Loading summary
Transcript77 lines
- [00:01]
Ad
Today's episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24. 7 that is definitely true for us over here. Sometimes 25. 7 it feels like so when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. Here's how it works. LinkedIn helps you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. You can either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs do get about three times more qualified applicants, but that means you're getting qualified candidates. And at the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Because based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. So find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com TSS that's LinkedIn.com TSS to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
- [01:20]
Discover Ad
As we head into the playoffs, it's safe to assume there will be a few calls made by the refs that will be hard to accept. But you know what isn't hard to accept? Discover. Believe it or not, Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. You heard that right, 99%. So make a good call for your wallet and get Discover. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. Learn more at discover.com creditcard.
- [01:47]
Apple Card Ad
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apply for Apple Card today and start earning up to 3% daily cash back on everyday purchases. And that daily cash can even grow automatically when you open a high Yield savings account through Apple Card. What are you waiting for? Visit Apple Co Card Calculator today to see how much daily cash you can earn. Subject to credit approval Savings available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility Savings in Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA member FDIC terms and more@applecard.com come.
- [02:31]
Dave Dufour
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, more bad news for the Mavericks, Shea and the Thunder both get to 50 and Sean Hyken from Rose Garden Report comes on to talk about the Trailblazers and their recent run. Good morning, everybody. Good morning.
- [02:49]
Esperaheny
S. Morning.
- [02:50]
Dave Dufour
Man, kind of a bummer Monday night. The schedule was not great. A lot of guys missing, not. Not great games, and then we. We got so many injuries.
- [03:03]
Esperaheny
God, March basketball. Yeah, yeah.
- [03:06]
Dave Dufour
You know, it's. Everyone's just trying to get to the playoffs healthy. That's what you hear, right? But we've got this tight playoff race, so it's not like guys can sit out. Every game really matters right now. And last night, here's everyone who left the game with an injury. Jaren Jackson Jr, Tyrese Maxey, Kyrie Irving, Gary Payton II, Justin Edwards, Keyshawn George, and Jaden Hardy. That's a bad Monday night.
- [03:32]
Esperaheny
That's incredible. I mean, in a bad way. In a terrible way that. I mean, like, injuries suck. They're the worst part of it. It's just part of the way the NBA works, unfortunately. But, yeah, bad Monday night.
- [03:44]
Dave Dufour
And let's start with the Kyrie Irving injury. Kyrie was going up for a layup in the blowout loss to the Sacramento Kings last night, and it looked like hyperextended his knee. He then stayed on the court, you know, laid down for a while, grabbing that knee for a while, got up, shot the free throws. Obviously, first thing that comes to mind, you start thinking about Kobe when he tore his Achilles, you know, and shot the two free throws. But, man, I was watching the video of that, and I noticed, man, he had tears in his eyes. And so, you know, as of right now, like, we don't know what the injury is, it feels bad. You know, when you. When you see a guy like. Like Kyrie Irving standing there with. Again, with tears in his eyes while he's shooting the free throws. So obviously, you know, our heart goes out to Kyrie, but this Mavs team feels a little bit snake bitten.
- [04:34]
Esperaheny
Yeah, man, my heart goes out to Mavs fans also. I mean, like, obviously, Kyrie is having an incredible season. I think it was worthy of an all star nod. He got the all Star nod being being able to, like, be an all NBA type of guy for them this season. Really, really excellent. Just all around, really leading this Mavericks team. And so for him to go down with injury, it's like, what else do the Mavericks fans have to deal with? You know, ticket price is going up, and you got Luka Doncic and no, even on a serious note, like, there's just so much happening in Mav's world, right? Now where you can't help but feel bad for every single aspect of it. And then you got to wake up every day reminding yourself that Luka Doncic also got traded from this team. It's tough. Really, really tough.
- [05:18]
Dave Dufour
Yep. And still no update on the injured guys. Anthony Davis, Daniel Gaffer, Derek Lively. So, yeah, hopefully that coming this week. So we'll keep an eye on Dallas and. And hopefully, you know, hopefully Kyrie avoided. Yeah. Anything bad. But as of right now, we. We don't know. It just looked bad. There was some basketball last night that. That was good. Even though Houston. Everyone was out for Houston. No Shanghun, no Fred Van Vliet. I mean, they started Reed shepherd in his first NBA start last night against the Oklahoma City Thunder. And look, the Thunder took advantage. Shea Gilbert Alexander took advantage. Shay scored 51 points. Oklahoma City gets to 50 wins. No other team in the west even has 40 wins right now. S. Yeah, that's kind of sick.
- [06:03]
Esperaheny
So I have a bunch of OKC stats right now. The first one, I have to say sga, by the way, to our conversation about most offensive player, best offensive player yesterday. SGA has the most 20 point games, most 30 point games, most 40 point games, and most 50 point games this season. So he's doing it all, which is unbelievable, but on a team perspective. So the 5015 Club, I'm making a new club here, right? Phil Jackson said 4020. Let's do 50 15. The Cavs did it the other day. Thunder now just did it. And before this season, there were 20 teams that made the 5020 club. Basically, 80% of those teams made it to at least the conference finals. Ten of them made the finals, and eight of them won the championship. So if you're in that group, you have about a 40% chance of winning the NBA championship, which is pretty good. One other stat about the Thunder. So they're now 11 games ahead of the second seed in the Western Conference, which is crazy, unreal. The differential, the gap that they've created for themselves in the west, it's absurd. But there are a lot of teams that have done that in history. Actually 19 since the 1979, 1980 season, which is the year Larry Bird and Magic Johnson came into the league. Only 19 teams have done it since then. Sixteen of those 19 teams have won the NBA championship. And all of those teams have either made it to the conference finals or made it to the finals. So Thunder fans, like, this is a pretty good indicator for what might happen in June, because the odds are in your favor that this Thunder team probably makes its way to the conference finals. Probably makes its way to the finals. And most of the time teams that are this dominant win the championship that.
- [07:56]
Dave Dufour
I mean, listen, I feel like this is just a different era. It is and it definitely is. They've got to have some, some scheduling luck come playoff time, you know.
- [08:08]
Sean Hyken
Yeah.
- [08:08]
Dave Dufour
I still think Denver is. And they gotta be healthy.
- [08:10]
Esperaheny
Right.
- [08:11]
Dave Dufour
And they got to be healthy too. Right. And you know, knock on wood, so far, since they got healthy, everyone looks to be, you know, doing okay. Before we move on from this game, let's talk about Reed shepherd. Because this was a guy coming into the season. I, I had people telling me, you know, this is like Mark Price mixed with, you know, Allen Iverson or, you know, just giving me just a lot of hyperbole about him. I, I watched some of his stuff. I, I've seen his tape. I mean, obviously the guy is good. I, I watched that, the clips from the 49 point Glee game. I mean, he can play. Yeah, I, I saw a guy who looks like he belonged on an NBA court.
- [08:45]
Esperaheny
Yeah, I mean, I, I wish that this becomes more opportunity for him at the NBA level. I think he definitely has an ability to score the ball. I mean, the defensive side of it will absolutely have to come along, but I, it's just hard to see him getting consistent run in Houston with the way that this team is progressing. There's so many guys on there and Cam Whitmore had a good game tonight and that's another guy who's kind of like in and out of their rotation depending on how healthy they are. Just a team that like this is not for this season but for obviously for this summer and moving forward. Some sort of consolidation, trade. Because these guys clearly need opportunity. They clearly are good enough to do so. And Reid is chief among them.
- [09:25]
Dave Dufour
Yeah, I mean, they've got, again, they've got a bunch of guys that are good enough to be in rotation or starters in a lot of places, similar to Portland and their situation we're going to talk about with Sean Hyken here in a few minutes. Let's talk about Memphis. They lost their third consecutive game on a game winner to the opponent. And in this game they actually lost Jaren Jackson Jr. To this ankle injury that we talked about at the top of the show. So we don't know how long he's going to be out, if he's going to miss some time. But they have just been scuffling lately. They're, you know, they're falling down the Standings as the Lakers and the Nuggets have risen up. And Desmond Bain had maybe the worst two minutes of his career that I've seen in the NBA. You know, he has an awful travel that gets called. So a big turnover there gives, gives Atlanta a chance to tie the game and then his pocket gets picked by Dyson Daniels and they give up the game winning layup at the other end for Caris Lavert. And again this is just three straight losses on game winners for, for Memphis. They gotta tighten up, man. It's, it's getting, getting less.
- [10:28]
Esperaheny
I mean look they, they didn't have jaw and Jaren got hurt. So all those caveats but at the same time like you gotta be able to close out these games regardless if you have, if you're touting the depth that you have, the versatility that you have with the Grizzlies, like you gotta be able to close out these games. And I think the, the fourth quarter execution has been something we've talked about a few times with this team where when the game gets a little bit slower, when the fast break transition offense isn't always accessible to them, they kind of just get stuck in the mud. And so that doesn't work well in the postseason. That's a question you got to have moving forward. And I think it's a fair question to have with this Grizzlies team even at full strength. Hopefully Jaren is healthy. Hopefully it's not that big of an ankle issue and they can get fully healthy for the playoffs. But as you said, like they're fourth in the west right now and they could potentially end up being fifth. They're only a game and a half behind the Grizz, the Rockets for that.
- [11:24]
Dave Dufour
So warriors, they pick up a win last night. They're 8 and 1 with Jimmy Butler out there. This is a team that's, that's on its way up. I mean look, there's, there's a scenario.
- [11:33]
Esperaheny
Things can change really quickly.
- [11:35]
Dave Dufour
Yeah, the warriors could maybe be the 4 seed by the time we get to the playoffs. You know, we, we only got 20 games left, but with the way things work, if Jaren misses any time. Yeah, that's going to be really tough for, for the Grizzlies to cover up for. So you know, we got to keep an eye on that, guys. Stick around after the break. Sean Hyken here to talk about our Trailblazers and how good of a job Chauncey Billups has been doing coaching them up. The Portland Trailblazers have become one of our favorite stories of the season. And we wanted to dig a little bit deeper into how things have turned around for them. So I got my good buddy Sean Hyken from the Rose Garden Report to stop in after the game last night. Sean, how's it going, man? Been a while.
- [12:32]
Sean Hyken
Doing all right, Dave, how about you? It's good to be with you, you know.
- [12:34]
Dave Dufour
Great. This show is a lot of fun and so are the Trailblazers. This was an unexpected season or this has been an unexpected season. If you would have told me before the season started that they would be. That the Blazers would be a half game back of the Suns in the standings at the beginning of March, Number one, I would say, wow, they're making a playoff push. That's impressive. I'm wrong there. The sun stinks. But number two, I would say, wow, things have gone very right for the Trailblazers, and I didn't even know they were going to put a competent team on the court. They've been so much fun to watch. They've been so good. What's. What's triggered this, I think.
- [13:14]
Sean Hyken
I mean, I'm with you. If you had told me that on March 3rd, when we're recording this, they would be closer to the play in than they were to any realistic chance at landing Cooper Flag, which was absolutely their goal going into the season was to be with the Charlottes and the Washingtons and the Utahs. Like that was their plan going in. They just have too many good basketball players, I think, to be able to do that. And it's not just, you know, some of the veterans that a lot of people think they should have traded at the deadline, like the Anthony Simonses and the Jeremy Grant. It's a lot of their young guys that are the guys that they're building around long term, whether that's, you know, Denny Avdia, who they traded for over the summer, or Tumani Kamara or Scoot Henderson, who's really started to put it together the last couple of months after what was a pretty rough rookie season and first part of this season, he started to really, I think, turn a corner in a way that I, I know people in the organization think he's made some real steps. And then, you know, the shade and sharp thing has been kind of up and down, but he's been playing really well on this road trip. So it's the young guys that are driving a lot of these wins. And I think that's the thing that the organization is looking at and saying, you know, this is really encouraging that, like it's not just they're winning a bunch of games because they have some veterans who are probably not going to be here long term, but.
- [14:28]
Dave Dufour
Yeah.
- [14:28]
Sean Hyken
And so it's messing with their lottery odds. It's not really that type of thing going on.
- [14:32]
Dave Dufour
It's a lot of the young, real internal growth.
- [14:34]
Sean Hyken
Yes, exactly. And also, you know, a move that they made last summer that I think a lot of people saw as pretty risky, which was that trade for Denny Avdia, which you don't really see teams that are in the category of rebuilding teams.
- [14:48]
Dave Dufour
Right.
- [14:48]
Sean Hyken
Give up draft capital to bring somebody in. But they looked at Abdia as somebody who a, you know, is on a really good contract for what, you know, for whatever that's worked, but also somebody that they felt like positionally fits with the other young guys that they've had, is young enough. He's just turned 24 earlier this year and skill wise, like, they felt like there was still some upside there. Like maybe eventually there's even like some fringe all star upside there. And they brought him in. And that move has worked out about as well as they could have hoped for it. I think him and Kamara have been their two best players this season overall, just like across the board. So, you know, yeah, there's a. This time last year, if you had asked me, like, what the Blazers have to be excited about at all, I would have probably not really had a lot to give you because so many of their young guys were either injured, like Shaden Sharp missed a lot of last season with an injury. And then Scoot was pretty rough for a lot of last year. This year, you look at it, there's a lot of stuff, I think for them to be excited and to be encouraged out.
- [15:42]
Esperaheny
So let's actually focus on a couple of these young guys. Scoot is the guy that I think most people will come to and say, all right, well, an inconsistent start to his career, but is starting to figure things out at the point guard level. We, me and Dave have talked about this before where it's like, it's so hard to be a point guard in the NBA. And so that learning curve for Scoot has been there. What have your impressions been of his second year and sort of how he's got his legs under him now?
- [16:09]
Sean Hyken
Well, he's just kind of gotten to a point where he's a little bit more sure of what he's doing when he's out there. Like, he's not. It doesn't feel like he's like making, you know, he's like jumping, you know, going for a layup or something and like making a decision midair whether what he's gonna do. Like it feels like that whole process has slowed down and kind of to your point about how, you know, the point guard position is hard to learn, I think he also. And I think if you gave any of the people involved in this truth serum at this point with what we've seen, I think they'd probably tell you that he's been at. Put in kind of a disadvantage. Like a dis. At a disadvantage because the ignite was just not a good. I mean you're seeing with a lot of the Ignite guys, like, you know, totally. Kaminga is still kind of doesn't exist anymore.
- [16:51]
Esperaheny
Right, right.
- [16:51]
Sean Hyken
There's like they shut that thing down for a reason. Like you're starting to see like a lot of the Ignite guys, even the guys like Scoot and like Jalen Green and Kaminga and like some of the guys that were like top 10 picks. It doesn't really come around right away. And you know, there was this kind of similar talk about guy about those guys earlier on in their careers. But Scoot for sure, really, it's been, it's been like almost two months at this point that Scoot has mostly been pretty good. So I think you, at this point you have to start to think he's not just having a hot streak of shooting or whatever. Like he's actually started to take some steps.
- [17:21]
Discover Ad
Right.
- [17:22]
Dave Dufour
What does that mean for. For their team? Like the roster. Right. Like the construction of the team. When you have these, all of these young guys and you mentioned, I mean the age ranges. I mean you've got Scoot and then you've got Denny Advia and, and Deandre Ayton who are in their mid-20s. I mean it, it just seems like the window here. I mean maybe that's the goal is to create a team that. That is a little bit more intergenerational and you've got, you know, varying contract types and sizes. I. I'm not sure. Like, do you have any insight there into what, you know, all of these young guys showing so much promise could. Could really mean for them?
- [17:58]
Sean Hyken
Well, they're, they at this point they just, you know, this is the, this is year two of the post Dame kind of rebuild. What's kind of ironic about this is the team they have right now would have been an awesome team to put around Dame. Like you put, you put Dame with like Kamara Avdia Shaden Sharp, you know.
- [18:17]
Esperaheny
Oh my God, all these guys.
- [18:18]
Sean Hyken
That would have been probably the best team that Dame has had since the, you know, lamarcus Aldridge between Robin Lopez, like, like that team. But they basically, this front office has basically just the whole way prioritized, big athletic wings that can defend and play multiple positions. That's, that's pretty much just the type of guys that they go for. Whether it's Kamara, who they wanted in that trade with Phoenix, or Abdia who they just gave up a bunch to, to get. Those are just kind of the guys that they've gone after and they feel like, you know, you can find shooting other ways or you can find, you know, some of the.
- [18:54]
Esperaheny
Develop it.
- [18:54]
Sean Hyken
Right, right. Or you can, I mean, right. You know, you look at, you know, Scoot has been a good shooter for the last couple of months and they're, you know, he's been, he's been working on his shot. Then, you know, Tomone Kamara, who, you know is known in his rookie season more as a defensive guy, wasn't really doing a whole lot on offense. He's become a pretty solid three point shooter this year too. And you know, Avdia, you know, the way he can kind of get downhill and you know, pressure the rim and do stuff like that, like they have, you know, a lot of that stuff. It's, it's one. It's an interesting thing. Dave, you're talking about like the team building thing. The way they've gone about this rebuild has been pretty interesting to me. And you know, you can land wherever you want to land on whether you think this is the you would take or you think this is the right approach. But when they've done these deals, whether it was the Dame trade or some of these other ones that they've done, they didn't go into them saying we want to just get as many draft picks as possible and just have as many lottery tickets as possible. The way that like Oklahoma City did or the way that like Utah is or, you know, you're starting to see like Charlotte start to do that a little bit now. They went into it saying we want players and we want players that are of a certain type and of a certain skill set, of a certain age range, of a certain like salary contract type so that we can start actually building a basketball team instead of just saying, hey, we have all these future draft picks and maybe one day some of them will turn into something and maybe some of them won't. But that's kind of been the approach that they've, that they've Taken. And you're starting to see more. More of their gambles on this kind of stuff have hit the knot. And that's kind of why you're starting to see them have these results that they've had.
- [20:28]
Dave Dufour
It's almost an ethical rebuild. I was like, you're not selling a fake future. Right. Like, I'm not doing the thing where, you know, like, the. A salesmen right now that are going around telling you about how AI is going to make all your dreams come true and be your girlfriend and all these things. Right. So, you know what we see with a lot of teams, you know, I mean, for instance, the Washington Wizards, they haven't even tear down.
- [20:53]
Sean Hyken
They still have, like, Kuzma, but, like, they still have, like, Brogdon that they. I guess Brogdon's going off or whoever. But the, the. The way I kind of have been telling it to people over the last couple of, you know, six weeks or so since they've started winning unexpectedly. And there have certainly been a lot of people here in town that are saying, like, oh, well, they're messing up the tank. This isn't the best thing for the team.
- [21:15]
Esperaheny
That's exactly what I was gonna ask.
- [21:18]
Sean Hyken
Here's my thing. Last year they won 21 games.
- [21:23]
Dave Dufour
Yeah.
- [21:23]
Sean Hyken
And they fell back three spots in the lottery and got the seventh pick. The year before that, they won 33 games and didn't really pull the plug on the season until like, the last month of the season and they moved up to the third pick in the lottery. Yeah. And there's.
- [21:37]
Esperaheny
There's no rhyme or reason.
- [21:40]
Sean Hyken
The last. The last two years in a row, Detroit had the worst record of the league and moved back to fifth. So it's like if you're, you know, if you're a team like Washington. Yeah. Like, objectively and mathematically. Yeah. What they're doing is probably the quote, unquote, best way to build a team. But they better hit on the lottery, they better get Cooper Flag or Dylan Harper, or else they're just going to be doing this the losers path.
- [22:00]
Dave Dufour
I don't like it. I don't like it. I like what Portland's doing.
- [22:04]
Sean Hyken
The same.
- [22:04]
Dave Dufour
That's right. Having good players is actually a good thing. You know, you teach winning culture that way. They don't. They don't roll, roll out there with a bunch of losers. And I do want to start talking about them not being losers like Chauncey Billups said they might be if they had gone back out on the court. This has now been a couple of months. But s brought this to my attention actually. Yeah, Chauncey Billups called these guys losers because they kind of, they rolled over. And since that time, this is when we've watched them go on this run. And you know, I've been critical in the, in the years past about the job that Chauncey Billups has done coaching the team. I gotta tip the cap he has been doing. He's pushing all the right buttons. The rotations have been very good. I liked some of the experimental things that he's doing. So I mean, talk to me about Chauncey Billups who is now like a.
- [22:59]
Esperaheny
Really good coach also extension eligible.
- [23:01]
Dave Dufour
Right.
- [23:02]
Esperaheny
Last year's contract on.
- [23:03]
Sean Hyken
So to, for just for people in the audience who maybe don't know the exact thing that you guys are referring to, at the beginning of November they lose a game by 45 to Memphis. And afterwards Chauncey gets up in front of us at the podium and says that what he told the team in the locker room was that if you don't, is it, is it if you slept well tonight, you're a loser. So like he says that he, that's not like, oh, sources say that he did like he said that on the record to us that he told the team. And so if that's the version of it that he told us, like you can imagine the version of it that he gave them. Yep, I, more than one, you know, I, I had some. I was, I was seriously wondering whether he was going to survive that home stand, like if they had lost the next couple of games. I was wondering if Nate Bjorkren was going to be the interim coach by the end of that week. But they won their next three games in a row and you know, I think at the minimum that kind of saved, you know, his job in the season. And then you've seen kind of the way that it's gone since then in terms of, you know, to your point, Dave, about pushing all the right buttons. You know, he took Shaden Sharpe out of the starting lineup at the beginning of, of this run that they went on and he was very honest about why. He said Shaden's a really good scorer, but he's going to be a 25 point scorer who gives up 25 points on the defensive end per game too. So he basically did that as a challenge to Shade and to be better on the defensive end. And you know, it's been a little bit up and down, but Shaden largely has responded to that. And you know, the same thing with SCOOT like early on in the season, Scoot was having a lot of the same types of issues that he had last season. And there were people around the team that were wondering, like, did they just miss on this pick? Is Scoot just never going to be, you know, a starting caliber point guard? But Chauncey, you know, stay coached him hard. He stayed on him. He said, like, you know, look, you know, what you're doing is not good enough. Scoot took it to heart. And Scoot has been really good for the last six weeks or so. And you know, I think kind of the same vein as what we were talking about earlier with Scoot, how hard it is to learn the point guard position for the first time in the NBA. It's not easy to be a head coach for the first time in the NBA either. And Chauncey's also been kind of put in. We can go through the whole list for his situation. We can go. We can go through the whole list of everything that's happened in the four years that he's been in the job. Like the Neil stuff happened like a month into his first season.
- [25:25]
Esperaheny
And then crazy to think it's been four years.
- [25:27]
Sean Hyken
And then Dame has this, you know, the surgery this first year, so they tear it down and they tank. And then the next, you know, Dame requests a trade. And then last year they have all the injuries and it's just, it's just all of this stuff. It hasn't been a really ideal situation for somebody to walk into as their first head coaching job. But I think he's come out of it. I'll, I'll, I'll say this. I do not think that he is going to be back next season. I still have, you know, that's, that's been since last April when he was going into the final guaranteed year of his contract. That's been how I felt it was going to go. I still think that's how it's going to go. But I think Chauncey has done a really good job of showing teams that, you know, maybe this situation in Portland wasn't ideal, but he made the best out of a bad situation and he's worth another look. And I think he's going to, wherever that may be, he may get another look, right?
- [26:18]
Esperaheny
He might be valuable to what they might. Another team might want to do. Also, like, you know, if you look at the life cycle of a team, like over the last four or five years, right, there have been teams in the second half of the season that make a run, right? The Grizzlies in the bubble. Then there was the, the Magic and Thunder. Last year it was the Rockets and now we're seeing the Rockets really pop off. It feels like it's the pre leap, right? And actually some of those situations ended up being a coaching change in the Rockets situation. Emo Doka coming in really helped them galvanize defensively. Do you think this is the pre leap for the Blazers where next year we're looking at a playoff team or a playing team, or is it the other way around?
- [26:58]
Sean Hyken
I think they would like that to be the case. I'll tell you this. I think after the way the last month and a half has gone, I don't think they're going to be going into next season thinking we need to tank. We need to get AJ DeBonso or we need to get whoever the top guy in the lottery is. I think they've kind of figured out that they have too many good players to be able to be as bad as you need to be in order to put yourself in the mixer or some of those guys. So whether it's a, you know, a, a coaching change is the thing that galvanizes it or I, I think they have other moves they have to make as far as, you know, roster wise. Like they got to figure out the Jeremy Grant thing because I don't.
- [27:32]
Dave Dufour
They got to consolidate.
- [27:33]
Sean Hyken
They have a lot of guys.
- [27:35]
Esperaheny
Well give more opportunity to the young guys.
- [27:37]
Sean Hyken
Right. Like if the scoot leap is real, then like you figure something out with Simons. Like they have, they have other moves that they have to make. But I think you're more likely to see kind of whatever the next level up version. And I don't know who the player is going to be, but you look at the idea of what they did last summer with Denny Obdia where they said, we identify this guy as somebody that we think fits with what we want to do and we think he can help us and we're willing to even give up what people think might be, quote unquote, too much to give up for a guy, whatever, like the next level up whenever, like the, you know, fringe star version of that is. I think it's more likely that they try to go for something like that than it is that they say, well, we need to tank for another year and we need to get another high lottery pick because I just don't think that's realistic for them at this point.
- [28:22]
Dave Dufour
Also, it's Portland, man. You feel the competitive team people show up. You don't have to have championship or bus celebration.
- [28:28]
Esperaheny
Fairly similar to another team that I cover.
- [28:31]
Dave Dufour
Exactly. You can read him over at the Rose Garden. Report Report Sean Hyken, my buddy. Thanks for hanging out with us. Appreciate you. That's going to do it for today's show, folks. For Sean Hyken and Esperaheny, I'm Dave Dufour and this has been the NBA Daily. Thanks for waking up with us.
- [29:13]
Discover Ad
As we head into the playoffs, it's safe to assume there will be a few calls made by the refs that will be hard to accept. But you know what isn't hard to accept? Discover. Believe it or not, Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. You heard that right, 99%. So make a good call for your wallet and get Discover. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. Learn more at discover.com credit card this.
- [29:38]
Aura Ad
Podcast is brought to you by Aura. Imagine waking up to find your bank account drained, bills for loans you never took out, a warrant for your arrest. All because someone stole your identity. Hackers aren't waiting. Why are you? That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Your personal data is a goldmine for hackers and Aura helps lock it down. Aura monitors the dark Web, blocks data brokers from selling your information, includes a VPN for private browsing and a password manager to secure your accounts before criminals break in. For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free@aura.com safety that's aura.com safety to sign up and start protecting yourself and your loved ones. That's a U r a.com safety terms apply. Check the site for details.
- [30:32]
Sean Hyken
Acast powers the world's best podcasts.
- [30:35]
Discover Ad
Here's a show that we recommend.
- [30:39]
Paige Desorbo
Hey guys. Welcome to Giggly Squad, a place where we make fun of everything but most importantly ourselves. I'm Paige desorbo. I'm Hannah Berner. Welcome to the squad. Giggly Squad started on Summer House when we were giggling during an inappropriate time. But of course we can't be managed. So we decided to start this podcast to continue giggling. We will make fun of pop culture news. We're watching Fashion trends pep talks where we give advice, mental health moments and games and guests. Listen to Giggly Squad on Acast or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:11]
Discover Ad
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
- [31:17]
Sean Hyken
Acast.com.