Welcome KD, Goodbye Astros, What's Up Texans!! What A Weekend!!

Wex and AC react to a weekend to remember in Houaton and the arrival Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets on Monday afternoon at Toyta Center 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Durant in Rockets Red for the last few hours. It
was surreal to see him, even better to hear him
talking about not only playing here, but the reasons he
wanted to play here and everybody else reacting to it.
If I were to take away one major thing from
Rockets Media Day heading into this twenty five twenty six campaign,

(00:22):
I feel like, in some way, shape or form, the
entire organization. And this does mean some of the players,
because they mentioned as much, are a little starstruck by
one of the greatest players of all time now wearing
Rockets Red.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yeah, one guy totally, completely, utterly exactly what you just said,
and another guy the exact opposite of that, and they
spoke not too far apart from each other. You spent
a little bit of time with Matt and Ross in
the Sports Talk seven to ninety our Heart media interview
suites the lounge. I spent almost the entire time in
the media availability portion of it. Amen Thompson absolutely basically

(00:56):
said that, I mean, you go in there and you're like,
I'm playing with Kevin. Durant also joked that he watched
him growing up kind of a guy. You know, clearly
he was a huge NBA guy, and this is big
NBA guy, and he didn't think he'd ever have the
chance to play with him because he's so old, but
now he's his teammate. Jeff Green said the exact opposite,
because Jeff Green and Kevin Durant came into the league
together and this is the third time they've been together.

(01:19):
And there are a lot of players that are very,
very excited about Kevin Durant being here, being part of
their team, being teammates with him, learning a lot of
the things that they can from him leadership and basketball.
But the reverse is also true. And we knew this
going in because of some of the things that other
people have already mentioned, but their excitement for playing with
him is comparable to his excitement playing with them. And

(01:44):
that's why I think it's going to be such a
nice treat for Houston to matter. On the NBA front.
There are national media at Rockets Media Day, we already
know about how many games have been picked up on
the national TV side, and the primetime slots, much more
so than they have in years. Obviously, we've got all
the games for you right here on Sports Talk seven
to ninety. But Kevin Durant truly seemingly excited to pass

(02:08):
the ball and set a screen for Alprin Shngoon. You
run the court with Amen Thompson, you know, watch what
the other growing players on this team can do. And
he's already worked out with so many of them before
he even put on his Rockets uniform. And obviously they've
gone through some workouts already. The All Fire promotion videos
that you've seen of them practicing together should give you

(02:30):
any every indication you need to know that. Obviously, when
they practice now after media Day, that's not the first
team practice. They've obviously been on the court together at
their training facility. They're not far off from the preseason
games beginning. And I don't know how EMA intends on
using all these players, And it appears everyone is in
good health other than Dori and Finney Smith, who acknowledge

(02:52):
he's still working his way past his offseason surgery but
doesn't expect it to be much of anything, if anything,
when they get to the regular season. Yeah, a lot
of good vibes over there, and for good reason. They
were ticked off that their season ended early in their mind.
And I would agree, and you would agree, and I
think a lot of Rockets fans and even NBA fans
would agree it ended earlier than it should have. So
a little hunger for that, little motivation for that, and

(03:14):
they do kind of have to start all over again
because the makeup of their team has changed quite a bit.
To players that helped to create what their brand of
basketball is, Fred Van Vliet and Dylan Brooks, they are
not likely to play in any games this year. Dylan
would have to be traded for from the Phoenix Suns
and Fred would have to have miraculous timing recovery from

(03:34):
ACL surgery. And obviously they lose Jalen Green additionally, So
there is a lot that's going to be different about
how they go about things, who they have out on
the court. But from the newcomers, Josha Kogi, Kevin Durant,
some of the new pieces, they echoed something very similar,
what was your thought about this team from afar A.
Kogi said, well, we knew we had to hit the

(03:56):
weight room before we came into a game against Houston,
And Kevin said something like, it's not like the refs
can call every foul. They know how the Rockets play, yeah,
and they know how physical a style it is, and
both of them are excited to be a huge part
of it. My predictions were not quite what yours were,
so I wouldn't say correct as I was not correct.

(04:16):
The Astros needed to win one more game at some
point this year. Certainly could have come during their six
game road trip, and granted some of the results for
the other teams might have changed slightly because they were
already into the postseason. I don't know that it makes
a whole lot of difference, but yeah, the Astros could
have taken care of that this weekend, the three days
prior to that, or any of the one hundred and

(04:37):
fifty six games prior to that. They just simply could
not do it. They still wear a walking wounded bunch
when they got to the final gun, with Jordan Alvarez
joined by Jeremy Pania on the injured list for the
end of the season, amongst a season full of them,
and now the questions begin. Their general manager and manager
will meet with us tomorrow. Dana Brown obviously talked about
a few of the unfortunate parts of the season and

(04:59):
the just appointment of it when he had his Sunday
interview with Astros Radio before the season finale, so some
decisions to be made, and I would say this with
a lot of certainty, a guess, but a lot of certainty.
They will have a lot of changes this offseason, both
in personnel that swings the bat, throws the baseball, catches
it runs the bases, and those that make the decisions

(05:21):
about who's going to be doing that, how we're going
to deploy them to do that. And it sure would
be nice if we didn't have to decide who to
play based solely on who's available due to injury. All
of those areas should have significant changes, meaning there should
be changes in the front office. With Dana Brown not

(05:41):
calling for his firing, I'm saying some of the people
working with him, and the same thing for Joe Aspata,
they're not or they should not bring back the entire
coaching staff next year. There's a couple of spots and
we have four hours, very specific spots. I think they
should make changes on and quite obviously the personnel will change.
Texans are fine. They never lose now that CJ. Gardner
Johnson has gone, so we don't even need to talk

(06:02):
about them. They're golden playoffs. Hello, Division championship we got
youa home game. You bet you in the playoffs, absolutely,
and one of the two teams playing next Sunday at
noon in Baltimore will rise to two and.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Three, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
The other will fall to one and four. The Ravens
and Texans huge matchup and rivalry renewed pits a pair
of one in three teams against each other a week
from yesterday.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Well, I have something and I'm gonna save it for
probably next segment, because I got a dose of reality
slapped into me by my own family, my own tribe
said this to me, and you'll you'll absolutely appreciate it
as it pertains to not only the Texans organization in
this season, but specifically yesterday's game. So I'll save that

(06:53):
for next segment. But yeah, that's one way to frame it.
I think a lot of it had to do with
the fact they were playing the Tennessee Titans, and if
you don't believe me, you can just just listen to
their rookie quarterback because he had quite the description of
their team after that loss.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, Texans had a lot to do with that, a
lot to do with that. The best part of their
team was what he was up against. Their defense, and
they showed it. They let him drive down the field
enough twice to have a couple of field goal opportunities
they missed. The Texans did not. That's why the game
was six to nothing for such a long period of time,
and the Texans finally found their way into the red zone.
They succeeded in the red zone for the first time

(07:29):
all season. They scored three touchdowns, all coming in the
fourth quarter to turn a rather lackluster afternoon of football
into the kind of victory we've been kind of begging
them to have. And they really couldn't coast because they
didn't have that lead until late. But the final score
showed what it should for. Once one team on the

(07:49):
field significantly better than the other team, the score should
reflect that every once in a while, and that's what
took place yesterday. They should have blown them off the field.
They eventually did blow them off the field. Eventually just
went up and down the field on them offensively, and
at no point during the game there were zero trips
to the red zone for the Titans. And that was
a game where they only turned the ball over once
and that was on a deflected pass. So they just

(08:10):
flat out and said, you just can't move the ball
against us, and that was pretty fun to watch.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
It was eventually, and then I'll get to that in
next segment because that's part of what I wanted to
to talk about. That first half was like bleach in
my eyes.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, I just you don't have to score points to
make it worthwhile to watch for me. I mean, it's
okay to like defense. And I think the Texans have
to be looking at themselves.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
I was talking about their offense, right, They.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Have to look at themselves for why the Titans defense
was able to do what they did to them. But
all they have to do is look at film from
any of the last three weeks. It's the same thing
over and over again for the first fourteen quarters of
the season. But the Texans defense, I don't think the
Titans offense would have been quite as f if not
for them, if not for the day that Daniel Hunter had,
if not for the fact that Derek Stingley Junior clearly

(08:59):
was hurt and talking to some of his teammates and
even him after the game, it was obvious that he
was hurt and absolutely in a position where you could
see him not suiting up and they basically challenged him once.
They don't have any talent over there, and the Texans
should have dominated them, and they did, and that's something
that they need to do more of when they face
teams like that. And they've already faced one. And I

(09:20):
know Jacksonville's three and one, and I know their defense
has thirteen freaking takeaways this year and their coach as
a madman. But come on, man, this so easily could
be a two and two team, a three and one team,
or anything like that. But as we said before, wins
and losses obviously matter to where you're trying to get.
But you better play good football if you want this
season to matter. And they're not quite there yet, they

(09:44):
don't have much more time to get there. Obviously, all
of those things are going to dominate our conversation today.
We'll get to best of X here in about fifteen minutes.
We'll sprinkle in some of what we heard from the
team rafel Stone and the head coach, email Udoka. Obviously
get into the end of the Astros season, what lies
ahead for them, some real decisions to be made on
players who may or may not be here next year,

(10:06):
and obviously everything that goes along with the Texans making
a fairly significant decision today in concert with the Cleveland
Browns of all teams, All that on the horizon, along
with our signature segment coming your way at four thirty,
Football at five, are off the top at five o'clock,
and some tickets to the Huge Games Saturday Night, the

(10:27):
only game in college football pitting two undefeated teams against
one another, when UFH hosts Texas Tech this Saturday night.
All that a part of today's a team here on
a Monday