Latest / Small Ball with Kenny Beecham / The Western Conference Has Too Many Good Teams

Transcript

The Western Conference Has Too Many Good Teams · Small Ball with Kenny Beecham

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Kenny Beachum podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you right off rip that I, Kenny Beachum, appreciate you.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: A couple days ago, we did a launch, an official first official first episode of the Kenny Beachum Podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're watching on YouTube and you see me do these quotation marks, you're probably wondering what does that even mean?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've been on audio, the Spotify and the Apple, you know that I'd have done like four five episodes before the YouTube channels around.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was under the name Not an NBA Podcast by Kenny Beachum.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then y'all showed so much love on Net that I was like, you know what?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta we gotta relaunch this.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta change the name.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta get a YouTube channel, and we did that.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all showed out the first episode, the Damien Little Trade, I think has like 100,000 views, which again is well more than what I anticipated.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, typically, I'm I'm gonna let you behind the curtain of how things work in this industry, right?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Usually somebody is launching a new show, a YouTube channel, whatever, whatever, they do a press run, they do a bunch of promotion leading up to the first episode.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I ain't do that.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I ain't tell y'all nothing was happening.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: The day that the first episode dropped, I made one singular tweet that said, hey, go check it out.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all showed out, and I that's just the community that we've been able to build over the years.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say again that I appreciate the support that y'all gave on the first episode.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, that not hopefully 100%, that is the first of many because I am here and I really the fact that y'all really enjoyed those episodes lets me know that this is the the lane that I should be going down.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to say again, I appreciate you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's do some housekeeping because I appreciate you, but I also want you to keep showing that support.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So leave a like if you are on the audio platforms.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Kenny Beach and Podcast YouTube channel launched, the link, or just go to YouTube and type in Kenny Beach Podcast.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you can find it if you listening to it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But if you are a YouTube watcher, I I would I would ask you to go to your Spotify and your iTunes to pre-download the episodes.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, Kenny, why?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm already here on YouTube.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have a quest.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I have this goal.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I got a whiteboard down here in the in the basement.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Spoiler alert, that's where this set is for the moment.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's in the basement.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I got this whiteboard right behind the camera.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: It says goes for the 2023-2024 season.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the number one goal that I have is to take the number one spot in the basketball podcast of, I guess it's just of the United States.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say of the world, but they don't have the world, but they have of the United States.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when we dropped the first episode with Damian Lillard, not with Damian Lillard, now that would have been crazy, of the Damian Lillard trade, we peaked at about the fifth, which again is crazy without any promotion, just saying, hey, y'all go check it out.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: We got fifth.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know who number one is?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's Unk.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's Unk, Shannon Sharp.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, clubs say, they do some great things over there.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, they're well, they're they're a lot more than the basketball podcast.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're probably mostly a football podcast, if we're being honest with each other, but they do a lot of other stuff.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they do some interviews with people that are outside of sports completely, but of course they do the chat Ocho Cinco stuff.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: They they have a lot going on, but they're still the number one basketball podcast in America.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Shannon Sharp, I want to compete with you.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is the this is the one lane where I have a chance to be Shannon Sharp or something.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it route running?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: He got me.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is it anything physical?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's killing me.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But but this is the one realm where I feel like I could get number one eventually.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a long race.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm racing against a person that don't even know I'm here, I'm here.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But we stick up, if we stick up on him and take that spot, he's gonna he gonna have to realize that the the Candy Beach and podcast, the community that we are building is real.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are on YouTube, go over, leave five stars, pre-download, just follow the show, uh, leave a like on this episode.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it, man.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing today?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I want to talk about how ridiculously deep the Western Conference is and try to put these teams into tiers, but with a with a little bit of a twist.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: We got to talk about the news around the association.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's been a while since we've talked.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: My apologies for that.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The NBA preseason has officially started.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Joel and Bede committed to Team USA.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Kai Jones officially requested a trade on Twitter.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a lot to talk about.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So buckle in, ladies and gentlemen, leave a like.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Five stars.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I want to talk to you about my approach for the 2023-2024 season.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned a white board behind the camera.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And on this whiteboard, again, this is gonna be corny, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a song, I don't remember what song, so uh, you can comment it if you want to.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a song by J.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Cole where at the end of his his uh his verse, he said, if they don't know your dreams, then they won't shoot them down.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I have always been a guy that had kept my goals kind of tucked there.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when I hit them, I did that.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I did that.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really tell my goals, but today I'm giving you two of those.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is being the number one basketball podcast, and number two is to change my approach to way I to the way I cover the game of basketball.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, again, I I don't want to have people thinking if you're new around here that I'm a reporter, I'm an inside, I don't have none of those.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I do have is two eyes and a brain that is hyper focused on my special interests, which is basketball.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I think for the 2023-2024 season, I personally, and this is just me grading myself, I personally took a little step back in the way I covered the sport.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, Kenny, what do you mean by that?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I feel as though I I wasn't as I I don't know, as good as I normally would be.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of different reasons for that.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I had a daughter last year, and uh that's big life changes.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Also proposed to my now wife, and now we gotta plan stuff.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like it was a lot of things going on in real life where again, if I if I was gonna grade my coverage of the NBA last year, I was probably like a B minus.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't settle for B minus in this.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I settle for B minus's quite a bit in school, but in this industry, I feel like if you're not going A plus or giving A plus effort, then you're just not gonna be successful.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this year I've reformulated the way I'm gonna be watching the game, the amount of time I spend on the game, and because I have a better familiarity, if that's the word, on uh fatherhood, being a husband, and now I kind of can manage my time accordingly.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the year where you're going to be getting the best content from me when it's around the game of basketball, and that's just an exciting thing.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I have this full-on plan for every single day of the association that if I hit this, then it ain't gonna be nothing.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, dang, that happened.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes last last season, things will happen around association where I was kind of oblivious to it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not talking about somebody got traded and I didn't know.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't that oblivious, but like this random player went off for 20 when he don't normally go off of 20.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I would have been oblivious to that.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now with my new pro approach, I will be hitting all of that.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm already talking to some people that see the game deeper than I do.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: We talk at X's and no's, and I'm gonna be learning stuff from them.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just know I am, in the words of uh uh Jimmy James, not James Butler, I am stupidly locked in.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I know when he said that, he lost in the first round.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: But when I say that, we going for the number one spot.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's talk about the Western Conference, okay?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: The other day I was strolling through Twitter and I saw a link to an article that ESPN put up.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was behind a paywall, which is unfortunate, which is unfortunate.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just I you know uh but but thanks to um my credit card, I was able to get into this article and kind of get a feel for what it was about.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was surprised to see this was an article, a format of article that I have read the previous two seasons.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's put together by Kevin Pelton and the staff over at ESPN, and they run these a bunch of simulations, they use advanced stats.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I always wanted to say AI, artificial intelligence, I don't even know if that's true, to kind of try to predict the total wins of every single team in the association.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And though it wouldn't be the way I would try to predict total wins, I understand that there's a market for the advanced stats, and I always find it fun.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for me it's always a big balance between the I test and advanced stats, and it might be 65% uh eye test and then 35% advanced stats, but I appreciate the advanced stats and looking at things like that.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the article dropped, and I read through it, and and I this was not like a revelation that I had in the moment, but like I start to really internalize how ridiculously deep the association is at the moment.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's why a lot of people are calling for expansion.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: The WBA just expanded.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Congratulations to the WNBA, congratulations to uh to to the Vegas Aces for winning game one.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've been I've been locked there just a just a little bit, you know what I'm saying?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just a small bit.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and people have been calling for the expansion in the association because, well, the league is extremely deep.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not even just talking about the talent level.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm when I talk about the deep the depth of the NBA right now, I look at the 30 teams in the association, and I see 28, 27 minimum that are actively trying to win basketball games.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, that's on different levels, right?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these teams are trying to win championships, some of these teams are just trying to see progression because they have been rebuilding for five seasons, and some of these teams are trying to make playoff pushes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, this is about to be a season where at least the first half of it, we're going to be seeing a lot of different teams that are really going out and trying to win.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we have this thing that all of us love, know, and love parody.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have parody.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I actually watched the video about the MLS, which is uh a tangent about the MLS and how parody has been a negative for American soccer.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's a topic for another day.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the world of the NBA, parody is as good as it gets.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, I do uh I have good memories of times where there wasn't a ton of parody when we knew it was gonna be Cavs versus Warriors because you wanted to see those teams go against each other.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: But right now, we see five different championships win in five different years, like that is fun to be.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were asking me the defendant champion or the field, I'm gonna take the field because that's just how deep the association is, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So again, I look at these 27 teams across the league, and I'm like, okay, a lot of these teams that are competing to be good reside in the Western Conference.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Western Conference is about to be a crazy, crazy bloodbath.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a couple years throughout NBA history, like 2009 is the one that comes to mind immediately, where the Western Conference was just ridiculous, where there was no off days.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you you are so good, and there are a team towards the bottom of the conference that is just so bad that you're like, okay, we got a hoop, but we ain't got a hoop hoop in this one.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're not getting a lot of layup games this season.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: At least to start off with again, things change, an injury might hit a team might blow it up, but as of right now, going into the NBA season, it's not a lot of games that you could take off, which means that we might not see a bunch of teams with 50 wins and so on and so forth.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: But getting back to the ESPN article, the the purpose of this article is for them to try to predict the standings for the upcoming season.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm always intrigued by this, right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of people that try to predict standings.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Last season, the enjoy basketball, enjoy basketball, the brand that I own.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this this brand right here, we put together um a website where we wanted everybody at home to try to predict the standings.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I went back to look at the tweets of the people that tried to predict the standings, everybody was everybody was wrong.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So predicting standings is almost impossible because you can't account for what players are gonna get injured, are you gonna get breakout players, so on and so forth.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: But ESPN tried to turn it into a science, turn it into a formula, and again, I think there's a balance here, but I always appreciate when people do something like this.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into the nitty-gritty.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Mine are based on this is Kevin Pelton talk talking, a combination of my uh um listen, if you're an audio listener, uh I can't pronounce this word, it looks like an acronym, whatever.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Player progressions for box score stats as well as three-year luck adjusted RAP RAPM from NBA ShotCharts.com.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I estimate games play based on those missed over the past years, and then make subjective predictions on playing time.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, so he's basically giving you the formula to how they got to the point where they were predicting the standings.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just want to give you that.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Does it mean anything to you right now?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not, because I I've read that 10 times at this point.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: It still doesn't mean anything to me, but I thought it was important for me to tell you how Kevin Pelton and the people over at ESBN ended up coming up with these standings because I thought the standings were so very interesting.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think if you asked a hundred people to predict the standings, I think that everybody's gonna have something different, right?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this one is maybe the most different you can see.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And again, for the audio listeners, don't worry, I will break it down for you.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So for my visual learners, here's their prediction for the Western Conference seating.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Audio listeners, at one, we have the Memphis Grizzies, then we have the Timberwolves, the Nuggets, the Warriors, the Suns, the Pelicans, the Kings, and the Lakers that round off the top eight.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the nine and ten fighting for the last two playing spots is the Mavericks and the Clippers, and then the people that missed the dance completely are the OKC Thunder, Utah Jazz, Houston Rockets, Blazers, and Spurs.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is very, very interesting.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because to have the Grizzies number one to start off with is uh, I'm sure, of course, they accounted for the fact that John Morant is gonna miss 25 games, but in their calculations, that didn't matter.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: We see the Timberwolves at number two.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is the team that's that made the playoffs last year.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Congratulations to them.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, they have a very experimental, heavy lineup that only has 30-ish, 35 games together, but they see them as the number two seed.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: The defending champions go to all the way to number three, and then the OKC Thunder, who were a team that were competing for a playoff spot last year, and then added Chat Homer, who looked really good in that first preseason game, they missed the dance completely.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this is crazy.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you're asking me, Kenny, okay, the AI slash the formula has it like this.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is the accuracy level?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, they they have done this exact experiment every single year for the past couple years.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, to be honest with you, um, according to the article, it predicted 60% of the NBA over-unders right last year.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So 60%.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Which I again, now that I say it again, I don't know if that's either like really solid or really bad, because that's how much parody it was in the league last year, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was so much parody in the league last year where some people predicted um teams to be very high and they fall off, and then the Brooklyn Nets traded all their pieces where they're supposed to be really good.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's hard to account for those type of things.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: They get it right, they have got it right 60% of the time.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought it was very interesting, and that kind of made me think of to myself, okay, these are cool, advanced analytics are cool, but what about the the mind that's in my brain?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: What does my mind think going into the season?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's what it's gonna be about.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times throughout the history of my YouTube channel slash podcaster with the homies, I usually stay away from type of predictions because again, there's so many different variables, and the way fandom works.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Kenny predicted my team was gonna be number six and they ended up number five.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: He he did that nine months ago, and I bookmarked the tweet.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tweet at him and laugh at his face, even though he was only a half game off.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I hate that type of stuff.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: That that's one thing that grinds my gears, so I usually stay away from it.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but but what whatever to to today we get it.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that a lot of the teams competing has a lot to do with the player.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Adam Silver and the NBA have done tremendous things to try to get people to care about the regular season more.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the best thing they could have done was a play in game.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I remember when it was announced, everybody was kind of turned off by the ideal and idea, and now I can't really imagine it existing or not existing at all.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: You get the um the Miami Heat who went from a team that was two minutes away from losing in the play-in to the Chicago Bulls, and then Max Just decided to be Larry Bird, basically, and they went on to make an NBA finals appearance.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the the play-in has been a godsend because it gives us fans something for our team to play for, where there's a lot of teams that would normally blow it up if they're at the 10th seed.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're like, hold on, that 10th seed means that we can get some potential playoff revenue dollars because let's be real, that's what the owners are talking about.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they care about.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we the 11th seed, we half a game behind.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Normally we might sell our pieces, but instead, we gonna really try to, you know what I'm saying?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna really try to do this.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of the few times throughout history where 95% of the teams, fandom, is pretty solid about the the direction of their organization, specifically in the Western Conference.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Look at every single team of the Western Conference.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Most fans associated with those teams to be like, hey, I like the direction of our team.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we might not win a championship this year, we might be might not be competing this year, but we might have drafted really well, we might have spent some really good money and free agency.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: We feel really solid, and that type of optimism is fun.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: I everybody should be optimistic.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: My bulls, again, we're gonna talk about the bulls a lot because the Kennedy Beach podcast.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: My Bulls are probably the one team in the association where fans should be the least optimistic about because 95% of fan 98% of 99% of fandom believes that they should blow it up, and the 1% that don't is DeMarta Rosen himself.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, I am still optimistic because I I think that Kobe White's about to be a stud.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a small thing because they get you excited for the NBA season.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: You feel me?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided for for my own sake to break these things up into one, two, three, four, five different tiers.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we're only talking about the Western Conference today.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: We might hit the Eastern Conference, not right, we will hit the Eastern Conference soon, but the Western Conference are broken into five different tiers.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not trying to determine who's a uh pretender versus a contender.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's not really important to me, that's not really relevant to me.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, again, we have 15 spots on where teams are trying to compete, and only 10 of them make the postseason, eight of them make the playoffs.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm trying to figure out not who's a contender or pretender, but what are the teams that should and will make the playoffs because that is just the first step.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And once you're in the dance, anything can happen.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Usually in the game of basketball, the better on paper team ends up winning a series that has not been the case as of recent.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the Miami are a prime example of that.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Every single team they went against in the playoffs on paper, they were worse there.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they had the heart, they had the grit, they had the grind.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, nope, those are two different things.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: They had the culture, which at this point, I like he culture, but the fact that they're putting it on a jersey is a little bit overkill, if you ask me.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, those jerseys, the league jerseys, I can't say if they're real or fake, obviously.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: The league jerseys don't look very good.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen a single league jersey that look good.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the official release ones look cool, but the league ones always come out, they just look weak.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I decided to break it up into five different tiers.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very curious to what y'all think.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's an open dialogue.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can hit me up on Twitter at KLT4Q.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can comment down below if you're on YouTube.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I just I want to hear what you think.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: The very first tier is something ridiculous would have to happen for these teams to miss the postseason.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there's four teams in this tier for my audio listeners.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is the Denver Nuggets, the Phoenix Suns, the LA Lakers, and the Golden State Warriors.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Something ridiculous would have to happen for those teams to miss.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna tell you what those what those ridiculous teams would be.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: For the Nuggets not to make the playoffs, Nicole Jokic has to miss the season.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Simple as that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's been an Iron Man throughout the course of his career, missing games here or there because he's an NBA player.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, Nicole Jokic has been as steady as anybody when it comes to total games play.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And again, even when he was missing Michael Porter Jr.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: or he's missing Jamal Murray, he was good enough to get his team into the playoffs.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: So as long as Jokic is on the team and he is healthy, they are a playoff lock.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, they're coming off a championship.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So again, something crazy would have to happen.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, a meteor hitting Denver completely.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: That like that's the type of faith I have in the Denver Nuggets making the playoffs.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Something crazy would have to happen.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Next, the Phoenix Suns.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: They played the first preseason game, and I it was interesting.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: What I saw was a lot of what we kind of anticipated, three of the best bucket getters in the NBA taking turns getting buckets again is the preseason, and that right there, even if that structure is not good enough to win an NBA championship, the way they play ball, because of the top end talent, will be good enough for them to make the postseason as long as one of Book and KD is healthy at all times, right?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you miss Kevin Durant for bulk of the season, which is has been the case over the last couple years, unfortunately.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: As long as you got book, you should be fine still.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: If if Devin Booker missed some time, as long as you have Kevin, there she should be okay.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if Bradley Beal missed some time, you still got the other two, you should be okay.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, they lack depth in comparison to some of the other teams, but that top end talent is good enough.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, and when it comes to this preseason stuff, we're gonna reference preseason a little bit throughout this video.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: I won't lie to you and act like I was stupidly locked in.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna stop using that.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: In the preseason, you know, I haven't been.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've been watching, but not as intently as a regular season game because I think that the preseason mostly for us NBA fans is kind of watching old faces in new places.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, yeah, Bradley Beal got his first game.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let me watch a quarter of that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Chris Paul got his first game, let me watch a quarter of that.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Kay Cunningham is back, you know.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Thompson brother was playing.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it has been for me at least.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, with the Wimby versus Shaq.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: I watched all of those minutes.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: As long as they was playing, I was there.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, that's the way I kind of tackle preseason because it's not a lot that can really be taken away from it, other than when we come to the Warriors, who we can talk about now, um, seeing Chris Paul and Steph Curry sure, the court looked really good in the one preseason game.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it gives me some optimism.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: The the Warriors, the reason I'm confident in them is over the this offseason, Mike Dunlavy Jr.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: has sure up their bench.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And before the Kevin Durant days, I guess a little bit during the Kevin Kevin Durant days, their bench was one of the things that they really took pride in, right?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sean Liviston, David West throughout the time, they the Barbosa early on.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like they always had multiple players on the on the bench that you feel confident in putting them in the game and being able to, for the most part, maintain the lead you have.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the That's the role of the bitch.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: It is to maintain or grow a lead or bring some extra energy.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the Warriors have had that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: But over the last couple seasons, they have they have not.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: They had a shot creator/slash uh shot chucker guy.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that I don't mean that in negative connotation and Jordan Poole, but that was it.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they tried to teeter the line of two different timelines with the Kaminga and Moody and Wiseman and the Steph Curry timeline.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't talk bad about it because during them trying to straddle the thing, they won a championship.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: But as you see now, you see now, James Wiseman is now gone.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan Poole is now gone.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're no longer trying to straddle that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: They even traded a young Jordan Poole for one of the oldest players in the league because they would rather have an IQ guy.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: They'd rather have a guy like Chris Paul right now.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Draymond Green punched Jordan Poole in the face, which we cannot look past.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: He decked him.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that ruined the relationship.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, they they decided to get a little bit older with Daryl Charge being on the team and Rudy Gay being on the team.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: They got old.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And now, even though they still have Kaminga, who looked really good in his preseason game as well, and now majority of their rotation is on directly on the Steph Curry timeline.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: They shured up those bench minutes.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Steph Curry, when he's on the court, we look at these on-off numbers, and I just want to showcase how elite Steph Curry is and how different it was when Steph Curry hit the bench.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was in a 94th percentile on his offensive impact on plus-minus.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm sorry, on on off.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which means that he was on the court, they were the best offensive basketball.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: But when he got off the court, when it was running without him on the court, so that's Jordan Poole for the most part, the pool party.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were terrible.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were the worst offensive team when he was off the court.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan Poole was second to last in the entire league in his offensive impact on plus minus.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I don't give all of that to Jordan Poole.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is not me punching Jordan Poole as well, but I'm just saying now they have a guy in Chris Paul who will be able to, you know, divvy up those minutes where you feel have you have a steady, one of the most steady players in the history of Vault.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he's not the player he was even two years ago, but he is as steady as can get for a backup point guard.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now he might start, he might do whatever.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, all we know for sure, or at least we can speculate, is that when Steph Curry's not on the floor, Chris Paul will probably be on the floor because they need that type of production, you know?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel really good about that.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And lastly, the Lakers.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Think about how they finished their season last year.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: After the trade deadline, how good they were.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Number one team in the NBA?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number one defense in the NBA after the trade deadline?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this offseason, they even added more depth.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I really, I really do like their offseason.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if we could get, you know, 85% of last year brawn, last year regular season brawn, and Anthony Davis fuels in an extra 15%, it would take some really ridiculous stuff for them to miss the playoffs.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um the year that they did miss the playoffs, the team was was poorly constructed, and I think since the 2020 year, this is the best constructed Lakers roster uh with the two guys.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first tier.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Something crazy would have to happen for those teams to miss.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into well, okay.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: These are not like tier one, tier two, or two three, but I'm just I'm just giving you the rationalization, okay?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: The next one is I feel good.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not 100%, but probably like 97%.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I I oh we fumbling.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I hit the wrong buttons.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we need a producer.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we will have a producer, or I can just focus on the content.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, there's only two teams in here.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Grizzies, it's the Kings.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Simple.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I feel really good about these two teams, but enough to like completely, completely guarantee.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say guarantee, I want you to really think about what the definition of guarantee is.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've had this this argument with my boy D.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Mills because he uses the word guarantee so lightly.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: A guarantee means 100%.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's no world in which whatever you're saying is gonna happen doesn't happen.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I can see a world where this thing happens.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Again, if we're doing 100 simulations at the NBA, I think that these two teams make it 98% of the time, but there is their 2%, which means that I can't give the guarantee.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, Kenny, what are those things?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you feel that way?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously, John Morant is missing 25 games.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's big.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now they did end up trading for Marcus Smart, who's as steady as can get.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they also made some other other moves here and there.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: They got Derrick Rose in the roster.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do we care about that?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know what Derek Rose is gonna provide in this old age.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, they had been a team that has been good enough, right?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: A couple years ago, they were 21-7 without John Morant, and a lot of people hang on to that as they should.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's crazy.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: John Morant was on the brink of superstaring up, and he missed almost 30 games in the season, and it didn't matter to them.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: They still went on to win a bunch of games.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: But since then, the team has changed pretty, pretty much, not a lot.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the Tyus Jones is gone and so on and so forth.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was their steady guy.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And last year, uh John Morant missed 22 games, and they were 12 and 10, which is still above 500.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: With that same record, if we put it the alone 25 games, they'd still be a playoff team, you know, if they kept that same trajectory.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: But again, they were significantly worse than the previous year without John Morant.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I still think that Desmond Bain, Jaron Jackson Jr., these are players that will impact games.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: These are players that should be in all-star conversations coming this year.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just saying there might be a 2%, but I still feel good.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: If I if you wanted me to bet money, I would.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: You feel me?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would bet on these two teams to make it, but I ain't betting the house.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can bet a lot of them, but not the house.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the Kings, the only reason the Kings, I'm a little bit skeptical about, and I do want to remind people, if you've been watching for a long time, the Kings are a team over the last three offseasons, somehow convinced me to feel really good about their team.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I was only able to cash in those chips last year where they were damn, damn good.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite league pass team in all of basketball.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this that's a West Coast team.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the Midwest, so I'm staying up late to watch them boys play.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't matter.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't care.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to watch the Sacramento Kings.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: They had one of the best celebrations with light in the beam.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: They had one of the best offenses in the league.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: De'Aaron Fox hit stardom again, not again, but hit stardom.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: DeMontisabones had a great pick and roll duo.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dribble handoffs.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Kevin Herter got to grow in a role as an NBA player.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Keegan Murray, who some people laughed at them drafting, I remember, stepped in and said, hey, I'm an impactful rookie.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they also had people come off the bench that are really successful.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a team that was so very fun to me.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: But what I will say, your number two after the jump is significantly harder than the jump.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you can talk to a lot of people that have been on teams that have made the jump, and they will say the exact same thing.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Last year, the one of the luxuries that, though I guess we could talk about all the luxuries, one of the luxuries that the Sacramento Kings had last season is they, for the most part, came out of nowhere when it came to the NBA teams, where they were the hunter and not the hunted.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And now with them finishing with a top three seed and was a chest stomp and a broken thumb, two broken thumbs away from being out of the first round, they're gonna be a team that every team is really looking forward to playing against and will be prepared.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, last year there wasn't a lot of time for that preparation.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: The second luxury they had is that they were the most healthy starting lineup in the league by a wide margin.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sabonis, Fox, uh Keegan Murray, you know, Harrison Barnes, and Kevin Herter did not miss time this year.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: DeMontis Sabonis played through a broken thumb, a broken hand, like it was nothing.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we got to commend them for that.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because being healthy and playing a bunch of games is something that we don't see all throughout the association.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if we plan the odds game, you know, I'm a knock on wood here, but if we plan the odds, they probably won't be as healthy last year as uh this year as they were last year.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the 2% of hesitancies.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I still feel really good about these teams.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: I still will be uh watching these teams a ton, but again, not in the top tier for me.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is I'm sure you understand why they're here.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the two teams that are there are the Pelicans and the Clippers.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you understand why they're here.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the injuries, it's the injury bug.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: The Pelicans already had um Jose Calderon go down.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Trey Murphy III is gonna miss some of the season.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, they have Zion Williamson on the team who has played 30% of his NBA game so far.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in those 30%, he looks like a top 10 player, but we need to get that up to 60, up to 70, and we haven't yet.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you understand what they hear.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: When they're healthy, the Pelicans are gonna be a team that will be a force to reckon with.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: They made the playoffs last year without Zion being there, without, you know, they had a terrible start to the season.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: They had all the injuries, terrible start, and still they made the playoffs.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: But the injuries are the reason why I can't put them up there.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the league is balancing out, it's balancing out.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then lastly, the Clippers.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: What can I say about the Clippers?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Since Paul George and Kawhi became a duo, every single year going into the seasons, I had been hyped to watch.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have been so hyped.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: A couple years in a row, I picked them to win the Western Conference.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I believed in the orchestration of the team, I believed in the star players because they fit so well and the defense was going to be so elite on those wings that I felt, especially with Kawhi Leonard being the player that he is at his peak, that this is a team that should be competing for championships for the next four seasons.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they haven't.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now they do have the one conference finals appearance, and there are a ton of players throughout NBA history who have zero conference finals appearances.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Zero.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we have to commend them on that, but that's not where they traded Shea Giels Alexander, all the picks and all the swaps.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: They did it for rings.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, even if they don't win one, I'm sure you can ask Steve Balmer, he would do the trade 100% of the time because the Clippers were a team that was teetered around uh irrelevant, and now they are a relevant team, or at least they have been over the last couple years.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and the biggest holdback I have, of course, is the injury book.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these teams, these boys have been playing together for a long time, since 2019-2020.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is about to be uh the fourth, fifth season together.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing the math.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth or fifth season together, and we have not had many healthy seasons where both of them were on the court.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to look through the numbers.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I decide to look through the numbers, right?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And only the playoffs, because that's what I care about.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care if Kawhi Leonard low manages the regular season, even though this year he's not going to be able to do that.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's not relevant to me.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's important is once we get to mid-April and we're trying to win championships.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: So let me read you some numbers that I did the digging on.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Clippers, since they acquired Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, have played 37 playoff games, which is good.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Again, they have the conference finals appearance.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if they wouldn't have had Kawhi Leonard go down against the Utah Jazz, they might have an NBA Finals win already.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's another universe that we're not in right now.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: They have 37 games played as a team.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: They have 23 of 37 games played where both of them suited up.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not one or the other, but both of them.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that is 62% of playoff games with both of those players.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's awful.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's objectively awful.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you wanna though, okay, 62% don't sound that bad, Kenny.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let me break it down.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of different duos that have been together since that exact time.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm putting every single one of these teams on the exact same timeline, okay?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Celtics duo of Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown have played 46 playoff games.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Collectively, they've played 41.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's only been five games where one or two of the players did not play.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is 89%.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Compare that to 62%.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which one is better?
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: The next, the Lakers.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Since they've had LeBron and since they had Anthony Davis, at least in this timeline, they've played 43 games.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And 42 of them, they played together.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's 98%.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's been one game where one of them did not make the playoff game.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now they didn't have the whole year to make the playoffs, but you get what I'm saying?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Of the games in the playoffs, they've all been available.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not at 100%.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: I watched Anthony Davis a couple years ago.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: He won 100%, but he was suited up.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Heat, Bama de Bayo, Jimmy Butler have played 66 playoff games.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: By far the most out of all of these duos.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: They've suited up together on 62 of them.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Jimmy Butler had a game this playoff run where he missed because of an injury.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's 94%.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got two that are closer to the Clippers.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And those teams are the Nuggets and the Bucks.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Nuggets have 54 playoff games since that same timeline.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: They've played together.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And again, we're talking about Jokic and Murray.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I said Nuggets, but again, Nuggets.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: 72% of the time.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's 39 games out of 54.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's close to the Clippers, but it's 10% higher.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then lastly, the Bucks have played 50 playoff games in that same timeline.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they've played together.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is Chris Middleton and Giannis played together 35 games.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: 70%.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now obviously you look at the 70% of the Nuggets, you or 72% of the Nuggets, you look at the 70% of the Bucks.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, Kenny, why are you not crucifying them?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like you crucified the Clippers if not playing.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's 8% more, Kenny.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: You keep you tripping over 8%.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because what do those two teams have that the Clippers don't?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: A goddamn ring.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's cool.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay that their duo has missed time.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jamal Murray missed a season and a half of ball with it with an injury, right?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Middleton been banged up, so on and so forth.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those two teams have a ring.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the fact that their percentage is lower than the Celtics, then the Lakers.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: The Lakers also have a ring in that time frame.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Celtics, then the Lakers, then the Heat, it's okay.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because they have the ring.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And even the other teams that we compare to, the Celtics have an NBA Finals appearance, the Lakers have an NBA finals appearance.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Heat have an NBA Finals appearance.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: All of these duos that have played in the same timeline of them have been more successful.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't, if you would have told me the moment that trade happened at 2 o'clock in the morning, over the hell it was when we got the notification that Kawhi Lin was going to the Clippers and oh, they traded for Paul George at the same time.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you would have told me that that team would have zero finals appearances in four or five years, I would say you were crazy.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because Kawhi was just coming off the finals.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul George was coming off a year a little while ago where he was top three in the MVP and it already had other stuff.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm just a little bit afraid when we talk about the Clippers that time has passed them by.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: That the core around the two stars have aged themselves out.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: As Robert Coverton played 16 minutes per game last season, when all of this was put together, when Robert Coverton was added to the Clippers, I looked at him and said, man, that is an incredible piece to add.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's an all-defensive piece.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now he struggled to get 20 minutes per game.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Marquise Morris was an absolute bucket when they acquired him from the New York Knicks.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: The man was like 20 points per game with the Knicks.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he had some good years with the Clippers.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: But ask any Clipper fan, they want that boy gone.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: You feel me?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: A lot has changed.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the core, the core that that was put it together, it's not as good as it was before.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul George and Kawhi Leonard are personally, those two are up for an extension right now.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I did read somewhere that they are conversating about some extension talks or whatever, but as of right now, they have not signed it.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: The ceiling is the ceiling.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know what, what MJ say the ceiling is the roof.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the floor, but the floor, we've seen that as well.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just, again, you know why they was there.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: I want to take a quick break to talk about some some news related articles or news related things.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any sponsors right now.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're watching this, you can sponsor the news segment, y'all.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hit the hit the hit the DMs.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can sponsor the news segment.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: I ain't got a name for it, but I can formulate that name around your brand.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: You just got to feel me.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, so the first thing we want to talk about is Kai Jones.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Kai Jones went to his personal Twitter today to say, I have officially requested to be traded from the Charlotte Hornets.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this news, Kenny, that you're talking about a young player that hasn't got a ton of burn, is highlighting his career summer league this year where he he put women yama on the poster.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we talking about this?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know Kai Jones.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know his support system.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know his friends.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know his family.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the Charlotte Hornets organization or what they're doing.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: But but based on what I've seen from Kai Jones over the last two weeks to a month, I hope, again, I don't I don't know exactly what's going on, but I hope that he gets the help that he looks like he needs.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a physician, a doctor.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know anything about mental health, other than me struggling with my own.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems as though this is a guy that desperately needs someone in his corner.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it be from him tweeting about things, him making TikToks, him dropping songs, him dissing other players around the association, and all of it ending in him requesting a trade via Twitter.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and when I saw this tweet, I immediately thought, ha ha funny, like yo, legendary tweet.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've got some crazy trade requests throughout NBA history.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we might put together a little TikTok of us ranking the best trade request throughout history.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Eric Bletso saying, I don't want to be here.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Oh, I was at the hair salon, whatever.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Kai Jones didn't use any of that.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: He straight up tweeted from his own personal account that he requested a trade.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's ever done that before.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when it originally came out, I was like, hee hee ha ha, that's kind of cool.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I really had to take a step back.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I really went through the brother's Twitter account and went to his TikTok and I'm like, man, it looks like he needs some help.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what he did is illegal in the NBA.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to be fined for these things.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: He had already been given a leave from the Charlotte Hornets.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: They told him do not report.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just hope that the young fella is able to get the help that he might need.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if he does not need help, then I hope all of this works out in his favor.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: But out of the 30 hundred years that we've had of the NBA, or let's talk about the last 10 years where Twitter and social media has been prevalent, we have never seen an individual player straight up tweet the fact that he is requesting a trade.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is not normal.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not normal.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I hope him nothing but the best.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I I'm a little bit I'm a little bit afraid for him, if I'm being honest with you.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen some crazy things.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm not projecting any of these on Kai Jones, but I've seen some crazy things in a mental health space, and I just Okay, we'll leave it at that.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: The next piece of news, which was big news a couple days ago, but brother, I was I was in Detroit filming some stuff.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see that eventually.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: What's the guy?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Noah Laues, right?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the guy, the team USA guy that's really good at what he does.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the NBA was after him, after his comments about world champion versus US champion, so on and so forth.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Team USA is like, hey, it's the Olympics.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing everything we can.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the American-born players that were eligible for the Olympics, there is one specific place that you're like, man, we could use some more depth there.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that was the center.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have people like Bam Monabio, Anthony Davis, so on and so forth.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: But now we as an America, we have a Joel and B.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of people, that was like, yeah, let's go.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: You USA.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't look at it like that.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I would love to see a team USA win.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an American.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm American born.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: I like the American team.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I like the players from I like well, I like NBA in general, basketball in general, but you know, it's cool to see the team that you root for do good things.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: I ain't seen a team I root for do good things in a long time.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: White Sox, Bears, uh, Bulls.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: It ain't been great.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Blackhawks, it ain't been great.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Fire, it ain't been great.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the one thing I have is when all collectively we can root for one thing in the NBA.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I when I saw this, I wasn't hoo-rah, hoo-rah, eagle noises.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of disappointed.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And mostly disappointed because they we already really, really good.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: You feel me?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would have much rather Joel and Bede were to play with Cameroon or for France.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because that evens the playing field at least a little bit.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you ask about the collection of talent Team USA is going to put together, though again, I don't know what will happen at the Olympics.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen some really good Olympic teams not get gold, but just on paper, there's not gonna be a country that's gonna be close.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Serbia might be close now that Jokic is coming and they were just in the finals.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Germany is gonna be close because they just won the finals.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: But LeBron, Devin Booker, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry's playing in his first Olympic.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: If he said if everything goes well, we didn't need Anthony Davis, even though LeBron might have put the call in.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we might have been okay with letting him go to France or the Cameroon.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been fun to see France have Rudy Gobert, Joel Embiid, and Victor Webinama.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, he's here.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I I just I just thought that like the the the American born homegrown talent that we already had was just good enough.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now we got you all again.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not comp I'm well, I guess I'm kind of am complaining, but I'm not about to be upset that we have them, but it's just I would rather have a balancing of the fields because the rest of the world is catching up, ladies and gentlemen.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen that, you've seen that on display.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the players across the association.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Who are the top 10 players involved?
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: How many of them are American born?
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a lot of.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Foreign-born players.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: The league, the world is catching up for sure.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: But also, now our new start center is not American born.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's just me.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's just me.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's kind of what I feel when it comes to the Olympics stuff.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm rooting for them.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hoorah.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or whatever they say.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it just feels like it feels like overkill.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's all.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like overkill.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's our new segment.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get back to our T Rankets.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we've already gone through a couple.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um the couple that we went through was something ridiculous would have to happen.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I feel good, but not 100%.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: We got, I'm sure you understand why they're I'm sure you understand why why they're here, right?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then this next one is um um, this one.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can convince me either way.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Dang, I spoiled it.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: I spoiled it.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is why we need a producer.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: I spoiled it.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can convince me either way, has uh uh Timberwolves, OKC, and then the Dallas Mavericks.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about it.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Timberwolves are here because I I am a believer in the Timberwolves, but also they they're doing something that on paper doesn't look great.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: The saving grace is that Anthony Edwards is a bad, bad man on that basketball court.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Carl Anthony Towns, when fully healthy, is a bad man.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you I put bad, bad man for and a bad man for Kat.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and but I can also see it going the uh the other way as well, because when they did play together, we're talking about the two bigs, it wasn't pretty.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't pretty.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: When Kat was on the court by himself, the offense is great, the defense was tanked, and then when Rudy Gobert was on the court by himself, the defense is great, the offense was tanked and when they were together, neither of those two things were good.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's 35 games together or whatever it may be.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: And now they have a bigger sample size, another year under their belt.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a believer, but if you told me you had them in the playoffs, I'll be like, yeah, that makes sense.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody else told me they weren't in the playoffs, I'd be like, yeah, that makes sense.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a there's a huge discrepancy in their ceiling and their floor.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Their ceiling is guaranteed playoff team, their floor is man outside looking in.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's saying something because again, they did make the playoffs last year.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: They did make the playoffs last year, but again, the league is catching up.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's more parity this year than last year.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those teams that you were able to beat last year are just slightly better.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to play a little bit harder.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that that that was just that was just one of the months, right?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: OKC is very similar, right?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: They were one of the surprise teams last year.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think they ended up with 40 wins on the season, which is something nobody really expected.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they added She Homgren, who looked really good in his first game, like really, really good.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Him versus Wimby was amazing.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: But again, you could convince me that they're gonna be a 4C.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because people are making that argument that they believe that the OKC Thunder will be a 4C.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say, hey, and you got it, you got a good argument there.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: But if you were putting together, stacking up the teams, and OKC ended up 11th, I'd be like, damn, I guess it's possible.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a strong opinion either way.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these are the these are the the swing teams in the association, if you ask me.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: And lastly, the Dallas Mavericks fit that as well, where the top it top two talents and Luka Doncic and Carrie Irvin, we know what they're gonna provide.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even in that first two play or the first preseason game, it was like, man, Luka got 25, his next high score got 12.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like we might get a lot of that this season.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: The offense with those two dudes on the floor might be electric.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was electric and one of the best in the league last year, but the defense wasn't very good.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I could see them being very good because Luca is one of the top four player, five players involved, and Kyrie Irvin is still an all-NBA caliber player.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: But then you're like, dang, who's our third best player?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Grant Williams?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is it this guy?
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is it that guy?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if Grant is your third, shout out to Grant, that's my guy.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is not a very deep team.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a very deep team.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna be asking things of some people.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if you told me that they're a guaranteed playoff spot again, just like the other two, I'd be like, yeah, that makes sense.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you said, man, they might not be able to put it together again this year.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, that makes sense.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can convince me either way.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: And lastly, again, I already spoiled it, my apologies.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't see it, but I've seen crazier things happen.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Those teams are the Houston Rockets, the Trailblazers, the Spurs, and the Utah Jazz.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Those teams are the ones that for the most part would be considered your rebuilding teams.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know you like Kenny, the Jazz are really good uh halfway through last season.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I just don't really like the idea of their lack of real point guard play right now.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be piecing it together with THT, maybe some Keontae Jor and some Chris Dunn who got a guaranteed contract.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to Chris Dunn.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: But last year I felt like they had some steady guys over there like Mike Conley, who wasn't great last year, but Mike Conley is a pros pro.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh similar to what I said about the Sacramento Kings on a lesser scale, teams are gonna be ready for Larry Market in this season.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: People are gonna be ready for Walker Kessler this season.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think even though they did have the acquisition of John Collins, that they still will be on the outside.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I've seen crazier things happen.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe they are able to rejuvenate John Collins' career just like they did Larry Marketing, and then boom, their front court looks incredible.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: I can see it.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Crazier things have happened.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Rockets are getting there very early on.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: They made some adjustments, obviously, bringing in Fravian Vleet, Dylan Brooks, uh, Jeff Green.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of those pieces are culture-builder things, but I don't see a world where they're a playoff team this year.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it's all on Jalen Green's back, and that's the comments that he's saying that people are expecting him to win, and it's his responsibility, his obligation.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I like that type of stuff, but I still think they're probably a year away.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Blazers blew up everything, and then they blew it up.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: They got the lineup is intriguing.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can't lie.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm part of the team.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lineup that is very intriguing, but I don't think it's gonna be good enough.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think that people like Jeremy Grant's probably gonna get moved if a team will bite on that contract at the deadline and so on and so forth.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think Scooters are stun.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think Shannon Sharp should be better.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think Efrey Simes could be really cool.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: DeAndre Aiden, I'm excited to watch him.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try to draft him in fantasy this year because I think he should be a lock for 22 and 11 every single night.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I do also believe that they are continuing their rebuild slash retooling, and in a lot of the cases that means that they will be on the outside looking in.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in the Spurs, I just don't think their roster is ready, even with Wimby, even with Devin Vassel signing this extension.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to Devin Vassel and so on.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't think they're ready.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the 15 teams in their own different tiers.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: Should I go over them again?
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: Something ridiculous would have to happen, is the Nuggets, the Suns, the Lakers, and the Warriors.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: I feel good, but not 100% is the Grizzlies and the Sacramento Kings.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you understand why they're here.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Pelicans and the Clippers.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can convince me either way is the Blazers, the OKC Thunder, the Dallas Mavericks.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just don't see it, but crazier things have happened are the Rockets, the Blazers, the Spurs, and the Jazz, ladies and gents.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whew! That was fun.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was fun.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to look back on this uh halfway through the season be like, dang, you was wrong about uh 60% of that stuff.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: You should have listened to Kevin Pelton and his auto-generated stuff because that was better.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I do appreciate y'all sticking in and watching or listening to this episode.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to quickly talk about a little bit of preseason stuff.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm not buying too much into preseason, but it has been interesting to say the least, mostly because NBA ball is elite and I missed the NBA.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we do we did get some people getting their debuts and with new teams like Chris Dasperzing is looking very, very good for the Boston Celtics.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ben Simmons put up 10 points and a half.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my god, I forgot to look this up.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to see this season, and maybe I could do this on the fly during the podcast, if there was any moment last year, maybe I'm being super disrespectful to Ben Tim.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: If there was any moment last year where the brother had double digit points going into halftime, last year he only had 13 games with double digit points in general.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: So how many of them?
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, oh man, yeah, it's not a lot.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, brother.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, bro.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sorry.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: I know you can't see what I see, but it's not great.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: If I had to guess without looking at all 13 of these games, I would say maybe three of them that he have double digit points going into the half.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: Which, if he get that in his first preseason game, ladies and gentlemen, we feel good about being.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not one of these super optimistic guys that think he's gonna return to all NBA form.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna turn to Ben 10 that was clamping people up and running the break and throwing behind the backpack.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that either.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying he's gonna do that.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: But any progression is good progression for Ben Simmons in this part of his career.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: I saw in that first game, he in the second or third possession of the game, he drove to the basket and leaned into contact.
• 52:58
  unknown: Huh.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think he shot one for two at the free throw line?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Huh.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: Last year, one of the biggest criticisms you can have on Ben Simmons is that he was afraid to go to the free throw line.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he did it.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, warm-ups, he was hitting threes in the corner.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, ah, hold on, hold on.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: He is he gonna get us again.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't shoot a three in the actual game.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the preseason is what, a couple games long?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Season starts very, very soon.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this version of Ben Simmons is just gonna be objectively better than the last.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes me think about the what the ceiling of the Brooklyn Nets can be because I think we can agree that it's a decent team, but is decent a 500 team?
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is it slightly below 500?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Ben Simmons playing okay, does that make them slightly better than that?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: I might have to think about that.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I do again want to say I appreciate you.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you are watching on YouTube and you watch 40-54 minutes of me fumble around and hit wrong buttons, leave a like, man.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: You had to enjoy something, right?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are on the audio platforms, again, I appreciate you.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: I the one thing about all of this, and this is just me being selfish and me being uh perfectionist when it comes to this type of stuff.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that I hit the wrong button like three different times bothers me to the point of no return.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that should I refilm this episode?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I feel right now.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: Huh.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a higher producer that will handle all the button pushing.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like talking and I'm like, hold on, let me hit let me hit this one, let me hit that one.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: Loves, and I'll see you, I'll see you soon.