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On this episode of The Heat Check, we got big drama and the hoops world.
Following the epic.
Collapse a TUSA at the Feeble World Cup, Adam Silver has passed some draconian rules designed to stop tanking and load management. Draymond starts the season better than he started the last one, and the Hornets backup center is beefing with the guy who took his job. We're almost back to normal in the NBA world, So James, go ahead and drop that generic ass.
You's breaking down all the biggest NBA storylines. So the Heat Check, the Heat Check, it's just a crazy, the best podcast covering all the drama around the association.
So the dead season is about to end, even though it really hasn't yet.
And I know that there have been people in my dms wanting me to weigh in on Kevin Porter Jr. And I just am not going through. I don't have the energy for this. It is so.
Incredibly sad, it's angering, it's I don't want to give opinion. This is a basketball comedy podcast, and for the life of me, I can't find anything funny with domestic violence. So you're gonna have to go elsewhere to learn about the details. All you need to know is it's not good. Not much to say except for that this fucking sucks.
So together. Instead, we'll start with some.
Old news and some new news, all kind of wrapped together. So as you know by now it's Thursday, the US did not medal. They shit the bed at the Feeble World Cup, not once, but twice. You know from the
emergency pod which dropped on Friday. The Team USA got absolutely schnitzled in a heartbreaker to Germany aka the Fighting Who the fuck is Dennis Shooter Think he is Dennis Shooters in the semifinals, which then set up a shocking third place matchup with Canada, which we thought would be the gold medal game, who ended up getting upset by Serbia and was that bronze medal?
A wild one woke up at.
Five something in the morning to watch Shay Gilgess Alexander give US straight buckets. Canada had full command of the lead pretty much the entire game. They had a four point lead with just a couple seconds left to go.
And if it wasn't for Mikal Bridges being just one of the more forethought athletes during the feb Cup, he gets fouled, makes one free throw, misses the other one on purpose, gets his own rebound, no one blocks him out, him out, and turns around, hits a three with point two seconds left in the game to tie at one to eleven. One eleven, and that, folks right, there was pretty much the highlight for Team USA in the World Cup. Ot You might have thought it could have been competitive,
but it was not. Canada blew the doors off the Americans. They won one twenty seven, one pint eighteen. I believe every single game in the Feeble World Cup, Team USA gave up over one hundred.
And ten points.
Dylan Brooks in this one had the game of his life. He had thirty nine points, seven for eight from three. I thought Dennis, I thought Dylan Brooks couldn't shoot.
What happened to that?
What happened to him not being able to shoot from three? All of a sudden he is a sniper, plays lockdown defense. Terrible end for Team USA. Everybody was down on them pretty much the entire tournament, including a lot of NBA players, as.
We will find out.
Quick mention though, of the gold medal game because Germany ended Serbia's dream run to win the gold with an incredible performance from yes, Dennis Schruder and Franz and Mo Wagner.
As I said, nobody balls out internationally more than Dennis Shruder.
He even stopped Maxi Klaba from joining team Germany because he was like, bro, we didn't see it last year, so we don't want to see you now. Dennis Schruder, the leader of Germany undefeated run. He wins MVP of the entire World Cup over Shae over Aunt Edwards, over Bogden, over Franz Wagner over Kat You get the picture. Serbia finishes second without Nikoliokic, which is fucking scary, or Vasilli Meichik, which means they are going to be a force to
reckon with in the Olympics. All this means together collectively, Paris twenty twenty four basketball is going to be insane. Jeremy squad is so good that Shruder said it's the best team he's ever played on and that he played with Braun and Anthony Davis in La Serbia, as I noticed, is going to have Joki Chimichick. France is definitely adding Victor Wanbiyama, but it might end up adding Joel mb two and on top of that they have a home court advantage.
Australia might end up having Ben Simmons back. I don't know if that matters. And as Steve Kirk.
Pointed out, the rest of the world is just caught up with Team USA.
This is in nineteen ninety two anymore.
And as sprinter Noah Lyles controversially said that the NBA should just stop using the term world champion because they only won against North American teams and not world teams.
He got flamed in that one.
He got flamed for that take, and you know what, turns out he was right, not only and Giannis tends.
To agree with him. This is what he said.
I don't think in any other sport you're called world champions, you know, like in soccer, which is bigger than the NBA, more popular than the NBA. When the Champions League, the UFA Champions League, you know, champions, they don't say world champion. You know, when they win the World Cup, they play against the US team, they play against teams around the world, you know, countries around the world.
They say world champs.
Last five NBA MVPs foreign born players. Two of the last finals MVPs foreign born players. Four of the five members of the twenty twenty three All NBA First Team non Americans, and that team did not include Nicola Jokic. Safe to say, Steve Kerr that the world is caught up. But what does Team USA.
Have that nobody else has?
Lebron James, Yes, Akron Star, Lebron James is here to save the day, tweeting photos of himself out at untimely moments to say he is going to be out recruiting to make him and Anthony Davis and Steph Curry finally play in the Olympics.
That is the headline.
And let me tell you if this ends up happening, that will be mussy TV. Because once Braun said he was in the Avalanche Stars chimed in Katie, Steph deeron Fox, Jimmy Butler, nobody wants to miss out on the Lebron Last Dance because now they know they will be encapsulated in history like a mummy, a big thing. Everyone wants in. Even Kyle Kuzma says he wants in. He tweeted, anybody USA basketball better get some NBA stars that know how to play a role. Anybody can be nice with the
ball in their hands. But can you be cool defending and going to the corner for a.
Few possessions question Mark.
You know it's funny though, as a quick aside, because nobody had to play defense and go to the corner more than Kyle KU's when he played with Lebron' so he knows all about it, and too, we know Kyle Kuzma hates that shit.
That's why he's a Washington wizard.
Which, though Devin Booker commented, I'll do that, all stand on the corner, all play defense. So when you've got Devin Booker, who's probably I would say, the best shooting guard in the league right now, saying he's fine with being a role player, that is going to add the Team USA to a new level. Lebron's last dance I think has the potential to be the biggest thing for
international basketball since the Dream Team. Yeah, everyone on social has already gone crazy, sites like coopsyper comparing these stars to Marvel characters, for which it's worth I did that and did not record it, and they did nail Anthony Davis as being grouped, which I think could be an entire episode on its own. America's Aging stars are going to get together and with Aunt Edwards is probably the exception for one last roundup against the world to show that they're as good as it gets.
It's going to be fun.
And unless the US does something to negate the plethora of overseas height, they need Anthony Davis and they probably need Joel Embiid and that's might not be enough.
Man.
And if we lose against the World with ad Lebron, James Joel Embiid, American fans are going to have a meltdown because you can only fall back on feeble World Cup doesn't matter, or setting our b team for so long before the rest of the world says maybe you're just not as good as us. We're gonna finally have to admit maybe the rest of the world has finally caught up completely moving on.
It has been a long.
Six weeks of nothing happening except for James Harden and Damian Lillard holding their team's hostage trying to jump ship.
But we finally have about a little bit of actual news to discuss. I'm not talking about PJ. Washington returning to the Hornets.
I am not talking about the San Antonio Spurs continuing to build up goodwill by giving Grant Campaign an outright release so that he can go with a contending team. I am talking about structural MBA news that we are breaking down.
Thank you to Adam Silver because our.
Fearless commissioner has now decided to take on the subject of load management and tanking head on.
Because it's face, it's been terrible.
It's been kind of killing the league vibe for at least in terms of in person paying customers for a decade. It's one thing to look forward to watching a February Clippers versus Sixers game on TV only to find out Kawhi and Embiid are sitting.
There in street clothes. But it's another thing to check the calendar for months.
Take your kid and promise that kid they are going to see Joel Embiid. You get nosebleed seats to see your hero, and then you show up to find the guy that you see and you paid to see. Take the day off until you can't even find out until you got your first hot dog in your mouth.
That's why Kobe is beloved. The dude is going to play through anything.
When he was playing through a broken hand, through broke anything. Just to keep the fans happy. But that's not happening anymore, so Adam Silver had to step in. By the way, quick aside, this happened to me last year when I wanted to see Jaw and Desmond Baine play against the Washington Wizards. I hate Capitol One Arena. It fucking sucks. It's like a best buy in there. But for Jaw and for Desmond Bane, I would do it. And you know what, I paid for floor seats just to watch David fucking Roddy.
Do you know how bad David Roddy is. Do you know how slow David Roddy is.
This is not a ricochet shot to David Roddy, but for a few hundred dollars per seat, I did not want to watch David Roddy and Steven Adams in the block disgusting, and I didn't. It's like going to Momofuku and then you go to the bathroom and you find out it's actually a Panda Express.
So yes, I get that this is a problem. Enter Adam Silver, who came up with this.
According to WOJ, the NBA's Competition Committee recommended to play that The league's board of governors is expected to approve Wednesday, It would ultimately give the league office authority for greater oversight over disciplined for missed games, and an ability to find teams over one million dollars for each instance of violating resting rules. This has got to be aimed, by the way, what the league is calling star players? What
is a star player? The MPa is defining a star player as someone who's made the All Star or All NBA teams in three any of the three previous seasons. God damn Bradley Beal, you are fucked. Here are Adams five.
Rules for fixing tanking. Teams must manage their roster to ensure that no more than one star player is unavailable for the same game. How is that going to work?
Because Paul George and Kawhi Leonard are injured all the time simultaneously.
Bron and ad more like Kawhi and PG or m Bidenharden.
Teams must ensure that star players are available for nationally televised games and in season tournament games. Adam Silver loves that in season tournament Boy, before it even gets started, he's making sure guys don't dog it. We saw this, everybody thought it was going to be an off day for star players, in the same way that Man United and Arsenal and Premier League teams send their B teams to compete in the FA Cup for English soccer. But the difference is between that and the NBA. The NBA
has much larger rosters that soccer teams control. Next point, teams must maintain a balance between the number of one game absences for a star player.
In home games and road games, with the preference for those absences to happen in home games.
So I believe one of the examples of this was that Steph Clay and Draymond all played on like a Tuesday at Golden.
State and then one day later they all rested in Denver. YEP. Can't do that.
You got to rest them all in San Francisco. Penalize the home fans and not the road h fans.
I don't hate that.
Especially if you're living in a suburb and you're driving you and your whole family to see your favorite player on Golden State and then he doesn't show up.
That's just bad for business.
Next point, teams must refrain from any long term shutdown or near shutdown when a star player starts participating in games or plays in a material materially reduced role in circumstances affecting the integrity of the game. This is what we call a direct shot at the Portland Trailblazers who ended up shutting down Damian Lillard and pretty much every player on their team except for consecutive ten day contract guys like Drew got ten day God you banks to
get Shaden Sharp and Scoot Henderson. That's what we call the Dame Lillard tank rule. No more shutting down superstar to lose games at the end of the season. I if I am Portland would be fine with paying ten million dollars for the rights of Scoot Anderson or Victor Wambayama. I don't think that's going to change the damn thing. Next point from Adam Silver in his league office, teams must ensure that healthy players resting for a game are
present and visible to fans. No more James Harden hooka parties. No more if you're not there, you're sitting on the bench. No more Kawhi going dark when he's out of a game. What is the penalty for violating these tanking slash load management rules? First defense one hundred k second offense, two hundred and fifty k third.
Offense, one million dollars for each individual violation.
Interestingly, Adam Silver also instituted what I call the Lebron exception. The NBA will allow pre approved designated back to back allowances for players who are thirty five five years old on opening night or have career workloads of thirty four thousand regular season minutes or one thousand regular season playoff game minutes combined. That exception impacts Lebron and stuff, but not Kawhi or ad Fyi. Here are the only seven players who can rest on the back end of a
back to back with no penalty. Lebron, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Chris Paul DeMar DeRozan, Mike Conley, and James Harden. That is it, and like clockwork, the league approve what it's calling the Player Participation Policy on Wednesday. It's gonna be interesting to see how teams try to evade this rule,
because we know that they will. I suspect that we're going to see a lot of Kawhi Leonard getting five to seven minutes of the play and then sitting out, which doesn't technically violate the league's rules, but kind of fucking sucks and fucks the vibe up from a betting standpoint as well, which might actually help you if you know that this is a possibility, and this is the big thing considering the league is fully in bed with sportsbooks right now, I'm not sure how this is gonna
play out, but it is going to be fascinating to see. Nonetheless, one thing that it won't do is make it more likely for me to throw a paycheck six weeks out in advance to see a player.
There's probably a fifty to fifty chance that we will see. Gonna be fun. Gonna be fun to see how this plays out.
Moving on, it's been a couple of months since we've thought about Draymond Green, and he's grabbed the headlines, so you knew that it was time. It was time for Draymond popping his head out of the woodwork, and here it is. It is now Ome Young Music's time to produce a Ramona showburn like Deep Dive, and there's lots of tea spilling. Last season, as we know, could not have started worse for Draymont Punches. Jordan Poole gets the whole TNT sort of comeback story, and then the entire
seasons off the rails. Golden State gets bounced by the Lakers, lots of speculation about his future, and yet, like we know, because he's Stepf's guy and he's important to the Golden State Warriors, he ends up signing one hundred million dollar extension and now those questions are quote unquote put to bed. But then the Warriors went out and they did the unthinkable.
They got Chris Paul. As we know, Draymond Green has been on record about how much he hates Chris Paul, and now Draymond is determined to wipe the slate clean, to do and say the right things. He said, I can look at this year as one of the most important years of my career, and it's not to redeem anything about Draymond, Okay. My goal is that we can help Chris Paul get his first championship, the guy that you hated. Now it is your life's mission to help out his career and his reputation.
That is a lie. New GM Mike gun Levy met with both of these guys.
Before signing off on the deal because he knew, like what we knew is that the two guys can't hate stand each other. They hate each other, and that's funny because the Holy really can't stand them up right. But
apparently they've now come to Jesus. They have had a somewhat of a peace agreement like the US and Russia and the Cold War, and according to om Young Music, after the trade in late June, Green said that he and Chris Paul touched base briefly before giving each other space and time to digest everything, but they have since had a face to face and phone conversations. Listening to Green talk about all the things that used to drive him wild about Chris Paul is almost like carrying an opponent.
Describe what it's like to battle Green in the playoff. Yeah, it's like seeing.
A smaller, older, more wily veteran be just like you.
They are a match in heaven, two world class pests with a history of animosity.
Now best piece, Hm, We're gonna see about that especially.
I think the thing that's the most interesting and the most we'll call it up in the air, is that the offense normally runs through Draymond, and with Chris Paul, the offense normally runs through him, who is going to capitulate and defer to whom. He said, after getting over the hump of being in the same room without killing each other, there's gonna be another hump of actually playing together. But it's gonna take some getting used to. Yes, both focal points of the offense. To me, that feels like
maybe Draymond comes off the bench Chris Paul. Now the rumors are that he's going to be starting. Who is going to be out of the starting spot. It's not gonna be Wiggins, probably not gonna be Looney, Definitely not.
Gonna be Stephand Clay.
That means Draymond Green is the odd man out unless they allow six starting five players. Green says that it's the most important season of his career. He's trying to position this now as some kind of redemption. Chris Paul also looking for redemption, and there's only one way that they can find it, and that's by winning a championship together, kissing and making up and giving each other praise about
how they couldn't accomplish it without the other one. And dray now thinks this roster, which is wild, has the chance to win two more championships. He wants to match Jordan, and he thinks that that's not out of the realm of possibilities. Guys, I am dubious, I am skeptical. I do not know about that one because I have no idea how they beat the Lakers. I have no idea how they beat the Grizzlies. Maybe they do, and I certainly have no idea how they beat the Denver Nuggets.
But hold onto your hats on this one. If they fall short again.
Shocking to think about a team bounce in the second round the playoffs in six, by the way, by a team led by someone older.
Than me, a four year old.
Chris Paul's reputation for not being able to win the big One will be further solidified. And then the belief that maybe, just maybe Draymond destroyed both timelines of the dynasty, and maybe, just maybe people are starting to worry about Steve Kurtu that will be hard to refute. Once again, all eyes are on our Dubs and the pressure is on.
If you're a.
Lifelong Dubs pan like me, your hopes lay in the hands of Chris Paul's fragile hamstring, Clay's ability to return to pre surgery, Clay and Draymond keeping his cool when he has to come off the bench. I just don't know about that. Moving on, There's just one thing I like more than an NBA superstar beefing on the internets, and that is an obscure NBA player beefing on the internets. Welcome to the kai Jones experience. If you are a casual fan, you might not know kai Jones other.
Than the fact that he has Dennis Robin like hair.
Blue purple changes every week started with the random Ig Live, where kai Jones appears to be random how shall we say, unable to operate heavy machinery. He repeated how the Hornets were not going to trade him. He said this, if I get that call on my phone, I will have my buye.
But I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon.
What a strong sense of job security for a guy who has played sixty seven games in two seasons and he averages eight minutes and three points. What does he have on Mitch Cupcheck? What does he have on someone? But it was how he was acting that attracted all the attention. The profuse sweating, the jerky dancing, the slur.
Speech, all of it was a little strained.
Some viewers observed Jones's weird behavior during the live stream, including the dancing, sweating, and the unclear speech, but do not worry.
He was not under the influence. How do we know that he was not under the influence.
He told us he was not under the influence, and that is what Kai Jones said on Twitter. He says, I was not on drugs or intoxicated. I was enjoying my night in my crib. Y'all bugging hashtag, goat life one hundred emoji heart emoji, a butterfly emoji, goat emoji case closed. Kai Jones sweating, jerking around, dancing, sweating, not intoxicated, just hot, just probably his air conditioning ran out.
That was what it was.
But hey, his actions later are really indicative of a guy who has it all together, because less than a week later, he randomly came after his own teammate, Mark Williams by commenting commenting on social media, Hey, show me a video of Mark pulling up, going left.
And hitting it anywhere man in college?
Show me where, to which Mark Williams responded with a video of fifty cent holding his own chest crying. So yeah, Hi Jones, acting crazy on IG Live then coming after the guy who took your job. Sounds like the NBA is almost fast and we are ready for it. That is all the time that we have for this little baby episode of the Heat Check.
Come back on Tuesday for an all new episodes.
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