Speaker 1: I think we have a new face to replace Lebron
Speaker 1: James on the billboard of Cleveland. Folks. I think we
Speaker 1: have it. I think we know who it is. I
Speaker 1: know it's early, but boy, oh boy, legit. Right now,
Speaker 1: Cleveland fans are cheering this man's name every time he
Speaker 1: touches the ball, and they're screaming ENVYP MVP. We are
Speaker 1: talking Donovan Mitchell because damn, if he keeps playing like this,
Speaker 1: everyone's gonna be talking about Donovan Mitchell for MVP. Just
Speaker 1: remember on this podcast we said it first. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I think, if Cleveland keeps winning, I think
Speaker 1: if they sit atop the East, I think Donald Mitchell
Speaker 1: does win MVP. I don't know what the odds are
Speaker 1: right now, but I tell you what it might be
Speaker 1: worth a sprinkle. It might be worth a little Pepperoni money,
Speaker 1: as they say, think about that Rookie of the Year
Speaker 1: stolen from him from Ben Simmons to MVP. I did
Speaker 1: not see that coming. I did not see that coming
Speaker 1: because and I think this is probably one of the
Speaker 1: worst things about Donald. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: bad things about Donovan Mitchell going to Utah, like for him,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bad things. The fan base is terrible, Like,
Speaker 1: they're very white, they're low key ist in every way,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, not a lot to do.
Speaker 1: They don't even allow coffee shops and most of that place.
Speaker 1: He went from New York to Louisville, Kentucky to Utah.
Speaker 1: Could there be more of a juxtaposition? I digress. But
Speaker 1: on top of playing for Utah, he's also got to
Speaker 1: play with Rudy Gobert. And Rudy Gobert, we don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't know how these two are meshing together. Is
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell worse or is Donald Mitchell better with Rudy Gobert.
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's a dynamic two guard, and we
Speaker 1: now see that dynamic two guards like Anthony Edwards are
Speaker 1: saying very shady things about what it's like to play
Speaker 1: with Rudy Gobert, already six games in the season, saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: I actually like smaller lineups. It's better for me when
Speaker 1: this motherfucker's not here. As an aside to the aside.
Speaker 1: Turns out Tim Connolly, new GM of the Minnesota Timberwolves,
Speaker 1: told absolutely no one consulted, absolutely no one within the
Speaker 1: organization on the player side about bringing in Rudy. Gobert
Speaker 1: did not ask for any gold stars, did not ask
Speaker 1: for any approval or hey, do you have any thoughts
Speaker 1: on this matter? Aunt Edwards, Dicey, his numbers are down,
Speaker 1: but we couldn't tell Donovan Mitchell for years what he was.
Speaker 1: Would he be better or would he be worse without Rudy?
Speaker 1: You have a team now full of players at that point,
Speaker 1: actually at that point they didn't make sense together, right,
Speaker 1: And Donovan Mitchell is averaging twenty six four and five
Speaker 1: and you're saying, is he going to excel or is
Speaker 1: he going to decline? He goes to the Calves and
Speaker 1: you're like, man, there's a lot of young guys that
Speaker 1: need the ball on that team. You've got Darius Garland,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have the rock. You've got Jared Allen, he's
Speaker 1: gonna need the rock. Evan Mobley, Caris Levert's a bucket.
Speaker 1: All these guys are gonna demand the ball. What is
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell gonna do. It's not like he's been this
Speaker 1: assist monster. But you know what, shockingly, surprisingly happily, I'm
Speaker 1: very happy because I like DONOVD. Mitchell as a person.
Speaker 1: He's he's really fucking good, like much better than we
Speaker 1: even knew he's. He was held back in Utah. Let
Speaker 1: me just say that very clearly, Donovan Mitchell was held
Speaker 1: back on the Jazz, not just from a scoring perspective,
Speaker 1: but in every facet of the game as well. We
Speaker 1: know that Donovan Mitchell is really good. He's been really
Speaker 1: good for a long time, been an All Star for
Speaker 1: a long time. But now he's on a whole other level.
Speaker 1: He's on another planet right now, and he could probably,
Speaker 1: just like Jaw last year, be in the conversation for
Speaker 1: most Improved Player. But that's kind of shady. I think
Speaker 1: when you're a star, winning most improved Player is shady.
Speaker 1: He's improved in every area, though career highs in everything
Speaker 1: from points to steals, to rebounds to assists. Let's look
Speaker 1: what's happening. His scoring, specifically from deep range, has jumped
Speaker 1: like crazy from thirty five to forty five percent from
Speaker 1: last year. This year, he's already hit in six games
Speaker 1: twenty five threes. What the fuck is that? Including eight
Speaker 1: in one game? What is that? What is that? He's
Speaker 1: a shooting guard, as we know, But now that Darius
Speaker 1: Garland has been out he's been playing part point guarden
Speaker 1: with ease at an elite level. His career numbers for
Speaker 1: assists like four or five. What is the averaging now
Speaker 1: checks notes seven and a half, seven and a half.
Speaker 1: And they're not just like swing swing, drive kick to
Speaker 1: a corner shooter. These are legit fucking dimes. These are
Speaker 1: bounced passes through a passing lane between defenders, threading the
Speaker 1: needle lay. And on top of that, because I've killed
Speaker 1: him on this dom Michell's playing some defense now, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden he leaves Utah. He's playing some defense.
Speaker 1: He has ten steals in six games. Ten count them
Speaker 1: ten steals. He had two blocks against the Knicks. Two blocks,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. In Utah. His defensive rating was one twelve,
Speaker 1: which is abysmal this year one oh five Drew Holliday
Speaker 1: is probably the best on ball defender for a guard.
Speaker 1: His is one oh one, so like k not that
Speaker 1: far off truthfully, very big difference between one twelve and
Speaker 1: one oh five. His points per game, like I said,
Speaker 1: is up despite being on a better team. I don't
Speaker 1: understand it. He's averaging almost thirty three points per game,
Speaker 1: which is the fourth best in the NBA. And his
Speaker 1: career numbers are at twenty four. The dude is just
Speaker 1: out of his mind right now. One hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: three points total in six games. How does that happen?
Speaker 1: How is it possible? Then you add in he has
Speaker 1: forty four assistering that time, he's recorded ten steals, hit
Speaker 1: twenty five three pointers, and most importantly, the caves are
Speaker 1: five and one. That's kingshit right there, that's MVP. Put
Speaker 1: my face and my body on a billboard next to
Speaker 1: the queue and add some chalk in the air dust
Speaker 1: like Lebron James kind of shit. And if he keeps
Speaker 1: us up, people are gonna be replacing Lebron jerseys with
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell. One's because he's only twenty six years old
Speaker 1: and his ceiling apparently can get much much higher. We
Speaker 1: gotta move on because the only other guard right now
Speaker 1: is this crazy? You look at the numbers, is crazy?
Speaker 1: The only other guard right now that's on And Jaw's great.
Speaker 1: I love Jaw. Jaw's playing great, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: shade Jaw. And he's up there in stats as well,
Speaker 1: So don't get in my mentions and be like you
Speaker 1: didn't mention Jaw But the only other surprising jump besides
Speaker 1: Donovan Mitchell is Luka Doncics. I knew he was playing well,
Speaker 1: I've watched the games. Obviously, you see him putting up numbers.
Speaker 1: You see him giving people the business. But then you
Speaker 1: look at the stats and you're like, that's not it
Speaker 1: can't be right. That cannot be right. If he does
Speaker 1: this continuously for the rest of the year, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into what will happen to the maps if he does,
Speaker 1: because it's not good. But if he does this for
Speaker 1: the rest of the year and keeps this up, he
Speaker 1: will have the best numbers in history we've ever seen
Speaker 1: from a guard, and that is including Michael James Jordan,
Speaker 1: Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Jeffrey Jordan is Jeffrey. It's not close either, Luca.
Speaker 1: You might not even realize it is averaging thirty seven,
Speaker 1: thirty seven, ten and nine. That would be the best
Speaker 1: total season in the history of guard play. James Harden
Speaker 1: at one point averaged thirty six, seven and eight in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. In Jordan's career, he never averaged ten rebounds
Speaker 1: a game. Never like this is Michael Jordan level and
Speaker 1: above type shit, Who the fuck What the fuck is Luca?
Speaker 1: What's going on? What is he doing? His worst statistical
Speaker 1: game this year was thirty one, sixteen and ten. Let
Speaker 1: me just say that again. Luca's worst statistical game this
Speaker 1: year is thirty one, sixteen and ten against Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: He has scored over thirty one in every single game
Speaker 1: with a higher forty four points. He had thirty points
Speaker 1: in the first half against Magic the other night. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's doing it shooting twenty one percent from three.
Speaker 1: When he shoots thirty five percent for his career from three,
Speaker 1: he could legit be scoring forty points per game by now.
Speaker 1: That is so insane. That's like only as shocking this
Speaker 1: year as Yannis from like a total player perspective, and
Speaker 1: then only as shocking from a guard perspective is Donovan Mitchell.
Speaker 1: I don't understand it. I don't understand it. And as
Speaker 1: good as Luca has been, the problem is really just
Speaker 1: that other teams don't care. Other teams don't actually mind.
Speaker 1: Other teams would prefer that Luca goes crazy, because as
Speaker 1: long as other Mavericks don't do anything, this Mavericks team's
Speaker 1: gonna lose a lot of games. This makes for a
Speaker 1: very simple defense, when it's just like, let Luca go
Speaker 1: off and we'll just guard everybody else. And the issue
Speaker 1: is it's quite simply JaVale McGee. Unfortunately, hate say it.
Speaker 1: JaVale McGee is getting starting minutes and JaVale McGee's not
Speaker 1: very good right now, He's the starting center on a
Speaker 1: team with two other centers that are much much better.
Speaker 1: I want to say that Javal McGee has a negative
Speaker 1: thirty five so far this year when he's on the
Speaker 1: floor in every single game. Combined Christian Wood, Javal McGee,
Speaker 1: Dwight Powell, all three centers right the team has the
Speaker 1: highest plus minus with Power, second highest with Wood, and
Speaker 1: behind them the team is committed to a negative plus minus.
Speaker 1: Guy JaVale McGee, he stinks. He stinks right now. I
Speaker 1: hate to say it. I love JaVale McGee, good player,
Speaker 1: really fun guy, nice guy. He stinks right now, he's terrible.
Speaker 1: You have Christian Wood right there, Christian Wood at one point,
Speaker 1: at sixteen points in a row, and Jason Kidd put
Speaker 1: him on a bench. I do not know what's going on.
Speaker 1: I am not sure Wood is bawling. He's per thirty six.
Speaker 1: Christian Wood twenty three to eleven and one. But he's
Speaker 1: getting twenty five minutes per game with the second unit.
Speaker 1: He's not out there in the fourth quarter either. He's
Speaker 1: not closing games. I don't care if you don't start,
Speaker 1: but you're closing games, You're kind of a starter, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? They are now. The MAVs are
Speaker 1: now one of only a handful of teams right now
Speaker 1: to blow a sixteen point or greater lead with under
Speaker 1: four minutes to go against Okac and in game would
Speaker 1: game one, when Christian Wood, like I said, had sixteen
Speaker 1: straight points against the Suns in the second half, kid
Speaker 1: just took him out and never played again. Why? Well,
Speaker 1: house way? How? And then they asked, Jason Kidd, how
Speaker 1: committed to you? How committed are you to continuing to
Speaker 1: start JaVale McGee? How how strong is your commitment to him?
Speaker 1: And he said extremely strong. And I said, you're gonna
Speaker 1: lose a lot of games like that, so you can
Speaker 1: all love and I'm gonna love watching Luca ball out.
Speaker 1: He can put up video game numbers this year, but
Speaker 1: if he does, Mavericks fans need to be very scared.
Speaker 1: That's so bad. He had thirty in the first half
Speaker 1: against Orlando and the game was tied at halftime. So
Speaker 1: if he has to score forty every night, folks, Dallas
Speaker 1: just might be a play and team. And that is
Speaker 1: a scary, scary thought.