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These NBA Teams Are Impossible to Predict · Small Ball with Kenny Beecham

0:05
SPEAKER_03: What's good, y'all?
0:06
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Small Ball with Kenny Beecham, episode one.
0:10
SPEAKER_03: Now, if you've been following for some time, I mean, a podcast is not very new.
0:14
SPEAKER_03: Uh, the name is new, the visuals are new, and the goal is new as well.
0:19
SPEAKER_03: Ball has been on my mind for the last couple months, man.
0:22
SPEAKER_03: This season I am dived in or diving in more than ever before.
0:25
SPEAKER_03: And y'all already know I was on top of my game.
0:27
SPEAKER_03: This year's gonna be a lot different.
0:29
SPEAKER_03: And last time you talked to me or you see me on this channel, we were doing the Kenny Beach and podcasts, which was a success.
0:36
SPEAKER_03: I always have a thing where I try something new without any goals or like any real vision for it and see if people enjoy it.
0:43
SPEAKER_03: And that's basically what Kenny Beach and Podcast was, and then it turned into this, where things are gonna be different, but the same.
0:49
SPEAKER_03: Like you're here to get my basketball opinions, right?
0:51
SPEAKER_03: But things will be elevated.
0:52
SPEAKER_03: We still got producer Greg on the ones and twos.
0:55
SPEAKER_03: And this season we will be having a plethora of guests, and it should be a lot of fun.
1:00
SPEAKER_03: Now we're at that part of the season, which is what, a week or two away, where you're gonna see all your favorite publications, your favorite YouTubers, your favorite podcasts go out there and give you their predictions of the NBA season.
1:12
SPEAKER_03: And I'm a guy that takes these predictions very, I mean very, very seriously.
1:16
SPEAKER_03: Hit me up when I'm right.
1:17
SPEAKER_03: Don't hit me up when I'm wrong.
1:19
SPEAKER_03: Don't hit me up when I'm wrong.
1:20
SPEAKER_03: But I like when I see a shot go in.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: For example, two years ago, Sacramento Kings, that was me.
1:26
SPEAKER_03: Also, three years ago, Sacramento Kings, I thought it was gonna be them and I was wrong there.
1:29
SPEAKER_03: But two years ago, Sacramento Kings, that was me.
1:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh last year, we got some some big A-Os like the Atlanta Hawks or um The Pelicans was like a neutral.
1:38
SPEAKER_03: Like I thought they were gonna be good, and hell, they were in the playoff series this year.
1:41
SPEAKER_03: I thought they were gonna be a little bit better.
1:42
SPEAKER_03: So I'm counting that as a neutral.
1:43
SPEAKER_03: Whereas I'm going through all these snows, trying to figure out which teams I'm really excited about, which seems I want to dive into or by stock in.
1:50
SPEAKER_03: There were three teams that stood out.
1:51
SPEAKER_03: And when I say stood out, I don't mean in a good way.
1:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean these are the teams that are so very impossible for me to figure out where they sit.
2:00
SPEAKER_03: And that's what today's episode is about.
2:02
SPEAKER_03: These are the three most confusing teams for me to predict going into this NBA season.
2:07
SPEAKER_03: The first team, and this this might be the hardest for all of them, is the Phoenix Suns.
2:13
SPEAKER_03: The Phoenix Suns last year were, they like I think if you are a top six C in the Western Conference, you're probably better than alright.
2:20
SPEAKER_03: You are pretty damn good, but they backed that pretty damn good season up by getting swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves.
2:27
SPEAKER_03: And I'll be honest with you, and my research of this, I went back to look at the ESPNs, the Ringers, all of the people that were given their prediction for that 3-6 matchup.
2:36
SPEAKER_03: And everybody, a majority of people were saying the Suns should win that series.
2:41
SPEAKER_03: Me included.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:43
SPEAKER_03: Don't go back and watch the tape.
2:44
SPEAKER_03: I did predict the Suns were gonna win that series.
2:46
SPEAKER_03: Not only did they not win that series, they didn't even win a goddamn game.
2:51
SPEAKER_03: Embarrassment.
2:52
SPEAKER_03: An absolute embarrassment.
2:53
SPEAKER_03: The last couple weeks of the season, I don't know if y'all remember, they had a really tough stretch.
2:57
SPEAKER_03: And they went out there and they won, what, seven of the last 10 games to put them in a position where they weren't in a play-in, but instead they were in a playoff series.
3:04
SPEAKER_03: And in the regular season, they took care of business against Minnesota.
3:08
SPEAKER_03: They were 4-0.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: So in my mind, the Minnesota Timbows play this crazy drop coverage.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: They have two drop coverage killers and Devin Booker and Kevin Durant.
3:17
SPEAKER_03: And that's when I had to realize that basketball is a lot more complex than that.
3:21
SPEAKER_03: And we were wrong.
3:22
SPEAKER_03: Shout out to the Minnesota Timbows for that successful season where they went on a legendary run, in my opinion.
3:26
SPEAKER_03: Um, but that left the Suns up in limbo because you have three.
3:30
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna count three of the most expensive contracts in basketball.
3:34
SPEAKER_03: The most expensive contract this year is Steph Curry, well deserved.
3:37
SPEAKER_03: The second most expensive is Kawhi Leonard.
3:39
SPEAKER_03: Damn it, I'm gonna say well-deserved, even if he hasn't been healthy for the last four seasons.
3:42
SPEAKER_03: Next one is Nicole Jokic's best player in the world.
3:45
SPEAKER_03: Next one is Joel Embiid, MVP of the league and one of the most dominant individual players in all the hoops.
3:50
SPEAKER_03: Then back to back to back, see Kevin Durant, or Bradley Beal, and Devin Booker.
3:54
SPEAKER_03: This is the first$400 million roster in all of basketball.
4:00
SPEAKER_03: So they lose in the first round, and basically the only thing they could do is fire the coach.
4:07
SPEAKER_03: Because Bradley Beal doesn't have a market.
4:08
SPEAKER_03: And you traded everything in existence for Kevin Durant.
4:11
SPEAKER_03: Devin Booker is the guy that's loyal to the soil.
4:14
SPEAKER_03: You can't make major roster moves here to decide to fire the coach.
4:18
SPEAKER_03: You know what I was thinking about relatively recently?
4:20
SPEAKER_03: When the Carthenny Towns trade went on, um, I hated it originally for the Minnesota Timbulls.
4:26
SPEAKER_03: Carton Tony Towns being the guy that's there since the very beginning, watching him go through so many rebuilds and then getting shipped out of the dough when he ain't even know it was coming, felt nasty.
4:35
SPEAKER_03: It felt icky.
4:36
SPEAKER_03: But every single day since then, I'm starting to like it a little bit more for the Minnesota Timbulls.
4:39
SPEAKER_03: Now we haven't seen it on court, Rudy Gobert and Julius Randle.
4:43
SPEAKER_03: But I understand what they were going for.
4:45
SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking to myself, okay, Minnesota did this to kind of extend the window of an Anthony Edwards-led team to be contenders or three years down the line.
4:54
SPEAKER_03: Hell, maybe this roster looks completely different, but they set themselves up with the Julius Randle contract and Anti DiVincenzo to be able to make some changes, right?
5:02
SPEAKER_03: They were really pigeonholed with Carneg Towns, who was tied for Devin Booker for the seventh most expensive contract in basketball, and trading him away for another All-Olimpia caliber player in Julius Randle and one of the better role players in basketball makes sense to me.
5:15
SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking, can the Suns do something similar?
5:18
SPEAKER_03: Like, is there a world where they have their Carl Anthony Towns trade?
5:22
SPEAKER_03: And then I'm looking at the roster and I'm also looking at rosters across basketball.
5:25
SPEAKER_03: And my I came to the to the uh to the realization that it probably doesn't happen because Bradley Bill pretty much holds no value across basketball.
5:33
SPEAKER_03: And Bradley Bill is a good player at this point.
5:35
SPEAKER_03: It's not a great player.
5:36
SPEAKER_03: And you traded everything to get Kevin Durant, you're not going to replenish some of that.
5:40
SPEAKER_03: And I don't know if there is another Kevin Durant deal that will be all NBA for all NBA.
5:44
SPEAKER_03: And again, Devin Booker is their version of Anthony Atwards, where this is the guy we want to help build around.
5:49
SPEAKER_03: So that I thought about it for some time.
5:51
SPEAKER_03: I even went to the finder, the trade finder, to the trade machine, and it didn't exist.
5:57
SPEAKER_03: Um, but this is one of those teams that has a definite window.
6:00
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm gonna be generous.
6:01
SPEAKER_03: I would say they probably have a two-year window with this current core.
6:04
SPEAKER_03: Most people would say this is a win or go home type of season for them.
6:07
SPEAKER_03: But again, I'm a generous guy.
6:08
SPEAKER_03: I'm a I'm a basketball enjoyer, so I like to be relatively optimistic with these type of things.
6:14
SPEAKER_03: Um I thought with them having these three most expensive contracts, having Grayson Allen, who just came off a career year with three-point shooting, having Yusuf Nurkic, who's had one of his best seasons, especially because he was on the court for the whole damn season.
6:26
SPEAKER_03: Um, they didn't have a ton of wiggle room to make this roster better.
6:30
SPEAKER_03: Again, concrete that Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal would be on this team.
6:35
SPEAKER_03: But with that said, I thought they had maybe the best offseason they could.
6:40
SPEAKER_03: Again, given the circumstances.
6:42
SPEAKER_03: Frank Vogel is gone.
6:43
SPEAKER_03: I want to remind you that late in the season, the the Phoenix Suns were getting blown out by, I forget which team it was.
6:49
SPEAKER_03: Frank Vogel goes into the locker room and he's yelling at the guys, get your head in the game, yada, yada, yada.
6:54
SPEAKER_03: And in the report, this is in the actual report, players on the team had to refrain from laughing in this man's face.
7:01
SPEAKER_03: He had lost the locker room completely.
7:03
SPEAKER_03: And Frank Vogel, I'm gonna say this, he's one of the best coaches imaginable in the NBA right now.
7:09
SPEAKER_03: Because winning the championship is hard.
7:11
SPEAKER_03: He's done that.
7:11
SPEAKER_03: He did that with the Lakers in the 2020 bubble.
7:13
SPEAKER_03: Like, you got to think about there's only a small percentage of NBA coaches that do it.
7:17
SPEAKER_03: And now it's it's like a revolving door because we have parody in the NBA.
7:21
SPEAKER_03: But historically, it's like Greg Popovich, it's Eric Spostra, you know, the it's these dudes.
7:26
SPEAKER_03: It's Steve Kerr and yada, yada, yada.
7:28
SPEAKER_03: So with Frank Vogel having one in the back pocket, even before he got that one with Braun, he's got conference finals appearances.
7:34
SPEAKER_03: He's a great NBA coach.
7:36
SPEAKER_03: But I will say sometimes you can be a great coach and not a great fit.
7:40
SPEAKER_03: So they fired the coach and Frank Vogel and they bring in a new guy, Coach Bud.
7:43
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna talk a lot about Coach Bud in a minute.
7:45
SPEAKER_03: But also the things they did this offseason is got a point guard.
7:48
SPEAKER_03: Not even just a point guard, they got two point guards.
7:50
SPEAKER_03: Frank Vogel, again, may not have been the perfect match, but there was one thing that Frank Vogel wanted that they never gave him, and that is a point guard.
7:58
SPEAKER_03: Legend says he walked into the office with James Jones and said, Hey, we love our roster here.
8:03
SPEAKER_03: All we need is a guy to get us set up, and they laughed in his face.
8:06
SPEAKER_03: Do you see Devin Booker?
8:07
SPEAKER_03: That guy can run point guard.
8:08
SPEAKER_03: Do you see Bradley Bill or Washington where he was averaging 30 points on a 30-win team?
8:11
SPEAKER_03: He can play point guard.
8:12
SPEAKER_03: They never gave him that.
8:14
SPEAKER_03: In this offseason, they got two of the better, or I would say Tyus Jones is like a low-tier to mid-tier start in point guard of basketball.
8:22
SPEAKER_03: Because you got to think about in the NBA, they're like 15 all-star caliber point guards.
8:26
SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna say he's towards the bottom of that, but still very, very respectable, right?
8:30
SPEAKER_03: He's a very respectable point guard.
8:31
SPEAKER_03: And then Monte Moores has been one of the best backup point guards for what, like seven years now at this point.
8:36
SPEAKER_03: And one thing these two dudes have in common is that they are floor generals who will help you get into your stuff, which is one of the things that they struggle with last year.
8:44
SPEAKER_03: When you are a team that has Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, and you are the worst offensive fourth quarter team in the NBA, that is a problem.
8:51
SPEAKER_03: Reminder, there's a team in Detroit that lost over 20 games in a row.
8:55
SPEAKER_03: And somehow they were a better fourth quarter team than your team, definitely a problem.
8:59
SPEAKER_03: Thing number two that they did that I really enjoyed was they drafted not for the future, not for upside, but for the now.
9:06
SPEAKER_03: Remember, this team has a very short window.
9:08
SPEAKER_03: So Ryan Dunn, who was known as one of the best offensive prospects in an NBA draft, is on their team.
9:14
SPEAKER_03: And then Uso Iguidara, who would name, I don't know if I'm pronouncing right, is a dude that with the spacing of the NBA should be a more successful NBA player than he was a college player.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: A win.
9:25
SPEAKER_03: Three big pillars.
9:27
SPEAKER_03: New coach, point guard play, drafting for up, uh, drafting for um for the now and not upside.
9:32
SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
9:33
SPEAKER_03: And again, Frank Vogel was the answer.
9:35
SPEAKER_03: That's completely okay.
9:36
SPEAKER_03: One thing about Bud, that man is a floor raiser.
9:41
SPEAKER_03: You talk to Bucks fans, they're gonna have very similar things that they hate about him.
9:44
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't make adjustments, especially come playoff time, yada, yada, yada.
9:48
SPEAKER_03: But one thing about Coach Bud is he is a floor raiser.
9:51
SPEAKER_03: And there's this thing, I don't know if it has an official name, but we're gonna call it Bud Ball.
9:56
SPEAKER_03: Bud Ball is successful in the NBA.
9:59
SPEAKER_03: So when I say this team, it's hard to predict.
10:01
SPEAKER_03: I truly do believe that this team is gonna be good enough to win a bunch of games.
10:06
SPEAKER_03: But the question is, are they good enough to be considered contenders?
10:10
SPEAKER_03: In my mind, as of right now, they're six, they're three out east and three out west.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: We could talk about that in a future episode.
10:14
SPEAKER_03: You could probably do your math and figure out who those six teams are.
10:17
SPEAKER_03: But this is a team that is borderline to me.
10:20
SPEAKER_03: And with Bud Ball, I think there's a world where they sneak in to be the fourth team that could potentially do it.
10:25
SPEAKER_03: This is the thing about Coach Butt.
10:27
SPEAKER_03: The one thing that you can count on is they're gonna get up three-point shots.
10:31
SPEAKER_03: Last year, the Suns were ninth in offense, twelfth in defense.
10:35
SPEAKER_03: When you think about that's pretty damn impressive.
10:37
SPEAKER_03: 12th in defense, when you have a starting lineup of Devin Booker, Bradley Bill, Kevin Durant, Grayson Allen, and Yusuf Nurkic, it's pretty impressive that Frank Vogel was able to get them to be one of the best, better defenses in basketball, and the offense being ninth is pretty impressive.
10:49
SPEAKER_03: Two, when you account for it, they were a low volume three-point shooting team.
10:53
SPEAKER_03: And not only were they a low volume three-point shooting team, they were the number two team in mid-range jump shots.
10:59
SPEAKER_03: The recipe just doesn't add up to being a successful offense, but they were able to do it.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: They were 19th, right?
11:05
SPEAKER_03: Maybe not low volume.
11:06
SPEAKER_03: They were 19th in three-point percentage or frequency, which inherently is not necessarily a bad thing.
11:11
SPEAKER_03: You think about the teams around them, Minnesota was right there ahead of them.
11:14
SPEAKER_03: OKC was right there behind them, Indiana right there behind them, the Pelicans right there behind them.
11:19
SPEAKER_03: But the one thing that make those teams different than them is that the Suns were 25th when it comes to shots at the rim.
11:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Minnesota got shots at the rim.
11:29
SPEAKER_03: OKC got shots at the rim.
11:31
SPEAKER_03: Nola got shots at the rim, Indiana shots at the rim.
11:34
SPEAKER_03: So we're 25th in shots at the rim.
11:36
SPEAKER_03: We're 19th at three-point shots and second in mid-rangers.
11:40
SPEAKER_03: The shot profile was awful.
11:42
SPEAKER_03: So the fact that they were ninth in offense is tells you like the efficiency of Kevin Durant, who, even though he some of the super, super advanced numbers say he's fallen off in isolation, yada, yada, yada, still ridiculously talented.
11:53
SPEAKER_03: Having Grayson Alice shoot 40 plus percent, having uh Bradley Beal shoot 40 plus percent, like those things were important.
11:59
SPEAKER_03: And again, ninth is pretty impressive when you when you think all things considered.
12:03
SPEAKER_03: Now, Bud will change those numbers, right?
12:05
SPEAKER_03: We don't want to take away the mid-ranked shot because again, we have we have Kevin Oran and Devin Booker.
12:09
SPEAKER_03: That's their bread and butter.
12:10
SPEAKER_03: You don't want to nullify their superpowers, but we do want them to expand as players, and that may be asking a lot because Kevin Aran is in his mid-30s.
12:18
SPEAKER_03: But here's how incredible the Bud Ball thing is.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: His first year in Atlanta was a 2013, 2014 season.
12:24
SPEAKER_03: Again, I'm gonna remind you, this is over a decade ago.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: Shot profiles have evolved pretty dramatically since then, but I'm gonna give you the numbers anyway.
12:31
SPEAKER_03: Um, he was second in three-point percentage as far as frequency.
12:34
SPEAKER_03: The year after that, third, the year after that, third as well.
12:37
SPEAKER_03: And then the year after that, they fell off to like 10th.
12:39
SPEAKER_03: But the reason they fell off is because, well, Jeff Teague was gone to his next team.
12:42
SPEAKER_03: Al Horford was gone to his next team, and the writing was on the wall that the Atlanta Hawks were about to hit their rebuild because LeBron swept them in the playoffs.
12:49
SPEAKER_03: Again, like that's that was that was the thing.
12:52
SPEAKER_03: LeBron just tore up the entire Eastern Conference.
12:54
SPEAKER_03: So then his time in Atlanta goes away that he ends up being a part of the Milwaukee Bucks.
12:59
SPEAKER_03: Again, the team that they eventually went on to win the championship.
13:02
SPEAKER_03: In the 17-18 season, this is Jason Kidd for half of a year, this is Joe Prunty for half the year, the Bucs were 25th in three-point frequency.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: 25th.
13:11
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna say that again.
13:12
SPEAKER_03: They were 25th.
13:13
SPEAKER_03: Bud comes in his very first year, they go from 25th in frequency to third.
13:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, from 25th to third, and then it follows on to fourth to 12th in their championship season, which is something we could talk about.
13:29
SPEAKER_03: The fact they went from fourth to 12 and they won as 12 is interesting, then sixth and fourth.
13:34
SPEAKER_03: It got so crazy.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: I just I just want to keep giving you examples of this bud ball to have that three-point frequency shit increase pretty dramatically under the Suns.
13:43
SPEAKER_03: Mike Scott played his rookie season in the 2012-2013 season.
13:47
SPEAKER_03: This again, a year the year before Coach Bud was a part of the Atlanta Hawks.
13:51
SPEAKER_03: His whole rookie season, he shot zero three-pointers.
13:54
SPEAKER_03: Not a half-court heave, not one at the end of a shot clock, literally zero.
13:59
SPEAKER_03: The first year Bud took over, he was averaging two and a half three pointers per game.
14:04
SPEAKER_03: Paul Milsap, in his first seven seasons in the NBA when he was a part of the Utah Jazz, shot 14 and 30, four, I'm sorry, uh 113 total threes.
14:13
SPEAKER_03: His first year under Bud, he shot 212.
14:17
SPEAKER_03: That is what Bud Ball is.
14:19
SPEAKER_03: And now people are writing your articles.
14:20
SPEAKER_03: Ooh, Yusuf Nurkic.
14:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean, he shot pretty decently last year on like 90 attempts under Coach Bud.
14:28
SPEAKER_03: He could do what Brooke Lopez did.
14:30
SPEAKER_03: Maybe not to the extent of success, but like Brooke Lopez was a low to the block.
14:35
SPEAKER_03: He started shooting threes a little bit before Bud, but not really his bread and butter.
14:39
SPEAKER_03: To now we call that man the splash mountain.
14:41
SPEAKER_03: Could Yusuf Nurkic be a Mike, uh Mike Scott?
14:44
SPEAKER_03: Could he be a Paul Milsap and see his three-point volume go up dramatically?
14:47
SPEAKER_03: Because the jump shot looks good.
14:49
SPEAKER_03: Again, he shot it fairly well.
14:51
SPEAKER_03: Somebody's about to start taking more and more threes, and that is gonna be the Phoenix Suns.
14:56
SPEAKER_03: And I honestly, as lame as it is, I am a firm believer that you need to shoot a lot of threes to win basketball nowadays.
15:03
SPEAKER_03: It's a copycat league.
15:05
SPEAKER_03: It started off with Dan Tony and all of the guys in Houston.
15:10
SPEAKER_03: Then it transitioned to this most uh recent champion, the Boston Celtics, getting up the most threes in NBA history.
15:16
SPEAKER_03: Like that is the way you win basketball games.
15:18
SPEAKER_03: There's only a select few teams, at least in the current era, that I believe can win a championship with having a relatively no three-point frequency.
15:26
SPEAKER_03: And that team is like the Denver Nuggets.
15:29
SPEAKER_03: They have the best player in the world who's a system in itself.
15:31
SPEAKER_03: They're his most uh prized possession is a 60% jump shot.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you take that, you know what I'm saying?
15:38
SPEAKER_03: But other teams that don't have Nikole Jokic, it's just gonna be tough.
15:41
SPEAKER_03: And this is also why I think that OKC in their first couple preseason games got up a lot of three-pointers.
15:46
SPEAKER_03: Like this is like this is just the way ball is.
15:49
SPEAKER_03: But I don't want to say that's a uniform league because the way you generate those threes are differently different.
15:53
SPEAKER_03: So even though three-point shots are going up, I think you can get different recipes to get there.
15:57
SPEAKER_03: Either way, one of the things that made the Suns good last season, but not great, is that their big three only had a net rating of a 6.7, which is good.
16:06
SPEAKER_03: That's that's pretty damn good.
16:08
SPEAKER_03: But when you think about big threes and three of the most expensive contracts in basketball, that's just not gonna cut it.
16:13
SPEAKER_03: I just want to put it on the playing field for y'all.
16:15
SPEAKER_03: The OKC Thunder big three, and I'm gonna use Big Three very, very loosely here in this next couple seconds here.
16:20
SPEAKER_03: OKC Thunder's big three had a net rating of 12.
16:23
SPEAKER_03: That's Shea, that's J Dub, that's Chet.
16:25
SPEAKER_03: The 76ers big three.
16:26
SPEAKER_03: Like I said, I'm using it loosely because Tobias Harris, Joel Embiid, and Tarres Maxie, net rating of 15.
16:32
SPEAKER_03: The Spurs, big three.
16:34
SPEAKER_03: The Spurs, do they have a big three?
16:36
SPEAKER_03: I'm counting it.
16:36
SPEAKER_03: Tyus Jones, Devin Vassell, and Wimbayama have a net rating of nine.
16:41
SPEAKER_03: And then maybe the best big three in basketball that's not literally a big three, the Nuggets had a net rating of about 15 with Jamal Murray, Nikola Jokic, and Michael Porter Jr.
16:51
SPEAKER_03: So you're telling me we're paying all of this money to have the second most expensive team in basketball.
16:55
SPEAKER_03: And our net rating as a squad with those big three on the court is less than Women Yama and Tyus Jones?
17:01
SPEAKER_03: It's not cutting it.
17:03
SPEAKER_03: And I think that under Coach Bud, that can go up because the offense should be should be better.
17:08
SPEAKER_03: You know, you paying$150 million annually for success, 6.7 uh net rating, just won't cut it.
17:17
SPEAKER_03: So the reason why, again, I'm teetering this fence has to do with these first two games of preseason.
17:23
SPEAKER_03: Kenny, it's the preseason.
17:26
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't matter.
17:28
SPEAKER_03: And for the most part, I would say you're right.
17:31
SPEAKER_03: But there's one thing that translates over, and I found this in an article by Jacob Sutton at J Sut Hoop.
17:38
SPEAKER_03: Shout out to him.
17:38
SPEAKER_03: He did this whole research about does preseason matter?
17:41
SPEAKER_03: He did the same thing for summer league.
17:42
SPEAKER_03: The reality is most of the time, no, it doesn't, right?
17:45
SPEAKER_03: We watch preseason to kind of get an idea of DeMar DeRose and his brand new jersey, or so on and so forth.
17:51
SPEAKER_03: More than like, oh, that team put up 50 points in the first half.
17:54
SPEAKER_03: They should be good this year.
17:55
SPEAKER_03: No, that's not what preseason is about.
17:57
SPEAKER_03: But the one thing that has a positive correlation from preseason to regular season is three-point frequency.
18:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is what we're here about.
18:05
SPEAKER_03: Three-point frequency.
18:06
SPEAKER_03: Here, here's what he says.
18:07
SPEAKER_03: Three-pointers made in frequency in preseason had a near negative 0.75 correlation with three-pointers made in the regular season.
18:15
SPEAKER_03: This one is interesting as it seems to show that even though coaches tend to experiment in the preseason with lineups, the game plan largely stays the same when it comes to behind-the-arc shooting.
18:24
SPEAKER_03: Boom.
18:25
SPEAKER_03: So in these first couple preseason games, when you see the Suns take 26 first half three-pointers, that is obviously what their identity is going to be going into next season.
18:34
SPEAKER_03: And I want to tell you that 26 first half three pointers that they took was more than three pointers they took in nine games last year.
18:43
SPEAKER_03: In the first half, they took more three-pointers than nine total games last year.
18:48
SPEAKER_03: That is Bud Ball.
18:49
SPEAKER_03: And you know they got shooters, right?
18:50
SPEAKER_03: Kevin Loran has never shot under 38% in his adult life.
18:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean, do we count those first two years of his NBA career?
18:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm not counting those.
18:58
SPEAKER_03: He's never been under 38%.
19:00
SPEAKER_03: He's always been closer to 40.
19:02
SPEAKER_03: His volume is like five to, I'm sorry, it could be like four to five a year, but he should get that up.
19:06
SPEAKER_03: Devin Booker, a very great shooter.
19:08
SPEAKER_03: A lot of the times he's more of a creation shooter, but as a catch-a-shoot guy, we saw it in the Olympics, he can do that.
19:13
SPEAKER_03: And then um Bradley Beale shot 40 something percent on catch-a-shoot threes last year.
19:17
SPEAKER_03: They have the talent to be a successful catch-a-shoot team, especially if Grayson Allen's coming off the bench.
19:21
SPEAKER_03: They have the recipe, y'all.
19:23
SPEAKER_03: Now, how much of that would translate to the postseason?
19:25
SPEAKER_03: That's the biggest question, right?
19:26
SPEAKER_03: Because even Tyce Jones, who's their point guard, who's even in the preseason, him and um Monte Morris have equated for one turnover to like 37 assists or something crazy like that.
19:35
SPEAKER_03: Um, the smaller guards typically are playing it off the court, and maybe that puts you in a similar situation where you get to the postseason versus the Minnesota Timberwolves and it doesn't really work out.
19:44
SPEAKER_03: But I am still teetering this fence on whether or not I want to put them in the upper echelon of contender.
19:51
SPEAKER_03: And one of the other reasons why I'm struggling with that is that Kevin Durant played 75 games last season.
19:55
SPEAKER_03: That is the most games he's played since 2018, 2019.
19:58
SPEAKER_03: After that, he had 35 games, 55 games, 47 games.
20:01
SPEAKER_03: And I just, I do believe as they NBA players get older in age, their body starts to break down.
20:06
SPEAKER_03: Kevin Durant has had a couple major surgeries on that low, his lower extremities that it makes me feel like that 75 games may not be extremely obtainable for the next couple years.
20:15
SPEAKER_03: And I hope it is, because Kevin Oran is one of my favorite watches in basketball.
20:18
SPEAKER_03: Even Yousse Nurkic, who played 76 games, that's his most since the 2017-2018 season.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: So they had relative injury luck.
20:25
SPEAKER_03: Pretty much everybody was healthy outside of Bradley Beal.
20:29
SPEAKER_03: So it scares me a little bit.
20:30
SPEAKER_03: And here's the last thing.
20:31
SPEAKER_03: Here's the last thing that scares me.
20:33
SPEAKER_03: And this is a very small thing, but the last 10 games of their season, it is a gauntlet.
20:39
SPEAKER_03: Like an absolute gauntlet.
20:41
SPEAKER_03: They see the Cavaliers, then they see the Bucks, then they see the Celtics, then they see the Timberwolves, then they see the Rockets, then they see the Bucks again, then they see the Celtics again.
20:51
SPEAKER_03: Um, then they see the Knicks, the Warriors, and the Thunder.
20:55
SPEAKER_03: Their last 10 games, every single one of these teams are projected to be above 500.
21:00
SPEAKER_03: Will they be?
21:01
SPEAKER_03: Time will tell.
21:01
SPEAKER_03: But every single one of these teams have playoff buzz going into the season.
21:05
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna end the season that way in this crazy competitive Western conference.
21:09
SPEAKER_03: Hell, you go five and five here.
21:11
SPEAKER_03: You might look like we won this little uh 10-game stretch.
21:14
SPEAKER_03: That's how much of a gauntlet it really is.
21:17
SPEAKER_03: I do trust Bud to be able to get them a little bit better, but the question for me is to how much better.
21:24
SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna open it up to you in the comment section.
21:26
SPEAKER_03: Hit me up on Twitter, on X, hit us up on Instagram at enjoy smallball.
21:30
SPEAKER_03: Please let us know what you think about the Suns.
21:32
SPEAKER_03: Um, I made a tweet the other day of me uh watching their preseason game versus the Pistons.
21:37
SPEAKER_03: And it was one play that stood out where it was really just ball movement after ball movement, and it ended in a Royce O'Neill mystery.
21:43
SPEAKER_03: But if that's the type of free floor and offense we're about to see this upcoming season, not only could they be a contender, they might be one of the best watches in basketball.
21:50
SPEAKER_03: And I mentioned the names of Ryan Don and Uso Igadori.
21:54
SPEAKER_03: Those dudes look like they might be able to play at least some minutes.
21:57
SPEAKER_03: Now, Ryan Dunn came in as a great defensive.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Prospect an absolutely dreadful offensive win.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: I saw him hit a pull-up mid-range or pull-up three-pointer the other day.
22:06
SPEAKER_03: Again, with a translate, probably not.
22:08
SPEAKER_03: I want to remind you that Anthony Bennett through his first couple preseason games was dominant.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: And then he took five games to score 70 points.
22:14
SPEAKER_03: Or was it seven games to score seven points?
22:16
SPEAKER_03: It might have been a hundred games.
22:17
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
22:18
SPEAKER_03: He was great in the in the preseason, then awful in his actual NBA career.
22:22
SPEAKER_03: So I'm not taking it like that who's that is who Ryan Dunn is, but man, if he can hit a three, I think he hit 12 total threes all of last season in college.
22:32
SPEAKER_03: So let me let me pump the brakes on that.
22:34
SPEAKER_03: I think I've just become a little bit too much, too many, uh too optimistic on this team.
22:39
SPEAKER_03: If I'm thinking Ryan Dunn is gonna hit a pull-up three-pointer in the regular season, um Igadori, he might steal some backup center minutes from Mason Plumley.
22:49
SPEAKER_03: His playmaking was way more advanced than I thought.
22:52
SPEAKER_03: And I'm not a big college guy at all.
22:54
SPEAKER_03: Um, but I did do my research on the prospects because we did a big draft show.
22:58
SPEAKER_03: And he was a guy that did stand out at least a little bit.
23:01
SPEAKER_03: I didn't think he was gonna look this good on the past specifically.
23:04
SPEAKER_03: Um again, game is a lot different once we come to the regular season.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna be seeing Jokic versus seeing Isaiah Stewart, but it's just a guy to be on the lookout.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: It's a 40th overall pick.
23:15
SPEAKER_03: He might actually play some real minutes.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: So you let me know what do you think about the Phoenix Suns?
23:21
SPEAKER_03: Are they contenders or am I just blowing smoke?
23:28
SPEAKER_03: Before we get to our second most confusing team, I'm bringing in producer Greg to do what we're calling five out.
23:34
SPEAKER_03: We got five minutes for Greg to give us topics and we're gonna talk it through.
23:38
SPEAKER_03: How are we feeling?
23:39
SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm feeling great, Kenny.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: I'm pumped for this season.
23:41
SPEAKER_02: Uh, before we do the five out, the five minutes, I want to see test your knowledge of obscure NBA players.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: Do you know the player that I'm wearing right now, this jersey?
23:50
SPEAKER_02: Um I'll give you a hint.
23:52
SPEAKER_02: Drafting 2008 second round point guard.
23:57
SPEAKER_03: 2008 second round point guard.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: 2008 was around the time where I actually watched college basketball too.
24:04
SPEAKER_03: So I might be able to lock in here.
24:06
SPEAKER_03: Virginia point guards from 2008.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Played for the Suns very briefly and the Bobcats very briefly, and probably only played two to three years.
24:19
SPEAKER_03: Ooh, um white guy?
24:21
SPEAKER_02: Black guy.
24:22
SPEAKER_03: Ah, no, I'm out.
24:23
SPEAKER_02: I'm out.
24:23
SPEAKER_03: Who is it?
24:24
SPEAKER_02: Sean Singletary.
24:25
SPEAKER_03: Sean Singletary.
24:27
SPEAKER_03: That is not ring a bell at all.
24:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna be honest with you.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
24:30
SPEAKER_02: He's a Philly great.
24:31
SPEAKER_02: He grew up with uh Kyle Lowry in Philly.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: They were the two best guards in the city.
24:35
SPEAKER_02: Um but very, very obscure NBA player.
24:38
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
24:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I feel I feel bad for not knowing that.
24:41
SPEAKER_03: But hey, you learn, you gotta learn, you gotta learn.
24:43
SPEAKER_03: I'm seeing it right here.
24:44
SPEAKER_03: Even like looking at his picture, I'm the face that you sometimes you see a face like, oh yeah, I didn't even get that oh yeah moment.
24:50
SPEAKER_03: Sheesh.
24:51
SPEAKER_03: Shout out to Sean Singletary, man.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: All right, let's go five minutes.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna hit the timer now.
24:56
SPEAKER_02: So, first topic, my brother is a major Sixers fan from Philly.
25:01
SPEAKER_02: He's also a huge Luca fan, uh, and thereby a big Mavericks fan.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: And I asked him the other day, which of these two teams do you trust more for this season and which has a higher ceiling?
25:11
SPEAKER_02: And he couldn't give me a straight answer.
25:12
SPEAKER_02: And I think it's interesting because the Mavs over the last few years, except for 2023, have overperformed.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: You know, they hit the conference finals in 2022, made the finals relatively unexpectedly last year.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: And the Sixers, I would say for the last five to seven years, have underperformed almost every year.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna throw that question to you.
25:31
SPEAKER_02: Which team do you trust more and which team do you think has a higher ceiling?
25:34
SPEAKER_03: I trust the Dallas Mavericks more simply because Luca is an engine by himself.
25:38
SPEAKER_03: And there's never been a time in Luca's career where I've had to question his durability.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: Even last year in the playoff run, he wasn't healthy and st and still they made their run to the finals.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: But I do believe when it comes to ceilings, I think the 76ers have the highest ceiling amongst all of these teams, not named the Boston Celtics or the OKC Thunder to me, just because Joe Ellen Bede is just one of those guys that even last year in the playoffs where he basically came in fresh off of his injuries, he's playing with Bell's palsy.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: He's got all of these elements going on.
26:09
SPEAKER_03: He still gave us a really good, maybe his best individual series with a little bit of um, what's the word I'm looking for?
26:17
SPEAKER_03: Like we've had him have good series when he was the two seed versus the seven.
26:22
SPEAKER_03: This was the first time where we had a good series where his back was against the wall, and it still didn't matter.
26:26
SPEAKER_03: They end up losing.
26:27
SPEAKER_03: But I think adding a guy like Paul George and adding Gershawn Yabusele, who might not materialize, and Caleb Martin, who is hot and cold, I think they're selling just a little bit higher because Joel Embiid as a system is just, can I just say better?
26:42
SPEAKER_03: Like Luke is the better player, obviously, but I look at when when Joel Embiid was healthy, they were the number two offense in basketball only behind the Boston Celtics.
26:50
SPEAKER_03: He was breaking records that Will Chamberlain set when it comes to points per minute.
26:54
SPEAKER_03: And I think some of that, if he is healthy, is translatable.
26:58
SPEAKER_03: But I trust the Dallas Mavericks a lot more.
27:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean, a lot more, just because like I'm watching Derek Lively progress every single game that he plays.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm trusting Kyrie Irvin to, even though we got in the finals and he didn't perform to the way we wanted him to, I trust him to be able to give us moments in the playoffs where he can be the best version himself.
27:16
SPEAKER_03: And your old friend Klay Thompson, I know he's 0 for 10 in the play-in game, but like I do trust that we might be able to get a Klay Thompson-esque game every once in a while.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: So you know, I was thinking on the Klay topic, I was thinking that, you know, last year he took so many bad shots, and he'll have the green light this year as well.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: But the difference is that if Luca doesn't want Klay to have the ball, Klay won't get the ball.
27:37
SPEAKER_02: In the Warrior system, Klay touched the ball almost every play.
27:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this is this is a different role for him, and I'm I can't wait to see how he adjusts, where I'm assuming his usage is going to drop significantly.
27:48
SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's just the reality of basketball at this point for Klay Thompson.
27:53
SPEAKER_03: And I still believe that he can be a really successful NBA player.
27:56
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I would hope that he does stop some of those.
27:59
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I haven't tested in a little while.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: Let me get my shot up shots.
28:03
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but sometimes you kind of need those.
28:04
SPEAKER_03: That's the heat checks for Klay can be legendary.
28:07
SPEAKER_03: Um, but who knows?
28:08
SPEAKER_02: And that won't be the finals, but that would be a very interesting series.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: I I agree.
28:12
SPEAKER_03: I agree.
28:13
SPEAKER_03: I don't think it will be either.
28:14
SPEAKER_03: But if we did get there, I would go.
28:18
SPEAKER_03: So if the 76ers got there, that means Joe Lebede is dominating at this point.
28:21
SPEAKER_03: So in that hypothetical series, I might go 76ers and seven.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Also, three stars versus two in terms of all stars.
28:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: Um, all right, second topic, you know, big Warriors fan, most of the listeners probably know this.
28:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, the biggest topic outside of, you know, can Steph and Draymond continue to play at the level that they're used to playing at has been can Kaminga make that major leap.
28:44
SPEAKER_02: So one, I wanted to get from you, what do you think that major leap means?
28:48
SPEAKER_02: And in my mind, I actually think it's more likely that Wiggins returns to 2022 Wiggins than it is that Kaminga takes some major leap.
28:57
SPEAKER_02: But people aren't talking about Wiggins in that way, but the focus is really on Kaminga.
29:00
SPEAKER_02: So I want to get your thoughts on that.
29:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think that they're not talking about him just because it's been, I guess, two seasons now since that's happened.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: And obviously he's dealt with so much off the court.
29:08
SPEAKER_03: I mean, he lost his father and everything and then took some time away from the actual team.
29:13
SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't trust that version of Wiggins to ever come back just because that really is just like a one year of his entire what at this point, ten year career?
29:21
SPEAKER_03: I forget what you think.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: It was certainly an anomaly.
29:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it was an anomaly.
29:25
SPEAKER_03: Um, where I am probably a little bit more bullish or optimistic about Jonathan Kaminga.
29:30
SPEAKER_03: And I think a lot of that has to do with like what his next step could look like.
29:33
SPEAKER_03: Um, I think he has the tendency, and you you definitely can probably attest to this, of getting that tunnel vision where this is a team that has so many very good playmakers.
29:41
SPEAKER_03: It feels weird to have a guy to not live up to that, but also not be great enough offensively to warrant it.
29:48
SPEAKER_03: Like some dudes have that tunnel vision, but they might be Kevin Durant.
29:51
SPEAKER_03: And at that point, we're completely okay with that.
29:53
SPEAKER_03: Um, but he also adds the other element to this relatively old, like old team of being a guy that can get it and go and just have this amount of bounce.
30:02
SPEAKER_03: And I do believe you need some level of like extreme athlete um to win.
30:07
SPEAKER_03: And I do believe that's what Wiggins was in 2022, where he was like getting hella offensive rebounds or doing this.
30:13
SPEAKER_03: Again, because I don't believe that version of Wiggins will be coming back.
30:16
SPEAKER_03: I'm hoping that Kaminga can kind of step into those shoes.
30:20
SPEAKER_03: He also got to improve that three-point ball, obviously, as we all know, considering him and Draymond and maybe Trace or him and Kivon Looney, like that three is gonna play a significant amount of minutes together because Draymond doesn't want to play the five.
30:31
SPEAKER_03: Um, but I would I would bet more on Kaminga's jump versus Wiggins coming back to that all-star level.
30:37
SPEAKER_02: All right, we just hit past five minutes, but I do want to ask you.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: So last year he averaged 16 a game, 50, 52% from the field, 32 from three in 26 minutes.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: What would that leap look like for you for this coming season?
30:51
SPEAKER_03: Um, because there's gonna be obviously more opportunity with Klay Thompson being gone, I think for that leap to be successful, sometimes a leap for me is not necessarily about how many more points you average.
31:03
SPEAKER_03: Um sometimes it's not even stat based at all.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: Like some dudes just look better on court and just a better fit for the system.
31:09
SPEAKER_03: But because there is more shots opening up with Klay Thompson being gone, I think I would say it will be a successful leap if he can jump up to a 20-point per game score.
31:17
SPEAKER_03: And I don't think that's out of the realm of possibility.
31:19
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if I would bet real money on it.
31:23
SPEAKER_03: Um, but that that's probably what a successful leap will look like to him.
31:27
SPEAKER_03: And it probably is getting to league average from three-point shooting.
31:29
SPEAKER_03: If he could get to 35%, I think they they really take that and um just become a better fit as a playmaker on that team.
31:42
SPEAKER_03: Shout out to producer Greg for the five out.
31:44
SPEAKER_03: You know, we named it that because we're we got the small ball line up with Kenny Beach, and we're playing five out now.
31:49
SPEAKER_03: So Greg will be back later in the show to talk more things and in the future as well to give us that five out.
31:55
SPEAKER_03: So the next team that is gonna be at least difficult for me to try to project is the Lakers.
32:00
SPEAKER_03: Now, funny enough, I just did a read um because we partnered with Vox Media.
32:05
SPEAKER_03: Shout out to Vox, where I did this ad read where it's like trying to get more people to click onto the show, listen to the show.
32:10
SPEAKER_03: And in that I said, I'm not your traditional podcast that's Lakers based or Warriors Knicks.
32:18
SPEAKER_03: And here I am talking about the Lakers on the very first episode.
32:21
SPEAKER_03: But it's hard not to because they are in a very similar situation to the Phoenix Suns, where the major thing that they did was bring in a brand new coach.
32:28
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this offseason was nothing.
32:32
SPEAKER_03: Nothing.
32:33
SPEAKER_03: I mean, Torian Prince is gone.
32:35
SPEAKER_03: Spencer Denwitty, he was awful for them, gone back to Dallas.
32:38
SPEAKER_03: Other than that, it's Bronny James.
32:41
SPEAKER_03: Shout out to Bronny.
32:42
SPEAKER_03: It's Cam Christie, or I'm sorry, Max Christie.
32:44
SPEAKER_03: Cam is on the other part of LA.
32:46
SPEAKER_03: Max Christie getting that contract, and it's JJ Reddick coming in.
32:50
SPEAKER_03: And I I don't know, man.
32:51
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: I believe that this could be the change that they that they needed.
32:59
SPEAKER_03: Is that crazy?
33:00
SPEAKER_03: Is that crazy?
33:01
SPEAKER_03: Like, I think a lot of this has to do with the mindset of JJ Reddick.
33:04
SPEAKER_03: And this is something I've mentioned before on some of the other shows that I host.
33:07
SPEAKER_03: That every single coach that comes into an opportunity, hell, I am in the process of learning coaching and I want to be on the bench next year as an assistant, not as a head coach.
33:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm very far away from that.
33:17
SPEAKER_03: Everybody has the idea of changing the philosophy of a team and changing the mindset, changing the way they play.
33:23
SPEAKER_03: And that sounds all good in the introduction interview and everything, but it's rare to actually get that done when you consider LeBron is 40 now.
33:31
SPEAKER_03: Or I'm sorry, he's gonna be 40 now.
33:33
SPEAKER_03: Like he's been playing a very certain way for a very long time.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: Other LeBron coaches have said very similar things to what JJ Reddick has said already.
33:41
SPEAKER_03: Anthony Davis, he's non-analytical.
33:43
SPEAKER_03: JJ Reddick is an analytics guru.
33:46
SPEAKER_03: Like this, the coaches say these things, and it's hard to put it into practice.
33:51
SPEAKER_03: But but I kind of do trust it a little bit more with JJ, and maybe that's bias he's playing in here.
33:57
SPEAKER_03: But um, some of the things that he mentioned makes me really, really excited.
34:00
SPEAKER_03: So, first off, last year, the Lakers gave up 14 A3s per game.
34:05
SPEAKER_03: That was bottom three in basketball, only behind like the Chicago Bulls and another bad team.
34:09
SPEAKER_03: Um, they made 11.6, which means that every single game they're starting off basically down by nine points.
34:15
SPEAKER_03: That was obviously not a recipe for success.
34:18
SPEAKER_03: It was a recipe to win at least a decent amount of NBA games, but not all of the NBA games that you won if you're a Lakers fan.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: And I do believe, again, based on the preseason games that we've seen, and we talk about the um the research that we mentioned in the Sun segment, that that three-point volume should go up significantly.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: So maybe they're not down by nine every single game, but instead it's maybe three, or maybe they're up by three.
34:36
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, they turned it around.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: But JJ Reddick just talked about a few things.
34:39
SPEAKER_03: The first one is empowering Austin Reeves.
34:42
SPEAKER_03: Austin Reeves just came off such a crazy um unexplainable season last year, where at some points he was the third most important player on the Lakers.
34:52
SPEAKER_03: And in other points, his coach was benching him to be a spark plug off the bench.
34:59
SPEAKER_03: Even though him and LeBron have pretty good chemistry, even though we could all agree that he's one of the five best players on the team.
35:04
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no, no.
35:05
SPEAKER_03: Mr.
35:05
SPEAKER_03: Darvin Ham said, no, we don't test you coming off the bench, and that test went poorly.
35:09
SPEAKER_03: Now, eventually, when he got back into that lineup, he started to look like the Austin Reeves that we were hoping to get, but it just overall was a weird season where I feel like Austin Reeves was pitching holed, and I'm not trying to speak to you as if Austin Reeves is this all-star caliber player.
35:23
SPEAKER_03: Like he's the third, potentially third best player on this team, and that's important, or you think historically about LeBron teams.
35:29
SPEAKER_03: That third most important guy, in a lot of cases, we're all-stars, but this case is not that.
35:33
SPEAKER_03: And he just needs to be in a situation where he can play his best ball.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: Like one of the things that we agree on with Austin Reeves, um, I don't even know.
35:41
SPEAKER_03: Did I say Rivers earlier?
35:42
SPEAKER_03: Austin Reeves is that he's learned a lot from LeBron James when it comes to drawing those fouls.
35:48
SPEAKER_03: This should be an interesting season for that because y'all know second half of the season, the whistle was a little bit tighter.
35:52
SPEAKER_03: I wonder how that impacts the Lakers when they were like with 500 more free throws than their opponents.
35:56
SPEAKER_03: Either way, um, Austin Reeves is supposed to be empowered to not just be the best version of himself, but to be like a true guard slash off guard for them.
36:04
SPEAKER_03: And I'm just curious of what that looks like.
36:06
SPEAKER_03: Again, getting bits and pieces from preseason, they they really did empower him.
36:09
SPEAKER_03: That very first game, there was no LeBron James, there was no Anthony Davis, so it was really Jackson Hayes, Austin Reeves, and some other dudes.
36:16
SPEAKER_03: And in that, I felt as though Austin Reeves was, again, put in the position to be the front runner as a ball handler.
36:22
SPEAKER_03: And that is on the team with D'Angelo Russell, who, again, has been a point guard for the entirety of his career.
36:28
SPEAKER_03: The next thing that JJ Reddit talked about was getting Anthony Davis to shoot more threes.
36:33
SPEAKER_03: Again, I feel like there's a lot of coaches that have said this about Anthony Davis.
36:38
SPEAKER_03: We gotta get him to shoot.
36:39
SPEAKER_03: And Anthony Davis has not hit a jump shot since the bubble, it feels like, bro.
36:43
SPEAKER_03: Anthony Davis's jump shot has fallen off a cliff.
36:46
SPEAKER_03: And JJ said on the Zach Low podcast, may it rest in peace, that he has a theory about why Anthony Davis's jump shot has not fallen over the last three to four seasons.
36:55
SPEAKER_03: And that first preseason game versus the Suns, if I'm not mistaken, he hit a three.
37:01
SPEAKER_03: That's all I needed.
37:02
SPEAKER_03: No, I'm joking.
37:03
SPEAKER_03: But like he took it with a lot of confidence.
37:04
SPEAKER_03: And it look any different, right?
37:06
SPEAKER_03: In my mind, when I hear about a legendary shooter like JJ Reddick having a theory about why somebody's jump shot is not fallen.
37:13
SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking mechanically, mechanically, it looked pretty damn similar to the Anthony Davis we've seen for the first, I don't know, for the last 20 years since we've known him as a basketball player.
37:21
SPEAKER_03: Um so I'm curious about that.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: Could they somehow empower Anthony Davis to take more shots and be efficient there?
37:27
SPEAKER_03: But also he mentioned using Anthony Davis as a playmaking hub, which feels like, I mean, we we talk about the league expanding and maybe getting um more three-point oriented.
37:37
SPEAKER_03: One thing that we're seeing across ball is that these centers being used as hubs.
37:41
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, it started pretty heavily with Nicole Jokic, and it's hard to beat that.
37:45
SPEAKER_03: He's maybe the best passing center of all time.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: Not maybe he is the best passing center of all time, and he has a system of himself.
37:51
SPEAKER_03: But the last year under Nick Nurse, we saw and um Joel Embiid become that hub, that system.
37:56
SPEAKER_03: His playmaking numbers went dramatically higher, and so on and so forth.
37:59
SPEAKER_03: Bam Adabayo in Miami to vary, this is varying degrees of success, by the way.
38:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, Bam Adabayo be this hub where the ball goes to him on a lot of possessions, and we trust him to facilitate and or create a shot for himself for his teammates.
38:12
SPEAKER_03: And we're seeing Alperin Shengun again, another lesser skill, but the centers across basketball are becoming smarter and more of a focal point in offense, different than what it was in the early 2000s or in the 90s, where they were focal points as well.
38:25
SPEAKER_03: But it's give the ball to him on the block and let Shaq cook, let David Robison cook, let Hakeem Elijah one cook.
38:31
SPEAKER_03: Instead, it's like, hi elbow.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: If you cut off of me, bet I got you right here.
38:35
SPEAKER_03: Oh, if not, I'm taking the job.
38:37
SPEAKER_03: So, like having Anthony Davis play this hub would be very interesting because we can all agree Anthony Davis basically had his first, his best season as a Lakers other than the championship run last year, and that equated to him making an all-NBA appearance.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: But also, what making a playoff series and losing to Jamal Murray?
38:53
SPEAKER_03: Like it it was a good season, a great season, but under JJ Reddick, there was a world where he gets better.
38:59
SPEAKER_03: And I do want to remind everybody that Anthony Davis, probably a top tennis player in the NBA right now.
39:05
SPEAKER_03: But there was once upon a time where Anthony Davis is widely considered like the top three, not as in his position, but like in the world.
39:13
SPEAKER_03: Um, and now he's going to 30s, and it's kind of hard for me to see him doing that again.
39:17
SPEAKER_03: But I would love to see a coach kind of empower him to get back into that version of himself because we know defensively he's still that, but it's a question about could we get him to be more effective offensively?
39:28
SPEAKER_03: Um, getting more three-point shots up in general is something JJ Reddick has talked about.
39:32
SPEAKER_03: And again, we saw that a little bit in the preseason.
39:34
SPEAKER_03: There's one thing about this new system that JJ Redick is running, and I made this a point, and I need to dive into it a little bit more when a regular season starts.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: There's a creator on uh TikTok, and I don't even want to give him credit because I think he was referencing someone else, and I don't want to get it lost.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: Um, when they said the NFL is becoming more and more like college football in a sense of their schemes and their patterns and so on and so forth.
39:58
SPEAKER_03: I think that we're in the in the early stages of something happening in the NBA.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: Now, college basketball obviously is a different game when there's no three seconds, it's a slower pace, so on and so forth.
40:11
SPEAKER_03: But there are a few coaches in basketball that run these things that are very, very similar to things you see in college.
40:19
SPEAKER_03: And JJ Reddick is going to be one of those guys.
40:22
SPEAKER_03: The first play of JJ Reddick's coaching career is something he took out of Dan Hurley's playbook.
40:26
SPEAKER_03: And then we saw him do that again and again and again between the first two games of the preseason.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: And the reason why I'm interested in that is because when you think about college basketball in general, a lot of the times these sets and these plays that are being ran is because you don't have the greatest individual level talent, right?
40:44
SPEAKER_03: If we have Kevin Durant, get the hell out of the way.
40:47
SPEAKER_03: He's Kevin Durant, isolation, let him cook.
40:49
SPEAKER_03: But in college, you don't have the Kevin Durant.
40:52
SPEAKER_03: So instead, we need to do, we need some Princeton, we need some pistols, we need some horns actions.
40:58
SPEAKER_03: And again, these are not things that are have not been in basketball because horns is the most useful play outside of the pick and roll in all of basketball.
41:05
SPEAKER_03: But these are the teams that don't have the bronze and all these great dudes.
41:09
SPEAKER_03: So we need to find ways to generate open looks and good looks.
41:13
SPEAKER_03: JJ is kind of doing that through the first two games of the preseason.
41:17
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think that's gonna empower this team a lot.
41:20
SPEAKER_03: Last year, in the 493 minutes the Lakers play without LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the court, they were a minus 16.38.
41:28
SPEAKER_03: Now I decided like that number feels very skewed.
41:30
SPEAKER_03: There's no way they play 500 real minutes without Anthony Davis and LeBron.
41:34
SPEAKER_03: It's kind of stupid, right?
41:35
SPEAKER_03: So I decided to filter out of garbage time.
41:37
SPEAKER_03: And now the number drops dramatically to 278.
41:40
SPEAKER_03: With net was a net rating of a minus 12.79, which means that there's about, and this is very rough here because even there were games where Anthony Davis and LeBron didn't suit up, that's a full 48 minutes with them on the ward on the court.
41:51
SPEAKER_03: But in averages, there's about four minutes a game where LeBron James and Anthony Davis are not on the court, right?
41:57
SPEAKER_03: Four minutes a game.
41:58
SPEAKER_03: And if your net rating is minus, let's round up 13 in those minutes, you're putting yourself behind the eight ball and you account for you being down by nine because you don't hit three point shots anyway.
42:08
SPEAKER_03: These are the type of things that I think that with the new playbook and them having this new type of system could change.
42:15
SPEAKER_03: Now, I don't expect them to have a positive net rating without Anthony Davis and LeBron Hale.
42:18
SPEAKER_03: Those are the two best players on the team.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: Those are the two top 10 players in basketball.
42:22
SPEAKER_03: But if we can get it to be less than, I'm sorry, more than double digits, how does that work with negatives?
42:27
SPEAKER_03: Either way, if we could get that net rating to minus eight versus minus 13, you're winning more minutes.
42:33
SPEAKER_03: And I think that with them having a better offensive system, because I watched a lot of Lakers, it was it was hard not to watch a lot of Lakers because they were on TV every goddamn night.
42:42
SPEAKER_03: Darvin Hamm was not running a lot.
42:44
SPEAKER_03: And I don't want to say he wasn't running anything because that's that's not fair to Darvin Ham, because obviously he has some type of plan or some type of system.
42:49
SPEAKER_03: It just was a very successful um hell.
42:51
SPEAKER_03: Even if you watch starting five that just came out on Netflix, the very first episode you see LeBron James kind of being upset with Darwin Hamm and his ministry strips.
42:59
SPEAKER_03: Darvin Ham had plans, he wasn't able to actualize those plans.
43:02
SPEAKER_03: Um, but I'm looking at this, all these things, Anthony Davis being a hub, them shooting more threes, off the Reeves being empowered, um, LeBron James playing more off the ball, who, and he cleared up saying that off the ball doesn't literally mean LeBron James is sitting in the corner.
43:15
SPEAKER_03: These are the things that make me a little bit more interested in the LA Lakers.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: So while the Suns was like, oh, do I believe in them as a contender?
43:22
SPEAKER_03: The Lakers is like, could I see them being a top six seed?
43:25
SPEAKER_03: Because this is a team that has gone through the play in for the last couple years, and it's worked to them get to the conference finals once, but we also see them go against the Nuggets, and boom, it's a five-game series behind Jamal Murray hitting two game winners.
43:35
SPEAKER_03: So I look at this.
43:36
SPEAKER_03: His team was a good team last year without a coach that we trust.
43:40
SPEAKER_03: And again, I'm not acting like JJ Reddick is coming in and being Greg Popovich.
43:44
SPEAKER_03: He's not Eric Spostruck, damn it.
43:46
SPEAKER_03: But based on what I've seen so far in the interviews, I'm more confident in him getting the most out of his talent than with Darvin Ham.
43:53
SPEAKER_03: And then I look at the line.
43:54
SPEAKER_03: If you go into FanDuel Sportsbook, they have a line of a 42 and a half when it comes to total wins on this season.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: I'm looking at last year where they were over this.
44:01
SPEAKER_03: I look at the new additions to the coaches.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, man, I feel like this is a pretty safe bet.
44:07
SPEAKER_03: Like the last time LeBron James' team has had less than 42 wins was a few seasons back with the Lakers, where LeBron only played 50 games.
44:14
SPEAKER_03: So if we can expect this Iron Man of a player to play again 60 plus games, 40, 42 wins feel safe.
44:21
SPEAKER_03: If you look at their starting lineup for last year, the one that actually mattered with Austin Reeves, D'Angelo Rusty, Ruh, Hachimura, LeBron, James, and Anthony Davis, that team's what, 23-8?
44:31
SPEAKER_03: Just looking at it.
44:32
SPEAKER_03: I'm just looking at it.
44:33
SPEAKER_03: Could this team go from a team that we see towards the bottom tier of a playing team to be like, oh my God, LeBron and them are back to the five seed.
44:40
SPEAKER_03: They're back to the sixth seed.
44:41
SPEAKER_03: A lot of that depends on health.
44:43
SPEAKER_03: A lot of that depends on them trusting JJ Reddick, and JJ Redick trusting his team to do this thing and um do it successfully.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: I don't know where it's stand.
44:52
SPEAKER_03: Because it feels weird.
44:53
SPEAKER_03: Because I'm on another podcast with my homie, who's homie Mike, who's a diehard Lakers fan.
44:57
SPEAKER_03: And we always make fun of Mike for being a Lakers fan.
44:59
SPEAKER_03: I mean, he's the one guy that's got a recent championship in the bubble or whatever.
45:02
SPEAKER_03: But it's like the way the Lakers are talked about in the media, like, oh yeah, we're gonna make fun of Mike.
45:07
SPEAKER_03: But I'm kind of buying into the Lakers this year.
45:09
SPEAKER_03: And I haven't bought into the Lakers since they added Anthony Davis.
45:12
SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying that that equates to a championship like when they add Anthony Davis, but like this out of all years, the one I'm the most excited about because they didn't panic, right?
45:20
SPEAKER_03: There was a world where they went extremely um hard and said, hey, D'Angelo Russell, you could take your player option.
45:26
SPEAKER_03: We're trading you, Rui Hachimura, and Jared Vanderbilt for Zach Levine.
45:31
SPEAKER_03: That team is not anything better than this team.
45:34
SPEAKER_03: And that was like the old Lakers recipe.
45:36
SPEAKER_03: And now they're like, no, no, no, let's take a step back.
45:38
SPEAKER_03: Let's see what the new coach can do.
45:39
SPEAKER_03: Because that low-key, that Zach Levine trade is gonna be on the table until February, brother.
45:44
SPEAKER_03: We don't need to jump the gun right now.
45:46
SPEAKER_03: So let's see what we have under JJ.
45:48
SPEAKER_03: And if that's not successful and we need that extra umph because Zach Levine can provide that, then we pick up the phone to call Leanne.
45:54
SPEAKER_03: We have more tradable first-round picks.
45:55
SPEAKER_03: All I'm saying, the Lakers should be better than 42 and a half, but I don't know if that makes them a top six seed.
46:02
SPEAKER_03: So it's hard for me to place that out.
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47:42
SPEAKER_03: Then the last thing, the very last thing I want to get to, and this is going to be briefly, is the Grizzlies.
47:47
SPEAKER_03: It's the Grizzlies.
47:57
SPEAKER_03: Two seasons ago, they won 51 games.
47:59
SPEAKER_03: The year before that, they won 56 games.
48:02
SPEAKER_03: And I'm I'm just a little bit more hesitant to get there.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: I think ESPN's model had them winning 51 games.
48:08
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, whoa, that's a that's extreme.
48:11
SPEAKER_03: I do want to say the the conference has got significantly better in the last two years that the Grizzies have been kind of chilling, whether that be because of a suspension or injuries and so on and so forth.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: Last year, they were the most injured team in the history of basketball.
48:25
SPEAKER_03: Like that is not that is not an exaggeration.
48:28
SPEAKER_03: They had the most games missed to injury than any team in basketball by a wide margin.
48:33
SPEAKER_03: So a lot of people's mindset is that because they are healthy, they are gonna be back.
48:37
SPEAKER_03: And I understand it.
48:39
SPEAKER_03: Last time John Morant didn't have a suspension, he was the LBA second team.
48:42
SPEAKER_03: Desmond Bain was in running for most approved player.
48:44
SPEAKER_03: Jaron Jackson Jr.
48:46
SPEAKER_03: literally won defensive player of the year.
48:48
SPEAKER_03: All of those guys are back.
48:49
SPEAKER_03: Jaron just saw his role increase last year with all the injuries, and now he's got a little bit more creation under his belt.
48:55
SPEAKER_03: Desmond Bang was basically the true point guard last year in his games that he played because Marcus Smart, who they traded two first-round picks to get, also only played, what, 20 games?
49:03
SPEAKER_03: And John Morant plays single digits.
49:05
SPEAKER_03: So Desmond Bang has more experience.
49:06
SPEAKER_03: Jaron Jackson Jr.
49:07
SPEAKER_03: has more experience.
49:08
SPEAKER_03: There's no world where this team doesn't be successful, right?
49:11
SPEAKER_03: But it's hard for me to get there.
49:13
SPEAKER_03: Two years ago, when they won their 51 games, or three years ago when they won their 56 games, this roster was almost entirely different.
49:20
SPEAKER_03: Again, those top three dudes are still there.
49:22
SPEAKER_03: And then Brandon Clark.
49:24
SPEAKER_03: Those are the last four players from that team.
49:26
SPEAKER_03: This team lost Dylan Brooks, walked a free agency.
49:30
SPEAKER_03: They couldn't match that money.
49:31
SPEAKER_03: That was a crazy amount of money for Dylan Brooks production.
49:33
SPEAKER_03: Hello?
49:33
SPEAKER_03: They was talking about him going to Shanghai on Twitter, and then he got 20 plus million annually.
49:37
SPEAKER_03: There's no way Memphis could have matched that.
49:39
SPEAKER_03: So I ain't mad at them for losing that.
49:40
SPEAKER_03: They traded away Steven Adams, who was dealing with all these injuries, and they again traded two first-round picks that ended up being Bub Carrington and Marcus Sasser.
49:48
SPEAKER_03: Those might not matter.
49:49
SPEAKER_03: Those might matter.
49:50
SPEAKER_03: Regardless, the core pieces that were a part of this team two years ago, majority of them are gone.
49:55
SPEAKER_03: And again, we're talking about two starters and then a whole bench.
49:58
SPEAKER_03: So it's maybe not that bad than what I'm making it seem because Jaws there, but it's hard for me to get to 50 plus wins on this team right now.
50:06
SPEAKER_03: The identity of those teams that were very successful were a they were a low turnover, high turnover producing teams that killed the offensive glass.
50:15
SPEAKER_03: Like I don't think people recognize how important Steven Adams was for this team.
50:21
SPEAKER_03: Jaron as a roamer is one of the best in basketball.
50:24
SPEAKER_03: But because he's a roamer and he's a big-time shot blocker, that puts him in a position where he's not the rebounder that we want him to be at nearly seven foot.
50:32
SPEAKER_03: I mean, when you're 6'10 and you average four and a half boards, something is up.
50:36
SPEAKER_03: Um and Steven Adams was the glue that kept all of that together.
50:39
SPEAKER_03: He was the blanket that got over that side of the ball when it comes to closing out those possessions.
50:43
SPEAKER_03: And also, Steven Adams was on a legendary offensive rebound and run.
50:47
SPEAKER_03: Now, they try to supplement that or replace that by drafting Zach Edy.
50:52
SPEAKER_03: And Zach Eady looks like a guy that I believe will be able to have a successful NBA career.
50:57
SPEAKER_03: He's basically a 50-50 prospect for a lot of people.
50:59
SPEAKER_03: Um, I think there's a world where he does have a successful NBA career.
51:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, and he was third when it comes to all of D1 basketball in his offensive rebounder rate.
51:09
SPEAKER_03: But it's hard for me to believe that he will be able to mimic what Steven Adams did, specifically in his rookie season here.
51:16
SPEAKER_03: So it's just harder for me to get to the point where a lot of people are with him being a 50-plus win team.
51:21
SPEAKER_03: Um, and they also just got the injury book.
51:24
SPEAKER_03: Again, I mean Vince Williams Jr.
51:26
SPEAKER_03: was probably the best interesting, most interesting thing that's come out of Memphis over the last season.
51:30
SPEAKER_03: He's already injured.
51:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh Gigi Jackson, a second round pick, who's one of the top high school prospects, and then he reclassified, ended up here, and got mad at his coach on Instagram live, got caught regardless.
51:41
SPEAKER_03: He was a second round pick and he was a bucket.
51:43
SPEAKER_03: A little bit of a tunnel vision guy for me personally, but a bucket.
51:46
SPEAKER_03: Both of those guys are already injured.
51:48
SPEAKER_03: Jaron Jackson Jr.
51:49
SPEAKER_03: already dealing with an injury.
51:51
SPEAKER_03: So this team has to A, stay successful, which is yet to be seen in the last couple seasons, or stay um injury without an injury of the last couple seasons.
51:59
SPEAKER_03: And they also have to refine their identity or kindle that old flame.
52:03
SPEAKER_03: And with the teams around them just all being better than what they were two years.
52:07
SPEAKER_03: Like this is not the same team that that went to war with the Golden State Warriors back two years ago.
52:13
SPEAKER_03: It's not the same roster.
52:14
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I do believe their ceiling is that, don't get me wrong, but I also think their floor is maybe not as high as a lot of people believe.
52:21
SPEAKER_03: So for me, as you can see, the Western Conference is a damn murder fest.
52:27
SPEAKER_03: I have no idea who's doing what.
52:30
SPEAKER_03: Uh, and I don't have a single confusing team about East.
52:32
SPEAKER_03: It's like I know those top eight teams are gonna be 18, the top eight.
52:34
SPEAKER_03: It's a matter of who's gonna be the ninth and 10th seed.
52:37
SPEAKER_03: Charlotte, I got my stock in you.
52:39
SPEAKER_03: And Atlanta, go do it again.
52:42
SPEAKER_03: Go be a play in team.
52:43
SPEAKER_03: Just let Trey Young be the all-time leader in points in a play-in, because I think he could do that.
52:48
SPEAKER_03: Let me know what you think are the most confusing teams for this upcoming season.
52:52
SPEAKER_03: I did have other teams like the Warriors potentially.
52:55
SPEAKER_03: I had the Nuggets, which surprised some people, um, and then like the Pelicans, but I don't want this episode to be three hours long.
53:01
SPEAKER_03: You got to come back next week.
53:02
SPEAKER_03: You got to come back next week.
53:03
SPEAKER_03: Now, before we get out of here, when we were named the Kenny Beach and Podcast, we had this segment called Ask KB, where we let people tweet in or go into the comment section to ask me a question.
53:13
SPEAKER_03: That is coming back, but instead of it just being through text and through everything, you can hit us up on Instagram.
53:18
SPEAKER_03: It can be a video or voice memo.
53:20
SPEAKER_03: Enjoy small ball.
53:22
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna open that up and let's see what see what y'all got, man.
53:24
SPEAKER_03: This is the inaugural episode.
53:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm excited to see what type of questions we get.
53:33
SPEAKER_02: All right, Kenny, before we get into these uh audience questions, I have a quick thing for you on the Grizzlies.
53:39
SPEAKER_02: If someone were to tell you that John Morant is a top three MVP candidate and he's neck and neck alongside Luca and Shea towards the end of the season, in your mind, where does that put the Grizzlies?
53:51
SPEAKER_02: Um where would they be at that point in the season?
53:54
SPEAKER_03: If he's that high, they have to be one of the top two to three seats um easily.
53:59
SPEAKER_03: And that's not out of the realm of possibility.
54:01
SPEAKER_03: I'm just having a really tough time to figure out where they're gonna be.
54:04
SPEAKER_03: We can all agree John Morant is a disgusting player, and I mean that as a compliment.
54:08
SPEAKER_03: Um, one of the most unguardable dudes in basketball.
54:10
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but like, damn, it's hard for me to look at Marcus Smart's injury history and them being small through their first three, especially because Jaron um Gigi and uh Vince are both injured right now.
54:21
SPEAKER_03: They're gonna be a small team and then a large team on the back end with Jaron.
54:24
SPEAKER_03: And it's a it's it's a hodgepodge of talent.
54:27
SPEAKER_03: I'm just not there yet.
54:29
SPEAKER_03: But if Ja does it, uh it's not not out of the REM possibility.
54:31
SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't be too surprised.
54:32
SPEAKER_02: But for you, it's this is not about Ja.
54:34
SPEAKER_02: This is about the other pieces.
54:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's about the other pieces.
54:36
SPEAKER_03: Ja is a safe of a prospect.
54:38
SPEAKER_03: Um he did take a 25-game suspension.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: Safe would be a bit of an ironic word.
54:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, all right, let's get to these questions.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: Hey Kenny, I'm a huge fan of yours and all your shows, man.
54:51
SPEAKER_01: I never miss an episode.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: I got a crazy would you rather question for you.
54:55
SPEAKER_01: Would you rather have 10 years of super good bowls basketball?
55:00
SPEAKER_01: You got a little taste of it during the Derrick Rose era.
55:02
SPEAKER_01: Ten years of that type of basketball.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: They go deep in the playoffs, but they never get a ring.
55:08
SPEAKER_01: Or would you have rather have a random year where they do win a ring, but the other nine years are just bad like they have been?
55:16
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
55:16
SPEAKER_03: So, okay, so that's not something that new to me.
55:20
SPEAKER_03: This hypothetical has come up a lot, specifically when we sit in Discord all day with me and the guys.
55:25
SPEAKER_03: Um I okay, so I guess my question is do I know in that 10 years that we do not win?
55:32
SPEAKER_03: We just we're a 50-win team, but we don't win, and I know that I'm watching these games knowing that there's a real ceiling behind it, or am I going into it not knowing that we're gonna lose in the conference finals every single year?
55:42
SPEAKER_03: What would you think, Greg?
55:44
SPEAKER_02: I would say you don't know you're gonna lose, but it's a heavy feeling.
55:49
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
55:50
SPEAKER_02: Also, this question comes from uh at c Downey underscore nine.
55:55
SPEAKER_03: Appreciate you for the submission.
55:56
SPEAKER_03: I might take the one ring, man.
55:59
SPEAKER_03: I I I have not been able to see what Chicago is like during a really good sports season, other than the Blackhawks.
56:06
SPEAKER_03: And the Blackhawks are just a small portion of uh sports fandom here in Chicago.
56:09
SPEAKER_03: Like the Bears have had their Super Bowl run where they lost to, I guess, my boss, Peyton Manning.
56:16
SPEAKER_03: Um, but other than that, that's the only time I've actually really seen it.
56:19
SPEAKER_03: 2005, um, White Sox championship was cool, but in 2005, I'm what, nine years old, so I don't really account for a lot of it.
56:26
SPEAKER_03: And I don't like the Cubs, so that didn't mean anything to me.
56:29
SPEAKER_03: So one year of a ring, I would probably take that and nobody'd be able to tell me anything about that one championship.
56:35
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know how to get the fake rings for the fans?
56:38
SPEAKER_03: I would buy 10 of them and I would wear them all at the same time.
56:41
SPEAKER_03: But like 10 years, because by year number nine, you're not even excited anymore.
56:46
SPEAKER_03: By maybe by year number four, you're not even excited anymore after losing and losing and losing.
56:50
SPEAKER_03: So give me one ring and I'd be happy.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: What's one all-time NBA team you wish you could have seen live?
56:59
SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
56:59
SPEAKER_03: Straight to the point.
57:00
SPEAKER_03: I like that.
57:01
SPEAKER_03: Shout out to you.
57:02
SPEAKER_03: Um one team that I wish I would have seen live.
57:05
SPEAKER_03: I I have like the, of course, Harwood Classics are a heavy one.
57:08
SPEAKER_03: So like I feel like there's no team that you didn't you can't see, but live.
57:13
SPEAKER_03: Is it a cop-out just to say the 96 Bulls?
57:16
SPEAKER_03: Like, is that a cop out?
57:17
SPEAKER_02: No, not a that's the best answer.
57:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm gonna take the 96 Bulls, but other than that, um, I really wanted to see like Bird versus Magic and how prime time there really was.
57:28
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, the league was a lot different.
57:29
SPEAKER_03: This is basically the inception of live TV for the NBA.
57:32
SPEAKER_03: I would have loved to be able to like sit in the living room and watch Bird versus Magic on a random day or a playoff finals appearance or something like that.
57:40
SPEAKER_03: But 96 Bulls, oh my God.
57:42
SPEAKER_03: Like a team that dominant, Greg, you you've seen a team that dominant of your favorite team.
57:48
SPEAKER_03: Um I can't imagine waking up to watch that team every day.
57:51
SPEAKER_03: Well, like you're almost guaranteed a win.
57:54
SPEAKER_03: Like it can't be anything better than that.
57:56
SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna take that.
57:57
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if there's if there's teams with more chaos and that you know adds to the fun of it.
58:02
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the the Rashid Wallace jailblazers or something like that.
58:06
SPEAKER_03: Right.
58:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because I was even thinking on that tip, you could be like, but but this stuff never carried on to court, but like Shaq Kobe 2000, 2001, but I I live that in a way.
58:15
SPEAKER_03: Um they never let that show on the court, though.
58:18
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't like they were pissed at each other when hoops were gone.
58:21
SPEAKER_03: I was mostly behind the the the closet stuff.
58:24
SPEAKER_03: So I'm I would go 96 Bulls, close second to like a bird magic rivalry.
58:29
SPEAKER_03: Um and then like I really wanted to see, was it 7076?
58:38
SPEAKER_03: Bill Walton.
58:39
SPEAKER_02: Oh, and the Blazers.
58:40
SPEAKER_03: The way like some of my old heads in my life talk about Bill Walton, like I can watch, I've seen some hardwood classic of him, but they are talking about him like he was the greatest thing to ever grace a basketball.
58:51
SPEAKER_03: And of course, before MJ and everything.
58:53
SPEAKER_03: Um, but it only lived like a season and a half, two seasons.
58:56
SPEAKER_03: So I would have loved to go back and see what that looked like.
58:58
SPEAKER_03: Um, also, he gets credit for being one of the best playmaking centers of all time, and defensively he was on top of his game.
59:04
SPEAKER_03: So that was an obscure one, but I would take that too.
59:06
SPEAKER_02: Well, speaking of uh, you mentioned earlier the the Netflix show starting five, it's very similar to how they talk about Sabonis' dad.
59:12
SPEAKER_02: Like you know, you didn't see it, but trust me, like he's one of the top five ever, you know.
59:16
SPEAKER_02: And If we didn't see it, we didn't see it.
59:19
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
59:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know what?
59:20
SPEAKER_03: I was watching that and I saw that part really stood out to me.
59:23
SPEAKER_03: Um, because obviously people know Sabonis, um Arvita Sabonis, and but I didn't think about him in that light until this thing dropped.
59:33
SPEAKER_03: Like I recognized, of course, he was 31 years old when he came over.
59:36
SPEAKER_03: He was obviously really good, but in that, they legitimately made it seem like he was the best player in the world at that time.
59:42
SPEAKER_03: And I had never heard that.
59:44
SPEAKER_03: I heard he was great, obviously, but best in the world, that's something that I don't know if that was played up for television or was that the universal opinion back there?
59:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't want to give spoilers, but hearing Kevin Garnett talk about him in the all-star game locker room was a that was a great story, smoking a cigarette, talking about how great he is.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_02: Um, that question came from Kyler W, and we got one more here.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Kenny, longtime fan, excited for the rebrand of small ball.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: With this draft class being touted as not having a lot of star talent up top, which rookie do you think is gonna have the biggest impact this season?
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: Wow, I love that because here's a spoiler.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_03: Um, next episode, that is something I'm actually diving into with a guest.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_03: Um and that's that's actually such a tough question.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_03: That's why I wanted to bring on like a genuine expert, somebody that their whole job is to do draft work.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_03: Um, because I don't know.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_03: Like when it comes to fit and opportunity, there weren't be, there won't be more people hired than like Alex Sarr.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_03: Alex Saarr is gonna go into the Washington Wizards, he's gonna start alongside Kuzma and uh Valentinous.
1:00:50
SPEAKER_03: That's opportunity.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: When it comes to fit, it's probably Zachary reaches Shay because he's playing with Trey Young, who generates all the open looks you could possibly get.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_03: But I don't know if he has the talent to actualize that and make it him be the MVP or the rookie of the year.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_03: Um immediate impact is gonna be tough.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_03: Like there are some later guys that I'm excited about.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_03: Like I mentioned, the Ryan Duns or the Uso Igadoris for like the Phoenix Suns, who might get real rotational minutes as late first rounders and second round picks.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_03: But I'm just I'm just gonna say, keep on the lookout for next episode where we talk about basically this exact topic.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how you called it, but it's coming.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_02: What are your initial thoughts on Dillingham?
1:01:28
SPEAKER_03: I'm excited about it.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm always a little afraid for young, thin guards in general, but he has such a way of moving with the ball that I feel like he might be the exception to like, this guy's knocking me off my spot.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_03: Like, I feel like that happened a lot to young players.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: And in his first preseason game, he had a possession where it kind of happened at the rim.
1:01:47
SPEAKER_03: That's why I'm afraid for him.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_03: But he's silky smooth, man.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_03: And now he's not under as much pressure as he was three weeks ago before Dante DiVincenzo was on the team.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_02: And I think guys like Ant, they're just gonna feed him confidence all game long, especially early in the season.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_02: So I could see him having an early case for maybe rookie of the year, even though he'll be coming off the bench.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_02: But I think that will likely, to your point, die down once uh, you know, that that physicality heats up and all that.
1:02:13
SPEAKER_02: But uh he's got something special, I think, in the at least the first couple preseason games that I watched.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I think it will be pretty tough to play him off the court, too, because of his anchor on the backside with Rudy Gobert.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_03: Where like he's he's gonna be a bad defender.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_03: It's it's got he's a A rookie, B small, C than, D didn't like it's it's a lot of reasons for him to be a bad defender.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_03: E' super offensive oriented.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_03: And if there's but if there's anybody you want a bad defensive point guard to play with, it's Rudy Gobert.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_03: So that's that's the bright side of it all.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_03: I want to say I appreciate you for watching this first episode of Small Ball with Kenny Beecham.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_03: Like I mentioned at the top of the show, um, I'm super excited for this upcoming season, man.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have guests, we're gonna have segments, we're gonna do it well.
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: And I do want to say thank you to FanDuel, thank you to Vox for coming in for a season.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_03: Thank you to producer Greg for being here on the on the ones and twos.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_03: Uh, we'll see y'all next week, man.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_03: A very great episode coming up, and we'll be here for the entirety of this season.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_03: Love y'all.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_03: Peace.