And now below. Welcome to the low post podcast recording Monday at 1 30 p.m. Where about 90 minutes ago, we just got the news that Kevin Durant has suffered an MCL injury, his third MCL injury in five and a half years, all of which all three of which look similar with players, Sazzaa Petchulia in 2017, Jimmy Butler last night in Miami. And I can't remember who last year on the pelicans all rolling into Durant's knee or leg and causing knee issues.
He will be reevaluated in two weeks, which means that's not mean does not mean that he'll be back playing basketball in two weeks just that he'll be reevaluated in two weeks. This could be a month could be three weeks. If things are going good for the Nets, I could see an outside chance and I'm saying let's just wait till after the all-star break. Tim Bontemps, Eastern Conference guru.
How are you? Well, Zach, how are you man? I'm good. The Nets are 27 and 13, one game back at the Celtics in the East.
So they have built themselves a cushion. They have built themselves a cushion to absorb a blow like this. And Durant is about as big of a blow as you could suffer. He has arguably been the best player in the league this year.
One of the favorites for most valuable player. The Nets are team jump shooting. They don't offense rebound. They don't get to the rim.
They don't get to the line. Because they have one of the greatest, well, two of the greatest pull-ups. The best one is Kevin Durant, the guy who's seven feet tall. He's going to be injured for some amount of time.
Now if this is 10 games, I don't really care. 10 games is like, it's the same thing with Curry. You'll go five and five. You'll figure out a way to win.
Kyrie will step up. The Nets have to rely on Kyrie Irving now, Tim. See about that for a second. Got to be the rock of the franchise for a little bit.
It'd be interesting. And Ben Simmons who shot a free throw the other day. Joe Harris will have to step up. He's been, eh, Seth Curry will have to play consistently.
You know, maybe Cantamas gets free, refreed. Like free Cantamas. But the Nets for the season are plus six with Durant on the floor, minus two with Durant off the floor. You isolate the numbers when Kyrie and Simmons are on the floor and Durant is off the floor.
They're minus one per 100 possessions. They have nothing at the rim. No offense rebounds. No free throws.
Team jump shot. The whole concede of it doesn't quite fall apart but falls apart somewhat wabbles, wiggles, sometimes tumbles without Durant. But if it's 10 games, fine. This is why you go 27 to 13.
You know, maybe you fall to third or fourth and then you climb back up and blah, blah, blah. And if it's 10 games, you're the straw poll guy. Durant's only missed one game this season. If it's 10 games, he could still win the MVP fair or not.
I feel like if you get to 70 in this day and age, you lose almost no MVP points. Yeah, I would say if it's 10 games, but I mean, 10 games is basically three weeks. It seems like that would be as bad as you see. Yeah, I mean, they play that gets them basically to February 1st.
They play another one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight games the first two weeks of February going into the all-star break. It seemed to me if it's even remotely close, that it would be better to just give Durant the extra time. And even if he misses an extra five or six games, if you give him six weeks off to rent, he'll rest and recover through the all-star game and come back at the end of February. I mean, for a guy that we saw wear down last year that has missed, as you pointed out, one game this year, he's played 36 minutes a night every game.
He's been incredible all season. I'm going to be really interested to see how the Nets manage that because, yeah, look, if he misses three weeks, he's got an okay chance of winning MVP still. I think both the and staff are probably going to fall in the same boat when they both missed a little too much time to really end up being able to win because they're both going to miss some more games. I assume Kevin's going to miss some more games after this.
I would imagine they'd be pretty cautious with him coming back, which is a shame because when I did the first ruffle, literally starting a month ago today, there were seven eight guys who had pretty damn good fantasies for the award. And as we see every year, you have to both be really lucky and really good because you have to be able to stay on the court and in both step and Durant's cases, these were completely fluke random injuries that could happen to anybody and just won't just so happen to happen to them. Yeah. And this again, this is the third one just like this for Durant, who also in between two of three had been a killies tear and it was a lot of games.
And this is one of the reasons why I think some teams notably Toronto, who we're going to talk about later, were not just frothing at the mouth to put every last thing in to get Kevin Durant this summer when he was only pseudo available anyway. Like I don't know how serious the Nets actually were in trying to trade Kevin Durant during his trade request period. But he averaged 45 games the last two years. They didn't play the year before that he's not getting any younger.
He gets hurt here and there. He seems to grow unhappy, although he's been very, very happy lately. Winning tends to make people happier. Winning is not a 20.
He's pretty good. And then that's been winning 18 out of 20. I mean, they've been the best team in the NBA in the last six weeks period, a championship contender, absolute stone cold championship contender. If they keep playing like this, the if the other shoe, the anvil that always hovers over this franchise, I think we all were, we were all envisioning something else.
And certainly no one ever wants to see a player of Kevin Durant's caliber. Any player get hurt. But Kevin Durant was on, I mean, I had a whole 15-minute monologue about how brilliant the guy has been this season. He's been incredible.
But if it's 20 games, and the past two MCL injuries have been about 20 games for KD, what was reported today that there's optimism around Durant and the Nets, this will be a little bit less than that. I've heard similarly that I've heard similar optimism that maybe this one isn't as bad or as painful. But we'll see. The Nets may get to all star or two weeks before all.
So I'd say, you know what, like, it doesn't make sense to bring you back and then, you know, take this week break and let's just bring you back after all. So we may see that. But if it's 20 games, that brings up the possibility. I mean, you just look at the standings, the Nets are second.
They're only two games in the loss column out of fifth. And so if it's a prolonged absence, that's if one, if two teams three, four and five in the East, that's Milwaukee, who is just the kind of the right now with Chris and Drew in and out of the lineup, Cleveland and Philly and be it still out, but Philly winning games anyway, if those teams stay healthy or get healthy, that's if number two in that interim, there is the possibility of the Nets slipping. I don't want to say to six, but at a point where your first round matchup is hard instead of a little bit easy and you don't have home court advantage, I just don't even know that they care. They're a great road team.
They're home court arena stinks as turns been advantaged. They had a better road record than home record last year and it's close this year. But all things considered, you'd rather play like the Knicks in the first round than have to have home court disadvantage against like Cleveland or Milwaukee or Philly or something. That could matter.
Yeah, it could definitely matter. And look, the Nets, you know, the Nets have been a heck of a story for the past 20 games. I mean, the fact that they turn their seats around the way they have is pretty incredible. On the other hand, it was a stretch that had you, like I would actually push back on the idea that they were a championship, contending team despite the fact that they have one 18 in the last 20 games.
I don't have the exact numbers up to now, but as of last week before they played Chicago, they were shooting 13 percentage points better than league average from the mid range over that stretch. They're hitting 56% of their mid range shots. They were hitting more jumpers than every team at every single level offensively. Now they have guys that can do that.
Obviously Kevin and Craig Irving to the best shooters in the league. But as we saw earlier in the season with the Celtics who have an overall more talented deeper team, they were incredibly hot for the first six weeks of the season. And then they had the 28th ranked offense for over a month because they're jumpshooting completely cratered on. And so, and you also look at the Nets played a fairly soft schedule, had a lot of pretty close, you know, escape artist wins in that stretch.
None of that's to take away from the Nets winning these games. I do not think we've talked about the Nets as a potential top seed in the East as potential whole court advantage team in the East. They deserve all the credit for turning things around, but they already were playing on the margins as it was without Kevin. And now they go into a stretch where they start with the Thunder later this week, but they play, oh, no, actually they have a couple of these often and they play the Thunder.
They play the Celtics. They play, you know, the later the month they play Philly, they play the Knicks. Man, I'm looking at this now. They even have a bunch of soft games here.
They might be able to, you know, get the Lakers, they get the Pistons. They get the, the Jazz were slumping. We'll see if Steph Bafford goal and State played the Spurs again. So yeah, I mean, if he does only miss three weeks, they might do a lot better than five and five against that schedule.
It's in the beginning of February is what I was looking at before. That's where it gets tough to play. They play the Celtics again. They play the Clippers.
They play Phoenix or why they could have Devin Booker back. They play Philly again. They play the Knicks and Heat again. That's a real tough stretch going into the All-Star game.
So that, that I think is where you really start to see the difference of whether he's back in three or four weeks or in a post All-Star game situation because that could really determine like you said, whether they're able to hang around second or third, maybe, or whether they're down fighting for something in like a four or five matchup, which sets us up for a potential Armageddon series in the first round with Philly, which would be a good one. Very fun. That's the next. The other loser here, honestly, is these Philly games, everybody's just been, there hasn't been one game yet between these two teams since the trade where everybody's been available.
Last year, Ben Simmons didn't play the first game. Joellen B. missed this next game. Durant at least is going to miss.
I would like to see these two teams have everybody on the court and play a game and we might not even get it till the end of the season. I think the next game is sometime in late March or April. As you mentioned before, the Nets started to streak around Thanksgiving to stretch around Thanksgiving. It was very obvious that it was then or nothing for this time.
It was then save your season, save yourselves, be functional, be normal, win games, or it's over. And they happen to. They won games. No distraction.
Nothing at all. But as you pointed out, then the schedule got harder and they kept winning, but there are a lot of close wins. Some close wins against bad teams even. Some close wins against good teams.
But they won the games and we are also, because Durant's injured, we're also, this game against the Celtics on Thursday on TNT was one of the most eagerly anticipated games of the year. Not so much anymore. And the Celtics, of course, are one of those two losses in the 18 and two stretch. And it was a double-fade.
It was a close game, but it was like a 11-point Celtics win. So only be your teams. And that was going to be a game I think where the Nets hope to make a statement at home with their no-home court advantage and try to get a win over another marquee team, a team that swept them out of the playoffs last year and now Durant won't play that game. And it strikes me as we talk about the Nets.
The jump shooting is built. That's how they've played since they got Durant. They have been a heavy jump shooting team that makes a preposterous amount of jump shots because they have Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and all these great three-point shooters. It strikes me that they're kind of the Nets and the Raptors are just opposite teams.
They're literally stylistically opposite teams. The Raptors take a lot of jump shots and can't make any of them. They're like the worst jump shooting team in the entire league. They take some.
That's a similarity. And they make up for it with free throws and offensive rebounds and all that. You know, look, without Durant, it's going to be really interesting to see how they hold up. I gave you the numbers.
The numbers aren't good. The pressure is on Simmons now to not be just sort of a, I wouldn't call him a buy standard or a wallflower. The Simmons of the last month has been an active participant in the Nets. Sort of.
Sort of. Particularly in transition, particularly sort of cutting around the rim and if he gets it around there, he'll shoot. Now that's not good enough anymore. Now he's going to have to actually try to score a little bit more, try to get to the line.
If like accept the possibility that he might actually have to go to the foul line. Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to say. So I was looking up his numbers before because like the free throw thing, I mean, as you pointed out, is incredible.
He made four free throws when they played Indiana on 25th of November, right before the street started. Since then he has taken a grand total of 13 free throws and has made one of them. Yeah, it's not good. It's not great.
And he's taken more than nine shots in a game one time in that. And lost in all this earned hoopla about all the wins in all the normalness. No, no franchise can celebrate just normality like the Nets. Normalness has been that Joe Harris just has been a non factor.
He's playing like 11 minutes, 12 minutes, 13 minutes. They're going to need him now. Seth Curry, it's like he seems to either score 23 points or zero points. It just depends on the night.
They're going to need him more consistently now. I'd like it'll be interesting to see how Kyrie adapts to life now as the number one. The number one guy. I mean, here's what I got to say about the best.
They have Kevin and Kyrie both playing incredibly, right? Shooting two pride percentages scoring. Durant's just under 30. Kyrie's at 26 points per game.
Nick Claxon's at 11.9. Nobody else on the team is after more than 10 points again. Like they are the definition of a two man team. Now one of those guys is out.
Can I give you an absolute scorcher of a chair? So I'm starting to process a pick of my all-stars. Okay. And as you know, I said Nick Claxon's an all-star.
I start from scratch. I ignore the fan vote, not because I disdain the fan vote. I also can't get people every. It's like clockwork.
It's like it's taking the bait. Everyone gets so outraged over. How does Derek Rose have all these votes? I can't believe Derek Rose is seven to eight.
I'm like, you don't have to care. You're not mandated to care. It doesn't matter. Derek Rose is going to make the All-Star team.
It's all fine. Julius Randall, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. You don't have to care.
I personally was pretty stunned. Nick Claxon had more fan votes than Julius Randall and Jalen Brunson. I didn't think I'd see the day that a net's role player would be getting more fan votes for all-star teams than the top two players on the Knicks. So as to this point, I picked 12 man rosters.
I do obey the constraints that the NBA puts upon voters, as I am a voter, for the starters. We really are just going to do this thing where Tatum's going to have to come off the bench in the All-Star game. Like, are we not going to be able to list him as a guard? What are we doing?
If we have all the honors in the NBA, then Doreen will probably replace the Rant and starting when I pick it as a play. In any case, one of the things I do is I make my spreadsheets with all the advanced metrics. There's like 10 columns of advanced metrics. I call it my Vorps and Shorps.
I'm liberal in who gets included in the spreadsheet extravaganz. I expand the candidate pool to a vouchavitch level of candidate, just in case. Let's be inclusive. Everyone's having fun.
Let's get in. Let's have 30 all-stars in each conference and then we'll start wiggling. The advanced metrics say Nick Claxon deserves a real look as an All-Star. I can't get there personally because he's scrounging points, but he's doing a little more than scrounging this year with these catch-in traffic and bank shots.
Between his defense and his efficiency, his screening, his passing, the advanced metrics are seeing something where it's like, oh my God, Nick Claxon has better combined advanced metrics than Jalen Brunson. It's not insane. I think it's pretty close to insane. And that's not a reflection on Nick Claxon, who has taken meaningful strides forward.
Then that's been a pretty good defensive team. He is a massive part of that as his counter-ramp, by the way. And so now we're getting to my next point, which is... Yeah.
No, go ahead. I'm actually more curious about what happens to Brooklyn's defense without Durant because talk about an area where they are hanging on by the thinnest of margins to average, to slightly above average defense, and they're doing it with Claxon and a bunch of interchangeable big wings, the best of whom defensively, and yes, I'm including Simmons in this, has been Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant has been their second best defensive player, maybe their best. It's between him and Claxon, it's been close.
I think Claxon's rim protection probably is in the edge. Durant has been incredible on defense, incredible protecting Durant, switching out, doing everything. And without him, they start these... They start Claxon, Simmons, O'Neill, Durant, all together.
They could come off the bench with Waddonabe and Warren, two other big wings. Without Durant, that entire lineup construction, they have fewer iterations of it, and none of them just work as well without Durant's seven footer with a long wingspan and ability to do everything on defense. I actually think the suffering might be equal on offense and defense without Durant. And the rebounding, like they lose Durant's not a great box-out guy, but by sheer size and tenacity, gets a fair amount of rebounds for a team that is a bad rebounding team.
Yeah, I mean, look, the Nets are almost a one-man team with Kyrie as sort of a satellite of that, right? Everything they do is built around what KD can provide them. Obviously, they're off as a shop profile, like you said, we talked about it earlier. Just jump shot after jump shot.
And if any team is going to be able to outperform that sort of thing, it's going to be a team where Kevin Durant is shooting 19 times a game, shooting 56% from the field, basically all on jumpers, right? Like he is just superhuman as an offensive player. And then on the defensive end, he's averaging one and a half blocks a game. He and Clax are the only remote rim protectors on the team.
Ben Simmons, everybody's talked about Ben, you know, could Ben Simmons play center. Ben Simmons has never been a rim protector. He can do a lot of other things really well. He can't do that.
So now you have Nick Claxton and then really nobody else's a threat at the rim at all. And like you said, Durant has been a tremendous defensive player this year. I think he's been as engaged at that end as he's been in his entire career. He has been flying around.
He's been really active. He has an all defense case. No question. Yeah, I think he's been great.
And again, like we talked about going back to the summer. So I think that's going to be able to contend against these other teams with their lack of size. Well, part of that is they have Kevin Durant, who is sort of a shooting guard. It's seven one, right?
Like that's that gives you the ability to do some unique things with that piece out of the mix. Now all of a sudden you've got a bunch of super small guards and Nick Claxton and no size. And for his good as class, man, he doesn't have the size to go up against an beat or any of the other Giannis or any of these other physical guys that have to play. So yeah, I'm with you.
I think for as good as Durant's offense is he's been a massive part of them being a good defensive team. And it's, you know, they do have a soft schedule the next few weeks that should help and get some wins. We're going to see how valuable he's been, I think, with the way these next few weeks go. Well, the Nets defense doesn't even have to be good.
It just has to be good enough. And it's been good enough in the last month to win a lot of games. And to your point, the emergence of off the bench, the re-emergence, I guess, of TJ Warren and the emergence of Yudawat and Abi has sort of allowed the Nets to never play Patty Mills and never play Seth Curry and Kyrie Irving together or rarely play those two together. And because the size and the rebounding is just too much to overcome, it's too many targets for good teams with a lot of big wings like Boston, for instance, they play on Thursday.
Do we have to see those lineups again? We shall see. But look, the bottom line is this, the luxury being 27 and 13 and the sigh of relief that this isn't more serious than it could have been all amounts to we can move on and talk about other stuff because Kevin Durant, if all goes well, will come back with the Brooklyn Nets in really strong playoff position. He's never really suffered any downturn from these MCL things before.
So he'll come back on his blazing and then that's will be fine. And even if you stretch it out to your points, act to the very far end of that and you say, say he sits out through the all-star game and give him all the extra time, he comes back, you know, around, you know, whatever February 24th or 25th, whatever the day after the All-Star break is. Like you said, this 18 to two run the Nets have gone on is going to at least put a position where they're going to be in the middle of the packs and we're in the East 5th or 6th or something. And it's not like Kevin's going to come back and go, man, if I'm in fifth, I have no chance to win.
I mean, he's not going to be afraid of any of these other teams in the East. And the one other thing I want to say to real quick to put a ball on this is this is a really interesting opportunity, I think, for TJ Warren, who has come back has been really solid off the bench, is a pretty good, he's shooting 54% from the field. And I think that I don't know what the Nets are going to do. My guess is he will move into the starting lineup and replace Kevin.
And if he can up his minutes and be healthy, that's a guy who not only can, you know, continue to have a ping it back to these guys this summer or this season, but has a chance to get himself a position to get back in the market in a big way this summer after obviously missing the past couple of years with foot injuries, he's come back and look pretty good. And that could turn out to be one of the real value signings of the entire league, if he's able to stay healthy, given they got him on a minimum this summer. It's funny. Some injuries happen and you know, I begin to pencil in the new rotation and who replaces who and how did it and some injuries are just so big and the players injured such immortals that I didn't even start to think about things like who's replacing Duran in the starting five and what's the what's I just didn't even think about it.
It's only thought about it now after a day and 30 minutes or whatever, it's talking about the nets to be fair. It's not any time before thinking about it. No, but it's funny. Like that's Kevin Durant.
The guy was if he had stayed healthy this season would have I think jumped all the way to number 10 on the all-time scoring list has a chance to finish fourth and maybe maybe that fourth is probably a good assumption for him. We'll see. I mean, this is who Kevin Durant is and you mentioned before the Nets have Kevin Durant. We did a segment on NBA today we were going to last week and the segment was going to be built around Nets pelicans and the question was very simply like which of these seems has a better chance to reach the finals this year out of their respective conferences and we were doing the pre-production call.
They're like, what do you think I said? Oh, the team that's Kevin Durant. And then there was like that there was silence on there was silence as if I was going to elaborate. I was like, no, that's the whole answer.
It's like whatever whichever team has Kevin Durant on it is the is the answer. Baseball fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows and originals across every ESPN network in service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional call visit activate.espn.com to learn how to access your account or sign off then start streaming in the ESPN app.
It's all the ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Switch to a team that doesn't have Kevin Durant on it. The Toronto Raptors, you spent a week in Toronto.
I was there for the end of that week. You have a piece up today and recording this Monday on ESPN about the Raptors as the most talked about. Well, actually, you said not enough people are talking about them. The low post has been talking about the Toronto Raptors as a trade deadline.
Yeah, the league is talking about the Raptors. I think the general public is not. Well, that's just part of the greater anti-candida conspiracy. That's right.
It's in Gulf the NBA for all these. That's right. Nah, all these years. Seventeen and 23 after a win over Portland yesterday, they have played the second toughest schedule in the league by some measures, but 22 of those games have been at home 18 on the road.
They're coming up after the conclusion of this long homestand, which concludes this week, starting tomorrow, Tuesday, or today by the time the spot guy goes up. Two games against Charlotte and then a third game against Atlanta. They better win all three of those games. They better get out of this homestand 20 and 23 or else the vultures that have been circling are going to be circling even closer.
And your piece is sort of just about the dilemma that they face, which is both a dilemma and a sort of the enjoyment of optionality. They're not trapped into this. We traded all of our picks for this iteration of a team that doesn't work and now we have to pivot. They have a team that is still fairly prime aged and young, full of players who I think have a lot of trade value around the league, but just hasn't worked this year.
And by the way, I was dead wrong about them. I thought the Raptors were going to be really good this year. I thought they had them picked to be a top six non-playing team hammer the over all that stuff. You and me both, by the way.
We're locked up on that. I've been wrong. And you know, they're 17 and 23. You know what their scoring margin is right now for the season?
I believe it's zero, but I could be zero. Zero. Exactly zero, which might suggest that they're better than 17 and 23, except their record in crunch time games is like not really that much worse than you'd expect it to be. And their scoring margin is benefiting a little bit from a 30-something point win over the Hawks and then a 43 point blowout over the Spurs early in the season.
So I don't know what to make of it. To me, Tim, I told you this when we were in Toronto, the alarm bells went off for me when they were 13 and 14 and off two days off, hosting the Kings at the start of a three-game home stand. And I think the Kings were on a road back-to-back. The Raptors led the whole game.
The whole game almost wired a wire and just could not put the Kings away. And Sacramento came back and stole that game in Toronto. And I watched that game live and I thought to myself, that's just not a game a good team should lose. I don't really care that losses happen and weird stuff happens.
That loss set off alarm bells in my head. And since that loss, they are four and eight. And every time I watch them, even when they win, I just come away thinking something is wrong with this team. Something is wrong with this team.
It could be basketball things are wrong with this team. I think they have, I mean, we all know they can't shoot. They can't shoot from anywhere. They're the worst three-point shooting team in the league.
They're the third worst mid-range shooting team in the league. They're the 11th worst shooting team at the rim. They cannot shoot from anywhere make any shots. We all know they try and compensate with rebounds.
Turnovers and all that stuff. We all get it. They also just have a weird playmaking deficit. They just don't have a lot of good passors on.
They have a lot of okay passors on the team. Just even Anonobi's assistant turnover ratio is negative this year. He misses a lot of interior passes. Pascal is a good passer.
But he's more of a let me dribble the ball for a long time, draw a double team and pass passer. They don't have a lot of like quick, snappy beat the defense one or two steps ahead kind of passors. And in Scotty Barnes, OGN and OGN and OGN and Pascal Siakum, those guys like to kind of play with the ball. And you get all these power forward sized guys who like to play with the ball a little bit.
It can work. They're all decent. They're all good players. They're all strong.
Scotty's a good passer. Pascal's a good passer. It just like it just gets to use Paul Hollywood's word. It gets a little claggy.
Gets a little claggy like a badly big bread. Gets a little claggy. And then you throw in, you know, Doug Smith wrote that column in the Toronto Star about a month ago that Ruffles and Trellis and Trellis and Trellis about Scotty's work ethic, so to speak. And he needs to work harder.
It included this line to him. There are those in the organization whose eyebrows were raised in the summer when Barnes would flit, in and out of team runs in both Las Vegas and Los Angeles. You were interviewed Fred Van Wiet for part of your story. He kind of chuckled and referred to Scotty Barnes as the golden child.
I don't know what's really happening, but I would say golden child is only used in one way. That's how I would say that. I would say this. Like I asked a lot of people about that Doug Smith column and what he says about flitting in and out of Vegas in Los Angeles.
I think that happened. I also don't necessarily think there's a big concern about Scotty Barnes work ethic because a lot of these guys, particularly young guys, when they work in the summer, they like to work with their own guys too, independently from the team and the place of their choosing at a time of their choosing. So I don't think there's a big Scotty Barnes work ethic concern. He's a worker.
He's fine. They're not worried about him. I don't think. I will say, you just look at the makeup of that team.
Fred is undrafted. O.G. is a late first round draft pick who came with a big knee injury in college. Pascal is a late first round draft pick who has this incredible late to basketball journey from New Mexico state to NBA to being a role player who never dribbled to this.
They're also self-made. And here comes number four pick Rookie of the Year, Future Star of the organization. It wouldn't surprise me if there were just a little unspoken tension about all of that. And between that and the basketball stuff, it's just like I said, I watched a team.
I'm like, something just isn't working with these guys. And they're running out of time to make it work. And clearly, Tim, besides hearing Bobby Webster, they could have easily broken up this team a year ago, two years ago, whatever. They didn't.
And they didn't, not just because they didn't find deals that they liked. They didn't because they liked this team and believed that it won 48 games last year. And that was real. They're running out of time to make it real again as you point out.
Yeah. I mean, the Raptors, it's sort of a perfect confidence of events that has them in the position they're in, right? Over the past several years, they haven't had any cap space. And as we know, with the way the NBA is set up, you're naturally going to, you know, attrition in terms of talent over time.
They lose Kawhi Leonard for nothing. Obviously, you want him to championship. Not saying that was a bad trade, but he leaves for nothing. Marcus Saldis for nothing.
Sir, Chipokalees for nothing. Three critical pieces, right? The turn Kyle Lowry, to press the shoe in the Goron Dragotch never played for him. He then becomes that young, that young another guy that fits in with the general theme of the Raptors, which is they don't have a lot of scoring.
They don't have hardly any guys who could create easy shots for other themselves or anybody else, as you point out, right? They're not a lot of good players, but they don't have it on playmaking. Then you add in the fact that over this 20-game stretch when they're 6 and 14, the Raptors have created the 11th best three-point shot opportunities in the league per second spectrum. Pretty good, right?
A lot of open shots. They do have Gary Trent. They've got Fred. They've got Pascal.
They got OG, like solid shooters. So the thing, like these guys, that's a weird thing, is like those guys can shoot. They're not like bad shooters. That's right.
They're not bad shooters, but the Raptors not only have been the worst team in terms of making shots over that 20-game stretch, which is half their season, coordinates, seconds spectrum. They are 6.2% worse than what they should be on the shots that they're taking. So like they're getting open shots. They're basically missing all of them.
They've generally lost talent over the past several years. So they've got a really good top four or top five, I think, including Gary Trent. The rest of the bench is pretty sparse. There's barely any scoring off the bench.
Malachi Flynn is the only other guy who can really handle the ball on the team in terms of guard play outside of Fred. So you have some depth issues there. And then on top of it, and maybe the most important thing, whatever the work, you know, set aside Doug's column, right? Scottie has either flatlined or probably progressed as a sophomore.
Again, not uncommon. He's going to be fine. He's a really talented player, but he has not played to the level that they hoped he was going to do this year. And Fred Vadleet has been worse over this 20-game stretch.
He's shooting 29% from three on nine attempts a game like that. They can't win if two of their four mainstain players are not playing as well as they were last year. And that is really when you boil it all down, all that stuff together is why the Raptors are, you know, in a funky place right now in six games under 500 and have a lot of questions to answer about themselves for the next month until the trade deadline. Yeah, Fred.
Fred's never going to be a good two-point shooter. No, never going to be a threat at the rim. Never going to be one of like the eight to 10 best playmaking point guards in the NBA passing point guard. They're just when you're that short in that sort of he's not a leaper or anything.
They're just passes you can't make. They don't have access to those passes. He's got to hit threes. They can survive him not hitting threes.
And as for Trent, you know, we've been reading and hearing for months that well Trent might be the most likely Raptor to be delties on a semi-expiring contract got player option for next year. Is he happy there and blah, blah. I'm like, every time I watch the rapper is like, he'd be Gary Trent, like they can't survive without Gary Trent. He's in essentially a three-way tie with Ananobi and Van Vliet as the number two leading score on the team.
He's the only rotation player unless you include Flynn who floats in and out of the rotation that's shooting above 35% from three. The only one. Right. There we have guys and that's the thing.
Like I know you're not wrong about that they can't shoot, but they're main guys outside of Barnes are decent to good shooters. They should be better than this. They should be making these shots. It's not like they've got, you know, guys who don't know how to shoot the ball, chucking up 43 is a game.
They just can't make anything. And so you combine that with the frustrations with losing with everything else and it's just a, it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy and they've gotten themselves into a pretty rough stretch. And like you said, these games this week, two against Charlotte, one against a rear-handed team. Better one.
Better one of them. Okay, things can maybe stabilize a little bit. They go one and two or something in that stretch. They better be 20 and 23 coming out of this zone.
I would agree. Even Nunobi who I think had and maybe still has because people go through weird sunset over 100 and 200 times, I thought he had solidified himself. He was like basically a 40% catch and shoot 3. He's a 34.9 right now and only 38 from the corners and he'd been at above 40 pretty regularly from the corners.
Like he just has to be better as a shooter. Yeah, he's going to go for shots too. I think those guys are going to hit more shots. I think the bigger issue is the playmaking part.
They just don't have, you know, and Nick Nurse is always trying different stuff and they're throwing different things at the wall, but they just don't have the ability to create very easy shots. You know, Matt Williams, our guy, Stats Williams, our stats and info group had a pretty fascinating stat. They are, I think first or second in terms of transition opportunities. They get a ton of transition opportunities, but they're pretty far down the league in pace.
And why is that? Because they're one of the absolute slowest teams in the league in terms of half-court possessions. They take longer and half-court possessions than I think every team, but maybe Detroit and a couple others. They're in the bottom five.
And that's because, as you pointed out, the guys that they have, they generally have to pass out, they've got to wait to kind of find a crease to attack, right? They don't have quick attack guys. Oh, geez, not really a play-make for himself or anybody kind of guy. Scotty Barnes takes a long time to get somewhere.
Pascal takes a long time to get somewhere. So if they're not out running in a transition opportunity, it's a lot of stand around and kind of wait for the defense. And it just gets harder and it's just very hard for them to score anytime they're in the half-court. And like you said, they're just playing in mud all the time when you watch.
It's not a fun, it's not a fun watch. Other than Jack Armstrong, who is just, is just such a delight on the broadcast. And their broadcast is very good with them and Matt Devlin. I always enjoy it.
The guy at garbage out of here is Jack Armstrong's signature call. And the pitch on it just gets higher and higher every year. And now he's almost not even saying the words anymore. It's just sounding like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's not even, he's like not even pronouncing the words anymore. I love you, Jack. You're the best. Jack Armstrong, huge bill span.
He was talking about the most exciting times. The game was so ugly yesterday. He was talking about the bills. They didn't hold him and Matt Devlin did a whole thing on Game Show Hosts yesterday because they were playing against the plays.
So they drew U-Banks, which made Matt Devlin think of Bob U-Banks, who was a Game Show Host back in the 70s. And then they just started going on, it was delightful. Anyway, a couple of things. Here played, I think, in the Raptor season has been, I mean, there's been a lot of stuff about Auto Porter who's never healthy and the frustration is over boiling, boiling over.
Now, Precious Itrua being just a total zero so far this season due first to underperformance then to injury. And now he's back and he looks more like himself. He's five of 34 from three so far this season. They really need him to be a legit switchable stretch for me.
Yeah, he's the jewel of the Kyle Oredeel, right? Like they could have in theory, Kyle Go and tried to get some cap space and tried to add some pieces, but they decided to go get Precious and go and drag it to again and became fed. So like really, you look long term, Precious is a guy that came out of that transaction. That's a guy that I think they hope is a part of their long term future there.
And yeah, like, I mean, again, five for 34 is not going to cut it. He was fantastic last season as he had a reliable three. He would pump it off the dribble. He could guard all five positions and he just hasn't been there.
And I think a piece of there for the last 40 games and now they will all tell you like, well, we started so last year in 148 games. I don't, this doesn't feel like that to me. This feels more disturbing. But if he's back, these is also a lot better this year too, way, way better than last year.
But if he's back full time, I'm not saying they have a chance to win 48, but they have a chance to stabilize their season. He gives them, he gives them a lot of the stuff they don't have. They just have not had any punch off the bench at all, especially not like Gary Transback in the starting lineup. They need Precious to be a energy guide, both ends for them, provide some offense, get out and transition, be able to guard some people, give their being guys some time off the court.
You know, obviously in Toronto, there's a lot of tension on the minutes that their top line guys are playing. I'm just not sure what else they're really supposed to do. Like they're in a hole, their top line players have to play and they don't have really anything behind them to make up for that other than you get Precious and if auto reporter can return, get the two of them back, then you kind of get back to what your team was supposed to be. But, auto's been out for two months, Precious has been out for two months.
That's a huge chunk out of their wing rotation, which is, you know, as we both know the way this team wants to play. And by the way, coming up at the end of January is a seven game Western Conference road trip that is ugly. So they better be more than stable by the time they get there. That road trip ends right before the trade deadline.
So they will have a lot of information about themselves as they approach go time. Last thing on Scotty Barnes, the last two weeks have started a very interesting period for him where he is now functionally on both ends of the floor become the center for the Toronto Raptors and the starting five and teams are treating him like Ben Simmons. No, and Draymond Green. No one is guarding him.
No one is within 20 feet of him. And he's had to adapt to, oh, okay, do I do some dribble handoffs here? Do I eat up this space up the dribble and go into my push shots? Do I screen and dive?
And it's been interesting to see, I think he's actually adapted to that. Okay. But that's been interesting. So let's get to the real question here, which is if they pivot, what does that look like?
And all the cash tag blow it up chatter. There's a lot of that that doesn't ask the follow up question of like, okay, so blow it up. Like, yeah, go to the bottom chase when they're very easy. It's very easy to push down on the dynamite trigger and blow things up.
It's a lot harder to actually figure out what that looks like. Well, and I've said this before, you know, traditionally that would mean you trade your oldest good player and rebuild around your young players and you get picks and young guys for that player. Well, that would be Siakum. Okay.
So name me the Siakum trade. I mean, we could probably name some, but he's 29. He's on pace. I think to make another all NBA team, which does also make him on pace to make it super max.
Yeah. He's a homegrown player, great story popular guy. Like that's not an easy trade to make. And he's not at the age where you're like, it's a no brainer.
He's in decline now. He's going to be really good for a long time. So we can talk about those deals. Well, if it's not that, then it's sort of retooling, refitting around Pascal Siakum, not rebuilding, not going into the tank.
And if that's what it is, well, is it just letting Van Vee walk away, trading them now for what you can get? Is it trading in an OBE because of the overlapping skill sets that we talked about earlier and just seeing what the market would get you for an NNOBE? Because I think there'd be six or seven teams calling with decent offers right away for an NNOBE that you bid them against each other and you get a really good offer. I don't know what the answer is.
I don't think they know what the answer is. What do you think of all those answers? I mean, I think they're going to wait this entire month and see where they're at on February 1st. And I think that is when they're going to really take a hard look, see where they sit, and then decide what they're going to do.
That's my sense of what they're going to do. And frankly, that's what the entire league does now is act with the play and tournament in both conferences. You just have so much more time to evaluate your team that I just don't think we're going to see many deals of any consequence before then because everybody's just going to wait and wait and wait and wait. And then if you're Chicago, if you're Toronto, if you're Atlanta, if you're Washington, if your team's out west, if you're Utah, whatever, you can wait the entire month of January, see where you sit and it's all right, we got 10 days, we can start making trades now and we'll we'll redo our team at this point and we'll decide whether we're going to sell or not.
I think the obvious two questions are what happens with Gary Trent and what happens with Fred. Both of them have the ability to be undershifted for AIDS this summer. They both have player options. I would assume both will decline them.
Fred said, you know, Fred gave a long speech yesterday that he hadn't actually turned down. The max offer that the Raptors could have given him said there was never an offer given. The bottom line is when I talked to Fred about it, he said he thought he outplayed that contract. He didn't want to make it easy on the Raptors and sign it, which certainly within his rights, at the same time, he's now an undershifted for age of potentially in six months.
And while he could sign this extension between now and then, the fact he hasn't signed it, I think it does lead you to wonder, do they do something like with one or both of those guys, what they did with Norman Powell two years ago and they got Gary Trent and do they try to turn one or both of them into controllable younger assets or picks or something. As they said, as you said, to kind of retool going forward. Do I expect the Raptors to trade both of those guys and Pascal and OG and like no, like this thing up around Scotty? I mean, I don't see that necessarily happening.
I think it would have to take a pretty crazy turn of events. I would think to get there. But I, but look, I think let's see what happens over the next three weeks. I think, you know, if they're playing, if they win these three games the rest of this week and they make a push towards 500 and they're playing better than, you know, I could very easily see a world where they sort of stand by and kind of continue to move on the path they have been.
But you know, right now they're too, they're tied for six in the lottery odds. They're two games away from Orlando. Like they are in a spot where if they turn the other direction, they've got a real shot to be in the mix for Victor, when I'm in, or St. Henderson, or these guys, you have to at least think about it.
Here's the thing about that. As you correctly pointed out today, they're currently six in the lottery standings at 17 and 23 tied with the Zards of Washington. And yes, there are only two games behind the semi competent Orlando Magic or two games ahead of slash behind in lottery order magic. That would get them to fifth, which incrementally increases their chances at the number one pick from 8.3% to 10.5%.
That's meaningful. And your top and your top four goes from 35 to 42%. That's very meaningful. They're, they're going to really have a hard time getting above fifth.
The bottom four are going to be real. The one three have the 14% chance. The bottom three, they have no. They're going to be really bad.
My point though is that they're not like 15th, right? Like they're six in lottery odds. Like if they just stay in sixth, they've got a real shot to jump up. Like this isn't the lottery of old when the first pick had a 25% chance of winning the lottery and then it went to like 20 and 50.
Now it's like first to sixth is kind of the same. I mean, it's not exactly the same, but it's a lot flatter than it used to be. And if they're just up there, they'll have a shot at getting a generational prospect. And so I do think it's going to, I do think the fact that they have gotten to this point is going to cause them to think harder about going that direction than I think they ever imagined they would have.
They certainly believe in their team. They thought they were going to be better than this. They think they are better than this and they would point to shooting luck. Some injuries, guys underperforming as stuff that they think will turn around.
And that they'll be a lot better in the second half of the year. But they're close enough to it now. And they've got juicy enough stuff to put on the table that seems to come after hard that I think, you know, they're going to have to think long and hard about where they're headed over the next month. Because they, you know, before the season is funny, the machine Kevin Pelton and I did an all in tears story.
We ranked all the teams in the league in terms of what tier of all in they were in. Some teams are all in a championship now, some now in the future, some trying to win half their games. The Raptors were in and all in on nothing tier, which got a lot of jokes from people in Toronto, including with the Raptors themselves. But the point was they had the ability to go any direction they want.
They could go all in and trade for Kevin Durant. They could go the other way and try to compete in the sweepstakes they gave to women. Yama, they could sort of just take the middle path and try to be good and continue to try to add to what they have. But they have as much flexibility as any team in the league.
And that's why this makes it such an interesting situation for them to be in because they do have young prime really good players at premium positions. And they've got some veterans, guys like Fred in particular that if they got put on the market could really help championship level teams. But they also believe they're a plough team. And they've already got a young guy they think is going to be their franchise cornerstone in the future and Scottie Barnes.
So they don't they don't have to go in any direction. And it's what makes their choice over the next month so interesting because they really have the ability to choose any direction they want. Yeah, I think Ananobi is the easiest one to move just because of his current salary. And you know, you know, in Begley came on this podcast and said the Knicks have called on Ananobi.
I think Portland at the draft was in on Ananobi. I think there's any I don't think there's any shortage of teams that would be into a into probably the best if not the best three in the league. Certainly one of the top two or three best three in the league. He's got to shoot and pass better than as this year.
See, I'll go makes a lot more money. And I just I mentioned with Bobby just purely speculation. Phoenix Dallas among teams that I think he could fit in and have particularly in Phoenix's case have the assets to make a play for him in terms of picks and swaps Dallas does not have as many picks and present day good players that I think would interest Toronto on their team. But that's a trickier one because of his salary and he's meaning to the team like somebody even throughout me would would Toronto take Russ and the two Lakers picture.
So I said, no, man, they're not doing that for me. They would laugh. They would laugh and hang the phone. That's ridiculous.
Anyway, we have a long way to go for the trade deadline. Great piece on the Raptors Tim Bontam's up on ESPN.com right now leading our NBA page. I will see you probably in Brooklyn on Thursday for Celtics Nets, which is not as eagerly as anticipated as it was 48 hours ago, but is still at least by me anticipated Tim Bontam's everyone. Thank you, sir.
Thanks, man. Appreciate you. All right, let's bring in go out to the West Coast. Dave McMahon, our Lakers insider beak.
Extraordinary fresh from a trip to the Rocky Mountains where the Lakers what a bummer. I was so looking forward to that game and then LeBron out with ankle soreness AD out, of course, in the Lakers five game losing streak the latest in a string of just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Here come the Lakers, reviving their season streaks ended. They are now 19 and 22 as we are exactly 29 days from the NBA trade deadline.
Dave McMahon and with a Phillies hat on. How are you? I'm doing well. And actually that was a five game winning streak they had and we're so used to talking about losing streak.
Did I say losing streak? Who said losing streak? Oh my God. What a freaking slip.
They're currently on the one game losing streak and policies to the Lakers. I mean, they're so undercover and I feel so bad that I shorted them in the national media. That's really a that is a uncharacteristic I think but of me but by game winning streak, winning streak, Hawks, Heat, Hawks, Kings. Yeah, Lakers rookie Max Christie told us afterwards that he made his first started NBA career but played pretty well for 19 year old 14 points and played with some boys.
They like him a lot but he said the first message being shared in locker match was let's start another streak and it's gonna there's some potential because they're back home for five games, right here but they do have some tough opponents coming to crypto.com arena. You got Luke and the Mads, you got John and the Grizzlies. There's some teams that are trending upwards just like the Lakers have it. Well, LeBron has been putting not so subtle pressure on the to do something anything to help this team.
His job in the interim and it's a tough job without Anthony Davis is to keep them within enough of a spitting distance that the front office maybe even should consider it and as you said the Lakers after playing a million home games have actually played 18 home games and 23 road games. They're gonna have a home heavy schedule. That's the way but Dallas, Philly, Houston, sack, those are their next four and then Memphis at the five game home stand. Four of those teams are good and then there's the Rockets then Portland on the road clippers spurs.
That should be a layup. Celtics, Brooklyn, Nick's, Pacers, Pelicans, those last five all on the road. It's not going to be easy for them to stay in it. Let's start with the basic stuff.
LeBron's ankle. Is he playing the next game? Is this just was that just a one game? Like, let's just let's just let's just bank these five wins and rest it.
Yeah, I mean, I test. I didn't see him coming into the arena last night. I felt like he's gate was affected slightly by the ankle just I test, but you look at the chunk of time here, you would have four days off actually five days off straight. You count Sunday, five days off to prepare for the Mavericks game.
So I would assume he'd be back in the lineup on Thursday. Anthony Davis, you broke the story yesterday and I don't want to I think you reported when they return to LA this week, which is now, or I guess they're probably back now, if not soon, he will begin ramping up for his return, which could be in a couple of weeks. And a couple of weeks, I don't want to misconstrue what you said. Today's January 10th, a couple of weeks would be the 24th, which is like six or seven more games.
Is that too optimistic? Is that like, what are we? What are we actually talking about here? No, by my understanding, that's within range.
That's on the table that, you know, so long as the ramp up process does not contain any setbacks and I mean, that's we don't know that yet, right? But the thought would be that it continues to check off the boxes that they have in place for him to return to play, that this ramp up process wouldn't have to be more than, you know, we could have two weeks. And so, you extrapolate it out to the 24th of January, you can be looking at that long five game road trip against pretty good opponents where he could be a part of that trip on the court. And they may, Mr.
Rand, they will almost certainly Mr. Rand on that trip. I mean, we'll see that's three weeks from now, I shouldn't say almost certainly, but I would guess 20 days from Dr. Rand will not be playing in Brooklyn.
And you mentioned, you don't know how the ramp up is going to go. You don't know if everything's going to be on schedule. They've also been missing Lonnie Walker, who's had a nice season for them in Austin. We used to have a nice season for them.
So they're down a lot. And Thomas Bryan has stepped up, Dennis Schruder has stepped up, quietly shooting 40% from free Dennis Schruder for a team that was kind of joked about for his lack of shooting around the Bronwell. He's a German laser right now, lasering in all the threes. But you know, this has been my, I have leaned on the side of, I understand the Lakers reluctance to trade the picks because A, the team just is very good.
I mean, there's a million reasons, but you mentioned the ramp up thing in the uncertainty of that, like you can't just guarantee that is team building, you can't team build based on the worst case scenario. So the class example that is Philly over investing in a backup for Juelen B, like in case Juelen B goes down, because if Juelen B goes down, you're done. It doesn't matter what else you do. You can't overspend on that.
You also can't over plan for the best case scenario when the best case scenario like never seems to sustain for more than 15 or 20 games. And that's a scenario where LeBron plays like this. And AD plays like the AD we saw for literally probably 15 games when he looked like maybe an MVP candidate again. If you can guarantee me that, that AD comes back and is just that for 30 games plus the playoffs, that LeBron is this uninjured for 30 games plus the playoffs, then in a fantasy world where that's guaranteed to me, then I start thinking a little bit more about the picks.
But as I've been saying over and over again, I don't know what the deal is the Indiana deal. How close were they really before the season to the Indiana deal? Healed and Turner Dave by your reporting. I've heard different scenarios involved.
I heard that there was someone within the Lakers organization that fully believed that when they went on a short break before the season really got going, that they'd returned from the break and those two players would be on the Lakers. I have also heard that the Pacers had some reluctance ever really making that a true deal, making a reality because of where the Pacers ownership are at this stage of their life. It's more important just to see a competitive team that necessarily plan and grab assets for a future championship run. And so I don't know if I can characterize like one-yard line or anything like that.
But certainly, of all the deals that were discussed during the summer, I think that one probably had the most realistic chance. And I'm assuming that's off the table. I've been assuming that's off the table for a long time. The Turner extension talks have become reportedly public.