The Ringer NBA Show - Goodbye Thibs and Hello Hoiberg (?!) | Heat Check (Ep. 364)

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

Minnesota firing Tom Thibodeau after a win, who could replace him, Kawhi Leonard’s return to San Antonio, and the drama-filled Sixers. Host: John Gonzalez Guests: Shea Serrano and Jonathan Tjarks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelly. The Rwatchable's podcast is officially back and will be coming to you every Tuesday in 2019. The season will kick off on January 8th with The Godfather, and you can catch up on all the recent episodes featuring Tombstone, Conair, and all the president's men. And with The Bachelor back for a new season, be sure to check out Bachelor Party with Juliet Litman for all related news and recaps. You can download and subscribe to both of those shows on Apple, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Heat Check. I'm your host, John Gonzalez. joined normally every week by my producer Isaac Lee, who has abandoned us in the very first show that we've done in the year of our Lord 2019. Instead, filling in ably off the bench. Jim Cunningham is here. What's up, Jim? Not much, man. How you doing? See, you come to work. You work hard. Isaac says to me, I think he got pissed at me because the Sixers beat the Clippers and he tweeted out a bunch of very hateful things. He said he hates Philadelphia. He hates cheese steaks. He hates Mick Mill, he said, which is just absurd. That's, that's ridiculous. How could you hate McMill? And then he said he

hates me too, and he decided not to come to work, so now you're here. Yeah, it's his New Year's resolution, just hating you. Hating me, hating all things, Philadelphia. He's off somewhere in the ether. We're going to forge forward without him. I want to thank everybody for listening to He Check. I want to remind you if you'd be so inclined to please rate and review us and all of our fantastic Ringer NBA shows and pods. And of course, we have lots of great content on the Ringer. Ben Dietrich, the Kingslayer, is back on The Ringer.com. He's got a piece about why Ben Simmons isn't holding the Sixers back and doesn't even need a jumper to get to the Sixers next level. Jim, the alternate headline for this piece, I believe, was fuck off Kevin O'Connor.

Because Kevin has this conspiracy theory about Ben Simmons's shooting hand, and Ben Dietrich says, you know what? No, no, Kevin O'Connor, go and read that. Also read Jonathan Charks. He has a piece up there about Jimmy Butler and the ongoing drama with the Sixers and how he's on a totally different timeline than the Sixers' two young stars. So later on in the show, Charks will be here to discuss. Jimmy Simmons and the Sixers

Never Ending Drama. There's also a piece that Mark Titus wrote about can any coach really save the UCLA Bruins? And the reason why that piece is germane is because the UCLA situation might have impacted the Timberwolves. Because they went and fired Tom Tibuto

after a win, which is absolute madness. And for that, we need to bring on our resident madness correspondent. All right, joining me on the other line from, you know, for a guy who's who, who doesn't have his own podcast. He's very good at having his own podcast from Villains. It's

Shasarano. What up, boy? Yo, you're killing it. Villains is excellent. I made my first appearance. We did Nino Brown and New Jack City. It was very, I was going to say it's very good. I meant to say it was very fun. It was very good. Not my part. Your part. But the whole series is really, I think the ratings are through the roof. They're going to bring you back for like 12 more seasons. It's wonderful. I hope we do get a second season. My trick that I figured out really early on was I was just going to book a bunch of people who were smart and interesting. And then I just sort of sit in the background and let them do all the work. I'm like the Chris Bosch of the threesome.

It's LeBron and Wade, and I'm just sort of out there when I need to be. If you are going for smart and interesting, I'm not sure how I ended up on there, but I enjoyed my time with you and Jamil. It was quite enjoyable. Times up, like while we're talking about villains and things that are happening, Tibbs has been a villain in Minnesota for quite a while. He won a game, Shea. He beat the Lakers over the weekend.

And then all of a sudden, the CEO and the GM of the Minnesota Timberwolves marches into his office. And I guess he was just sitting there like, hey, guys, I just won. What's up? And they're like, yeah, you're out. That's some weird shit. They weren't used to it. They were surprised.

They saw the W in the win column. And they're like, this is not the letter we're used to see. something is wrong here. Time to go. It's just really bizarre timing. So according to Woj, Minnesota CEO, Ethan Casson, or Kisan, I'm not sure how to pronounce that one. And GM Scott Layden walked into Tibado's office and fired him after the Lakers victory. Leagues sources tell ESPN. Tibado was surprised at the timing.

Yeah, no shit. Had no idea his ouster was imminent. Apparently, the CEO had not been a fan of Tibado the entire time. Now, Shams tweeted out something almost concurrently that sort of dovetailed with this, where he said, increased fan apathy in Minnesota with critical season tickets renewal period approaching was an undeniable factor in Tom Tibido's inevitable firing on Tibido and the business of basketball, apparently it wasn't working out. The wolves, Shay, are next to last in attendance in the NBA. But is that the head coach's responsibility? Like, he's all of a sudden got to sell

tickets too? Well, you know, you don't directly sell the tickets, but yeah, that's your job to get people in the seats. You went a few. games, you get some people in the seats, like they're connected. There's no way that they're not connected. That axe is going to fall on someone's head, I suppose. It's got to fall on somebody's head. I think we were all kind of waiting for Tibbs to go at some point this year. Like at the beginning of the year when the whole Jimmy Butler situation was going down and it looked like, okay, Tibbs wasn't going to trade him because he wanted to hold on to him as long as possible because that way he might be able to back into the playoffs and he expected that he was going to go anyway and maybe that

would boost his resume moving forward with some other team. But then they got rid of Jimmy, and I thought they could have gotten more for him personally. If that four first round pick deal from Houston was actually real, that made more sense to me. It was a long-term play, as opposed to going and getting Roco who I like and Dario Sarge, who I like, but I just thought they could have gotten more. But once they moved to him, I thought, okay, well, I guess they're going to just wait till the end of the season for Tibbs. But for them to do it now, after a win, is just bizarre. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's really the only explanation that there can be is the

ticket thing. Because what else besides there is that? Like it wasn't like he showed up. I think he got there in what, 16, 17? And they went like 30, 31 games. And then the next year, last year they were eighth. They won 47 games.

Like they were going up. This year they've been kind of at a standstill. I guess maybe a little bit boring. But I don't know, man. That's like a tough time to just fire tips. Yeah. I mean, since trading Jimmy, they've been a top 10 defense in the NBA.

And Carl Anthony Towns has actually been killing it. And, you know, Derek Rose has been playing well and Jeff Teague is patting stats when he's healthy. Wiggins has still been not that great. But since trading Jimmy, they've been a better team. And then, you know, so like I thought, okay, well, maybe, you know, they'll really

focus on Carl Anthony Towns and, you know, they'll let Tibbs go and do his Tibbs thing. His rotations are still kind of wonky. You know, he's still he's still playing basically just his, or he was still playing basically just his top five, six guys. So maybe they finally woke up

and they were like, this is not tenable. So they're going to have Ryan Saunders in the interim. He's a smart, younger guy. He's got a good reputation around the league. It'll be interesting to see what he does until they finally figure something out. You mentioned like what other explanation could there be? This is an interesting one.

So Glenn Taylor and Scott Leiden apparently really like Fred Hoyberg who was out there. And apparently there were rumors that, and there are rumors that Fred Hoyberg is in conversation with UCLA. Right. And Fred Hoyberg had previously been an assistant general manager in Minnesota prior to going to Iowa State.

So there was a report that part of the reason why they fired Tibbs right now is because Glenn Taylor was worried about losing Fred Hoyberg to UCLA. And so they decided let's fire Tibbs now. And then Fred Hoyberg could have his choice of either the front office job that Tibbs vacated. or the head coaching job that Tibbs vacated, but not both because they want to split them up. So I guess they're really hot after Fred Hoyberg? How could you not be?

That's Minnesota's favorite son. He played there, right? He played there for like two seasons. It's crazy. If I'm not mistaken. The thing that Fred Hoyberg has going for him is that when you look at him, he looks like a movie coach.

He looks like the coach of the basketball movie that you bring in and he turns everything around. Yeah. He has that sort of Aaron Eckarty vibe. about him. That's his biggest thing, I think. There was some debate in ringer slack over the value of one, Fred Hoyberg, because I go, he went 115 and 155 in Chicago. You got to fire your guy right now to go get that guy. Like, I guess anytime you can get somebody who's super under 500, you got to do it.

Also, I think it's hilarious that it's possible that Fred Hoyberg would end up replacing Tibbs twice. Yeah. Because why not? But there was some debate in ringer slack about. how good a coach Fred Hoyberg was. Like the COCs of the world think that like maybe he didn't have the greatest hand dealt to him in Chicago with that front office and with that player personnel group and they switch things around and, you know, he had Jimmy for a second and then that went south. So maybe like with a new group he might be better. But I don't know.

I mean like what is his claim to fame that he made an Iowa state team and a bad conference kind of okay? That's it. Yeah. Round of 64, baby. Iowa State. Round of 64, scoop that guy up the minute you get the chance.

I kind of wanted to see him go to UCLA. Because I don't watch that much college basketball anymore. I do, however, like the prestige programs. And I would like to see UCLA return to prominence. It didn't work out with Alfred. And I was like, okay, maybe Fred Hoyberg would go in there and they'd shoot a lot of threes and they'd be good and it'd be interesting in L.A.

And that'd be fine. I just don't understand the rush if you're Minnesota. I mean, like, yes, you had to get rid of Tibbs eventually. but they continue to be a shit show. They were a shit show at the beginning of the season with the whole Jimmy thing and Tibbs and like what do we do with that? How do we iron out that chemistry situation?

Like Wiggins and his brother are like dragging Jimmy on social media and Carl Anthony Towns is being passive aggressive and they can't get out of their own way and they finally unload Jimmy and like I thought that things would like quiet down a little bit

and now they do this. Yeah, they did not quiet down a little bit. I wonder if Okay, this is like a super far-fetched thing, but I wonder if the Minnesota people saw like the way that everything went down with Jimmy here. And they go like, oh, well, maybe that's why it didn't work out for Fred in Chicago. Like he was dealing with that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

They were close to the problem now. They got to see a little bit of it. Maybe they believe without that there he's the guy to do the job. I don't know. That's just me spitball in here. I think it's a bad decision. No, I think Hoyberg is not the way to go here. You know who they should hire?

Tell me. This is a real answer. They should hire Becky Hammond. It's time. It's time for Becky Hammond to have an NBA team. Bring her in. I love how much you stand for her and women in basketball, women's basketball, all things spurs.

I like this. Make the case. Well, she's a genius, first of all. That's a good start. And she's put in the time under pop. Like you work under pop. This is not, who is the, I forget his name.

The other guy who was like, I worked under Pup, I know what I'm doing. The two a day, the guy we talked about last time. Jim Boylan. Yeah, this is not a Jim Boilin situation. She's been years with the Spurs.

She knows what's going on. It's time for her to get a chance. Like, this should be, this should be it. Do you think that the NBA and NBA players, which can still sort of be like, like I think it's as professional sports leagues go among like the four major sports with all guys,

that it tends to be one of the more progressive leaning leagues. However, it is still all guys in the locker room. And like they have this like, you know, recalcitrant guy ethos about like, hey, you know, can women coach us? Do you think that the NBA writ large is ready for that now? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's always going to be the case.

We can say that until, you know, 100 years from now if there's never a woman head coaching in the NBA, we can always be like, well, there's never been, like, that's how you make that change. You put one in there. And then this isn't even just a thing, like, oh, let's hire her only because she's a woman. She's a very good basketball coach. A very good basketball coach should get a chance to coach a basketball team. Like, the rest of the stuff will sort itself out. I mean, you're talking about several lost our appearances, five or six. She was all WMBA first team, all WMBA second team. There was a season where she like led the league

and assist. I'm trying to remember all the stuff from the big story that was written about her. She's like one of the top 15 players of all time in the WMBA. Like she has the pedigree. It's, let's go. No doubt about it. Put her in there. It's time. I mean, it's time, John. John Gonzalez is time.

I'm on board with all this. I think it makes sense. And like you and I would look at this and go, yeah, of course, why not? That makes sense. It's like, she's got a really brilliant basketball mind. Why wouldn't you want to employ a really brilliant basketball mind. I just keep coming back to, like, I know how some, I'm not going to, you know, paint with a broad brush and say all or most or whatever, but just some athletes look sideways at these things. It's kind of like, so I was, I'm working on a piece about the Knicks that'll be

on the ringer.com on Tuesday. And this isn't specifically about that, but it's just, I guess there's some parallel where I was talking to Tim Hardaway about the Knicks and tanking and how it makes sense from an academic standpoint. And his response was, well, fans who want that, like, have they ever played basketball? It's that old, well, you never played bit. And so that same line of, well, you never played in the NBA, there's still people in the NBA who think that way. Like, if you didn't play in the league, then you can't tell me anything. And, sure. I, like, I just wonder if she'd butt up against that. How many coaches in the NBA have played in the NBA, though? Fair. Not very many. And the ones who have, and Doc Rivers has,

Hey, great job, Doc. Fred Hoyberg has one, what did you say, 115 and 155? Yeah. Something goofy like that. Right, right, right. Cool. We've seen.

And yeah, I got the, I pulled up her page. Yeah, six, six time WMBA all-star, two-time first NBA, first WMBA team, two-time, second, assist leader, top 15 player of all time, top 20 to 20. Yeah. I'm on board. Her resume, her resume is unimpeachable. You sold me.

We're going to make this happen. and we're going to push for this. I think you need to write the piece and then bring it to Glenn Taylor's attention because it seems like they really know what they want to do. So I'm sure it wouldn't take much for you to sway them. Before we continue on to your spurs,

because I have questions about what happened last week with Kauai's return, because I know you wrote a great piece about that. I'm interested to see whoever ends up coaching the Minnesota Timberwolves what happens with their rotations because, again, I'm looking at them here. Like they go and they trade for Robert Covington and Dario Sarich

and Robert Covington is in the rotation heavily. Dario Sarich has barely been in the rotation. He's been one of the like

fringe guys and I don't really get that. They've really, really used Derek Rose because of course Tibbs loves

using his old guys. They, you know, the usage rate for Jeff Teague was pretty high surprisingly so. I wonder if now

like they're finally going to commit to like full on, this is Carl and Anthony Towns's team. Let's run every set through him and maybe that helps Andrew Wiggins.

I don't really know, but I would just like to see them use some of their other guys like a Josh Akogi and a Dario Sarich and sort of change up those rotations that were so, so heavy on their starters. I think that that's a fair thing to say. Especially you need that right now because when we get,

they're going to make the playoffs, hopefully. If they do make the playoffs, like you're going to need Dario to have a game. You're going to need the other guys to do like at least one big thing and one big game to give yourself. a chance in a series. And if I'm looking at the standings right now, Minnesota is their 11th,

but they're only one, two games, they're two games out of the eight spot, four games out of the seventh spot. Like, they can make a run here because that's the Lakers and that's the troblagers. They can make a run. They can get up in there. If they can sneak into the seventh spot, they're going to be trouble for somebody. They're going to be trouble for anybody except for the warriors. Everybody, everybody else has that two through eight is like, all right, good luck. you know what I'm saying? Yeah. They should be fine.

Yeah, start running it through Katt. And let's, you know, let's bang some bodies down low. Let's get into a little bit of trouble and see what happens. Yeah, he's been really good lately. And again, they were top 10 defense since trading, since trading Jimmy. And they're in middle of the pack net rating team. So if they do squeak in there, it'll be interesting.

And then, who knows, maybe fans will go. They'll sell some tickets, which is obviously a very important thing in Minnesota. You get fired after a win if you don't sell any tickets. That would be good for them. You mentioned the back end of the Western Conference playoff pick. which has gotten quite interesting because your spurs have had a resurgence. And I wanted to mention this to you. So I wrote a story, and this was pointed out by Dan Devine, shouts to Dan Devine,

who was very helpful on both Twitter and Slack to point this out. Since December 1, the Spurs have the best net rating in the NBA. And December 1 is a very interesting date because, as Dan Devine pointed out in both Twitter and Ringer Slack, December 1 is the date where I wrote a story. after spending some time with the Spurs saying no cavalry was coming for the Spurs this year, and now they're very good. So congratulations to the Spurs. You're welcome for the Ringer Curse.

I cursed them into being good. Yeah, you did. We have a private Slack in San Antonio where it's me, it's pop, and it's like four or five NBA players on the team. And the whole thing ever since that article has been like, let's do this because fuck John Gonzalez. Yeah, fuck John Gonzalez. They've got like a cut out of you, like Major League style,

where they're peeling off pieces of your clothes. Yeah, it's bad for it. We're going to win the pinnett. We're going to win the basketball pinn it this year because of you. That's no prize at the end, by the way. It's a bad prize. Once you get to the last piece of clothing, it's really bad. But congratulations to the Spurs because when I was talking to Patty Mills about it for that piece,

he was like, look, the problem for us so far this year is, you know, we look around and we don't have Manu and we don't have Tony. And for a while now, we haven't had Tim. And the issue has been leadership. Like, we're trying to figure out. who we are and how we fit and like you know who's in charge around here and like to plus i felt like they were thin they had so many injuries and then i don't know man you tell me they've just been killing it lately well yeah we are what halfway through the season we're at 40 games for the spurs

they're 23 and 17 like this is the point where things should start to straighten out you have the beginning of the season of course is going to be wobbly you've lost tony you've lost manu you bring in Damar, a new guy, and Damar is a great player, but he wasn't those guys. He wasn't like that presence in there. It takes a while for everybody to figure out their pieces. Now when you watch them play, you like understand what Damar wants to do in the game. You understand what Lamar wants to do. We have figured out all of a sudden that Damar is a fantastic pastor. So now the offense is sort of being facilitated, at least in part through him, which is, you know, giving him a little more confidence, giving everybody else a little more confidence. We're starting to see

moments where they like show up and do a thing. The first half of that Raptor Spurs game, he went nuts in the first half. Yeah. By the end of the first half, the game was basically over. But in that, you know,

we wanted to see this is a big game for him. Everybody understood this is going to be the biggest game of the season for Demar. What's he going to do? And he fucking showed up and was slitting everybody's throat. Like that's what we needed. You get a performance like that and you go, all right,

we're ready for the playoffs. We know what our guy can do now. We already felt that way about, about Lamarck. because of his season last year, we understood, okay, boom, he put his stamp on it. This is his team now. Here comes tomorrow.

We have this performance. Now we're all in San Antonio feeling really good about what the Spurs can do. We're going to cause a little bit of trouble for somebody in the playoffs. We're eight and two in the last 10 games. Like we're balling right now. One four in a row, eight and two in the last 10, just four and a half games off of the Western Conference lead. I should never have doubted them.

Every year I go, okay, maybe this is the end. And it's never the end because they still have pop and he coaches them up and they go out there and they do their Spurs thing. And I'm an idiot. But at the time, they looked like they were really struggling. They were even openly talking about how much they were struggling and how it was a weird year for them. And I'm like, wow, they're like even admitting to it. But that's crazy. I shouldn't have doubted them.

But you mentioned the Spurs Raptors game, which was an interesting game for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the Kauai went back to San Antonio. But also you took over the Ringer NBA Twitter feed, changed it to tell Kevin he's fired. you had a grand time. Nobody had, like, I would say on the list of people who had fun that day, it was, it was Demard de Rosen number one, and then 1A was Shea Serrano. Yeah, I was having a wonderful, wonderful evening. I don't think they're going to invite me back.

I got an email afterwards, and they were like, hey, you can't do some of the stuff you were doing. Wait, is that, you didn't actually get an email. That's too good. No, I'm just playing around. They love when you're messing around with Kevin. Everybody loves when you're messing around with Kevin. Let me ask you, though, about Kauai. Did you boo? Because there was like this, this big debate about should you boo? Should you not boo? They were chanting Trader, which I thought was slightly funny, but also slightly a little too much. Where were you on that?

That's what you need in that situation. You need something that's a little funny, but also like afterwards, you're like, was that the right? Did we do the right thing there? That's what you needed. I was, yes, I was pro booing. But, okay, there are two types of booing here, John. There's booing when you're like angry and you do not like a person. person and you want bad things to happen. And then there's booing when you're kind of just like, just sort of ribbon somebody a little bit to let them know. Because the thing is, Kauai won the 2014 NBA title for us. We don't win it without him. He is responsible for it. That's why he got the finals MVP. No doubt. Everybody in San Antonio, for the most part, we all understand that. We all appreciate that. We all understand how rare that sort of thing is. Because if they had lost in 2013 the way that they did and then they didn't follow it up in 14 with that victory like things look a lot different for tim tony and manu but because we have that it's this great grand

thing so there's a clear appreciation here we love kawai lennard we will always love him for for the end of time but because he left we're going to like boom a little bit and make a little bit of fun of him he's going to get these jokes but it's in it's in like good fun you know what i'm saying we after the game you saw kawai and pop they had this great moment where they like hugged each other and they were smiling a little bit. And like that was sort of the spirit that we were hoping for. That was like the number one outcome for the game. We blow the raptors out. Yeah. We get to boo Kauai a little bit. And then at the end, we all sort of hug and we're like, I mean, we care about you still Kauai. You know, that's where we are. That's where we are.

You take over the Twitter feed. Everybody in San Antonio wins. How long does this go on though? Like next year, let's say hypothetically, he comes in. He's with the Clippers, right? Because he's going to the clippers, comes in with the clippers. You still bowing or now is it like long enough and far enough removed from him being traded and forcing his way out that you let it go? That was a one-time thing. He's fine now. We won't boo him anymore. We'll cheer for him more than likely when he comes back. It'll be like that sort of situation. You just need a little bit of time between the hurt before you like look back and remember everything fondly. John, can I tell you a story before we get off? Please tell me. I'm going to I'm going to tell you a story because this is

This is maybe the gnarliest thing that has ever happened to me in my life. And it happened immediately before the Spurs game, which is why I'm thinking about it right now. Let me tell you. Let me set the stage for you first. Okay. The game was on Thursday, John. Uh-huh. On Wednesday, my wife went to Houston.

That's where her family is. Right. She took the boys with her. It was her and my three sons. They went to Houston to go do like the post-Christmas. Let's go visit my side of the family thing. So they were gone. I was at the house by myself, at the apartment by myself.

because I had a lot of work to do. Also, I had to watch the game, and I don't want to be interrupted. So Thursday, I was, like, getting ready for the game to start. I said, let me go get some food. I'm going to go, there's a delicious Taco Bell. That's a few miles from my house. I'm going to go get a whole bunch of junk. Better Taco Bell than other Taco Bells.

Yes. Okay. I mean, there are, this is, this one is attached to a gas station. So it's kind of sketchy, but also delicious. Yeah. So I go, I order an irresponsible amount of food. I come home. I have my dog with me.

We are walking from the car to like the elevator to go upstairs. So I'm holding my food in one hand with a dog leash, my drink in the other hand, and I'm walking. And as I'm headed toward the elevator, John, this old man comes walking around the corner. I've seen this old man several times. We've been in our apartment now for six months, six or seven months. We have like roughly the same schedule. He works, I believe, at like a car wash across the street. I see him with a shirt every once in a while.

Okay. So I see him sometimes going to work or coming home from work. And we don't really talk. It's more like a hey, what's up sort of situation or a head nod. Typically, when I see him, we're like taking the boys to school or something. It's in the morning. So like he knows, he knows us. We kind of know him, but I don't know his name.

But I'm walking. I've got my food. I've got my soda. I'm headed toward the elevator. He comes around the corner. I see him. He's also carrying food. He's got Waterburger.

There's also a Waterburger. I love Waterburger. He's got a water. It's delicious. He's got a water burger and a drink in his hand. So we're walking. He sees me. I see him. He, this is very insightful of him. He sees my food. He sees that I have one drink. I'm assuming he's processing all this in his head because he looks at that. And then he looks at me in the face. And he says, where's the wife? He has figured out that she's not there because I'm eating a bunch of too much Taco Bell with one drink. So he knows she must be gone. He's doing irresponsible things. He says to me, where's the wife? I realize he's he. He's he's noticed the one drink that must be, it's only for me. Right. I laugh a little bit. I'm like, ha, ha, ha, ha, she's in Houston. I say back to him because he's also carrying a bag of food with one drink.

I say to him, John, where's your wife? Oh, no. Mind you, I don't know this guy. I don't know this guy at all. I assume he's married. Right. He has like a grandfatherly vibe to him. I assume there's like a chain of people underneath him.

Oh, no. I say to him, where's your wife? Without missing a beat, John. Without missing a beat. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't stop walking. He doesn't pause. He says this back to me, John.

He says, John, are you ready for this? He says to me, where's your wife? Ha, ha, ha. I laugh a little bit. I say to him, John. I say, oh, where's your wife? Without missing a beat, John. He says two words to me.

He says, still dead. And then just keeps fucking walking. Oh, my God. I couldn't believe. I realized right in that moment, John, that I had never spoken to this man before. I don't know if he's joking. I don't know if he is telling the truth. I don't know anything.

think about anything. My whole world is spinning around in my head now. He just keeps on walking right into his apartment. I've not seen him since then. This was a couple of days ago. I don't know what to do now, John. He went into his apartment to record his villains podcast about Chase Serrano. That's amazing. He was not laughing, but he was not sad. He was not, there's no way for me to know if he was telling the truth or not. But he said that, and I didn't know what to do. I should have, like, like in the usual suspects, when the detective realized, and he drops the cut. Like, I should have done something like that.

I was just in a state of shock. I had no idea what to do. That's a fantastic story. And next time we have you on He-check, you go and knock on his door and bring him in. And we'll get to the bottom of this. You've got another villains coming out next week. Have you announced the...

I'm on the final one of the season. Have you announced which character we're doing? No, I haven't announced it yet, but yes, you are one of the guests. It's you, and it's the good Kevin at the ringer.com. Kevin Clark, not Kevin, Not Kevin O'Connor. Not Fart Snake. It's Kevin Clark. We gotta have the good one on. All right. So that'll be one to look out for. Listen to all the villains. They're really good. Shea Serrano has his own podcast finally. Thanks for doing this, homie. I appreciate you.

All right. So that was Shea Serrano. Before we bring in Jonathan Charks, I want to remind you about our NBA watch of the night. We've got the New York Knicks at the Portland Trailblazers on Monday night. And then the Knicks have a back-to-back. They're going to be at Golden State on NBA TV on Tuesday evening. And I'm doing a piece on the Knicks that'll come out on the ringers. on Tuesday. The Knicks have been super weird lately. The Knicks have been super weird all the time, always forever, but specifically this season. I really like David Fisdale a lot. I think he's a good coach. I think he's a smart guy.

I think he's a straight shooter, which is a large portion of the piece. And I like that this team is finally full on tanking because for you ever in a day, the Knicks were like kind of bad, not good enough to be relevant, not good enough to make the playoffs, but not bad enough to be.

the top of the lottery, and now they're just like full-on tanking, and it's causing all kinds of strife on the team. You know, like Hardaway was saying he doesn't like tanking, and Enos Cantor's pissed off that he's coming off the bench, and he's doing Enos Cantor stuff. And also, he said that he's not going to London, Enis Cantor, because he's worried that the Turkish president might put a hit out on him. So there's lots of stuff swirling around about the New York Knicks. So they're my NBA watch of the night, both tonight and tomorrow night.

So you're going to want to check that out. And remember, gang, if you want to watch every NBA game, be sure to some. subscribe to NBA League Pass on NBA.com, Amazon, or your local cable or satellite provider. And before we get back to Heat Check, a quick word from our sponsor. Thank you, Microsoft Surface, for being a sponsor of the Ringer NBA show. Do you need a device that helps you get stuff done, but is also perfect when you want to catch up on some fun like streaming, live sports, or checking on your fantasy team? We'll check out the latest member of the Microsoft Surface family, the new Surface Pro 6. Just take the keyboard off and use it like a tablet or snap it by.

on and use it like a laptop with up to 13 and a half hours of battery life. That's insane. My computer lasts like an hour and a half. And the new eighth gen Intel core processor, it's everything you love about the Surface Pro now even more powerful. And now, back to heat check. All right, joining me on the other line from the ringer.com from Corner 3. He's a new homeowner. I hope the house is looking good. Charks, what's up, man? Nothing too much of supporting my cowboys. The dream is alive. The cowboys are still alive. The Cowboys are still alive. The Philadelphia Eagles are somehow still alive.

Shouts to Cody Parky for helping us out with that one. And I was just saying to you before I introduced you, I don't think this is going to happen, but there's a non-zero chance that somehow we get an all-NFC East conference final. Hey, two teams in the second round for this supposedly terrible division. For the supposedly terrible division. I believe they're still alive. They're still alive.

I hope, by the way, that Robert Mays is still alive, that somebody has gone and checked on him. We can't be sure, but I'm hoping. I think he knew what Nick Foles was in the game. There were just not much to do about it, really. The magic just can't be stopped. Tough stuff for Chicago. Interesting things, though, in Philadelphia, not football-related, basketball-related.

And you know what? I've been accused on this show by listeners that we have an East Coast bias. But I can assure you, everybody who's ever listened to Heat Check knows that we have never once on this program talked about the Philadelphia 76ers. So we're going to do that right now for the first time in history. because Jimmy Butler went and not surprisingly made some waves. Woj and Ramona reported that he, quote, aggressively challenged Brett Brown about his role on the team.

Me personally, it was 47 days from the moment they traded for him to this report. And I would have taken the under. I can't believe it took this long for him to make waves. It's kind of like when you trade it for Jamie Butler, you know what you're getting into. It's like with the thing like the scorpion or the scorpion stings. Like you can't be mad at the scorpion. He's going to do what we're going to do.

Yeah, that's, I mean, it's in his nature. So apparently there was a loud vocal contesting of Brett Brown during a film session in Portland, according to Woja's sources, that called it disrespectful. And Brown said later that he didn't have a problem with it. According to Wojah's sources, a source close to Butler contends that his intense direct, I'm quoting now, that his intense direct style can come off as combative, but he's just trying to make his point clear. A source close to Butler sounds an awful like Butler. does that before we get into your piece,

because you wrote a whole piece about Jimmy Butler and like his age and is fit with a team that's on a kind of a different timeline with him before we get into all of that, like Jimmy being Jimmy and his character and being the scorpion that you mentioned on the frogs back as they try to pedal across to whatever playoff situation awaits them

on the other side of the pond to really torture that analogy. One, I'm not surprised, but two, does it matter if Jimmy is being Jimmy? Because like they must have known this was coming, right? I mean, they had to figure that it was worth, like, what was it, the juice is worth the squeeze. But the thing is, like, it's not going to stop, right?

Jimmy knows what he wants. He's going to push for what he wants. And at some point, either he's going to get what he wants or he's going to leave. And I think that's the tough part because he has hanging over them as the free agency this summer. Yeah, and that's going to be a big deal. I mean, because right now they're still, I guess the honeymoon period is officially over. And now they're into, you know, what might be a truncated marriage. But you wrote a piece on the ringer.com, wondering,

about Jimmy Butler's fit with the Philadelphia 76ers for a number of different reasons, the main overarching premise is that he wants to win right now. And you're not sure if that quite syncs up with the timeline

that the two young superstars are on. But you did mention, despite the fact that he wants to win right now, that they have been winning more right now with him. They're a better team with him in terms of win-loss record, right? I mean, for sure, they were only eight and six before they made the trade.

There just wasn't a ton of a talent around their two best players beforehand. So they're more talented. And I think it just goes to this. Like Jimmy looks like, I'm a pick and roll ball handler. The best version of this team is me getting the ball. Everybody's spaced on the floor for me and fitting roles around me.

Whereas Embedon Simmons are thinking, we're great young players. We're not going to accept roles to like just be your secondary options. We're not Clint Capella, you know? And I think that is the fundamental tension is that Jimmy looks at like, we can be better if those two guys accept smaller roles around me. And they're like, why do we accept smaller roles?

We're freaking awesome. Let's just let us grow into becoming great players. Yeah, the idea though, like of Jimmy, I mean, I guess in some way, part of me suspected that Jimmy might want to be the alpha when he got here because it's not really in his DNA not to be the alpha. But I think even he must know, you know, we can have the argument about him versus Simmons, but I think even he must know that it's Embede's team. It's hard for me to fathom that even in Jimmy Butler's wildly overestimated sense of self-worth,

that he doesn't look at the situation in Philadelphia and the city of Philadelphia and think that it can be any team, anybody else's team but M. Beds. He must know it's M. B's team. I think that's probably true, but Jimmy is looking at me and M. B should run more pick and rules. And the number that jumped out to me is it's very small sample size. But when it's just Embed, Jimmy, and no Simmons, they're like plus 20 and 60 minutes. And it's like if Jimmy and Bia are running pick and rolls, what has Ben Simmons doing? Yeah. So you put this in your piece.

And it jumped out to me too. So you have a little graphic in here that says, Butler, Simmons, and Embed together. The Sixers are a plus 4.2 rating. Butler and Simmons with no Embed, they're slightly better than that at plus five and change. Butler and Embed together with no Simmons plus 20 Almost plus 21 That is a significant thing I mean like when you say it jumps out

Yeah like it leapt off the page to me So one my first thing is Does this go? Is Jimmy right that maybe like let's take away Like the style of play for a second And just talk about the rotations And sort of staggering their minutes Does Butler have a point

That maybe this comes back to Brett Brown In terms of like should he be rotating these guys In a different way and maybe playing Simmons without Butler and Embed Moore. Well, the thing is, though, when you look at the numbers, when it's just Simmons by himself, it's not terribly successful. And that goes back to the lack of talent

on the rest of the roster. Yeah, they're super thin. And I think what makes it tough for Philly is like, Brett Brown's like, look, Jimmy, we're doing well and we're going to do better as our supporting cast gets better. And Jimmy's like, yeah, we're not doing well enough, but maybe we just give me the ball more off. I mean, that's the obvious answer.

I think like this whole like how much the Sixers are running the pick and roll bit and how much or rather not running the pick and roll bit has been a thing in Philly for a while. Like they just don't for a number of reasons. And once you got a Jimmy Butler, it was anticipated that like, hey, oh, now you've got a guy who this is a natural fit for the pick and roll. Like, of course you're going to run more of it. And clearly they're not running nearly enough of it for Jimmy Butler's liking. I just wonder, like you mentioned in the piece that it's difficult. call to do with this grouping because they don't have a lot of floor spacing. They don't have a lot of shooting. And like once they traded Robert Covington and Dario Sarge for Jimmy Butler, two things

happened. And I made this point a thousand times. I'll make it a thousand and one. One, they got better. Two, they got thinner. Like they just don't have a lot of useful bodies right now. Yeah, it's tough. Like the pick and roll at a very fundamental level. You have the ball handler, the screener, and then three shooters. And they just don't have very many shooters. And the ones I do have don't play much defense. And then so the tough part is if you have this like basic setup, if you haven't beaten Butler and Simmons is kind of out there floating around, really the best place to use Simmons is as a screener, but he rarely ever screens for anyone.

And my suspicion is like this is something KFC's been talking about for a long time, so you want Simmons to see more of a screener. Yeah. But like I think in Simmons in mine, it's like, well, that's the Draymond Green rule. Like, Draymond Green's a good player, but I really need the ball in my hands. I don't need to be, you know,

settings from somebody else, giving up my body and getting hit going on the lane and not getting the ball back. I want the ball in my hands. I don't know to see what I can do. I mean, Ben Simmons is a incredible player. And I think from his perspective is like, I'm not going to accept the lesser role if I can just be the bug eye with the ones all the time. The chemistry issues between Butler and Embed and Simmons, like I know in Philly, it's a very sensitive topic. People want to believe that it's all kumbaya, but I think like there's enough smoke here to believe that there's something of a fire. Now, how however hot the fire is, who knows.

But when you look at like Butler going, hey, yeah, I need more P&R and ISO and, you know, and Bede being like, I don't really like shooting threes, which by the way, bullshit. I don't, I call bullshit on that. I think he likes to do as much as possible, whatever possible on the floor and like threes are part of it. He likes to do the most.

Yeah, like the idea that he's like, no, no, no, I don't want to shoot threes. Yeah, okay, sure. And then Simmons, like everything you just said, I think checks out. I think he looks at himself and goes, I'm not going to be Draymond. I'm going to be Ben Simmons.

I'm going to be really fucking good at it. And that is creating some tension between those three and the team writ large. Ben Dietrich, Kingslayer Ben Dietrich, back on The Ringer.com, has a piece about Ben Simmons right now, kind of dueling banjos with you and him with these Sixers pieces where he says that Ben Simmons and his jumper. Like, there's been, obviously, a lot of conversation and debate about Ben Simmons and his jumper and, like, how he improves his game. But Dietrich's story is, you know what, he doesn't need a jumper to take the Sixers to the next level. What say you about that? Well, I think with Simmons, I think he looks at like what Yanis has in Milwaukee. And he says, man, if I had four shooters and we're pushing the ball all the time and they're just massive lanes to the basket, I look incredible.

And he probably, he looks a lot better than what he does now. It's just, do these pieces fit around me? And I think Simmons really can make the same points of Butler's making about I should have more stuff run for me. I should have more dribble handoffs. I should have more space to attack the rim. But given those constraints to the rest of the roster, it's just very difficult to create that space for him. What do you think that his jumper ultimately ends up being?

Because lately he's taken more bad mid-range jumpers. And Joel Embedd kind of roasted him inadvertently just a little bit by saying he's taking them but not making them. See, I don't know that was inadvertent. Joel does what you're saying. He's very verdant. Yeah, it was verdant. And then you had Brett Brown going, his jump shot, he's coming to terms with it, or he's going to come to come on his own terms.

Coming to terms is a great line. It's going to come on his own terms is what he actually said. And then Brett Brown said something that made me almost fall off my chair. He said, I want him to start developing a corner three. Well, yeah, I think we all would love for him to develop a corner three, but we're in the middle of the season. You very rarely see an NBA play. The off season is used to develop a new component of your game.

And then they implement that during the season. But very rarely on the fly during the season, do you see a player phase in a facet of his game that he didn't previously have? So like, Brett going, yeah, start shooting that corner three like in the middle of the season. Okay, sure. Take a shot. I'd love to see it. But I don't know that it's going to happen.

What I'm looking for is Simmons is the leading indicator. It's a free throw percentage because like the numbers have shown. if you don't shoot free throws well, the jumper is just not going to be there. And right now, Ben Simmons is a career 57% free throw shooter. And to me,

like, before I believe Ben Simmons is going to be able to shoot, I want to see that number gets like 65, 70, 75%. And if he can do that, that makes his game so much better because it means he can draw fouls more often. Yeah. He has more confidence in that.

And to me, until that number goes up, even though like there's those videos of him hidden threes like in practice, I'm sure you've seen them, like, there. Yeah.

But to me, the number to watch is that free throw percentage. Until that goes up, I'm just not going to believe Simmons never going to watch of a shooter. Sixers,

uh, social media leads the league in, hey, this player is off shooting three-pointers by himself, but he's not going to do it in a game. And like, we break it down as a pruder film like.

It's always a lot of fun. How do you think that this three man, weird fit ultimately resolves itself? Because the Sixers have a decision to make, right? I mean, you've got Jimmy Butler, who's 29 years old.

He's going to be a free agent in the off season. I know the people said if he walks, it's not a big deal, and that they could clear up potentially as much as 50 million in cap space. And, you know, that would involve, like, getting rid of Markell somehow and all this stuff. And then they could go after multiple free agents. But as we learned last offseason, and as I keep repeating, it's very difficult just because you have cap space. One, a lot of teams are going to have cap space. And two, it doesn't mean that you can just automatically go and, like, pick the player you want. And, like, it's not as simple as going and shopping for groceries. You have

to get them to come and stay with your team. So I still think if Butler leaves, it's kind of a disaster for them. But I'm also not convinced that these three guys long-term work together, and one of them might have to go. And like, who knows? I mean, maybe it's Butler, maybe it's Simmons down the line. I'd be shocked if it's Embed. But how do you think it ultimately resolves itself with these three guys? I think a couple of things. Like, looking back on it now, the guy they really could have used was B. Elisa. And I think Dave was so concerned about saving cap space. Because the story with him was they gave him a one-year deal. And then he was, I want a longer contract than the Sacramento for that, though.

The whole thing I'm going to Europe for a while first. But I think what they need to do is upgrade their supporting cast and not like Star Hunt as much and just like, okay, let's find players to make these guys better. In terms of these three, my suspicion is it's going to come down to Jimmy versus Simmons. My suspicion is if Jimmy stays, Jimmy's going to talk to them. He's going to say, look, this is what I want my team to be. If I'm going to stay, I need these pieces around me. And my guess is if Jimmy stays long term, Simmons is not going to be in Philly in two

three years. I mean, first, Simmons would fetch a lot. I mean, I'm not saying that they should do that, but you could get a big return for him. There's so many fascinating offers

because he's such a small contract right now. Like, if you put him out there, and though I will say this, I think he will leave, but man, to me, I would have much rather built around Simmons

than Embed and taken a slower build. But I think once they traded for Jimmy, they put things in motion, they kind of opened the box, they can't close it now. And I think ultimately Simmons will leave. Who knows where it'll go. But you can get someone really great for him if you trade him.

Yeah, that's kind of the part of your piece that I disagree with just a little bit in terms of when you were saying that they were on a different timeline and that, you know, Jimmy's about winning right now and the Sixers might not necessarily be. I'm not sure that I buy that component because I look at the Eastern Conference and I go, okay, yeah, the Raptors have been the most consistent and best team. But I don't think that the Raptors are unbeatable. You did say, like, you're not sure, you know, among the Raptors, Bucks, Pacers, Celtic, Sixers grouping, that in the playoffs, you're not sure that the Sixers would be favored against any of them. And that's probably right. But I don't think that they'd be heavy dogs in any of them. And I certainly wouldn't be shocked by watching. If they beat any of those teams or lost any of those teams, I could consider it a coin flip. I could see it going either way. So if you have a chance and the Eastern Conference is, in theory, open, like, why not roll the dice on it? I mean, I think for sure this season. I think they're going to make some trades. They've gotten more pieces to play. The question is, do they use that, like, heat pick they picked up on the trade?

Right, the 2021 unprotected. I think with this roster now, I just don't think the pieces are there around their big three. Even forgetting the fit issues around Simmons, Butler, Embedde, I just don't believe in that supporting cast. I think they're probably worse than they were last year, supporting cast-wise. Oh, there's no doubt about that. They're super thin, and they definitely need to add. I'm just saying with those three guys, if you can add at the deadline,

who knows, maybe you can flip Markell Fultz for something, or maybe you do use that 2021 unprotected first. Who knows? But yeah, they definitely need to add. But I like that core in the Eastern Conference where you could just go, all right, well, at least we have a shot.

We have a shot to do something. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely like, there's reasons for optimism. I just go back to like, you look at like the great big threes, even in recent history. And there's always one guy taking a step back saying, I'll take a smaller role.

Yeah. Like there's always a Chris Bosch. There's always a Kevin Love. Sixers need a Chris Bosch in this scenario. We all need a Chris Bosch in our lives. Yes, yes, we do. We need a Chris Bosch in our lives here at Heechek, too. That would be wonderful.

What do you got coming out later on? What are you working on? Anything you want to plug? Yeah, I'm doing a thing on the Nets. And one of the more unlikely rookies this year, Rodion's Curricks. The numbers when he got in the starting lineup changed their whole season. they're all of a sudden riding back in the playoff race.

They're like 13 and 4 with him in the starting lineup. It's pretty crazy. We'll be on the lookout for that. Make sure to read Jonathan Charks on the ringer.com. Listen to him every Friday on Corner 3. Charks, thanks for doing this, homie. All right, y'all, go Cowboys. We're going to take that part out.

Jim, make sure you cut that part. All right, good back. All right, that was Jonathan Charks, despite him mentioning the Dallas team that shall not be mentioned. He's a wonderful guest. We want to thank him. We want to thank Shayserrano. I want to thank my producer, Jim, not Isaac,

because Isaac has abandoned us. and we want to encourage all of you if you'd be so inclined to rate and review us on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to listen to The Mismatch on Tuesday, group chat on Thursday, Corner 3 on Friday. Thanks so much for listening to Heat Check. I'll be back with the producer TBD on Monday next week, gang. Thanks.