Krick Fixes For The NBA

If you're tuned into Heat Check with Trystal Quick.

On this episode of the Heat Check, it's time for me to play Commissioner Crick.

Yes, sir, no more, Adam Silver in comes me.

I've decided, after careful thought, we are going to fix the NBA.

It's an episode.

We have just some time on our hands, and I've got some thoughts on how we make the NBA better. That means we've got everything from expansion to reorganization to even fixing the All Star Game.

I got you covered.

Also, we got to get into a little bit of news from around the league. Must conversation about Jahn Morant and some of the things that have recently been reported. Update on Lonzo ball lot happening, Nick, So drop that generic ass beat. All right, we begin this Episodisde with some sad news. I don't actually know really what is true and what's not true, but let me tell you this. The Washington Post is a pretty reputable news source, so I'm gonna go ahead and say that the reporting is detailed.

Of the head. Crazy. Story.

Was reluctant to even discuss it, but I feel like, if you're just a casual NBA fan, you probably don't even know that this is going on. According to the Washington Post, Job became friends with a highly rated basketball prospect who no one knows who he is because he's a minor. He's seventeen, and part of the friendship involved Jaw inviting this kid over to play in pickup games during the summer at his house. During one of those games, things got very heated.

A Job threw the.

Ball hard when checking up, and then the kid got so steamed that he checked it back just as hard. John missed the ball and it hit him in the head and that's where things went sideways. I don't mean to make light of it, but that's kind of what

The ball was actually the first punch, not me.

Jaw then looked at his friend, according to this article, and said, should we do it, boy?

And then they did. Apparently they beat the kid senseless.

The kid says he was punched dozens of times by both men, and then this is where it gets really kind of worse. Jah goes inside, the kid goes somewhere. Jah goes inside, apparently grabs a gun, puts it in his waistband, puts his hand on the gun in a threatening manner towards the kid, and Tea. Morant all the while is as usual, somewhere close and is screaming at Jaw to get.

Back inside the house.

Hey, you need to stop this right now, Like we gotta, we gotta figure.

Out a way to get your little last home.

So, according to the Post, in an interview with the police, John Morant said, like I mentioned a little bit before that he acted in self defense, but I swung first, he told detectives. Almost never have I heard of a self defense case that claims that you were the one that threw the first punch. I don't know if I've ever That's a very wildly honest and yet flawed self defense claim. The police report continues, Jaw believed that the boy had been an aggressor because he threw the ball

It's because you're ready to square up. It's time to go now.

And so that was essentially fighting words, that was essentially fighting mannerisms. During the interview, detectives mentioned the boy's allegation that Morant flashed a gun, and ja Morant and his people never denied that claim. Probably could not have come at a worse time for Jamorant. Let's be honest, probably don't want to have any bad pr on the heels of you releasing something that people are supposed to buy with your name on it.

That's very obvious.

But Jahn Morant dropped his very first signature shoe with Nike on Tuesday, that was two days ago, and then Wednesday, WAPO drops this piece. I don't know if WAPO is trying to sink the stock of Ja Morant's signature shoes, but I'm just gonna say that timing's not great. As an aside, Ja Morant being the first signature shoe for Nike that is four hundred dollars is absolutely bonkers it

Also, by the way, this came like a month ago.

Remember when the Super Bowl week was and then there was an incident with the Pacers and there was like that whole Hey, I think we got a laser scope pulled on us by Jaw's friends and family. After Andrew Nemhard, poor, a little cute Andrew Nemhard from Gonzaga, who's like probably one hundred and seventy five pounds soaking wet. They leave, and all of a sudden, Jaw's friends come by and they're making all kinds of threatening gestures and there's a laser beam on them.

Now Jaw.

Or his claimed that it was just a laser pointer. They were headed to a PowerPoint presentation.

Apparently they were.

They had their cats in the car. They're just making sure the cats were entertained.

I get it. I've got a dog. She sometimes rolls with me. I pull out my little laser beam.

Sometimes it so happens to randomly go into my enemy's forehead just as I was playing with.

It with my cat. It is really weird. What do we make of all this? In all seriousness, it's not good. I'm gonna say that.

I'm gonna say this is not supposed to happen to a superstar player.

And these are all self inflicted wounds.

I think Jaw is very close to fucking his life up, and I don't think he quite gets that part right, somebody has to sit him down, in my opinion, and say, jaw, you're about to lose everything. All this endorsements your career.

You take two.

Hundred and thirty one million dollars. You cannot operate on hood rules anymore. No more, cannot do it. You are the face of your franchise. You're probably gonna be the face of the NBA.

You can't just be curb stopping someone because they do it ball too hard at you. You can't do that.

You can't go inside and grab a gun put it in your waistband.

I'm like, yeah, well look what I got. No, you cannot do that, and neither can your friend pack or stack whatever, none of them. And and you are the greatest show on on planet Earth. That's the thing. You're not Malik Beasley. You're not insert random role player here. You are the best player to watch on planet Earth on a basketball court, not even close.

And you might lose all of that because you felt disrespected by a kid because he pulled his pants up at your house when you invited him over to the barbecue. That's some corny ash shit. That's a Oh I'm a gangster. I want to show him my muscle, because I'm one hundred and fifty five pounds.

Soaken, wet, what are we doing here?

You can't have your friends encouraging you. You can't have any friends that encourage you to do this nonsense.

Because why because they're not worth two.

Hundred and thirty one million dollars if they go to jail. No one's gonna give a fuck. No one, not the world, not the criminal justice, and nobody.

You are the one that will be.

Significantly altered by these decisions. So the op ed got posted in the Washington Post as well, and they said, uh, Jaw is on a bad path, which I agree with. Defiance is part of his basketball charm. Accountability had better be a.

Part of his evolution.

Yes, yes, And without accountability, you're gonna have more incidents like this, without a recognition that this is out of pocket. I can't be operating in this way. You are going to risk it all and probably lose it all for nothing, for absolutely nothing, because the truth is, if you're looking for disrespect, you're going to find it everywhere, even from a child who threw a basketball at you and pulled its fucking pants up. So I've been on record saying

Be does.

He's got these tone deaf responses to many crises, including load management or poor refereeing at the end of games, all the things that have happened with human rights abuses, and as Canter coming out and now feeling like he's blackball.

There's just a lot going on right now.

And we've talked about this over the past three seasons of the show. But somebody said, well, what would you do, Commissioner Crick. You're so you got such good ideas, you got your so fast to criticize.

You can't complain without offering a solution. You're just screaming into the void.

So you know what, in an attempt to fix that, Welcome to Commissioner Crick's NBA, where I will be fixing the league, this league for the foreseeable future. My comprehensive basketball plan. We didn't get into media relations, but we could. My comprehensive basketball plan will not only position the league at the forefront of the growth and professional sports, It's

It begins.

It begins with expansion Executive Order. Two Western Conference teams are going to be added to the mix, the Seattle SuperSonics tomorrow and the Las Vegas Jacks. Those are the teams right now. So now we've got thirty two. It's from thirty to thirty two. That is going to be a very important mass school to have. Because I am blowing up the current structure of the league. We are going to reorganize the league based on geographic lines.

No more. Hey, what's the furthest east Western Conference team? Why is Minnesota in the West? Why is OKAC in the West? Fuck? If I know who knows? No idea? So we're gonna figure that out.

The NBA, I think, has been dicking around with expansion for way too long.

The time is now two cities.

We know those two cities deserve the teams, so why make them wait, there's zero sense.

So now that we have thirty.

Two teams, we expand the season, not contract the season like a lot of people want. We're expanding the season to eighty four games. You'll find out why eighty four in a minute.

The reason why these radical changes are so important.

I think for geographic relocation or in terms of geographic restructuring, it will keep travel.

Down to a bare minimum.

You're not gonna get teams going on these road trips where they're flying from Toronto to Seattle, Toronto to San Francisco. That doesn't exist anymore. You'll be playing teams in your own division more than you do.

Now.

We'll keep the conferences, the two of them, Eastern and Western. Right under the two conferences, we'll have four divisions. Let's divide the Western Conference into eight teams. So you've got the West, You've got the Midwest, You've got the South, and you've got the East.

So the Midwest and the West are.

In the Western Conference, the South and the East are in the East.

Little confusing, I know.

So for the Western Division or the Coastal Division, we'll call it Portland, Golden State, Sacramento, LA Lakers, LA Clippers, Phoenix Suns, Las Vegas Jacks, and the Seattle SuperSonics. For the Midwest Division, you're gonna have the Denver Nuggets, Utah Jazz, Minnesota Timberwolves, Milwaukee Bucks, Yes, Chicago, Indiana, Detroit, and Cleveland. I don't know teams are actually in the Midwest. In the East, divided into two divisions, We've got the South.

There won't be in the same division. In the East, I think it's much more clear.

Miami, Toronto, Charlotte, which could have gone either way, Brooklyn.

Nets, New York Knicks, Washington Wizards, Philly, and Boston. Every team now plays everyone in.

Its division four times, so you play a home and home two games with every other team in your division. That, Folks, is eighty four games, twenty eight division games, fifty six out of division games. Now there are no more random things. Only four divisions, So how do the playoffs work?

Simple?

It's kind of like the Sweet sixteen. Top four teams in each division make the playoffs.

Period.

That means sixteen total teams are in, sixteen total teams are out, no.

More play in tournament.

I know you love it, but I've got a solution for that as well moving forward, which I'll talk about.

In a second. Think about this.

It's like the Sweet Sixteen of March Madness, with the West and the Midwest on one side of the bracket and the East and the South on another.

Side of the bracket. Do not overthink this.

Except for a single elimination game, it will be the regular series that we get in the playoffs. So the winners of the West and the Midwest divisions play in the Western Conference Finals. The winner of the Southern and Eastern play the Eastern Conference Finals. Winner of those finals play for the title. Not reinventing the wh But here's the twist.

What about the teams that don't make the playoffs? What happens with them?

So this is where Adam Silver or Commissioner Cricks Coveted tournament takes place. This is a single elimination tourney where the winner of this tournament gets the number one pick.

In the draft. The draft then after the number one pick goes specifically on record.

So to get the number one you've got to win the single elimination tournament like we get in March Madness, and then you're not gonna be able to say, Okay, well, the second worst team gets nothing because they've flamed out, So the second second worst team in the draft, after the winner gets the number two pick, the next gets the number three pick, et cetera.

The tournament will take place directly.

After the season, the regular season, the single elimination tournament, and then that gives the actual playoff teams a one week break in order to get healthy.

Watch the games get excited.

So now they get rested, we get some postseason basketball, and I actually think there might be more intrigue and excitement around who gets the number one overall pick, just like on the heels of March Madness, because it will be probably two weeks after Final four to figure out who's going to get Victor Wambiniama. I honestly think this is better than March Madness. You're gonna get crazy basketball. It would dominate ratings. We would get such good rating

You want that.

EPL style tournament, Adam Silver, Here it is there, you go. Other changes for Commissioner crick All Star Game will be Team USA versus the World. I think that's already in motion anyway. I think actually I put that in emotion. Can you imagine Nikola, Jokic and Luka deciding that they're gonna mail it in because they're playing against Team USA and they don't want.

To look like idiots. I don't think that happens. I think Team USA has to.

Play hard because they don't want to get punked by the international team. We'll also move the All Star break backwards. We're moving it to halfway through the season, no more twenty games left. When they say the back half the season after the All Star break, it actually will be the back half of the All Star breaks. Having an All Star Game with twenty four games left in the season makes no sense to me. Here's another change. My

No.

There's nothing more than I hate and turning on League Pass to watch the Timberwolves play in MAVs colors or the MAVs play in the Celtics colors. Sometimes they play against each other. I can't even figure out who's playing who, what's going on? Even when they show you in the graphics packages, who's in what color? Still can't figure it out? There it is I have fixed the NBA to a very large degree, all in one segment. I think this

I know that we normally.

Try to make jokes here, but sometimes you got to cover a subject that, no matter how much I try, I find humor in it. And like I can't find zero humor in this, we got to talk about Lonzo Ball.

This thing is out of control. It is so sad. First of all, Lonzo is not only a great.

Player, but the Bulls haven't really recovered since he went down last season. I think they were number one in the East at one point. But he's also a good dude. He's a really good dude, beloved by his teammates. The Ball brothers are, by every account that I've heard of, totally good guys.

How good was he with the Bulls when the Bulls?

When when the Bulls were playing with Lonzo Ball, they were the number one seed in the East. He was shooting forty two percent from three, and even more important, the Bulls allowed eight point six year points per game when compared to when he was off the court. That was top four percent in the entire NBA. Defense never recovered since he left, So I don't know if that makes the Lonzo Ball injury update more painful to hear, but it's certainly if you're the Bulls, doesn't make it

Yeah, I don't think you're shocked. I'm not shocked, but.

It's it's kind of scary considering that we didn't see him play most of last year. Now we haven't seen him play this year, and it's pretty jarring to hear. When the reason came out behind it, it's probably.

Even more difficult to process.

So just to recap the timeline, because it's weird, complicated and it took a while. January fourteenth, Lonzo Ball tore as meniscus. Pretty simple, pretty normal injury that we've seen in the NBA. Goes under the knife, goes and gets arthroscopic surgery right after misses the rest of the season, which you could say, some people do come back from meniscus tears with surgery, some people don't.

Not cause for concern.

Yet the timeline from being able to play following surgery sometimes can range from four to six months, so okay.

The dark clouds then begin to form.

Eight months later, in September, Lonzo then has a second surgery on the same knee, on the same tear.

The Ball said it would.

Just be a few months just to clean up, which is obviously a lie, and they were looking at it January twenty twenty three return date, But then January twenty eighth came and Billy Donovan let it slip that Lonzo Ball was nowhere near returning to the court, and in fact, it actually became known that Lonzo Ball was still in pain and wasn't even able to run yet.

Wow. The Bulls released this statement.

Despite making significant increases in strength and function over the past several months, Bulls guard Lonzo Ball continues to experience performance limiting discomfort during participation and high level basketball activities. Considering the time required to achieve the necessary level of fitness to return to play and the current stage of

So what's wrong?

According to his dad, LaVar Ball, Alonzo has quote debris and a nerve.

What does that mean? I don't actually know what that means.

Is that like when you get dust in your eye, because that stuff's really painful? Is that like the the expanded dust in the eye scenario. The issue apparently is even more complicated because Tristan Thompson went on ESPN and reported that doctors have told Lonzo Ball that this is a unique injury that they have never seen before. So it was not just a meniscus tear. So when you apply unique to anything bad, it's always worse. It's never good to be like.

This is such an interesting case.

I've never seen this before, you have such a unique injury. No, those are things you do not want to hear. That means things are bad because they don't know how to fix you. If they've never seen something before, they don't know how to fix it.

To be honest, doctors are just like us. They're just people.

They've never encountered this, they're probably not going to be able to help out. The latest is that Lonzo plans on receiving a this is normal platelet rich plasma injection into the leftne Kobe used to get that done in Germany all the time.

They do it here now in the United States. Very painful, but also very helpful.

He's gonna put that in his left knee to minimize the pain that he's experiencing from a pair of operations that he had in twenty twenty two.

Good news, he's already had those.

Bad news, he's already had those Like that's he knows the pain, but he's already had PRP in that same need in twenty eighteen. I want to see Lonzo ball back. He is so good. He was hitting his stride, he was finding his way. He was in real NBA player. After all the noise and smoke around the UCLA to Lakers sort of transition and LeVar ball Drama medicine has

Remember when New York yet Knicks drafted him.

Everybody thought he was going to just be this breakthrough talent, that his shot would start to fall, he would figure it out.

No, never happened. Never happened.

Despite four years as a New York Knick. Remember they put him on Tree Young. That's probably the most famous he'll ever be. He shot thirty nine percent for his career. He currently gets like ten minutes a game in Dallas. His shot has not been fixed. He is currently still shooting thirty eight percent in Dallas.

Number two Mobiamamba.

Everybody thought Mobamba was gonna be electric Magic. Spent four and a half years waiting on Mobamba. They were like, well, he'll figure it out, guys, he'll figure it out. He's he's a stretched big man, he can shoot the three long, he's athletic, he.

Has good personality.

And you know what, he never did a guy everybody thought had the skills necessary to be a star, and no he did not. We only got a song from it.

That's it.

That's all we have. And I don't even think he was drafted when the song came out. So song could have just came and went the Magic shipped him out for a bag of chips to the Lakers at this year's trade deadline. As we know, Number two is Mobamba number three. Oh, this one's close to home. This one's so close to home. Zach Collins from Gonzaga tenth in the overall draft from the Portland Trailblazers. You know, the Blazers. We've talked about this a million times, but I'll say

He's never going to be a star. Obviously he was reached for in the draft. That's fine.

But the worst part about Zach Collins existing on the Portland Trailblazers is that the Blazers passed on stars, elite players for Zach Collins. Let's talk about him, Donovan Mitchell. I mean, the list could just end there and that would be that.

But it doesn't. Bam At a bio could end there. It does not.

John Collins, Jared Allen, Kyle Kuzma, og An Andobi all went after Zach Collins. You could have just kept your first round picks and got two of those guys that hurts. Also receiving votes from me is James Wiseman, of course, James Wiseman's been coasting for the Warriors on potential pretty much alone. Dante Exem. Dante Exem and the Adida's Nations. They thought when he was sixteen years old he was

That you can only live for so long on potential.

But some of these guys are probably going to get an NBA pension and will magically figure things out when they never will. That's all the time that we after the Heat Check, check back Tuesday for an all new full episode. Do not forget to watch the feed, and please follow the Heat Check as a season head towards the playoffs and follow us on social at at this heat Check and at Trista Criek because the heat Check never sleeps.