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These NBA Teams Have Turned It Around · Small Ball with Kenny Beecham

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome in and welcome back to another episode of Small Ball with Kenny Beachum.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: Today we got to talk about two Giants going against each other.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: Almost a perfect NBA game, the Cleveland Cavaliers versus the Oklahoma City Thunder.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: Could that be an NBA finals preview?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: I guess we got to talk about that.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: I also want to talk about three teams that started off slow to start the season, but as of recently, have been doing some pretty good things.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mentioned to y'all that I'm trying my very best to not look at everything with this big, big magnifying glass and think about the overarching picture, but take things more at face value in the NBA.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: So these teams are not contenders, but we gotta show some love to teams that are turning it around.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: Before we get into that, I'm gonna remind you to leave a like on the episode, subscribe to the channel, tell a friend to tell a friend that we are looking for more listeners.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're looking for more viewers, and they could be your homies.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: I also want to say thank you for all the support on the last episode.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I ended it giving my New Year's resolutions for 2025, and I got so many DMs, so many tweets, so many messages on Instagram of people going through similar stuff or showing their um condolences to my former coach, Coach Lavik.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I just want to say thank you to the community, man.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: I I love every single one of y'all.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like the respect and the amount of messages I got made me feel great, and it made me want to fight even more towards the stuff.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: You go watch that episode if you missed it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: But uh I was pretty candid and pretty open about some personal struggles, and um I'm doing good.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: That's all I gotta say.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: I stepped on a scale this morning and I was surprised at that number.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: My wife always tells me that if you're gonna weigh yourself, you gotta do it right when you wake up.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes I've I've I woke up and I ain't like that number that was there.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: But today specifically, oh, I must have been eating good this week.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, let's get to the game of the year.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: I was going into OKC versus the Boston Celtics as the game of the year, and that one actually was pretty great as well.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: But the Cavs versus OKC was even more perfect.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: Last episode, we did our contender's tier list.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: I had the Boston Celtics number one, OKC number two, and Cleveland number three.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I got to see my number two and my number three team go head to head, and it was an absolute banger.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: Final score was 129 to 122.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I gotta give credit where it's due.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: I have absolutely hated the ESPN coverage of the NBA, specifically when we talk about pregame, post-game, halftime, overall uh uh presentation of the NBA.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: This time around, it was a banger.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: I felt like I was watching a playoff game.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: They did this sizzle about the Cleveland Cavaliers where they're sitting down with the players, Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Jared Allen, Jared Allen back in front of a microphone.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: It was really, really dope.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: So again, I got to tip my cap and give credit where it's due.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: I thought they did a good job there.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I was I was talking to the homies trying to figure out why this was different than like their normal coverage of like the Christmas Day games, which was absolutely dreadful.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things we came to conclusion about is this game was flexed in.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: This was not a normal, nasty televised game.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: These two teams have been so dominant that the NBA slash ESPN was like, no, we got to find a way for people to see this.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe it was that short notice.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't have time to hit up the big, big guys over there to have their own show.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: Instead, they got some lesser-known people who I thought did a phenomenal job and they had to find a way to fill that time that wasn't the number one guy talking about it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: And they said, hey, what if we interviewed DG?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: What if we interviewed this guy?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it felt cool because as y'all know, Cleveland and OKC are two of the smaller markets.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: And though they've been so very dominant this entire season, they don't get a ton of press.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: And again, that's part of it being a small market.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I would just guess that there are some casual NBA fans that maybe didn't know that OKC was doing as good or Cleveland was doing as good, that sat down to watch this game and maybe fell in love with one of these two teams or fell in love with some of these players because I I found myself laughing at some of the interview questions and the responses from Darius Garland.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: So again, tipping my cap to the way it was covered.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Cleveland won this game, man.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: And uh OKC came into it on a 15-game win streak.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: The Cleveland Cavaliers came in and a 10, 11 game win streak.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: So it's one of the few times we've seen a double-digit win streak going against each other.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think the last time was in the year 2000, where it's the LA Lakers versus the Portland Trailblades.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: Who knew that the Portland Trailblades was that good?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: I did.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was I was kind of around back then, uh look at Unk.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things that was so so cool to me, and this is not just about, I guess, this individual game, but it's more about the Cleveland Cavaliers at large, is how many plus passers they have on the court.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: There is basically no construction of a five-man unit that won't have at least three to four really good to excellent passers.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: And the Cavs are not one of those teams that swing, swing, swing, swing, swing.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, they're towards the bottom of the league when it comes to total passes per game, but they always find a way to make the right one more.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: Even the first possession of the game, you get Dean Wade in that corner, which is a beautiful one more.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Later in the game, Max Drew saw a slow-cutting Ty Jerome on the backside and found a way to get him to him.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: They don't make a ton of passes, but the passes that they make are usually excellent.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: And that goes to pretty much everybody.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta think about their starting lineup.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Darius Garland, one of the better playmakers in basketball.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_03: Donovan Mitchell, I mean, I've we've watched Donovan Mitchell's career, and I guess he's one of the few players to average 20 every year of his career to start off with, with some legendary guys.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we've seen him come in and immediately have an offensive impact, immediately help the Utah Jazz go on the playoff push.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: But he hasn't always been this great playmaker.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: But throughout his career, he's got better and better and better.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: And his load offensively has been significantly less than any time of his career, opposed to his rookie season.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: And with that, he's become a way better playmaker.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_03: You got Evan Mobley and Jared Allen, who I'm gonna talk about in a second, are really great passes for their position.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: And Dean Wade is the only guy in their lineup that I can't say is an ultra great passer, but guess what?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: He's pretty damn good too.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: So they always have a way and they always play together.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that is some super, super cool stuff.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the depth really showed his head in this one from Ty Jerome to Karis Levert to, of course, Max Struce, who we already mentioned.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody that checked in this game, except for Isaac Koro, had a really good um positive impact.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Even Jordan Yang, who shot like one of five, he ended up having an impact, being a nuisance.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's one thing about Jordan Yang.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: You don't get on some scan.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: He might have a bad foul here or there, but those are the type of things they really need.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: This was really like a game for me on both sides.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not just about the Cleveland Cavaliers, but on both sides that was accept and adapt.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I kind of see how we how we guard and Donovan Mitchell.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I bet we're gonna do this to have him on a secondary action instead of a primary action because the way Lou Dor, I mean, they showed so many bodies to Donovan Mitchell, didn't even let him really think about what was going on.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was Lou, it was J Dub when they needed a longer defender.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it was Caseon Wallace to get underneath them.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: They did a lot of different stuff, but it was accepting and adapting.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: And one of my per the perfect examples of this is Max Struce.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Max Struce hit plenty of just catch and shoot three-pointers.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: And eventually later in the game, Coach Mark Dayton had to accept that we just can't let Max Struce shoot.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there are times where Max Struz looks like the greatest shoot of all time.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: There are other times where he looks subpar.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Today was one of those Cal Corver type performances.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And eventually Coach Mark Dayton decided to try to run him off the line.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: Kenny Atkinson said, okay, we're gonna let Max, when he is on the court with Donovan Mitchell, by the way.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: Again, we already talked about great NBA players, superstar in the NBA.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna let Max Struess be the primary facilitator here.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna run a stagger screen, and we're gonna have the secondary option on the backside so we can get an open three.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: So Max Struz went from this catch and shoot guy towards the beginning of this first half to being one of the primary ball handlers to the set in the second half where he was getting a little bit of penetration.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm talking about like getting free throw line and then finding open shooters.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: He had to one play late in the game where he's running the pick and roll with Evan Mobley.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't one of the all-star level guards, it was Max Druze.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it led to an Evan Mobley basket.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's just perfect basketball, y'all.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: It was a game of runs, but it felt like both teams had an opportunity to match that run.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: It was this, it was that, it was everything.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_03: No matter what type of NBA fan you were, you got a taste of something that you like.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you wanted the old heads, ooh, I know this game was 129 to 122, but this was a really good defensive game, y'all.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes a defense can be so good, but what do they say?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: Better O.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: Better O.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: Great defense, better O.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: And that happened a lot in this game.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're a defensive type of guy, you got some opportunities to see a trailing Ludor block, a Donovan Mitchell pull up three.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: You got to see um Isaac Koro chase around the screens.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_03: You got to see Dean fucking Wade.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: And my notes, my last bullet point just says Dean Wade.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: I ain't even got notes attached to it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: I just wanted to make sure I let you know that Dean Wade was there.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a type of dude that's not too much on the three-point shooter, guess what?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: You got Shake his Alexander, that's what he does.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: But you also opened up the third quarter with a Kenridge Williams baseline mid-range jump shot.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: You had it all.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: If you like great big man play, guess what?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_03: Jared Allen was phenomenal.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: If you like great big man play, Evan Mobley might not have had the same statistical type of uh performance as Jared Allen, but boy was he amazing as well.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: So you got pretty much everything.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: One of my favorite things about the Cleveland Cavaliers is their bigs.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: One of the few teams of basketball that has completely accepted that they are willing to run two seven-footers out at the same time and it not be a detriment.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like some teams have tried it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking about Detroit Pistons of last, where it was a Drummond and a Greg Monroe.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, don't let me forget Josh Smith.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: Those three dudes started together.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of the times you think about two big men starting together, it just doesn't really work.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: But what makes this one special is A Evan Moldley's offensive progression where now over this last stretch he's attempting like three to four threes per game and he's shooting 40 plus percent from it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's beautiful.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_03: But also, these two bigs do not let the ball die when it hits their hands.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: There are plenty of bigs across basketball.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: If they're running a pick and roll, once you get the ball to the roll man, they don't really have many options.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes you can see a short roll pass.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think Derek Livel has done a phenomenal job of this uh so far in his second year.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: But a lot of bigs is like, hey, when the ball's in his hands, it's like a breath of fresh air for the defense because we know that he's going to have to go up with this one.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Where both of these dudes are so great at passing, where this four-five high-low pass thing, I think they had three alley oops to each other in this game alone, where Evan Mobley was setting the screen and you had uh a roaming Jared Allen in the dunker, and Evan Mobley just threw it up to him and say, Go get it, big fella.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: And he did.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then the best thing about what Kenny Agerson has done to this team is basically both pairs have accepted their role.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Where of course you're gonna have minutes where all four of them on the court, like that first set in the first quarter, six or so minutes.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: You're gonna have all four all-star caliber players on the court together.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: Then two of them go to the bench, and it's like one guard, one big, and we're gonna roll.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: They've done such a good job of accepting that and being good in it.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I know we all know that Victor Wimyama has one defensive player of the year.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: I've never seen an award be uh one with like one game of basketball, but that's how good Wimbi is.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: He's a generational defender.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not taking it away from him.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: But Evan Mobley should probably be number two.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Evan Mobley has a defensive rating when it's just him on the court, no Jared Alvin, of a 101 points change.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: Do you hear that?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: That would be the best defense in all of basketball.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's the type of defender that he really is.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he is able to blitz, he is able to play drop, he is able to come to the point of attack.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: He does pretty much everything.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the one thing, I guess it's kind of two things.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: The Achilles heels of the OKC Thunder.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's the kind of things that we talked about last episode when we were kind of given pros of cons of every single contender.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: The one of the things that they're just small.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you look at the game, their previous win against the the Celtics, first half of that game, they were just minuscule.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like at one point, uh Joe Mazzula was running Lou Cornette and Porzingis together, and just they got so many points in the paint in the first half.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was 32 to be exact.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: In the second half, they got six.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it was only, I think it was zero in the fourth quarter.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's what I heard.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: So uh sometimes this team just feels really small, and you're going against a team like the Cavs, who are always gonna have a seven-footer, like the backup center for the Cleveland Cavaliers is Evan Mobley.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: He's a starting power forward and he's the backup center, right?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: They're always gonna have at least one seven-footer.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: They felt really small in this one.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: And what basically closed out the game was a plethora of offensive rebound from the Cleveland Cavaliers, kind of showing the lack of size for the OKC Thunder.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: But again, the Thunder are a one of the greatest defense statistically that we've seen, right?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: But you can't take away everything.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I got like Akira type of flashbacks watching this game and seeing corner three after corner three after corner three for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's one thing that the Oklahoma City Thunder have been completely okay with giving up last year and this year, that is the corner through three.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: And if you remember, last year in the playoffs, that's where they lost to the Dallas Mavericks.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: One one of the main one of the major factors where it was PJ, it was Derek Jones Jr.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: in the corners, hitting those shots.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of times, like, okay, we're gonna give those shots up to uh 36 to 38% three-point shooters, and we'll cross our fingers that they miss.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: And well, the Cavs don't miss.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: They don't miss.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: They don't miss.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: So you got a ton of corner three-pointers here, and that might have been the determinant factor of it all.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: And now I'm about to go out here.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of want to see exactly how many they gave up.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it was a lot.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was a lot.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you start off the game with one and it just continues to trickle down.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: So luckily for us, we get this matchup again in just one week's time.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: So we get to see if the Oklahoma City Thunder treat it like a little playoff thing and they adjust accordingly.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: I wish we would get a game where we do have Chet here, but after next week, the only way these two teams meet again is if it is in the NBA championship and knock on wood.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: If that does happen, everybody will be healthy.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_03: But it was the perfect game.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's kind of rare that you kind of get this where um again, I'm I've been I've been adjusting my screen time.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm actually on a 28-day streak of not going over on my screen time, which is pretty, pretty cool.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's rare that you get almost consensus that everybody who was watching the game enjoyed the game, and that is amazing.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: Now I want to talk about some teams across hoops that started off slow and have found a way to pick it up.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: The first one is a Sacramento Kegs.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like the beam, ladies and gentlemen.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I do want to say this right here, right up top.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: I do still believe it was cowardly to fire Mike Brown after making him lead a practice, after making him do a media circus, and on his way to the team playing to board a flight to go to, I think it was Los Angeles.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: I do still think it was cowardly to fire him in that manner.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: I still think it's cowardly that we are what, a week and a half, two weeks since he's been fired, and not a single person of power has come to the podium and explained or given a reason why instead they let their players throw him into the fire.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, De'Aaron Fox, how do you feel about Coach Mike getting fired?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it seemed like De'Aaron Fox was kind of fumbling and he made some comments that didn't rub people the right way, but ultimately it feels like the relationship is cool.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: There was just a post on Instagram of Coach Mike Brown and De'Aaron Fox out to dinner yesterday.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: So though De'Aaron Fox might not have given the best answers in these interviews after Mike Brown was fired, it seemed like their relationship is still fine.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why I just felt like whether it be Vivek or whether it be whoever's in charge over there, go into the podium and just hey, say, hey, we fire Mike Brown.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: This is the reason why.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: So let's leave it at that.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: You do that and you don't get those De'Aaron Fox comments.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: You don't get to really get your players have an opportunity to say the wrong thing.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I do think that part was cowardly.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: But what I said when he was fired, and I didn't mention it on this show, but I mentioned on the other podcast, is there's a world where Mike Brown gets fired and the Sacramento Kings go on a run because their statistics, their data is not that of a bad team.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: Now, when he was fired, they were in the midst of a homestand where they lost every single game.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was 5-0 or 0-5 at home.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: Inexcusable.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: Inexcusable.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I'm not the biggest Mike Brown supporter.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like I did, I do think he did some great stuff bringing or helping the Sacramento Kings get back to relevancy two years ago and light the beam, and him winning coach of the year was one of the greatest stories.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but you know, as you can tell, when you go 0-5 on a homestand, things need to be shaken up just a little bit.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: And Doug Chrissie has come in and got these boys hooping five and one in those six games, and the one loss that he had was that that first game, that game that was with the Lakers after Mike Brown got fired.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Every other game has been pretty good.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, few things that I've seen that has been adjusted, right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: When you think about interim coaches, it's not a ton that an interim coach can do to change things on the fly.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: You got to think about it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: You had a full, full training camp under one coach where he got an opportunity to get his rotations right or have an idea of what his rotations are, get whatever playbook, get whatever scheme, do all of this stuff.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: And the interim coach kind of has to scrap some of that because he can't scrap it all.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't have time to redo the rotation, they have the time to do a full new rebrand of the team.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: So he has to kind of take a small piece here, there, here, there.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: He's done some good team camaraderie type of stuff, though.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: When you tell a guy to go get your mittens and your hats, because we're going up to the top of the arena to see the beam, it's pretty dope stuff.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: But the fan, he basically is doing everything that the fan base has been asking for.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not even a part of the fan base.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: The major thing that that grinded my gears about this start to the Mike Brown season was Keon Ellis being in a doghouse?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like that that that blew my mind.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if I can ask Mike Brown one question and he had to be candid with me, he had to be honest.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: I would ask what happened with the relationship with Keon Ellis for him to go from a person that later in the season started for y'all, for him to get and some nights DMP coach decisions.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_03: Some nights he got on the court, but it was the last two minutes of a game, a garbage time game.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: Some games he got in for one defensive possession at the end of a game.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: What happened?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know the answer to it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because last year where Keonella started, they were 13 and 8.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Last year where Keonello started, they were the third best defense in basketball, and somehow he started off this season in a doghouse.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of understood it earlier in the season, but it at one point it became inexcusable.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like you think about the acquisition of DeMar DeRozan and his deficiencies, which is, of course, three-point shooting.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: And as the league continues to get to get more spread and more three-pointers being shot, the idea of having a Kevin Herter start makes sense in theory because at the best version of Kevin Herter, he's a shooter.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately, he hasn't really been that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: So once Kevin Herter opens up the season shooting 22%, yeah.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: I thought that that was like, all right, let's just go back to what we knew last year, let the pieces fall where they may.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't happen.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: And instead, they made the opportunity or made the changes to start um to start our guy Malik Monk, which has been pretty good.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to Malik Monk.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: He had a couple really good games where De'Aaron Fox was out with his butt injury.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's not a joke, he literally was out there with a bruised booty.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um and eventually Keon Ellis got into that rotation, but that was with Duh Christie.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: And since then, Keon Ellis has been phenomenal.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: We had the one game, and I fell asleep on this game because Damon went to double overtime.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then the next day after we started our podcast, we went back to watch it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: Keon Ellis, and I tried my heart hardest to count this, and I bet somebody got to help me out finding up my statistics, man.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like I'm getting lost in stats sometimes.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: But my own personal counting, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: Just me and my eyes in this game versus the Miami Heat, the game where DeMar DeRozan took over the second overtime.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to my boy Damar.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Keon Ellis, when I counted, had 14 deflections.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: One game.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: Granted, double overtime, so more minutes.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: He played 50 minutes.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: But that many deflections from one player in one game is ridiculous.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's Dyson Daniels on steroids type of stuff going on from Keon Ellis.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not like Keon Ellis can't shoot.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: The guy is one of the better catches.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: Let me see what the number is.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: Last time he's 41% right now from three on one and a half attempts.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I'm sorry, three and a half attempts.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was looking at his two-point shooting.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Three and a half attempts, 41%.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: Guess what he shot last year?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_03: 41% from three.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is what he does.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: The year before that, even though it was a very, very, I mean, very, very small sample size, 50%.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: He's a shooter.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: He's one of the better defenders in basketball.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things I love about Keon is how attached he is to the ball handler around a pick and roll.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: He's going to be on that hip.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: And he does a really good job of not getting caught.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know that one move that Jalen Brunson has pretty much mastered, and the NBA has tried his very best to get rid of, where you got a player on your hip and then you bump it to him and then you go up for a foul.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: He does a pretty good job of anticipating that bump and not getting called on that foul very often.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I just I love Keon Ellis' game.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: So the fact that he wasn't in a lineup very early on is ridiculous to me.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: And as one of the catalysts is for their five and one start, Keon Ellis.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing is like, okay, so it's it's hard to look at a six-game sample size versus, I guess before Mike Brown was here, what was it?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: 30, 30-ish games, 30-ish games versus six games.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not gonna beat around the bush.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: The six games, it wasn't against the most elite competition.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: You got some injuries here, but the Kings have also had De'Aaron Fox out.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: So again, it's hard to look at statistics.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: But what I will say is that they're shooting the three-point ball, uh significant like four more three point attempts per game under Duck Christie versus Mike Brown.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes it really is just a numbers game.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_03: But the thing that I love the absolute best in this six game sample size under Duck Christie is this team is running just like they did when they were really, really good.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: When they were the number one pace team of basketball, right?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Now in the Doug Christie era, they are number three.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's pretty damn good.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: And you think about again, when you think about the players that you acquired, DeMar DeRose, and he is a, I want to shoot a mid-range jumper, I want to play in the half court.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: I understand adjusting your team philosophies to kind of gear towards that a little bit.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: But so far they've been able to balance it pretty well.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things I did like with Mike Brown is that it didn't feel like DeMar's number was called often.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: And when it was called, it was the typical give you the ball and let you go to work.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: He wasn't really put in too many actions where it was a full-fledged, here's the first action, there's a secondary action if this doesn't work out.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: It was not a lot of that.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: And under Doug Chris, I'm seeing a good amount of it.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just been a better watch.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, it's been a better watch.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if that means that this Kings team, who are right now tied for the 10th C with the uh Spurs, I don't know if that means they will eventually overtake the Spurs and make it to the play in and become this huge success story because the Spurs can't goddamn score in the second half anymore.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it's just been good.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: And again, I'm trying to take things at face value.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to say thumbs up to the Sacramento Kings right now because you have been electric.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: Before we get into the the second, the second team that's been uh really, really hot over the last couple weeks.
• 23:18
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• 23:27
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• 23:32
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• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we got some bangers Friday night, man.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_03: The game that I'm looking forward to is OKC versus the New York Knicks.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: And some of the things I'm really thinking about is Carnthony Towns.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: They played against each other last week, and in that game, Carnthony Towns for the first time that season this season didn't attempt a single three big per.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Not that he shot 0 for something.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't attempt the three.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: Now, shout out to OKC.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like I mentioned, they can run you off the line, but damn it, Kat, we expect more.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And I definitely expect more because since then, those two games that he did play in Chicago, he was three of seven.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: That was an amazing game from Kat.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: I was there in person.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: It was beautiful.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: In the game after that, against Toronto, I want to say he was three for three from three.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: So you know Kat is one of the best shooting bigs in basketball.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: OKC is not gonna run him off the line like that again.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: At least I don't expect that.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the next thing I'm thinking about is Isaiah Hartenstein and how much he has to crash the glass against his New York Knicks team.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: So I would look at some Carnegie Towns three-pointers and Isaiah Hartenstein rebounds if I were you.
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• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: So the last two things I want to talk about, you know, they say the NBA runs to the century division.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe I made that up.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: Hell.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: It was mostly said when it was LeBron and Paul George here, and then the Pistons were not god-awful.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then the Bulls also are pretty good.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a long time since then, but I'm going to say it again.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: The NBA runs to the Central Division.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: Even though we don't really, we only have one real contender.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: Either way, the Indiana Pacers are back question mark.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's in my notes.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: Indiana Pacers back question mark.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: It does help to get your team to be close to 100% healthy.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now, um Aaron Eastmith is projected to come back this weekend, so we'll see what that looks like.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: The Pacers have too many good players, is what I'm realizing.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's weird to say that about a team that is currently 20 and 18, but they I do believe that they have to do some type of consolidation thing because they got a lot of players.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Either way, um, them getting back healthy or getting closer to health is one of the main reasons I say they've been good in the last 10.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: They're they're 7-3 in that time frame.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: And Tyrese Halliburton playing better is a huge catalyst to this as well.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: He is 19.5 points, 9.5 rebounds on 48, 38, 87% from the free throw line.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the cool things about that is my major criticism about Reese so far this season is that he wasn't getting rim pressure whatsoever.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: And it just makes the offense way more guardable if your primary ball handler can't get downhill.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: We're in this stretch, there are a few games where I'm like, he is being ultra aggressive when it comes to getting to the to the paint.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: And that led to him having games where he shot, you know, nine free throws, eight free throws.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what you that's what you want.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: Earlier in the season, by the people that I've talked to, Tyrese was dealing with some back issues, man.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know, I haven't talked to him or the people that told me about his back issues um earlier in the season, but just based off visually watching him play over this last two weeks, two and a half restretch, it makes me feel like they have remieded it, remied it, remedyed it even enough for him to hoop.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, or maybe he's just become so accustomed to the pain that he can just fight through it.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what it is, but we're having some really good performances.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And and he, so so one of the things that makes me a big Tyrese Halliburn fan, shout out to my boy, is when you have a guy with his high of a usage rate and he doesn't turn the ball over, that is a recipe for a really good offensive team.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you think about the guys that have the ball all the time, typically they're gonna average a bunch of turnovers.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: And in this stretch, Tyrese has been almost perfect when it comes to turning the ball over.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: So far in the season is 1.8, which is the lowest since his rookie season, which is great.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm gonna look at his last 10.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: Let me see.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't do this beforehand, but his last 10 games, and Tyrese Halliburton is averaging one turnover to uh 9.7 assists.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: One turnover.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: What a great assist of turnover margin.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_03: That is perfect when you think about how often he had the ball.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I just read an article uh by Kayla Cooper, who's one of the best writers in NBA.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: I don't read other sports articles, so I'm just gonna say NBA, but damn it, I might as well say best writers of sports.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: And she does a great job covering the Indiana Pacers over at uh basketball.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: She wrote, it's a it's a Patreon that I've been subscribed to for a few years now.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: And she said that the way Tyrese Halliburns had the ball, statistically, she had the statistics for this, not just her taking a guess, is on the same level as what James Harden did in his MVP seasons.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: And you think about one turnovers, one of those things.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: One, one, come on, man, one turnover per.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: She also wrote that the the um lineup of Tyrese Halliburne, Andrew Nimhar, Benedict Mather, and Pascal Siakam, and Miles Turner have a defensive rating of a 100.8 per 100 possessions in about 300 minutes.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: That is on the same level as Paul George and Roy Hibbert, Indiana Pacers, all the way back them years.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: So this is the team that didn't really have the identity of being a great defensive team, but they found a way and found a few lineups that are actually just dominating defensively.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to give a lot of credit to Andrew Nimhardt.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: He is every single year we have advanced stats darlings.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: These are the dudes that the statistics say when this guy is on the court, the team is statistically so much better.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: We've had people like Alex Caruso.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_03: We've had people trying to think of some other some other guys that have fallen into this throughout the years.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Alex Caruso, Derek White.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's like some of these dudes just have such great careers.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to I want to read you where we all, I don't think he qualifies because of minutes play.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_03: That man, Andrew Nimhar, is towards the top 4% when it comes to individually um how he's impacting the game when it comes to offensive, um, offensive plus minus and defensive plus minus.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_03: He's he's in the top percentages.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: He's in there with Steph Curry, Nikole Jokic, and Jay Sean Tate, which maybe I should have held that last name.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: Huh.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: Either way, that is the type of season that Nim Hart is having.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: And he's he's basically doing everything you can ask for um as a primary defender.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: And to think that they will be having Aaron Eastmith back from his injury this weekend, they they are they are on the up and up, which is really, really positive for the team.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um the acquisition, by the way, he's he's in the 99th percentile in um efficiency differential.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: I just had to look it up to double check that he's in the 99th percentile um in his 628 minutes.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: The acquisition of Thomas Bryan, I got to see it firsthand last night because while we were also watching Cleveland Cavaliers versus OKC Thunder, I can't help but to watch my favorite team be ass.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I got to watch the Thomas Bryan experience where he went out there and he turned into I don't know, who do I want to compare him to?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: A little bit of Yoke, a little bit of B, a little bit of Kareem, a little bit of Shaq.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: He was everything.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: And one thing that I really like about the acquisition for him is how great he has been and adding extra possessions in this limited amount of time because he will get down there and get on that offensive glass.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: And when you talk about a team that, again, doesn't turn the ball over a lot because of their number one guy, getting extra possessions is amazing.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: They're playing faster than what they did earlier in the season, which was one of the major things that I was watching, like, what the hell is going on?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: This team was one of the best offenses in the league last year, one of the fastest teams in the league last year.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: How can we go from that to 22nd in the league?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: When it's stretch, they are going.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: They are going, and it's been fun.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: And before the season starts, before every season, I do my league pass rankings when it comes to watchability.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: And this year, I think I had the Indiana Patriots in the A tier.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't play like an A-tier watchability team early in the season, but they're starting to get back there.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um by the way, here here are the here are the new numbers.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, when it comes to expected wins, how many games would a team win in an 82-game season with this efficiency differential?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: And this is by um a clean in the glass.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: Number one, in his 122 minutes with the Lakers, is Dorian Finney Smith.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: His team is plus 24 points per 100 possessions better offensively when DFS is on the floor.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's crazy.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_03: Again, small sample size, 100 minutes, but still.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Number two is Nikola Jokic.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know him, you know what he does.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, number three is is Micah Potter.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that's all defensively.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: His teams are whoa, 17 points better defensively when he's on the court.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: Do I need to tune in to more Utah Jazz games?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: Also only 180 minutes.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: So when you think about it, if if we put the threshold of at least 500 minutes played, you have Jokic one, Andrew Nimhart 2, Chris Paul 3.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: Let me say that again.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: Jokic 1, Nimhart, Nimhart 2, Chris Paul 3, and Jalen Johnson, if you want the full start top five, it didn't win by that is incredible.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Incredible.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: So um he is one of the advanced analytics starling, and one of my favorite things is watching it translate.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: Where it's not just like, okay, the numbers say he's great, but is he really?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's kind of kind of hard to see.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: You're going to see it.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now it's not the impact the Jokics give, goddamn it, but it's like when you watch you, they are noticeably better.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: The last thing I want to talk about, like I said, it runs through the the central division.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: Detroit basketball is is it is it back?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: They're above 500 for the first time since last year, three games in, where they were two and one after they beat the Bulls when Zach Levine had 50.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, they are 19 and 18, y'all.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: This is the latest in Kay Cunningham's NBA career where his team has been above 500.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's January.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: Last year they won 14 games.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: They're at 19 right now.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: Can you can you hear me?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: This has been this has been really fun to watch.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: Five game win streak currently.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: And and one thing that I think is really good or really cool is how they've been able to win against bad teams, right?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of the the real determinant factors of a team that's progressing.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: We're like, it's the it's the nets, goddammit.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's the nets.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes this team wouldn't be able to beat the Nets.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: But so far this year, last was that last night, two nights ago, um, they were able to beat beat the Nets.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and and I was at Derrick Rose night, and and I was getting a bunch of notifications.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_03: Kenny, you gotta check the box score of Pissers versus Timbulls.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: Ken, you gotta take the box score.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: I take the box score.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: This man, Anthony Everett got 40 out of 60 points.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I tell myself, when I get home, I'm watching this game.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: I gotta see how Anthony Edwards can put up 53 points and still lose.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: And when I turned on that game, I spent more time focusing on the Detroit Pissers than I did on Anthony Ewards.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's how fun it was.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: Last year, Kay Cunningham was the most blitzed NBA player outside of Luka Doncic, which makes sense.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: You blitz Luka Doncic because we're okay with playing uh uh three on four because that's how good of a player Luka Doncic is.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: We want the ball in anybody else's hands other than Luka Doncic.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: You blitz Kay Cunningham because everybody on the court with him are they're bad at basketball.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: So if we just blitz the one guy that's decent, we should have a recipe to win.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: And they other teams did have a recipe to win.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, the teams ain't caught up yet because they are still blitzing Cade so very heavily, but guess what?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: He has shooters in this recent stretch.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Tobias Harris is shooting 55% from three.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: Simone Fontechio, 50% from three.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: Tim Hardaway Jr.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: 38.7% from three.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: And Malik Beasley was in a slump.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: He had a good game last night.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: But before that, he was having another great shooting year as well.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: So blitz him all you want.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: Kay Cunningham is making teams pay.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: They're doing a lot of stagger screens, a lot of drag screens over there in Detroit, and is leading to open shots on weak sides.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: I like um in the game against the the uh Minnesota Timberwolves, how many times we got an empty side poster for Kay Cunningham.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Kay does a lot of things really, really good.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one of those things is using his size when he has a skinnier defender or a smaller defender.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of times in that game was Jaden McDaniels, man.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_03: He's one of the better defenders in basketball, but Jaden McDaniels is this thin-framed guy.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: And Kay Cunningham felt comfortable with going to the post with Jaden McDaniels on his back.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's growth, that's progression.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: And don't you dare put like a really smaller defender on them because he will do the same thing.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: I've been having a lot of fun watching him do that.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: The other thing is he is ridiculously efficient.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have no numbers to prove this.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: The eye test is my numbers, damn it.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: He is ridiculously efficient and semi-transition.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: Off a make, and and you got three three players back.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: You got three players back.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's that for me, that's semi-transate uh uh transition.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Full transition is like, man, it's a two-on-one, it's a three-on-one.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: Semi-trans uh transition, he has been phenomenal of getting a paint touch with him with his feet and kegging out to that corner where it might be Malik or kegging out to that other corner where it might be Tim Hardaway or Simone Fontek, yo.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: God damn it, Simon Fontec, yo stop dribbling the ball, shoot the goddamn ball.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: But he's he's done such a good job.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_03: And last year, um, oh no, not last year, going into the season, ESPN did their top 100.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: And the way ESPN does top 100, they're projecting.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's what they do.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: They're not taking the last year as like, hey, these were the top top 100 players of basketball.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: They're saying for this upcoming season, we believe Jokic will be the best player.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: We believe this player will be the second best player.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: They had Kay Cunningham at 67.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I made a tweet when that came out that basically said that this ESPN top 100 thing usually got a couple bad ones.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: Historically, I think last year Derrick White wasn't on the top 100 at all.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's ridiculous.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: But Kay Cunningham being at 67 was one of the worst things they've done.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: And boy, did I get a lot of people like, who do y'all think Kay Cunningham is?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: Have you looked at his numbers?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: Have you looked at this?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: Have you looked at that?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I looked at?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: The fucking games.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: I watched the games.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: And Kay Cunningham was overtaxed on a team with zero shooting, zero identity, zero coach, and zero wiggle room.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: The offseason, this team brought in real veterans that can play basketball.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_03: They brought in a coach who has had a defensive identity at every stop, whether he was an assistant or a head coach, damn it.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, JB's teams are gonna compete defensively.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: And since then, that 67 is still it looked bad then to me, but now I was looking bad to the people that told me I was wrong.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because K Cunningham has been that nice.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: And K Cunningham should be an all-star this season.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: He just should.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like, sometimes, and and I'm a guy that just told you point differential for Andrew Nimhart, right?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I I try my very best to balance the two, but there are there are certain instances where I have to put the fucking calculator down and put my glasses on and watch the film.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: And and yes, he struggled with finishing at the rim.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: And yes, his turnover rate was extremely high.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, his numbers were pretty good, but maybe a bit inflated because he was one of the highest usage rates players in basketball.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: But the man could straight up hoop.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: At the end of the day, you gotta say this man can hoop, and if he can get just a little bit of help, and dammit, I don't think he's still got a lot of help.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: I just think he got a good amount of help.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: If he's got just a little bit of help, things will open up more for him.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: Teams were blitzing him or going under on screens.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: Guess what?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: You can't do that because he's become a respectable three-point shooter on the pull-up.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: He's got he got these young dudes on the wings who Lord knows they can't shoot, but damn it, they get a lot of energy.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to the rookie, Ron Holland, and the twin of Sar Thompson.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: They gonna compete and they gonna make you be under a lot of pressure defensively.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: He got a hot head on his second unit that I still, man, he hit Noah Clowney in the throat yesterday.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: And some players just don't get the benefit of the doubt.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: Whether it's an accident or not, you've been in a thousand fights, Stu.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just assuming that was intentional.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: But that hot head on the bench is a really good basketball player.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, one of the better defensive bench players in the league, but we ain't talking about that.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: One of my major criticisms was had to be about Jalen Duren.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say throughout this recent stretch, he's been pretty good in the pick and roll.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like he, when I watched previously, and I'm a I'm a bit, I'm a hyperbolic guy.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_03: If you've been listening to this show for some time, you know, I'll say worst ever.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say best ever.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say that.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: Jalen Durin was just straight up a bad defender.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: Straight up bad in the pick and roll.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: One of the worst.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's the hyperbolic.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: One of the worst pick and roll defenders for somebody with his cape up, like his tools.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: Vucevic bad pick and roll defender, he has no tools.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: He's tall.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: He's tall.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's literally it.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_03: Jalen Duran is tall, athletic, strong.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: He's got everything you could need to be a good pick and roll defender.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: He wasn't.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: In his recent stretch, I've been pretty impressed.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: And what I've noticed is that he does a really damn good job on a pick and roll when the roll man is not an offensive threat.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: If it is Rudy Gobert, it's a lot easier than if it's Car Anthony Towns that's made that up.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: Just it's a lot easier when it's not one of those dudes with an offensive bag or a short roll passer when it is one of those type of dudes.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's just if I get the ball, I'm going up.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: No disrespect to Claxton or Rudy Gobert, he's pretty damn good there.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I still want to see growth.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but the cool thing about Detroit basketball is that they're they're almost guaranteed, almost guaranteed a play-in spot when you look at the standings.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: You would assume that the Bulls are gonna make some type of moves, I guess you can make that assumption.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: And we assume Philly is gonna find a way, at least in the play-in.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: But every other team looked like they're gonna be trying to compete, right?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: And no other team beneath them, the Nets, have waved the white flag.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: The Hornets have not waved the white flag intentionally, but they just bad.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: The Raptors and then the Wizards have no chance.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, like the Pistons are pretty much guaranteed a postseason performance.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that's gonna be fun.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: See, see how they play with them stakes are a little bit higher.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: But it's been it's been fun.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to JB.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I thought those are the three teams that have caught my eye over the past week or so.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: We're about to do your favorite segment, five out.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see what producer Greg is up to.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Greg, how are we doing?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: Got nice scenery going on right now.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm in San Diego, had to escape LA.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, everything's fine though, with my girlfriend, with my dog.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everyone's healthy, but uh had to get out of the city for a little bit.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um, for the people at home, if you are impacted by this, we send in our prayers and God, it's just if it's like a pop uh apocalyptic, and I'm not even there.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: I've just seen pictures.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: You actually live through it at least a little bit enough to be evacuated.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: So again, we send in our prayers and hope that uh we walk out of this and things are better.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know how that could be, but hopefully.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a good word for it.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely felt apocalyptic.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the skies were were crazy.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but let's focus on basketball.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I have a uh this might be more of a 10 out than a five out.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: But the first the first part of this is gonna be a little shorter and is a little little less serious.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was thinking about Tyler Kolick, uh the G League player on the Knicks who was drafted uh at a Marquette this past year.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think a couple weeks ago, he played in the G League game and I can't remember his stats.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was either a triple double or he scored 30 plus.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he played all 48 minutes of the game, I believe, or the G League games might be 40 minutes.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then that night he played for the Knicks and played like 12 minutes and was pretty productive.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: So basically played two games in a day.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking about the NBA ratings, and this is not feasible at all.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: But let's say once per year they had like, you know, each team had a week break and then came back and played a doubleheader.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: A game in the in the late morning, early afternoon, and then a game at night.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in this fantasy world, every player on the teams had to play both games.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think of that in terms of just a ratings point of view?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't think we would ever be able to convince the players that that's worth doing.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's the main thing.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: But as far as ratings go, to be able to say, oh, okay, you got a one o'clock tip-off and then the eight o'clock tip-off, that will be kind of interesting because you can maybe see some adjustments, right?
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, they killed us in game number one with this action.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: Now we're gonna try to counter it with this.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: And now instead of it being, I'm gonna use OKC again because they always rotate that shooting guard position.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: Instead of it being Kesan Wallace, is now Isaiah Joe starting.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: It will be pretty cool.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: The NBA is just one of those sports that is so much cardio and so taxing on the body that like I don't even like back-to-backs for teams because I just assume they lose.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: So it being within four hours of each other, but both teams are tired.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Every player is tired, so every player is tired.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: But maybe that makes it worse, though.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: That second game that the score is 82 to 80.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh man.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: All right, just think of creative ideas.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right, next one here, and as you know, this topic is very close to me.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: So speaking of the Warriors, and I I know uh some of the listeners uh might have an issue with how much I bring up the Warriors, but all I say is Steph Curry to me, despite you know, I love him, I love the Warriors, he's still the best show in basketball to me.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think uh no matter how exciting Wemby is, Jokic, Shay, if there's one player just puts on a show, I still think it's Steph above all else.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do you agree with that?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking I'm thinking in my head, um, is is he number one?
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um honestly, I think I think Jokic is my number one nowadays.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm just assuming that Jokic is gonna give you 30 plus and give you three highlight passes and one um what do they call a samba shuffle in the paint?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's just I'm gonna put Jokic one.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_03: Steph Curry's definitely at the lowest, he's three.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: At the lowest.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's two.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's just racist bias, but that may I've I've watched every Vic game like since October 30th, man.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Stuff you've never seen.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I get it.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I won't disagree.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the topic here is the Warriors.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: So Steph has made it clear, and he said this multiple times in a recent article came out, that his goal is to win a fifth championship.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I really believe like he wants to keep playing purely to win that fifth ring.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Warriors ownership and management have made clear that, or at least verbally, they also have this same goal, but, and this is a big but, without risking or mortgaging the future uh to do it.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a pretty impossible task.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so in essence, they actually don't have the same goal.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: They can say they want it, but they don't want to risk or trade any future picks or a coming, you know, a big future prospect to you know to improve the team now.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that being said, to me, Steph, and he won't do this, but I believe he has every right to ask for a trade, and there can almost be nothing said about it from fans or even warriors ownership or management in terms of he does he doesn't have this right.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think the good thing about it is that he that's just he just won't do it.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um I just he's in the elite class, and I'm sure he's ultra aware aware of this, of like the one-team dudes.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm gonna spend the entire 18 years of my career here.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, regardless if he does request straight or not, he's getting a damn statue, maybe a couple, like that's how important he has been from a$300 million evaluation team to the most expensive team in basketball.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's Steph Curry alone.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um I but you know what?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_03: The way it all works, which I agree with you, right?
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: If hypothetically we got a notification from Sean Surrounding right now, Steph Curry has requested a trade.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: There would still be people that would criticize it, right?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I also think those people are not in the note as much as me and you, right?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: They they may not look at it at the grand scheme of the team not being willing to trade a Kaminga or Moody or Pods for a Larry Market in this offseason.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think he the article was very eye-opening, I would say that much.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_03: Because my major criticism, and this was one of our first episodes we did together, Greg, um, I was saying that Steph Curry is just one of the few superstars in basketball that does not apply that pressure.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the cool things, or maybe cool, depending on where you where you see it, the guy behind me, right here, LeBron James, that's the one thing he does.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: He puts pressure on the front office.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: He'll make a comment here or there, he'll he'll make a tweet, maybe it's me, and it gets them to make a trade to go get this random role player that's not gonna save things, but maybe make it slightly better.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: Steph Curry doesn't do that type of thing.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I would say in the last year or so, we've been seeing it way more often.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: But this one was the biggest of it all.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like this whole article is him like, man, I just I just want to do it one more time because I know I got it.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: And we watch on the Nightly Bayless.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: We know, we know he got it.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: But the team is just too too scared for post-STF, which doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: Because post-steph objectively is gonna be bad regardless.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Gonna start over no matter what.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: No matter what.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: Kaminga, as good as he can be, he's never gonna do the type of things that kept y'all in contention when Steph Curry was around.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll just never understand having a guy who's torsed a ladder part of his career but still an All-Lymbia Cali player and not putting the chips on the table.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I I um I was talking about this with the guys, and one of the guys said to me, Um, it seems like they're completely okay with letting the last couple years of Curry's career be like Dirk's.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it made me so sad.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because Dirk, the last now, Dirk's last couple years, he wasn't nearly as as still good as Steph Curry is right now, right?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: But they were just okay with letting him be there and be like this.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: They were a bad team, but you knew that people were gonna come watch because Dirk was still there.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: He had been there for 18 seasons, but they never did anything to make them better.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_03: And part of that, again, Dirk wasn't at the point where he could lead a team.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_03: Steph Curry's literally could still lead a team to a championship.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: So the fact that they're opting for that bothers the hell out of me.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_03: And the good thing about what the Dallas Maveries did is that kind of them doing that got them to the point where they drafted Luka Doncic, right?
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: So you got to usher in this new guy, but the likelihood of that happening is so damn low that that even being in the back of mind for the front office is is crazy.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: And um, Bob Myers getting out at that time is perfect.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like he didn't want to be the one to make these decisions, and they brought in the guy that feels like I don't know this.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe Mike Dunvy, maybe man uh um ownership, we don't really know, but they're just they're okay with selling a bunch of tickets right now, and that's that's sad.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's totally accurate.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a big actions over words guys, and I really do it feels like Steph has been told that they are not okay with that.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: But all the actions point to they are totally okay with that.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like if Steph got to that realization that holy crap, like my organization is okay with me having a dirk last few years, I think he would have more urgency to get out.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think he's under the impression that you know what, like I'm trusting them.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not in I'm not getting too involved with trades, but I'm trusting what they tell me is that they want to get us into contention.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: But their actions are anything but that.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think they're terrified of losing trades, like trading for Jimmy Butler and it not working out.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: There is no perfect trade.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, what's your what is your option just to continue as is?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that is not good enough for for Steph.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, it's you keep Steph and you take a big risk to to losing that trade, or you or you lose Steph.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: This this option of, like you said, those last years of dirt keeping Steph and the team being super mediocre.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's too competitive of a dude and too currently good at basketball to be okay with that.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm rooting for him to I mean, I'm either rooting for the Warriors to make a big splashy deal, even if it is super risky, or I'm okay with Steph being like, guys, this was a great run.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to retire here, but what your actions have shown me is that we're no longer competitive and I'd like to go to the competitor, uh, to a contender.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, my dad used to say to me, um, and I never understood when I was a kid, but kind of makes sense in this context.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, being scared is a luxury.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: He used to say that in sports, because I was kind of one of those kind of kids that would start off a first quarter and turn the ball over three times.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but in this, like being scared is a luxury.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's it you can be scared when you already have Steph Curry.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: There are other teams in the league that can't be scared to make trades because they have no other option.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: They don't have a guy that's holding the franchise down.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: And if they started to run their organization with that in mind, then things would be better.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately, that's just not necessarily the case.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is the last thing I'll say.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: I won't harp on it too much more.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I understand like this approach of you know, we gotta wait for a better deal, we gotta wait for a better deal.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that may have been okay three, four years ago, but it's three, four years past then.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like now it's like you've put yourself in a position where you have to make a bad deal or a less optimal deal.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, they've put themselves in this position.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: Agreed, agreed.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now we're gonna do some Ask KB.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: You can hit us up on Instagram at enjoy smallball, or you can hit us up on Twitter at enjoy b ball.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: These ones that we have today, we got a little mixture of a bunch.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna get to some of the tweets.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: The first one comes from NBL Jinkies, who says, which NBA team is the next to blow it up?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've been on this for the last week or so that I do believe it's probably gonna have to be the Phoenix Suns.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: I can't I can't look at any other contenders, right?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_03: Other than maybe the Pelicans.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_03: There were some rumors about Zion Williamson.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_03: At some point, I got when I was walking to the office like three days ago, it said that the Bulls are interested if Zion becomes available.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: So like maybe, maybe them, but they've been trying to not blow it up, betray one of their best players for two years now, and they still haven't.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: But the one that would make the biggest impact on the league is the Suns.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because you will have Kevin Durant and his older age is still great at basketball.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: Devin Booker, first year of a max contract, still um, so they have pieces that like both of those dudes can swing championship odds ridiculously, right?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: Devin Booker gets traded to almost any team that would be acquiring him.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: You're like, oh, that team could potentially win a championship.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: Same thing with Kevin Durant.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna go with them.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think it's probably in their best interest as they continue to look awful and they don't have their own first-round picks, and there are some other teams that have their picks that might be willing to trade those picks back to you for one of those star players, and that team would be the Houston Rockets.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I would assume that they're the next team to do it.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think any team blows it up this February 6th, though.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think the next blow up would have to be in the offseason, where there's more flex flexibility.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: There are more teams that were gonna be interested because, like, hypothetically, if you make Kevin O'Reilly available right now, and there would be teams calling for sure, but maybe less teams calling now than in the offseason, where you can maybe make some adjustments to clear some money off the books this offseason about not re-signing this dude or making a small trade to trade this contract.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to do all of that in the middle of a season.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna say Suns, and then if it's not the Suns, then maybe the Pelicans, because I watched that first game back from Zion, and I'm like, I I I feel like no matter what happens with Z, I'll always be like, this is gonna be the time.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: This this gonna be the one that he stays healthy, he's gonna look great.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, 360 winmill on in trans transition.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he was talking Traz Anthony Edwards.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's perfect.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_03: The next one comes from Rain.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: At least I think that's how you pronounce it.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_03: My apologies.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: Does Jamal Mosley have a case for Coach of the Year?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: The unfortunate part for him is that Kenny Atkinson has the the Cavs on pace to win 72 games right now.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I just don't know how you could win coach of the year over that type of production.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_03: But there's no coach in basketball that has done more with less than Jamal Mosley.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_03: And shout out to Paolo, he will be back tomorrow.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's gonna be pretty cool.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but with Paolo being out since what game number five, Franz Wagner getting out, uh Mo Wagner going out, then Jalen Suggs going out.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody has done more with less, and they're sitting at six games over 500.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's really the defensively oriented team.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_03: They got the younger dudes stepping up, like Caleb what Caleb uh Houston is starting in games, and Tristian DaSilva has looks like Franz Wagner baby version.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so he does he definitely has a case.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_03: It would just be hard to put him over Kenny Atkinson if the Cavs continue to play this well.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_03: Last one I have from Twitter comes from Xander.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: He said, if you had, and he capital, it's capital.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I have to pick a team that wasn't the Bulls to be a fan of, who would you pick and why?
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: I have to.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: All right, let's let's let's talk through this.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk through this.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: I am not a bandwagoner.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: I would if I had to, let's hypothetically, the Bulls, poof, they're gone.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's only 29 teams left in basketball.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: And today I had to make the decision.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: As much as I love, absolutely love watching the OKC Thunder.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_03: I can't say I'm gonna be an OKC fan because I wasn't there in the trenches when things were bad, when it was um, oh my God.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to think of some random lineups that when you had Poku starting alongside some of the other scrubs over there.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't I wasn't there for that moment.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I I don't want to just jump in right there.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_03: Instead, I would have to try to say a team that's that feel like I'm looking at their future, and hmm, I kind of like some of the stuff that's going on over there.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe I'd pick a team that I trust their front office.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know who that is, though.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's weird for me to say the Spurs because they have Wimby now.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people are about to be Spurs fans, y'all.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_03: It would be tough, man.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_03: If I had to pick another team that was not the Chicago Bulls, I would probably select the Brooklyn.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_03: Brooklyn Nets.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: You can't call me a man wagging it in, can you?
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_03: A little brother in its own state.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_03: They suck.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: They suck.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: No, I don't.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I'm so happy I don't have to actually do that.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because like I would probably honestly opt to just be a fan of players and not pick a team.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: I always be like, hey, whatever team Chris Paul is on, that's the one I'm rooting for this year.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, he's from the Warriors to this team, to this team, to this team.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_03: We're following Chris Paul until two years from now when he decides to call it quits.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: We do have one more, and it's from Joseph Katz, who says, What do you think young guys with high potential should do when they're at the end of the bench and have been rotting away because a team is confusing to play them uh substantially refusing to play them substantially example?
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_03: Keon Ellis, Cam Whitmore, Rob Dillingham.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: The the Cam Whitmore videos I've been seeing recently have really really pissed me off.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's just one of those things, man.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like he deserves an opportunity to play somewhere, right?
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: But I also don't think pouting around and moping after a win is ever gonna rub anybody the right way.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_03: Even the other 29 GMs that you are kind of trying to get to, nobody's gonna look at a person that is on a winning team moping and say, that's the guy we want to trade for, right?
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's like imagine your teammate hit a game winning, you're like, damn, I wanted that shot.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_03: That that's some that's what Scottie Pippen was on.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_03: And he got through that.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_03: Shout out to him, I guess.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_03: But like, I don't, that's one thing I just don't like, Kian.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_03: We got to get it together.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_03: We gotta get it together.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_03: You're on one of the coolest scenes in basketball, and yes, you're an absolute bucket.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_03: In the 17 minutes you play, you score 15 points.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty damn impressive, and you deserve to hoop, but you kind of have to stay patient.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: That would be that would be my thing for all of these guys.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_03: Keon Ellis, stay patient.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_03: Pray that the coach get fired, I guess, and get an opportunity.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_03: Rob Dillingham may be less than these other two dudes because I Cam has proven that he can score in this league.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_03: Keon Ellis can prove has proven that he can defend in this league at the bare minimum and shoot 41% from three.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: Rob just hasn't proven anything just yet.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: And he's still a rookie while those other two dudes are in year two and year three.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_03: So Rob really just has to relax and wait for his time to come.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_03: Put his head down, go to work, still be a great team player, learn from the dudes that are on your team.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like him learning from Mike Conley is pretty gonna be pretty important for his future, I would assume.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: Cam Whitmore could be learning for Uncle Jeff.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uncle Jeff has been in the league for damn near 20 years.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you don't become this superstar, you might be able to learn how to stay consistently in his league by just being and doing what Jeff Green does.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_03: So stay patient, put your head down, stay in the gym because when your number is called and you do make a lasting impression, you'll stay in that rotation.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yo, what's up, Kenny?
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh producer Greg.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: Got a quick question for y'all for Ask KB.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as of right now, CJ McCullum is the current president for the uh NBA Players Association, and is followed by vice presidents like Grant Williams, Jalen Brown, Bizmac Biombo, Malcolm Brogdon, Trip J, and Donovan Mitchell.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when the time comes for CJ to move on, if for some reason the chain of command wasn't changed, who do you think could be the next president?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be any of the current VPs either.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: Love the pod and all y'all do.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Peace.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting because I don't really know what the hell they do.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: Other than when somebody gets suspended, say no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna we're gonna fight that suspension.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's that's it.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's all I know that they do.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously they're working with the NBA to figure out CBA stuff and all of those type of things.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um you have to have a really good ambassador, right?
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_03: That's why when Chris Paul was a guy who was perfect, I would say.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um Malcolm Brogdon looks like a president.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe it's Malcolm Brogdon.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um at the end of the day, you want the person that is the most passionate about the topics at hand, right?
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_03: Some people get into these type of things just for the namesake, and I'm not saying any of those dudes did that, but you just want the person that that is the most in touch with these type of things.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes I look at like Jalen Brown and how vocal he is to his NBA brother and to say that that could be a guy that we trust to be the president.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_03: Again, Malcolm Brogdon has the look, Grant Williams has the time.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_03: I I would I would go I would go Jalen Brown though.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_03: Let's let's get a star player in there again.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um we'll see what happens.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate you watching or listening to this episode of Small Ball with Kenny Beachum.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_03: You let me know what you think in that comment section.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_03: I guess you could leave comments on Spotify now.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're there, drop a comment.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_03: That would be cool.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_03: Tell a friend to tell a friend that small ball is looking for new listeners and new viewers.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate you as always.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'll see you next week.