All right, and now we have a special guest, Keith Smith, the guru from spotrack and the best NBA follow on Twitter at Keith Smith NBA. He joined my other show bet MGM tonight. I was joined by my co host Nick Ashew and Ryan Horba. Let's get right into it was a dope ass interview.
Keith Smith jumps on with us. Haven't talked to our buddy Keith Smith in quite some time. Good to see your face again, my friend. What do we expect from the Grizzlies? Let's just put away tonight because it's you know, it's the first game with job back, But like, what's a realistic expectation for this Grizzlies team just moving forward now that John Morant is back with them, I.
Think just to be competitive the rest of the way. Really just make these games solid, try to get a sense of what does this team look like with John Morant and Marcus Smart because he's also going to be back at the end of the week, and get a real sense of where do we want to go from here?
For them, just to get to five hundred, they'll need to go thirty five and twenty two, and that's like a winning percentage that would be mirrored out of the top six teams right now, and that's just to get to five hundred, and that's even knocking on the door of the play in tournament. So I'm just not sure that where we're headed this year for this team. They're seven and a half out of the last playin spot in the West right now, but you can't make that
all up in a week. So if I was Taylor Jenkins, I'd be saying, hey, let's try to make up a game a week. That's even that is really difficult, but let's try it and see where we landed when all of a said and done.
Yeah, gonna be interesting to watch that progress, especially since they have, you know, really no centers there. I'm curious to get your thoughts on this Donovan Mitchell situation. Obviously he's mom, Darius Garland out for significant time, Evan Mobley out significant time. I think the rumor was that the Cavs might even look in the offseason last offseason to move Jared Allen, and now no Donovan mental extension coming, and now the trade rumors are starting to pile up.
Where are you at.
In terms of likelihood of Tree this season? Before the deadline and where he could potentially go and the probability of that.
Yeah, I think the no extension stuff is getting way overblown. It's the exact same situation that Daron Fox is in in Sacramento as far as extensions go, and everybody was like, yeah, Daron Fox turned it down. That's smart because he can make way more money later. So that's exactly where Donovan Mitchell's in the same spot. So that part I'm not overly worried about there because that was always going to be a delayed thing until he either knew what his all NBA future was and Kenny cash in on the
Supermax or not. As far as trades go, I think the Calves they've won a couple in a row without those two guys, but they're probably going to be a team that's going to be hovering right around that six seven line and the assured playoff spot or the playing tournament, and then that's a major step back from where they were a year ago. But I just can't see them trading Donovan Mitchell roughly a year and a half in to this experiment. I think that's something that drags into
the summertime and in the summer. If it's starting to look like, yeah, he's not staying here no matter what happens, that's when you have those conversations. I assume it'll start right back up again with the knicks and the nets. The Heat will be involved, the Lakers will be involved, because they're always involved on any superstar. So that's where we'll be, is you know, the kind of typical teams
that we heard involved last time. And then does some other team jump in and say, you know what, We'll grab him because we think he can put us over the top of the next year or so, and that'll convince him to stay here with us. That's always a you know, tried and true thing that teams try to do and try to make work. But we'll ultimately see where that goes. But I don't think this one anything happens in the next couple of months. I think this goes into next summer at the earliest fur trade.
All right, Keith, I'm so glad to have you on because I haven't talked with you in a while here and I'm looking at Boston plus three seventy five and you're just the man to talk to. I've done it two years in a row. They're gonna make fun of me, and I'm thinking about doing it again. They're eight and two in their last ten twenty and five this season.
I love this team, actually, man. I like the KP move more than I thought early thoughts on the Celtics right now, the way that they're trending in any concerns that you have moving forward in the East.
Yeah, when they have their top guys together, they're great. Any combination of their top six when they're all in there is really good. It almost doesn't matter which five of the six are on the floor. When they're missing one or two of them, it starts to get a little less great. They're still a good team, but they're not that great. They're really dominant at home. I believe now fourteen to no at home. I have been absolutely just hammering teams in Boston this year, and they've been
kind of just okay on the road so far. They're about to start tonight in Golden State, a long four game road trip, kind of key road trip. They've got the Warriors and the Kings back to back, and they've got a couple of days off before they play an afternoon game in Los Angeles. That always goes really well for the visiting team, get a little bit of that La flu going on, and then they've got the Lakers on Christmas. So this is gonna be a stretch where we're gonna find out a lot about this team and
how they look. Chris apps Porzingis isn't gonna play tonight. It looks like they're kind of going to manage the back to backs with him. They already do that with Al Horford, so we'll see what that looks like. But when they've got their main guys, they're really good. They're kind of thing that's still out there is what happens. If a couple of those guys go down, then they're probably in trouble because they don't have they have good functional depth. Their top six to seven eight guys are
fine for the playoff period. We we're long ways off of that, so that that could be they lose guys. They started losing a few games, that's how Milwaukee, maybe Philadelphia could catch them and pass them in the standings in the regular season.
Talking to Keith Smith bet MGM tonight, Hey, I'm watching the Knicks recently now and I see a team that you know, no Mitchell Robinson is obviously a major loss for them. They don't really have a lot to go with it in the in the middle now. But Julius Randall has been great. H Jalen Brunson has been playing fantastic. I mean at a fifty spot the other night. When you look at this Knixt team, obviously we know they're gonna be in the market. They've been in trade rumors
for another star. You mentioned Donovan Mitchell. That'll probably be a summertime thing there. But when you look at this team right now, where do they stack up from what you've seen on the court with the rest of the Eastern Conference. It's kind of just where they're sitting in the standings, or do you see a possibility where they could maybe climb a little bit higher as the season goes on.
I think they're about where they are. I think their record will improve, but I think they're a top six team, but they're not in the category with the top three. I think the East, the Celtics, the Bucks, and the Sixers have really set themselves apart as the class of the conference, and then the Knicks are in that next group of teams, and that's got teams like Miami, Cleveland, the Magic. Those teams are all kind of in that mix, and that's fine. That's not necessarily a bad place to be.
It's just kind of where they're at, and I think what limits them is Jalen Brunson is really good, but some teams have figured out ways to kind of scheme and take him out of things a little bit. Julius Randall's still very hit or miss. RJ Barrett is, you know, maybe the most inconsistent guy in the league. He can drop thirty one night and then have ten the next and it looks good because on the overall season stats
it's twenty points per game. But yeah, you kind of when you see how it got there, you're you're kind of left, uh, puzzled a little bit. And then I feel like they've just got too many guards and wings for the minutes they want to play. We've already heard Josh Hart and Quinton Grimes both grumble a little bit about their roles. We heard Emmanuel Quickly a little bit when he came back after missing a game that he was feeling a little left out out in the cold
wood minutes. So I think that's just gonna be something they're gonna have to work through until the trade comes, and it really comes down to they're going to be the group they've been over the last let's call it about four years now, which is extremely patient and is waiting and biding their time. They're not chasing. They chase the A level guys if they don't get them. The old Knicks would have said, all right, let's get three C level guys and call it good. Now this group
has been a lot more patient. They wait, they hold, and they try to see what develops for them. So I think we're in a spot with the Knicks where it's probably what you see is what you get. But maybe that big move is just around the corner, because they do get the sense they've been piling up assets, they've been retaining players, waiting and biding their time to make that big move.
Atlanta Hawks Keith off to a very very disappointing start. They're eleven and fifteen, just one game better than the Bulls, who actually been a lot better now that Zach Lavine hasn't been playing, and one game better than the Hornets. What can Quinn Snyder do to fix this? Or is this roster fixable?
I think it's more what can the front office due to help Quinn Snyder fix it now? Part of it will be fixed when they get Jalen Johnson back. He was playing really, really well for them. He was arguably, you could say, their second best player behind Trey Young in the early part of the season. I think Clint Capella is where to the territory now where we should be having a conversation. Should in Yaka kong Wu replace him in the starting group and where does that go
moving forward? I don't know. The cityqe Bay DeAndre Hunter forward pairing just doesn't really work for me. They're there are two guys who were just kind of averaging just about all ways. They're neither one of them is a bad player, but neither one of them is overly special, So you're you're real messy. The offense. I think that's
where Win Snider could do some stuff. And I thought their game, albeit it was against the Pistons last night, you did see some semblance of we're gonna cut out some of the Dejonte Maury running the offense type stuff. We're gonna really we're gonna let Trey kind of lead us there, and and Trey got his shots, but he
also was really got the ball moving. It was sending guys off up, and they put Murray into this off ball secondary creator role, and I think that's better than the all right, we got to give Dejonte a few possessions here, and then Trey Young goes and stands out around the logo somewhere and doesn't move, and there's multiple clips you can see he just doesn't move. And then the big thing is their defense stakes, and it's just not gonna get any better with the personnel they have.
So it's probably something where Quinn Snyder can do only do so much, and maybe they make a trade and do something to balance the roster a little bit better for him.
That's all the time that we have for the Heat Check. Big thanks to Keith and the whole gang at bet MGM tonight. Come back tomorrow for an all new episode. Check out the feed for past episodes of many episodes which drop unexpectedly, like Jalen Hurts calling out as teammates for not being committed to winning. Do not forget to follow the Heat Check as we go through this new NBA season. That means tea, that means X's and O's no,
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