Just about every NBA rookie experiences his share of ups and down. Here's a steal by Batist in Asiakaba Slammatiste Bible rocks the round. What a play. The rookie is doing it at both ends of the poor. But for Matiste Thible, lately, the trends have definitely been of the upward variety with Matis. The scouting and the eye test was always that he was a really good defender. So the fact that the numbers are backing that up, you know, it really just reinforces the immediate impact he's been able
to have on a championship team. ESPN NBA writer Tim Bontemps recently did a feature on this year's twentieth overall pick, and he joins me to talk about it on this episode of the broadcast. How are you out there, seventy six ers pod people. I hope you are preparing, excited, pumped for what will be a great holiday week for you coming up. I'm excited. You know, there's the time for family, friends, grub, some other stuff, all those things. The seventy sixers. Yes, they have some immedia games on
the horizon this coming weekend and early next week. But I cannot freaking wait for the Christmas Day game at the Center against the Milwaukee Bucks, likely the top two teams in the Eastern Conference going at it to close out the first third of the season should be fantastic. But as for matters of the present, we are going to speak about a guy who has been really good for the seventy sixers as of late, and his name is Matise Thible. Tim Bontemps wrote an article about Matise
that ran on ESPN on Wednesday. Suggest that you google it, find it and check it out. But before we sit down with Tim, a reminder that to subscribe to the podcast, all you gotta do is head to anywhere you get your podcasts. It could be Spotify, Pandora, maybe Apple Podcasts, Google Pods, tune in Stitcher, soundclous, type in seventy Sixers
podcast and that should take you to our feed. Two days after one of the toughest losses of the season, the seventy six ers twenty point defeat at Brooklyn, this past Sunday, the team was back at it at the training complex in Camden, and at the conclusion of practice to Bias Harris spoke. He was asked who on the team has impressed you the most so far this season? He paused, thought about it, then gave his answer. Batistible said the veteran What is it about the twenty two
year old Thible that Harris thinks it so impressive? You know, I would say his defense and then visibility as a young player to find his way on the floor. You know, I think you beginning the season we roll with him for a little bit, then you know he coached one a little different direction and now to find himself back on the floor. It's Thible. As Harris said, it is currently enjoying a strong stretch and recently he seems to
be on the tip of everyone's tongue. In The Inquiry, which ran a feature on him last Sunday, and as I mentioned on a Wednesday, the morning of the seventy six ers match up with the Miami Heat, ESPN published a story about him. Now before both pieces came out, and this is the God's on his truth fingers crossed
a cross my heart. We here at the Old Broadcast had planned to focus on the versatile rookie for this week's episode of the Pod, but then when Tim Bontemps's piece ran we felt the timing could not have been more perfect to invite Tim to appear as our guests on the pod. And here he is. Tim. How good did you say, Matisse Thible is playing at this moment, twenty seven games into his professional career. I would say, as Brett Brown has said repeatedly, he's progressing well, right.
I think that's that's the way you need to look at it. I mean, coming into the Sea, I was very high on Matisse. I thought that he was a guy that needed to be a key piece off the bench for this team called April fifteenth, when the playoffs start. It's not usually the way you look at a rookie, especially for a contending, you know, championship contending team like
the Sixers hope to be. But they they traded up in the draft to get him as a four year guy out of Washington because they had the expectation that he could be an impact player right away for them. And I think, you know, especially over this past month since he got benched in Denver and he kind of has worked his way back into the rotation, I think you've really started to see a lot of the things that the Sixers hoped he could be and is already proving to be a really essential part of what they're
trying to do. Give me some stats that stand out about him too. Yeah. I mean, look, coming into this season, everybody knew who Matisse was going to be had the potential to be a really good defensive player. But the fact that the numbers already show he's one of the more effective defensive players in the league this quick, you know, is a really good sign for where he's headed. With Matisse, the scouting and the eye test was always that he
was a really good defender. So the fact that the numbers are backing that up, you know, it really just reinforces again the immediate impact he's been able to have on a championship team, which is not something that rookies are usually able to do. And now we're starting to see some steady three point shooting two. I don't know what exactly his three point shooting percentages, but last I
knew it was over forty percent. And if you told the Sixers that he was going to shoot even thirty five percent from three on a decent volume coming into the season, they would have been overjoyed. Because the thing about Matisse coming in was everybody knew he was going to be a potentially dominant defensive player, right Anybody who watched him play it for a second at Washington saw he was incredibly gift at that end of the court.
But the thing people wondered about was was he going to be enough of an offensive threat to stay on the court. The fact that Matis has come out and is making the shots that he is now and as comfortable and confident as he looks taken three, five tries the three and nails. Yes, he is an elite defender, but he's shown the ability and really working on a
three point shot and he shot it well. The percentage almost doesn't matter if he If he's looking this confident and is willing to take these kinds of shots and kind of stay within himself and not turn the ball over, that's all the Sixers really need him to do. And he's you know, if he keeps this up there, like I said, they're going to be absolutely thrilled with the production they're gonna get. That's a surface of a view of the Matisse Thyble story at this point, But I
want to go back a little bit farther. You've been around the seventy six Ers for a while now throughout last season, a lot more this year where the franchise left off the end of twenty nineteen following the playoff exit, Specifically the front office, what did they deem to be their mandate going into the offseason to build a championship team. Definitely disappointed right now we didn't reach our goal, but it's only going to fuel us for this offseason. In
the summer, We're all gonna get better. I'm gonna get better, and I look forward to that challenge. We have a great plan in place to make a deep run next year. If you look at the way the Sixers have built this team, going out and getting out Horford, getting Josh Richardson, the trade they made last year for Tobias, locking up Ben Simmons, they have clearly built a team that is
ready to win now. And normally when you have a guy like Joelle who's a twenty five ish right and Ben Simmons, who's twenty two twenty three, you'd be thinking on a longer term horizon. But I think I give the Sixers credit for saying, look, we have a chance to win right now. We're going to push our chips
in and see where it goes. And I think in today's NBA, where everybody's trying to do the same thing, I have a lot of respect for Elton brand in the front office here for going out and doing something different. When those five guys are on the court and they're locked in, you can see the ceiling for this team is extraordinarily high. Championship obviously, then is the end goal, and going for it with a starting lineup that features
five players with all league potential. If you turn back the clock to the spring, at the beginning of the summer, where do you think the front office of the seventy sixers felt the twenty nineteen draft picks would factor into this whole grand plan. Look, they promised Matis really early, right, he went to the combine and shut it down, and everybody wasn't quite sure where he got a promise from, but everybody knew we had one, and the Sixers, you know,
clearly zeroed in on him from the beginning. Elton, what made you think he had to trade up to number twenty. It sounds like you guys were pretty locked in on Matiz the whole time. There's actually some players we were looking at you know, Matisse was the one that I felt we had to go get. It's like, Okay, we need to move up and get this because uh, you know, he's that talented and that he fits a need that we need to fill. So that's what we had to
fill it. And I think when you look at where their team is at, again, this is a guy who's a four year college player, who's an expel defensive talent who they thought they could, you know, work on his jump shot a little bit and get him to come in here and immediately produce. It's very hard for teams playing at this level to have rookies walk in and be good. It's just really difficult because the learning curve in the NBA to become a good player is very steep.
And you know, people generally freak out about the rookie class every year and these guys are good and why are these guys bad and whatever, And that's what's made this year's group of players on these teams that are good right now stand out to me because you do have guys like Matisse and Tyler Hero and PJ. Washington
even in Charlotte who's played well. You have some of these guys on teams that are trying to make the playoffs and make an impact immediately getting into big roles, which is not is not a common thing in the NBA. The other thing that made the Thible acquisition so fascinating, at least to me, was the team the seventy six Ers did the deal with to get him. We are at pig number twenty in the first round. The Boston Celtics are on the clock right now before the pick
comes in, Let's check with Woads. Right now, woj, could this pick be on the move Reese? Boston is going to be selecting for the Sixers. Here batist Thibal from the University of Washington, a wing player. Philadelphia will send the Celtics number twenty four and thirty three in this draft for Thibal. And this wasn't the first time the Sixers and their nemesis, the Celtics did a draft night trade. Did this add to the intrigue to the story in your eyes? Tim? I mean, I think it's impossible to
avoid the history there, right. I mean, these are two blood rival teams going back for sixty years or seventy years. And then you also have the fact that you know they made the trade for Jason Tatum two years ago, right, the Jayson Tatum Marco Folks trade. Like that, all that stuff hangs over all this stuff. You know, they're teams that I mean, we're both at this game the other day in Austin. I was thinking to myself during the game that was one of my favorite games to watch
all year, the awesome game. It would be amazing to see those two teams playing in the playoffs again. And you better believe it, if Matisse becomes a real player, that's something that's going to kind of always hang over. So that's gonna be the latest thing to kind of hang over this matchup, right. I mean, you could see scenarios where Matis is guarding Jason take them a lot in the playoffs, and you know it's there. There are
situations where you could easily re engineer that. And Mattis is in Boston and Jason's here, so you know, it's all that stuff is fun and it definitely adds to the story. And there's no question that the history between these two franchises is gonna, you know, connect them with this Matise thing for quite a long time. We go back to the summer League five. It was pretty good, average round eleven and a half points for rebounds, had a couple of steals per game and assists as well.
He then in training camp really seemed to turn some heads. What was the first impression that you remember having a Matisse style? Was there a game? Was there a moment? I was sitting with a scout during the Pistons preseason game and Matisse made two or three plays in that game that were big time, big time plays. How many steals does he have tonight? Already He's got four, He's got three of them. I think he blew up I
think two different plays and stole the ball. Just was really really good, and you could see even in the preseason, Like like I said, going back to the summer when he got drafted, everybody knew he was a great defensive player. But to see him walk in and immediately have the impact he had and be able to blow up plays and you know, pick guy's pockets and steal the ball and block shots and just reek havoc all over the
court was really impressive. And I will follow that up with in the opener against the Celtics, it was fascinating to watch him guard Kemba Walker. He comes in the game, he instantly gets put on Kemba Walker, one of the best guards in the league. Kemba gets two fouls on him in eleven seconds. After a couple of minutes on him. He immediately goes with the bench right and like, well, here's the rookies, welcome to the NBA. Moment he asked
to guard an NBA guard. Then he comes back in later in the game and it was like watching the raptors in Jurassic Park, like start to figure stuff out. He like started to watch Kenba's moves. He stole the ball off him once, he blocked him once. Remember what I said earlier about not trying to make a great
play from behind, Forget everything I said. Like, that's the thing that's really fascinating to be watching him as that he gets out on the court and he processes stuff so fast and picks stuff up so fast that he's like learning stuff on the fly with these guys, and you know, you can just see the potential there for him to be just a truly, you know, really impactful, potentially dominant wing defender, which is just a really rare thing to find in today's league. So That's why the
three point shot with him is so critical. Um, if he can, if he can consistently shoot the ball and be just just some kind of a threat for where teams have to pay attention to him, He's going to be a really, really good player for a really long time. How much do you think the early part of Thible's relative success has had to do with the environment he's in right now, the general setting, his skill set that he's had both naturally and also worked on to develop,
and then the aptitude part of it. I mean, I think it's a combination of everything. Right, Tobias after the first game made that comment where reminded him of Kauai. No, not at all. Technically, he guard one and four, so you can really slop him in pretty much anywhere on a basketball. But I've not seen him looking come in with his defensive skills. So the only guy I would say, it's like Kawhi come in as a would everybody Knill be a top defender. Nobody I think realistically thinks he's
going to turn into Kawhi. But like I think he could be a more athletic version of Bruce Balling, Right, that's kind of who I thought he could be Bruce Bawen was a really really important player for a championship level team, right, and someone who Brett Brown references that's right. And so if you know, if you're an elite level role player, you look really good on really good teams.
If you're out there against a team like the Celtics and you make a couple of plays against Kemba Walker, then after the game, people go, hey, Matissa's out there against Kemba Walker. He made a couple of plays in the fourth quarter. It helped us win the game, and
then it stands out more. Right. So I don't know if his development would necessarily be different somewhere else, but also it certainly helps when you're in a structured, good team environment and you have talent around you that allows you to just focus, like, Hey, I'm gonna walk go out on the court. I gotta make threes and I gotta guard the hell out of somebody, and if I do those two things, I'm gonna play. I don't think
there's any question that helps those guys a lot. Not surprisingly, a linear path, Thible's rookie campaign has not entirely been you reference the ups and downs that any rookie, regardless of where they're selected or what team they played for tens to experience. And that's kind of where your story that ran on ESPN the day before the seventy six
He's played in the the Miami Heat began. Look, Mati Matisse played in a two three zone at Washington a lot of the time under Mike Hopkins, who was a Jim Beheim disciple, right, and he kind of went around and just freelanced a lot right, blew up, play, stole the ball, made blocks like he was kind of like a free safety. And he came to the NBA and he tried to
do the same stuff. He admitted as much. And he like thought he could just come in and like run around and try to make plays and not really worried about who was guarding. And in the NBA, you can't leave decent shooters, right, and college guys just miss all the time. He doesn't really matter. But if you leave just some average two point shooter, if you leave them wide open, they're gonna make that shot most of the time.
And so Matisse would run around and try to make plays and give up threes, or he would come flying down an offense and try to like jump in the air and try to make a pass and turn the ball over. And so there was after he initially got that brief burst of minutes, he then had to sit down for a while and kind of watch a bit and get it beaten into his head that listen, if you're gonna play, you need to do again. You need to take what you're supposed to do and not do
other things. You takes a long life to tease a young guy and get to the end. How after DNN limitation of say how much responsibility do you feel as to stay in his air and saying that this is a punishment, this is just part of the season. This is how much of that as the comfortable I understanding? This is what I think it stems from me. First, It's really, you know, high level type of team. It's it's part of life in the league. You know. No,
nobody's apologetic about that conversation. It's just a very direct, honest conversation. And I think you've seen since then he's become much more, much more disciplined with the ball. On offense, He's not really freelancing around. He basically is a catch and choo guy, which is what he should be. And on defense, he's done a much better job of staying within the system and doing what he's supposed to do.
And then you know, if he gets an opportunity, sure, jump out and try to make a steal, but don't try to do it every single play and just leave guys scrambling around behind you all the time, because that's how you end up staying on the bench. In the month it passed from when he was going through a period when he was not in the rotation as frequently
as we saw, and even the first week of the season. Heck, he even started game number two of the year when the seventy Sixers played Detroit to now where he's coming off games like the one he had against Toronto, scored twenty points, the thirteen point after against the Denver Nuggets, he was on the floor down the stretch against the
Boston Celtics when the Sixers wont at Ted Garden. Is it just a matter of being able to observe and learn and adapt in a guy like this is case from what you've been able to tell him the reporting you did. Yeah, I mean, look, I think he's certainly, he's certainly done a great job and again like his skill set translates very well to being out there in key moments because you can put him out there and he can guard a guy. I think he's been I think he's been really he's been really, really good. I
don't think there's any way to argue that. And I think that you kind of if you look at the way this is playing out. If he just keeps doing what he's doing now, taking the right shots, playing within the system, he's gonna be out there in big moments. You have that three at the b and there were some all stars around you sort of pecking you on and being excited for you. Will you step back? What does that feel like to have guys at this talent
level be so excited for and reliance on you? And that's something that I've I really find myself thinking about a lot, Like if even just like six months ago, if you would told me I'd be in the position I'm in today, it would have been really hard for me to believe you. I think I'm incredibly blessed. I'm so grateful and to have the guys that we have on this team and to have the opportunity that I have,
There's been nothing so of a blessing. I look at their roster, I think he's the sixth best player on the team. I think he has to be a key part of this rotation if this team wants to win the title, and they have more work to do to add another piece or two, because I don't think their bench is deep enough. But I do think that if you look at where his development is, it's right on track with what Brett keeps saying, which is, when I get to April fifteenth, is this guy ready to go
in the playoffs? So for a guy like Matisse, he needs to spend the next four or five months getting to the point where if he has an open shot in the playoffs, teams have to respect him and he can knock some of them down. If he can do that and stick doing the defensive stuff that he's doing, the Sixers are going to have had a hell of a draft pick and they're going to have a chance to make the run they want to. All things the
seventy Sixers hope, indeed will come to fruition. Tim Bontemp's great piece on ESPN this past week about Matisse Stable, thanks so much for taking the time to join the pot no worries. Man hap me to do it. Tim's handle on Twitter is at tim Bond Temps and he is around the seventy six ers NonStop, tracking the team every step of the way of this season. Hey, hope you have a terrific, outstanding holiday coming up this week. If we don't speak before then, but be on the lookout.
The hope fingers crossed is to get an episode, a holiday themed episode, out before that point in time. All right, take care, see it