Since I've spent so much of the last three years talking about the Brooklyn Nets, it only seems fitting that my new Year's resolution be about Ben Simmons and being nicer to him. Really, it's sort of simple. The things that Ben Simmons did that drove me insane are mostly in the past. He's a product of other people trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And you know what, that's not what the Nets are doing right now. They're using Ben Simmons like the type of
tool he is. Since he got back onto the court, Ben Simmons has been, let's be honest, like very good, very good, like great, kind of great. And he's a huge reason that the Nets are the hottest team in the NBA right now besides Jaques baughd. How good has Ben Simmons been of late. He has and the nets best net rating on the team plus twenty one point seven. He has the best defensive rating on the team one oh six point six. And get this, folks, Ben Simmons,
Ben fucking Simmons, This is insane. I had to check and recheck. Has the highest offensive team, highest offensive rating of any starter on the Nets, one twenty seven point nine. Highest total rating, highest defensive rating, highest offensive rating. Do you remember that this team has Kyrie Irving and Kevin fucking Derant? The question is houseway? How lee it to Kyrie to explain it? He said, I think he could
probably answer that better. But it's me as a teammate just seeing him smile, have fun, be competitive, that's him being himself. So anytime he could just be himself and trust that we have his back, I feel like that's the best version of himself. And you know what think, Thanks, Thanks Ben, I'm going to make this resolution. I'm happy for you. I'm happy for Ben and when Ben is playing like this and more importantly, is healthy, because that's
important as well. The next team could be very dangerous. They could be very very hard to be moving forward, and I've been okie doked by them before. But I think this is a real team. I think this is a team that could actually compete for a chip. I think everybody in the East is very vulnerable, even in the Boston Celtics. We saw them lose the Orlando Magic twice.
And you know what, my New Year's resolution, my biggest one, really is to be happy for Ben Simmons and to be nice to Ben Simmons and to find reasons to praise Ben Simmons, because why, this is a man who's broken and he needs every piece of help that he can get, and this is a version of Ben we can get behind. My final New Year's resolution is aimed at two players, Rudy Gobert and Grayson Allen too least
like players in the NBA. Most likely my resolution, you're gonna say, Trista, are you gonna be nice to them? You're gonna be is your resolutions to just say nice things about them, find things that they do well, Fuck no, it's to point out every time these fuckers do something things stupid because I feel they get the benefit of the doubt way more than they do, even though no one likes them. This year, I resolved to absolutely positively not change my mind on Rudy Gobert. Everyone tries to
tell me he's a defensive Player of the Year. Everyone tries to tell me he's actually a nice guy. He just made a mistake during COVID times. Everyone tries to tell me, you know what, he's just not being used well. Everyone tries to tell me that Donovan Mitchell is a problem, But you know what. No, no, no, no, no, no, it is Rudy Gobert. Rudy Gobert fucking sucks. Everything about him sucks. His face sucks, his hair sucks, his body
makeup sucks. His defensive although he plays okay perimeter defense, he's just not that guy. He is not worth the money, he is not worth the trade value. He is just not really worth the breath that's coming out of my lungs right now. But you know what, I'm doing it for, y'all. Fuck Rudy Gobert. Part of that is the reason that he tries to spend so much time trying to change our mind that he's not a jerk. He is. There's a full blown documentary about him not being a jerk.
And you know what, when you do that, that shows you are said jerk. Recently, Donovan Mitchell, as we know, gave his views on Rudy and let's just say what this like, he's doing it than he can to keep the peace. But he doesn't like Rudy Gobert either. No one does. One of the reasons I like Donald Mitchell very very very very nice but very honest guy. And then of course after he said like yeah, it was all about COVID. That's when I really started to not
like him. Gobart's PR team went into crisis mode again, got him a feature article on the New York Times. What got Did Donald Mitchell get a feature article in the New York Times? No caa Cia is Donovan Mitchell's agency. He couldn't get a feature article in the New York Times, even though he's having an MVP caliber year. But Rudy Gobert, toiling away in Minnesota with one of the worst trades in NBA history, just doing absolutely god nothing gets a
feature article in the New York fucking Times. I digress. It was the fluffiest of fluff pieces. Here's what Rudy says. A lot of people celebrate my failures. A lot of people celebrate my failures. It's kind of a mark of repet for me, just to have people that wait until I do something wrong or until my teams start losing, then they become really, really loud, And when my teams do well, it's quiet again. Pause, hold up, stop the press right now. People shit on you all the time,
even when you win, they're shitting on you. No one likes you when you're winning because you can't win when the lights are bright, Rudy, That's why we don't like you. Continue, he says. He embraces that because it's part of the external noise that comes with all the success that we've had in Utah over the last few years in his career. Once I start to have success, when I started winning Defensive Player of the Year All NBA, begin an All Star, brag,
brag brag. When my team when we started winning like fifty games and stuff, the people on social media are always the loudest. Pause. Pause Again, You're saying all hate stems for your success and not because I don't know you shut the league down, your stance on COVID, the fact that you liked of Elon must tweet about your
pronouns being prosecute fauci, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Back to the point, we finally get to the entire point of the fluff piece, which was to address how Donovan Mitchell told the truth about Rudy, and Rudy says this, I think it was a tough situation for me in Utah, just like it was a tough situation for him. Things happen, and sometimes people can do things to you that can hurt you, a lot of times, it's out of fear, you know, So you just have to grow through that and see
past that. Rudy was then asked, yeah, you mentioned people do things that will hurt you. Do you mean Donovan Mitchell and he goes, I mean generally that's life, right, right, right right, yeah, just psychoanalyzing just the general society when we're talking about Donovan Mitchell shitting on you in the most classy way. Okay, victim, Rudy, Rudy's the victim. Everyone hates Rudy for no reason. We're just all being gas let that Rudy's just this awesome guy and that everyone
doesn't like him for no fucking reason. Okay, Okay, So my's my resolution is to never take the boot off of his neck, because you know what, he's gonna do everything he can to weasel out of all the bad things that he does and try to spin it into something good for Rudy. Which brings me to Grayson Allen, maybe the other person in the league that I like less than Rudy Gobert. He's probably in the running for top two least like player in the NBA by fans,
by players, all of it. So in a game this week against the Bulls, Grayson Allen did Grace and Allen things when he always does it against the Bulls. He's a fucking relentless menace against the Bulls because remember he almost hurt Alex Crusoe last year and Alex Cruso had to make a whole thing out of it, and then he didn't shake Alex Scruzoe's hand, and then he didn't apologize. You guys remember this, But he's doing something against and
against the Bulls. So Grayson Allen did Grayson Allen things and cheap shot at the Mardro's and in they in the head. Are you shocked? I am just absolutely shocked. I am beside myself. You could just flip me over with a feather right now. This is what he said. Here's what DeRozan said. I felt a hit. I felt like it went across the middle. I felt like I went across the middle in a football game and tried
to catch a slot route. So he cheap shots him in the back of the head, straight from Grayson's playbook, and DeRozan, of course, he was pissed, so after the game he said, yeah, it's his track record. If it was Boban, I probably wouldn't have done nothing. Can't tell you how much I love tomar Derozen simultaneously just slamming Grayson Allen and praising Boban. I love Bobon we all do.
He's just like an absolute treasure. Zach Levine. By the way, Tim McMahon is now attaching to a possible Mavericks trade, So you file that away in your tickler file. Well, Zach attacked the entire He watched the entire charade. He said this, Ah, yeah, we know Grayson Allen's track record. Pat got the foul, but Tamar got elbowed in the back of a head. Damar responded the right way. The next twenty minutes, you saw what happened. Yep, Bulls came back.
They won the game in part because they were pissed about Grayson Allen. Grayson out there cost in bucks wins they very much need right now because the bucks don't look very good right. What did Grayson have to say? Probably nothing if you included the if your answer included the word bullshit, yeah, just not taking any accountability, because that's Grace and Allen Yep, here it is. You go, Grayson, tell us what you said. It was exactly what the
video showed. I went to set a screen, got bumped into Jamarro, and when you get bumped into somebody, you put your arm out to stop yourself. I didn't try to run him over. I mean he was upset he got blindsided by a screen. Dude, you're using the word blindside to describe a basketball play. You are at fault when you get when you hit someone in their blind spot, that is a one percent cheap shot by you. And
then he says this. They asked him, hey, did you apologize tomorrow, like like you were supposed to do Alex Crusell last year, and he was like, well, I was trying to He's talking to somebody else at the time. So yeah, I mean I just never spoke of him. I just don't know what happened. It has never spoken them out to play. So the answer is no, No, you did not speak to him. There's another Grayson Allen making an excuse about why you didn't take accountability, Why I
didn't apologize, Why isn't his fault? It's just are they not? Is Rudy Gobert and Grace and Allen just not the same person. They are the worst, They are the worst. What's that song like, this is why you suck? This is why you suck? Like this is one of those situations where Grace and Allen just needs to go trade him. Even the Bulls Collar commentary was like, Yeah, nobody deserves a one to two punch more than Grayson Allen. Just give him a two piece chicken nugget meal and get
this chink thing out over with. And that's my final resolution for this New Year's edition of He Checked. My final resolution is to always cover these random kind of stories because I think this is what the NBA needs. I think this is what makes the NBA so fun, so interesting to follow. There's always great play, of course, there's always Lucas sixty. There's always drama like Travis Slank getting deep six by the Atlanta Hawks, And there's always
gonna be guys we all hate. We want to find ways to just affirm our amount that we hate them, so love and love and happiness and hate kind of New Year's resolution episode. And there's always gonna be cheap shot artists like Grayson Allen and when they do Grayce and Allen things. I'll be here to call them out. That is all the time that we have for the heat Check. We will be back Monday. I don't know if we're gonna be back Monday, maybe Tuesday for an
all new episode. Check out the feed for past episodes and many episodes which drop almost every single day. Do not forget to follow us in twenty twenty three. Trade deadline is just around the corner, folks, and the All Star Game, which I need to get my credentials for. Do not forget to download subscribe. Please tell your friends and follow us on social at this heat check and atest to crick on TikTok. Thank you guys, and I will see you back in studio next Monday