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NBA Contenders or Pretenders · Small Ball with Kenny Beecham

0:05
SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to Small Ball with Kenny Beachum.
0:07
SPEAKER_02: I'm titling this one, Our Pre-Flu Game.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: MJ had the flu, not really a stomach bug.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, and he went out there and he dominated at the NBA finals.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: This is my pre-flu game.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: Do I get credit for producing an episode, putting out an episode the day before the real sickness hits?
0:24
SPEAKER_02: The only reason I'm saying that is because my daughter is fighting and what I'm gonna just call the cold as of right now.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: And as a dad, I got to do my due diligence and make sure she feels good, which means I'm holding her, coddling her.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and when you're that close to them germs, to them viruses, I just know tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and feel a lot worse than I do today.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: And I'm already feeling it right now.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: So if I get a little bit stuffy throughout this episode, if I'm even more scatter-brained than usual, which would be saying a lot, uh, that is because this is my pre-pre flu game.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: All right.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: On today's episode, I kind of want to go through the teams that I deem to be contenders before the season started.
0:59
SPEAKER_02: Has anything changed?
1:00
SPEAKER_02: Have we seen some teams jump up?
1:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I also want to go through our bi-weekly, we're gonna call it bi-weekly PAL rankings.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: But before we do all of that, I want to talk about some news.
1:09
SPEAKER_02: Now, this was not originally on the runner show that I curated, but when I walk into the office here, I checked my Twitter, and the very first mention I had was from a tweet that was six days old.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how I missed this, uh, but I do want to at least talk about it at least a little bit, and it has to do with the NBA viewership declining.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna give you the Spark Notes version of this very long tweet.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: Basically, what you need to know is this year our double header on ESPN when the season opener was down 42% in viewership comparing it to last year, Victor Wibanyama debut.
1:38
SPEAKER_02: One of the other games, Bucks versus 76ers, down 2.55 million views of last year's game, which was Celtics versus Knicks.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: The Suns versus Clippers were down 49% compared to last year's game.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: Thursday night game had 1.45 million viewers.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: That is a 29% decrease, and that was Spurs versus Mavericks.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: And then this was the kicker uh Pacers versus Knicks, a series that I absolutely love.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, at the end of it, we saw a bunch of injuries, so on and so forth.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: The rematch of that series where there was some animosity.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: Hell, we saw Tyrese Halliburton and Jalen Bronson go on WWE to make the feud real.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: Well, that game on national TV on a Friday night had 830 million views.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, 830,000 views less than a college football game that was on ESPN 2.
2:27
SPEAKER_02: Now, in here, I don't know what this ESPN 2 game is.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if this is a premier game, but damn it, if it was a premier game, it probably would have been on ESPN 1.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: So this matchup of two teams that were in the battle for the Eastern Conference or going to the Eastern Conference Finals had that many less views than a random college football game.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: And uh it's not ideal.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: Now, the NBA just uh is about to go into this new contract where we have a bunch of money being thrown around.
2:54
SPEAKER_02: We have new players, and it's not just ESPN and Turner, it will be the Amazons, it will be the CBSs, and a bunch of different people are coming in.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: The TV deal looks amazing, everybody's getting paid, yada, yada, yada.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: I do still believe that this is a problem, and I'm not completely sure how we fix it.
3:10
SPEAKER_02: There are a couple things wrong with the NBA.
3:13
SPEAKER_02: And listen, if you're on the show or you're listening to the show, you are most likely not one of these people that we're talking about because if you're locked in the small ball with Kenny Beachum, you're probably an NBA diehart, right?
3:23
SPEAKER_02: Um, but there are a few things that contribute to this, right?
3:26
SPEAKER_02: This last bullet point, Pacers versus Knicks having almost, I'm gonna round up, almost a million viewers less than a random college football game, just tells me a few different things.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: Hey, the season is just too long.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: This is not something that is new.
3:40
SPEAKER_02: We've always had 82 games, and and there's been for years people basically saying that we should shorten the season.
3:45
SPEAKER_02: It's just hard to get a diehard NBA fan, NBA players to agree to this because, well, that means less money for the owners because we're getting less uh home games, that means less money for the players and less statistics.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: Let's be real.
3:59
SPEAKER_02: Sports is about statistics, man.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: You're trying to tell me we're taking 10 games off.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: So that means that me averaging 30 in a 72-game season is not as impressive as anyway.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: So we're we're also competing with this is this is not even, I don't know.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: We're also competing with things outside of sports.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: Kenny, what do you mean?
4:20
SPEAKER_02: I am one of the people that cut the core.
4:22
SPEAKER_02: Man, I don't know if I've ever had cable in my adult life.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: The moment I moved out of my dad's house at 18 years old, I didn't go, I didn't call Xfinity to say, go get me a box.
4:31
SPEAKER_02: I immediately transitioned to whatever I could pay, uh, well, that's a lot more now, but$25 a month for whatever live TV is and or whatever it is.
4:41
SPEAKER_02: So Hulu, for example.
4:43
SPEAKER_02: You can watch these games of Hulu, not that.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: When you load up Hulu and you see a game that has Bucks versus 76ers, but oh no, no, there's not a uh Joel Embiid on the thumbnail.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: It's not even Paul George on the thumbnail, it's Tarys Maxie versus Giannis.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: I see that.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: And I also see Beverly Hills cop.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: If I'm a Caldu NBA fan, I'm like, hmm, this one out of 82 games is not as significant.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: I would rather watch Beverly Hills Cop.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: So we're not even just competing with other sports, we're competing with random TV shows and random movies because a lot of people have also cut the core.
5:20
SPEAKER_02: I also think the NBA has done a very poor job of passing the torch.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: We are leaving the era of multiple top 10-ish players of basketball, where Braun is nearly 40 and you he's starting to kind of look like it.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
5:33
SPEAKER_02: Still LeBron.
5:33
SPEAKER_02: But Steph Curry is in his mid-30s, Kevin Durant, mid-30s.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: Those three guys, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, now they're on a different stage of their uh playing ability compared to those top three dudes, but those dudes carried us for the whole 2010s and for the early spots of the 2020s.
5:51
SPEAKER_02: And now we kind of waiting to see what the next guy is.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: And now we got some good candidates, right?
5:55
SPEAKER_02: We have Luka Doncic, who's made an all-star appearance every single year, other than his rookie season, who's been all NBA first team every single year except for his rookie season.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: We haven't seen the NBA transition of passing the torch.
6:05
SPEAKER_02: Now, where I'm gonna give him credit is they they tried it last year.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: The 7-4 freak out of France, he's coming into the NBA.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're gonna put him on Nasty TV way more than he probably should be because we need him to be the next super duper NBA star.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: They tried it a few years before that.
6:22
SPEAKER_02: Remember, Zion Williamson and the Pelicans had a gazillion uh national TV games?
6:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, we just saw him block a shot from the opposing elbow on the opposing block all the way to the corner when he was in college.
6:35
SPEAKER_02: We need that in the NBA.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: He is so powerful of a player.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: He burst it out of a shoe, a Kyrie burst it out of the shoe.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: We need that on national TV.
6:44
SPEAKER_02: Didn't work with Z.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: He missed all of that season.
6:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, and it kind of worked with Wimby.
6:50
SPEAKER_02: As I mentioned here, that 1.6 million that we saw from the double header was down 42% compared to Wimby's debut.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: So the Wimby thing is kind of working, but not so much working because now we get a game that is Spurs versus Mavericks a couple days later, and well, nobody watched it.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of working.
7:08
SPEAKER_02: But also, I think we have a problem with the product.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: Now, I am not one of those people, I love the way the NBA is, but again, I'm speaking for the fan that is not the diehard that gets paid to watch these games.
7:19
SPEAKER_02: We also have a problem with the way the game is played.
7:23
SPEAKER_02: I used to be, a few years back, I used to be a diehard Apex Legend player.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: So much so that my days consist, and this is before I was a father, so it was a little bit more excusable.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: My days consisted of watching basketball from 6 to midnight, right?
7:37
SPEAKER_02: Getting recording videos from midnight to two.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: Then when I wake up at 10 a.m.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: the next morning, I was on Apex until the game started again.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: I was a grinder.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: One of the worst things about that was there was a meta.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: Man, I was trying to climb these ranks.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: I was trying to, I was trying to get into the I wasn't good enough to be one of the top 100 people in the world.
7:59
SPEAKER_02: But I was, damn it, you couldn't tell me that two, three years ago.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: And if you're an Apex Legend fan, you know there was all there's always a meta.
8:05
SPEAKER_02: But specifically during that era when I was grinding, the meta was Bangalore, Seer, and Valkyrie.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: Kenny, what are you getting on here?
8:14
SPEAKER_02: Why are we talking?
8:15
SPEAKER_02: Why are we talking about Apex Legends?
8:17
SPEAKER_02: Because in order for me to climb up the ranks and ranked, I needed to play the meta.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: We couldn't, my three couldn't compete unless we had a Seer.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: We couldn't compete unless we had a Valk that can get us out of sticky situations.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: We couldn't compete if we didn't have the smokes of Bangalore.
8:35
SPEAKER_02: Anytime you shifted away from the meta, for me, that's not like, again, one of the top players in the world, we lost games.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: The NBA also has a meta problem.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: If you're not one of the teams that is jacking up 43 pointers a game, it is almost impossible for you to win.
8:54
SPEAKER_02: There's a meta problem.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: And there's no way around it.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: You could be, you could have two top 10-ish players in basketball.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: But if you are not running the meta, things won't look amazing.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: And that's what the NBA has right now.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: Again, I'm not one to complain.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm okay with the way the three-point shooting is because the way they're generated is differently in my mind.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: But for a casual NBA fan, everybody's just shocking up threes.
9:21
SPEAKER_02: It's a little, little tough, right?
9:24
SPEAKER_02: Now, me personally, um, I guess I have a unique perspective on all of this because in my mind, there's no question on whether or not the game is actually declining in popularity.
9:33
SPEAKER_02: Because I think it's as popular as it's ever been.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: And the reason I say that is because my whole job, my whole livelihood is revolved around whether or not care people care about basketball.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: And I have seen not just my videos, because I'm a sicko, I don't know if I've ever said this publicly, I track the analytics of my competitors.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: Listen, it's all love here.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: It's all love here.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: I got no animosity towards other in any NBA creator.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: I want everybody to eat.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: But I track it because I want to make sure that I'm towards the top.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: Or saying at the top.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: So I'm watching everybody's numbers do well.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: So the problem is not just the general popularity of the sport, it's mostly about how do we get people to care about the live event.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't help that it's increasingly more impossible for people to watch in market games.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: I know this is not necessarily what we're talking about, we talk about doubleheaders on the ESPN, but they've made it more difficult for NBA fans to watch.
10:29
SPEAKER_02: And I think there is a percentage of NBA fans that want to keep up with the league, don't have the time or want to put in the effort to watch the games live.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: And that's not a knock, right?
10:41
SPEAKER_02: There are people that watch YouTube, watch TikTok, watch and listen to podcasts in order to keep up with their favorite sport.
10:50
SPEAKER_02: Those people will not be encountered in the 1.52 million viewers that were watching Suns versus Clippers.
10:59
SPEAKER_02: But I was one of the 1.52 million.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: And then I also got 150,000 people that watch me talk about that game.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: Now, some of those people probably watch the game as well, but you give them saying, Now, I I have a in the grand scheme of things, a small fan base compared to these overall numbers.
11:14
SPEAKER_02: But I think the game is as popular as ever been.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: But it's hard to get people to watch these nasty televised games.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's gonna be harder as we get into this new TV deal where you have to go through Prime, you have to go through Hulu, you have to go through all of these different chains in order to keep up with the sport.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: Again, this was not something that was completely on my run of show, but I want to, I wanted to talk about it.
11:35
SPEAKER_02: I want to talk about it.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: Uh the league, again, is as big and as popular as ever, but how do we get the casual fan to care more?
11:42
SPEAKER_02: Could we shift the rules?
11:44
SPEAKER_02: That's again something that's maybe too far for me.
11:47
SPEAKER_02: But at this point in time, if the viewership is as important as it should be, uh Adam Silver should think about it.
11:53
SPEAKER_02: And of course, he's incorporated the in-season tournament.
11:56
SPEAKER_02: And it's probably gonna be a decade of the in-season tournament before we recognize whether or not it was a good idea, right?
12:01
SPEAKER_02: First year, I think the numbers probably looked phenomenal.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: It was the first year.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: Second year, I would expect these numbers to be down.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: But I don't know how long it'll take for people to care and if they ever will care.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: That's what I'm saying, like 10 years or so of a sample size, right?
12:15
SPEAKER_02: Because the Lakers won the in-season tournament.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't know a damn Lakers fan that was using that as a badge of honor because they got to the playoffs and they lost in five.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
12:24
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, nothing that the N-C tournament's gonna do is gonna compare to raising the Larry O'Brien trophy.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: But is there a world where it matters at least a little?
12:31
SPEAKER_02: How do we incentivize it to be more than just, hey, the players?
12:36
SPEAKER_02: The players get half a million.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: Half a million is a lot of money, even if you are a multi-millionaire already.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: You know?
12:43
SPEAKER_02: Is there a way that we change it to that it means something when it comes to NBA seeding, playoff seating?
12:50
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, but it has to mean a little bit more.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: That was just a whole tangent about ratings.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: Let me know what you think.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: Um, as a viewer of this podcast, how do you consume the NBA?
13:01
SPEAKER_02: Are you watching live?
13:02
SPEAKER_02: Are you just tuning into this podcast and a hundred others?
13:04
SPEAKER_02: How are you doing it?
13:05
SPEAKER_02: Okay, anyway, let's get back to uh NBA news.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: Jordan Bede got suspended three games.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: If you're out of the loop, uh, there was a writer named Marcus Hayes who wrote this article with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: Basically, uh just not the greatest things.
13:18
SPEAKER_02: Um, talk about how Jordan Bede welcomed a son into the world and he named his son Arthur after Joel Embiid's late brother, and uh he wants to leave a legacy for his son.
13:27
SPEAKER_02: Where if he wants to leave a legacy for a son, he has to get to work.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: It was just in poor taste in my mind, and most people's mind.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: And Joel and B uh said it was on site.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: Saw Marcus a few days later, got into his face, got into a verbal altercation, at least pushed him a little bit, and Joel and B got three games for the little confrontation.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: Now, the question on my other podcast was we knew he was gonna get some type of suspension.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: The question was how much of a suspension three games feels like enough.
13:52
SPEAKER_02: He probably wasn't gonna play them damn three games anyway, let's be real.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: But three games feels like enough.
13:56
SPEAKER_02: Because I am a person, um, this means I guess means a lot today as I'm recording this is Wednesday, day after the election.
14:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm somebody that truly, truly believes in freedom of speech and truly, truly believes in freedom of press.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: So while Marcus um was absolutely in the wrong, and what he did was Jack Assery, he has a right to write those type of things.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: But he's not free of criticism and he's not free of an ass kicking.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: And Jordan B told him, hey, if you ever do that again, I'm gonna do some stuff and I'm gonna have to suffer the consequences.
14:26
SPEAKER_02: And I truly do believe Jordan B is about that.
14:28
SPEAKER_02: Because as a as a parent, when somebody starts writing about your kids, talking about your kids, it's a lot different, bro.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: And I'm luckily enough that my fan base and viewership, it never gets that crazy.
14:39
SPEAKER_02: Um, there will be people that make some tweets about my family, but it's like that person's not a viewer anyway.
14:43
SPEAKER_02: They're just engagement farming.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, but nobody's ever made a tweet about someone that's close to me that is no longer with us.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure that would send me over the edge as well.
14:51
SPEAKER_02: So uh Joel Embiid gets his three games, and hell, I'm I'm sure he would do it again and again and again.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: And from in Marcus's uh defense, even though he probably shouldn't deserve any, uh, he did go onto Twitter to verbally and publicly apologize to Joel Embiid, and he said he's using it as a way um to better himself as a journalist.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: So we'll see what that really means.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, but Joel Embiid getting three games is interesting.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: I think the best thing about it, if anything, it gives us a newer timetable to when he can play.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: And I think that puts him in line to play in a Clippers game.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: Let me quickly look up the 76ers schedule, uh, because that game could be kind of loud.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, the Clippers game is tonight.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: So Paul George is returning to LA tonight, and in three games, we're talking about one, two, three.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: He'll be back for the NBA Cup, which is starting November 12th.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: So actually, I like that a lot more.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: Him versus the 76ers, good playoff series there as well.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: Let's see what he can really do.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: Um, this was also something that jumped on the radar uh a couple hours before I came here to film.
15:47
SPEAKER_02: This is from Kevin O'Connor.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: Shout out to Kevin.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how real his sources are, but I'm gonna take it um and just talk about it.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: I've had some sources around the league tell me that they believe it's not a hamstring that caused the struggle this year.
16:00
SPEAKER_02: It's his back.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: And he's saying that in reference to Tyrese Halliburton.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: As you know, Tyrese has not had a good season whatsoever.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: His numbers are down across the board.
16:08
SPEAKER_02: Now he did just go into Dallas and gives us 25 and 12, I want to say.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: And in that game, he objectively looks so much better than the previous games.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder how much of that was Dallas also losing out on Derek Lively in this game.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: And then in the second half, Daniel Gaffer played seven minutes.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: So this was hey, it was small ball versus small ball because the Pacers only have one center as well, the Miles Turner.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: So both of these lineups, it was like Obi Top in and it was um Pascal Siakam versus PJ Washington and and uh Najee Marshall.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder with them not having a true rim protector down there, did that just open the game up more for him?
16:45
SPEAKER_02: I watched his game back um one and a half times, and he looked like he was moving a lot better.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: Overall, his numbers are down across the board.
16:52
SPEAKER_02: Like two seasons ago, 25% of his shots came at the basket.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: Now it's down to 9%.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: And that is such a crazy drop-off.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, he dealt with the hammy last season, and that was the reason, right?
17:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, I've never dealt with a hammy injury, but my boy Mike has, and he we were sophomores in high school.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: He he won the starting small four position.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: Shout out to my boy Mike.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: He played like four games of the regular season, then had this hammy injury that held him out of like two weeks' worth of games.
17:17
SPEAKER_02: And I promise you, I swear right hand two.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: That was 12 years ago.
17:23
SPEAKER_02: Mike ass still doesn't run the same.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: So a hammy, that's one of them injuries.
17:28
SPEAKER_02: Well, I, as somebody that has experienced himself but seen it firsthand, I always take a hammy as like that is one of them ones.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: A back is worse than that.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: A back injury is objectively worse than anything your hamstring can do.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: It's just not great.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: It's like one of those things that you never can really fix.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: I think it easily the Steve Kerr, Steve Nash, one of them is one of the Steves, um, had back surgeries and afterwards, 10 years later, said it was the worst decision of their life.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I can kind of see that.
17:57
SPEAKER_02: There is a YouTuber that I used to watch, shout out to him, um, who also went through some back injuries because he sat at his damn desk and played games for a decade long.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: And he's now still streaming, and he will tell you that his back still hurts.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: Michael Porter Jr.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: went through three back injuries and he don't move the same as he did when he was 17 years old pre-injuries.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, Larry Bird also went through a ton of back stuff.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm going kind of extreme.
18:19
SPEAKER_02: I'm mentioning surgeries, and that's not even on the doctor for Tyrese.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: At least I pray.
18:23
SPEAKER_02: But just back injuries in general is just one of those, like one of the least uh one of the things I would want my player to deal with the least.
18:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, even like a am I am I bugging?
18:35
SPEAKER_02: Like a torn something.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: You know how many players have come back now with medicine.
18:38
SPEAKER_02: Once upon a time, a torn Achilles was like a death sentence.
18:41
SPEAKER_02: Nowadays you can come back from a torn Achilles and maybe not be exactly the same, but still be able to average the most minutes in the NBA.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: Shout out to Kevin Durant.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, and it'd be okay.
18:51
SPEAKER_02: The back is just one of the ones, man.
18:52
SPEAKER_02: And I pray that that is not the case that that Kevin O'Connor's sources are wrong, and my boy Tyrese is just trying to get back in the swing of things, and that's why he's not um playing to his normal capabilities.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: All right, enough for the news.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about some contenders.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: Now, before the season started, I had deemed it that seven contenders, there were seven contenders, at least in my mind.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: Um, these contenders included the Boston Celtics, the OKC Thunder, the Dallas Mavericks, the 76ers, the Bucks, the Nuggets, and the Knicks.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: Those were my seven.
19:26
SPEAKER_02: And boy, did Minnesota Timbulls fans come after me, Kenny.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: How could we not be contenders?
19:31
SPEAKER_02: That's a conversation for another day.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: My question is of these seven, how many of them are still contenders two weeks of the season?
19:38
SPEAKER_02: And have some other teams jumped into the contender pool.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: So let's start off with the Boston Celtics.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: I think we can all agree they are still the favorite to win a championship, even though they're not the last undefeated team.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: They're still the favorite in my mind.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: So the question is: when you win a championship, how do you get better?
19:56
SPEAKER_02: How do you build on the championship?
19:58
SPEAKER_02: Now they were in a unique territory where they were able to bring back pretty much everybody that was in the rotation.
20:03
SPEAKER_02: They also had their superstar player have some type of chip on his shoulder after not winning finals of MP and seeing the narrative about that.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: Also going into the Olympics and sitting out a bunch of games, so on and so forth.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: They all have chips on their shoulder, which is just rare.
20:15
SPEAKER_02: But how do you build on that on the court?
20:17
SPEAKER_02: So they're still the best offense in basketball.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: Somehow they're five points per game, or five points per 100 possessions better than last year.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: And I want to remind you, last year they're damn, they damn near were the best offense of all time.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: And they're five points better per 100 possessions this year.
20:32
SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't expect that to be the case, considering this is what an eight-game sample size, but that just shows you that they've taken their offense, their brand of basketball, and elevated it.
20:42
SPEAKER_02: They're still shooting a ton of threes, as we already mentioned.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: And that number is at 51% of their shots are threes.
20:47
SPEAKER_02: 51% of the shots.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: And last year they talked about how many threes they were getting up.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: That is 8% higher than last year.
20:54
SPEAKER_02: And of the top six players in basketball with most three-pointers made.
20:58
SPEAKER_02: Can y'all guess how many Boston Celtics are in the top six?
21:01
SPEAKER_02: It's three.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: It's Tatum, it's Derek White, and it's Peyton Pritchard.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: Oh, we're gonna talk about Peyton Pritchard in a little bit because that six man of the year war, I'm looking at it.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: They are all top three in total makes in the association.
21:14
SPEAKER_02: That is absurd, especially consider Peyton Pritchard is coming off the goddamn bench.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: But the thing that has also changed, of course, we knew they were gonna get a lot of threes uphill, they're up even more of that is their transition offense.
21:25
SPEAKER_02: This was a team that last year didn't run very often.
21:28
SPEAKER_02: When they did, they were successful.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: They were one of the best teams in the league as far as points per possession when they did run on a fast break, but they just didn't do it often.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: We'll rather be a set offense team.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: This year, them boys are going.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: Them boys are going.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: Um in the first eight games, this is for what it's worth.
21:45
SPEAKER_02: They play against the Hawks, the Hornets, the Pacers, the Bucks, and the Wizards.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: These are teams that nobody looked at that five out of seven games and said, Hey, uh these.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Of teams we expect to be great transition.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: Of those five teams, I'm sorry, all five of those teams are in the bottom seven in transition defense.
22:07
SPEAKER_02: But it also is like a chicken or the egg thing.
22:09
SPEAKER_02: Are they bottom seven in transition defense because of what the Celtics did to them?
22:14
SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, these advanced stats, small sample size, or are they genuinely that damn awful in transition offense?
22:20
SPEAKER_02: Who really knows?
22:21
SPEAKER_02: So, for what it's worth, not great transition defense teams, but they have still been amazing.
22:27
SPEAKER_02: And that's off misses, that's off turnovers.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: They practically cannot miss.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: And I want to give a big shout out to uh, I never know how to pronounce this man's name, Namias Cata.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: Um, he got to start the other night against the the Atlanta Hawks, and that was a game I watched closely until about halfway through when the Celtics were up at 30 points.
22:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, he just gave a different energy to the Boston Celtics team.
22:49
SPEAKER_02: They didn't need a different energy, but hell, you'll take it.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Where having him as a lob threat is just something they haven't really had in the last couple seasons.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: He also has a defensive like uh mindset to be able to switch onto the perimeter, and they were running him and Al Hoffer together, and Al Hoffer was kind of roaming around, and it basically made it impossible for the Atlanta Hawks to do anything.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: And Hawks are going through so many injuries as well.
23:10
SPEAKER_02: Even Trey Young had a rib injury in this one, he ended up with two points, six assists or whatever.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: But I just want to give a shout out to a fringe rotation player that I don't know if he's gonna be fringe anymore because the Lou Cornette minutes are cool when you're getting blown out.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: They just haven't been amazing.
23:23
SPEAKER_02: Same thing with the Xavier Tillman.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: I would accept uh expect Cada to jump up a little bit in that rotation.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: I also want to say, I don't know what all it takes for Jason Tatum to be in those real conversations, but damn it, he should be in those real conversations.
23:36
SPEAKER_02: As of today, I I would probably say he's my MVP.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: As of today, two weeks in.
23:41
SPEAKER_02: He's averaging 37 and five.
23:43
SPEAKER_02: Good efficiency on the best team in basketball, not record-wise, but the best team in basketball.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: And Tatum has always had a weird candidacy for these because I don't think many people would argue that he's one of the three best players in basketball.
23:57
SPEAKER_02: I find it sometimes hard to argue that he's one of the five best players in basketball, but he's made All NBA first team every single year over the past couple of years.
24:05
SPEAKER_02: So, like, by that, by definition, especially last year, where All NBA was literally positionless, he has a case for top five, but he I don't I don't know how to explain it.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if he'll ever win an MVP award, basically what I'm saying.
24:19
SPEAKER_02: Because even though Shea has started off relatively slow this season, he's still a favorite to win the award.
24:25
SPEAKER_02: Luka Donta started off relatively slow as well.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: He also is second behind um Shay when it comes to MVP odds and everything.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: Even though Tatum is averaging 37-5, uh, a stat line that has not happened for the Boston Celsius since 87.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: Do you want to guess who that 87 player was?
24:42
SPEAKER_02: It was damn Larry Bird.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he is hurt by the fact that their team is so stacked, obviously, right?
24:50
SPEAKER_02: They have another all-NBA caliber player on the team, even though Jalen Brown has missed the last three games.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: They have um another two other all-stars when they're completely healthy and Drew Holiday and Porzingis.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: And though they haven't made it the last couple years, they're all-star caliber players.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: And Derek White got all-star buzz last year.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: All of that, I completely, completely understand.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: But I got to look at the results, and the results are saying Tatum is the AVP of the league as of today.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: We could come back to this in three weeks and a month and see if that has shifted.
25:14
SPEAKER_02: Boston South is still a contender.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: Next, OKC Thunder.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't go too far into this because just last episode, we brought in our board Three Cone.
25:21
SPEAKER_02: If you missed that episode, go check it out.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: We talked about the OKC Thunder, and nothing has changed in the week.
25:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're still undefeated.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: Um, this is a crazy stat that I dug up myself.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: They've played seven games so far this season.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: Five of those games, they held the team to under 100 points.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: And I want to say six because one of those games it happened in garbage time where Shay and J Dub and Chet weren't even on the court.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: The opposing team put up like 30 something points in the fourth quarter in the quarter that none of the stars played.
25:45
SPEAKER_02: Regardless, I'm gonna take it at face value.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: Five of their seven opponents haven't scored 100 points yet.
25:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, last season, 82 games sample size, that only happened nine times.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: It's happened five and seven games this year.
25:58
SPEAKER_02: It happened nine all of last season for them.
26:01
SPEAKER_02: This is they're on pace to have the best defensive rating in modern basketball history.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: Enough said.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: So they're still a contender.
26:07
SPEAKER_02: There are a few teams that I still have a TBD, so I'm gonna keep them in a contention.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: That's gonna be like the Dallas Mavericks, who I just confusing team where they will go out and dominate a game and then just the other night again lose to the Indiana Pacers who weren't looking necessarily great.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: So they're still a TBD.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna keep them in the contention as of today because they haven't done enough for me to feel like they've fallen out.
26:27
SPEAKER_02: They also haven't done enough for me to say that they're 100% in here just yet.
26:31
SPEAKER_02: 76ers, I'm gonna keep there.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: Again, no Joel Embiid for at least the next three games.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: But the first game of Paul George, even though they did end up losing to the Suns, um, was better looking than I expected.
26:41
SPEAKER_02: Paul George missed his first five or so shots.
26:43
SPEAKER_02: I hate the fact that he got the last shot of the game with Tyrese Maxie was on the burner, did nothing.
26:47
SPEAKER_02: But nonetheless, a lot of their role players look like great pieces alongside what the team will eventually look like when Joel Embiid comes back.
26:54
SPEAKER_02: Gershawn Yabusele through the first two weeks has been everything is advertised.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: The question was, could he transition his shooting from the Euro League to the NBA with the longer three-point shot, the longer season, all of that?
27:04
SPEAKER_02: He's been phenomenal.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: Um, better passer than I thought he would be at this stage of his career.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: And it is cool to see him back in the league.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: And if he continues this type of play, he'll be in the league for the foreseeable future.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: Next, the Bucks.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: Did any team fall out?
27:19
SPEAKER_02: Damn it, it's the Bucs, man.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: Um Doc Rivers said he guarantees that they're gonna make the playoffs this season, which I would agree with that.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: Even with Giannis and Dame, even though they're one and six, there's no doubt in my mind this is the playoffs team unless for whatever reason they decide to blow it up, which I think that shouldn't be the case.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: Um that's just moving the goalposts a little bit closer, ain't it?
27:38
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna make the playoffs.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: Doc, I could be the coach right now and make this team a playoff team.
27:45
SPEAKER_02: That's not what you're getting paid for, brother.
27:47
SPEAKER_02: You're paid to raise a Larry OB.
27:49
SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm not one of those people that believe that Giannis is doomsday for Giannis and he's gonna request a trade or he should be traded, yada, yada, yada.
27:56
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I do believe that they're falling out of contention.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: I think everything that could go wrong for them has gone wrong.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: And even with that, I still don't trust the team to win a championship.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: You got to think about it like this Gary Trent Jr.
28:07
SPEAKER_02: has not hit a goddamn shot.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: Bobby Portis is so high volume, low efficiency player right now.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: That's not normally who he is.
28:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh Brick Lopez cannot hit a shot.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: Chris Middleton hasn't played a single game, and Shams reported earlier today, they have no idea when he'll be back.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: The sky has fallen for them.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: And you would expect Brick Lopez should hit more than 20-something percent from three.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: Garrett Trent Jr.
28:29
SPEAKER_02: is a 40% career three-point shooter.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: He should get at least, he got to at least be league average, right?
28:34
SPEAKER_02: Chris Middleton will eventually come back.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: You can expect some of those things to change around, and I still don't believe they have the pieces to be competitive enough to win four series to raise Hilario B.
28:45
SPEAKER_02: The good thing about it, they do have a, at least on paper, a great game season in the works.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: Like last year, he talked about him not being able to really work out in the offseason because he was afraid to get injured.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: It seemed like he was working out this offseason.
28:58
SPEAKER_02: And Giannis still looks dominant.
28:59
SPEAKER_02: It took him a while last year to get really uh to become a dominant defender.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I don't know if that was that might have been right after Doc got there when his defense started to pick up.
29:09
SPEAKER_02: Um, but again, he should be a better defender.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: But all that being said, they are out of my contention tier.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: Out, out, out of my contention tier.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: Next, the Denver Nuggets.
29:17
SPEAKER_02: Just found out that Aaron Gordon is gonna miss some time with a calf strain.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: That's unfortunate.
29:21
SPEAKER_02: Shout out to Aaron Gordon.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: This is a team.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: And my note, I'm gonna read you what my notes say, but I'm I'm pushing back a little bit about my notes.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh the Denver Nuggets are falling out of complete contention for me.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: That's what my notes say, at least the first sense of my notes.
29:34
SPEAKER_02: And I'm sitting here thinking about it.
29:36
SPEAKER_02: And I'm trying to convince myself not to pull the plug on them just yet.
29:41
SPEAKER_02: I think they are also in a dire situation, just not as bad as the Bucs, um, because the Bucs are just this really, really old team that lacks depth.
29:50
SPEAKER_02: The Nuggets are not an old team, they just also lack the depth.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: And if you look at some of the other teams across basketball that are winning games and we consider to be contenders, they have one of two, or more than one of these two things.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: They have um the depth and they have continuity.
30:06
SPEAKER_02: The Nuggets have the continuity, they just don't have the depth, and now Jamal Murray's out with a concussion and MP, and then uh Aaron Gordon is gonna miss some time as well.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: So it's like I'm gonna hold off on getting them out of the contention realm, but boy, they on the edge, man.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: They one fit in, one foot out.
30:21
SPEAKER_02: They're one fit in, one foot out.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: All of their wins have been against really, really bad teams.
30:27
SPEAKER_02: And like, I just I want to see them play against OKC tonight.
30:32
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna see them play against the Mavericks in a couple nights, or you know, the Grizzlies on back-to-backs.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: Because right now their wins consist of the Raptors, the Nuggets, the Jazz, the Raptors again.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: And um, a lot of these games were convincing wins.
30:51
SPEAKER_02: Wins are wins at the end of the day, but overtime against the Raps, overtime against the Nets, and then RJ Barrett's last shot hit every part of the rim before it rimmed out.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: So I'm close to saying no, but I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt for at least a week or so.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: Next, we got the Knicks.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: The Knicks, I'm keeping here for now.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: I think their sample size is a little bit too small for me to dig into these numbers.
31:12
SPEAKER_02: Like on paper, they have the 20th ranked defense, but it's they don't at the same time, where this maybe sound crazy, but if you eliminate that one Boston Celtics game where the Celtics literally tied a record for three pointers made, if you eliminate that one game, they have a top five defense in the league.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: They also have a top five offense.
31:28
SPEAKER_02: That is a recipe to be a contender.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: The problem is it is uh they can't stop anybody at the rim.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: Opponents are scoring almost um anytime Carl Anthony Towns is on at the rim.
31:39
SPEAKER_02: Cat ranks dead last among 73 players who contest at least 25 shots at the rim with the defensive field goal percentage of 90%.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: Do you recognize how ridiculous that is?
31:54
SPEAKER_02: For what it's worth, chat over there in OKC is 36.8.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: Carthony Towns, when he is the man contesting at the rim, is giving up 90%.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: That is whoa! Um, it got bad even in the last game against the Rockets.
32:11
SPEAKER_02: And this is again uh a team that is so interesting because they have so many new pieces, they're trying to figure some things out.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: Where Alperson was having a night.
32:19
SPEAKER_02: He was having a night.
32:20
SPEAKER_02: Four minutes left in his game.
32:21
SPEAKER_02: Top Thibodeau and the Knicks decide, hey, Kat, we want you to guard Tari Eason now because you can't stop Al Prince Shangoon.
32:27
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna have uh Ojanninobi be the guy guarding Alprin Shingoon, and we want you to roam.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: We want you to roam, be in heavy help because Tari Eason, though he has been great so far this season, he's not as much of a threat as Alprin Shingoon.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: So this is what happens.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: You know, Ojananobi can guard fives, but he he can bang down low, but he wasn't strong enough for Shingoon.
32:47
SPEAKER_02: And Ojandanobi allowed Shingoon out of the post to get baseline because he expected his help to be there.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: Hell, they even called that on the broadcast.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: We watched that game.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: He expected Carnthony Towns to be there in help.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: And even when Carnthony Towns is not guarding the guy in the post, he's missing his assignment.
33:03
SPEAKER_02: And Alpha Shingoon got an easy layup.
33:05
SPEAKER_02: So it just hasn't been great defensively for Carl Anthony Towns just yet.
33:08
SPEAKER_02: Um, on the offensive side, after a slow start, it's been pretty damn good.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: Where I don't even know how to express what I'm thinking.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: In his time in Minnesota, Carnegie Towns didn't have spacing, he was the spacing.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
33:22
SPEAKER_02: Nowadays, he has all the spacing.
33:26
SPEAKER_02: And you're seeing him capitalize on his drives where he's driving to the RAM at an all-time high and he's finishing at the RAM at an all-time high.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: Now, anytime he's got in the post, he's gonna do this uh this left shoulder hook, and that is hit or miss here or there.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: But when he is putting the ball on the floor out of like just him in an ISO situation, he is converting those a lot.
33:46
SPEAKER_02: So I'm just gonna I'm gonna say TBD on the Knicks.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: I still worry about their post defense or their paint defense.
33:52
SPEAKER_02: Everything else is kind of flowing.
33:54
SPEAKER_02: There were questions about Mikhail Bridges' shot.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: He's been okay at least.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: Ojan and Obi's been fine, and Jalen Brunson is not overtaxed as a ball handler.
34:00
SPEAKER_02: So um, the only another thing that scares me is that in this game against the Rockets, we are seven games to the season.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: They've already shortened their rotation to seven players.
34:12
SPEAKER_02: Uh that's not ideal when you think about how long the season is and what the postseason looks like.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: They've shortened their rotation to seven players.
34:18
SPEAKER_02: Now, Tyler Kolek played four minutes.
34:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm not counting him.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm not counting him.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: When it comes to players that played 10 minutes or more, it was only seven.
34:25
SPEAKER_02: That's scary this early into the season.
34:27
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna get him a TBD.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: So as of today, the only team that completely fall out is the Bucs.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: What about these other teams?
34:34
SPEAKER_02: Because there are some teams that's looking pretty damn good right now.
34:37
SPEAKER_02: Like the Cleveland Cavaliers.
34:40
SPEAKER_02: Still undefeated as I record this episode.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: Who knows what happens tonight when their game, but they're still undefeated.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: Have they done enough for me to put them in the contention level?
34:50
SPEAKER_02: Even though they have not played the most difficult competition, right?
34:54
SPEAKER_02: All of their wins have gone, except for the Knicks win, have gone against teams that have not looked, let's say, amazing.
35:00
SPEAKER_02: Even the Bucs, right?
35:01
SPEAKER_02: They have one game with Giannis and they win that on basically a game winner on with uh Spider.
35:07
SPEAKER_02: And then the next game, there's no Giannis, and they win that with Darius Garland takes over and throws the lob to Jared Alley at it.
35:12
SPEAKER_02: It hasn't been uh as dominant of a performance as far as them going against good teams, Sasha, but that now they have another gauntlet coming up, so we'll really get to see what their identity is.
35:22
SPEAKER_02: I'm tentatively gonna put them in the yes.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: And the reason I say that is I look across the Eastern Conference and I ask myself, what team, based on their defensive matchup, fits the best alongside the Boston Celtics?
35:35
SPEAKER_02: Again, everybody's fighting to beat the Celtics.
35:37
SPEAKER_02: I think the Cavs are towards the top of that list, man.
35:39
SPEAKER_02: Kenny Axis' teams never give up threes.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: Boston Celtics are a team that almost includes shoot threes.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: And they also have the wing defenders to match the Jays.
35:48
SPEAKER_02: Um the Knicks do as well, Will Jananobi and Mikhail Bridges.
35:51
SPEAKER_02: But um, I'm gonna put them in like a yes.
35:54
SPEAKER_02: They're also one foot in, one foot out.
35:56
SPEAKER_02: How about that?
35:56
SPEAKER_02: They're one foot in, one foot out, but I've been extremely impressed with the way they've been playing game.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: Um, I dropped a video on them completely, so I don't want to, you know, re-go through some of my bullet points from that video if you missed it.
36:06
SPEAKER_02: Kenny Freel on YouTube.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: It's like a 10-minute video talking about the Cavs.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: Then we have like the Phoenix Suns, who are one of the few won-loss teams in basketball.
36:14
SPEAKER_02: Um, they were a team and I was, of course, really high on, had them as my two seed.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: And right now they're living up to that, at least in my mind.
36:19
SPEAKER_02: I'm still gonna say no as far as them being contender.
36:22
SPEAKER_02: So I need more of a sample size for them as well.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: Even though they have some really good wins under their belt, I still watch them and I still don't trust Yusuf Nurkic.
36:30
SPEAKER_02: And granted, they've closed out a lot of games without Yusuf Nurkic on the court.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: They closed out a lot of games without Tyus Jones because he's a guy that gets picked on defensively.
36:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm still gonna say no as a contender as today, but that they're close enough that it might shift.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: And a no to the Warriors as well.
36:44
SPEAKER_02: Uh, they finally get their first matchup, even though they've been phenomenal this year, their first matchup against a good team.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: Tonight, I don't know how that's gonna go.
36:50
SPEAKER_02: They've been one of my favorite watches in basketball, but damn it, I can't say that they're a championship level team.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: So, as of today, are we still as we're still at seven contenders?
37:00
SPEAKER_02: We substituted the Bucks for the Cavs.
37:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh, before we move on, I want to quickly talk about two other teams, just very, very briefly, some uh observations about the Lakers and such.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: So, Anthony Davis, after their loss to the Detroit Pistons, said, we're just two different teams right now.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: One game, we're this team who showcases that we're one of the better teams in the league.
37:21
SPEAKER_02: The next, we're this team who I don't even know who we are.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of been the thing for the Lakers in the entirety of the Braun Anthony Davis era, excluding the first year where they did win the championship.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: Um I think we can all agree that JJ Reddick is miles ahead of like as a coach and Darwin Hamm.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: But there are still some things that are troubling.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: This team, we talk about depth and continuity.
37:47
SPEAKER_02: Damn it, they got continuity, but they do not have depth whatsoever.
37:52
SPEAKER_02: Where I'm watching these games and I'm watching Max Christie, I'm watching Gabe Vincent, I'm watching Jackson Hayes, which he's got his own stuff to worry about right now.
38:02
SPEAKER_02: Um I'm looking at it and I'm like, damn, they need a lot of help on that second unit.
38:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm watching D'Angelo Russell.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: And D'Angelo Russell has been, over the last couple years, at least a good regular season player.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no, no, no.
38:17
SPEAKER_02: Not to start this year.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: It's been awful.
38:20
SPEAKER_02: They could use a trade.
38:23
SPEAKER_02: And previous years, I've been hesitant, right?
38:26
SPEAKER_02: I've been hesitant to tell the Lakers to go all in, go trade, and I'm not even saying this because he's on my team.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: Go trade for Zach Levine, go trade for this guy, go trade for that guy.
38:33
SPEAKER_02: I've been hesitant because I was asking myself, what does that trade do to your ceiling?
38:39
SPEAKER_02: Is it worth trading two first-round picks for borderline all-star or all-star caliber player?
38:44
SPEAKER_02: If that means we're good enough to maybe be in contention for the sixth seed.
38:48
SPEAKER_02: I think under JJ's Tutelich, is that the word?
38:51
SPEAKER_02: Under JJ's coaching, that that bigger move could be worth it.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: And Jerry Vanderbilt hasn't played in a decade.
38:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh Anthony Edwards told us that on the broadcast.
39:03
SPEAKER_02: He ain't played it forever.
39:04
SPEAKER_02: That is enough.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: Danzo Russell's contract is enough.
39:08
SPEAKER_02: Gabe Vince's contract, and they have, they're one of the few teams in the league that have these mid-tier contracts.
39:13
SPEAKER_02: Right now, it's like, hey, you got a max or you got a minimum.
39:16
SPEAKER_02: They have a few between 10 to 20 million dollar contracts you can aggregate in order to make something happen.
39:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't know if I'm still a fan of going out to get the big name player because that doesn't do anything for their depth.
39:27
SPEAKER_02: It might help their overall talent.
39:29
SPEAKER_02: But like, there are a few guys across basketball that I'm like, yeah, if the Lakers could use their draft capital to go get this random role player, that significantly changes their organization.
39:39
SPEAKER_02: Right now, they're 29th in basketball and three-point frequency.
39:41
SPEAKER_02: We talked about the meta.
39:43
SPEAKER_02: They're losing in the meta battle.
39:46
SPEAKER_02: They're drawing hella fouls, is what the Lakers have done for the last four years.
39:49
SPEAKER_02: They're gonna have a million free throws more than their opponent.
39:51
SPEAKER_02: That's just the reality of it.
39:52
SPEAKER_02: Whatever, whatever.
39:53
SPEAKER_02: They're um towards the top of the league when it comes to paint offense, but they don't get up threes.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: And when I re-watched that Detroit Pistons loss, and shout out to the Pistons, they've closed at a couple games.
40:02
SPEAKER_02: Congratulations.
40:04
SPEAKER_02: The three-pointers that they generated, it was only 28 of them, but bulk of them came at the end of a shot clock.
40:14
SPEAKER_02: Majority of them came at the end of a shot clock or so early that it was like, we ain't shot a three in a while.
40:20
SPEAKER_02: Very rarely do it feel like they're generating threes off of the actions that they're running.
40:24
SPEAKER_02: And I feel like that is more of a problem.
40:27
SPEAKER_02: Um, it's one thing to not get them up, it's another thing not to work to get them up.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: Um, so we'll see what the Lakers end up doing.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: I do believe this is gonna be a year that they do do something, though, right?
40:36
SPEAKER_02: This is not gonna be another year where they're at the deadline and all Lakers fans are hoping that they make the deal, hoping that they make the deal and they never do.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: I think JJ is a good enough coach to make it worth it.
40:44
SPEAKER_02: Um next team, last thing, before we get to uh talking to producer Greg with our five out.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: I want to talk about the Brooklyn Nets.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: There's a clip that that is living every damn day on Nets Twitter.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: Before this even started, me and the guys on the other podcast, we did our NBA over unders the Brooklyn Nets line was 18 and a half.
41:07
SPEAKER_02: And I smashed the under.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: They are on pace to do a lot more damage than that.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: So shut up.
41:13
SPEAKER_02: Hey, guy who talks basketball is wrong.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: It happens.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: It happens.
41:17
SPEAKER_02: I'm not one of those dudes that die on a hill.
41:19
SPEAKER_02: I was wrong there.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: Um but how how wrong do y'all want me to be?
41:25
SPEAKER_02: Do y'all want to win games?
41:26
SPEAKER_02: That's like that is the c this is one of the few years where the Brooklyn Nets own the rights to their own pick, where they control their own destiny to an extent.
41:33
SPEAKER_02: So them having a season where they defy the odds and overperform greatly, I don't know if that's good for your franchise.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: I think there has to be a rug pull coming soon.
41:45
SPEAKER_02: Hey, listen, Schroeder, phenomenal leader, one of the better leaders in basketball if you ask Jordy Nelson.
41:50
SPEAKER_02: Now we know two weeks into his NBA career that Jordy Nelson is one of those coaches that we can trust a long-term rebuild.
41:56
SPEAKER_02: Cam Thomas is doing his thing.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: Cam Johnson is doing his thing.
41:59
SPEAKER_02: During Finney Smith is getting game-winning three-point attempts against the Denver Nuggets.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: Like, there are a lot of things here.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: And Cam Thomas is standing.
42:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm not trying to throw him in no trades.
42:08
SPEAKER_02: But these are real players with real value.
42:11
SPEAKER_02: And I would expect them to have this rock pool, man.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: The last thing you want, I I firmly do believe that if you continue to win, and let's say, because like the bottom of the Eastern Conference, because I'm assuming that the 76ers and the Buck Brooklyn um the Bucs are going to find their way into the playoffs.
42:30
SPEAKER_02: That last two spots for the plan, it's up for grabs.
42:35
SPEAKER_02: And the last thing I would want, the last thing I would want for the Brooklyn Nets is for them to grab one of those spots and then have the seventh overall.
42:43
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, not the seventh, the 11th overall pick in this year's draft, and the only draft where they own their own picks.
42:52
SPEAKER_02: This is supposed to be the year where you go for Cooper Flag, who looked pretty good as the primary ball handler for Duke, or you go get an Ace Bailey who we ain't seen because he's dealing with an injury already.
43:02
SPEAKER_02: This is not a year where you put your eggs in the Dennis Schroeder basket.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: Because what is the lifeline?
43:10
SPEAKER_02: What is the the the lifespan of that?
43:13
SPEAKER_02: A year.
43:15
SPEAKER_02: We're getting Cooper Flag or getting Ace Bailey or getting VJ Etchram or whatever one of these the dude from BI BYU who looked phenomenal last night against um some dudes.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: I just enjoy the wins as you as you do, but recognize that this is probably not great.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: Early season don't matter.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: Early season don't matter.
43:34
SPEAKER_02: But if we're a month down the line and y'all are still a 500 team, I'm not feeling great about that for y'all.
43:41
SPEAKER_02: Now, before we bring in producer Greg, I mentioned earlier about Peyton Pritchard.
43:45
SPEAKER_02: And Peyton Pritchard has been killing the game.
43:47
SPEAKER_02: Like I mentioned, top in the league when it comes to three pointers made.
43:50
SPEAKER_02: And if you're top in the league and three pointers made and you're also on a good team and you're coming off the bench, what does that mean?
43:55
SPEAKER_02: You gotta be in contention for six men of the year.
43:58
SPEAKER_02: If you go to FanDuel Sportsbook the Odds are up, and Peyton Pritchard as of today is the favorite of the plus 400.
44:04
SPEAKER_02: Right behind him is Buddy Healed, who is going through the part of the Buddy Healed cycle that we are all aware of where he can't miss for a month straight.
44:12
SPEAKER_02: He's plus 700.
44:13
SPEAKER_02: Malik Monk, a staple in the six man of the year conversations, plus 800.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: Betty McMath, plus 900, Nazi plus 1000, the reign and champ.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: And then uh I like Trey Man as well at plus 1300.
44:23
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you want to know the history of the Six Man of the Year award, historically, you have to be on the playoff team.
44:28
SPEAKER_02: There's only been one in the modern era to win Six Man of the Year without being on the playoff team.
44:33
SPEAKER_02: So that might eliminate a guy like Trey Man, and it might hope a guy like Peyton Pritcher, who's not on the playoff team, but on the best team in basketball.
44:40
SPEAKER_02: So I'm just curious to see how this goes.
44:43
SPEAKER_02: Um, some of these dudes are on really good teams.
44:47
SPEAKER_02: If I had to bet today, I still like Nas's chances.
44:51
SPEAKER_02: At a plus 1,000, I feel like that's a good deal as of today.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: I see him as a guy that can play his way back into that conversation with it being so early into the season.
44:59
SPEAKER_02: So I guess we're gonna have to wait and see.
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46:24
SPEAKER_02: So now let's bring in producer Greg for your favorite segment, five hour.
46:28
SPEAKER_02: How are we feeling today?
46:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm doing great.
46:30
SPEAKER_03: I uh speaking of Halliburton and kind of your concern level with him.
46:33
SPEAKER_03: I don't have much today, but I wanted to bring up two other players and kind of gauge where you're at with uh your level of concern for either where they're at in their career or their lack of improvement or development.
46:44
SPEAKER_03: First player is Zion.
46:47
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
46:48
SPEAKER_02: This is actually something me and the guys talked about just last night.
46:51
SPEAKER_02: Um Zion is a guy that has not added much or improved his game since we first got introduced to who he was.
47:05
SPEAKER_02: And I guess in the grand scheme, it's not that big of a deal, but he also hasn't evolved to the point where we feel comfortable with him being a 1-8 on a championship level team.
47:17
SPEAKER_02: Where as of today, I think he's shooting like 40% from the field on a guy that exclusively takes layups and dunks.
47:24
SPEAKER_02: That's nasty.
47:25
SPEAKER_02: I mean, at one point he was a 60% from the field type of dude.
47:28
SPEAKER_02: And now, granted, he did go against Draymond that one game where he was five for 20.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: Like that game was crazy.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: I I watched that game back and I'm watching Zion's possessions, and some of that is just Draymond and Kevin Looney walling him off completely, bad balances, yada, yada, yada.
47:41
SPEAKER_02: But as I watch the Pelicans who are dealing with every injury in the world right now, and I think about the splitting of Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson, I understand picking Zion, but I also don't believe at this point that Zion is going to be the guy to take the New Realms Pelicans to the promised land.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: And that's scary stuff you consider all you've invested in him right now.
48:03
SPEAKER_02: So on my concern meter, I'm probably putting it at a seven.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: I do believe that he's gonna be a guy that can make multiple all-star appearances just by the way he plays.
48:11
SPEAKER_02: But when we think about trying to win a championship and being a 1-8, I think he's just lacking a lot of the stuff that you need in this level of basketball.
48:19
SPEAKER_03: And do you think that shooting percentage is due to a bit of diminished athleticism or more so defense is just catching up on how to play him?
48:26
SPEAKER_02: I think it's both, honestly.
48:27
SPEAKER_02: Like um, some of those games, his bursts, it's still otherworldly because he's Zion, but when you compare it to what the it was supposed it was two years ago when he was an all-star, it's night and day.
48:38
SPEAKER_03: It used to be must-watch TV.
48:40
SPEAKER_03: Yes, when he was first in the league.
48:41
SPEAKER_03: He's gonna dunk on somebody, he's gonna have some crazy athletic play.
48:44
SPEAKER_03: It just doesn't really happen anymore.
48:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we don't get Zion highlights for what it's like as we used to.
48:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, he can still get a good game.
48:51
SPEAKER_02: Like the game before that against the Warriors, he had like 27, 28 points.
48:55
SPEAKER_02: So he could still give you a really good game, but he hasn't had, yeah, that highlight factor where we mentioned earlier this the NBA was putting a lot of eggs in Zion's basket.
49:04
SPEAKER_02: They couldn't care less anymore.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: Like the Pelicans don't get nationally television, national television games or covers like that anymore.
49:10
SPEAKER_02: I think part of that is because Zion hasn't lived up to the expectations.
49:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm rooting for him as a fellow anime lover.
49:17
SPEAKER_02: Um, I want him to be great.
49:19
SPEAKER_02: Every time I've talked to him, he's been a pleasure.
49:21
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I gotta keep it real.
49:23
SPEAKER_03: Second player is Wimby.
49:25
SPEAKER_02: I'm not worried about Wimby whatsoever.
49:27
SPEAKER_02: Um I it's funny that he went on this whole like media tour, like, yeah, these guys don't want it as much as me.
49:33
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm not saying Chet Homer's name, and Chet and the OKC Thunder took his lunch.
49:38
SPEAKER_02: Where like it's it's one thing to have a bad game, in my opinion.
49:40
SPEAKER_02: It's another thing to not assert yourself.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: And I feel like that's where Wimby is lacking in a lot of cases, where I've said before, my biggest criticism of Wimby is he's a floater, where there are just possessions where he would have a small defender on him and he's okay with sitting at the wing instead of using that size in his athleticism to get a good look for him and his team.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm not worried about it though, because the night after, of course, he gives us a five by five.
50:07
SPEAKER_02: I do believe he does shoot way too many three-pointers for a guy that probably is going to shoot 32% for his career.
50:14
SPEAKER_02: And I think he's way less than that to start this season.
50:16
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I I'm not I'm not worried about it as far as what he can be in the long term.
50:27
SPEAKER_02: So two weeks ago, we started our NBA Power Rankings.
50:30
SPEAKER_02: And if you missed that episode, my power rankings are different than the power rankings you might see on ESPN or any other bleach report, so on and so forth.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: Because I don't take into consideration what you did last year or anything like that.
50:42
SPEAKER_02: This is a complete blank slate power ranking.
50:45
SPEAKER_02: And if you see this on Twitter and somebody screenshots and say Kenny is out his goddamn mind, please remind them of that.
50:52
SPEAKER_02: This is blank slate.
50:53
SPEAKER_02: I don't care who's on the team, it's how your team is performing versus the competition.
50:56
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, here's my top 10.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh, two weeks into the NBA season, starting off at number 10, the Los Angeles Lakers, like I mentioned earlier in the episode, uh, or like Anthony Davis mentioned, they're a good team and sometimes they're a bad team, but they do have a bunch, in my opinion, quality wins under the belt.
51:11
SPEAKER_02: They do have really bad losses, like a Detroit Piston one, but still top 10.
51:15
SPEAKER_02: Number nine, the Minnesota Timbulls, Anthony Howard's three-point volume is a one to be seen.
51:19
SPEAKER_02: One thing that I did not expect to happen this season and is has not changed since we talked about it last week.
51:24
SPEAKER_02: They're still a good team.
51:24
SPEAKER_02: Julis Randall shooting a career high from three.
51:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't expect him to shoot that damn good all season long, but they still do have the necessary pieces to win a bunch of regular season games, in my opinion.
51:32
SPEAKER_02: And that's with Jaden McDaniels not having anything offensively and uh DDV not hitting a three-point shot just yet, basically.
51:40
SPEAKER_02: So um, the fact that they're still okay right here is pretty good.
51:43
SPEAKER_02: They've lost some of that edge defensively, which scares me because that's what what their identity was last season.
51:48
SPEAKER_02: Still early on.
51:49
SPEAKER_02: We'll see if their identity shifts or if they could get completely bought in back to the defense.
51:53
SPEAKER_02: Number eight, it's gonna be the Dallas Mavericks.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: The Mavericks, again, just a weird team.
51:58
SPEAKER_02: We talked about this a little bit earlier.
51:59
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what to make of them just yet.
52:01
SPEAKER_02: They've got some good wins.
52:02
SPEAKER_02: They also got a game against the Pacers where they lost.
52:05
SPEAKER_02: I think they also lost a game to the Rockets early this season, if I'm not mistaken.
52:08
SPEAKER_02: So up and down season, but this is the way the NBA is right now.
52:11
SPEAKER_02: We have a couple outliers.
52:12
SPEAKER_02: I think it's five teams up top with a good record, then everybody else is 500.
52:16
SPEAKER_02: So it's or 500 or one game above 500.
52:19
SPEAKER_02: So it's a matter of who did they beat and how did they beat them.
52:22
SPEAKER_02: Um, anyway.
52:23
SPEAKER_02: Number seven is the Houston Rockets.
52:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:26
SPEAKER_02: I I understand they lost to the Charlotte Hornets earlier in the season.
52:30
SPEAKER_02: I understand that the Warriors are about 31 and they got that to overtime.
52:34
SPEAKER_02: Um, but they've looked pretty damn good.
52:37
SPEAKER_02: They're one of those teams that I'm super excited to see how Emay tries to finagle these rotations because every game has been different.
52:45
SPEAKER_02: The game against the Warriors, they rolled Tari Easton and Amin Thompson because those are the dudes that got them back into the game, where Alprin Shangoon doesn't play in your fourth quarter or any of overtime other games.
52:54
SPEAKER_02: He's playing the entire fourth quarter like he did against the New York Knicks.
52:57
SPEAKER_02: It's very situational, but they have so many talented players where a guy like Amin Thompson, in my opinion, is not getting the amount of minutes that he should.
53:04
SPEAKER_02: He's so damn good play that man, but it's hard to when everybody else, other than Fred Van Flee, is performing.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: And Freddie is just the steady, even though he's shooting awful, awful percentages, he's steady Freddie.
53:16
SPEAKER_02: That's his nickname.
53:16
SPEAKER_02: So I understand keeping him high in the rotation, him getting 30 plus minutes per game.
53:21
SPEAKER_02: But also it's like Amin Thompson and Reese Shepard look pretty damn good.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: But they're number seven.
53:26
SPEAKER_02: Number six will be the New York Knicks.
53:28
SPEAKER_02: They lost to our number seven team, Houston Rockets, but they also have, again, some really good wins on the season.
53:32
SPEAKER_02: We talked about them earlier.
53:33
SPEAKER_02: Number five, Golden State Warriors.
53:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: Now they have the highest variance where next time in two weeks, when we do this episode, they could be so much further down because this is where the season gets really good for them.
53:47
SPEAKER_02: They got Boston tonight on ESPN.
53:49
SPEAKER_02: Can't wait for that game.
53:50
SPEAKER_02: But as of today, again, only based on what we've seen, they're number five.
53:54
SPEAKER_02: They're dominant, dominant defensively.
53:56
SPEAKER_02: Um, and the offense is still pretty good as well.
53:59
SPEAKER_02: And that's without Steph Curry having to be the supernova version of himself.
54:02
SPEAKER_02: Number four will be the Phoenix Suns.
54:04
SPEAKER_02: Great season so far.
54:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm enjoying everything about their season except for Yusuf Nurkish.
54:08
SPEAKER_02: Number three will be the Cleveland Cavaliers.
54:11
SPEAKER_02: Number two will be the Boston Celtics.
54:13
SPEAKER_02: And number one will have to be the OKC Thunder.
54:17
SPEAKER_02: That is my top 10 power ranking as of today.
54:19
SPEAKER_02: Again, all of this stuff is really, really shifting.
54:21
SPEAKER_02: It was a it was hard to figure out do I put the Celtics one or two, but I had to remember whatever happened last season don't really matter.
54:28
SPEAKER_02: And the Thunder, um, the Thunder's offense still hasn't done anything that's super, super impressive, and they're still beating teams by a million points.
54:35
SPEAKER_02: So maybe that's a reason for them not to be number one.
54:37
SPEAKER_02: Damn it, I gave it a number one.
54:38
SPEAKER_02: So we won't have the Celtics number one every single week.
54:41
SPEAKER_02: All right.
54:41
SPEAKER_02: Um, next thing we want to do is get to my favorite segment.
54:45
SPEAKER_02: Ask KB.
54:46
SPEAKER_02: All you got to do is go to the Enjoy Smallball account on Instagram, send us a message, it could be one letter, and then you can send a voice message.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm taking all questions.
54:55
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Kenny.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh big fan.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: My name's Zach.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: Been following you and all your stuff since about 2020.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: It's been so cool to see you grow in the media landscape.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: Love how you talk about the game.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, you keep dropping hints that you want to be a coach.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh I love that.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: What kind of inspired that desire?
55:13
SPEAKER_01: Because I know you always wanted to be like the number one media guy, and I'm sure you still probably do, but uh, what inspired the desire to kind of want to get on the sidelines?
55:22
SPEAKER_01: And what would be some of your core philosophies once you got that opportunity?
55:27
SPEAKER_01: Um thanks, go Cavs, and let's go, Nas Reed.
55:31
SPEAKER_02: I like that.
55:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, so okay, I want to press the brakes a little bit.
55:34
SPEAKER_02: When I say I wanted to do coaching, I'm not trying to be a high school coach, a college coach, an NBA coach.
55:41
SPEAKER_02: In my mind, some of the in my life, some of the most influential people to me were my coaches.
55:46
SPEAKER_02: And I think I'm just at the age where I kind of want to give back.
55:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think the best way for me to give back is through things that I enjoy as well, and that would be basketball.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: So, like, um, I would assume that once my daughter, if, if, if, I hope she does, um was uh get into basketball, I would want to be her coach there.
56:05
SPEAKER_02: Um I just again, those people, those guys, Coach Dana, Coach Lavik, the coach, Coach Nelson, uh, Coach Lottie, all of these dudes, shout out to them, helped form who I am as a person and helped me grow my love of the game.
56:22
SPEAKER_02: And I kind of want to be that for the younger generation in a way.
56:25
SPEAKER_02: So uh I was invited to come to some high school practices just to kind of get a feel.
56:30
SPEAKER_02: I ain't been in a high school practice since I was 16 years old.
56:32
SPEAKER_02: You feel me?
56:33
SPEAKER_02: So kind of get a feel of what practices look like again.
56:36
SPEAKER_02: And they invited me to sit invited me to sit on the bench, and I'm like, yo, no, I can't, I can't, because I feel like that's a mockery of the people that's actually putting the work in.
56:44
SPEAKER_02: So I said I could come to the games, I'll just sit in the bleachers, let me come to practice, let me take some notes, yada, yada, yada.
56:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, when it comes to philosophies, that is a part that I still have no idea.
56:52
SPEAKER_02: Like, and that's one of the reasons why I want to shadow some coaches, kind of to get it get um some references.
56:58
SPEAKER_02: I just want to see what coaches decide to do and why they decide to do them because I've played under a plethora of different coaches where I've had a coach where this is his identity, and damn it, as a player, you better adjust.
57:10
SPEAKER_02: I've had some coaches to be like, okay, I see the team we've built through this tryout.
57:14
SPEAKER_02: It might be rough for the first month, but I'm gonna gear my philosophies around who y'all are.
57:19
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know what the right idea is necessarily, but I want to be open to all of that.
57:24
SPEAKER_02: But at the at the base of it all, I've always wanted to just give back, like um, when we started Enjoy Basketball, there were three major C's.
57:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, it was content, it was commerce, and it was charity.
57:35
SPEAKER_02: And we've done content.
57:36
SPEAKER_02: Hell, you're watching the show right now.
57:38
SPEAKER_02: We've done um commerce, we drop every or what, four or five times a year.
57:41
SPEAKER_02: And the charity aspect of it, um, it's just something we're still lacking.
57:45
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying coaching necessarily is charity, but when I when I think about trying to put an input on the younger generation, I kind of put those two things together.
57:52
SPEAKER_02: So um we'll see though.
57:54
SPEAKER_02: We'll see.
57:55
SPEAKER_02: Like maybe I enjoy, you know, coaching the seven-year-olds, the 10-year-olds so much that that evolves to the point where I want to coach high school or thing like that.
58:05
SPEAKER_02: But uh, there's only so many hours in a day.
58:08
SPEAKER_02: And like you mentioned, my main goal is to be number one in sports media.
58:10
SPEAKER_02: I can't be number one in sports media while missing games because high school basketball games at the same time as NBA games.
58:17
SPEAKER_02: So uh, you know, it's a tugging pool.
58:19
SPEAKER_02: I my number one priority, don't you worry, is this show and all the content.
58:25
SPEAKER_02: But I do want to give back.
58:27
SPEAKER_00: Yo, QA vibes live from the shoe palace stock room.
58:31
SPEAKER_00: I need to know.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: We're talking sneakers here, we're talking sneakers.
58:34
SPEAKER_00: And then your top three of all time.
58:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna just be honest.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: In one of your old, old set of videos in the background where you had the shelves with the shoes, you had a pair back there.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: It was an Air Max one, watermelon jokes, the green and pink ones.
58:46
SPEAKER_00: I went into shoe palace when I seen them.
58:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yo, I need these because I've seen them in the background of your videos.
58:51
SPEAKER_00: But we're being honest, if these are not in your top three, I don't know what to tell you.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: I'll try to respect it as much as I can, but I need to know your top three of all time.
59:02
SPEAKER_02: Hey, shout out, shout out, man.
59:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, that's the first video one I think we've got.
59:06
SPEAKER_02: So, man, um, the black cement three, 100% of my top three.
59:09
SPEAKER_02: 100%.
59:10
SPEAKER_02: Um, I have to give some love to the sneaker that got me into sneakers.
59:14
SPEAKER_02: That will be the white cement four.
59:16
SPEAKER_02: Um, the OG one with the with the Nike Air on the back.
59:19
SPEAKER_02: Not no disrespect to the redrop, but the the OG ones.
59:22
SPEAKER_02: Like I have, I am not exaggerating when I say this, I have four pair of those at the crib because I won't throw them away.
59:27
SPEAKER_02: Even the ones that I beat to death, they are still there.
59:29
SPEAKER_02: Um, and then the third one's gotta be something outside of Jordan, right?
59:33
SPEAKER_02: I can't just be a Jordan, Jordan, Jordan guy, um, even though we do love Jordan.
59:37
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I'm starting to open up a little bit more to the outside brands as a Chicagoan growing up, it basically was Jordan or nothing.
59:44
SPEAKER_02: You that makes sense, right?
59:45
SPEAKER_02: Born in the 90s and stuff, Michael Jordan was on top of the world.
59:48
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, I guess he still is when it comes to the sneaker game.
59:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if I'm keeping it honest, like a smooth pair of forces, white forces, they round out my top three.
59:59
SPEAKER_02: God, that feels disrespectful to some shoes.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_02: Um, I think I'm gonna keep it at those three.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna keep it at those three.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you want like very specifics, like like I could give you my top three favorite collaborations, but you gotta call back in for those.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_02: But I'm gonna go uh black cement three, white cement four, and just a pair of all white forces, G Fasos.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know what y'all call them, what y'all are, but I don't know.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_02: Um give me give me those three.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_02: And if that was my only sneaker rotation for the rest of my life, I will be fine.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
1:00:29
SPEAKER_02: I will be completely fine.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of Small Ball with Kenny Beecher.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_02: Man, the comment section is completely open.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_02: I gave a ton of opinions today.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_02: You let me know what you think about the ratings being down, Joel Embiid getting suspended, and my NBA contention ranking.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: Um, because I'm sure you might disagree with the way we're doing it.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_02: That's why we love sports.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_02: We can disagree, but still be cool.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate y'all, and I'll see y'all next week.