I think you just
look at the age and you you also buy in
a little bit to the idea that like, ah, the
Warriors aren't really featuring him. They're holding him back. He's
not being allowed to do X, Y and Z, which
the reason is because he can't do X, Y and
Z consistently. But you kind of combine all that and
then you can talk yourself into he's he could just
be a superstar two way combo forward like which is
everybody wants it and you and you just to get there,
though you have to ignore. You have to just only
see the flashes and not pay attention to like all
of the mistakes and all the other stuff that we
always talk about.
Speaker 1: I'm team Steve Carr on this one. We can move
on the Houston Rockets, which our are They are my
team grant. This team has too many damn good players.
And yes, this is mostly about Aman Thompson and Reed Shepherd.
And in case anyone's wondering if that was just sort
of a fun audio anecdote, that is actually what I
wrote down for the slide on the Houston Rockets that
we have up there. You look at this team and
I understand, I don't even know who I'm blaming. This
is like why I'm so I'm not even furious, but
A'man Thompson is averaging fewer minutes per game than he
was last year. There's always this risk of if you're
coming off the bench, your minutes are always going to
be repressed. But to be averaging fewer per game in
last year, just at how good I think Aman Thompson
is and it feels like, by the way I know,
the efficiency doesn't always back this up. The jumper looks better,
like it's smoother, especially launching from the corners. For him,
it feels like he could just do so much more,
but the Rockets have way too many good players and
so it's almost holding him back. And by the way,
Reach Shepherd is averaging a whopping eight point six minutes
per game through three games. And I don't know that
Reed Shepherd has done anything that said, oh, well, he
needs to be playing these minutes. But if we're talking
just a few games here, to have the number three
overall pick and that's what he is playing in year
one should typically be a red flag. And for this,
it's my opinion of Reed Shepherd hasn't changed. It's just that,
my god, the rockets are so loaded. At what point
And I'm not saying that because I don't know how
much worse they'd actually be, But at what point do
you have to start looking at it and say, okay, well,
maybe Fred van Fleet and Dylan Brooks and even Jalen
Green who's been playing really well, like those guys can't
play thirty plus minutes a game because we need to
start allocating these minutes to these guys who are I think, well,
Jalen Green that would be debatable, but certainly more so
than Fred van Fleet and Dylan Brooks. These other names
are way more important to the future. I mean, even
Cam Whitmore, he is not shot well from three grant
this year and over twelve right, and he did make
a shot against the Mavericks, though didn't he I think he.
Speaker 2: Had much was made of it because it was his
first of the season.
Speaker 1: Whopping seven point one percent now on the season. So,
but it's also like he's playing twelve point four minutes
per game. What type of flow are you supposed to
get into? And so if you're asking me, where are
the minutes supposed to come from? That's not really my job.
But I kind of look at it and say, I
don't like, I get the process of if you're trying
to win the most games right now. But even if
you are trying to win the most games right now,
I've view Ama and Thompson as someone who just needs
to play more, is basically what I'm getting at. This
is more about him than it is Reed Shepherd. Even
though taking someone number three and then I know you're
a better team, but this is not like you were
a playoff team last year and added the number three
overall pick. So it's it's different from well, like, look
how loaded and good they are. Okay, awesome, you're not
one of the best teams, just like in the Western Conference. Inarguably,
I know that you're three and two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they they So I had this thought watching them
against Dallas, and Thompson was playing great and so and
Green had moments where it was like, oh my, that
guy is the fastest man on earth, like he just
you know. So I start thinking about the Rockets addressing
this in terms in through the prism of like, okay,
what combinations do we like? And I really do think
Green and Thompson as a combo works like that, you
get so much of one thing, which is like the defense,
the decision making, the transition stuff, the rebounding, the disruption
from Thompson, and then Green is just like a lights
out scorer. Like I really, at this point, I just
don't have any question that Jalen Green is gonna be
and is right now just an awesome offensive player. Like
maybe that means he's Zach Levine, but maybe he's better
than that, you know, Like I really, I'm getting increasingly
sold on Green and sold on him and Thompson playing together.
I have no idea what those lineup minutes look like
so far this season. I don't care because the samples
are tiny, and that's a two man combo, so noises everywhere.
But then you start and like Shangoun non negotiable, Jabari
Smith Junior, I think is just kind of not in
anybody's way, so he's gonna play a lot. So then
it's just like Whitmore and Shepherd are just gonna get
squeezed because Tarry Eastan's gonna play like that. He's just
gonna get his fifteen to twenty minutes a night, not points,
to be clear. So those two guys. I just don't
know what the pathway is to playing is for them
unless you are gonna move Brooks, gonna move Van Vliet,
which I think would so fundamentally change what's one of
the best things about this team, which is just like
the competitive edge and like the physicality and that kind
of thing. Like, I don't know if you want to
do that. So I don't have a solution, but your
your overreaction is correct. They're just and it's there just
are too many guys that need to play, and you
just don't know enough about the combos that work beyond
Thompson and Green.
Speaker 1: To my eye, the more I think about it a
little bit. But by the way, to your point, there
are a plus eleven point eight when I'm in and
Jalen Green played.
Speaker 2: Again, I do value that stat now because it's verifies
what I said.
Speaker 1: I do partly wonder if it's I think Dylan Brooks
in theory is the most replaceable and we're talking about
guys whose minutes can come away if you just insert
a Men Thompson in there for Fred van Vliet and
just kind of lean into defense. If you think Jayalen
Green's for reals, It's a tough situation to be in,
So I'm not actually criticizing them, but I will say
I usink Ahma and Thompson specifically, and I would argue
read Shepherd too, just need bigger roles and they're gonna
have to figure that out as the season goes on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Shepherd might be hurt by the fact
that there's less urgency to find out about him because
of where his contract is, you know, like you the
clock's ticking on some of these other guys, you know.
Tom Thompson certainly even went more like you just reach.
Shepherd's just too far down the line in terms of
when we have to decide to pay him to be
like a high priority.
Speaker 1: It's objectively wild that the number three overall picked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, who we loved and was gonna be super
NBA ready and maybe is, but we just don't. We
haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 1: These are your Indiana Pacers, Grant.
Speaker 2: So it's so funny, Like I was a couple of
nights ago when they were really in the process of
epically blowing the lead against Boston. That game went to
overtime and Siakam won it with that top of the
key three against against the Celtics. I really sincerely did
have the thought, now you put this on the sheet
just for transparency. I had the thought of like, oh,
I'm gonna just nominate the Pacers are the twenty one Hawks,
because I was just watching the Pacers coming off this
phenomenal offensive season conference finals, tyres Halburtn's great, all the
parallels to Atlanta and Trey Young were there, and as
they're blowing this lead, I'm like, oh, I'm so in
on this theory, Like they just really don't have it.
That was a flash in the pan. And then they win,
so less convinced than I would have been had they
officially blown that game against the Celtics. But the parallels
are frightening. I would say, an offensively driven team led
by a singular offensive star who kills you defensively, reaching
a conference finals in a weak field, Oh, the arrow's
trending up. You've got all these all these positive signs.
And then it's kind of like, oh, I don't know
about this team, Like the defense is still an issue.
They're not getting anything out of Jaris Walker. Maybe it's
a positive. Bennec Mathern has had some real moments this year,
But yeah, like, I don't know if you're re ranking
the East, we're not moving the Pacers higher than we
had in preseason right at this point.
Speaker 1: No, I don't how much of it comes down to, Okay,
Tyre's Haliburton will eventually you know, have games where he's
making shots. He's not even shooting Will Loozy at sixty
he hasn't been to the line a bunch. He's at
a sub sixty seven percent from the foul line, and
so I don't I mean, defense is still like they
guard him like a five alarm fire because it's Tyre's
Albert and that helps. But I'm even looking at the
Benedick Mathren breakout or progression that they've got, and look,
Andrew Nemhard hasn't shot too well to start the year,
so some of this stuff should normalize. But I'm kind
of looking at it and saying, this is great that
Benanic Mathrin is doing it, but it doesn't necessarily solve
any of their biggest issues what he's doing, and that
almost complicates what they're doing even more.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: I don't have this is one of the teams that
I have the least feel for, But I do think
the overarching thought of we always knew that they weren't,
not that they weren't Eastern Conference titles material they made
it that counts for something. You can only play who's
in front of you. But we know progress isn't linear,
and even by those standard its this team feels like
it was further away then last season might have showed.
Speaker 2: Do you think, cause I feel like I've fallen victim
to this, Like when we saw the very best version
of Tyre's Haliburton for a few months last year, I
just I just fell into, oh, this is the base,
like this is what he is. And the fact is, like,
if you're just being objective about it, that stretch was
the out in his career, Like he's been great, Like
he's been super efficient, even you know that, I think
he was a twenty ten and forty percent guy that
just like never happens. He's done that before independent of
last year's first half. But like, do you think maybe
we just were too quick to assume that he would
just Haliburton would just be that first half of twenty
three twenty four guy like all going forward, like that
was the baseline and not something lower than that, Or
I mean he's been objectively like disappointing for him so far,
Like do you have some of that going on too?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wondered if I even wrote when I was
doing the round table for basket All, she wrote that
it's so good to be in the Pacers position of
we know that we have both the guy and the
number two guy, and now I'm just like, you just
have two number two guys, and I'm trying to just
all right, We're only a few games in the season,
it's still really early, but that is that's a different
conversation that I don't think they need to have yet.
I just don't like, even if Tyrese Halibert is playing better,
I guess I haven't seen enough from this team defensively,
is where are still most of my concerns are going
to lie to say, where's that step forward? Because you
can be you could be the second best offense in
the NBA, which we've seen them do, but the fact
that they're I guess if you're nineteenth in defense like
they are now, you would almost view that as a
plus and so it will organically come. But I don't know,
Like the turnovers has been all over the place with them.
They continue to struggle on the defensive glass like we
all actually did not realize they're dead last defensive rebounding
rate too. I thought they were only bottom five. I
don't know looking at this roster, I don't know where
to solve for their biggest issue, Like they'reiggest issue. Let's
be Frank has been Tyreus Haliburton's play to start the year,
and that will normalize. I think it'll If he's not
a top whatever MVP candidate, he's still going to be
a superstar. So I don't have real concerns about that.
But when you look at their other concerns, or just
look at their defensive concerns right now, where is the
in house salve coming from? And I don't see. I
don't know how. Maybe fans people who cover the Pacers
probably do a better job of it than we are,
but they have to be going through the same sort
of existential dilemma here of what is the peak of
this team as currently constructed. We're onto my Los Angeles Clippers.
We don't need to spend a ton of time on them,
other than to say that Avita Zubox is going to
win motion improved player. He had me feel a little
bit not okay about this take when he went for
six points the other night, But then he goes and
he drops what did he drop against the Clippers? Like
twenty two in the loss? So I feel a little
bit better there, but you lost to the Blazers. As
the Clippers, they've been super frisky this year, especially on defense.
I don't know if this is just a I don't
know how much of this I guess to say is, oh,
Zubots is playing more. But when you're basically you know,
as him, you're playing career high in minutes, and you've
parlayed that into around twenty points, a league leading thirteen boards,
and your three assists, which those have come off. I
think he was at like four and a half at
one point. He's done some really good center floor playmaking
for them. He is still a deterrent at the rim.
It's not even just he's a good rin protector, like
teams just get there noticeably less when he's on the court.
I don't know if that's when you've watched Zubots, I've
gotten a sense that I really do think he's they've
used him more like he's making more complicated decisions on
offense specifically, and I think he's very clearly their most
valuable defender right now. But when you look at most
improved player, there's the push and pull of is this
some guy who's already good and is just getting more
of an opportunity or is it someone who's already good
and they improved by just absurd amounts. Do you think
he falls more into the former or the latter category?
Speaker 2: I would say, I think like the first thing you
would push back against if you were trying to fight
the case against him, is that like, well, yeah, he
is just playing more, but all is per hundred per
one hundred, possession numbers are up, so it's like other
than rebounding, because he's always been just a phenomenal, permanent rebounder,
but even that, like it's not a career high, but
he's at eighteen point two boards per hundred. He hasn't
been over eighteen since twenty nineteen twenty, so like it's
it scoring up. Assists of free throw attempts per one hundred,
they're all up, So it's like you might say, oh,
that's not a new skill. I would argue, like in
a lot of cases, if you can play more and
in it even just hold your normal like permanent stats,
like that's a big value add I don't know if
that means you've improved, but then when you're also upping
your permanent production and playing more, that's that's improvement because
just like the theory would be, well, if you could
have done that before, you would have just played more before.
Like I get it that the Clippers are just kind
of searching, but like I do think we undervalue the
ability of a player to occupy a larger role and
not give back any efficiency like we always do the
volume efficiency trade off. Zubats is like he's just doing
more and playing more, So that would be the crux
of the most improved case. And I think it's also
valuable that like he's just way more important to this
Clippers team than any Clippers team he's ever played for,
especially defensively. So I don't know, maybe you also credited
him for like he's in a position now where like
their success and failure depends on him being really good,
and he's held up under that heavier burden, so you
kind of got to contort a little bit to get there.
But you definitely can make the case that he's in
that conversation.
Speaker 1: I think it's also the thing that I think helps
him on offense too, is that because of the way
that defenses can now guard them, he's not getting as
many easier looks at the rim, and so we've seen
him seen him take more shots out of the restricted area,
and yes, his efficiency has come down because of that.
But when you're still going to be as high as
he is on twos, which is he still what is
he on like fifty nine percent on twos it is,
or he's still pretty high enough on twos that it's
sixty point six sixty point six, So there you go.
That's that's a form of improvement. To wrap up here,
would you be more inclined to go with so early
in the season, But are you more inclined to go
with a candidate like him where he's kind of working
from a I don't even want to say a high baseline,
but a known baseline, or someone like Trey Mann, who
it's okay, he's in Charlotte, he's lighted up. This is
first real, real full season opportunity. But he's he's producing
certainly enough to be in that I've always grabbed. This
is not even it's more of a conceptual question than
I think the the two players themselves. I think I've
been always more pulled to I like to mention the
guys like Trey Man, but I've been always more pulled
to the guys that have these larger track records.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that makes it more. It makes that
makes it easier to point at a guy and say like, oh, no,
he's look at where he's been for a long time,
and like here's where he is now. That's different, that's better,
that's improvement. Man like man kind of hint. Man feels
to me, I get, I don't know, more like a
guy that's just playing more. That's not totally fair. But
like we saw this a little bit down the stretch
with Charlotte last year when or nobody saw it because
nobody's paying attention. But Man had a little bit of
this going on late last year too.
Speaker 1: Onto the Los Angeles Lakers, the other team we recently
did a deeper dive into, So feel free to go
check that out YouTube podcast channel if you haven't listened
to us before. JJ Reddick Grant is totally going to
win Coach of the Year, and I think the one
pushback to this aside from let's play out the rest
of the season is Kenny Atkinson has to be the
odds on favorite. Yeah right now, but because it's the Lakers,
and there's probably a chance that voters will have watched
more Lakers games then, And I think you also, we
were all just there's no way the Lakers are panting out.
They need this big trade. I think more people left
the door open for the Calves to be really good
with a new head coach than with the Lakers to
be really good with a new head coach. But I
think when you just look at the material changes to
the way they're playing, the off ball movement, the way
that Austin Reeves has played, they have I don't even
know if it's unleashed Anthony Davis so much as just
IMpower him. Like the driving from him and the shooting
files it's resulted has been great, and of course the
offensive rebounding crashing. They still aren't built to take enough threes.
I mean, he would if they were. Imagine they were
like top half in the league in three point ten three.
On top of all this, this to me, I'm I'm
I'm denigrating my own overreaction, But he is going to
I think be in the conversation because the Lakers look
like a team that as constructed, would you and I
didn't really the door open for too much seemed more
menacing than we had thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a lot of I know that a
lot of my thinking about the Lakers was preseason was
predicated on like, well, here's here are the obvious downsides
that are probably gonna happen, like Lebron and Ad won't
be as healthy, and JJ Redick is just being set
up to fail because of the pressure, because of the
fact that they didn't change this roster because of the
Lebron and Brownie like it just but that was like
a failure to consider like maybe JJ Redick is actually
gonna be like really organized and thoughtful and like do
all the obvious stuff and just make this whole operation
look like it's just better considered like possession to possession
and then like Macro than it was before. That's a
little unfair to Darvin Ham and his staff because like,
I'm sure they spent plenty of time, well plenty of calories.
Speaker 1: Sorting Milwaukee and Darvin Ham is there. Obviously that implies
both causation and correlation doesn't marse, of course.
Speaker 2: I just it just seems in the early going like
Reddick is like he got all the big stuff right,
which is the Davis needs to touch the ball more,
Austin Reeves needs to be like freed up to do
more on ball stuff, and we we don't need Lebron
to be super high usage. He's kind of like got
big stuff handled and then like the small stuff like
I don't know, single possession subs or like always having
a good ato, like all all that, all that stuff
he seems to have checked down checked the box for too.
So like it's early, but it does just feel like
he has and it's again it's a whole staff, and
it's like there's a team of guys actually playing. So
you can't credit everything the coach, but like everything feels
kind of organized and optimized, like it does feel like
they're doing all this the best that they can with
what they got, which is really all you can ask
for from a coach.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the Memphis Grizzlies and my overreaction for them,
mister Grant Hughes is Taylor Jenkins joined a basketball coach's
cult that mandate you have luscious but not too bushy
beards and also can't play anyone thirty minutes per game,
even when you have some players who definitely need to
be playing thirty minutes per game.
Speaker 2: Now, this is the soberest overreaction you've had so far.
I believe this is one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Of the fact. I just I don't even want to
spend too much time on the Grizzlies because I still
just want to see them get healthier and understand what's happening.
But I think the crux of my issue here with
I don't think they've been bad. I just grant who
leads them in minutes per game right now?
Speaker 2: I was just gonna ask you that because I was
looking at it and I was like, no way, he's
gonna guess this. It's Sadi Aldama.
Speaker 1: And then I understand that injuries have been a part
of the equation, but it's getting harder and harder for
me to descern what the plan will be when or
if this roster is ever fully healthy. Is the recently
converted to a standard deal Jay Huff a mainstay, the
product of Zach Edie needing a treadmill, or Jaron Jackson
Junior's minutes restriction? Does are we witnessing the new normal
for Marcus Smart the new normal being sub thirty five
percent on twos and sub twenty percent on threes, and
he's playing fewer minutes per game than Jake Larevia and
Scotty Pippen Jr. Is Jalen Well's gonna be the next
to leap frog him? What is Santi Aldama in the
rotation when others return and aren't on a minute cap
and when Edie isn't in foul trouble? Is he a
power forward? A five, A three? Is he perhaps a
three point nine six two five eighty four somewhere in between?
And also, by the way, guys that haven't played, where
do Luke Canard and Vince Williams Junior and GG Jackson
the second fit into this? Doesn't sound like Gig's gonna
be back, Like even at the start of twenty twenty five,
At this point, I just does this all somehow end
with John Morant coming off the bench or something. I
honestly just don't. It's not I'm not even this. I'm
more so trolling, man, But like this, I this team
is still going to be really good. But is this
a matter of they're too injured, too deep, they still
don't know what they're trying to do, Like what is happening?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weirdly both, right, like you could imagine it,
like just the Warriors are kind of a similar thing
where I got to play a million guys, so nobody's
playing thirty minutes. But it's like the Grizzlies came into
this season with a bunch of injuries. This is the
last situation you would have expected sub thirty minutes for everybody, right,
it's all they're gonna have to lean on X SO
and so because they don't have Gg Jackson or Vince Williams.
And Jared Jackson was heard to start the year like
so Oldama, I guess he is the minutes leader, but like,
oh Oldama's gonna have to play thirty five a night,
and Jaw just you can't take Jaw off the floor
you need it. You can't trust Scotti, Pippen, Junr. And
it's like, well, you do have a bunch of injuries,
but it turns out you got several guys that just
like are closer to rotation players, and maybe you thought
they were gonna be the Marcus Smart of it all,
Like that's where the minutes can just go away from.
Speaker 1: Jaellen Wells did leap frog him in minutes per game.
I dotted this down.
Speaker 2: Smart Smart does not look good. Uh and boy that's
man just just a continuing another entry in the Grizzlies
just losing every trade like that just.
Speaker 1: Like also a compliment to the Celtic's ability to strip
a motion from the equation and trade the hearts and
souls of their team. They did it with Isaiah Thomas
when he was injured, and then they did it with
I'm not I really the human element of it sucks, but.
Speaker 2: That the Smart trade was like, yeah, no, we know
he's cooked, Like we gotta get off this money.
Speaker 1: Like that was right and also his day just I
don't know how good the Grizzlies are going to be
if this is just kind of the the state of things,
is it? Are you more so impressed with what they've done?
I mean they're seventh in offense and like their defense
is having around the average jaws looked. I was a
little bit worried when he had that was it the
thigh injury? But he only yes the game, so that
at least feel good about Jaw.
Speaker 2: Right now, I feel good about Jaw and I feel
good about I hate that Desmond Bain's hurt again, But
why are.
Speaker 1: Not someone who is like like those are there? I
get even I think he's the one player I look
at and say coming into this season, like, why does
it seem like he was on an artificial minutes cap
dealing with an injury we to know about.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're all just maybe they're just so scared of
like everybody getting hurt like last year, to where it's like, well,
we'll just do something else.
Speaker 1: It's the head coach is called that Taylor Jenkins joint.
That's what it was, all.
Speaker 2: Right, Dan Tyler Hero is a change man. He has
undergone an evolution. He maybe also you know, went to
see a spiritual leader that that scared the like exercise
the mid range demons from from his soul. His shot
profile has changed, and this is going to help the
Miami Heat not be a bottom ten offense forever, which
is what they've been last year, in the year before
and currently are now. So this is a big overreaction
because Hero is gonna have to be better. But so
he's in the nineties First of all, he's been reclassified
on cleaning Glass as a wing, so the percentiles are
a little funky, but ninety second percentile among wings in
non corner three point of temper eight was never a
high non corner three point of temperate. Guy mid rangers
are just not part of the shot diet anymore to
like a shocking degree for someone who if you just
picture Tyler Hero in your mind, what you see is
someone coming off a pin down and shooting like a
nineteen footer, maybe with the dribble Pepperdin there. So he's
taking more than half his shots from three for the
first time ever in his career. And if you're looking for, like,
how do the heat construct an offense that can keep
up with a defense that historically has been very good,
like top ten every single year going back to fourteen
to fifteen, and then you got a bunch more top
tens before that, so the defense is always good. Can
you get enough scoring? And if you're not going to
make a big broster altering trade, one of the ways
to do that is to fix the shot diet of
someone that you're already really depending on for offense. And
so so far Hero looks like a very different type
of player.
Speaker 1: Do you buy into it being sustainable? Because I think
this might be me sip in the early season coolie,
I think I buy it.
Speaker 2: It's so extreme that it feels like it was an
offseason point of discussion and like yeah, so short answer, yeah,
because like if it were just ten percent here or there,
maybe not. But like the mid rangers are gone, Like
so that's that's clearly like that's a deliberate thing that
the Heat and Hero are on, you know, in lockstep on.
Speaker 1: They're like getting them outside of being a bottom ten offense,
you only need to climb up three spots, which this
time of year is nothing. Grant, they're starting lineup right
now six percentile on offense at ninety six point six
points per one hundred possessions any small sample size theater
here at the moment, I don't even know, like what
would be that you have. You're starting Rosier and Hero
and so those are your two best floor spacers on
the team. I guess the only thing you could say is, hey,
let's throw Duncan Robinson in there for Nikole Jyovich at
this point, and I don't know what that does to
you defensively, but that lineup hasn't even been good defensively
as it is. I think in part because Jimmy Butler
and bam Adebayo are like, oh, we're just they're already
kind of you probably get a little bit worse defensively
going from Yovich to Duncan Robinson, so there's not going
to be just some monster uptick offense. And this is,
by the way, Duncan Robinson's role, Like he's shooting what
is he twenty three percent from three for the year.
So I just don't like, I don't know what the
solve is for this team in house, and I don't like,
have could you go with him Hawks and lead into
the defense. I know we're getting kind of far afield
from Tyler Herro, but what is their pathway out of
being mediocre at the moment?
Speaker 2: It's tough. I mean, I think the defense will be
much better than it is right now. That's that's part
of it. I do think, having said all that about
hero like, this will still be a team that if
it is good, it will be because the defense is good,
like just because that's the heat recipe. I actually thought
the other day watching them, I wonder if I don't
know why. This is something I've been thinking about more
with certain guys, but like, are they starting Yovic to
showcase him, because it's like I would just rather have
Hawkes out there, right if, like just as a as
a total floor game player, Like you know, you're not
getting the shooting, but you get more of kind of
everything else with Hawkes. And I think Hawkes is clearly
more important to the Heat long term than Yovic. So
like it just I think that would be my move,
even though like on on its face you'd say, well,
Yovic is a spacing four, so like you do want
him out there for offense. I just think Hawkes is
a better overall player, like some of the passing post
ups like that kind of stuff might just might counterintuitively
be better for them offensively than Yovic.
Speaker 1: I guess that would be a thought. I just don't.
I don't how much I guess you're what you're saying
is so lean into Hawkys and just go sort of
like defense there, like let's try and bring back because
they weren't starting Hawkas last year, and they started Yovic too,
like they played him a ton alongside Bam, So I
I don't know what the answer.
Speaker 2: Is no, it's not easy. It's not obvious.
Speaker 1: There's been a little I would say they've been a
little bit burned by three pointers. I think opponents a
stree like forty five percent unopen threes and forty three
percent and three overall. So I agree with you that
the defense will like tick down and Jimmy Butler will
probably be better. But like, I just don't know. I
don't know how to feel them and the pacers, like
two of the teams is like I don't really know
how to feel.
Speaker 2: About you guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, early, Still we move on to the moll.
Speaker 2: This is uh, this is it's hard to avoid the
hyperboleon hot takes with this one. The Milwaukee Bucks are
up next, and the overreaction is this guy is falling
this team. It's time to blow it up. Jannis, we've
got we got our first first. Jannis might have wandering
eyes or might be movable with the nets in the heat.
I think it was Bill Ryder of CBS Sports had
this the other day. Uh, not a shock, just given
the circumstances and the team's trajectory, and like what the
next five ish years might look like. Bucks, as we're
recording are one and four. They've got some bad losses
against some teams that they shouldn't be losing to and
that aren't even healthy. That Memphis loss on I guess
as yes, last night being one of those. It's just rough,
like in you know, Middleton's supposed to come back as
we're recording this today November first, that just doesn't seem
like the cure all that it would need to be.
It's a it's it's rough. Like Giannis has been super productive,
but he's playing differently. Maybe you can touch on that.
Lopez is looking older, Dame has been you know, good enough,
I guess. But then you've got a bunch of minimum
guys that are playing huge roles and as valuable as
Gary Trent is for like what he's being paid, it's
still the case that like he's too important. The doc
rivers of it all, like that's just I think, I
don't know, it's hard to be enthused right now. I
know we're doing overreactions, but like it's it's not good
for the Bucks at the moment in a way that
feels kind of real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and we did. I did a deeper
dive on this response to report. So you can go
check out that on one of the previous episodes. But Giannis,
I think he was he was not the problem against
the Grizzlies when they just got absolutely trucked PROA the problem.
Speaker 2: It's not him, right, It's like he's.
Speaker 1: Culpable in the sense like he's playing too differently. And
I wondered how much that was. Is this an active
decision by him or the coaching staff. Is it a
response to Chris Middleton being out, but like he shouldn't
be dribbling or initiating as much. The number of his
baskets that were self created were way up from last year.
More of them are coming off of just like three
to six plus dribbles at that point, and you don't
want that from Giannis, especially if you're operating in the
half quarter majority of the time. I think what that
was somewhat troubling to me. I think what was is
a bigger deal still is just they look old. They
can look slow, especially like because you could talk yourself
and say, okay, you know what, Gary trans Junior is
going to shoot better from three, He's not going to
be sub thirty percent forever. Same with Brook Lopez, A,
Bobby Portos has been bad. Can you could talk like
his value is on offense though, so if he's not
really playing well on there, what is he giving you elsewhere?
Not a ton? So I guess you could talk yourself
and saying, you know what, the offense is just going
to be fine it eventually. Can it be at the
peak of what it should be when you look at
the personnel?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Is it going to be twenty fourth? Also?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Could it be tenth still by the end of the year.
Middleton coming back?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: Defensively, man, though this team they are getting like blitzed
at points in transition again, and it's a lot of
it is kind of the Okay, they're doing a better
job of getting back, but like sometimes they're just learning
teams operate and semi transition after their making shots, and
so it's like, oh, they're not getting back or they're
not as locked in. I still the team. You look
at them, and their defensive rebounding rate has been eighth
this year, so that's fine, But like they're not forcing
turnovers on defense at all. I guess they're not fouling
a ton particularly, but the ball containment when you watch
them at least feels like it's been kind of sort
of a major issue once again. So I don't you
look at them and it's okay, they have NBA players,
but the depth on defense clearly isn't there. And when
you combine that with what is happening to them on offense,
because you look at a lot of these guys who
are just not playing up to snuff, or they're they're
missing shots or how hard it looks like, you know, Yiannis,
that's even if we remove the blame from him, he
should not have to be working as hard as he
is for the shots that he's been taking. So whether
that's by choice or by design out of what they
views necessity, I don't know, but just having Dame on
this team, that should not be the case in general either.
And so you're dealing with this offensive awkwardness and you
don't have margins for error there because your defense, I guess,
was not built to be good in the first place.
Is how you would frame it, which is fair because
they struggled there last year. They got a little bit better,
but you just added Gary Trent Junior and Delon Wright
and Torrey in Prince. It's not like you overhauled your
defense and Brook Lopez. I still think its valuable there,
but he's a year older, Giannis is a year older,
Dame is a year older, which is gonna hurt your
ball containment. So it's really just sort of all over
the place. For me. I think I buy into this idea,
though I don't think Giannis will crush a trade mid season.
That would honestly shock me. So I don't know that
we've reached that level of dire just yet. But I
think you look at this and the fact that their
set defense is I think their set defense is twenty
seventh in points lat per possession, which is inexcusable. I
look at it and I say, the sky is falling.
Feels like a proper response to their body language, the struggles,
and just knowing that, do you think Chris Middleton comes
in and even if they wind up having the seventh
best offense in the league, is that better to offset
and say some of these players shoot better. How much
of their struggles do you look at right now to
tribute to? Oh, the offense just really hasn't been good enough.
Speaker 2: No, not many. I do think if you look at
the statistical profile, it is that of an old slow team.
And like they're there and that's contributing to them losing
the possession battle like pretty badly. They're dead last and
offensive rebounding. Now that's schematic one, but like, also you
can't be dead last and offensive rebounding and also be
a bad transition defense like you got like one or
the other has to be at least okay, right, And
they don't ever force turnovers, So it just tells me
that they're not they're not like out physicality ing or
like they're not beating teams or competing even like with
athleticism or physical play. And that's just they're older, they're slower,
they're you know, like Dame isn't like moving anybody other
than Yannis. It's just everybody's kind of out there. And
then to move on from the like analytical side of it,
like do you I don't have any faith that Doc
Rivers is like the guy to fix this. I just
you know it just what have we seen from him
in the last decade that suggests like this is the
guy that writes ships. I feel like the opposite is
kind of the case with him lately.
Speaker 1: Right, And I would also say too that I think
people might point out that the Bucks are not playing
like too slower relative to the league average. They're eleventh,
that's still slower than last year, and like when that's
supposed to be part of your identity. But I was
going to ask you, did you see an apologies if
you mentioned this? Did you see him a report from
Bill Ryder that apparently Doc Rivers has become like assuming
more power in the decision. Did you mention that? I apologize?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, but I saw that. I didn't mention it. I mean,
that's that's a that's an emergency, like that's a problem.
Speaker 1: They the report kind of said that he will make
the decision of what happens with the team after twenty games.
I do know if he is in power to decide
whether Gianni stays or goes, just the Bucks franchise should
be deleted from existence at that point or owners should
at least be forced to sell because that is mind
mouthingly fucking stupid there.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a gross over simplification. But their
record is worse with him than with Adrian Griffin, like
by a lot, and Adrian Griffin was not doing a
good job, Like, so what do we call this?
Speaker 1: I mean the and I just again, I'm not do
you immediately the concern level for this team is high
when you're looking at the performance on the court, looking
at the off court, the rumors, and I think it's
more so the vultures and the lusting that's happening outside Milwaukee.
Do you assign any urgency or concern to actually that
or do you just think it's more likely if anything
along those lines happens. It's so it's so much more
of an offseason thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you just erase the particulars, and I
presented you with the following situation of this team wanted.
There's a team that won a title a few years ago,
has a great player who's getting older. It's a small
market team. The core around him has gotten old. There's
no flexibility. The coach is doing a bad job. Nobody
thinks he's the answer. There's a possibility this star might
ask out sooner than later. What do you think the
right thing to do? Is you would say start looking
at trades, right, like you That's just that's what you
would do if you didn't know it was Yiannis and
the Bucks and whatever else. So, like, I think you're
right that the offseason is probably more likely. But like
these things can accelerate real fast, and like it could
get to a point where it is, in fact, like
the objectively correct decision to start shopping Yannis, like that,
I don't you don't do that after you know, one
win in your first five games. But the longer this
goes and the less light there is at the end
of the tunnel, the more it's just like the responsible
choice to start being proactive about it.
Speaker 1: Again, this is the Trey Young situation. Gianness will get
you more than Trey Young if you're not getting your
own picks back. That's why when I when I was
recording solo, I named New Orleans is kind of a
nice dark course because if they offered you control of
twenty six and twenty seven back mm hmm and then
other stuff, they have other first to give they have
I mean maybe and if the Bucks still want to
be good you brandon Ingram is probably a key salary
in that deal. But like, if you're not getting control
of your own picks back, what is the value you
would have to still want to be good? Yeah, I
do think there are teams with Tree Young. I would
be shocked if a team gave up a current All
Star or someone on that trajectory with Giannis. Let's use
okayse as an example. I don't think I would be
able to pull the trigger here, but you could envision
Okay See talking themselves into yeah, we'll give you j
Dubb if it means getting y honest.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, no, I yeah, I think that's right.
I just like you zoom all the way out, and
like you know, Giannis has been there for his whole career.
He's he's not going to finish his career there like
almost nobody does. And so like this is happening. Eventually,
it just becomes a question of, like when's the smartest
time for Milwaukee to to just lean into what has
to happen. You know, I don't know if that's this year.
Speaker 1: I am up next with the Minnesota Timberwolves. My take
is overreaction. If you put two, I've Anthony Edwards on
the twenty fifteen Rockets, those Houston Rockets win the championship.
So Anthony Edwards over James Harden on that Rockets team.
This is just he's taken fifty three percent of his
shots from three point range. Right now, James Harden I
think has done that once in his career, and I
don't even know if it was ever on the Houston Rockets.
But like this is a wholesale shift in the way
that Anthony Edwards is playing. I still think his life
is made too difficult. That points for the Timberwolves, who's
They're another team where I don't have a feel, like
a decided feel for them because I feel like I'm
kind of changing my opinion and outlook for them by
the possession. But this version of Anthony Edwards is absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 2: Thirteen point three three point attempts per game. That's a
lot for a guy that is still most dangerous going downhill.
You'd like to see the free throws up. I guess
that's the trade off, right. It's like, oh, we love it.
He's getting threes up. That's awesome. Someone that athletic needs
to get more than six free throw attempts a game,
which is basically where he's at now and where he
was was last year. I just I still I still like,
I still like it. Still like it's like you might
as well get those threes up. Uh, he's been awesome. Uh,
I just like do do you does the shot diet
change for him, like ease any of the concerns you
have about Minnesota's offense as a whole, and like the
I mean, I let just the lack of playmaking besides him.
I mean this this is a team that, like the
defense will be fine. It sort of has to be
based on how good it was last year, and it's
just an offensive question. How does how does his change
like make you feel one way or the other about
the offense.
Speaker 1: I do wonder if it's so you don't because he
was taking like some of the three point volume was
going to come from the rim volume, but the fact
that it's also come like you're looking at the the
overall change where it's okay, he's down to what is
he down on his mid range frequency? He dropped that
by eleven percentage points to share his shots. I think
I feel comfortable with it because I also view it
as like when you go dig into you, Okay, well,
how he playing independent of when there's not like Julius
Randall Engelbart on the court at the same time, like
that's an opportunity for him then be more aggressive, get
downhill and there should be more room to operate and
I don't think Julius Randall has played particularly terribly, but
I think that they're trying to. And a lot of
this too is Dante DiVincenzo is still shooting sub thirty
percent from three. I doubt that hole Jane McDaniels, by
the way, doing his best sub twenty percent impression. Again,
I almost feel like this overreaction, well, I've kind of
enjoyed it from Edwards, or at least I think it
shows an understanding of what they need, the lineup circumstances,
the personnel circumstances, excuse me, around him, it's almost doesn't
it kind of suck that this uptick needs to come
from him, of all people. And it also still feels like,
do you think it's simplified? I don't know the best
way to frame this. When you watch him, do you
feel like it's simplified the work he needs to do
to get his shots off enough to where then okay,
this is definitely worth the tradeoff a little bit.
Speaker 2: I still can't escape. I used to feel this way
as is, going back a long time with like maybe
maybe like the early twenty tens Lebron where it was
like every time he took a jump shot. It was like, ah,
missed opportunity, and Edwards isn't the same in that, like,
you know, every time he goes to the basketing, I
just want I just feel like Edward's going downhill to
the basket is like, Okay, that's what should happen on
every possession if we can, you know, make that a possibility.
Speaker 1: I mean, I still don't think the Wolves have the
spacing for.
Speaker 2: That, right. That's the thing. It's like, you, I just
want him to attack because it's like, who knows what
might happen. And I do think to be the kind
of like singular offensive star that we think he can be,
you just you gotta be up towards nine or ten
free throw attempts of a game. I think that's that's that's
something that like should develop.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like I think I think it's right now.
I guess what I was getting at is I view
this as a necessary change, and it's been him where
more of his buckets overall are coming off assists because
I think that tends to happen with I guess unless
you actually Luca or Harden that or tra that's what
tends to happen. It just almost is why is he
the only one or the one making this shift? And
it's okay, you dig into it. Well, Dante Devincenzo's not shooting.
RealD Jade McDaniels is. He hit them during last year's playoffs,
but he's in terms of volume and efficiency, he's a
relative non threat from beyond the arc. You almost need
him now, Anthony Edwards to space the floor so that
Julius Randall and who's been by the way, I think,
what's Julius Randall shooting? Like fifty on three?
Speaker 2: Still?
Speaker 1: Is he in the sixties?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: He was hitting them sixty two and a half percent
from three on four times per game, So like to
open up room for everybody else, Anthony Edwards is needed
to become the floor spacer. I think the adaptability he
has shown is a good thing. I just question is
it to this degree? Is it the greatest thing for
Minnesota's offense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Probably probably not.
Speaker 1: We're onto the this is rough New Orleans Pelicans grant
this offense is cooked. Is that I've got I've got
thoughts and opinions, but just off off rip? Would you do?
Where are you at?
Speaker 2: My response would be like, it doesn't need to be
this way, like why how did this happen? But yeah,
I mean you can get into the deeper numbers, but
they're twenty eighth in scoring efficiency, they're twenty fourth in
effective field goal percentage, and they turn the ball over
a ton. So and look that's pretty cooked.
Speaker 1: Pretend that they're gonna shoot more threes at your own
I won't even say risk at this point. I think
it's just a delusion. They're twenty seventh and three point
of tenth, right, they're taking fewer threes than they were
last year. I was they were the team though, grant
that I was saying, we had some breaking news on
that we would need to tackle during this podcast. So
here's did you see the bad news? No, well here's
the bad news. Herb Jron is gonna be out two
to four weeks with a right shoulder strain and a
partial tear in his rotator cuff. He thinks that's gonna
be at least closer.
Speaker 2: To four weeks. Yes, yeah, CJ.
Speaker 1: Mccoum is gonna be out two to three weeks with
a right adductor strain. So they're fucked. You lost Trey
Murphy or Trey Murphy has yet to play this season
and CJ McCollum, Now those are your am I missing anyone?
Let me look at their roster like, those are your
single two most important three point shooters and now they're unavailable.
Where are the threes coming from? I just Brent, you can't.
And now you're in a position where schmid Duha had
pointing this out on Twitter. Even if you use Zion.
We we had called for more Zion as a screener,
and we've seen it a little bit more of the season.
I thought. I think with Brandon Ingram doesn't fucking matter
because you're just getting contested twos out of that. Because
Branding doesn't want to take pull up threes, Zion isn't
gonna pop. He's gonna need to roll. And Dejantay Murray's
injured as well, and I think he's at least more
willing to take those shots than brand Ingram. But even
he is, I wonder was I too high on his
addition in the sense of, well, is he gonna take
enough of them for that to work? But I think
there's a better chance of that all working. We have
seen them, you know, they've they've played the Oh Jordan
Hawkins is on this roster card. Like we've seen that,
we've seen it more, have we seen it enough? Over
thirty minutes per game. I never would have predicted that
for him, but he's been that important to them, so
maybe you view him as a more important four spaceer
thin CG. McCollum. That's fine, but you're talking about three
of your four most important like perimeter shooters right now
or out of the lineup, and there's just no excuse
then for them to also be grant so god damn slow.
This is a team that still gets out in transition.
But when you kind of look at the overall speed
of their offense, you can't be fourteenth in average possession time.
You are twenty fifth in average possession or excuse me,
you're twenty seventh in offensive efficiency after an opponent makes
a shot, because you can't go against these set defenses,
especially with this personnel. Why are you also fifteenth in
offensive speed speed, not even efficiency after a defensive rebound
you're in the you're fast after you force a turnover. Okay, great,
grand wonderful. Those are not the vast majority of your possessions.
And by the way, like can you you can't even
force more to your your top ten opponent turn over
eight already, and you watch them, this is you can
say the three point volume is a symptom of their personnel.
Their offensive process right now is not because this is
a team that the and I'm not saying it always works.
I don't know how efficient they would be. I'd argue
they'd probably be hella efficient because Zion Williams. By the way,
Zion's not blameless in all this. He has not been
great to start the year. No, I have confidence that
he will be better. But you can't be a team
that lacks offensive creation in the half court with the
right shot profile, with up with talent that is I
don't even know if it's redundant or just it's a
like it's not complimentary to one another, especially with who
you have available right now, and the decision is like, well,
we're just gonna play I can't say slow at shit,
but relative to what you need to play at, you're
playing slow at shit. So this is really disappointing, and
I don't know who to blame. Is that the front
office or the roster construction? Is it really green at
this point because he's not instilling more urgency in his players.
How much can we actually play and lean injuries for them.
It's just wildly disappointing to kind of see even be like,
we know we're inefficient when we're you know, going up
against set defenses, and yet we're just gonna play way
slower than we should be anyway, because that's and this
was my point before I rambled on it's not always
going to work, but playing at more chaotic speeds and
not letting defenses get fully set is a way to
equipse at least some of the deficit of well, now
you're dealing with a creation deficit, but of the floor spacing,
the half court dynamism.
Speaker 2: I think, Uh, I don't disagree with any of that.
I think I think to close it on a lighter note,
for the Pelicans, I would I would bank on multiple
twenty five point games from Jordan Hawkins while McCollum is out.
I think it was trending this way a little bit. Uh.
He just flat out needs to be a featured part
of this offense. He's definitely he is wired to like
get shots up like he definitely is hunting shots. He
moves great off the ball, He's over forty percent from
three and he does not take like exclusively easy shots,
So I think that efficiency's coming down, but he's going
to be forced like this thirty one minutes he's averaging
like that's going up, like just because you you must
have him on the floor if you want any kind
of perimeter threat to give your other guys, give your
ingrams and zions, like real opportunities to do anything. So
I don't know, this isn't a fantasy podcast, but Jordan
Hawkins is about to start getting some crazy numbers because
he's critically important suddenly, and I do think like he
just is capable of being a high vaulty like twenty
plus points scorer. I really do think he has that in.
Speaker 1: Him, by the way, and I think what's also is
just at what point do they run out of time here?
Because how much longer can you have? I've actually been
impressed with the defensive returns. I think guys are at
least trying more than I would have thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, but.
Speaker 1: You're not good at ending possessions on the glass. Your
bottom ten of defensive rebounding, your opponents are getting to
the rim a bunch. You've done a good job they're
not shooting too well there, but they're also not shooting
exceptionally well from three. How much of that is the
Pelicans and a lot of it if it is a
lot on the Pelican, well, a big chunk of that
is gone for a month because of Herb Jones being out. Yeah,
and now you I think what I'm saying is I
don't know that they had a huge margin for error
on defense anyway, just kind of looking at the vitals.
But now it's gone with Herb Jones.
Speaker 2: And as all the nice things I just said about
Jordan Hawkins, he's going to get targeted every possession on defense,
Like he just is too thin, doesn't have the size,
like he's he's a like he's a go at that
guy guy right now. And that's gonna like contrast that
with Herb Jones, who is like the last guy you
ever go at. That's gonna be rough. Basically swapping those minutes.
Speaker 1: What do you think is more likely? I guess statistically
it's always what the second option here will be. But
they make a trade or Willy Green gets fired mid season.
Speaker 2: Uh well, I mean that's that's pretty close. Like I
was going to ask you earlier, is like, do we
just is the lever they pull Willy Green. I don't
think that'll be fair. I think it's probably a trade
because like even if Willy Green has had some heat before,
you just like it's injuries right now, Like injuries are
the cover for the entire team. Though, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Our next team not exactly healthy either, kause anybody cares
New York Knicks, they are your New York Knicks this time, though,
Grant make me proud.
Speaker 2: Damn they've already lost the cat trade already.
Speaker 1: That's fun.
Speaker 2: Adjudicated he had the forty four point night.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I appreciate your boldness sticking with
this after he dropped the forty burger.
Speaker 2: Well, we are overreacting, but we can't overreact to the
other way to one game. I mean it's a it's
a standard case, like the forty four counts Like that
was a you know, that's what you need, that's what
you want. I think he was seventeen to twenty five. Like,
just getting that kind of shot volume is huge for
the Knicks offense because it just can't be bruntsing all
the time every night. But you look at the financial
components you look at the lack of depth. You look
at like just the weirdness of like how hard it
was to get him enough shots in the in the
first few games. We talked about this a fair amount,
but like, I don't know it. You know, we knew
that there would be like some fit issues or like
just some feeling out stuff, but like I never imagined
that one. I thought maybe it would be like, wow,
they really got a rain cat in, Like he's really
like good, Like I get how many picking pop threes.
It's been the opposite where it finally they got some volume.
But like before that, I was just like, what what
is he doing out there? Like how how is this
not turning into you know, twelve three point attempts per game.
I I hope that still happens. But the you know,
the other sides of it, we are overreacting, like lots
to be seen, but like hasn't been great so far.
We got to concede that it's.
Speaker 1: So bizarre because like the if you dig into the vitals,
it's this time of the year where any of the
stats were saying they could change overnight, but like that,
you look at the Knicks vitals and it's well relatives,
just like we're talking about Towns hasn't necessarily been great
at either end of the floor for them, And you
could say, okay, like and they look, they played the Celtics,
they played the Caves, they lost to both of them.
But you're at five hundred positive point different positive net
rating despite playing that Celtics game.
Speaker 2: By right, it's gonna ruin their numbers for like another month. Still,
it's gonna wreck everything.
Speaker 1: It might ruin their numbers to the entire season. Yeah,
and like, because even if you filter out like that
Celtics game, they've been really like they're twenty ninth in
defense overall. I can't remember what the number was exactly,
but I think they were sixth when you take out
the Celtics game. So you look at it and say, okay, yes,
this is clearly an overreaction. I will say, the thing
I'm watching is definitely what he's doing defensively. And then
I think the place to wrap up here because we
just did a deep dive on them. Everyone can go
check it out and I don't think much has changed
other than Karl Anthony Town's took more shots. Is the
way to empower him to continue along this where it
seems like Tibbs wants one of him and Brunton on
the court at all times, which logistically makes sense, or
is it, well, we need him to get easier shots,
so we should play him with bruntson even more than
we already are. I'm not I honestly don't know the answer.
I'm not criticizing TIBs for his approach, even because I
think intuitively like Karlthon Town's has paid like a megastar
because it's yeah, like that should be a guy who's
in some lineups without Jee Brunson.
Speaker 2: I mean that that sort of is the problem with
him though, right, Like that is why that comte's that
is that that's why that contract is viewed as like, oh,
I don't know about that one, because he just hasn't
been that guy. I think the usage would depend on
like because like in the playoffs, it's just like you're
gonna play them together as much as humanly possible, and
so like the the Cat, but no Brunson minutes are
gonna be There'll be like two of them maybe in
like the games that really matter. So I think then
from from Tim's perspective, and he's just like a win
the game tonight. Guy, I think you just like you
can't really worry about like, oh they gotta we gotta
like build up cat to to be able to handle
these playoff minutes. Like I think everything he does with
staggering or not staggering, those two will just depend on
like what is called for that night to win the game.
There won't be like long term planning involved.
Speaker 1: I have a question for you. I want it to
be a quick one and it's not really a serious one,
and there'd have to be like eight teams involved because
of the salary cap situations. I feel a true right now,
all you're giving up all McHale bridges and Karl Anthony
towns and you're getting back Joannis attend to Kombo, and
there's some other rotation players sprinkled. I'm not talking another star,
are you? If you're the Knicks and you could change
out those two players like basically undo like these two
mega transactions man for Jannis, what would you do?
Speaker 2: So I so I'm just like I know you said
a short answer, so I still have Brunson og Jannis
five outs.
Speaker 1: Basing has gone out the window with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're a really different team, Mitchell Robinson still here.
I guess, uh, I fuck it, I do it? Why
not do you do? You do it?
Speaker 1: I have I'd probably do it. I just at this point,
I'm just sort of like, I don't know, because I
tend to be higher on Karl Anthony towns than most,
so I think I would naturally go to Now if
you could do McHale, Bridges and Mitchell Robinson and every
and other teams are involved, maybe they're sending Milwaukee first,
ors Milwaukee's still trying to be good and wants mcale. Well,
I would preferably go like, pardon me, wonders would be
better to go McAllen og and then keep Cat. But
it's just Giannis isn't that type of guy on defense?
I don't know, but interesting thought exercise rights. I love
like if you could. If the question is basically you
could undo two of their past three mega transactions and
just folded into Giannis and Tentha Koumbo, that's the forget
the math. We're salary cap doorcs around here. We know
that's not how it would need to work. I think
it's an interesting discussion to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't say that one.
Speaker 1: I would absolutely say no to because I don't think
you'd be good enough. Is McAllen og like one of
those guys would still need to be on this.
Speaker 2: Team at the end, I think so, yeah, I think
that's right.
Speaker 1: We're on too. V Oh, this is gonna be fun.
Grant the Oklahoma City Thunder. Grant, this is the best
defense of all time? True or false?
Speaker 2: Uh, I'm gonna say false. That can't be right.
Speaker 1: So, I mean the season still hasn't ended, but it's
actually true. As of right now, they would be tied
to the lowest defensive rating in NBA history with the
Washington Bullets. However, the best way to actually do this,
and I don't think this is going too far into
the weeds, but if you want to see who's been
the best defense or offensive all time, or worse for
that matter, you should look at how they compare relative
to the league average at that time, because pacing is
so different across eras, and so we call that adjusted
defensive rating, which is just basically you're going to take
the league average defensive rating, divide it by the actual
teams like the team's actual defensive rating, and then multiply
it by one hundred so when you do that with
the Oklahoma City. So by the way, in this in
this course, the higher defensive number is better. They're adjusted
defensive rating the Okahma City Thunder right now one twenty
three point five to four. The best defense of all time,
mister Grant Hughes adjusted defensive rating of all time comes
from the nineteen sixty three to nineteen sixty four Boston Celtics.
They had an adjusted defensive rating of one twelve point
eight nine. So let's just round one twenty three point
five to one twelve point nine. That's not even close
right now. Again, so few games into the season, I
just wouldn't rule out the possibility that they wind up
having the statistically the best defense of all time. They
are forcing they you know how good they are on defense, Grant.
They're getting hurt because they're playing too many garbage time
minutes at the moment, because they're forcing turnovers when all
their best players are on the court like crazy. But
you look at their overall turnover rate, it's only top
thirty five of all time, but it's so much lower
than their non garbage time turnover rate, which is they're
forcing turnovers on more than twenty percent of their possessions.
They are all versatility and aggressiveness and smarts and limbs,
and they don't even have good like their best defensive
rebound around the team, who is Isaiah Harrierstein has yet
to play and so they're still susceptible too if you're
gonna go up against kind of earlier bigs. They are
missing I don't know where you would put him in
the ranking of their most important defenders. But if I
just put him smack dab in the middle and said, well,
they're missing their third or fourth most important defender and
are still just and it's not even close, by the way, relive, Like,
you can't say this is the best defense in the
league and have that be bold. That's that's an understatement.
At this point, this team has the chance to be
so statistically dominant relative to the field, relative to the
error that we're in. I don't think we have fully
appreciated it yet.
Speaker 2: And like the numbers are super persuasive. It's just like
and even if you just look at the raw numbers,
a defensive rating and non garbage time of ninety two
point five is like.
Speaker 1: What's the next what's the next best word good.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's yours and my Golden State Warriors at
ninety seven point nine, which would which would have led
the league last year by like a trillion points, by
the way, way better than Minnesota. But yeah, the raw
numbers insane. And then just like they I don't you know,
whatever catch all you want to use, let's I always
kind of default to EPM. I think Hartenstein and Caruso
were both in the top five, and the Thunder defense
was fourth in the league last year, and you just
throw those two guys into it, and it's like, well yeah,
like but just like an anecdotally, there's nowhere to pick at,
like if they have if they have anything close, like
you know, if you put Isaiah Joe or like what
you know, there's guys that can they will play that
you could like, oh good, there's someone we could sort
of go at. But when this team is even close
to fully healthy, I just don't know, Like, who are
you attacking? Like it's really the like the predatory stuff
goes the other way. It's like Alex Caruso is like
attacking his matchup, and like lou Dort is like a
tep physically attacking the guy that has the ball. Like
the dynamic this defense is like flips the dynamic of
like who's actually trying to attack the other?
Speaker 1: They're like, you can be cause I don't know. This
isn't the easiest thing to do. But like, if you're
an offensive player, no matter how good yards, let me
just get off the ball and then someone else can
go after someone you can't even there's nowhere to go
finding that matchup. It's about can I even get rid
of the ball for any sort of advantage and you can't.
Now we do have to play the Devil's advocate front here.
Opponents are shooting fifty percent at the rim. They're shooting
twenty nine percent from three. That's like the best mark
in the league. And both uh no, excuse me, they're
only second and three point defense, so they saw me.
Let's move on. But what I will say is the
fact that like they're there, I will say there was
probably noise in the three point there's always I'm sure
there'll be a thunderfan or twenty and the well, no
like they actually do.
Speaker 2: There's always noise.
Speaker 1: There's always noise in three point defense, the rim defense.
Do I expect it to be a fifty percent all season.
Holy hell no, but I think you could that they
don't have what could maybe be their best Like we're
talking stand still verticality, like chet Holmgren is more of
a dynamic rim protector. Yes he's better, but if Isaiah
Hart and stut like he's your second best rim protector,
like you're just and you're playing without really another big
at this point when you look at the injury to
j Will, So I just I want to leave the
door open that even if you don't think if you're
gonna say no, I'm not comfortable with too many of
these guys don't play enough, or they're not stars or
I'm not gonna remember they're not gonna be Hall of famers.
If you want to go that route, that's fine. I
believe that this is my oreation. I believe this team
has a case to finish the season with Statistically, what
is the best defense relative to the league average in
NBA history?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is an overreaction because that's what
we're doing. But that so far is the one that's like,
actually the hardest to like Cam Johnson is or Cam
Thomas is less likely to average thirty. How about that
than the thunder ard to finish with the best.
Speaker 1: I wonder where this would rank when we're all we're
done here shortly, Wait, where this would rank against all
our other overreactions. It's not going to be I don't
think it's going to be the spiciest or least likeliest by.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's I mean, it might be the least
I mean, which is crazy because it's the most hyperbolic.
You're saying the best thing of all time of anything.
That shouldn't be a safe prediction, but it feels that way.
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, it is your turn and we're
on too. You had to pivot here, yep, with the
news this is rough the Orlando Magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so prior to prior to the news that Palla
Bankera has a torn obleak, which is like, I didn't
know he was like hitting fifth for the Tampa Bay Rays,
because that's a baseball injury generally speaking, it was gonna
be that the Magic. We're gonna bust out of this
ridiculous trend of having a crappy offense. They haven't had
a league average offensive ratings since twenty eleven, twelve, uh
and they had been looking a lot better and Poalo
obviously had the fifty pointer and just looked like he'd
taken another step after making the All Star team last year.
Now that he's out, I think the overreaction is that
Orlando's got to make a trade that focuses on holding
up the offense one while Palo's out in two to
get it up to the level that like, I don't know, Honors,
how good this defense can be. So you know, so
the defense actually isn't just you know, kicking ass. And
then oh man, they they couldn't you know, they they
scored one hundred and six points tonight like that that
just can't they can't continue if the if the Magic
want to get where they you know, their talent suggests
they can. So I would just throw out all the
usual suspects, like you got to take a look Zach
Lavine and Anthony Simons, and if you don't want to
think quite that big, I don't know you could you
could downgrade from there, but like it's just got to
be You've got to find a way because Paolo, you know,
is on the short list of guys who just matters
more to his team's offense than most. So unless you
want to go through this stretch where maybe you're five hundred,
maybe you're worse than that. Without him, you just have
to find some scoring. So I mean that's been an
issue like before the injury, but I just think it's
it's like now it's non negotiable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's I there could be pushback, but you
just want to look at Palabankarol on the floor this
year grant the magic one hundred and seventeen point seven
points per one hundred possessions. That's in the seventy eighth percentile.
Without Palabank Carrol on the court, grant that drops to
ninety seven point nine, which is in the first percent tile.
Speaker 2: Like they're being defended by the Warriors number two defense
all the time.
Speaker 1: Not the okayseed defense though, because they would be in
the zero with pre I just and I don't know,
you look at this roster and I think, look, they've
impressed when you look at their shot diet overall, and
like this this is with I mean k KCP will
shoot better than sixteen point seven percent on three, and
I'm assuming Wendell Carter Junior will eventually shoot at least
over fifteen percent from three, Like is are Franz. My
point here is, are your best shooters right now? When
you look at a jail And Suggs or Franz Wagner
when Palo isn't gonna be on the court for the
entire game, are they going to continue to shoot as
well from three? And so where are you going to
make up some of these made three pointers? Maybe it
normalizes to where it's just at right now because Kentavius
caledwell Pope makes more of his his shots, But that's
going to be a concern. I think even more than
that is, even if you think Jalen Sugs and Franz
Vagner are ready to shoulder more of the creation, Like
are Anthony Black, who's impressed this year hit a game
winning three? Shoutout Amy Black and Cole Anthony? Like is
that enough? Just second? Like just those four players are
now you're I don't even want to say your best?
Are they your only initiators whom whom I missed?
Speaker 2: No, I was gonna say, like the shooting is an issue,
but the shot creation and playmaking was was a bigger
issue before Pollow got hurt. Right, Like, I think you're
focused on exactly the right thing.
Speaker 1: More junior at the elbows. Now is that what?
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe this is just Anthony Black now, like you know,
because he's looked impressive so far, certainly relatives to last year,
and what is the averaging he's second behind Palow and
assists per game and he's not he's playing twenty five
minutes like he's not you know, out there a ton
Like maybe this is just where I don't know, we
get an answer or we get like a pretty a
much clearer indicator of like how big of a role
can Anthony Black have in this offense than we've had
to this point. I'm not saying it's like, well, we're
going to find out for sure if he's like if
he justifies the pick that he that they used on him,
But it's like, I think we're gonna get a lot
of information. I hope we get a lot of information
because I'm very curious to see is Anthony Black more
than like you know, got length, good defender maybe down
the line, connective passer.
Speaker 1: Shots definitely better that like Stan still jumpers down.
Speaker 2: Can we see if like, okay, let's maybe stretch some
of that and see what else might be there. I
don't know, if you're looking for like the glass half full,
that's it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm also hoping and by the way, he's not
benefficient as a pick and role scorer this year point
seven possessions and that's accounted. Wow, that's kind of for
a larger share. When I'm watching the Magic, I didn't
feel that that he was doing that as much as
he is. I'm hoping we will see because a way
to maybe alleviate some of the pressure would be, let's
on court Jet Howard Moore and really try and like
put pressure on defenses away from the ball might be
the way to go.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We can't even spend much time on because, like, what
is the opinion of the Sixers other than things suck,
The world sucks. It's ending. The overreaction to what we
see thus far is Kayla Martin and Andre Drummond will
start in more games than Joel Embiid and Paul George.
And look, we have another little breaking news tidbits. Joel
Bid wants to be one hundred percent game ready with
that left knee, and he's almost there, per Shamsherania on
Joel Embiid and his left knee injury. Now, okay, fun
we still have no timetable for what the fuck is
going on here? I just it's sad. In six Ers Land,
they are bank rolling a three star operation and what
they're getting in return for that bank roll as a
one star operation. They are twenty seventh in offense, they're
eighteenth in defense. Nick Nurse is grumpy. I don't know
how you could be. Okay, yes, Paul George and Joel
Embiid are gonna play for how long? Like what you're
just constantly waiting for the I predicted in part at
the start of the season or before it started. Excuse
me because I wanted to manifest good vibes that the
big three would play a thousand minutes together this year.
Grant you much of an idiot, I look like right now?
Speaker 2: Well, I was just kind of trying to think, like,
because it's an overreaction, I know, but okay, so how
many games do I think we'll just confine it to
Himbiid to keep it simple, Like is it actually possible
that Andre Drummonds gonna start more games than him? And
like you get a little ways into the you know,
let's really break it down. It's like, oh, he might
like that really it's like, cause, so let's say embiad
his back, he misses the first what ten games, Let's
say he comes back in game eleven. Maybe that's conservative.
I don't know. He's not gonna play back to back,
so that's I don't know how many back to back
teams have. Let's knock off like six or seven more there.
So we're approaching twenty missed games as it is. And
then okay, so is he gonna be just fully healthy
available for every single other game that's not a back
to back the rest of you, of course not. So
now it's like, well, Drummond needs to start like fifty games?
Actually does Drummond just need to start forty forty games?
And he will start more than embiid like not out
of the question. So yeah, it's an overreaction, but like you,
actually it's based on what's happened so far. You actually
do have to start thinking about it and wondering if, like,
oh my god, is that going to be right?
Speaker 1: And I do have to amend comments I said when
we were doing the news thing. It does seem like
the Sixers were fine publicly for saying that Joelbie wasn't
gonna play in back to backs, and so in a way,
they were almost giving fans a heads up when he
wouldn't be playing, and I took it the other way.
But yeah, this is Can we move on? I'm saying yes,
The Orlando and Philly back to back is super tough.
I seized that from you. I'm really sorry. Phoenix is
technically mine, even though I stole the sixers from you, Mike. Buttenholzer,
like Frank Vogel before him, is potentially probably going to
play Kevin Durant to literal, actual, likely irreversible death.
Speaker 2: Grant thoughts, seems pretty rational to me.
Speaker 1: It's an overreaction, but there's just what here's my thing,
and it's I get it. It's still early, but I
don't want to hear. Let's actually break it down this way.
What's the best way to manage Kevin Durant's workload? Efter
he placed sixth in total minutes in last year Grant
his age thirty five season. I'm not a doctor. I'm
also not particularly smart, but I'm pretty sure it's not
having him lead the league in total minutes during his
age thirty six season. I also don't want to hear,
and I was actually watching Kenny Beacham reacted to my
overreactions for Bleacher Report and his commenters got mad, and
he kind of dismissed it. Kd's a hooper, he wants
to play. I don't care, and look Kenny's he seems
like the nicest guy. Even when he criticizes my stuff,
He's super nice about it. Fuck that sentiment. It's awesome
that Kevin Durant wants to hoop, but it sucks that
you're so small in the front court that you're still
relying on him. And then also kind of the subplot
of this year, and I don't know if it's a subplot,
because I'm sure that Suns fans are just like enraged
Yusuf Nurkic is not good and he has the minutes
to back it up this year. So that's now, it's okay,
So we're super reliant on Mason Plumbley, and this is
we're at a point now where it's all right, well
what do we do after that? The Sons feel like
and this is a really tall order to say for
a team that's in the second apron and with just
standalone assets, then at that point when you don't have
first round picks to trade. What is the desirable contract here, No,
you're trading anyone, whether it's a Nurkic, whether it's a Kogi.
Maybe Grace and Allen would have some standalone value, but
he hasn't even played that well to start the year.
Nor is he playing like a ton. By the way,
Monte Morris has to be just really pissed that he
signed with his team. By the way, that's a nice
another little side here, So like, what is the you know,
what is to solve for of getting Kevin Reant fewer minutes?
I understand that that's still not a good position to
be in. He's averaging almost forty minutes per game. That's
too I don't care that we're five six games in
the season. That's too many minutes. Yeah, I don't care
that he's immortal. It seems like he is one of
the best basketball players of all time. He is literally
unstoppable most of the time. And I think the offensive
process for Phoenix has gotten way better. But he does
feel like we're sort of playing with fire here. The answer, though,
I just don't think is on the roster because what
is the everything I just said, what is the alternative?
Speaker 2: Well, that that is the exact problem, because what seems
likely to happen is because so I one of my
takes on this team is that, like there's two guys
in the starting lineup you're not sure going to be
able to be on the floor to close games that
you care about. And that's Nurkitchen Jones just because like
one defensive targets like you know, size, speed, all that stuff.
The problem is, like Kevin Durant just becomes more important
with this lineup construction the deeper into the season you
go and into the playoffs, because he might just have
to play a lot of center, like in those they
messed around with that last year. So like you're not
only wearing him down just in raw minute totals, now
you're doing it in advance of what is probably going
to be tougher demands on like physically what he's being
asked to do. Uh. So, like it's you're just you're
you're playing with firelike in both ways, I guess, like
I just I don't. Yeah, it's it's a huge problem,
but there is no solve for this, Like this is
this is what happens when you build a team this way.
There just isn't like you just don't have the ability
to reach down the depth chart and find someone they
can like, oh, let's give this guy ten of Katie's
minutes every night, Like.
Speaker 1: Right now, you don't give him credit for so he
played what he played forty four in the OT game
against the Clippers. That's not skewing the thirty nine point
seven and it's PERI, here's the game logging the not
OT games Grant thirty nine, thirty eight, thirty nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and here's the thing, like you I can
understand why you would do that, as as Budenholzer, because
he's playing great, Like he's shooting fifty three percent from
the field, forty six percent from three, like twenty seven
three and seven, blocking one point eight shots a game.
Like he's clearly their center if we're gonna look at that.
So like the production is not hurting from from the
minute total. So it's like you probably feel like you're
getting you're doing more than getting away with it at
some point that's just not gonna work like that.
Speaker 1: Just any way, it's it's weird to see bo and Booker,
especially Booker, logging fewer minutes and that just because they're
so deep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the spots. Yeah, like there's now.
Speaker 1: But the answer, the only actual answer that we haven't
mentioned is Bullboll still exists. And unless he's dealing with
an injury that I haven't seen or heard about, do
you just dust him off? It's oight here, take five
of Kdi's minutes per game. We're gonna lose those minutes
and we'll like, we'll figure.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know what to do, I mean more
Grayson Allen, more, Ryan Dunn. I guess like you know
they still though I think the bigger issue is just
like they don't they they can't trust Nurkic to play
playoff games, like a big big minutes in playoff games,
and so like what it ain't gonna be plumbing, So
I just it might just be Durant playing small ball five,
and like you can't just beat the crap out of
him for six months and then expect them to do that.
Speaker 1: Can you get uh Isaiah Stewart for use of Nurkic
if you include your twenty thirty one pick. I haven't
even looked. I need to look at the salaries, but
I think Nurkic makes more.
Speaker 2: I think he makes more I think Stuart's in like
the fifteen to seventeen range.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, oh yeah, Nurkic is higher than I thought.
He's at eighteen point one this season. Do Stuart make
low enough where it could be what's like a cheap
player on the Pistons that they could also give you
for because Isaiah Stewart's at if he's in the fifteen
range like you said, which you are right, he's fifteen
on the button, So give me another Detroit Pistons player
that's like can make three million dollars or something, and
that would I hear they're just throwing guys like Quinton
Grimes into deals, so maybe oh no, he's gone already
too late. You could Oh, they don't have I mean
it would be Marcus Sasser and uh, it would have
to be Marcus Sasser and Isaiah Stewart, which the sass
A is so redundant on this. You could get Bobie Clintman.
I'm intrigued as him as like kind of a stretch
big So but would you are you at the point
where you're pulling that like if Isaiah Stewart, if you
have to get off Nurkis and Isaiah Stewart's maybe the
best player you can get for that, or you doing
it with the twenty thirty one pick.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, I mean you're all in as it is, you
might as well. I like Stuart better than Nurkic. I
think just the energy, the shoot this fathing. Maybe like
you could actually play some five. Yeah, I don't know
why not.
Speaker 1: I just I don't think it's enough to twenty thirty one.
I like Stu, but we move on. Is it's still me?
It's still me again? Why did I seize the sixers
from you?
Speaker 2: You just wanted to talk about the sixers really badly.
Speaker 1: I'm going low hanging fruit here, but it's gonna lead
into a discussion about what the actual overreaction is. Why
are avery signs of Jeremy Grant both still on this team?
Damn it. My thought process here is all right. You
got Scoot coming off the bench. Fine, he's looked way better,
which is part of this. The fact that he looks
way better is okay. Shadon Sharp is out and we're
still not putting Scoot with the starters. He didn't start
his last game. I didn't watch the last Blazers game,
so I don't think he started, did he? Anyway, he's
looked better, and I'm so glad that you gave up
two first round picks and Malcolm Brogden just to make
Denny Avdia a smaller part of your offense. Which is
if you're not gonna just not play, and that's with
Matis Stibel injured by the way, So if you're not
if you're just not going to play, like unless you
don't want to play too, Monti Kamara, who I think
has lot more long term value to you than Jeremy
Grant at this point, just because he's twenty four years old. Uh, Like,
what are we doing here? So I just I mean,
you could even make the case that I guess because
they're so injured up front, but like, why isn't Donovan
Clinton playing more? I know he's a rookie, but isn't
this a team that you know you're like, you have
the timeline to play a rookie and I think, look,
Sharp is injured, but you are now in this is
year two of your complete just like start over. But
we're talking about you have three of the past top
seven overall picks, none of them are starting for you,
and none of them are averaging more than Only one
of them is averaging more than twenty five minutes per game.
Only one of them is averaging more than fifteen minutes
per game. For you, right now, christ Shane Sharp hasn't played.
That's too like, oh, we can't dismiss the Shane and
Sharp injury, but like, what's going on here? And I
don't I understand the theory of the Deniavia trade. I
understood it and now I'm understanding it even less. And
I think it was debatable. Is what I'm getting at
is that there was not an Iron Clan logic to
the Deniavida trade. And that's why I come back to
I think both Jeremy Grant and Affrey Simons are good players.
I think Simon's holds kind of an outsized importance because
of he's not hitting his threes right now, but just
the volume he takes them and his ability to take them,
although Grant is getting them up this year too, they
hold outsize importance if you're trying to streamline the development
of others. But I think the Blazers have gone too
far in the direction of let's have these proven players
here and give them minutes and just the way Danny
Aviya has looked this season offensively inside what they've assembled.
I just don't. I don't get it.
Speaker 2: This was always going to be the push and pull
with this team, right. We knew, we knew this was
the dynamic. We knew that they had sort of two
different teams on the same roster, and that like I
get but I guess the thought would have been, well,
they'll just well, actually, we had a fun conversation about
like what if what if the veterans on this team
are good enough to where they are just pushing for
a playing spot, which, like I don't know, maybe, but
but I think we are correct to typically just air
on the side of like, when you have these two
different timelines operating simultaneously, you just got to trade the
older one. And just because like you you just get like,
what's the scenario where you sort of maintain the status
quo and end up in a good place, right, Like,
I just don't. I guess the argument is you keep
the veterans around so it is easier for Scoot to
like maximize his potential, and same with kling In, although
it's a harder case to make with kling In because
just get guys out of his way and let him learn.
But like, I just that's not appealing to me. I
don't think. I think you're kind of in the same
boat where it's just like the second you have, you know,
as good of an offer as you think you're gonna
get on grant On, Simons on tyble On, like go
down the list, just pull the trigger and like get
this team more sensibly organized around like a like a
common age range. I guess. But yeah, I just I
don't have an answer to your overreaction question. I don't
know why they're still on the roster.
Speaker 1: It's honestly probably not a big enough overreaction. And too,
I didn't see I actually saw the clothes of Clippers Blazers.
Uh that the Blazers won, by the way, so maybe
weird to record this after that. But Scoot did not
start that. I didn't see the beginning of that.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, they've started the same five guys every game.
It's it's I mean, Avdya, Kamara eight and Grant and
Simon's Kamara. Like Kamara is like in the middle of
the two timeline because he's good now and is a
role player, but like he's still young enough to where
it makes sense as like a major complimentary piece of
a team built around Scoot and sharp and clinging. So
I don't know, don't treat him, is what I would say.
Speaker 1: I guess when you look at that lineup, do you
think that it's been good enough or insulated like what
bringing scooed off the but like as scoop and maximize
coming off the bench enough to say like, hey, we
need to stick with his lineup that's getting blitzed by
nine points per one hundred possessions and can't score, Like
they just can't score.
Speaker 2: It's hard because like we always we like devalue guys
that produce off the bench because it's like, oh, they're
going against backups. But at the same time, you want
Scoot to have like a I don't know, it depends
on like how much how much do you want to
have Scoot develop in like a trial by fire scenario
because that kind of was what happened last year. It
didn't go great. So like I understand the bench, you know,
coming off the bench and like just getting a rhythm
and going against easier competition, But like I don't think
you can go through the whole season doing that right,
like shitty starting lineup metrics. Notwithstanding, like, I don't think,
I don't think that's a that's like that seems like
an irrational way to approach his development. You can't just
be like, oh, he's a reserve guard, like you decided that.
Speaker 1: I also don't think can you make the argument that
they're trying to showcase let's say three of the guys
that are in the sunning line right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they ought to be right, like that's
that that would be what you should do. But who knows.
Speaker 1: We're still with me? Is this the run where there's
too many West teams?
Speaker 2: You got a couple more here.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to do any of this at the beginning.
You're so lucky. Sacramento Kings Kean Ellis slept with a
close personal friend of head coach Mike Brown and then
never called them. Am I overreacting?
Speaker 2: Do you think? I think in the search for explanations,
that's not the craziest one you could come up with.
Speaker 1: Mike Brown did come out, and I appreciate the candor said,
ke On Ellis's role is going to be situational, which, look,
Kevin Herder has played well this season, I think is
not only has he shot the ball better, I think
that his defense overall has been better. And so if
he's going to be the more dangerous shot maker and
not kill you on defense, which by the way, through
their first few games they are ninth in defense and
sixth in offense. It's resulted in a five hundred record, though,
so I don't like, we don't need to celebrate it.
I just when you look at how much their top
guys have played, something kind of has to give here
to why as Keon Ellis yet to even top He
played a little bit more in their blowout win over Utah.
But you have Kegan Murray at thirty seven point one,
Damar at thirty six point nine, do Mas at thirty
six point two. That's not a ke On Ellis thing.
That's a lot of Okay, we have Trey Lyles and
not we have Alex Lenne after that, and then Dearon
Fox at thirty six point one. You have Kevin Hurder
at twenty six point five, Malik Munk at twenty four
point seven. I understand there's a lot of bodies here,
but Kean Ellis had sub fifteen minutes per game with
by the way one DNP coach's decision sprinkled in. I
don't love it because I think they need the defense
of playmaking and peskiness he brings, and they're probably gonna
offset a little bit of their offense by doing that.
And he has not looked like I thought he had
a little bit more on ball wiggle and shake to him,
He's never gonna explore that on this team. But he's
he isn't shooting the three ball well. He hasn't taken
a ton of them because he's barely played, So I understand.
But I'm almost just kind of looking at this and saying,
you of the Kings of all teams, kind of knowing
how banged up even when your guys are gonna play
they can be by year's end. This doesn't feel like
the best allocation of minutes to me when you're looking
at the top eight of your rotation, and I'm just like,
if we move forward, this is the one I was
iffiist on. I thought about changing it, just because the
Kings are, like I said, top ten and off as
a defense so far, I just think at the top
like there's room to shave minutes off of Fox of
the Rosen, maybe not so much of Monk, but I
would say maybe even I herd her because this is
a guy who's had a lot of shoulder issues the
past like year and a half, and let's get Kean
Ellis just some more minutes in there, and yeah, changes
the dynamics of your team, but I think it could
maybe like let's try to limit the wear and there
on our best players right here.
Speaker 2: So I was It's funny. I was talking to a
King's season ticket holder, multi year season ticket holder this
morning and I specifically ask your wife, yeah, right, yeah,
the marriage would be over. H I asked him, like, so, like,
what's why is Herder playing so much? Like are are
you Like I'm fishing for him to be like yeah,
I can't believe it. I thought Ellis would. I stupidly
and uh conceitedly thought like what we had been saying
about Ellis and how important he is to balance out
an offense leaning team, like I thought everybody would think that, like, well, yeah,
Ellis should be playing more. But he was like no,
I mean like Herder moves great off the ball. The
defense is afraid of him, like he he can do
something with it if he gets closed out on and
like he's just a better, more versatile shooter paraphrasing, but
that was the gist of it, and I was like,
and he's like Ellis makes stand still threes and that's
kind of it. And I was like, wow, I you know,
I guess like if Herder is just a better overall player,
which is debatable, I think still given the needs that
this team we thought would have now the offense of
the defensive ratings suggests maybe we were like exaggerating that,
but like, I still think if you zoom all the
way out, this is a team that's gonna need more
than one good perimeter to Fender on the floor, and
Keithan Murray is the one. So this has got a
change still, even though Herder has been good and I
am receptive to like one more like really dangerous offensive
player in a lineup that already has several Like that's
kind of interesting in like a playing tier strengths kind
of framework. But I still I righte like Ellis just
has to get one minutes eventually, don't Maybe if this
is coincidentally keep bringing it up. Maybe this is a
Herder showcase. Maybe you're trying to prop up his value
because you know you're a inter thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look at he has been good. I
just don't know that this is sustainable and it just
feels weird. I guess I'm not a big believer in
kind of the defensive returns so far. I mean when
you see like kind of what happened at points during
the I mean the Lakers game specifically. I also just
I guess, my big I don't even know if this
is an issue, but it's okay, Well, what needs to
happen for him to get real minutes because you didn't
play him a ton against Utah where you like blue
doors off of them, So what kind of needs to
happen there for him? Like, what is what is the situation?
Will mean? I guess I want to know explain to
me the situation in which Kean Els is gonna get minutes,
because it doesn't seem like he's even guaranteed minutes in
a game that you're going to win rather comfortably.
Speaker 2: I think the situation is one, you've just traded her
her because you pumped his value up deliberately. Or two
they give up like one forty five, you know, three
times in a week, and then they realize this, this
starting lineup cannot continue.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to the Spurs. I have them as well.
I did steer clear Victor women Yaba for the most
part here do you think we should have leaned into
He's not going to figure it out on offense at
all because of the way defenses are just they've decided, well,
he's gonna do this to us on defense, like they're
loading up against Wemby. It's not like, yeah, really.
Speaker 2: Real quickly before, because we talk about Wemby plenty. I
do think what we've seen so far this season reinforces
the fact that, like there's no question about his defense,
it's still really hard to figure out, like how you
should use this guy offensively. Like I really still am
less sure about that than I've ever been. And part
of that's how defenses are playing him. But part of
that's just like the size and skill set and like
the types of players that teams are guarding him with.
I just like I don't know what to do with
him on offense.
Speaker 1: So my actual overreaction is the turnovers are here to stay.
I know Trey Jones has been banged up to start
the year, and I know Chris Paul's thirty nine, but
like he was brought on in part to solve this issue.
They are turning the ball over in eighteen percent of
their possessions basically, which ranks twenty seventh in the league.
That mark is not much better when Chris Paul is
on the floor, and I think you look at this
team and you say, okay, well this can be. It'll normalize.
For CP three in particular, he's turned the ball over
a bunch relative too. I mean if if the season
ended today, which luckily for them it doesn't, but his
career high turnover rate, what would you have guessed his
career high turnover rate was grant before this year?
Speaker 2: What is it this year? Just for point of reference, twenty.
Speaker 1: One point nine. And that's, by the way, that's like
a six point.
Speaker 2: Drop of what it. It can't be well, he's on
the ball all the time, I don't know, like fourteen percent.
Speaker 1: It's fifteen point eight and he's only been above fourteen twice. Okay,
So again, that's definitely a symptom of the personnel, of
poor spacing, of having to experiment. I've seen some people
were getting mad at like points where it looks like
Wemby and CP three are off the court together and
they're not going to love that. I understand it, And
I also understand that Chris Paul wasn't going to come
in as a thirty nine year old and have this,
you know, comprehensive change over everyone and experimenting with Stefan Cassell.
Of course that's going to add to it, but it's
super discouraging. And I don't like Devin Masel just by
coming in in virtue of opening up the floor, does
he change this it all? It kind of just feels
like the Spurs are This might be a more route
or a more subtle way of saying, I'm focusing on
the turnovers, but we were way too much on the
spurs and skis everybody, even us too. I think we're
more measured. Was just like, oh, this team is ready
to pop, and it's okay, let's let's kind of slow
our role here on this team because they're still going
through the typical growing pains despite having what we believe
to be is going to be one of the best
players of all time, Like they're twenty offense right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think like there's a chance that this
actually you're saying it's here to stay. This could just
get worse because one of the one of the one
of the things that that could happen this year is
they just like as they decide, like we just got
to get Wenby more touches. However that needs to happen,
and he's just gonna be a higher turnover guy because
of the hygh dribble, because of the like he tries
shit like which I think is a feature and not
a bug, Like he really will try to make some
passes that are just not there because he sees him
but it's just you know, so I think I think
that's actually a mark of a player that you know,
has a news splash. Wemby has like pretty high offensive potential,
but like I could just see especially Paul gets hurt,
that's gonna happen. And then you do just try to
force feed Wemby to try and just try different things
to figure out like how do we maximize what he
can give us? And I think that's just going to
produce more turnovers. So I think it could get worse.
Speaker 1: And they're not and I think people should not expect
them to try and make a trade and an attempt
to get better. I mean the defense is I mean,
how much of the Utah game is doing any heavy
lifting here? But like their fifth in defense, So like
that's you know, that's that's something. What were they If
you had to guess what were they before the Utah game?
Probably you think, oh, you think the jump was that big?
Speaker 2: I have I don't know. I just think every jump
is bigger than we get. We assume it's gonna.
Speaker 1: Be off the filter that out, but we we could
we could move on to message your team again, sucking grant.
Speaker 2: But it's your guy. Uh, the Toronto Raptors h R J.
Barrett is the second most important player to the Toronto
Raptors future. Uh, that's that's pretty hot, taky. Here's the
here's the gist of it. Uh. Scotty Barnes is one. Obviously,
even though his his uh he got his he got
his face broke recently, so that's gonna cost him what
three to four weeks I think? Or is that the
three to four weeks and then evalue reevaluated anyway, he's
out fractured orbital not great. This is just an argument
that Barrett at least has a case to be more valuable,
more important, big picture than Emmanuel Quickly, which might not
be something Raptors fans love because Quickly is the guy
that just paid. But I mean the way Barrett has
played so now, it's he's played a couple games this season,
but he looked like a different guy down the stretch
last year after coming over from the Knicks. The average
of twenty five, five and five is shooting threes at
a fifty percent clip, which is just like okay, but
like he still just seems like the guy that man
he gets going downhill and good things happen. He's got
the draft pedigree, Like there's a case here right that
that Quickly just is like a a really really great
backup or like a mid tier starting point guard, and
Barrett's just better than that at a wing position that
might matter more.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's an overreaction, maybe because I came
up with it. I actually the Raptors fan seem to
think that it might just be Graaty Dick is the
second most what.
Speaker 2: We're really going for it.
Speaker 1: Huh. Look, he's definitely got more on the ball, and
for someone who I think has moved a lot better
defensively this year, I could see it but I would
I still think think everything you said holds truer. I
do think because of maybe the facilitation potential, that's what
this might come down. I think the two things that
comes down to is you trust the manual Quickly's outside
shop making more both on and off the ball, right yeah, yeah, yeah,
but you're gonna try. I think you trust R. J.
Barrett's dynamics getting downhill, whether he's on off the ball more. Right,
So who winds up being the better facilitator slash defender
for this team? And as I talked about with Samson Folk,
Quickly hasn't been that good with the Raptors. I think
as he gets more familiar, you'll see him navigate the
Florence Greens better. But I think it's a discussion between
the two, right, just what they paid Quickly like he's
the answer, just because it's so long term and so
much money.
Speaker 2: And I would I would frame it too positively because
like I do think Quickly is gonna be a good
starter and can be better than that potentially. I think
this is just an acknowledgement that Barrett is like better
than than we thought. I think, I think I think
it's it's a good. It's a good issue if we're
having this discussion for the Raptors, not a like, oh quickly,
ain't it like that's not that's not the point of it.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the Utah Jazz. I'm curious whether you
think this is an overreaction. The rebuild is more behind
schedule than we actually think. And here's the thing. What
I mean by this is not looking at this season
and saying, oh, this team is supposed to be better,
by the way, if you care. San Antonio was fifteenth
in defense before that the Jazz game, by the way,
so it was a pretty big jump ten spots. But
you were still wrong, and I like to point that out.
Speaker 2: That's the important part.
Speaker 1: So the Jazz are kind of doing now. They're thirtieth
in offense, twentieth in defense. They have yet to win
a game. I get what they're doing now, and it's
the right thing to do. I want to make that clear.
But you look at it and you say you at
least wanted to have this idea or hope that oh,
maybe the best player of the next good iteration of
the Jazz is on this team, or maybe even the
like the second best player, And you can default to
Larry market In there, but is he really going to
be on the long term iteration of the Jazz If
I had to pick the non Larry Marketing division, I
don't see anyone right now who looks like they can
even be the second best player on the really good
iteration of the Jazz. And Cody Williams is not played
enough for us to go there. Taylor Hendricks the devastating
injury that just fucking sucks, Walker Kessler, even peak Walker
Kessler is not going to be that guy. Kiante George is.
I don't know you ever have these players you feel
a certain type of way about. But the aesthetics of
his game they look so good at like not the
turnovers obviously, but getting to his spots, how smooth he
can look like shooting the ball, making passes, and then
you just go look at the numbers or just watch
him miss all these shots, and it's all right, is
this are these two things ever gonna kind of overlap
the aesthetics with the numbers And the answer feels like, no,
I know, We're a season and change into his career.
That's where I'm kind of at on the Jazz is
they're not in a terrible spot because of these young
players still might be good, and they have all these
other picks and they have all this flexibility moving forward. However,
to not have like even someone who resembles a tent pole, well,
now we're what this is year three of the rebuild.
Yeah that's concerning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the extra picks and the flexibility and all that
stuff helps, but yeah, it's just I mean, the Hendrick's injury,
what are you gonna do? But that removes one guy
at least for now that we can sort of like
start looking at like, oh, is he maybe gonna be
like he didn't look like it before the injury, and
now we're just gonna have to wait. I mean, Walker
Kesseler is someone they keep, I guess trying to trade
or at least are open to. I mean like yeah,
and I feel actually you asked, like do I have
those guys that I feel George is that is one
of those guys for me where it's like the aesthetics
are there, like you could see the flashes of like
that guy looks like a good, like exciting starting point guard,
and then the production just is what it is, Like
it's all eye test, you know, in the positive sense
for him. Yeah, I mean, and you'd love to blame
it on the like you know, half assed tanks of
the last couple of years, but like, yeah, you didn't
get Wimby that was a mistake or you didn't you know,
you could have done better in that draft positioning yourself.
But like they came out of this one with Cody Williams,
and like in this draft, like who knows, Cody Williams
might just be the best guy. That's that's not totally
off the table at this point.
Speaker 1: My even by this year's rookie class standards, my Cody
Williams will make top finished, top three Rookie of the
year voting predictions not looking So.
Speaker 2: It's so early. It's so early, Like I I mean,
do you think.
Speaker 1: This as an appropriate overreaction that or is it not overreaction?
Speaker 2: No? This is this is well, this is like the
correct take. I feel like unfortunately, so maybe it's not
a good overreaction. It's a correct reaction.
Speaker 1: Onto your Yeah, Washington Wizards and my large adult son.
Speaker 2: Dan billall coolbal is a future All Star.
Speaker 1: H wow.
Speaker 2: A fair amount of tape on this fella. A couple
of days ago, unrelated to this, there was a really
good write up with a lot of scouts takes in
Josh Robbins for the Athletic has been doing that for
for some I think just Wizards players, but coolally like
makes one showed up different than we thought as a rookie,
had better feel, just was more of like a basketball
player than anybody, like always raw, like he's just a
bunch of tools, Like he was more than that from
the jump. And now I do think you can just
bank on this guy's going to be a defensive monster
at a premium position because he can just guard your
six seven sixty eight guys and anything smaller than that
I'm he's fine with because he just has length and
foot speed. So the defense I think is gonna be there.
And then some of the on ball stuff, like some
of the finishing, some of the three point shooting flashes
you get like and you just you marry that just
with the frame, like just I know, I feel like
this partly got me into trouble with Kaminga and a
lot of other guys where it's like he's this size,
he's this athletic, and he could he's showing signs of
stuff on both ends of the court. I'm just like,
I'm in I just want to buy stock in that
guy and Koli Bally. I think it sells him short
to just say, oh, it's about the like physicals, it's
about the that's a factor because he does have like
real game on both ends. So I know I don't
have to sell you on this, but but I think
I think it's legitimate that he has an all star potential.
Speaker 1: What do we talk about a lot on this podcast,
And one of my favorite words probably a cliche at
this point when it comes to stardom or high end
players scalability. The Atlanta Hawks game, which I that was
the game of his NBA life, so it's like not
the greatest example, but he did literally everything, whether it
was just space the floor, hit threes, there was I
think my favorite sequence of the game is navigates the
floor to screen perfectly, is able to like intercept the
past that's trying to come in over his head, defers
it goes, they go the length of the floor, someone
misses a shot and he's there just to put it back.
Like this guy is just all like he is way smarter.
It's not just yeah, those physical tools are on display,
but he's using them so intelligibly more than obviously you
or I didn't. We don't cover the draft like that,
so we were going off other opinion. So I'm not
gonna poo poo other people's takes.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: I just look at him, and I'm like, there is
We said it last year, used the word feel this
year there is more to the point where from the
first like one or two games, I was concerned he
wasn't gonna shoot enough because he was just so focused
on like developing the handle on the vision rant. He's
their most efficient scorer out of the pick and roll
right now.
Speaker 2: That's terrifying.
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's not he's I mean, he's averaging
a point per possession out of the pick and roll.
So I want to make it clear, it's not he's more.
He's twenty and.
Speaker 2: He's not like a point guard. So I mean, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And look, that's sixty fifth percentile. You you want to
I'll pick that from black cool BALI right now. Oh yeah,
you have to talk me out of it, and it
would be I think the position would still be will
he be on ball enough? Will he have the numbers enough?
And the answer is he's averaging over eighteen points per
game right now. And you would argue is just yes,
they have featured him more, but this is not like
his his usage overall is eighteen point three. So this
is not we don't get into total usage. You can
get into the like facilitation. This is this is their
third option who's averaging eighteen points a game. And I
think he's someone who cold at least be a team's
second option. And what might you be you want to
you know, you have Carrington and Pool and Kuzma is
he probably their fourth on certain possessions. So I just
look at him and I think he's good. If you
give me an over under one point five All Stars
right now, I'm gonna take the over. I think he's
shown so much.
Speaker 2: I think I think the the like again, the physical
tools are just like that alone is a head start,
and then the fact that like he also has like
you pointed out, like he's just way further along like
feel wise and intelligence wise. And then there's like he's
kind of like whatever weird niche like NBA thing you
like to fixate on. He kind of gives you some
of that, Like he's really hard to screen, and he's big.
Like usually the guys that are hard to screen are
like real, you know, you're like Marcus Smart was hard
to screen, Like it's rare for that to be the case.
Usually it's a little quick guys or whatever. Just he
has all these weird, little niche things that he flashes
where you're like, oh, that's like a that's a weird
premium skill that we could just like add to the
package of Like also, maybe he's a first option offensive
creator in three years.
Speaker 1: And look, that's the That's what we don't know, because
as good as he is right now, we have to
see And I think it helps the fact that he
can get his points in transition, play off the ball
really well. But look at his drives. I think he's
shooting fifty percent on drives this year. I believe they're
a little bit up from last year. Can he facilitate
out of those when defenses starts to load up against him?
Can he create for more of these dead stops? I
think that he's shown like the field intelligence I'd predicted, yes,
I don't know if I'd go as high as number
one option, but we haven't seen that response to his
breakout just yet I think because he was still sort
of this unknown quantity. The final thing I'll just ask you.
I've found myself after that Hawks game, torn between trolling
the Pacers for not just taking this guy who looks
like everything they need and then kind of deferring to well,
he wouldn't be playing for them anyway. Is what is
the more correct course to go here? Because Jared Walker's
not playing? Yeah, right, he had this opportunity to break
into the rotation last year and didn't.
Speaker 2: I think I can you can forgive the Pacers for
just not seeing it because like a lot of people
apparently didn't with cool Bally, But like, I think he
would be playing. I mean, like I think you didn't.
I like Aaron E. Smith as much as the next guy,
but I think you could play him over him. I
think maybe he's just in there instead of m hard
potentially like that. I yeah, that feels like a missed opportunity.
So I think trolling is probably the correct way to go.
Speaker 1: Lightning round time, mister Hughes, we have subscriber overreactions. I
will take us through them, or will alternate, but I'll
start first. This one hurts, but when I put it first,
because of the Palo injury. Rhet Bauer says, Palo Bancaro
already is what NBA Twitter said Anthony Edwards was going
to be. And then we had Philip who actually Philip
I think was the only one to appear in here
twice because he is a second spicy one I liked.
Palo won't win MVP, but we'll finish ahead of SGA
and Luca. Let's work backwards. He's not going to qualify
for MVP at this point, right that take, But that
would have been I could have seen it with SGA
because you could go the whole central force route and
SGA has all this other Yeah, I would have been
hard pressed to get there with Luca.
Speaker 2: Luca would just have to have gotten hurt. That's the
That's the only way.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the second one or the
first one?
Speaker 2: I guess technically so like face of the League stuff
or or that kind of thing. I mean, I will say,
watching that fifty pointer, it was just like, oh my god,
what do you do with this guy? Which is how
you do feel about Anthony Edwards when he's on a heater.
But the Bankero's just like physical, overwhelming style was even
though that fifty pointer had a lot of jumpers in it.
Just that was like my one note on that we'll
never know, or we won't know for four to six weeks,
I guess, is my reaction.
Speaker 1: There, I think he's out in definitely was the time table, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the shorter one. I think was what they gave.
Speaker 1: Next up is we have excuse me a some choking.
Oh boy, this is yours fun dat Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this from be rich. Steph Curry is holding back
this new era of the Warriors, and I do He
did want me to uh let everyone know that he
delivered this take very shortly after undergoing actual brain surgery,
but I feel like the take makes that clear, So
I don't feel like we need to let people people
know I almost killed Dan. If you're not watching that video,
it's a it's a half serious take, but I do
think it to view it charitably, it's just acknowledging how
deep this Warriors team is and how beautiful their style is.
With thirteen great players.
Speaker 1: We haven't even pulled out the fuck it's so deep
meme for the Warriors. Somebody needs to do that. But
I will say not to take this overly seriously. It
does speak further to Steph's low maintenance and scalability that
he's third of the Warriors in points per game. So
it's just like we're not hearing in grouse.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well and just how there's no question, it's
like there's never gonna be like, oh, what's what about
when Steph comes back? Is he gonna disrupt all this? Like? No, no,
he's he does the opposite of that.
Speaker 1: My turn. We had this from retro Braiden. The Bucks
window has truly ended. It could still be a team
that wins enough games to make the playoffs every year,
but they will never be in championship contention. Ever, again
leads to Giannis asking out sooner than we thought. That's
from retro Brayden. We did cover the Bucks. I don't
even like this is a proper reaction at this.
Speaker 2: That's just correct. You're right, you're right, retro Braden accurate.
Speaker 1: So very quickly, this is the point of the round.
You don't get to elaborate on this is Giannis on
the Bucks in twenty six yes or no, Nope, elaborate
and I'm just kidding, just kidding.
Speaker 2: Next up, Oh, here we go. The Bucks need to
be blown up. Trade everyone fire Doc. Also, Willy Green
from the Pels will be the first coach fired. From Mattiel,
I mean we're on board with all the Bucks stuff,
will you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Will? I mean we're what what other card do it?
What's the trade that you want them to make? I
don't it's a little too early. I guess what we've
seen a lot of Willy Green as a head coach,
though we haven't.
Speaker 2: Those are the two, right, I don't know who what
other coach? He like, Billy Donovan just seems to keep
skating by. Uh so those are those are your two?
Speaker 1: It's I think he is the coach most likely to
get fired, but I don't know if he I don't
know how much he deserves it. I would say he's
not blameless. Oh boy. The Utah Jazz have nothing to
show for their rebuilds so far. They don't have anyone
who projects out to be a number one option on
a decent team, and they are on the path to
perpetual mediocrity. That's from carroten Hold. I love Flames on
this take. We kind of just talked about it. I
would agree. I wouldn't say they have nothing to show
for their rebuild. The bounty of picks they have, they
could go out and I'll frame it this way. They
have the ability to create their own trade market if
they want to. Next up, Oh, this is for you, Grant,
this is yours.
Speaker 2: Oh, Ryan Dunn will at least be the Sun's fourth
best player, All Rookie First Team and a top five
defensive wing by the end of the season. From usher,
I mean fourth best, Okay, So Tyas Jones has got
to take a seat there. I guess like Royce O'Neill,
yusef Nurkic, I mean, if you've told me Ryan Dun's
gonna shoot forty percent from three on decent volume, then
like there's a real case here just because of the
defensive versatility, low usage role guy. He's kind of everything
you'd want from O'Neill, except just younger, more athletic. So
overreaction a little bit, But like, how else do you
react to a guy who just could not shoot at
all becoming like a plus shooter. I don't know, Like
I think it puts everything else on the table.
Speaker 1: Here's a list of every member of the Sons who
has made more threes than Ryan Done. Kevin Durant, Devin Booker,
that's the list. So I honestly all rookie first team,
I particularly making all rookie teams. I'll go on board
first teams. Well, with this draft class, it sucks.
Speaker 2: You read the whole thing about nobody's getting fifteen No
one scored fifteen points yet it's just like.
Speaker 1: So that's okay, that passes this inn if test. So
does I mean fourth best player? I so honestly, the
first team All rookie is probably the most like the
easy like, yeah, okay, fourth best player. I mean a
fifth best player might be his floor.
Speaker 2: I mean he might get their fourth best is tough
because there are like established veteran NBA players on this team,
but like, couldn't you see you know, the the black
box that is some of these advanced metrics. He just
grades out as like an elite defender, like for by
defensive estimated plus minus or like defensive rap whatever like
And that's just how he is statistically the fourth best player.
That's not being their own possibility at all.
Speaker 1: No. I mean, look, they're seventh in defense right now.
They've been outperforming their offense. So I favor this one.
I think he'll get one of these three things in
the bank.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect overreaction because it's it involves a rookie
who's doing a thing we didn't think he could do
for six games. Like, it's a perfect overreaction.
Speaker 1: I love that one. That was great. Thank you Usher
who Andrew Abraham. I miss Julius Randall already? Is there
a way to trade him back to the Knicks? I mean,
like we can cook up some trades where.
Speaker 2: You feel, do you miss Julius Randall? Is that is
that a common Knick sentiment? Or are they like, ah,
we could really use that secondary playmaking.
Speaker 1: Most Knicks fans are probably more optimal there. I think
Knicks fans are in the stage of you can't count
the Boston game, and it's just like, yeah, you taking
count twenty five percent of their schedule. That's my whole
thing is Boston was the measuring stick. I think this
proves how far away they probably are from Boston. It'd
be nice to see them with Mitchell Robinson impressious of
Chew and what that looks like a little bit. I
don't know. I'm still open minded on the Cat edition.
We talked about this already. I will say though, and
we've now said this, I do feel better about the
trade from Minnesota's perspective than I do about the Knicks,
because I think it started to set in the sobering
reality of what would happen if this doesn't play out
almost perfectly for New York and how boxed in that
they would be unless they make the Yannis trade that
we outlined for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a soft landing for the Wolves relatively speaking,
and there's kind of just not one for the Knicks.
Speaker 1: Shout out Andrew though. Yeah, Julius Randall, I don't think
he's been that bad a minutisol. There's definitely awkwardness in
the starting five and with Gobert, but I think they're
again I've changed my perception of them by the possession,
but I think he's been fine for the most part.
I like these are good ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got a two for from Austin here for
the Pacers will finish sub five hundred. Let's take that one. Uh,
that feels like an overreaction, but we did just call
them the twenty one Atlanta Hawks. I don't remember their record.
I think I probably they would have won like thirty
six games the next year or something like that.
Speaker 1: Aren't they contractually obligated to win no more than thirty
seven at this point, I'll double check that also is
a Pacers fan.
Speaker 2: I know, Well, so this is a this could be
a reverse Jinx attempt, but I don't I don't think
it is. I mean, sub five hundred is rough. I
feel like that's a Haliburton injury or a Siakam injury maybe,
because like they should win even if even if you think,
like all the offense just can't be second best anymore
and the defense is going to be a prop like
I don't know, like, well, they could win forty three.
Speaker 1: They lost, I mean, they barely beat the Pistons and
then they got blitzed by the Knicks. They needed overtime
to beat a Sixers team that doesn't have Embiid or
Paul George. They lost to what was a good version
of the Orlando Magics, and they were within for that,
and then it took them overtime to I mean, they
beat the Celtics, which which no one else has this season.
So there's that. It's definitely spicy, but someone's got a
kind of like who is it good? Like is it
gonna be the Knicks or the Bucks that are in
Who's more like go to finish under five hundred? Philly,
Milwaukee or Indiana. I don't know why I'm yelling at you,
by the way, I apologize.
Speaker 2: Man, those are all good. I guess you probably have
to say Indiana just because we know that the top
end versions of those other two teams are just better
than Indiana can be.
Speaker 1: The vibe Indiana seem a lot better than in Philly
and Milwaukee, though, if that's how it comes.
Speaker 2: To, yeah, I hate this is like a I always
like cringe when I hear this like line of reasoning.
I just I'll just say, like Bill Simmons does this
all the time, where he's like, there's always a team
that you thought was gonna be good that falls out,
you know that kind of thing. There's always a this
and we just don't know who it's gonna be yet.
Because it's like, well, okay, I don't know what actual
like logical point you're making, but the Pacers are maybe
just just that team that is like, ah, we kind
of oversold them. We should have seen this coming. They're
not quite that good. That that fits to me. The
second one here from Austin Also, the Lakers will finish
top four in the West with Ad making First Team
All NBA.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 2: There's not either there might be one or two guys
I'd take over eighty for m VP right now, And
we just spent a lot of time lauding the Lakers.
Top four is that's hard, But I definitely am on
board with Ad being a first teamer. I think you're
gonna need the Nuggets to stay struggling, maybe a couple
other issues to get them up into the top four though, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, but it's also kind of like, oh,
where the Warriors is gonna stay where they are. There's
a lot of like fluidity in the West, right.
Speaker 2: There is more than we would I mean, okay, see
Minnesota Dallas, you'd probably put ahead of the Lakers, but
like Minnesota has looked beatable on some nights, I mean haven't.
Speaker 1: Even peaked offensively yet. So I do this is a
This is a very good overreaction that both of these
Nice job Austin. Next one will be for me and
it comes from Pelicans, Adam. I'm really worried about that
the Pelicans are going to be bottom five and three
point attempts and defensive rebounding all year. I would say,
Adam One, thank you for your contribution. You are not
worried enough because this is just a fact. There's they're
gonna be bottom five and three point attempt thre eight
like that's just pencil that in. And defensive rebounding. You
let two of your more valuable rebounding bounders go for
nothing in Yanna talent Uness and Naji Marshall, and you're
injured to high hell right now. So where's the rebounding
coming from? Is it like Eve's mec is gonna come
in there? Is he gonna be like solve this? Zion
has never historically been that greater rebounder, So I think
you're appropriately concerned. I have larger concerns for this as
such as are they even just gonna figure it out
on offense in general?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the problem is that the defensive rebounding
was foreseeable because they just like you said, they lost
guys that rebound and they were gonna play small like
the three point attempt thing. Just if you're gonna play
smaller more often in five out and have Zion drive
to kick and suck the defense and like there's no
excuse for the three point attempts being what they are.
Even if you're got, if you have guys that you
want shooting them hurt, like, that's just still still just
like a stylistic choice. You're just not prioritizing those shots.
Speaker 1: Next one is gonna be for you, mister Hughes.
Speaker 2: All right, this is from Thomas Lonzo. Ball will not
be traded and the Bulls will make it to the
second round of the playoffs. I mean the trading part.
So he's out with a wrist injury. It's grade one
or two ten days. I think was the problem. Disney,
We're good. I mean, like, is there anybody else that
just everyone's rooting for like this? Like isn't isn't this
kind of like well, besides, he has one hundred and
one percent approval rating. Ball is just at one hundred.
Speaker 1: Cody, who were some of the podcast fa We've got
bismock Biambo fans in the discord.
Speaker 2: A lot of bismack surprising, I would say, a surprising
amount of bismack Beyombo talk.
Speaker 1: Which is to say, from one which is a little
bit shout out b JP.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's take this one at a time. Will not
be traded that I'm in on because he expired.
Speaker 1: Trade him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's expiring, Like I don't know what doesn't have
a player option or no, this wasn't a player option year. Yeah,
I think he's I think this is the last year
make it to the second round. So unless you're prepared
to say that they are going to be a top
four seed, you need them to be one of I
mean Boston, like Boston, I think first like Boston. We'll
just say it was Philly, Milwaukee, Cleveland, whatever. Uh, that's
a tough one. I do hope that Lonzo Ball does
not get traded and is in fact the reason they
win a first round series. But that's that's a that's
a pretty solid overreaction.
Speaker 1: I will say, if they stay in the top ten
of defense, after going from Andre Drummond to Jalen Smith
in the center rotation, going from Alex Caruso to Josh
Giddy in the guard rotation, having Zach Lavine play more
minutes this year, I guess the rozen's not there. That'll
be well, that'll be a feat.
Speaker 2: There's witchcraft happening. If if that's how it ends up.
Speaker 1: Billy Donovan for coach of the Year. You heard you first,
we're getting into some Denver I had cut a lot
of Denver Nuggets. If we had Denver nugg we had
so many of them.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Nicole J. Cole says, the Denver Nuggets will be in
the play in So this is this takes it a
step further than me talking about the Jokic scoring title grant.
The Nuggets are a playing team and by the way,
that just means that they're not top six in the West. Yeah,
let's go through it. We have I'm prepared to say that, okay,
See is better than Denver. Is that the hottest take
you've ever heard? Okay See, Phoenix and Minnesota feel like
the Locks and Dallas fell lots to be better than Denver.
At this point, that's four you seed Golden State, the Lakers.
Speaker 2: Name the Kings, Like the Kings could just be the
fifth seed? Why not? Like that's that's that's a Houston, Yeah,
there's I mean Memphis, right, Memphis. This is this is
not an overreaction. I think this is like this acknowledges
the downside here and like if Jokic gets hurt, they're
probably not even a playing team, right, Like they're just
the you. You're in the lottery and you don't get
this pick.
Speaker 1: Probably next up we have this is from philm. This
was I liked this one. This is for you too.
Speaker 2: Chet will be the reason SGA doesn't win MVP, so
they them, I mean, it makes sense. It's just like Ifga,
SGA like probably played about as well as he could
last year, didn't win it, and now the talent around
him is rising, and so the argument that it's not
just him gets easier to make. So like, and Chet
just has looked I mean, we we maybe didn't we
maybe should have transferred over fifteen to twenty five percent
of our Jada hype onto Chet. I feel like right
like he's been unbelievable. He's been better than Jadob so far.
Speaker 1: And this team hasn't started, by the way. Just okaysee Thunder,
they just haven't started hitting their threes yet. Oh by
the way, you know who you know who's actually the
one who's hitting their threes. Lou Dort as he's known
to do. It's lou Dort just continuing to make those threes.
Next one we have coming up from Okay, here you go,
settle a grant from are they good NBA. The Pacers, Kings,
and Bucks all underperform this year, missing the playoffs, while
the Warriors, Hornets, and Bulls make the playoffs. The Warriors
get to the second round, while the Hornets and Bulls
are first round exits. And yes, this gives the Bulls
front office just enough hope to probably not trade Levigne
or Vouch. That's again from are they good NBA? I'll
start here. I don't think there's a market for Vouch personally.
Maybe the Pelicans if they just wanted someone who could rebound.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But so let's break this. Let's start with the Pacers, Kings,
and Bucks. While all underperform. I think the spiciest version
of that is.
Speaker 2: The Kings, right, yeah, because they're the same, Well yeah,
because they're like the safest, right, They're the safest regular
season team in the group.
Speaker 1: Here, what would underperforming be for them? Just relative to the.
Speaker 2: I mean, missing the playoffs would be underperforming right because
he said missing the play Yes, all right, so I'm
missing the playoffs.
Speaker 1: What do you make of the Doves may making the playoffs?
I can get on board with the Hornet and the
Bulls making the playoffs. Is a different but that's yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's hard. But at the same time,
like we're just sitting here asking a lot of tough
questions about the Pacers and the Bucks and the Sixers
and the Heat and Jill go down the line like
I don't know, somebody's sneaking in. It seems like there's
gonna be some some unexpected openings there. H So are
are the Hornets and the Bulls the two teams to
fill those? I mean, if it's not gonna be Toronto, Brooklyn, Washington, Like,
I don't know, it's kind of like a process of
elimination argument here.
Speaker 1: I so, if you had to pick of the teams,
most likely it missed the playoffs from Pacers, Kings or Bucks.
Who are you going with? I'm probably he's concerned with
the Kings, but at the same time, they play in
the West, the right simmer.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to. I know this is overreacting,
but we I kind of we can't say the Bucks.
The Bucks have the blow it up potential though, now,
like that's that's that's that's a factor. I I guess,
oh man, it's I guess it's the Pacers, But the
West being what it is. The Kings. I think the
Kings are again the safest team here, Like as far
as you've got to bet your life, they're gonna win
forty five games, Like I feel like that's still the Kings.
But that might just not be enough in the way
I think.
Speaker 1: I think what helps them is that they seem to
have the highest floor or a higher fluida where so
you know they'll be in the play in where it's
could you see the Pacers missing the playing all together
and like not even having a chance to get into
the playoffs?
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe, I mean they're all that's this is a
tough call. They're all like you can make the case
for all three of these teams here, which is not great,
like Thet's.
Speaker 1: Make the playoffs, Dubs Warriors or Hornets or Dubs Dubs
Hornets are bulls.
Speaker 2: Of making them, I mean the Warriors, like even in
the West, Okay, yeah, I mean Charlotte's tempting. I just
don't believe in the Bulls despite the start.
Speaker 1: I think the most likely part of this is that
both zach Lavine and Nikolovuvic don't get traded. Is probably
the most sat.
Speaker 2: RULs fans are like losing their minds right now.
Speaker 1: Oh here's this is a fun one.
Speaker 2: All right, I think, isn't me. I'll take it. The
Calves are firmly in championship contention. Good games only Yep.
Should we move on? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Talk, Yeah, I think we're done the Calves. Are we
over I think even we overthought the Calves with the downside,
Remember you and I got caught up. We're pretty good
at not being prisoners of the moment. But after the
Jared Awn hit piece then the playoffs, you're like, there's no.
Speaker 2: Way, no way. I was, to your credit, I was
worse than you about about like there's no chance they
go forward with this. I was wrong about the Don
Mitchell thing.
Speaker 1: We were about the first Jared Allen contract, that we
were wrong about him southing.
Speaker 2: We should probably, I'll just take it. I should not
be allowed to discuss the Calves anymore. I think I
think my hit rate is too low on Cleveland, which
is bad news because I think they're great now.
Speaker 1: So sorry, this is like me being high on the Grizzlies.
It's the kids of death. I think this. I think
this might be our final one right here. Yeah, this
one so jt Ix hitter John Collins will win sixth
Man of the Year.
Speaker 2: I mean John Collins had a great dunk the other
night I saw. That's the best thing I can say
so far.
Speaker 1: You know, what helps him is that he will not
be the one starting. It seems in Taylor Hendrix is absence,
so he he will continue to come off the bench.
But I mean he has had what would you say,
like two above average games.
Speaker 2: I mean then you you know, trying to help out here.
I would assume if and when he's traded, he will
not be a starter. So he's gonna preserving eligibility is key.
I think he's I think he's safe on that front. Man.
Speaker 1: When I started hitting threes again, he's had one good
three point shooting game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What a precipitous fall for John Collins. Remember remember,
like you know, there was real It really felt like
there was something there in the early years with the Hawks.
But it's just I don't know what his future in
the league is as far as being part of a
winning team.
Speaker 1: Grant, we made it in under three hours. You're welcome
to our listeners. Are you ready to take us out
of here?
Speaker 2: Happy to every ready. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the
submissions actually on this one. Always good to get some
listener and viewer participation. Appreciate that if you haven't already, rate, review, subscribe,
thumbs up on YouTube, leieve comments on YouTube, join our discord.
That's how we got most of these submissions. I think
not too many Twitter submissions. Were they all discord?
Speaker 1: They were? No, we had to Twitter submissions all right,
to YouTube submissions or yeah with Twitter, sorry.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that's how you can participate. We always appreciate that.
It's good, good discussion discussions going on in there all
the time. Live game Campfires channel is always very helpful
if you want to catch up on what's going on
that night, you're coming to it late. Links for that
in YouTube and podcast description. How you can get involved there.
I think that's going to cover it. Tell your friends,
tell your enemies. Apologies, Jared Allen shouts Frank Milkina