Speaker 1: You're tuned into Heat Check with Triste Quick. On this
Speaker 1: episode of The Heat Check, the first week of the
Speaker 1: NBA season is behind us and the Utah Jazz. The
Speaker 1: Utah Jazz are the best team in basketball. The Sixers
Speaker 1: are the worst team in basketball next to the LA Lakers.
Speaker 1: Just like everyone thought, well with the brain, everyone with
Speaker 1: the brain thought the Lakers would steak. But I will
Speaker 1: be going over all of my big surprises this past week,
Speaker 1: as well as getting into a few viewer questions. Also,
Speaker 1: is Jake Crowder going to the Milwaukee Bucks. NBA is cooking, Nick,
Speaker 1: So do me a favor and drop that beat. This
Speaker 1: week was wow. This week was something. This is the
Speaker 1: first week of the NBA season. It's in the books,
Speaker 1: and I've made a list of some surprises I wanted
Speaker 1: to share. I wanted to highlight the teams and players
Speaker 1: who have genuinely given me some sort of shock, both
Speaker 1: good and bad. And like baseball, the heat Check is
Speaker 1: going to begin in Philadelphia, where the Sixers are off
Speaker 1: to a hot start, a shockingly really rough start, which
Speaker 1: means that the Sixers are now zero and three at
Speaker 1: a team when the city, I don't know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a at sports Peak. You've got the Philadelphia Phillies now
Speaker 1: going to the World Series. You've got the Eagles, maybe
Speaker 1: the best team in the NFC. And then you've got
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia seventy six Ers, a bendless Philly team with
Speaker 1: the addition of some pieces like PJ. Tucker, got some
Speaker 1: pieces like the Anthony Melton, a healthy embiid and in
Speaker 1: shape Harden. And yet somehow and three you hate to
Speaker 1: see it couldn't have happened to a nicer city, could
Speaker 1: not have happened. Is Doc gonna get fired this year?
Speaker 1: It feels like it's starting to be a groundswall. I've
Speaker 1: been looking on Philadelphia seventy six Ers reddit and there's
Speaker 1: comparisons to Jimbo Fisher, which he would be fired if
Speaker 1: if Texas A and M didn't know him eighty seven
Speaker 1: million dollars over the next two years or three years
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. So what is happening why? It's
Speaker 1: a good question because it's shockingly not Harden's fault, But
Speaker 1: it never really feels like it's Harden's fault, does it.
Speaker 1: He can offensively carry the load and somehow not contribute
Speaker 1: to winning. He has been great, though he had one
Speaker 1: bad game against the Spurs, but is averaging twenty six,
Speaker 1: eight and nine a game. I don't think I expected that,
Speaker 1: did you? Joelle is Joel? He's averaging twenty seven, thirteen
Speaker 1: and four, very standard performances for a perennial MVP candidate.
Speaker 1: Tobias Harris, who I personally don't like as a fit
Speaker 1: on this team shooting forty four percent from three tyrese
Speaker 1: Maxi is averaging twenty three and three. So on paper,
Speaker 1: everything looks good, which seems to be a real problem
Speaker 1: with Doc Rivers teams. Right great on paper, not so
Speaker 1: great in reality. The big problem is that they can't
Speaker 1: play defense. They just can't. They can't transition for shit,
Speaker 1: when Mbat is off the court. This team is just
Speaker 1: horrendous defensively. Maxie can't defend, and that just makes two
Speaker 1: giant holes defensively, alongside with Harden, who's also a hole.
Speaker 1: The Sixers are twenty fourth in defensive rating this year.
Speaker 1: A draft from sixth last year? Where's Matisse? Thibel? Wasn't
Speaker 1: he supposed to be the next Ben Simmons. Matisse has
Speaker 1: played all of forty one seconds in their first two games.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, he got an uptick in minutes three minutes
Speaker 1: against the Spurs when they lost. When asked why, Doc
Speaker 1: had a perfect answer, It's just the other guys. It's
Speaker 1: a pecking order. Right now, he's working his butt off.
Speaker 1: He'll play. He's got a chance to earn more minutes
Speaker 1: at some point. But now, right now, Daniel House and
Speaker 1: de Anthony Melton are in front of him. We're going
Speaker 1: with the smaller rotation. But he'll have a chance to
Speaker 1: earn minutes at some point. Daniel House, Daniel House could
Speaker 1: barely get minutes on a Rockets team when they were
Speaker 1: actively tanking for Jalen Green from potential first team All
Speaker 1: NBA defense to a third stringer behind Daniel fucking House.
Speaker 1: Daniel fucking House was fucking that COVID tester in the bubble.
Speaker 1: What a rough fall from grace Boy, Oh boy, you
Speaker 1: gotta trade matist Bible. You gotta let him go. There's
Speaker 1: ten teams that want someone who can put some good
Speaker 1: defensive minutes in. Can it be fixed? That is a
Speaker 1: matter of significant debate at the moment. To be honest,
Speaker 1: there are really three major problems happening at once. One
Speaker 1: there's the Joel mb problem, not that Jojo is playing
Speaker 1: bad because he's not or getting hurt. Well, he might
Speaker 1: be hurt, but we're not sure. We'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute. This is about the offense. He's having
Speaker 1: to work so hard on offense that his defense is suffering,
Speaker 1: and when Joel's defense SAgs, the entire Sixers defensive scheme
Speaker 1: falls apart. He's not making easy buckets. He's not getting
Speaker 1: much in the mid range and struggling to get into
Speaker 1: the low post where buckets are plentiful and easy for him.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the offense is being ram poorly. It's
Speaker 1: almost like the entire philosophy of the offense isn't great.
Speaker 1: It's almost like Doc Rivers is making it very hard
Speaker 1: by an old school, post centered offense. Second, Harden not
Speaker 1: exactly what you think. I mean. He's really good offensively.
Speaker 1: He seems in shape, very motivated, looks good, averaging double
Speaker 1: digit assists. Yet the Sixers are twenty fourth in both
Speaker 1: offensive and defensive efficiency. This is a team problem. It's
Speaker 1: not just a single issue. Our guy Seth partnow points
Speaker 1: out the issue as partly Harden's usage rate, which is
Speaker 1: so ridiculously high that Maxie's usage rate is down sixty
Speaker 1: percent and Harris's rate is down seventy five percent from
Speaker 1: last year, So they're not getting opportunities either like last year.
Speaker 1: And Maxi, for all of his points, I mean points
Speaker 1: per game, has looked not the same player that he
Speaker 1: was before. I think Tyrese Maxi might need to sit
Speaker 1: his ass on the bench and come off as a
Speaker 1: six man. But that's another situation. Thirdly, which I intonated
Speaker 1: and sort of foreshadow second ago, there's a coaching problem
Speaker 1: in Philly. It has now reached critical mass. Is Doc
Speaker 1: Rivers a bad coach? No? Would another coach be better
Speaker 1: with this team? Absolutely? After losing to the Spurs, Doc Rivers,
Speaker 1: of course, as per usual, gets absolutely murdered on social media.
Speaker 1: The blue checks a plenty, Like Ben Dietrich, we're calling
Speaker 1: for his firing after a game one loss to Boston.
Speaker 1: What do you think what happened when they lost to
Speaker 1: the Spurs? Get the fuck out of here. His postseason
Speaker 1: failures are very well documented. If this team struggles in
Speaker 1: the regular season. When Doc Rivers went on the record
Speaker 1: to say that this was the deepest, most complete team
Speaker 1: that they've put around, Joel mb call me overreaction Monday.
Speaker 1: But I am overreacting and the overreaction is not good.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the problems are there. The writing, as they say,
Speaker 1: is on the wall. Will they plague Philly all year?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I thought the Boston Celtics were
Speaker 1: a bad team until like January of last year, and
Speaker 1: they went to the finals. So anything is possible. With
Speaker 1: Boston and Milwaukee looking as good as advertised, Man Sixers
Speaker 1: might be in for a long year. Oh yeah. About Embiid,
Speaker 1: there were reports swirling about that he's still dealing with
Speaker 1: the planter fasciitis that he suffered over the summer. Didn't
Speaker 1: even know he had planter fasci idis. I thought he
Speaker 1: had in an orbital bone fracture and a terror in
Speaker 1: his thumb. But this is like the amount of injuries
Speaker 1: racking up on Joela Embiid's body. Only rivals operation, but
Speaker 1: you know, we move on. Players like Gorn Dragich Yusuf
Speaker 1: Nurkic have missed significant time with this injury. So for
Speaker 1: a big man, not great. This is what Embiid said
Speaker 1: before training camp. It all started when the team was
Speaker 1: out in La out of nowhere. I just thought it
Speaker 1: was whatever soreness. Over time, it just kept getting worse
Speaker 1: and worse and worse, and then it got to the
Speaker 1: point where I couldn't walk and it was really painful.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that is rot row embiid rough start for
Speaker 1: Philly might not get any better anytime, which I would
Speaker 1: hate to see personally. So you may look at the
Speaker 1: Timberwolves right now and be an optimist. If you're living
Speaker 1: in Minnesota, that's probably you, or from Minnesota, that's probably you.
Speaker 1: You want to say good things about the Timberwolves because
Speaker 1: things look exciting. See the glasses half full. They're two
Speaker 1: and one. They're only loss coming from blowing a second,
Speaker 1: big half lead, second half lead to Utah, which you know,
Speaker 1: you can see Utah like a team like Minnesota kind
Speaker 1: of overlooking Utah. You could say, oh, you know, they're
Speaker 1: an aunt Edward's free throw away from being three and zero.
Speaker 1: And you would be right in theory, but wrong in reality,
Speaker 1: because we are now seeing some things come to light
Speaker 1: about the issues in Minnesota, at least early on, that
Speaker 1: are not being addressed, not shockingly, not shockingly. It all
Speaker 1: starts with giddy cats. Carl giddy cats and any giddy
Speaker 1: cat talents. I don't know why that's so disrespectful that
Speaker 1: I said it so many times, but we're gonna continue.
Speaker 1: He's having a very hard time in this system finding space,
Speaker 1: and he's a guy who kind of needs space because
Speaker 1: the center, all of a sudden of the floor is
Speaker 1: blocked out with a massive red X by the name
Speaker 1: of Rudy Gobert. And it is becoming apparent that the
Speaker 1: Rudy Gobert experiment is going to require some patience. It's
Speaker 1: going to require some tinkering, because it's gonna be it
Speaker 1: feels like very up and down for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: And the biggest problem, according to a Timberwolve Substack Howls
Speaker 1: and Growls, which is a very funny name, is getting
Speaker 1: Aunt Edwards didn't see that coming. To buy into the
Speaker 1: pick and roll monster that is Rudy Gobert. It's almost
Speaker 1: like two guards, two teams in a row. Donovan Mitchell
Speaker 1: and Ann Edwards don't particularly love working alongside Rudy Gobert.
Speaker 1: We'll have to see. But Ann is a supremely talented star.
Speaker 1: As we know. He has spent his entire career working
Speaker 1: with these pick and pops with Karl Anthony talents. It
Speaker 1: shows he likes that, and a number of times already
Speaker 1: this year he's blown assignments and even allowed mediocre defenses
Speaker 1: like okay, see he gets set and then get a stop,
Speaker 1: and then that vaunted as they say, that high prestige,
Speaker 1: elite defense that Gobert supposedly has. Well right now, the
Speaker 1: Wolves are eighteenth in the league in points given up
Speaker 1: three hundred and forty because they're giving up an absurd
Speaker 1: number of uncontested shots, specifically in the perimeter. They're leaving
Speaker 1: guys wide open from three. They are twenty fifth in
Speaker 1: rebounds allowed, they are twenty eighth and assists allowed. They
Speaker 1: are twenty third in the league in creating turnovers. They
Speaker 1: suck so many metrics. They're nineteenth in defensive rating. They
Speaker 1: were thirteenth last year with Rudy Gobert. Without Rudy Gobert,
Speaker 1: So that is saying a lot, right, These are issues,
Speaker 1: These are problems that need to be fixed. And the
Speaker 1: Wolves already played OKAC twice and let's just say this,
Speaker 1: it wasn't easy, and that's okay, zee, So what's gonna
Speaker 1: happen when they play a team of a higher caliber.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that the Wolves are gonna not be
Speaker 1: a plan team. I'm just saying, let's pump the brakes.
Speaker 1: That this is the top five team, top six team
Speaker 1: in the West. I am saying also that there's a
Speaker 1: situation that needs to be monitored carefully.