NBA Sends CLEAR MESSAGE With Schedule Release | Lakers vs Clippers for LA Dominance
It is locked on NBA Game Night for the night of Tuesday, August 12th. On today’s show, more details on the NBA’s opening week schedule and a strong signal of who the league thinks might be the next face of the league. Plus, who’s better, the Lakers or the Clippers. All of that and more on today’s Locked On NBA Game Night. When that final buzzer rings, you know it’s time for Locked On Game Night. All the postgame reactions to every game across the league every single night with insights only the hosts at Locked On can provide. It’s the true NBA fans one stop for all the action every game, every night. It’s Locked on NBA Game Night, tipping off now. Hello and welcome to an offseason edition of Locked on NBA Game Night. Wes Goldberg here with Tony East, however you might be tuning in on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for making Locked on NBA your first listen every day. Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is around the corner. or visit FanDuel today and start planning your future bets now. Jam-packed show for you today. The Lakers and Clippers go headto-head and the Celtics have a new person in charge. But let’s start with the latest on the NBA schedule. The league officially announced the schedule for opening night. Tony, we’ve got uh Christmas that’s out there, opening week is out there. Martin Luther King Day is out there. Um as well as some other games from the opening week slate. Um, so look, we already knew the opening night and and Christmas games from Shams last week, but the NBA announced that the national games for the second and third nights of the regular season game, uh, regular season will be Cavs at Knicks and Spurs at Mavericks on the second night and then Thunder versus your Pacers and Nuggets at Warriors on the third night. Tony, did the NBA get their opening week right? Yes. Finals rematch has well okay so the one game like the Pacers are ironically the team that’s like well you know the finals rematch has to be there but certainly has lost a lot of the shine but yeah two of the first three days they’ve got Steph playing they have Joic playing we’ll talk about this but lot of flag today on these released games a lot of Cooper flagyama and the NBA’s new favorite game Wes Cavs versus Knicks the only two East teams they seem to care about at all are playing Yep on Christmas and during the opening week slate, which to be clear is the only two East teams that anybody has any like real confidence is going to be good. There’s a lot of teams that should be very good, but clearly from a TV perspective, we see where the NBA feels and I agree with them. So, I think it’s the teams and games I would have roughly expected. Maybe a Bucks could have snuck in there. Maybe a second Lakers would have been there. But given the popularity thing and the has to have the finals rematch game. Yeah, this is about what I thought this would look like. Maybe plus or minus a LeBron. Yeah, the NBA is treating Cavs Knicks like a turkey club sandwich. It’s just like, yeah, when in doubt, just order that when it, you know, it’ll be fine. You know, it’ll just be fine. Um, they don’t really know what else is on the menu here. There’s no other East teams at all except for the reigning Eastern Conference champions because they have to do it. That’s it. They literally have to put them on. Um, yeah. I So, quickly, the MLK slate, also Milwaukee at Atlanta, OKC at Cleveland, uh, Dallas at New York. So, again, your two Eastern Conference teams get to play other teams. Uh, evidently, uh, and Boston at Detroit. Um, very disappointing to me personally. I mean, I get that. I get why, but that Memphis is on the overseas trip and doesn’t get to host an MLK game. That’s a little like it’s weird. It’s weird. It’s weird. Is it an oversight? I don’t know. You end up with Boston and Dallas and like look, I nothing says Martin Luther King Day like Cooper Flag and the Celtics in prime time, I guess. But that was a little weird. Um, look, I I did like a quick little tally of the teams that they’ve featured the most um on their sort of prime time marquee slates. Opening day, opening night, opening night, opening week, Christmas, and MLK. Uh, the Thunder are featured three times, the Warriors are featured three times, the Mavericks are featured three times, the Lakers twice, the Spurs twice, Denver twice. So, you look at the three teams that are featured three times. Shay Gilders Alexander and the reigning champion Thunder, Cooper Flag and the Dallas Mavericks and Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors. Steph obviously makes sense. Steph CS uh OKC makes a ton of sense. Shel just Alexander, they’re the reigning champs. They deserve as many marquee games and everything that comes with it as possible. Dallas to me is a little interesting though. I get it. They are they serly they they clearly see star potential in Cooper Flag here. But to me, I look at the teams that the league is featuring, they are clearly prioritizing the usual suspects, whether it’s Steph Curry and LeBron James, but they’re also pushing two players, I think, in a very new way in Shay Gildas Alexander, who’s 27 years old, been along around for a long time, but newly minted MVP, newly minted champion. It kind of feels like the league is finally just sort of shrugging their shoulders and saying, I guess we’ll recognize that this guy is pretty good, and we’ll put him on a bunch of national TV games. And then obviously Cooper Flag who appears to be the great white hope I I guess. Yeah. I mean they always try to do this Zion Webby Flag. Like if they think he got a chance to be a him dude like get him out there a lot. Let people see him. If people want to come back to it that’s great. The ratings will show it. So this was obviously going to happen. I think they’ll hope that he’s any good, right? Because for example Zion was on all the time. The Pelicans, you never see them now. That did not go well. He was hurt. They weren’t any good. But the opposite happened with Minnesota where they like soft launched Anthony Edwards and everybody’s like, “Oh, watching this dude is awesome.” And they’re in that group of two, I believe, right? They play opening week and they’re Oh, no. They’re on the Peacock exclusive. That’s what they’re saying, right? That’s not technically marquee, but the NBA wants it to be marquee, but still like they’re they use an a good amount. He’s on Christmas, right? So, that’s kind of the paths it can go. just looking at like recent top picks who are had a chance to be, you know, grabbing the hearts of fans and, you know, Flag’s already good, right? So, I think that it has a good shot to go pretty well. It obviously went very well with WBY. He’s on TV all the time and has international appeal. So, you know, I obviously the NBA would like to have another young American stud, right? And so, if they can put him in front of everybody, I get why they’re going to do it. I thought there’d be more We WBY than Flag because let’s be real, like WebM is that dude now. But I’m that’s what I was most surprised by that they were immediately ready to shift gears to Cooper fly that maybe not isn’t totally I’m not taking away but to give like the Spurs might legitimately be pretty good. Right. Right. Dearan Fox Victor Wemanyama there’s some depth there. I think maybe we’re a little bit too uh soon on some of the people are saying Spurs playoff team. That might be a little bit too early for me. But do we know Dallas is going to be any good? Like I think Cooper Flag is awesome. I think he’s going to be good right away. I Kyrie Irving is out for maybe the entire season. He’s not going to be in any of these games for sure. Anthony Davis, we’ll see. His cornea apparently left his body. I don’t know. And he needed surgery for it. I don’t know what’s going on with that. Uh we’ll see how long he’s healthy. There’s the Derek Lively quite like we don’t know if they’re going to be any good. So, it’s one thing to have this interesting, marketable player in Cooper Flag. Uh, it’s another thing to put him on national TV and then just get smoked by one of these actually good teams. Yeah, I agree with that. And like there are always exceptions. Rookies are oftentimes not good, right? And so there will be games where he is on TV and not particularly awesome. So, it’s just a tricky balance and you got to hope it goes well. But like they also do a good job of either pitting him against another young stud like their first games against the Spurs or a team that like h they have the appeal like Steph or I forget who their MLK game is that we already talked about. There’s so many games we’re talking about today. Remember all of their MLK game was uh the Knicks at Madison. Oh yeah, there you go. Right. So then it’s like less obviously you know something like that’s less risky, right? So you can sneak that in and get away with it. Is there any teams you’re surprised to not see at all? The only one that very quickly jumps to mind is the Clippers, I guess, but not really. They’re not that popular. I mean, Philadelphia, we’re just giving up on that. We’re like that. That was a team that was routinely opening week, Christmas Day, Joel Embiid, and we’ve just And I’m not even blaming the NBA for this. I get it, right? You don’t know. They’ve officially just shut the door on Joel Embiid, right? Like, we’re just done with that whole thing now. Yeah. And then uh I mean we we know why, but they’re so popular that I wondered if there’d be Boston. No, Boston is also like, “Oh, wow.” Like, this tells you what the NBA thinks of of the Celtics this year. I guess if if I were going to make the argument on behalf of a team that maybe should have cracked into one of these games, specifically on an ABC or an ESPN night, could you have tried to push the Orlando Magic? Yeah, maybe so. uh given that they have a potential superstar in Palo Beno. Detroit has the same arguments too, I think. But go ahead. Detroit at least has a has a MLK game, but um the magic at nothing and you would have thought I don’t know like there’s some synergy opportunities there with Disney. You could show Disney World over there in Orlando on ESPN or on ABC. Like they’re I’m surprised that they didn’t try to push that a little bit more. If you’re looking for an Eastern Conference, we know that the Knicks and the Cavs are going to be good. We know that they’re also not going to be the only good teams in the East. Why not take a flyer on another East? Somebody else has got to be good. And the Orlando Magic, if you just look at some of the odds makers and stuff like that, like people think they’re going to be pretty good. People still know Jaylen Brown. He won Finals MVP. People know James Harden and Kawhai. Like that I I’m think most surprised by those two from vet teams. And I think you’re right that I’m surprised they didn’t at least show us their guess for the East team that they think might might have a chance to be on some of these. Um the groupings for the inseason tournament are going to be announced on Wednesday. Then the full regular season schedule comes out on Thursday and various teams have already sort started announcing and releasing their preseason schedule. This stinks. This stinks. This setup they have the whole week of schedule release. Yes. Yeah. They they are scheduling they are scheduling announcements for an announcement. Like what what is happening? Who cares? It’s weird that Shams gets some of it but not all of it early and then some of it comes out. It the NFL does it right where they’re like here are the games. Here are the teams you’re going to be playing and then eventually they give you the order in which the games will be played. I don’t know the obviously the NBA can’t do that but this is it’s too it’s too stretched out. We got a press release that said it’s going to be on Good Morning America tomorrow. So, we’re getting a press release about an upcoming basically press release on TV. I’m like, what are we doing? What are we what is going on? Classic NBA. Layers on layers of stuff. Um, nothing. You gota You got to find your only August event. You got to find a way to make it an event, right? We’re talking about it right now. Not for much longer. Coming up next, who’s better, the Lakers or the Clippers? We do we de blah we debut a new game called NBA versus next. Today’s episode of Locked on NBA is brought to you by FanDuel. 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The best way to support the show is to subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. All right, we’re going to start a new game. This is called NBA versus Tony. I don’t know if this is going to catch on or not. I guess we’ll see how this first one goes. But the idea is here, we’re going to take a deeper look at two teams and pin them against each other head-to-head by categories. Best player, best co-star, better depth, and better coach. Then decide which team is best. Today, it’s the battle of LA. It’s the Lakers versus the Clippers. Tony, when you think about these teams, what comes to mind? Well, clearly that one is marketable and one is not. as we just said, um, old old like it’s, you know, the the Lakers are trying to not be, but a lot of I guess they’re not super old on the Lakers side, but just established talent trying to gel, right? And that’s been the story of many LeBron teams and that’s been the story of the Clippers since they traded for Paul George, right? But, uh, there’s different cast of characters this year and it’ll be fun to see. I’m really excited for these two actually. Uh, so I’m very excited for both these teams. Uh FanDuel has I think the Clippers overunder at 49 and a half and the Lakers overunder at 48 and a half. So wow, they think that both of these teams are pretty close to each other here, which makes them perfect for our first episode of NBA versus um let’s start with best player. Tony, I think this one is a pretty clear winner. But if we’re going to do the candidates for this, it would be Luka Donuch, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard. I don’t know that you would put anybody else even in that mix here. Uh, but to me it’s clearly got to be Luca. Yeah, I agree. I was trying to think of who the funniest person to make a snarky joke about would be like, “What do you Why’d you leave Chris Dunn out of there?” But I couldn’t I couldn’t think of the funniest person quick enough. Yeah, it’s Luca. And especially if the skinny stuff translates to any sort of either consistent play or more games, right? Because last year he started skinny and then got hurt so fast he just gave up on that. Right? But if he doesn’t get hurt early this year or he sticks with it regardless of any challenging circumstance, that’ll go a long way. And he was in and out last year with the Mavs that made him not as effective right away with the Lakers. Like he gets a full year of this and seeing how we can really help him. I think that will he is already the best guy like even bigger, right? So you get an extra boost there. Like Pete Kawhai is amazing. LeBron is obviously a top 10 player still, but yeah, it’s Luka. I think it’s not even close. Is there any way for LeBron or Kawawaii to actually be the better player this season outside of Luca just getting hurt? Like if LeBron game, yeah, I mean I don’t think LeBron could get there anymore. Kawawaii if he’s health if Yes. Yeah. Um gosh, man. I mean, he’s even even saying healthy Kawawaii is still like 67 games max, right? Like he just doesn’t they build in rest for him, which they should, right? I’d like to see him fully strengthened in the playoffs myself, but yeah, man. I just he s he’s so Quai is so good. Like his career has almost made him underrated when he does play to me because he became kind of an afterthought for the right reasons. Like I’m not saying it’s wrong for people to think that way. Like he is nasty good, man. He was he could be the best player on any given night and so could LeBron by the way. LeBron could totally be the better player. But I think for the balance of the season, we agree Luca Donuch. That’s why um best co-star. So obviously LeBron, I suppose, is the candidate from the Lakers. uh for the Clippers. In a weird way, you could almost say Kawhai is the co-star because you know James Harden is going to be out there. Like James Harden is the quarterback who plays all 17 games and Kawawaii is the wide receiver who might be the best receiver in the league but only plays nine of the games, you know. So, in a weird way, you could almost say that the Clippers revolve around James Harden more than they revolve around Kawhai on a day-to-day basis. I’m stretching here for the sake of interesting. I could even say that maybe the best co-star in the Clippers. Uh if if we agree that Kawawaii is the star is the best second is the second best player on the Clippers actually of each Zuba. Thank you. I was going to get there. Yes. Make the argument on total value last year. Like I could make a pretty compelling case. He was the Clippers best player over the full regular season. Yes sir. Absolutely. Uh but not for the premise of this question is not that right and I think everybody understands that. Yeah. I think uh if you line them up like who’s the best player on each team, who’s the second best player all the way down, the Lakers have the best first best player and the best second best player. Um but to do that dorky thing everybody does in the playoffs three through let’s say I don’t know 10 might tip to the Clippers. Well, that’s our next question. It’s better depth. I think that’s easily the Clippers. Easily the Clippers. Now my only concern about the Clippers are really deep. Are they too deep? because it’s what I loved about the Clippers last year was that they had a defensive identity. We’ve got Zubach, Chris Dunn, Dererick Jones Jr., that was a hell of a defensive backbone. And then obviously Kawawaii when he was out there and you look at some of the players that they added, Chris Paul, Bradley Beal, John Collins, like these guys could potentially steal minutes away from those defensive leaning guys. And I just wonder if that’s going to throw their identity a little bit too much out of whack where you end up seeing some of their minutes veer more towards the bigname guys and less towards those defensive backbone guys who I thought were super important to their success last year. Okay. So for sure playing Paul’s going to play, Beal’s going to play, Harden’s going to play, uh Zubat is going to play, Kawhi’s gonna play, and then that that that’s what was that five players I said. Then Bogdan Bogdanovich, Dererick Jones Jr., Chris Dunn, John Collins, Brook Lopez, and Nick Pat Batum all have a strong case for minutes, right? Most of those guys got added or resigned like recently. Doesn’t even count for like Young, Interesting, Kobe Brown, Cam Chris, you two aren’t good yet, but like interesting. They just drafted a kid in the back of the first round, right? Like they have lots of stuff that is one of those 11 guys is not is just not going to play, right? I don’t know which one it is. If you made me guess, I’d guess it’s Pat Batum and he just spots in and that’s fine because he’s super old. But they’re they are really deep with like actually good players, which is important because they’re so freaking old. I bet this is the highest sum of the eight of the years of service column ever on basketball reference for a team. It’s it’s crazy. Um it it’s a little it makes me a little queasy because it starts to feel a little bit like those old Doc Rivers Clippers where it was like I know who you are. Let’s sign you Paul Pierce. Um kind of things like that. But in terms of the question, there’s no question that the Clippers have more depth than the Lakers. And it is a problem I would rather have than the Lakers problem, which is uh I don’t know if they have 10 to 11 players who you would trust where the Clippers almost certainly do. Seven. Exactly. Um better coach. I think this is might be closer than people think, but I’m still going Tailoo. Uh JJ’s first playoffs was not particularly awesome. So, even if I could say like, yeah, his regular season was good. He’s very charismatic. He clearly does well for his team. Yeah, it’s Tailoo. Like, I’ve seen him do it time and time again with different resources, it’s Tailoo. Yep. And all those depth concerns that I talked about in terms of how does this do he disperse the minutes? Is it going to be, you know, how does he, you know, do all that stuff? I trust Tailoo maybe more than a lot of coaches to figure that out. He’s he’s really good with his rotation. Tyler has one big problem, Wes. What is it? The hardest task Tyoo has is to figure out how to get James Harden to play well in a game seven. And if it can’t happen, they might be in some trouble because he’s good at everything else. So, in terms of our verses, we had four categories. The Lakers took two of them and the Clippers took two of them. So, I don’t know how we break this tie. I probably should have had I should have had a tiebreaker ready to go since I made up this segment. I guess we’ll just pick which one. Um, your point is the big one. I I don’t trust James Harden in the playoffs and I don’t trust Kawhi Leonard to stay healthy. So, if I had to pick between these two teams, I think the Lakers have a higher ceiling that they could act that they could realistically get to than the Clippers just because I don’t trust them when push comes to shove. I don’t trust the Lakers rotation as much as everybody else. So, like people who cover the Lakers, so watch him more. So, they’re probably right to be clear. They all they all think Ruby’s good. Like I don’t think Ruie stinks. He’s a at least an average NBA player, but I’ve always been lower on Ruie than everybody. And so the Lakers are relying on some combination of Cleba, Ruie, Gabe Vincent, Jared Vanderbilt, Dalton Connect, maybe Bronnie, Jakeia, and DeAndre Aiden, and Marcus Smart this year. Yeah, some certainly inconsistent or banged up guys. That’s just like a lot of question marks for me. And I don’t have as many question marks with the Clippers besides just like can this old creaky team not evaporate into dust at some point. So, I’m picking the Clippers, but I think the Clippers have the lower floor because of how old they are. I took the Lakers. You took the Clippers. I don’t know what that means. I guess we’re just in the same place that we were to start the segment. There are two teams and we have opinions about them. We need a coin. We need to flip a coin. Uh, okay. Let’s flip a coin. Let’s do that. Here, I got a heads I win, tails, you lose. I have peso here. Uh, I got to figure out which one is head and which side is tails. Okay. Wait, that’s funny. I have a euro. Heads is clippers, you said. Yes. All right, let’s go. Boom. It’s Tails. I win. I could have made that up. You have no idea if I was on the huge for the Lakers. Huge. Good. That’s a good sign for Lakers fans there. Uh, meanwhile, there is a new person in charge of the Boston Celtics. We’ll talk about what it means and why the sudden change after this. Thanks for tuning to Locked on NBA Game Night. It’s time to wrap up our Tuesday night episode the way we do every week. It’s time for buy or sell. Wick Grossback is out as governor of the Celtics and Bill Chisum is in. After Grossback sold the Celtics to Chisum in March, he was expected to remain the governor through 2028, but it was announced today that instead Chisum will assume the Governor title effective immediately for the uninitiated. Governor is the NBA’s fancy word for owner. Uh buy or sell that Grusback was ne was ever going to run this team for another 3 years. Tony, let’s ask the Lakers. Let’s ask the Mavs. Let’s No. I mean, he could try, but the guy who has spent the money wins, right? And so, good congratulations to Mr. Chisum. Uh, I would also say this, this doesn’t just like August 1st, all of a sudden Bill Chisum cup, he’s like, you know what, I want to, you know, this didn’t just happen. Right. Right. And so I don’t want to like overthink this, but you always wonder what it means when a team has a dramatic offseason and then this comes out. I’m like, what what really what really has happened in the land of Boston this offseason? This is a huge deal, right? Like this is a totally different head of operations now telling you what your restrictions are, who is doing them, evaluating everybody’s job. They did just extend Joe Mazoula like a week ago, right? Like I can’t imagine this happened after that. So, it’s just all new and fresh and it’s not a bad thing by default. It could go either way. You don’t we don’t know, right? But it’s a huge deal, right? And so, I think all these owners have kind of proven their suckers with the whole like, “Yeah, I’m going to keep running the team that I don’t own.” Like, no, you’re probably not. Um, we’ll see what this actually means for the Celtics. Probably like next season, next off season. Yep. I’m I’m selling that Gross Beck was ever going to run this thing through 2028. That was ridiculous. It never happens. Go ahead. They’re ducking the tax this year for sure. Yes, 100%. Like this is happening. Expect an Anthony Simons trade at some point, I would guess. Um that’s that saves them even more money. Uh but look look, nobody sort of wants to admit it, but things are rocky for Boston right now. We have no idea if they’re going to return back to championship contention. Everybody just sort of assumes that they will when Jason Tatum comes back. But Tatum’s going to come back to a roster with Jaylen Brown and with Derek White presumably with Joe Missoula newly extended. Yeah. Okay, cool. But the thing that we were saying about the Celtics and their championship rosters was how deep they were, how many great players they had, how much talent they had. And you can’t say that anymore, right? They still have talented players, but they don’t have that depth that made them so special anymore. And so they’re just sort of right back. Even with Tatum back, I think they’re just sort of in the mix with the Knicks and with the Cavs and and whoever else sort of emerges out of the Eastern Conference and to say nothing about the competition in the Western Conference. So, um, you combine all of that with the with the your point, well, you’ve got somebody new in charge. How do they not only how do they spend, right? Will they be willing to go back over the Second Apron the way they were over the Second Apron? We don’t know to reacquire some of that talent. Um, but do they empower somebody like Brad Stevens and Joe Missoula to run the show the way that Grossback did, which I thought was one of his best traits was, you know, good owners tend to stay out of the way and let their basketball people do the basketball things, but a lot of new owners don’t like to let that happen, right? They’ve got some fresh ideas that they want to instill and and talk about. So, who knows? Like, this is a pretty rocky time, I think, for the Celtics to change hands in decision-m and ownership. Look, they had two top they still had two top 15 guys. really good, but like the take when they won the championship was like in theory people thought Derrick White was all-star caliber. Like they had five allstars, right? And Drew was not that last year and Porzingis was not that because he was sick, but they don’t they’re on a team anymore. It’s like it’s not even like they could get back to that. Like those two are gone, right? So getting to that level of talent again is possible because they have the flexibility now and they have enough picks to make trades, but it’s a lot harder, right? Brad Stevens is really good. I think they have a chance, but yeah. Yeah, they’re they’re definitely worse and getting back to that will be very challenging. Uh, moving on. I found this clip on Reddit that I want to talk to you about. So, it’s a bad start to any conversation. It is at least sports related. Um, this it’s Michael Jordan getting interviewed immediately after hitting the shot over Craig Elo to win game five first round uh of the 1989 playoffs. So, uh, Jordan hits the shot. He’s doing his signature jump and fist bump in the air and all that stuff. And so, we’ve seen that scene 100 million times. What struck me about this clip, it was taken basically from the sideline reporter, maybe the sideline cameraman behind the reporter is what I’m guessing. So, you see the shot, but you see it from like this lower sideline angle. And then Jordan is like pump fisting in the air, jumping up and down, having won this game. and the sideline reporter immediately runs out, pushes his way into the scrum of of Michael Jordan’s teammates celebrating with him and then just starts interviewing him. Tony, it’s jarring. It’s absolutely crazy. It’s about about 24 seconds go by between Jordan actually making the shot and the reporter’s first question to Michael Jordan. He pulls him away from the scrum of teammates and just starts asking him questions. Wow. It It’s absolutely insane. And and the guy the reporter almost gets taken out by multiple Bulls players. um trying to get in there. So my question to you is buy or sell bringing back sideline reporting like this. I I mean so here’s the thing. If MJ’s pissed about it, it does like it hurts the interview. But for you and I watching or any fan watching their favorite team on TV, in theory, if they are receptive to that, like the Thunder love their sideline dude for example, if that gets you the most raw in the- moment reaction, it’s better. So, it’s kind of a hard trade-off cuz like that’s a national TV game. They might not know the sideline reporters well or anything like that where it’s like there’s ways that that goes really well and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, that was the greatest sideline interview ever.” That’s how you get anything as possible from KG. Or it’s just like, oh, that ruined it. Like you interrupted a huge moment and now the celebration looks bad. So, I’ll mostly sell it like give it a little bit of a moment to breathe. Like 60 seconds is plenty. But right, I like the idea of quicker if possible just because the player says more meaningful things. I like it being live. That’s the dyn and I don’t know for the record. I have no idea if it was shown on the broadcast at the time this way. I have no idea or if this was just sort of found footage, but I like the idea of getting a live interview ready to go. Uh, versus, you know, the cutaway to the postgame guy and then it’s a commercial that somebody paid a lot of money for and then we come back to the pre-re what turns out to be the pre-recorded postgame interview and then we actually get the press conference afterwards or whatever. Getting that moment immediately after and hearing from the player live in that moment is interesting, but to your point, it’s very risky, right? Because if that shot doesn’t go in, how does that interview go? Right? Like it’s just it’s a little bit different. Also, I think I have to sell this just out of safety reasons. I I am couldn’t have a reporter just go into a scrum of seven foot basketball players and just hope for the best anymore. I don’t think that would work. Imagine after the Pacers Bucks game five, there’s like a mini brawl happening after the series. Some silent run in the middle. Oh man, you don’t want to do that. Nope. Nope. Uh last one really quick. It’s Demarcus Cousins’s birthday on August 13th. So, tomorrow Tony buy or sell that Demarcus Cousins was ever a top 10 player in the NBA. Uh, sell, man. Barely, though. He was really good, man. Like, when the Pelicans traded for him, people were like, “Oh boy, this is a huge deal.” And then that rep lasted for forever. Like, were you on the Warriors beat when everybody was like, “Oh my god, they got Boogie, too.” Like, I was there in the Bay Area. I was not yet on the official beat, but I was loosely covering the team. It was crazy. Yeah, people were like, “Oh man.” And then he That was funny because he went unsigned and we were like, “Ah, he’s kind of washed, sort of done, whatever.” And then he signs with Golden State. We’re like, “This is unfair.” It’s just like, “Yeah, that was that was ridiculous.” Um, like the Kings dude who could put up like 50 and 20 like once a month. He was close. He was definitely close. He was close. I’m going to sell it out of and I mean no disres. It was so close. I’m He’s probably like 11, 12, 13. But like this is the difference between having kind of watched it and lived it and the and just kind of looking at the stats. He was fourth in scoring in 2016 and yet I don’t think anybody would ever say yeah there’s there’s not 10 players I would rather have over Cousins just because of some of the other concerns with him. basketball references uh uh awards thing does not show that he ever got MVP votes. So that’s probably telling that he was not quite there. Yes, he made second team all NBA, but that was in the era of positions where he just had to be the second best center, not a top 10 player. So yeah, no real indicator from voters even at the time that he was a top 10 player, but god was he like you’d walk away from some games be like, “Oh my god, that dude’s unstoppable.” And I I I saw him plenty in Sacramento when I lived in the Bay Area. I used to make the drive up there and yeah, there was just nights where you’re like, “Oh my god.” But did any player ever benefit more from the positioned AllNBA teams more than DeAndre Jordan? Cuz there was just like a center slump for a while and it felt like he made a hundred AllNBA teams. You made that first team one year, I think. He did in 2017. You know who massively benefited? First all NBA finisher one year, Al Jefferson, who legitimately made an allNBA team. Good for him.
The NBA announced its schedule for opening week, as well as MLK Day. Did they get the schedule right, and what message are they sending with the teams and players they are choosing to showcase? Wes Goldberg and Tony East discuss the schedule before diving into the latest concerning the Boston Celtics ownership change. Also on today’s show: NBA “Versus” featuring the Lakers and Clippers.
0:00 Intro
1:30 NBA schedule details
11:30 Whose better: Lakers or Clippers?
23:00 Celtics ownership change
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2 comments
Cringe 7:19
"An actual good team" talking against the Mavs is wild, and I hate the Mavs