The Unball All Rookie Team, which you know Bill Simmons has been thinking about for the last three weeks since he said all those shady things about Jalen Green.
Uh.
The Rookie team was released. Not a ton of surprises, but here they are first team Scottie Barnes, Caid Cunningham, Jalen Green, Yes, Sir Jalen Green made the.
Team, Evan Mobley, and Franz Wagner.
Of interest to me is the fact that the top four picks from the twenty twenty one draft all made the All Rookie Team, which it means that this draft was good. It's a good draft, one hundred percent top heavy, giving great value, even kind of like below three. The lowest drafted player on the team is actually Franz Wagner, who was taken eighth by Orlando.
So you're getting you're getting.
Scottie Barnes, Kid Cunningham, Jalen Green, Evan Mobley, and Franz Wagner.
Fun stuff.
Obviously, you know Jalen Suggs didn't make the team. Scottie Barnes did. He was taken at five, So that's interesting stuff. Actually, no, it's one, two, three, five and eight, not four, and then NBA All Rookie Second Team Io dis soon move. I think we all kind of figured out it would go there. Chris Duarte for the Pacers, Josh Giddy from Oklahoma City, Bones Highland from Denver, number twenty six, Herb Jones taken at thirty five.
Second Team is fascinating to me.
It includes three players who were drafted at the end of the first round or well into the second round. Giddy, of course, was drafted six overall. You could probably make the case of that Okayse wasn't tanking, and Giddy played a full season and it wasn't out for some random injury that wasn't real. He could have made All Rookie first Team, like he could have probably taken over Jalen Green, especially since Jalen Green a lot of his strengths happened
at the end the tail end of the season. Top draft picks who did not make the All Rookie Team. The player probably who has the biggest gripe about not making the NBA All Rookie Team is Chris Dwarte.
He had thirteen four and two.
Really good early, not so good late, but again really hard to showcase yourself when your team is basically shutting you down on purpose because they want to get the ping pong balls again.
Indy knew very quickly. Even though Indiana.
Has been known of beach just basically succumbing to being mediocre, they're okay with that. They've never liked being in the lottery for some reason. They're not all about the rebuild. The owner has said that on multiple occasions. But they realized this train ain't stopping, so we might as well just lean into it, or we're getting smushed. So that's what they had. Also, I think another gripe is probably Trey Mann.
He had a great year.
He finished tenth in rookie scoring. He had a very positive he had a positive win share on a really bad OKC team. And then Alpera and Shangoon really solid year as well, ten five and three. We can go through some of the other ones. Jalen Suggs did okay twelve eight and six. The eight's pretty impressive. Jonathan Kaminga once he finally got on the court, nine three and one.
He's playing in the playoffs right now.
Ish Davion Mitchell twelve two and four off the bench. Zire Williams was really good. He had some flashes in the playoffs eight two and one. James book Knight got off well. He barely even sniffed the floor he was taking. He was taken at eleventh. Probably the biggest bust of the draft was James Booknight at eleven. He fell like a rock, and he probably should have fell even further. I don't even think James Boknight.
Should have been a first round pick, honestly gross.
Josh Primo another bust, very very much of a reach from San Antonio.
He put up six two and two.
Chris Dwarte, like I said, he had thirteen four and two, Moses Moody at fourteen, Corey Kispert at fifteen. So those are some other notables that weren't on any team. But the interesting thing to me was how deep this draft was. Twenty five players average six points or more per game,
Eleven had ten or more points per game. The only non European drafter, the only non European player drafted in twenty twenty one who didn't get minutes on his team was this kid, Jason Preston out of Ohio, drafted by Orlando. Of course, some random spot and then he ends up getting traded to the Clippers, and then he suffers a season ending injury, and we we'll never hear of him again. We'll never hear this guy's name until, like after me
saying it now, you'll never hear of it again. So, with the twenty twenty two draft rapidly coming up, we're gonna be spending a ton of time breaking down these prospects, what teams actually need versus what they say they want, right cause that's all about like, oh, are we going to take the best available? Are you gonna take for fit? Are you gonna take for upside? Are you going to
try to limit risk? All that stuff is something that is there gonna be character concerns because you know that's gonna come out some random Twitter from like two thousand and how old are these kids, so like twenty ten, twelve, whatever. It is, like, I just want to make sure they're not toddlers. When I'm talking about the Twitter dates, it's like, yeah, it's like two thousand and seventeen.
But it is great looking back and seeing what a crazy.
Good draft twenty twenty one was given that I think a lot of people in advance thought it would be somewhat weak.
Hopefully twenty twenty two is better than we think as well. Can't find out until the kids get off.
The Miami is the one we denied, the one we pushed off to the side, the one that we decided wasn't capable of winning for a variety of different reasons, despite the fact that that two years ago they were in the finals, and they have Jimmy Butler, and they play really good defense, and they're one of the best coach teams in the NBA, and also, by the way slight caveat, they were the number one team in the East. So like Miami, for some reason, everybody's just like, I don't see it.
I don't see it. Maybe a little time off helped.
Not sure. I think it's a very very interesting series here right these The Heat heard the haters loud and clear and put a straight beat down on the Boston Celtics in a way that shocked probably even the worst Miami critic. They made Boston look as bad as they've looked since they were twenty five and twenty five at times. Boston, of course, got out to an early lead, but once halftime came, boy, whoa it was what bad trick time.
Even without Horford and Smart, Boston had an eight point lead going into halftime, and I was like, they must be feeling themselves. They must be still riding that adrenaline from Game seven with the box, like something's going on.
Maybe they'll just like be Miami up, maybe Miamilla. It wasn't good.
But what they forgot Boston was that Miami doesn't have Botenholezer coaching this team. Like, halftime adjustments are coming, sir, they are coming. Eric Spolstra is in charge, and he's done this a long time. He's been to the finals a lot.
Five times. I think he did three with Braun.
I think he was on the staff four with Braun and then the last one, and then was he on staff with the Dwayne Wade series. He might have been a video assistant there. Five at least we know.
Five at least.
So how good was his halftime adjustment? Really really, really good? The Celtics got just destroyed from the opening possession of the second half. They got outscored twenty to two out of the blocks thirty nine to fourteen in the third quarter. Boston did not score their first basket until four point fifty three left over seven minutes without one single bucket.
And you know who was important.
P J Tucker even off like his bum ankle, which he's I think he twisted.
In the first half.
PJ Tucker shut Tatum and Brown down, and I tell you what. As Tatum's primary defender, PJ Tucker held Tatum zero for three shooting and basically put him in jail the entire second half. And that was after coming back from what I said, nasty ankle injury. Jimmy Butler was also really, really good, like to the point where I can't doubt he's just maybe he just sucks in the regular season and maybe that's just it. Maybe he's just really good in the playoffs and that's it. He's just
he's hitting shot after shot. I've called him Jimminy Bricketts like in the Times. He was bad last year though against Milwaukee, he was awful. It was really bad, very inconsistent. He was hitting brick after brick. Anyway, I gotta give Jimmy Butler his flowers. I can't slander him last year. Right now, he's really good, He's excellent. He has said everybody was sleeping on me. Yes we were, And now we are not. Jimmy Butler's point prop tonight is for Game two, twenty six and a half points.
I think he'll hit that.
I'm worried, of course, you think about the regression to the mean, But he's balling right now.
He's balling right now. Game two gonna be tough tonight. No Derick White, no.
Horford, Marcus Smart's probably gonna play, but he's limping on a fractured foot.
I mean, this Boston team is a hospital wing.
Horford has COVID, and now Derek White just had a baby. Congratulations to Derek White. Cannot wait to see how Boston adjusts or tries to adjust to replicate the first half of Game one.
Throughout the second half.
Let's talk about Dallas Golden State first and foremost, probably one of the better coaching efforts that we've seen from Steve Kurr in years.
In a crucial moment.
Probably you know, sit back, refresh yourself, watch the games on TV, see if anything sticks out. He had COVID for like four straight games or something. He's bothering his wife, making her forcing her watch TV with him watching games. She said she'll never do that again. I bet he's awful. I bet he says so much stuff that she doesn't understand what catch the pin.
Down, catch them get him on the backside.
Yeah, he's literally like drawing things up for her. She said, I do not care. I'm I'm doing wordle right now, Like I'm just sitting here like it's fine.
Let me just tell you about how it was supposed to go. She's like, I don't care anyway. So that time off might have refreshed him, because.
He did some amazing things defensively on Luca that people really were wondering how he would neutralize him, And maybe he won't moving forward, maybe Luca will have a coming out party at some point. But that unique challenge he took on and had, like I mean a thick, Bible sized book full of defensive sets that he threw out on the table for Game one.
They were just confused, like, Yo.
You've thrown literally ten different schemes at us and it's the first quarter.
What's happening here?
This is the type of Elite Warriors team defensively that we saw in the first twenty games, where they were stifling, they were blitzing.
Everybody's picking up on help like.
Guys are tagging like everybody knows what they're supposed to do. They're the ones doing the confusing instead of being the ones confused. The versatility really was some of the best that I've seen in a long time. They were limiting all of the shot creation from Luca, putting him into bad spaces where he only had a limited amount of options instead of all the options that he's normally available
to have. And the stat that mattered the most to me defensively was that Golden State had fifteen blocks and steals to Dallas's seven, just more defensively active offensively, Golden State basically blew Dallas' doors off, not through one guy going nuclear, but exactly what got them there the first twenty games as well, spreading the wealth out balanced. All seven Warriors who got thirteen minutes of time were more scored in double figures, none scoring more than twenty one.
So for anyone who had STEP's prop at twenty six and a half, that was a loser. Game was not close after the first quarter, even though Dallas was trying to bring it back, bring it back, claw in, they.
Cut it to five.
Somebody said this on Twitter, which is so true. If you are down by ten to the Warriors, you're really down by twenty. If you're tied with the Warriors, you're really down ten. In order for things to be act equal truthfully, where it's like zero zero, you need to be up ten.
You need to be up fifteen because the Warriors have.
A way of just a flurry of shot making where you look up, you take a drink, and they're up forty like that's just them. So you need to figure out a way to get going early, or it's night night sleep mask for you. Dallas was awful, shooting the ball thirty six percent from the floor, twenty three percent from three, and Dallas had almost twice as many three point attempts as the Warriors, and they were open, they were open.
It was gross.
Like I saw Reggie Bulock shoot four threes in a row, open, all missus. I saw Luca shoot three threes in a row, all missus. I mean, when does that happen? When does that ever happen? Something's wrong with Luca too. You know that his shoulders banged up. He's got a rake scar across his face now, which he thinks is pretty cool. He's probably drinking right now, just getting his stretch on doing a little cold tub, but I expect Jason Kidd to come back with his own counters in game two.
Super excited to see how this goes. I want to see I want to see both series go seven, truthfully, and that should be something for us to keep in mind, because if you're a Golden State Warrior fan and you think this is just how it's gonna be, I regret to inform you that Dallas has been has lost every single game one so far.
This playoff series. Bye.
I want to say Game one of the first round wasn't by a ton, but Game one in the Sun series was by a lot. They've lost multiple games by ten or more and they've won some games too by ten or more. So look out, Golden State, Dallas is coming. That's all the time that we have for the Heat Check podcast.
Will be back on Monday with a new episode.
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As things heat up and we.
Get closer to the NBA Finals, maybe I could squeeze it in a game or two, depending on who gets there.
We will see you on Monday, franc Thanks to listen.
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