Cracks Showing Early for Minnesota and Philly

is Jake Crowder going to the Milwaukee Bucks. NBA is cooking, Nick, So do me a favor and drop that beat. This week was wow. This week was something. This is the first week of the NBA season. It's in the books, and I've made a list of some surprises I wanted to share. I wanted to highlight the teams and players who have genuinely given me some sort of shock, both

good and bad. And like baseball, the heat Check is going to begin in Philadelphia, where the Sixers are off to a hot start, a shockingly really rough start, which means that the Sixers are now zero and three at a team when the city, I don't know, maybe it's a at sports Peak. You've got the Philadelphia Phillies now going to the World Series. You've got the Eagles, maybe the best team in the NFC. And then you've got the Philadelphia seventy six Ers, a bendless Philly team with

the addition of some pieces like PJ. Tucker, got some pieces like the Anthony Melton, a healthy embiid and in shape Harden. And yet somehow and three you hate to see it couldn't have happened to a nicer city, could not have happened. Is Doc gonna get fired this year?

It feels like it's starting to be a groundswall. I've been looking on Philadelphia seventy six Ers reddit and there's comparisons to Jimbo Fisher, which he would be fired if if Texas A and M didn't know him eighty seven million dollars over the next two years or three years or whatever it is. So what is happening why? It's a good question because it's shockingly not Harden's fault, But it never really feels like it's Harden's fault, does it.

He can offensively carry the load and somehow not contribute to winning. He has been great, though he had one bad game against the Spurs, but is averaging twenty six, eight and nine a game. I don't think I expected that, did you? Joelle is Joel? He's averaging twenty seven, thirteen and four, very standard performances for a perennial MVP candidate. Tobias Harris, who I personally don't like as a fit on this team shooting forty four percent from three tyrese

Maxi is averaging twenty three and three. So on paper, everything looks good, which seems to be a real problem with Doc Rivers teams. Right great on paper, not so great in reality. The big problem is that they can't play defense. They just can't. They can't transition for shit, when Mbat is off the court. This team is just horrendous defensively. Maxie can't defend, and that just makes two giant holes defensively, alongside with Harden, who's also a hole.

The Sixers are twenty fourth in defensive rating this year. A draft from sixth last year? Where's Matisse? Thibel? Wasn't he supposed to be the next Ben Simmons. Matisse has played all of forty one seconds in their first two games. Don't worry, he got an uptick in minutes three minutes against the Spurs when they lost. When asked why, Doc had a perfect answer, It's just the other guys. It's a pecking order. Right now, he's working his butt off. He'll play. He's got a chance to earn more minutes

at some point. But now, right now, Daniel House and de Anthony Melton are in front of him. We're going with the smaller rotation. But he'll have a chance to earn minutes at some point. Daniel House, Daniel House could barely get minutes on a Rockets team when they were actively tanking for Jalen Green from potential first team All NBA defense to a third stringer behind Daniel fucking House. Daniel fucking House was fucking that COVID tester in the bubble.

What a rough fall from grace Boy, Oh boy, you gotta trade matist Bible. You gotta let him go. There's ten teams that want someone who can put some good defensive minutes in. Can it be fixed? That is a matter of significant debate at the moment. To be honest, there are really three major problems happening at once. One there's the Joel mb problem, not that Jojo is playing bad because he's not or getting hurt. Well, he might be hurt, but we're not sure. We'll get to that

in a minute. This is about the offense. He's having to work so hard on offense that his defense is suffering, and when Joel's defense SAgs, the entire Sixers defensive scheme falls apart. He's not making easy buckets. He's not getting much in the mid range and struggling to get into the low post where buckets are plentiful and easy for him. It's almost like the offense is being ram poorly. It's almost like the entire philosophy of the offense isn't great.

It's almost like Doc Rivers is making it very hard by an old school, post centered offense. Second, Harden not exactly what you think. I mean. He's really good offensively. He seems in shape, very motivated, looks good, averaging double digit assists. Yet the Sixers are twenty fourth in both offensive and defensive efficiency. This is a team problem. It's

not just a single issue. Our guy Seth partnow points out the issue as partly Harden's usage rate, which is so ridiculously high that Maxie's usage rate is down sixty percent and Harris's rate is down seventy five percent from last year, So they're not getting opportunities either like last year. And Maxi, for all of his points, I mean points per game, has looked not the same player that he was before. I think Tyrese Maxi might need to sit his ass on the bench and come off as a

six man. But that's another situation. Thirdly, which I intonated and sort of foreshadow second ago, there's a coaching problem in Philly. It has now reached critical mass. Is Doc Rivers a bad coach? No? Would another coach be better with this team? Absolutely? After losing to the Spurs, Doc Rivers, of course, as per usual, gets absolutely murdered on social media. The blue checks a plenty, Like Ben Dietrich, we're calling for his firing after a game one loss to Boston.

What do you think what happened when they lost to the Spurs? Get the fuck out of here. His postseason failures are very well documented. If this team struggles in the regular season. When Doc Rivers went on the record to say that this was the deepest, most complete team that they've put around, Joel mb call me overreaction Monday. But I am overreacting and the overreaction is not good. So yeah, the problems are there. The writing, as they say, is on the wall. Will they plague Philly all year?

I have no idea. I thought the Boston Celtics were a bad team until like January of last year, and they went to the finals. So anything is possible. With Boston and Milwaukee looking as good as advertised, Man Sixers might be in for a long year. Oh yeah. About Embiid, there were reports swirling about that he's still dealing with the planter fasciitis that he suffered over the summer. Didn't even know he had planter fasci idis. I thought he had in an orbital bone fracture and a terror in

his thumb. But this is like the amount of injuries racking up on Joela Embiid's body. Only rivals operation, but you know, we move on. Players like Gorn Dragich Yusuf Nurkic have missed significant time with this injury. So for a big man, not great. This is what Embiid said before training camp. It all started when the team was out in La out of nowhere. I just thought it

was whatever soreness. Over time, it just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and then it got to the point where I couldn't walk and it was really painful. Oh man, that is rot row embiid rough start for Philly might not get any better anytime, which I would hate to see personally. So you may look at the Timberwolves right now and be an optimist. If you're living in Minnesota, that's probably you, or from Minnesota, that's probably you.

You want to say good things about the Timberwolves because things look exciting. See the glasses half full. They're two and one. They're only loss coming from blowing a second, big half lead, second half lead to Utah, which you know, you can see Utah like a team like Minnesota kind of overlooking Utah. You could say, oh, you know, they're an aunt Edward's free throw away from being three and zero.

And you would be right in theory, but wrong in reality, because we are now seeing some things come to light about the issues in Minnesota, at least early on, that are not being addressed, not shockingly, not shockingly. It all starts with giddy cats. Carl giddy cats and any giddy cat talents. I don't know why that's so disrespectful that I said it so many times, but we're gonna continue.

He's having a very hard time in this system finding space, and he's a guy who kind of needs space because the center, all of a sudden of the floor is blocked out with a massive red X by the name of Rudy Gobert. And it is becoming apparent that the Rudy Gobert experiment is going to require some patience. It's going to require some tinkering, because it's gonna be it feels like very up and down for the foreseeable future.

And the biggest problem, according to a Timberwolve Substack Howls and Growls, which is a very funny name, is getting Aunt Edwards didn't see that coming. To buy into the pick and roll monster that is Rudy Gobert. It's almost like two guards, two teams in a row. Donovan Mitchell and Ann Edwards don't particularly love working alongside Rudy Gobert. We'll have to see. But Ann is a supremely talented star. As we know. He has spent his entire career working

with these pick and pops with Karl Anthony talents. It shows he likes that, and a number of times already this year he's blown assignments and even allowed mediocre defenses like okay, see he gets set and then get a stop, and then that vaunted as they say, that high prestige, elite defense that Gobert supposedly has. Well right now, the Wolves are eighteenth in the league in points given up three hundred and forty because they're giving up an absurd

number of uncontested shots, specifically in the perimeter. They're leaving guys wide open from three. They are twenty fifth in rebounds allowed, they are twenty eighth and assists allowed. They are twenty third in the league in creating turnovers. They suck so many metrics. They're nineteenth in defensive rating. They were thirteenth last year with Rudy Gobert. Without Rudy Gobert, So that is saying a lot, right, These are issues,

These are problems that need to be fixed. And the Wolves already played OKAC twice and let's just say this, it wasn't easy, and that's okay, zee, So what's gonna happen when they play a team of a higher caliber. I'm not saying that the Wolves are gonna not be a plan team. I'm just saying, let's pump the brakes. That this is the top five team, top six team in the West. I am saying also that there's a situation that needs to be monitored carefully.