The Ringer NBA Show - 'Heat Check' — Real or Not Real: Cavs, Clips, Magic, and more (Ep. 152)

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

The Ringer's Juliet Litman and John Gonzalez sit down to talk some NBA story lines, including some obvious trouble in Cleveland (1:35), Draymond Green and the Golden State Warriors (9:55), and the Clippers' impressive start to the season with point-Blake (22:13). Then they go on rookie watch to talk Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, Frankie Smokes, and more (28:40). Finally, they look ahead to some of this week's more exciting matchups (33:50). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before we get into today's NBA show, let me just tell you about all the shows we have on the ringers NBA channel. On Mondays, you've got me, Juliet, and my co-host, John Gonzalez. We have a Monday morning show that goes over headlines in this newly titled Heat Check. On Tuesday, Chris Vernon and Kevin O'Connor got you covered deep diving into the biggest stories of the week, all the stats you need to know, and all of the research that Kevin does every single day. Every other Wednesday, me and Chris Ryan will be on to talk about gossip, rumors, off-com. court transactions and probably the Oklahoma City Thunder. On Thursdays, Chris Ryan, Justin Berryer, and other staffers from the Ringer will also be

talking in the NBA group chat. And if that's not enough for you, Bill Simmons has got you covered. He is the biggest hoops head out there. You can subscribe to the Ringer MBA feed on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcast. The Monday Heat Check. I'm John Gonzalez. That's the name of our podcast, Monday Heat Check.

I love it. I like it. I think it's good. I want love and you want like. We'll figure it out. We'll meet the middle. But we're going to, the point of the show is to catch up on the weekend, look ahead, kind of taking stock of storylines.

And as a result, we're going to keep it tight. It's going to be a tight 30 minutes. Ish. Something like that. Maybe some overtime. I like that. We'll see how it goes. But let's get into it.

Number one story right now that we need to discuss. Number one story. The trouble in Cleveland. What are they doing? Or is there trouble? So is there trouble? Julieette. Yes, their trouble.

They lost four of their last five, including three in a row, to the following teams and tell me if this sets off any alarms. The Knicks, the Pelicans, the Nets, and the Magic. It's tough. That's tough. What's the worst loss to you there? I was going to say, like, if you threw it maybe the Kings, like, that's like a murderer's row of awful. What's the worst loss? I guess, I guess the Nix. The Knicks are a bad team.

The Knicks are terrible. Yes. Although there's some hope for them. We'll talk about that later. The Knicks loss is really tough. There's also a clip that I saw, thank you to NBA Reddit, of before the even the final buzzer, the whole Cavs bench had just left the floor and walked off. There's like Sad J.R walking very, like, despondently.

Sad J.R. is one of the saddest figures in the NBA. Yeah, he's not happy right now, but there's a reason not to be happy. I mean, have you seen, like really, the numbers really bear this out? They're defensive rating, Juliet. They're 27th in the NBA in defense. That's rough. I checked. Still only 30 teams in the league.

That's really not good. Only the Nets, who they lost to, the Mavericks and the Timberwolves. The Timberwolves, I don't know what Tibbs is doing with that defense. Those are the only teams with worst defensive rating in the Cleveland Cavaliers. And normally I would look at this and go, okay, well, it's LeBron and it's still only October. We're funneling very rapidly towards November, but still early, right? And you go, it's going to be fine. It's not fine.

It's not fine. Kevin wrote about this today for the ringer, Kevin O'Connor. I like him. I like the ringer. I do too, two good things. Specifically about that, how their defense is really bad. And even though they got a bunch, they got many more pieces after Kyrie left, they're old. They're an old team.

Old teams aren't necessarily known for their defense. And so just like running down their roster, I was like, yeah, this isn't great. So they got Jay Crowder and Jeff Green as like two of their new additions. And Kevin was writing about how they really need the best effort out of both of them. and if you are worried about getting the best out of Jay Crowder and Jeff Green, you're not in a great spot. Kevin has really staked a flag or planted a flag on two main issues in the NBA. One is that Ben Simmons is shooting with the wrong hand. The other one is that Jay Crowder got bad and nobody noticed.

Our Dallas Mavericks contingent also is like, no, Jay Crowder is bad. We have a lot of anti-J Crowder sentiment at the ringer. I like Jay Crowder a lot. I think people personally like him. It's making it harder, though, recently. his recent play has made it much harder for me to defend him because I'm watching him play. And he isn't the Jay Crowder that I previously was enamored with, especially in the defensive end, a guy who could like switch multiple positions, play on the perimeter or down low. Yeah, yeah.

Defensively, though, like could really step out on guys or play lower. I kind of thought of him as like a poor man's Dremont, very poor man's, and I wouldn't put Dremont in the same sentence as him right now. It's really a problem. and Simmons put this on our slack last night. Like, if you look at their fit, we've got LeBron and Wade and Derek Rose and Love and J.R. and Crowder and Corver and Thompson playing significant minutes. Pick some group of that and figure out how it fits.

I don't know. So one thing that I was really confused by last night is that at sort of crunch time when if the calves were going to come back, it wasn't quite crunch time. But like, if there will be a comeback, it would happen now. Tristan Thompson wasn't playing. And I thought that was weird. And he had like an abysmal stat line last.

night. It was, uh, well, while you're, while you're looking for, uh, Tristan Thompson's stat line, I thought it was interesting. Ben Falk this morning tweeted out that their D, while it has been bad overall, wasn't as bad as it looked because what really happened, and this goes to your point about Tristan Thompson, they got killed on putbacks. Right. So like their boards, their defense, uh, at the rim, not great. Like the Knicks somehow, despite being, they have any, Enis Cantor was eating them alive. How is that possible? Thompson had in 20 minutes had 1.1 block, one turnover, and four fouls. That's not a good line.

That's horrible. That's really bad. That might be the Kardashian curse. How much do we lay, though? I mean, like ultimately, when we're talking about, yeah, Tristan Thompson wasn't out there, and Tristan Thompson didn't play well, and Crowder didn't play well, and, you know, JR was sad, and you can't expect anything out of Rose and Wade. But also, right, I mean, like, you go through this.

I know, I just ran down everybody except for the main guy, though. LeBron. Like how much do we? Yeah, what do we like? Like, because in that Nets loss, he missed a couple free throws late. He didn't, there was a long inbound pass from Kevin Love that he botched. Like, ultimately, a lot of this is still on LeBron. Yeah, absolutely.

It's funny that it's like, it's October, maybe the end of it. But last year, the Cleveland, Cleveland's hopes, like there was an article, I think Windhorst wrote about how it all, like, rested on LeBron's free throw shooting. which hasn't been good which hasn't been good and it's almost like yes if only that was their only problem LeBron's free throw shooting it'll take a while for them to like figure out

a group that works together but it's a lot of misfits on this team it's not as inspiring as weirdly last year's roster was the misfit crew that they've compiled or put together is sort of disconcerting but I'm not like I'm not ready to just like

push off the LeBron free throw shooting And especially like last year at the end of the year it was a problem in the same way that the defense at the end of the year was a problem. We were going to the playoffs and everybody went, oh man, like the defense and LeBron like what's going on. Now it's at the beginning of the year. And so part of me wants to go, okay, there's plenty of time. They'll figure it out. But this is a continuation of what we saw from last year. And I think this is a worst team.

Like Isaiah Thomas and his one working hip cannot get back soon enough. It's funny. I was thinking about that last night. Like is he, how will he even fit with this team? I think the problem is there's not like a fit to be had. There's not really a system running right now that's effective. Would you make a panic trade? Would you do a blood so trade?

Interesting. Depending on what you're giving up, right? I mean, it's context is everything. But I wonder like if LeBron looks, I was making a joke last night that LeBron's going to trade himself to the Lakers before next week is out because he's got to look at this and go, this is clearly not working. The thing may miss the most with Kyrie, which they'll get partially from Isaiah Thomas if he comes Zach healthy is someone else who can initiate offense.

in the same way LeBron can and like sort of get get them going and create in the same way. And hopefully he will add some of that. But the bloodsoe question is interesting because they do need like a second sort of point guard type. Almost like a Kyrie Irving type. Almost like a Kyrie Irving type. If they could figure out a way to get somebody like that, that would be great. Because that is like who else is like getting their own shot on that team right now? Nobody.

No one. Like maybe like occasionally Wade, but like he's just not playing that way. He's old. It's a bad team. It's a bad mix. All of a sudden, I've talked to myself into the Cavs cratering. Nice. I'm not there yet, but I think the season will be hard.

The defense is really like that, especially because it's a continuation of what we saw at the end of last year. That to me is, like, I can't believe that the group of teams that they're with in defense includes the nets and the Mavericks and the T-Wolves. Those are bad defensive teams. Why are the T-Wolves down there? I don't know. I don't know what Tibbs is doing. Nobody knows what Tibbs is doing. He was supposed to be the defensive Maverger.

He was supposed to go in there and coach him up, and he's done the defensive team. opposite. They've gotten worse. All it can do is beat this under. Carl Anthony Towns, like, he should be really good on defense. He's got all of the skill set, and he is not using any of that skill set. The T-wills are for a different day. They are.

The calves will be probably fine, but not, I think it'll be a harder season. It's good that they play in the East. Yes. Congratulations to them. Although you're losing to the Knicks. What's the value of playing in the East? The Knicks, like, you should have looked at the schedule and gone, you know, an apologies to Jason, Concepcion, who really apparently likes the Knicks for reasons.

I don't know. He should have gotten off of them for years ago. But you should see them on your schedule and go, oh, great. This is when we get right. Yeah. This is when we rest. Yeah. Chris Osphors is saying us look good, by the way. Quite good.

He's the only good thing about that team. Although we're going to get to Frankie Smokes later. And maybe. Maybe him too. Sure. Why not? Let's move along to another contender who maybe we should be a little concerned about the Warriors. I'm not at all concerned about the Warriors because they're really good and they're going to continue to be good and it's fine.

But Draymond has been interesting. Draymond's been interesting. So he had a fight with Bradley Beale on Friday, which he didn't initiate. You were busy having a dinner party in your massive backyard. Yes. Did you see this? I did see it. Did you bring everybody inside from your massive backyard?

No, we caught up with it. And then we watched like kind of like caught up with the game. I like this Bradley Beel. This makes me like him more. Fisty Bradley Be feisty. get into it. Did you see when he, so after he got into it with Raymond Green, he got ejected. Did you see him and his interaction with the fan in the tunnel? No. So there was, you know, there's

Bradley Beale's interaction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Explain what happens. So there was, yeah, because it's an audio podcast and not a video podcast, but there was a fan who was just like stationed in the tunnel that leads back to the locker room area and was giving Bradley Beale the finger and screaming at him, uh, apparently very not nice things. I'm not a lip reader, but I'm not a lip reader, I could tell. Who does that? Like what kind of person who attends a basketball game is like, yeah, I'm going to heckle someone who's got kicked out.

Apparently that guy. It's like really ridiculous. That guy was very angry. I try not to get that worked up about sports because we work in sports. Sure. You got to pace yourself. But Bradley Beale, I thought handled it really, really well. He initially like glared at the dude but didn't say a word and then just grand and walked away.

And I thought that that was the best case scenario. I like, I'm with you. I like feisty Bradley Beal. and I like anything, Draymont. I do too. I do too. And he had some really forceful comments about the situation with the Texans and Bob McNair talking about his team as inmates.

And I think that's awesome. I think that he is like he's becoming like the leader we would like for him to be. And so he said, I wouldn't personally play for someone who views me as an inmate because I haven't done anything in my life to be an inmate. So in order to be an inmate, you're either in a hospital or you're in prison. Well, I'm not in the hospital. I'm not for damn sure I'm not in prison. And he spoke like at length, really, which I just think is when MGA players take their opportunity that they have every day to make a statement like that is it's powerful and it's meaningful.

It's like it's impressive to me. I think the NBA and you know like while I am generally low to credit like a billion dollar conglomerate for anything, like I think for this specific thing standing up and speaking out when it's been traditionally more difficult for NFL players to do. although the Texans had a great moment of group unity on Sunday when they all kneeled in defiance of their owner. Most of them, not all of them. Most, most. Dremond and the Warriors writ large, you know, like from Steve Kerr to Katie to staff, have been out front on all of this. And that kudos to them, man. I think it's awesome.

I think it's great that they're speaking their mind. And like right after two, like not long after he's scrapping with Beal. Like he's pretty, as it turns out, Dremont Green, not just versatile on the court, versatile off the court can do a lot of things. He still got fined for that, even though he did initiate. He got a $25,000 fine and Beale got $50,000 fine, which is the same as the Curry Mouthguard Toss, which is ridiculous. It seems a little arbitrary.

It's like completely a ridiculous. And then I think also Green comments on that, saying like that it doesn't make sense. I don't understand how they come up with these figures. Me neither. Like what's the process? Are they sitting around at a table like you and I? And then they're like, yeah, throw out 25. That seems roughly equivalent to Steph Curry tossing his mouth guard.

Yeah, you can't injure someone with a toss mouthguard. Like, I don't care how protective that thing is. There's no injury coming. It could be like an eye situation. Yeah, you put your eye out. He flicked it. He wasn't like an overhand throw. It was like a sidearm, like I'm pissed.

It wasn't, I don't know. It's not take anyone's eye out. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, I think it's ridiculous also that he's chomping on that mouth guard anyway all the time. I have a warrior's take. Can I share it with you? Please. They're very, they're very, um, rocketsy to me right now.

And a lot of offense and sort of like not the same level of effort everywhere else. Like, it's sort of their calling, Steve Kerr likes to talk about how they're calling cards or defense, like the last three years. It's not quite there. All right. So you're right about that. They're 26 and defensive rating. That's poor.

Steve Kerr isn't be pissed about that. He's going to be pissed about it. Here's how poor it is. It's only one spot better than the already, as we mentioned poor. Much maligned. Cleveland Cavaliers defense. They're in that same grouping. That's not a grouping that you want to be in,

although as we know, their offensive rating best in the league. So that helps. Yeah. Last day, again, I saw on Reddit, Steph, Clay, and KD had a 72% true shooting. They still lost. That's very rocketsy.

That's the kind of thing you expect from a hardened team. You're right about that. But they are younger and they have like a vibe. Like they are so much better equipped to start playing defense than the calves, like that's the main difference. Yeah. Oh, no, I think that they'll absolutely get it together. I mean, like, you can't have a, you can't have somebody like KD and Draymond on the same

team and also Clay, who's a great perimeter defender and not have a good defense. He looks great this season. I'm loving it. You love him. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. Quick Clay note. Oh, my God.

Last week, there's a commercial came out with Clay just, it's for the Bay Area News Group newspapers. He's just sitting alone in the locker room reading a newspaper and talking about like how it's physical newspaper? His pregame rituals to read the paper. It was just amazing. It was so clay. Is this apocryphal or is this like does he actually do this? I think he actually does it. He reads a physical newspaper. I don't think Clay like lies about things that he does. I think he just doesn't say anything. He's an old soul. I love it. Doesn't he like kind of come off as like an old soul? Like he likes to hang out with his dogs and he like likes to read the newspaper. Yeah. It's great. And that's that's that's it's great. I'm excited about him having such a good early season. This is this is great news.

It makes me happier that we did the Claytheism thing now. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to go through some more topics, so we'll fire them off. But first, let's just talk about our sponsor. Let me tell you about Casper mattresses. A Casper mattress is an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Supportive memory foam creates an award-winning sleep surface with just the right sink and just the right bounce. You can try Casper for 100 nights risk-free in your own home, and if you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund you everything.

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www.cassper.com slash MBA and use offer code NBA to get $50 off towards any mattress. Again, that's www.cadcad.com slash MBA using offer code MBA to get $50 off. And remember, terms and conditions apply. Okay, we're back. A lot of early season trends. We're two weeks in. So there's not a good sample. size, but there's enough to jump to conclusions.

Yeah. So I want to do some real or not real. And like if you believe in these phenomena that we're seeing. Are we starting with the guy that we've been talking about? Yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about Lonzo Ball. Okay. All right.

So this has become quite the divisive issue here at the Ringer. Yes. And you and I, dare I say, are in the minority position on it, which is kind of surprising to me. So I went to the Wizards game last week when John Wall. You were there as well, which I found out later. Sorry, I didn't tell you. No, well, you didn't tell me which kind of.

You were there with your brother, right? Yeah, I was, I was on personal time. You were on work time. I was working, but that's okay because we had the same take, which was a radically different take than Ringer Slack had. Ringer Slack was watching the same game that we were watching and were quite effusive about Lanzo influencing that game. When Lanzo had gone almost the entire,

he didn't score his first field goal in that game until the fourth quarter. Yes. Which meant he went five quarters straight of NBA basketball without scoring from the field. He ended up with, I think, eight rebounds and 10 assists, which fine. But what was your, you didn't think he influenced the game nearly as much as the rest of our staff colleagues. I think he not only didn't influence the game that much, but he also just like, he looks worse in person. He looks lost more often on the court. He looks like timid.

He kind of sharks away. He just looks like he's not playing the same game as, let me say, Kent Tavius Caldwell Pope, which is embarrassing, because KCP is not that good. KCP is much more aggressive. I think, like, the point that, to your point, like, what I saw was that he was almost, like, overly deferential. And when you hear Luke Walton talk about Lonzo Ball, you frequently will hear him say, I'd like to see him be more aggressive offensively. There's a part, there's a component of Lonzo Ball that I really like, where he's always going to make the smart pass before the pass. Sure. You know, like before the assist past, the hockey assist.

He's really good at that. He does the little things. He wants to get his teammates involved. but dude you were also the second pick they jettisoned de angelo russell who was you know for all his faults he could score the basketball for you and he wanted to right right exactly and you're supposed to be this new leader can you be the leader by being the quiet guy who does the little things i don't know i don't think there's enough of a system in place there also to harness what he does well maybe it's you know another kind of spare parts team and this is not really like the what they will be next year

but he doesn't really seem he's in a position to succeed right now. There's not a lot of parts around him to really like... I do think Josh Hart is quite good from Villanova. Yeah, he's fine. Josh Hart's fine.

He was injured, so he just started playing preseason at all. But I think that he almost impacted the game more defensively than Lonzo did. Like he came in right away and you're like, oh, a steal, okay. Lonzo got cooked. I mean, like defensively, I'm not on board

with Lonzo at all. Offensively, again, he doesn't really... I mean, here's the thing, like, So we're a bunch of nerds here at the ringer. And we like to look at numbers. And this is why I was wondering about the hot takes that are pro-Lonzo. I like Lanzo fine. I think he'll be good.

But I look at his advanced metrics. And I'm not seeing anything that really supports this argument. Like, yes, his assist ratio is through the roof. His P.R is really garbage. I mean, it's at 9 right now. His true shooting percentage, I don't even want to look at it without some sort of protective goggles. It's 385, Juliet.

That is really, really, really bad. It's really bad. I think his non-advanced metrics are thrown off by the one game. Yeah, his one game against the sons. Yeah. Or he's played really well. His counting stats are fine, right? Is that they're called counting stats?

Yeah, then the ones are, yeah, you just tick them off. Cool. Yeah. I just call him non-advanced. Those two, all of the same thing. That's why, like, I think he's going to be a good player in the NBA. I'm not sure if he'll be great, but I certainly look at him when he's trying to score the ball and go, man, he looks timid.

He doesn't look like he wants to go out there and be aggressive. Not ready for prime time. Not ready for prime time. I just want to say Bradley Beale was guarding him, not John Wall. Right, for most of the game. There were moments when John Wall was out there against him and vice versa, but you're right. And especially at the end of the game, did you notice they were just like hiding Lonzo in the corner on whoever they could find? And keeping him as far away from, even though on the very last play on the inbound's play where John Wall took that weird pinkie three point shot that he should have passed a Beal on.

Lonzo was like in his vicinity but yeah they kept him as far away from John Wall as possible. But I'm saying on the other side too, Beal was guarding Lonzo. Yeah, yeah, that too. It's like John Wall, like you were going to destroy him. Well, they had John Wall on KCP because I think he's better. Yeah, which that's the biggest indictment yet, Julia. I know. I'm like, oh, KCP looks good on this team.

Moving right along, the Clippers are behind the Grizzlies, but atop the Western Conference. Real or not real? I don't know. So this is. We got Clippers Grisden. I mean, Clippers Warriors tonight. I'm really excited. I'm excited too and we're going to get into who you think is going to win later on.

But in the same way that I never know what to make of the Clippers early in the season for the last however many seasons, I'm there again. They lead the league in net rating. What's happening? Like they're a good defensive team. Yeah. They're a good offensive team. Point Blake is starting to happen. He dunked.

Like I keep forgetting that we're allowed to. curse because it's the ringer, but he dunked on Rudy Gobert. I know. RIP Rudy. That was upsetting because I like Rudy Gobert. I just can't get behind the clippers, but they do look really good. I think I just say, I think they'll beat the Warriors tonight. Warriors are on her back to back and it's in L.A.

This is how they get you. You can't buy into this. I hope that the Clippers lose because they have like a, they haven't the last seven times. I think they've lost the Warriors, something like that. For a long, long time. And that was a fun rivalry that I was like glad the Warriors just kind of squash because I'm so anti-clippers

irrationally so. Why are you so anti-Clippers? I don't know. I'm just like, this is a Lakers city. Let's just keep it that way. And so I feel that there's like a lot of irrational hate in L.A. for the Clippers. Like they're the Clippers. How do you hate on the Clippers? They've been terrible for so long. Just let them live. It is an exciting evolution for Blake though. The point Blake dream is really happening. And partially because he's he's hitting us threes, which makes it more possible. I'm the reverse of you in that I hope they do beat the Warriors because I would like the Clippers to be real and good under Blake. I'd like somebody in the West to like significantly challenge the Warriors.

And if it's the Clippers without CP3, holy shit, how is that possible? What a great storyline that would be. I just don't buy it. I think independent of like how they match up with the Warriors, though, yeah, the Clippers are a fun story right now. They are. It's pretty wild. And they do have a lot likeable players.

Like Pat Bev is fun. Yeah. Lou Williams is fun. I like Blue Williams. I've always liked Lou Williams. Like he gets to the line. He shoots. He's a instant offense guy.

Wonderful. DJ catching lobs again, like really being involved in that offense. He's back. He's back. Maybe it really was CP3. I think the clippers are real. I think that it's just really hard to know how everything else will shake out. But I could see them being like three or four in the last.

I had them on the edge of the playoffs like about to teeter out. And boy, like I think I was wrong early on reaction. I had them at five or six, but I think they could be three or four. I had them in that seven, eight. Like, I really looked at Chris Paul and went, like, how are they going to look defensively without him? You know, he was the engine that made them go in the playoffs, especially when Blake went down. Yeah. I was wrong, I think.

I don't know. It's early still. I bet I'm buying the clippers. Old clippers lose to the Blazers last week in that, in that thriller. Oh, for sure. New clippers, Blake wins it for them. Which. That kind of sums them up.

And, like, Healthy Blake is a really good. Blake. Like Blake having this team being like, okay, I don't have to defer to anybody. This is really my deal. Him shooting threes. Like, it's just been amazing to watch him this season. Totally. He's kind of like playing the towns role.

Like what we all want from towns is kind of Blake right now. Yeah. I'm all about this version of Blake. All right. So Lanzo not real. Clippers real. The magic. Lower stakes on this one.

But wait, the magic. So let's just talk about some of the magic's win. They won over Brooklyn in spectacular fashion. They also beat Caves and spurs. Yeah, they beat the calves and the spurs. Which, how's that possible?

I don't know. They, look, I've watched. Aaron Gordon's running the point. None of this. All of this is upside down. Vucevic shooting threes. Aaron Gordon shooting threes. Aaron Gordon, like,

doing the things that we expected Aaron Gordon to do, like not outside, like, not with the dunk contest outside of the dunk contest. where like previously the only time we ever noticed Aaron Gordon doing positive things was at AllStar Weekend. And now all of a sudden he's doing it during the regular season. I'm sort of befuddled by it. And at the same time, I can't turn away.

I've watched an inordinate amount of magic basketball. Like I don't know if it's like there's something wrong with all of us. I don't know what's happening. I'm happy for Aaron Gordon because he just declined his extension. Bet on himself. Yeah, bet on himself. So we're seeing contractor, Aaron Gordon. It's great.

Contractor Aaron Gordon's thrilled to not be playing along. alongside Alfred Payton right now. Yeah. I also, I think Frank Vogel's a good coach. Like, I think those... I do too. He did a lot with those Pacers teams when he didn't have a lot to work with.

And... It's coaching him up. Yeah, I like it. I mean, it's just... It's fun that since the East is like, quote unquote, bad. There's, like, sort of like, a weird kind of parody,

so it opens the door for a lot of teams to be better than we were expecting. But we have to give the magic credit because they've beaten two of the traditionally best teams of recent vintage. Hard to finish games

against teams that have consistency and talent. And they've done that against the calves and the spurs. And with the spurs, there should be the caveat that, of course, like, Kauai is not back yet. But they didn't just beat the spurs. They smacked them. It was like by 30. At least, like, by the point.

Yeah. Which is bananas. I don't, like, I'm still not sure if I'm buying it. Do you think, by the way that anybody outside of Kevin Clark, like, uh, in Orlando has noticed? Like, does, does the greater Orlando area care about the magic? I think yes. Yeah?

Yeah. Yeah. This is exciting. Spurs and calves, come on, that's big. Can we, and I think this is a bit that we need to pick up on because, like, there are teams like this that are sort of like surprising that we're watching and getting excited about. Can we have a team of the heat check pod? Can we like vote on that as this pod goes on? Like who's our official team?

Yeah, we should get a team that we like, you and I are really on board with. It could be magic. That's exciting. Magic is possible. The nets have been interesting. You know I have an affinity and an affection undying for the Portland Trailblazers. I'd like to lobby you. on the Portland Trailblazers?

I think it's got to be an East team. There's too much, like, really fun stuff happening in the West. Like, there's less time for, like, passion projects in the West. The Grizz are weird. I know. They're, like, they're out there. People underrate the Grizz, though. Every year.

Gassol and Connolly are really good. It's like, this isn't that surprising. And Chandler Parsons, not dead yet. Not dead yet. We'll see. He'd want one good game, like, thrilled for you. All right. We'll put them all in the mix, and we'll take Twitter suggestions, too, on who the team of the heat

check pot should be. Let's talk rookies. Real quick. Yeah, let's do it. Much to your chagrin, Jason Tatum is quite good. Jason Tatum is so good. All right, so. I spent a long, long time last week thinking about the nickname that we should be going with for the Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum duo.

Are you ready? I am. The J-Team. I love this. I love this so much. I wasn't sure where you were going until you got the drop because I don't know if you know this about me. Actually, you probably have picked up on it because you're quite bright. But my Twitter avatar is two of the four members of the A-Team, the original, not the movie, like the TV show.

There's only one. I am an undying A-Team nerd. This is great. I'm on board. I thought about it for a really long time. My worst name that I rejected on my own was like, you're going to J-school with like, that's like a journalism nerd joke. Anyway.

I'm one of those. I just try to make J-Team happen, you know? I'm totally on board with this. Thank you. he's quite good. He's quite good. He's more than like serviceable. He's like a key cog in a competing team.

First of all, like his usage rate, his minute load, what they're asking him to do for a rookie on a team that has, even with Gordon Hayward out, significant expectations. Like I've watched a lot of Celtics basketball, probably too much for my mental health. And they're really good. And it makes me sad for all of the reasons that people have already expected. like the Celtics traded back, got more assets, and might have gotten the best guy in the draft.

He is already at 19 years old. He's got an NBA man-sized body doing man-sized things. His true shooting percentage is fantastic. His P.E.R is fantastic. He can shoot from inside outside. He can body people. He plays defense. He's switchable.

I am losing my mind about Jason Tatum. I love watching him, but I also hate it. It's tough, particularly because Fultz is now out indefinitely with a, scalpular muscle problem in his shoulder. I would like to do also a Fultz update. Okay. All right. There we go.

All right. Let's talk about Frank Nillikina. Frankie smokes. Frankie smokes. Kind of a mixed bag against the calves. Defense not great, but he's a rookie. No, no. The defense has been, the defense has been, like, he's got good defensive instincts.

He got good defensive instincts, but he's a rookie. So, like, Dwaywayway, like, Dwayne Wade, like blew by him one point. He did. There were moments in the calves. where he would play in. He showed flashes, would you say? Flashes, exactly. And exactly what you were saying, what do you wait?

There were, it was like three quarters of a play of good defense. Sure. Where he'd be like, oh, he's playing good defense. And then like somebody would turn a corner on him. He'd be like, ah. Right. But for the whole, he's got good length. I think he knows where to be.

I like his ability one-on-one to like, you know, go over screens. You know, I think he could be a good defender. He looks like he's got good passing. instincts. Yeah, he's a good compliment for Christops. Yeah. For Chrissy, as I like to say. I'm not sure about his scoring. He looks like in the same way that Lonzo is a little reluctant to shoot. Don't worry. Tim Hardaway Jr.'s

on a max deal. He'll score all that they need. Yes, he'll take all of the opportunities. Frankie Smokes is like the default nickname, but there are other nicknames out there. The French Prince. That's one that came to us via Sean Fantasy. Very good. The French Prince. And then he's a passing guard, so of course, people wanted to go with the French connection.

I like the French Prince, though. I like the French as well. And Frankie Smokes is just too good not to use. In future weeks, I'm sure we'll be talking about Larry Markinen. I'm sure we're talking about Donovan Mitchell, who yammed on Lonzo, of course, Dennis Smith. But embarrassing move of the week, Malik Monk tried to lob it to himself, Jordan Bell style. However, it wasn't in the open court, and thus Aaron Gordon blocked it. What a fool. What a foolish move. This, okay, so of all of the giffable, are you a giff or a Jeff Parsons? This is, this, I knew we were going to be good friends. because this is a conversation that I had with Justin Barry or the other day as like a really quick aside,

the people who came up with the technology for GIF say that it's G. And I'm like, listen, you came up with the technology. That's great. The G stands for graphic. You don't get to invent a new language. That's a great point. Great point. You get to invent the technology.

I didn't know that. English, you don't get to mess with. Cool. End of a side. So it's a GIF. So it's a gift. So of all the giffable moments, thank you for getting me back on track there. I get like really heated about that.

of all the Giffable moments early on, number one was Blake Griffin dunking on and then smiling over Rudy Goberus he hung on the rim

that was just amazing number two really close Malik Monk what were you doing really just really bad these rookies kind of need to like

take it down a notch I mean he was going for that highlight real moment and he got it but not the one he expected really tough Gondo

pick one game this week you're excited about so there's a lot of good ones you mentioned the Warriors Clippers and Clippers. That's super exciting. The Spurs and the Celtics also tonight.

I want to officially say that I think the Clippers will win tonight. And I think they'll lose, but I hope it's the reverse. It's very dismissive. Mine is the end of the week. The prodigal son returns. DeAngelo Russell is going to be in town. You keep saying it's a Lakers only town and throwing shade at the Clippers. I can't wait for him to return. Every time Magic turns around, he says that the Lakers drafted Lonzo. For culture. Well, also because they needed a leader.

Right. I mean, they can't open their mouths and mention Lanzo Ball without tacitly, not so tacitly throwing shade at D'Angelo Russell. I can't wait to have him back. It's pretty, it's tough. It's not a good look. He's a kid, you know? I mean, he must have been so horrible that Magic just like hates him. Because Magic guy is not like a big shader.

Who else is he throwing shade at that you ever hear? Nobody. Yeah. All he does is Trump and everybody's the everybody's biggest cheerleader. But you hear that from other guys, too. I mean, like, you hear Brandon Ingram saying, like, what a leader, Lonzo is. You hear Lonzo saying that Lonzo needed to be a leader. When he had his pre-draft workout, he goes, well, they, and DeAngelo was still on the team

of the time. He said that, oh, you know, they need a leader or a point guard. I'm like, dude, not only do they have a point guard, like, he's in the building right now. Sure. I cannot wait for this. It's going to be drama central. I want all of it. I'm looking forward to it as well.

There's a bunch of good games. Which game are you going for? I want the Thunder to have, like, a signature win. So they're playing the bucks. I love the thunder. They're off our board though for the team for the heat check team. No, they're off. Because they're in the Western Conference.

Yeah, they're also just like, just obviously like the thunder. Warriors Clippers I'm most excited about tonight. I'm also looking forward to Warriors at Spurs. Warriors have a kind of hard early season schedule. Like they're getting a lot of like these road games out of the way, which I think is actually good for them. Although it might not alleviate any people's concerns. They're the Warriors though. They'll be fine.

Like everybody that they're playing is like, oh, no, we're playing the word. They don't get to complain about the schedule. Oh, totally. They don't get to complain about their defense, getting ejected, fines, referees. They don't get to complain about any of it. The weirdest thing that happened last week off the court was the back-to-back home and home between the gris and the maps. I thought it was really weird.

But I guess they're close to each other. I don't know. I don't know. Really bizarre. That's a side note to what has been an otherwise podcast of headlines. Thanks for listening. I'm Juliet. I'm John Gonzalez.

And we'll be back next Monday. You can hear our colleagues, Kevin and Chris Verno tomorrow. On Thursday, there's the Chris Ryan group chat with many of our staffers. And check out the Bill Simmons podcast. Also always has a lot of hoops. Thank you for listening. Bye.