April 18, 2025 • 38 mins
Trysta’s got her fire extinguisher ready because the Kings and Bulls just went up in flames.
On this episode of Heat Check, she dives into the messy collapses in Sacramento and Chicago, what really went down in that Mavericks closed-door meeting, and why people might not be taking the Rockets seriously enough.
Trysta also tries out new segments "Buy or Sell" and "Trysta's Wild Ass Stat" before getting into her favorite first-round matchups including why people might be sleeping on the Rockets.
Follow Trysta here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The playing is here, playoffs are here, and we've got
a lot to cover. I'm talking through the Sacramento Kings breakup,
and good lord, is it bad. I then have to
try to make sense of the Chicago Bulls, which spoiler alert,
I cannot. I break down whether I am buying or
selling MAVs gm Nico Harrison's defense wins championships, mantra, and
(00:27):
we will hit a bunch of quick fire updates from
around the league too. So much to talk about. Why
it drop that motherfucking beak. That should be Rihanna, and
it should be Rihanna, my mom. The heat check boom.
You're listening to the Hottest, the Hottest. It'd be a
podcast out here. I said what I said, it's the heat.
(00:53):
The body wasn't even close to cold. When the Sacramento
Kings win Chopa Chopa tilmni McNair, we knew he was
already gone, because Wes Wilcox was already gone, literally took
a job somewhere else. Uh and the Kings absolutely stunk
(01:14):
up the joint. They lost a home game in the
nine to ten play into the Dallas Mavericks one one
oh six, and the Kings did the impossible.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Really, they looked worse than the Chicago Bulls.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That's hard to do.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
It is really hard to look.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Worse than the Bulls. I don't know if there's a
team I feel worse about in terms of watchability than
the Sacramento Kings. If you watched that game, it was
clear everyone was ready for Cancun. Everyone that's saying a
lot think about this. This team already existed. Big man
(01:58):
that can't play defense, that's Jonis Valanciunas, that's Nicola Vucevic.
Same guy Demarty Rosen, he exists. He also exists on
the Chicago Bulls at one point. Zach Lavine, a guy
who basically was untradable. He exists on this team now.
So this is insane. Mani McNair fired fifteen minutes after
(02:23):
the game. The exit interviews hadn't even occurred yet, and
it seems kind of amazing it took that long, especially
when you consider in twenty twenty three, the Sacramento Kings
had the Executive of the Year, the Coach of the Year,
and Mike Brown Kia Clutch Player of the Year. In
(02:45):
Deer and Fox. They won their division.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
They were forty eight and thirty four.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
They were the most viral team in the NBA, where
it was like the Beam team, Light me up on
that beam, bebe warm me up on that beam. Gross
And two years later, all three of those humans are gone.
They're gone, They're nowhere to be found. And it was unceremonious.
(03:13):
The Kings finished fourth in their division. They get bounced
in the play in tournament. They're forty and forty two.
And I don't think a single soul, don't think a
single soul cares about the Beam all time. Fumble just
so bad, and I think there are moments where you
can say, how do we get here? What do we do?
(03:35):
What was the defining catalyst to me? If you look back,
we knew it wasn't gonna make sense. We knew it
was gonna fuck up everything in terms of how this
team played. And that was the Demarda Rosen trade. First
of all, he had to give up something for him
you shouldn't have. Second of all, it made the entire
(03:58):
team dynamic completely. The chemistry off how you wanted to
play with Demana, Sabonis and dearon Fox now made Sibonis
pretty much like irrelevant. He's basically Jonathan Kaminga now that
Jimmy Butler is on the team, like, what are you
doing here? What is your role? We don't know. Then
(04:19):
you parted ways with your head coach, and you did
it when your star player told you, I do not
want him gone. I need some stability in this god
forsaken franchise that has had nothing but tumult and turmoil
the entire time I have been an NBA professional. And
(04:40):
so you the owner, go against your GM and you
fire that coach that your star player wants to keep
while you're on vacation in Cabo. First of all, not
the right time to make a firing with your daughter,
who's at one point the G League GM with her
(05:02):
boyfriend who happened to meet her because he was a
throwaway piece in the Sabonis trade in Jeremy Lamb. This
is if you've seen that Apple TV show called Studio
that lays out all of the insanity of Hollywood and
you're like, Wow, this can't be real. These guys are
(05:23):
fucking clowns. That is this.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
This owner is outrageous.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
By the way.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
The daughter is not some hooped. She wanted to be
a pop star.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Bitch. Just call him my phone, let them locked up
non stop.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I'm an owner of an NBA team, not.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
A pop star. What the fuck? Bro? All right? So
then Mike Brown leaves that was a side road. Darren
Fox is like, okay, well, I clearly haven't gotten through
to you, guys. It's not just that there's now no stability.
It's that I told you I will ask out if
you fire him. So I am asking at some point
(06:01):
out and I need to go somewhere else. And he
wouldn't sign the extension. Then you traded deering Fox for
a bag of potato chips plus a fifty million dollar
player in Zach Lavine who was virtually untradable, and you
didn't get anything back but to take that contract on.
(06:22):
Why is also the guy Vladi Divok, who was a
legend for this team. He's still he unceremoniously was let go,
got tanned, got skinny, and now he's back around the team.
So Mayni mcmahir gets fired. So Moni gets fired two
years after being Executive of the Year, and now reports
(06:42):
are today that he never wanted to fire Mike Brown,
didn't want to hire Doug Christie's ass who probably by
the Way is going to get the job, and if
he was left alone probably would have constructed a very
different roster, which makes me feel bad for Minnie McNair.
Not that we needed reminding, but all the skeletons are
now coming out of the closet, and not shockingly, Evan
(07:04):
Sideri is reporting that it was Vivek Ronadive who pushed
for DeRozan and trading Fox for Zack Lavin. These owners,
they are so ridiculously egotistical to think that just because
you were successful in one thing, you were successful in
something completely else, you're gonna be And in less than
(07:26):
twelve hours later, the Kings hire Scott Perry.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I don't know if you remember him. You remember Scott Perry.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
The Knicks refused to sign him re sign him when
his contract ran out in twenty twenty three. He's been
unemployed since. I hear he's a home care worker like
he is. That's a shot at me, That's a shot
at me. He's been jobless for two years and Vivek
already hired him once in twenty seventeen when he took
the job as VP of basketball Operations, and he just
(07:59):
left three months to take the job with the Knicks.
I just don't know what you do. I don't care
really how many pieces you change, how many coaches you change,
how many gms you change. It doesn't even matter who
you got. You could have gotten Tim Connolly. No, I
(08:19):
think getting Tim Conley. I would understand not going through
the process. But outside of Tim Connolly, you gotta go
through the process. You have to have interviews, you have
to have some semblance of professionalism when you run your organization.
And I am pretty sure that you're going to just
hire Doug Christy without a full search as well. I
(08:41):
don't know how you can be excited about this team.
Everyone needs to go. Everyone needs to go, every single
one of them bums, including Demonis Sabonis. Sabonis has three years,
one hundred and forty million dollars left on his contract,
and he's already like, we'll see, we'll see how it goes.
(09:03):
I want to see how this franchise is running. No, sir, no,
I want to see how you are running. And he
laid an egg in the plan. Tournament Levine three years,
one hundred and forty million dollars left on his contract.
You also have to go. DeRozan two years fifty million
dollars left on his contract. He's gotta go. Malik Monk
(09:26):
three years, sixty million left on his contract. If you
get finessed by the bulls, you're the Patsy's patsy. That's
what you are. You are literally the sucker at the table.
Full of suckers at the table. If they put a
bunch of suckers in poker in the room and they
all played poker together, that you would be the one
(09:48):
that would lose. Is the Sacramento gigs. That's fucking crazy.
We owe Deer and Fox in apology, Fox I was
very critical towards.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
He got dragged by local media.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
People including myself, were like fuck this guy, you know,
not like really fuck this guy, but kind of. And
turns out deeron Fox was right to get the fuck
up out of there. The team is not stable. It
is very dysfunctional when you have a pop star, well
not a pop star, excuse me, like a fledgling, aspiring
(10:23):
pop star in her flame out former NBA player boyfriend
who she met when he was on her team. Because
she's the her dad runs the team. Like when that
is occurring, it's a fucking dysfunctional place. And they will
never be a true contender until the vek Runnerdiba is
no longer there. He's I am putting that on wax
right now. I don't care how much that makes you cringe.
(10:45):
I love the Beam team. I spent many amazing nights
in Sacramento at the Golden One. I love Sacramento, I
love Fox, I love the vibes that this team was
giving off. I love you know what, We'll always have
that double over, triple overtime game between the Sacramento Kings
and the LA Clippers, probably the greatest game regular season
(11:08):
game I've ever seen, the shot making and now it's
just smoking ruins of a franchise that for most of
its history has inexplicably been a total fucking Jokeville. So
let's go to the other sucker. Yeah, why not another
(11:31):
team in the playing another team amazingly kick the fuckup
out of there. Time for cancuon, time for make it
make sense, Make it make sense.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So the Sacramento Kings of the East.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Make no damn sense. Every year, instead of deciding, hey,
we're not very good, we're going nowhere, we're forty one
and forty one in the last four years, by average.
Instead of saying, hey, cool, we're five team. We're competitive.
Instead of saying, hey, we lead the league in attendance,
(12:09):
they say, hey, we should probably get a high draft
pick so we can actually do something with our team.
They fuck around and they say, we want to be
we want integrity, We want to have competitive integrity. That
is what they say. That's truly their point. And they
get bounced by the heat and the play in pretty
(12:29):
much every year, actually, last three years they've gotten bounced
in the plan. The team gave up seventy one first
half points to the Miami Heat. Make that make sense.
The Bulls are the illusion of a functional team, where
the Sacramento Kings have never had any success. It's almost
(12:50):
more difficult because you had that boyfriend, you had that
husband who did everything at least seemingly a first glance.
You got multiple titles, You had the greatest player of
all time on your team. You had Scottie Pippen there,
you had Dennis Robbin there, you had the best coach
of all time. There, you had iconic logos and swag
(13:14):
and the city of Chicago and great fans, and you
just tricked it all away. They are the illusion of
a team that wants to win, when the truth is
all they want to do is make money. All they
want to do is sell Michael Jordan jerseys for seventy
nine ninety nine, probably one hundred and forty nine ninety nine. Really,
(13:37):
all they want to do is say they lead the
league in attendance and they've got a nice young piece
they're excited about. All they want to do Michael Ryansdorff
and Jerry Ryansdorff is being control of a sinking ship.
Well really just like a ship that doesn't go anywhere
and just kind of floats in the water. That's crazy.
(13:57):
They were so late to move to Rosen, to move
Levine lol Kings, and they've held on to vouch Nicola Vusich,
a sieve on defense who got a puff piece recently
by the Athletic didn't understand that and Patrick Williams, who
even their delusional VP of basketball Operations said, tough to
(14:19):
think of the positive things that Patrick Williams had going
for him this year. Now they have half or less
than their previous value. Do you remember trading two first
round picks for Vushevich?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
And you gave up Window Carter in the process.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yesh, make it make sense. The Bulls get bounced and
now have missed the playoffs for the eight straight time
in ten years. They haven't made a final since Jordan's
last title said twenty eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So would the architect of this whole thing say?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
What did he say? He said, I like the direction
is there?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I like the direction we're.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Going, he said. I like Josh Giddy. I want to
keep him. I like Kobe White, I want to keep him.
But turns out it's gonna be more complicated since Giddy
wants like forty rex forty ms. He's a restrictive free agent.
Someone will poison pill you. And Kobe White is extension eligible,
but he is not. He's probably headed restrictive free agency
(15:27):
in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And get this.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Ak arturist Carnisovas, the architect of the Chicago Bulls, which
has like a very murky title, said he also loves
the head coach who has an all time winning record
for the Chicago Bulls under five hundred, just under five hundred,
not like Steven Silas. We've got a lot of draft
(15:52):
picks under five hundred, which like shout out to Steven Silas.
He also Karnisovas, which I thought was low key for
the fans, for fans that are are really up on
AK and basketball dynamics. So someone in the media asked him, hey,
has they may be reached out to you, but the
Denver opening He says, I have.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
No interest, and it was like, dog, we don't want you.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
If you're a Denver fan, we have.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
No interest in that.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
That's like saying I'm a balding accountant, not a good one,
like the junior Associated H and R block in Philly.
Like not good. Philly says, I have no interest in
Sydney Sweeney, Like she has no interest in you. Like good,
he says. Jerry and Michael Krause, No, Ryan's dwarf, excuse me,
(16:46):
have my back. This is where you feel like I'm
taking crazy pills when I talk about the Bulls. You
cannot get better until you get worse. There are no
two timelines. You can remain competitive while you are retooling,
rebuilding and trying to get to a place where you
(17:08):
can make a championship run. This team is a perdatory team,
and so they finally decide to truly pick a lane,
which means burn it all down, trade the everybody anyway,
the bulls make the bulls make sense. You can't, you can't.
Moving on, Let's go to a little segment called buy
(17:30):
or sell. Let's boy, we're buying or selling Nico Harrison,
the GM of the Dallas Mavericks, continuing to say and
doubling triple and quadruple down on the Luca trade, saying
a million times, no matter what question is asked, defense
Wins Championships. I think you kind of know where I stand.
(17:53):
But this is this is just just a lead into
the take. So the funniest social media post of the
wee was from a MAVs fan, well really from a
Dallas fan, a Dallas fan, and it said it took
Nico Harrison less than forty eight hours to kill the
vibes of Paige Becker's going number one overall to the
(18:16):
Dallas Wings. Are you buying Nico Harrison's Defense Wins Championships take,
which he uttered at least twenty times during his private
press conference. So, okay, a little background that we must
set it up first and foremost. If you don't know
(18:38):
that Nico is getting killed on the internet, and in
real life because he traded Luka Doncic. Welcome to twenty
twenty five. Nico who everyone hates, and Maverick's CEO, Rick Welts,
who apparently is like a smart guy. I don't know,
that's what they say. I don't know him at all,
held an invitation only press conference amazing where select Dallas
(19:02):
media was allowed and absolutely no video or recordings were allowed.
Somehow we got somebodio out of it. Anyway, this was
the organization's first chance, first attempt to fully talk about
the Luca trade, and it went about as well as
(19:22):
you thought it would. First Shams is reporting that Nico
Harrison didn't even want to do this, which looks like
the first smart thing I've heard from Nico Harrison, Like,
I am not down for just reopening this wound. I'm good,
let's not do it. I think this is a bad idea, guys.
But Patrick Dumont, who I think is the donkey of
(19:44):
the day, is like, no, I think we should. In fact,
you should, and you're gonna. And he wants to do
this because they're losing so much money and they've got
some thoughts on how to fix that. But to almost
every question because media is like, hey, we would like
(20:05):
to still talk about the Luca trade, from how it
originated to the thinking behind the deal. Nico continues to
say Defense wins Championships. And ESPN's Temic Man was there,
who we love, and he said Nico Harrison doubled down,
tripled down, quadrupled down. I could go on. I ran
(20:25):
out of fingers counting how many times he said Defense
wins Championships. This reminds me of a little story when
I was twelve and we went to this little community
center orientation and my mom was there with me. She
had a little pat nopeen and the guy who was
running the orientation said basically and he said basically, and
(20:48):
he said basically so many times in his orientation that
like five seven, eight minutes into it, my mom grabbed
a pen and started riding down time. He said basically.
And so I, as a twelve year old great role model,
had to look over at my mom riding tab every
(21:11):
time and try to suppress the laughter. I think that's
what Tim McMahon was doing with Defense Wins Championships, and
he's sticking with it now. You may not be on
NBA dot com on defensive ratings from last year. Maybe
you weren't paying attention to last year, but the Mavericks
had the top defense in the league for the final
twenty games after they traded for Daniel Gafford and PJ. Washington.
(21:34):
Even in the finals against the Celtics, they had one
hundred and nine point two defensive rating, which is quite excellent.
That would have ranked second in the league last season.
They lost for other reasons. But that logic maybe doesn't
add up. So I don't buy defense wins championships, because
you know what buys champion wins championships, defense and offense.
(21:58):
There's a strategy. Uh, that's how you become the Boston Celtics.
You know how you end up having just defense? You
know who you are. Then the Minnesota Timberwolves twenty twenty three,
twenty twenty four, who got bounced by that very same
Mavericks team, then Nico blew up in the Western Conference finals.
McMahon also said, uh, the Mavericks o their first round
(22:22):
capital for deals they made to build around Luca in
twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, and thirty.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Either outright or swaps, which is the entire window.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Winning window contention window that this ownership group in front
office says is how we evaluate them. He called a
three to four year timeframe to build a contender, and
McMahon pushed back on the logic of that, and he
just kept going back to defense wins championships. So if
Dallas wants to win with a defense first team despite
(22:58):
last year's MAVs with Luca where the second best defensive
team post All Star Break, and now you're building defense
with Anthony Davis who only played fifty six games twice
in the last eight years or more, and Kyrie Irving
who now has a torn acl at age thirty three
and can opt out of his player contract. And now
(23:19):
as you buy the balls, is there anything salvageable in Dallas?
And so it gets worse. If you could imagine this,
Nico is saying, my obligation is to the Dallas Mavericks.
Some of those decisions are going to be unpopular to
maybe Dirk, the most iconic player in the history of
(23:43):
your franchise, and maybe the fans, but my obligation is
to the Dallas Mavericks. What he means to say is,
I've got the donkey of the day signing my checks,
and my obligation is to the guy who pays me,
and he thinks this is a good idea, and I
think it is a good idea. So that's what we're
(24:03):
gonna do, despite the fact that no one's coming to
the games anymore. If you wondered why they would hold
a private press conference before a playing game that could
determine the eight seed, the Dallas Morning News put out
some insight. MAVs were slated to lose one hundred million
before the Luca trade. Before the Luca trade, they gave up,
for who knows why, forty five million dollars in regional
(24:26):
TV revenue to create MAVs TV all of of the
Phoenix Suns. Guarantee you that's not going well right now.
It cost eight million dollars to launch it. They have
ten million dollars in luxury tax. That's a sixty million
dollar loss, and then plus operational and revenue shortthles shortfalls
put them in one hundred million dollar hole.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
And that's before the Luca trade.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's before the Luca trade thousands of canceled season tickets. Luca,
by the way, was the number one jersey seller period
in the NBA. First one as an international player, and
international revenue is huge. So merch tanked at tendance, dropped
from second to sixth in the league. And I bet
you baby, it's getting worse because they were pretty damn
(25:12):
good before the trade deadline, and there wasn't that many
games after the trade deadline. It is not inconceivable that
the MAVs could lose more than one hundred million dollars
this year. I don't know why they would decide to
open the wound again right before the eve of the
play in game. And now you've got the fan base
riled up. Derk Noviski probably is a Laker fan, like
(25:33):
he probably is never coming back to Dallas. Nico Harrison
looks worse than ever. Brush up on your resume. So
I am selling hard on defense, wins, championships and whatever
this Mavericks team is selling as a whole.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Just because you say something over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Doesn't make it true, doesn't make it right, and doesn't
make me believe you. And nothing is going to convince
me that trading your generational star and making your elite
defense worse and telling me it made it better is
a smart roof. We gotta move on, let's talk about
a little first round matchups. Boy woo, little segment call
(26:14):
keep your Eye Out.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I don't think that's what it's really called. It's something
like that.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
We're still working on the segment name.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I think it's like keep your eye out. I think
it's something like that.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
A little help from the GPT.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
So so.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
We are waiting on the one versus eight matchups in
both conferences, and everything else is locked in.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
We got Cleveland plays the winner of Heat Hawks.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Who gives a fuck? Really, I want it to be
Hawks because I want George Niang and Kris LeVert to
play their former team, and I know that's spicy. You've
got Boston versus Orlando, which is probably Boston afore, New
York versus Detroit, which we'll get to it a second,
Indiana versus Milwaukee, and then the West. We've got Okay
sever versus the winner of Memphis Dallas Houston, which is
(27:04):
number two seed versus seven Golden State, number three Lakers
versus six Timberwolves, Number four Denver versus five Clippers. We've
already talked about Denver and La and La versus Minnesota.
We will dive into all of these in time. But
the series that jumps off the screen and open Saturday
is the Houston Rockets versus the Golden State Warriors. The
(27:29):
Warriors are three and two versus Houston this season, but
every game was close. Every game was close. Do not
count the Rockets out. Do not count them out. Why
Steph looked great in the plan. But guess what nobody's
like Aman Thompson for the Memphis Grizzlies. And they have
Dylan Brooks, which we know likes to play very tough,
(27:49):
physical defense. I was gonna say, Memphis used to have
Dylan Brooks and guess who has him now? Oh shit,
ain't no fun. When the rabbit got the gun.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Houston brings the physicality.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
They basically say, well, the refs can't call every foul
this is here. They can't call all of them.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
I'm and Thompson held Steph Curry to three points.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
The last time they played.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Houston's very long, very physical.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I think that they can bother pretty much everyone on
this roster, including Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler. You've got
Steven Adams there. People forget he's there. People forget they
made that trade. Speaking of another Memphis Grizzly. He has
a problem for Draymont. He's very physical. His teams three
and two in their last five matchups against the Warriors
(28:31):
and Draymond Green. So I think that's really interesting. Two
defensive trends to watch. Jimmy Butler has two plus steals
in nine of his last ten games, so I think
there's gonna be a battle of defense here. I'm in.
Thompson is a block machine. He has two plus blocks
in four of his last five games. He loves blocking
Steph by the way. Everyone does right and it's hard
(28:52):
to do. But the bottom line is this, don't count
out Houston, now, do not count them out. I know
that everybody thinks the Warriors are so good post a
trade deadline with Jimmy Butler, and they are, but they
still ended up in the play in, and there was
a lot of opportunities for them down the stretch to
not be in the play in. If it's a tight
whistle and they don't allow a lot of contact, which
(29:13):
is hard to do in the playoffs, the Warriors will
win this easily. They might win four to two, maybe
for to one.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
If the refs let these men play, it's.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
A problem it's a problem. You've got a home court
advantage in Houston.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Ima Udoka loves revenge.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
He went up against Steph Curry the year that he
coached for the Boston Celtics when they won the title.
The Rockets could take this series. Don't sleep. The Rockets
are very, very good. They've got a lot of pieces,
and they're gonna make this game very fucking ugly. Speaking
of making the game very ugly, the Knicks play the Pistons.
Both teams don't play pretty. Knicks are a lot prettier
(29:52):
now that they got Kitty Kat and Michale Bridges. But
the Knicks and the Pistons haven't seen each other in
the playoffs since nineteen ninety two. They haven't seen each
other in the playoffs since nineteen ninety two. They've been
like little mediocre ships passing in the night. When the
Pistons were good, the Knicks weren't good. When the Knicks
(30:12):
were good, Pistons were good. The Pistons, we have to say,
are the most fascinating, inspiring, exciting team in the NBA
story in the NBA, at least to go from the doldrums,
the team that everyone was shitting on the team that
had lost the most consecutive games in a row in
(30:35):
NBA history fourteen wins in total to forty four wins
in one year with a new head coach and a
new GM. The first team in NBA history to triple
their win total over back to back eighty two game
seasons is crazy. That's insane, and they've done it in
(30:56):
a couple of ways, which we'll go into as well
in a bit. Thing that is happening concurrently is the
fact that the Knicks have been struggling down the stretch.
They win fifty one games, their best total in twelve years.
But they're oh to ten against the good teams, oh
and ten versus Boston, Cleveland, Okay, see, and guess what.
Guess who else? They can't fucking be Detroit. They're one
(31:18):
and three against Detroit. Detroit goes undefeated at MSG, which
is supposedly the place where people have shook us and problems.
So I kind of like Detroit in this matchup. And
I know that's an insane thing to say, but Cad
Cunningham has been insane against the Knicks. He averaged twenty six,
(31:44):
nine and six this year, but he averaged thirty two
points per game and shot fifty six percent from three
at MSG. Knicks don't have an answer for him. Nicks
don't have an answer for him, but they do need
a secondary score. That's the one concern I have for
Troit is are you who are the others?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
As Shaq would say.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Because when you're on the run, when you're on the road,
excuse me, you need the others? Is that Dennis Shuter,
who has a lot of playoff experience won a title
with LA in the bubble? Is that Tobias Harris? Is
that Michael Beasley? Is that Tim Hardaway Junior? Is there
some sort of like someone emerges in every road game.
(32:30):
We don't know who it's gonna be, but it's gotta
be someone because they are going New York is going
to blitz Kay Cunningham. Josh Hart is going to be
blanketing him Ognnobi. There's a lot of length in defense
on this New York Knicks team. They have to continue
what they did really well. Detroit was a top five
(32:51):
defense since January. I could see this being a very
low literally like just the last time they played thirty
years ago in the playoffs, like an eighty seven five
games in terms of New York. They're gonna need production
from the corner shooters. You need Michel Bridges to shoot
the rock and do what he was paid to do
and what you traded all those picks for him for.
(33:13):
He needs to work. He needs to make Caid work
and he needs to work. And offensively, New York needs
to shoot better from three. They're shooting thirty five percent
from three, which is what they did two years ago
when they got bounced early by Miami. You can't have that,
so New York, you gotta contain kid. You gotta make
(33:34):
sure no others are stepping up. You gotta put up
a bunch of threes. You are twenty seventh and three
point attempts this season. That can't happen. Og needs to
go nuclear, which he has been doing at the end
of the year, and Jalen Brunson needs to be Batman.
And then you need to speed fucking things up because
pistons are gonna want to take you into the alley
(33:56):
and hit you with rocks. Okay, you need to go
up and down the court, and you need to make
this thing your pace. You need to do things your way.
As you might imagine the beat writers for their respective
teams think their team's gonna win. James Edward thinks the
Knicks are gonna win, and Hunter Patterson thinks the Pistons
are gonna win. I think this thing goes seven is
(34:19):
an amazing matchup. I'm so excited. Detroit's already beat New
York three or four times this season. I think the
momentum and defense can carry Detroit. But listen, you have
a lot of fucking stars with a lot of experience
in the playoffs playing for New York and Detroit has zero. Well, besides,
(34:40):
there are role players like Tim Hardway Junior and Tobias Harris.
I think the series is closer than people think. I
really do. This is not your grandparents, your dad's, Nick's
Piston series, But I think it's just gonna be as
tough and physical and gritty as it was back then.
All Right, moving on, we got to get to some
news from around the league. So Adams went on.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
The Pat McAfee show.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
He said, so this is just real, quick said, next year,
every national.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Game will be streamed on the NBA's new TV deal.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Whooa kind of exciting. Every national game will be streamed
in the NBA's new TV deal fun means Peacock fans
will then be able to personalize their feeds and choose
camera angles, which I don't know why I need to
do that weird under the basket angle that nobody asks for,
that I have to have when I go on TNT
overtime because I can't find my log in and that's
(35:30):
all I get.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Or deportees.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Who's with me? Deportees? So that's that part. Then moving forward,
another piece of news. Joe Dumars. Yes, Joe Dumars has
been hired by the Pelicans. He has been hired as
executive vice president of the New Orleans Pelicans, and he
leaves the NBA front office to probably get fired at
(35:52):
some point. John Hollinger, friend or show wrote the message
they sent without meaning to is stop taking a serious
We are not a real organization. Everyone in the West
connects Hill Zion's gone. Zion is gone. CJ. McCollum is gone.
If I'm HERB Jones, I'm getting the fuck out of there.
I'm taking my entire wardrobe of matching sweat sets. I'm
(36:14):
getting out of there. David Griffin apparently tried to fire
their head coach in the David Griffin. Former GM tried
to fire their head coach Willie Green in the middle
of the season.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Ownership who knows why they blocked it.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
They like Willy Green, and remember the Pelicans don't have
great attendance. Eight dollars for court side tickets at the
Smoothie King Arena.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
It's now gone.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
The price. Yesterday's price, ain't today's price. Four dollars for
courtside seats Pelicans read it is, of course spiraling the
top thread.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
There's no way we can keep this team in New Orleans,
is there?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yikes? Dame Lillard somehow moving forward cleared the red turn.
You've got a blood clot, brother, you got a blood clot.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
If Victorma can't return, then how can you.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Dame is clear for game action, just three weeks after
having deep vein thrombosis pause. Sean's reports Milwaukee's Dame Leo
Lillard has been cleared of deep vein thro on bosis
and is no longer on blood thinning medication. He is
out for Game one, expected to ramp up for a
playoff return. Cannot wait for Milwaukee to melt down against
Indiana again. Cannot wait any team with Damon Giannis is
(37:24):
a threat, but I still don't believe. And then trist
As Wild asked out of the week. Shout out the
hometown hero to Moni Kamara. He is getting major buzz
for All defense. I think he should be a first
team All Defender. Here is why Timani Kamara drew more
charges thirty one charges than twenty one not players NBA
(37:46):
teams this season. He beat second place Austin Reeves by
nine charges. That is your trist As wild ast out
of the Week. All right, that's all the time that
we have this set for this episode of The Heat Chick.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Come back Tuesday for all new episode.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Check out the feed for past episodes and many episodes
which drop unexpectedly like Memphis and The Plan. But do
not forget to follow us all season long. Download subscribe,
Tell your friends, even the ones you haven't spoken. Two
cents vine, follow us on TikTok at this Heat Check,
follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and threads at trist the
(38:22):
Underscore Crik. See you next time, Stay spicy,
The playing is here, playoffs are here, and we've got
a lot to cover. I'm talking through the Sacramento Kings breakup,
and good lord, is it bad. I then have to
try to make sense of the Chicago Bulls, which spoiler alert,
I cannot. I break down whether I am buying or
selling MAVs gm Nico Harrison's defense wins championships, mantra, and
(00:27):
we will hit a bunch of quick fire updates from
around the league too. So much to talk about. Why
it drop that motherfucking beak. That should be Rihanna, and
it should be Rihanna, my mom. The heat check boom.
You're listening to the Hottest, the Hottest. It'd be a
podcast out here. I said what I said, it's the heat.
(00:53):
The body wasn't even close to cold. When the Sacramento
Kings win Chopa Chopa tilmni McNair, we knew he was
already gone, because Wes Wilcox was already gone, literally took
a job somewhere else. Uh and the Kings absolutely stunk
(01:14):
up the joint. They lost a home game in the
nine to ten play into the Dallas Mavericks one one
oh six, and the Kings did the impossible.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Really, they looked worse than the Chicago Bulls.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
That's hard to do.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
It is really hard to look.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Worse than the Bulls. I don't know if there's a
team I feel worse about in terms of watchability than
the Sacramento Kings. If you watched that game, it was
clear everyone was ready for Cancun. Everyone that's saying a
lot think about this. This team already existed. Big man
(01:58):
that can't play defense, that's Jonis Valanciunas, that's Nicola Vucevic.
Same guy Demarty Rosen, he exists. He also exists on
the Chicago Bulls at one point. Zach Lavine, a guy
who basically was untradable. He exists on this team now.
So this is insane. Mani McNair fired fifteen minutes after
(02:23):
the game. The exit interviews hadn't even occurred yet, and
it seems kind of amazing it took that long, especially
when you consider in twenty twenty three, the Sacramento Kings
had the Executive of the Year, the Coach of the Year,
and Mike Brown Kia Clutch Player of the Year. In
(02:45):
Deer and Fox. They won their division.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
They were forty eight and thirty four.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
They were the most viral team in the NBA, where
it was like the Beam team, Light me up on
that beam, bebe warm me up on that beam. Gross
And two years later, all three of those humans are gone.
They're gone, They're nowhere to be found. And it was unceremonious.
(03:13):
The Kings finished fourth in their division. They get bounced
in the play in tournament. They're forty and forty two.
And I don't think a single soul, don't think a
single soul cares about the Beam all time. Fumble just
so bad, and I think there are moments where you
can say, how do we get here? What do we do?
(03:35):
What was the defining catalyst to me? If you look back,
we knew it wasn't gonna make sense. We knew it
was gonna fuck up everything in terms of how this
team played. And that was the Demarda Rosen trade. First
of all, he had to give up something for him
you shouldn't have. Second of all, it made the entire
(03:58):
team dynamic completely. The chemistry off how you wanted to
play with Demana, Sabonis and dearon Fox now made Sibonis
pretty much like irrelevant. He's basically Jonathan Kaminga now that
Jimmy Butler is on the team, like, what are you
doing here? What is your role? We don't know. Then
(04:19):
you parted ways with your head coach, and you did
it when your star player told you, I do not
want him gone. I need some stability in this god
forsaken franchise that has had nothing but tumult and turmoil
the entire time I have been an NBA professional. And
(04:40):
so you the owner, go against your GM and you
fire that coach that your star player wants to keep
while you're on vacation in Cabo. First of all, not
the right time to make a firing with your daughter,
who's at one point the G League GM with her
(05:02):
boyfriend who happened to meet her because he was a
throwaway piece in the Sabonis trade in Jeremy Lamb. This
is if you've seen that Apple TV show called Studio
that lays out all of the insanity of Hollywood and
you're like, Wow, this can't be real. These guys are
(05:23):
fucking clowns. That is this.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
This owner is outrageous.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
By the way.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
The daughter is not some hooped. She wanted to be
a pop star.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Bitch. Just call him my phone, let them locked up
non stop.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
I'm an owner of an NBA team, not.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
A pop star. What the fuck? Bro? All right? So
then Mike Brown leaves that was a side road. Darren
Fox is like, okay, well, I clearly haven't gotten through
to you, guys. It's not just that there's now no stability.
It's that I told you I will ask out if
you fire him. So I am asking at some point
(06:01):
out and I need to go somewhere else. And he
wouldn't sign the extension. Then you traded deering Fox for
a bag of potato chips plus a fifty million dollar
player in Zach Lavine who was virtually untradable, and you
didn't get anything back but to take that contract on.
(06:22):
Why is also the guy Vladi Divok, who was a
legend for this team. He's still he unceremoniously was let go,
got tanned, got skinny, and now he's back around the team.
So Mayni mcmahir gets fired. So Moni gets fired two
years after being Executive of the Year, and now reports
(06:42):
are today that he never wanted to fire Mike Brown,
didn't want to hire Doug Christie's ass who probably by
the Way is going to get the job, and if
he was left alone probably would have constructed a very
different roster, which makes me feel bad for Minnie McNair.
Not that we needed reminding, but all the skeletons are
now coming out of the closet, and not shockingly, Evan
(07:04):
Sideri is reporting that it was Vivek Ronadive who pushed
for DeRozan and trading Fox for Zack Lavin. These owners,
they are so ridiculously egotistical to think that just because
you were successful in one thing, you were successful in
something completely else, you're gonna be And in less than
(07:26):
twelve hours later, the Kings hire Scott Perry.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I don't know if you remember him. You remember Scott Perry.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
The Knicks refused to sign him re sign him when
his contract ran out in twenty twenty three. He's been
unemployed since. I hear he's a home care worker like
he is. That's a shot at me, That's a shot
at me. He's been jobless for two years and Vivek
already hired him once in twenty seventeen when he took
the job as VP of basketball Operations, and he just
(07:59):
left three months to take the job with the Knicks.
I just don't know what you do. I don't care
really how many pieces you change, how many coaches you change,
how many gms you change. It doesn't even matter who
you got. You could have gotten Tim Connolly. No, I
(08:19):
think getting Tim Conley. I would understand not going through
the process. But outside of Tim Connolly, you gotta go
through the process. You have to have interviews, you have
to have some semblance of professionalism when you run your organization.
And I am pretty sure that you're going to just
hire Doug Christy without a full search as well. I
(08:41):
don't know how you can be excited about this team.
Everyone needs to go. Everyone needs to go, every single
one of them bums, including Demonis Sabonis. Sabonis has three years,
one hundred and forty million dollars left on his contract,
and he's already like, we'll see, we'll see how it goes.
(09:03):
I want to see how this franchise is running. No, sir, no,
I want to see how you are running. And he
laid an egg in the plan. Tournament Levine three years,
one hundred and forty million dollars left on his contract.
You also have to go. DeRozan two years fifty million
dollars left on his contract. He's gotta go. Malik Monk
(09:26):
three years, sixty million left on his contract. If you
get finessed by the bulls, you're the Patsy's patsy. That's
what you are. You are literally the sucker at the table.
Full of suckers at the table. If they put a
bunch of suckers in poker in the room and they
all played poker together, that you would be the one
(09:48):
that would lose. Is the Sacramento gigs. That's fucking crazy.
We owe Deer and Fox in apology, Fox I was
very critical towards.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
He got dragged by local media.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
People including myself, were like fuck this guy, you know,
not like really fuck this guy, but kind of. And
turns out deeron Fox was right to get the fuck
up out of there. The team is not stable. It
is very dysfunctional when you have a pop star, well
not a pop star, excuse me, like a fledgling, aspiring
(10:23):
pop star in her flame out former NBA player boyfriend
who she met when he was on her team. Because
she's the her dad runs the team. Like when that
is occurring, it's a fucking dysfunctional place. And they will
never be a true contender until the vek Runnerdiba is
no longer there. He's I am putting that on wax
right now. I don't care how much that makes you cringe.
(10:45):
I love the Beam team. I spent many amazing nights
in Sacramento at the Golden One. I love Sacramento, I
love Fox, I love the vibes that this team was
giving off. I love you know what, We'll always have
that double over, triple overtime game between the Sacramento Kings
and the LA Clippers, probably the greatest game regular season
(11:08):
game I've ever seen, the shot making and now it's
just smoking ruins of a franchise that for most of
its history has inexplicably been a total fucking Jokeville. So
let's go to the other sucker. Yeah, why not another
(11:31):
team in the playing another team amazingly kick the fuckup
out of there. Time for cancuon, time for make it
make sense, Make it make sense.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
So the Sacramento Kings of the East.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Make no damn sense. Every year, instead of deciding, hey,
we're not very good, we're going nowhere, we're forty one
and forty one in the last four years, by average.
Instead of saying, hey, cool, we're five team. We're competitive.
Instead of saying, hey, we lead the league in attendance,
(12:09):
they say, hey, we should probably get a high draft
pick so we can actually do something with our team.
They fuck around and they say, we want to be
we want integrity, We want to have competitive integrity. That
is what they say. That's truly their point. And they
get bounced by the heat and the play in pretty
(12:29):
much every year, actually, last three years they've gotten bounced
in the plan. The team gave up seventy one first
half points to the Miami Heat. Make that make sense.
The Bulls are the illusion of a functional team, where
the Sacramento Kings have never had any success. It's almost
(12:50):
more difficult because you had that boyfriend, you had that
husband who did everything at least seemingly a first glance.
You got multiple titles, You had the greatest player of
all time on your team. You had Scottie Pippen there,
you had Dennis Robbin there, you had the best coach
of all time. There, you had iconic logos and swag
(13:14):
and the city of Chicago and great fans, and you
just tricked it all away. They are the illusion of
a team that wants to win, when the truth is
all they want to do is make money. All they
want to do is sell Michael Jordan jerseys for seventy
nine ninety nine, probably one hundred and forty nine ninety nine. Really,
(13:37):
all they want to do is say they lead the
league in attendance and they've got a nice young piece
they're excited about. All they want to do Michael Ryansdorff
and Jerry Ryansdorff is being control of a sinking ship.
Well really just like a ship that doesn't go anywhere
and just kind of floats in the water. That's crazy.
(13:57):
They were so late to move to Rosen, to move
Levine lol Kings, and they've held on to vouch Nicola Vusich,
a sieve on defense who got a puff piece recently
by the Athletic didn't understand that and Patrick Williams, who
even their delusional VP of basketball Operations said, tough to
(14:19):
think of the positive things that Patrick Williams had going
for him this year. Now they have half or less
than their previous value. Do you remember trading two first
round picks for Vushevich?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
And you gave up Window Carter in the process.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Yesh, make it make sense. The Bulls get bounced and
now have missed the playoffs for the eight straight time
in ten years. They haven't made a final since Jordan's
last title said twenty eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So would the architect of this whole thing say?
Speaker 1 (14:56):
What did he say? He said, I like the direction
is there?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I like the direction we're.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Going, he said. I like Josh Giddy. I want to
keep him. I like Kobe White, I want to keep him.
But turns out it's gonna be more complicated since Giddy
wants like forty rex forty ms. He's a restrictive free agent.
Someone will poison pill you. And Kobe White is extension eligible,
but he is not. He's probably headed restrictive free agency
(15:27):
in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
And get this.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Ak arturist Carnisovas, the architect of the Chicago Bulls, which
has like a very murky title, said he also loves
the head coach who has an all time winning record
for the Chicago Bulls under five hundred, just under five hundred,
not like Steven Silas. We've got a lot of draft
(15:52):
picks under five hundred, which like shout out to Steven Silas.
He also Karnisovas, which I thought was low key for
the fans, for fans that are are really up on
AK and basketball dynamics. So someone in the media asked him, hey,
has they may be reached out to you, but the
Denver opening He says, I have.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
No interest, and it was like, dog, we don't want you.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
If you're a Denver fan, we have.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
No interest in that.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
That's like saying I'm a balding accountant, not a good one,
like the junior Associated H and R block in Philly.
Like not good. Philly says, I have no interest in
Sydney Sweeney, Like she has no interest in you. Like good,
he says. Jerry and Michael Krause, No, Ryan's dwarf, excuse me,
(16:46):
have my back. This is where you feel like I'm
taking crazy pills when I talk about the Bulls. You
cannot get better until you get worse. There are no
two timelines. You can remain competitive while you are retooling,
rebuilding and trying to get to a place where you
(17:08):
can make a championship run. This team is a perdatory team,
and so they finally decide to truly pick a lane,
which means burn it all down, trade the everybody anyway,
the bulls make the bulls make sense. You can't, you can't.
Moving on, Let's go to a little segment called buy
(17:30):
or sell. Let's boy, we're buying or selling Nico Harrison,
the GM of the Dallas Mavericks, continuing to say and
doubling triple and quadruple down on the Luca trade, saying
a million times, no matter what question is asked, defense
Wins Championships. I think you kind of know where I stand.
(17:53):
But this is this is just just a lead into
the take. So the funniest social media post of the
wee was from a MAVs fan, well really from a
Dallas fan, a Dallas fan, and it said it took
Nico Harrison less than forty eight hours to kill the
vibes of Paige Becker's going number one overall to the
(18:16):
Dallas Wings. Are you buying Nico Harrison's Defense Wins Championships take,
which he uttered at least twenty times during his private
press conference. So, okay, a little background that we must
set it up first and foremost. If you don't know
(18:38):
that Nico is getting killed on the internet, and in
real life because he traded Luka Doncic. Welcome to twenty
twenty five. Nico who everyone hates, and Maverick's CEO, Rick Welts,
who apparently is like a smart guy. I don't know,
that's what they say. I don't know him at all,
held an invitation only press conference amazing where select Dallas
(19:02):
media was allowed and absolutely no video or recordings were allowed.
Somehow we got somebodio out of it. Anyway, this was
the organization's first chance, first attempt to fully talk about
the Luca trade, and it went about as well as
(19:22):
you thought it would. First Shams is reporting that Nico
Harrison didn't even want to do this, which looks like
the first smart thing I've heard from Nico Harrison, Like,
I am not down for just reopening this wound. I'm good,
let's not do it. I think this is a bad idea, guys.
But Patrick Dumont, who I think is the donkey of
(19:44):
the day, is like, no, I think we should. In fact,
you should, and you're gonna. And he wants to do
this because they're losing so much money and they've got
some thoughts on how to fix that. But to almost
every question because media is like, hey, we would like
(20:05):
to still talk about the Luca trade, from how it
originated to the thinking behind the deal. Nico continues to
say Defense wins Championships. And ESPN's Temic Man was there,
who we love, and he said Nico Harrison doubled down,
tripled down, quadrupled down. I could go on. I ran
(20:25):
out of fingers counting how many times he said Defense
wins Championships. This reminds me of a little story when
I was twelve and we went to this little community
center orientation and my mom was there with me. She
had a little pat nopeen and the guy who was
running the orientation said basically and he said basically, and
(20:48):
he said basically so many times in his orientation that
like five seven, eight minutes into it, my mom grabbed
a pen and started riding down time. He said basically.
And so I, as a twelve year old great role model,
had to look over at my mom riding tab every
(21:11):
time and try to suppress the laughter. I think that's
what Tim McMahon was doing with Defense Wins Championships, and
he's sticking with it now. You may not be on
NBA dot com on defensive ratings from last year. Maybe
you weren't paying attention to last year, but the Mavericks
had the top defense in the league for the final
twenty games after they traded for Daniel Gafford and PJ. Washington.
(21:34):
Even in the finals against the Celtics, they had one
hundred and nine point two defensive rating, which is quite excellent.
That would have ranked second in the league last season.
They lost for other reasons. But that logic maybe doesn't
add up. So I don't buy defense wins championships, because
you know what buys champion wins championships, defense and offense.
(21:58):
There's a strategy. Uh, that's how you become the Boston Celtics.
You know how you end up having just defense? You
know who you are. Then the Minnesota Timberwolves twenty twenty three,
twenty twenty four, who got bounced by that very same
Mavericks team, then Nico blew up in the Western Conference finals.
McMahon also said, uh, the Mavericks o their first round
(22:22):
capital for deals they made to build around Luca in
twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, and thirty.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Either outright or swaps, which is the entire window.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Winning window contention window that this ownership group in front
office says is how we evaluate them. He called a
three to four year timeframe to build a contender, and
McMahon pushed back on the logic of that, and he
just kept going back to defense wins championships. So if
Dallas wants to win with a defense first team despite
(22:58):
last year's MAVs with Luca where the second best defensive
team post All Star Break, and now you're building defense
with Anthony Davis who only played fifty six games twice
in the last eight years or more, and Kyrie Irving
who now has a torn acl at age thirty three
and can opt out of his player contract. And now
(23:19):
as you buy the balls, is there anything salvageable in Dallas?
And so it gets worse. If you could imagine this,
Nico is saying, my obligation is to the Dallas Mavericks.
Some of those decisions are going to be unpopular to
maybe Dirk, the most iconic player in the history of
(23:43):
your franchise, and maybe the fans, but my obligation is
to the Dallas Mavericks. What he means to say is,
I've got the donkey of the day signing my checks,
and my obligation is to the guy who pays me,
and he thinks this is a good idea, and I
think it is a good idea. So that's what we're
(24:03):
gonna do, despite the fact that no one's coming to
the games anymore. If you wondered why they would hold
a private press conference before a playing game that could
determine the eight seed, the Dallas Morning News put out
some insight. MAVs were slated to lose one hundred million
before the Luca trade. Before the Luca trade, they gave up,
for who knows why, forty five million dollars in regional
(24:26):
TV revenue to create MAVs TV all of of the
Phoenix Suns. Guarantee you that's not going well right now.
It cost eight million dollars to launch it. They have
ten million dollars in luxury tax. That's a sixty million
dollar loss, and then plus operational and revenue shortthles shortfalls
put them in one hundred million dollar hole.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
And that's before the Luca trade.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's before the Luca trade thousands of canceled season tickets. Luca,
by the way, was the number one jersey seller period
in the NBA. First one as an international player, and
international revenue is huge. So merch tanked at tendance, dropped
from second to sixth in the league. And I bet
you baby, it's getting worse because they were pretty damn
(25:12):
good before the trade deadline, and there wasn't that many
games after the trade deadline. It is not inconceivable that
the MAVs could lose more than one hundred million dollars
this year. I don't know why they would decide to
open the wound again right before the eve of the
play in game. And now you've got the fan base
riled up. Derk Noviski probably is a Laker fan, like
(25:33):
he probably is never coming back to Dallas. Nico Harrison
looks worse than ever. Brush up on your resume. So
I am selling hard on defense, wins, championships and whatever
this Mavericks team is selling as a whole.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Just because you say something over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Doesn't make it true, doesn't make it right, and doesn't
make me believe you. And nothing is going to convince
me that trading your generational star and making your elite
defense worse and telling me it made it better is
a smart roof. We gotta move on, let's talk about
a little first round matchups. Boy woo, little segment call
(26:14):
keep your Eye Out.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I don't think that's what it's really called. It's something
like that.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
We're still working on the segment name.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I think it's like keep your eye out. I think
it's something like that.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
A little help from the GPT.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
So so.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
We are waiting on the one versus eight matchups in
both conferences, and everything else is locked in.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
We got Cleveland plays the winner of Heat Hawks.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Who gives a fuck? Really, I want it to be
Hawks because I want George Niang and Kris LeVert to
play their former team, and I know that's spicy. You've
got Boston versus Orlando, which is probably Boston afore, New
York versus Detroit, which we'll get to it a second,
Indiana versus Milwaukee, and then the West. We've got Okay
sever versus the winner of Memphis Dallas Houston, which is
(27:04):
number two seed versus seven Golden State, number three Lakers
versus six Timberwolves, Number four Denver versus five Clippers. We've
already talked about Denver and La and La versus Minnesota.
We will dive into all of these in time. But
the series that jumps off the screen and open Saturday
is the Houston Rockets versus the Golden State Warriors. The
(27:29):
Warriors are three and two versus Houston this season, but
every game was close. Every game was close. Do not
count the Rockets out. Do not count them out. Why
Steph looked great in the plan. But guess what nobody's
like Aman Thompson for the Memphis Grizzlies. And they have
Dylan Brooks, which we know likes to play very tough,
(27:49):
physical defense. I was gonna say, Memphis used to have
Dylan Brooks and guess who has him now? Oh shit,
ain't no fun. When the rabbit got the gun.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Houston brings the physicality.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
They basically say, well, the refs can't call every foul
this is here. They can't call all of them.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
I'm and Thompson held Steph Curry to three points.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
The last time they played.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Houston's very long, very physical.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I think that they can bother pretty much everyone on
this roster, including Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler. You've got
Steven Adams there. People forget he's there. People forget they
made that trade. Speaking of another Memphis Grizzly. He has
a problem for Draymont. He's very physical. His teams three
and two in their last five matchups against the Warriors
(28:31):
and Draymond Green. So I think that's really interesting. Two
defensive trends to watch. Jimmy Butler has two plus steals
in nine of his last ten games, so I think
there's gonna be a battle of defense here. I'm in.
Thompson is a block machine. He has two plus blocks
in four of his last five games. He loves blocking
Steph by the way. Everyone does right and it's hard
(28:52):
to do. But the bottom line is this, don't count
out Houston, now, do not count them out. I know
that everybody thinks the Warriors are so good post a
trade deadline with Jimmy Butler, and they are, but they
still ended up in the play in, and there was
a lot of opportunities for them down the stretch to
not be in the play in. If it's a tight
whistle and they don't allow a lot of contact, which
(29:13):
is hard to do in the playoffs, the Warriors will
win this easily. They might win four to two, maybe
for to one.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
If the refs let these men play, it's.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
A problem it's a problem. You've got a home court
advantage in Houston.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Ima Udoka loves revenge.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
He went up against Steph Curry the year that he
coached for the Boston Celtics when they won the title.
The Rockets could take this series. Don't sleep. The Rockets
are very, very good. They've got a lot of pieces,
and they're gonna make this game very fucking ugly. Speaking
of making the game very ugly, the Knicks play the Pistons.
Both teams don't play pretty. Knicks are a lot prettier
(29:52):
now that they got Kitty Kat and Michale Bridges. But
the Knicks and the Pistons haven't seen each other in
the playoffs since nineteen ninety two. They haven't seen each
other in the playoffs since nineteen ninety two. They've been
like little mediocre ships passing in the night. When the
Pistons were good, the Knicks weren't good. When the Knicks
(30:12):
were good, Pistons were good. The Pistons, we have to say,
are the most fascinating, inspiring, exciting team in the NBA
story in the NBA, at least to go from the doldrums,
the team that everyone was shitting on the team that
had lost the most consecutive games in a row in
(30:35):
NBA history fourteen wins in total to forty four wins
in one year with a new head coach and a
new GM. The first team in NBA history to triple
their win total over back to back eighty two game
seasons is crazy. That's insane, and they've done it in
(30:56):
a couple of ways, which we'll go into as well
in a bit. Thing that is happening concurrently is the
fact that the Knicks have been struggling down the stretch.
They win fifty one games, their best total in twelve years.
But they're oh to ten against the good teams, oh
and ten versus Boston, Cleveland, Okay, see, and guess what.
Guess who else? They can't fucking be Detroit. They're one
(31:18):
and three against Detroit. Detroit goes undefeated at MSG, which
is supposedly the place where people have shook us and problems.
So I kind of like Detroit in this matchup. And
I know that's an insane thing to say, but Cad
Cunningham has been insane against the Knicks. He averaged twenty six,
(31:44):
nine and six this year, but he averaged thirty two
points per game and shot fifty six percent from three
at MSG. Knicks don't have an answer for him. Nicks
don't have an answer for him, but they do need
a secondary score. That's the one concern I have for
Troit is are you who are the others?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
As Shaq would say.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Because when you're on the run, when you're on the road,
excuse me, you need the others? Is that Dennis Shuter,
who has a lot of playoff experience won a title
with LA in the bubble? Is that Tobias Harris? Is
that Michael Beasley? Is that Tim Hardaway Junior? Is there
some sort of like someone emerges in every road game.
(32:30):
We don't know who it's gonna be, but it's gotta
be someone because they are going New York is going
to blitz Kay Cunningham. Josh Hart is going to be
blanketing him Ognnobi. There's a lot of length in defense
on this New York Knicks team. They have to continue
what they did really well. Detroit was a top five
(32:51):
defense since January. I could see this being a very
low literally like just the last time they played thirty
years ago in the playoffs, like an eighty seven five
games in terms of New York. They're gonna need production
from the corner shooters. You need Michel Bridges to shoot
the rock and do what he was paid to do
and what you traded all those picks for him for.
(33:13):
He needs to work. He needs to make Caid work
and he needs to work. And offensively, New York needs
to shoot better from three. They're shooting thirty five percent
from three, which is what they did two years ago
when they got bounced early by Miami. You can't have that,
so New York, you gotta contain kid. You gotta make
(33:34):
sure no others are stepping up. You gotta put up
a bunch of threes. You are twenty seventh and three
point attempts this season. That can't happen. Og needs to
go nuclear, which he has been doing at the end
of the year, and Jalen Brunson needs to be Batman.
And then you need to speed fucking things up because
pistons are gonna want to take you into the alley
(33:56):
and hit you with rocks. Okay, you need to go
up and down the court, and you need to make
this thing your pace. You need to do things your way.
As you might imagine the beat writers for their respective
teams think their team's gonna win. James Edward thinks the
Knicks are gonna win, and Hunter Patterson thinks the Pistons
are gonna win. I think this thing goes seven is
(34:19):
an amazing matchup. I'm so excited. Detroit's already beat New
York three or four times this season. I think the
momentum and defense can carry Detroit. But listen, you have
a lot of fucking stars with a lot of experience
in the playoffs playing for New York and Detroit has zero. Well, besides,
(34:40):
there are role players like Tim Hardway Junior and Tobias Harris.
I think the series is closer than people think. I
really do. This is not your grandparents, your dad's, Nick's
Piston series, But I think it's just gonna be as
tough and physical and gritty as it was back then.
All Right, moving on, we got to get to some
news from around the league. So Adams went on.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
The Pat McAfee show.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
He said, so this is just real, quick said, next year,
every national.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Game will be streamed on the NBA's new TV deal.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Whooa kind of exciting. Every national game will be streamed
in the NBA's new TV deal fun means Peacock fans
will then be able to personalize their feeds and choose
camera angles, which I don't know why I need to
do that weird under the basket angle that nobody asks for,
that I have to have when I go on TNT
overtime because I can't find my log in and that's
(35:30):
all I get.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Or deportees.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Who's with me? Deportees? So that's that part. Then moving forward,
another piece of news. Joe Dumars. Yes, Joe Dumars has
been hired by the Pelicans. He has been hired as
executive vice president of the New Orleans Pelicans, and he
leaves the NBA front office to probably get fired at
(35:52):
some point. John Hollinger, friend or show wrote the message
they sent without meaning to is stop taking a serious
We are not a real organization. Everyone in the West
connects Hill Zion's gone. Zion is gone. CJ. McCollum is gone.
If I'm HERB Jones, I'm getting the fuck out of there.
I'm taking my entire wardrobe of matching sweat sets. I'm
(36:14):
getting out of there. David Griffin apparently tried to fire
their head coach in the David Griffin. Former GM tried
to fire their head coach Willie Green in the middle
of the season.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Ownership who knows why they blocked it.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
They like Willy Green, and remember the Pelicans don't have
great attendance. Eight dollars for court side tickets at the
Smoothie King Arena.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
It's now gone.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
The price. Yesterday's price, ain't today's price. Four dollars for
courtside seats Pelicans read it is, of course spiraling the
top thread.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
There's no way we can keep this team in New Orleans,
is there?
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yikes? Dame Lillard somehow moving forward cleared the red turn.
You've got a blood clot, brother, you got a blood clot.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
If Victorma can't return, then how can you.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Dame is clear for game action, just three weeks after
having deep vein thrombosis pause. Sean's reports Milwaukee's Dame Leo
Lillard has been cleared of deep vein thro on bosis
and is no longer on blood thinning medication. He is
out for Game one, expected to ramp up for a
playoff return. Cannot wait for Milwaukee to melt down against
Indiana again. Cannot wait any team with Damon Giannis is
(37:24):
a threat, but I still don't believe. And then trist
As Wild asked out of the week. Shout out the
hometown hero to Moni Kamara. He is getting major buzz
for All defense. I think he should be a first
team All Defender. Here is why Timani Kamara drew more
charges thirty one charges than twenty one not players NBA
(37:46):
teams this season. He beat second place Austin Reeves by
nine charges. That is your trist As wild ast out
of the Week. All right, that's all the time that
we have this set for this episode of The Heat Chick.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Come back Tuesday for all new episode.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Check out the feed for past episodes and many episodes
which drop unexpectedly like Memphis and The Plan. But do
not forget to follow us all season long. Download subscribe,
Tell your friends, even the ones you haven't spoken. Two
cents vine, follow us on TikTok at this Heat Check,
follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and threads at trist the
(38:22):
Underscore Crik. See you next time, Stay spicy,
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