Speaker 1: Cool, So let's move out of the CBA. I have
Speaker 1: some general NBA questions too. Number One, I need to
Speaker 1: know what's going on in Toronto because I I have
Speaker 1: not seen someone go from beloved to a hot seat
Speaker 1: to I need to take time to reflect. It's been
Speaker 1: a decade and maybe I don't want to coach here anymore.
Speaker 1: What's what's your take on how this is all got
Speaker 1: to this place with Nick Nurse and his future around
Speaker 1: the Raptors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not any sourced reporting, but it's a
Speaker 2: you know, gut gut feel on this is he's gone,
Speaker 2: Like I don't you don't get to all this point
Speaker 2: with all that noise, and then you with like five
Speaker 2: or six games left in your season, you're like, hey,
Speaker 2: I know we're getting ready to go into the most
Speaker 2: important parts of our season in the playing tournament, maybe playoffs,
Speaker 2: but let me just address this with you guys now,
Speaker 2: because I don't want to do it again. Like that
Speaker 2: could have been done, you know, before the last game
Speaker 2: of the year. You could have done it. You could
Speaker 2: have done it before your last postseason game, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: And I think that was a you know, hey, we're
Speaker 2: trying to do something here, over the next few weeks.
Speaker 2: So let's just run with what we got. But I
Speaker 2: think it's pretty clear that that's headed for divorce and
Speaker 2: it's gonna go a different way. The whole I'm gonna
Speaker 2: take weeks, and that might be turned into I'm gonna
Speaker 2: take days because I have another job offer ready for me,
Speaker 2: and here we go. Because like him or not, and
Speaker 2: I think some of his antics are a little tiresome,
Speaker 2: but Nick Nurse is a very very good coach, and
Speaker 2: I think there's a handful of teams out there that
Speaker 2: are gonna say, all right, hey, this is a guy,
Speaker 2: whether it's lift us into title contention because we're already
Speaker 2: a pretty good team, or we're not very good and
Speaker 2: we want to be good. Let's get him in here
Speaker 2: to kind of move us forward. He's gonna have very
Speaker 2: good opportunities coming his way.
Speaker 1: If because there's been a lot of rumors about him
Speaker 1: maybe being linked to Houston, if he's already getting players
Speaker 1: like ogn and Obi and Pascal Siakam to tune him out,
Speaker 1: which is what the reporting is. In my opinion, Keith,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to hear yours. There's no way he
Speaker 1: would want to be a part of a rebuild with
Speaker 1: that sort of roster, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, we were already
Speaker 2: hearing some of the things there were you know, port
Speaker 2: Steven Silas is out there. They're telling us openly like
Speaker 2: these guys don't listen. I tell them what to do,
Speaker 2: and then they don't run the plays, they don't do
Speaker 2: this other stuff, and it's like, yeah, I think that
Speaker 2: probably my guess would be if we see Nick Nurse
Speaker 2: headed to Houston, we're gonna see Houston turning their fifty
Speaker 2: million into cap space and we're signing some veterans, we're
Speaker 2: trading some of these kids in packages, and we're turning
Speaker 2: this thing very quickly into where where we're going forward
Speaker 2: with this. I also don't get the sense that Houston's
Speaker 2: ownership is let's say, the most patient in the world.
Speaker 2: They gets all right, we did this kind of rebuild
Speaker 2: thing for a couple of years. Now let's be good again.
Speaker 2: So I think that could be part of if that
Speaker 2: all comes together, like we're hearing some of the rumors,
Speaker 2: I think you might see that turn into let's push
Speaker 2: this thing forward very very quickly.
Speaker 1: Another rebuilding team that has questions around it's coaching. Rumors
Speaker 1: are that Pop doesn't know if he's coming back in
Speaker 1: San Antonio. He's not going to make a decision until
Speaker 1: he finds out whether they're getting Victor WOMPI gamma? Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that kind of the long and the short of it.
Speaker 2: I kind of feel like it might be right. I
Speaker 2: think he's kind of looking at and saying, hey, you're
Speaker 2: going to deliver me a you know, not that they're
Speaker 2: the same kind of player, but give me another Tim Duncan.
Speaker 2: I'm here. I'll be here next year. If it's you know,
Speaker 2: we slipped in the lottery and we're getting you know,
Speaker 2: the third pick or whatever. That guy's probably pretty good.
Speaker 2: But I'm kind of good. I've I've done this. I think,
Speaker 2: well we I kind of I don't think Pop's going
Speaker 2: to be the kind of guy necessarily. I know some
Speaker 2: people have said like he's going to retire and then
Speaker 2: if you see him again, it's gonna because you're part
Speaker 2: of his inner circle and you're at one of his
Speaker 2: wine dinners. I don't know if that's gonna be how
Speaker 2: it goes. I remember different sport, but kind of similar
Speaker 2: type thing. I remember hearing Bobby Bowden Joe Paturno talked
Speaker 2: for years about, Hey, if I'm not a football coach,
Speaker 2: what am I right? And at this point in my life,
Speaker 2: this is what kind of keeps me going, gets me
Speaker 2: up every day, is to do this. So I kind
Speaker 2: of wonder if Pop's like, hey, if I'm not in basketball,
Speaker 2: and I think it's been Forgotton because he's been coaching
Speaker 2: for so long, came out of the front office, and
Speaker 2: he came out of the front office because it was hey,
Speaker 2: we built a mess of a team. I should be
Speaker 2: the one who has to deal with this. And then
Speaker 2: they you know, lottery odds as the Celtics guy. I
Speaker 2: remember quite well we were supposed to get Tim Duncan
Speaker 2: and Keith van Horn with Rick Patino and ended up
Speaker 2: with Chauncey Billups and Ron Mercer instead. I think Pop
Speaker 2: might be like, hey, i can go back and do
Speaker 2: some work in the front office again, and I'll still
Speaker 2: be around and kind of doing my thing. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, a handful of his kind of people who
Speaker 2: presume maybe to be his successors, they've kind of moved on,
Speaker 2: gone on because he just keeps doing it. But it
Speaker 2: wouldn't surprise me if they get one min Yama if
Speaker 2: he's right back on the bench again kind of Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do my thing and waiting it out until
Speaker 2: the absolute right. Personally, he feels like I'm ready to
Speaker 2: hand this off to is available.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of the season, I told somebody who
Speaker 1: works for the front office of the Spurs. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's such a young, fresh team. The
Speaker 1: way that they're running the offense feels so different. It's
Speaker 1: almost like you forget sometimes that it's Pop running the show.
Speaker 1: And their response to me was, we never forget. We
Speaker 1: know every day who's running the show. Is the question,
Speaker 1: I guess is like, what does that really mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think sometimes what that is is, hey, we
Speaker 2: like he's now instead of the I'm in there every
Speaker 2: single day grinding with this, he kind of becomes like, hey,
Speaker 2: I oversee this operation, right, I've got somebody's kind of
Speaker 2: running the defense, somebody who's kind of running this. And
Speaker 2: that's in general how NBA teams kind of work. I
Speaker 2: think one of the misnomers is that, you know, I
Speaker 2: think because people know NFL coaches love to talk about
Speaker 2: I sleep in my office and I get two hours
Speaker 2: of sleep a night and I'm breaking down film for
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred hours a week, and it's like, well, why, like,
Speaker 2: what more did you learn than that one hundred hours
Speaker 2: that couldn't have learned in forty But I think it's
Speaker 2: with the NBA coaches then people think like they're heavily involved,
Speaker 2: and I think sometimes it's they've they've their responsibilities, get
Speaker 2: farmed out to a lot of people and they kind
Speaker 2: of do their thing, and then what happens with the
Speaker 2: coach is like, all right, now I collect all that
Speaker 2: information and I formed that into what we want to do.
Speaker 2: And I think for Pop one of the cool things was,
Speaker 2: I think it was a year ago, we had a
Speaker 2: chance to talk to him and he was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of re energized by this, like I've got
Speaker 2: a bunch of kids in here now and where then
Speaker 2: he said, you know what's cool is we tell them
Speaker 2: to do something, they go out, they screwed up ten times,
Speaker 2: and then they finally get it right. It's like, oh man,
Speaker 2: they got it. Now, Now we can take that, we
Speaker 2: can build onto that with piece number two, and you
Speaker 2: just kind of keep adding to it. And I think
Speaker 2: he's been a little bit re energized by some of
Speaker 2: that stuff. But my guess is it's probably a little
Speaker 2: bit more of a shared responsibility within the organization than
Speaker 2: it is so much. Hey, Pop's really fully running everything
Speaker 2: the way it probably was during most of the Duncan
Speaker 2: Genobili Parker years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the sense that I got was maybe that
Speaker 1: they're some of the people there are ready for a
Speaker 1: regime change to take place too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I kind of wonder if the talent bleed out of
Speaker 2: the organization with assistant coaches was Man, I can't wait
Speaker 2: here and be the number two for a million years,
Speaker 2: Like I gotta go. Like like if we if we
Speaker 2: were to talk about college basketball, it was like I remember,
Speaker 2: for like twenty years, it was black guy's gonna take
Speaker 2: over for coach k. Yeah, then it was well he's
Speaker 2: still here, and Neil and then it was you know,
Speaker 2: Tommy Amaker and Chris Collins and all these guys were
Speaker 2: and see what house they were all the next guy
Speaker 2: and they were all they all had to go and
Speaker 2: we even go other places, and it was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I kind of wonder if you know the the you know,
Speaker 2: will Hardy's and Becky Hammond and Quinn Snyder's and he
Speaker 2: may Udoka and all the ones who were under pop
Speaker 2: all had to go other places. And then eventually it
Speaker 2: was like, all right, now I got my shot at
Speaker 2: the top job, and I'm kind of running my show.
Speaker 2: You know, where do we go with this? I think
Speaker 2: that's probably a little bit of what's going on there.
Speaker 2: It maybe it was, man, if you'd gone a year
Speaker 2: or ago or two years ago, we could have had
Speaker 2: this coach slid them right into the top spot move forward,
Speaker 2: and it's just not how it has gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do want to get your thoughts on the
Speaker 1: play in tournament as a whole. Now it's a permanent fixture.
Speaker 1: Do you think it worked out how you originally thought
Speaker 1: it would or or is it better or worse?
Speaker 2: Better? Way better? I was not I don't want to
Speaker 2: say it wasn't a fan when they did it for
Speaker 2: the bubble season. I fully got it because you had
Speaker 2: to do something. You couldn't come and play a million
Speaker 2: games in the bubble. That was just not gonna be
Speaker 2: how it went down. So I was like, all right,
Speaker 2: I kind of like what they did with with the
Speaker 2: Bubble year, and then they kind of tweaked and adjusted.
Speaker 2: I still part of me kind of wishes and this
Speaker 2: year is different because these teams are all right there
Speaker 2: that if hey, if you're the tenth seed but you're
Speaker 2: twelve games behind the nine seed, thanks for playing, but
Speaker 2: your season's over. We don't need you involved in a thing, right,
Speaker 2: you're you stink and get out. But I think it's
Speaker 2: this year, right, These teams are all right pretty close
Speaker 2: to each other within a couple of games, and I
Speaker 2: think what it's done is it's given the NBA as
Speaker 2: close as wherever you get to our version of March Madness,
Speaker 2: right where it's single game elimination kind of there. I know,
Speaker 2: you lose the first one, you get that second shot
Speaker 2: at it. But it's pretty cool to watch those games knowing, hey,
Speaker 2: this is all on the line, right, It's like we
Speaker 2: get up you know, a week, you know, a week
Speaker 2: of game sevens almost you know in the thing. And
Speaker 2: and that to me is, you know a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really cool process as we you know,
Speaker 2: have and able to get that and then it's like,
Speaker 2: all right, we had that fun, and now we go
Speaker 2: into the playoffs. And one of the biggest things I
Speaker 2: love about the NBA playoffs is the best team usually
Speaker 2: wins because you're gonna you're tested, right, you've got to
Speaker 2: win four times in seven games, and you got to
Speaker 2: do that four times in a row, and that is Hey,
Speaker 2: it wasn't just one bad shooting night knocked us out,
Speaker 2: but we still get that taste of the NCAA tournament.
Speaker 2: One bad shooting night knocked us out through the playing tournament.
Speaker 2: So I think it's been a massive success. Not only that,
Speaker 2: the combination of the play in tournament plus the flat
Speaker 2: and lottery odds, which means you don't need to be
Speaker 2: horrendously bad from you know, the season opener to make
Speaker 2: sure you can get victa win Binyami. You just need
Speaker 2: to be bad, like kind of naturally bad. Those two things.
Speaker 2: I mean, we it's only this week, with less than
Speaker 2: a week to go in the season, that we're starting
Speaker 2: to get more than the worst four teams in the
Speaker 2: league eliminated from playoff contention. That's massive win to me
Speaker 2: is teams had something to play for, you know, almost
Speaker 2: all the way to the end of the year, you
Speaker 2: into last week, and that's where we're starting to eliminate
Speaker 2: our teams. That's a major, major success and everybody should
Speaker 2: feel pretty good about.
Speaker 1: That awesome stuff. Thank you so much for breaking it
Speaker 1: all down. That is all the time that we have
Speaker 1: for this episode of The Heat Check. Massive thanks to
Speaker 1: my guy Keith Smith. Make sure you give him a
Speaker 1: follow on Twitter at Keith Smith MBA. Make sure you
Speaker 1: read his work at spotrack dot com, s p O
Speaker 1: t r ac dot com. Check back Thursday for an
Speaker 1: all new episode. Do not forget to pete the feeds
Speaker 1: for past episodes, interviews and bonus episodes that drop onexpectedly
Speaker 1: throughout the week. Sometimes Keith blesses us on BETMGM tonight
Speaker 1: as well. We post that here and please follow us
Speaker 1: the heat Check as we're almost to the playoffs, download subscribe,
Speaker 1: Tell your friends, every single damn one of them, and
Speaker 1: follow us on social at this heat Check and at
Speaker 1: trist to crick on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter. Because the heat
Speaker 1: Check never sleeps, especially we got a new CBA to
Speaker 1: get ratified,