The Dallas Mavericks Are Done

foot doctors, Pat Bev being Pat Bev. M Moore playing is just around the corner, folks, So Nick, do me a favor and drop that generic aass beat the should be Rihanna. So a little story time. Just got back from Cincinnati. I had an event where I am seed the opening of the bed MGM Sportsbook at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. Legendary first base and Sean Casey was there. Cool hero Ikey Woods was there from the Bengals, and Kenyon Martin akak mart Uc Bearcat, legend nets all

pro power forward, just number one overall pick beast. So we're gonna actually get Kenyan Martin on the pod soon. He actually asked to be on, which is amazing, so look out for that. Also, Father of kJ Martin, who

is in prison aka playing for the Houston Rockets. But I did want to talk about some college hoops because I went to Louisville, which is just a short hop down the road from Cincinnati, and I went over to the Young Center, which is actually, I don't know if you know this, but youm Center is KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Yeah, did not know that. Watched the Elite eight game between San Diego State and Creighton, which

was an absolute rock fight. Found some cheap ass tickets like five minutes before game time, a second row half court on the more right behind Iron Eagle, which was amazing. Turned out to be an all time game. This is all just a roundabout way to talk about Deer and Fox hating college basketball and March Madness. They asked him if he's watching any of the games. This is what he had to say, watch March, I kind of flip through college games. I can't watch a full college game, really, no,

I can't. It's hard. It's hard. Just the shot making is not at obviously the pro level. The refs are bad. A lot of coaching is really bad. Yeah, it's I can't stand it. A lot of coaching is really bad. Keep in mind this is a man who was coached by checks notes Luke Walton. He said, the coaching is really bad, the refereeing is really bad. I don't know if that's a fair assessment. I think it's definitely different.

Is it as pretty for sure? Not a lot of people thought that the San Diego State game was a disaster. I personally loved it. I watched it up close and personal. It felt like if you were up by four points in that game, you were up by fifty. That's how hard a basket was to come by. Miami versus Texas. You had Miami come back from thirteen down with no threes. If Creighton or San Diego State would have been up by thirteen points, you might as well just call it

game over. There's no chance one one bucket between either one of them combined might have taken two or three minutes. Not because they were just horrible. The defense was that good. You had a San Diego State asset team playing man to man full court press from second one in the game all the way through literally the first possession Creighton

got the ball. You had our man Trommel playing full court press on him, locking him down, making Andrew Nemhard's little brother, making his life just a pain in the ass, tiring him out. You add Calkin Brenner seven footer for a Creighton. You add him setting screens for Nemart in the back court. This is the thing about the NBA. It just can't. You can't match the intensity of it of college basketball, at least until the playoffs. You just can't.

The NBA nobody cares this much. Every rebound is a fight. Players don't take plays off. An entire quarter is unheard of to take off like it is in the NBA. Yes, the NCAA schedule half the amount, less than half the amount, like we'll call it a quarter of the amount of the NBA. But the desire should be the same. It's

just it just isn't. If you look at like a random Pistons Spurs game in January versus San Diego State versus Creighton in the Elite eight, I guarantee you'd rather watch San Diego State versus Creighton watching Jade and Ivy chuck from thirty five feet while every single Spur except for Trey Jones is sitting on the bench for load management. Get out of here, Get out of here. I know the beat NBA is the best basketball in the world,

but that's not the point. Different strokes for different folks, and the college game is beautiful in its own way. Side note on college hoops. If you haven't seen Caitlyn Clark and her performance two nights ago, forty one point triple double, first in NCAA history, never been in thirty point triple double in women's college tournament history before, and she had forty one. Go find that shit on YouTube.

My lord. I think Caitlyn Clark might be I think she might be the best college player, men's or woman's in history. I'm not even joking, not even joking. The MAVs are so fucked they are. I mean, they are absolutely toast. The more you think about it and break down what's happening with this team roster, assets, draft situation, et cetera. And also just like play right now, just performances, period, the more you realize this team is just so screwed

they are absolutely done. How bad is it that the only option that the MAVs have right now, the only like slight way out to salvage the disaster that is this season is to lose every single game for the rest of the season. I'm not joking. Seven games left. The only thing that the MAVs can do to fix it, even a little bit, which is not going to fix the whole thing, is to tank, lose it, shut Luca down, lose every single game. Let me explain why that will be.

So we talked last week about the Mavericks Warriors game and that ended in the protest. Dallas said that it was supposed to be their ball and the Warriors ended up getting an easy dunk and then that ended up them losing the game and falling from six to like tenth. Right, And we said that the last few games were pretty easy, right, We said, oh, fortunately, they have two games against the Hornets, the Pacers, the Bulls, the Hawks, and the Spurs, all

winnable games. Since then, the MAVs got their doors blown off to the Charlott Hornets twice without LaMelo, without Terry rose Ear and without one other player as well. It was just Gordon Hayward doing Gordon Hayward things. By the way, did I mention that that was the largest underdog win

of the season. The Hornets were sixteen and a half point dogs and one outright and the MAVs in those two games that they both lost against the Hornets, they only led in those two games for ninety one seconds combined out of ninety two minutes or ninety six minutes. Did I mention Charlotte has the second worst record in the East. Those are not just bad losses. Those are changed the entire philosophy and direction for the rest of

the season kind of losses. Tim McMahon called them maybe the two worst performances, not just of the year, but in recent memory. The second game in Charlotte, Tim McMahon Dallas Mavericks I would call him on the beat for ESPN. He called Luca's performance the single worst forty twelve and

eight game in NBA history. Luca argued with the refs pretty much all night about everything, to the point where he got technicled teed up in his sixteenth of the year, which would have made him ineligible to play Monday night, which is tonight against the Pacers. And the Pacers are better than the Hornets except for Adam Silver. Put his knee pads on and went to work and found a way somehow to rescind Lucas technical which the refs the next day came out and said, no, that technical was legit.

We are not played on rescinding it. We're all NBA podcasts today predicted no, that will not be removed or changed. That call will not be and it was changed. Any possibility that Silver is a little scared about the potential of having not just Luca missed the playoffs, but Lebron missed the playoffs in the same year. Either way, it's a disaster. So how bad are things for the Dallas Mavericks right now? They are currently a full game behind the Oklahoma City Thunder for the ten seed and last

place in the play in tournament. Five of their next seven games Dallas are against playoff teams. So remember we said schedules kind of eat It's not easy anymore. Sixers, King's Hawks, Bulls Heat. This is a team that, even if they were trying, could easily go from Western Conference Finals last year to Cancun on three. This all sort of seems impossible considering the fact that they were so

successful last year. Luca has been largely healthy pretty much all year, and the Mavericks made the biggest deal at the trade deadline, which was getting Kyrie Irving, and do not say that was Kevin Durant that was the biggest trade, because the only reason that Kevin Durant trade happened was because Kyrie asked out. The MAVs are currently six and nine in games that Kyrie has played. But here's the part, the little kicker that people are not talking enough about.

The MAVs are three and eight in games that Luca and Kyrie both play. Anyone see that coming. That is shocking. So in summation, the MAVs mortgaged their future to get not just Christian Wood but Kyrie Irving, giving up multiple picks and multiple assets, and now the only hope is to maybe re sign Kyrie, which means they gave up their lockdown defender and they're probably not gonna keep Kyrie.

They gave up their lockdown defender Dorian Phinney Smith, their number two scoring option in Spencer Dinwoodie, who's averaging seventeen to four and eight as an d an unprotected twenty twenty nine first round draft pick and two future second round picks. Four potentially two months of Kyrie Irving, who has given you a thirty seven and a half winning percentage. Now it's so bad that Kyrie Irving is getting booed in the stands, getting hackled by Mavericks fans, booted from

the game. Things are obviously going according to plan. According to plan, it's not working. Look in his recent pressor speechless, he's not playing with any choy, He's saying that he has issues with his personal life. All of that is the nightmare scenario. But here's like, I guess the cherry on top of how bad it is, do you know how bad it is in Dallas right now? How bad is it Trista. It's so toxic that the Orlando Magic think that they can lure Luka doncic away and bring

him there. Yes, recent reports are that the Orlando Magic are quote monitoring the Luca situation and they believe they believe that Luca would look at the Orlando Magic franchise, which has been in the lottery for every year for about a decade, and be like, yes, I think Orlando is in a better spot to win in the or an intermediate term then my current team, the Dallas Mavericks that just went to the Western Conference finals. They believe

in their head that that's a possibility. They're like, yeah, Europeans don't really care about these dogshit cities that they play them. Look at Dirk Noovisky, look at Joannie, look at Nicole Ocic. They don't care that they're in small markets. They don't leave, They stick around. And you know what, I tend to agree. I tend to agree things have gone I actually do believe the Orlando Magic has have more pieces, more draft picks, better cap space flexibility than

the Dallas Mavericks in the next decade. I believe that the Orlando Magic right now are in a better spot to win than the Mavericks, which is fucking crazy. Things have gone sideways. You gotta put blame all over the place. Nico Harrison is terrible. Jason Kid's not making decisions correctly at the end of situations. Rumors are that the MAVs locker room is tuning out Jason Kidd. All of these are segments all on their own. They're probably gonna fire

Jason Kidd. He's gonna probably be the scapegoat of the NBA and this team, even though he's like the last thing that's the problem for the team. Yeah, he's not good, but let's be honest, there's not much really to rock with. And if you look at next year, you add in how little cap space this team has. So if you look at twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, without signing Kyrie Irving, this team has twenty twenty five million dollars to spend, right, that seems like quite a bit of

cap space. Oh, twenty five million dollars in free cat space this year. Then you look at how many guys they have locked up and it's eight eight of fifteen spots. That means you have twenty five million dollars to spend on seven players. What can you get for twenty million dollars across seven human beings in the NBA? My guy Alan Krab was getting eighteen million. One man, what are

we talking about? And here's the kicker you. Oh, if you're the Dallas Mavericks, this year's first round pick to the Knicks unless you fall and get a top ten pick in the lottery. It's a top ten protected first round pick. So what does that mean? You gotta figure out a way to get that top ten pick. Baby, you gotta lose out. So the only way you have an ability to get some young emerging star for cheap in a very loaded draft is that they must lose shut Luca down, lose seven games in a row, which

puts you record rise right on the brink. You still might be fucked thirty six and forty six, which is the ninth worst record in the which gives you like a little bit of hope of giving a top ten pick. Otherwise, which would be a disaster as you lose out and then get the eleventh pick, which you have to give

it in the next But otherwise, who are you? You're the La Lakers two years ago with Lebron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook and a bunch of guys on vet minimum contracts, except for you don't have Anthony Davis, and you don't have Russell Westbrook, and you just have a young girl Lebron James. Ask Lebron how much that worked for him? Think of that. The Mavericks are the twenty twenty one Lakers with just Lebron James. I'm calling it now. The

Mavericks are losing Luca. It's happening. If you look at the situation, it's not a matter of if. It's only a matter of win. Speaking of Lebron James, so he's back baby, after missing thirteen games with that foot injury, Planter Fasciu tear something so they lost to the Bulls, which I think is hilarious. Won eighteen, went to eight. Bron had a pretty good game nineteen eight and three thirty minutes to play, came off the bench actually, which was the first time that he's came off the bench

since two thousand and seven, which is wild. What's funny, though, was how Lebron described what it took to get him back on the court. Did you see this he said? According to Bron himself, the first two doctors that Lebron met with told him that he needed to have season endings surgery, but he didn't believe him. He went to a third doctor, whom he called the Lebron James of foot doctors, and told him. This doctor told him if he did round the clock rehabit training, he could return

in time to play out this year. Four weeks later, he's back on the court. But the Lebron James the foot doctors comment is really getting me. It's really I have there's so much to peel back on it, and I thought to myself, Oh, the Lebron James of Foot doctors. He must mean the most obvious, disprovable liar of foot doctors, because that's to me what Lebron James is. He says

such meaningless, small lies. If he reinjures his planter fascy itis or whatever it is, his little foot, little tendon on the bottom of his foot, and he misses the playoffs and has to have surgery in the off season, which he said he might have to have, and he's not gonna tell us that means that is exactly right. The Lebron James the foot doctors, is the type of doctor who would just lie about things that they know

nothing about. Remember when he said, oh yeah, I knew that shake Gilges Alexander was gonna be an all NBA caliber player. I just saw him. I knew it. I saw the Mighos one time, and I knew they were gonna be as big as they were. That's this guy, only he is taking Lebron James's health into his hands. Or also, like the fact that Lebron James is not just saying things in third person. He's not calling, oh yeah,

Lebron James is tired today. Lebron James went through a workout today, he's he's calling someone else and referring to someone else in the third person of himself. I guess he's gonna be like, oh yeah, I went and saw Creed three. I love that Michael B. Jordan, guy Lebron James of Actors, love that guy. He's really good. It's like, yep, yep.

I don't know why he does it. I really was thinking about this because I think now it's on purpose, because he's not had one scandal in twenty plus years in the league, right, not one, Not one thing with his like, not one thing with infidelity, not one thing with I don't know, like going on ig live with a gun, like, not one time that he's been ultra inebriated in public or drunk or high. Nothing zero, not

in the off season, not in season. Nothing. But then he sets these little banana peals out for himself to slip on, like these very weird things that get us to roast him for being one of the corniest people I've ever seen, the dumbest liar I've ever seen. Remember he was running around with uh I think it was Alcolm X's book, and he was on the front page for like the entire time. He was in the bubble, said he loved the godfather Washington a million times, couldn't

find one quote. These are calculated pr moves to make him seem more human, because otherwise he'd be infallible. I don't understand it, small comical errors that do nothing really to change his reputation except for to just make him less likable. I don't understand it. I don't understand it. Let's move on away from Lebron. I think it's time. When we talked about the Bulls in Pat Beverley, I do didn't want to do it, didn't think it would amount to much, And over time we're seeing that the

Bulls are better with Pat BEV. So we talked about him last the season. The only reason we talked about him is because he was the worst player in the NBA in terms of plus minus. I think he had the lowest offensive rating in the league. So he talked about that. We made fun of it. He barely played after that. The Lakers moved on from him. You know how that went. We knew that he was getting traded

at the deadline. That meant he was probably gonna get bought out because he's making like ten million dollars from whoever was going to take his contract on, so Orlando Magic full Circle said, no, Patrick Beverley is not a player that we won on our roster with this young developing team. They buy him out. So then he signed with the Bulls. But it didn't happen right away. Took a little time. I think it took like ten days. A lot of people thought the Bulls were going to

dismantle their roster. Get rid of Vooch, get rid of de Rozen, get rid of Little Bean, get rid of Gruso. Potentially. There were multiple rumors about them just shutting it all down. So then the deadline came, The deadline went, and what do they do? They acquired Pat Bev. Everyone was climbing the move. Why'd they do it? This doesn't make any sense. And now Patrick Beverley continuing just to show us why

we're all wrong. In fifteen games that Pat Bev has played as a Bull this year, here are his stats. They're not great. Let me just preface it by saying they're not some sort of all you're not going to see like he's averaging seventeen seven and five. That's not where we're going. But he's been impactful six six and four with one and a half steals in blocks per game in thirty minutes of playing time plus sixty nine.

In his time with the Bulls, the Bulls were ten and five when he's played in those fifteen games, they're ten and five. They were seven to nine leading up to the trade deadline. That is so impactful. They're currently in tenth place, three games ahead of the Pacers for the final playing spot, one half game out of the eighth place, which would give them two chances to make

the playoffs. This could be the biggest turnaround in the NBA since the trade deadline, which makes Pat Bev potentially the most impactful player at said trade deadline, which is absurd to say, but it actually could be true. A lot of it is about Pat Beverly. All of his teammates have embraced him. People are now reevaluating Pat Bev's time with the Lakers, and they're saying, maybe it wasn't

Pat Bev, maybe it was the Lakers. So they asked Pat Bev what happened, what was going on with the Lakers, and he said, well, yeah, if I'm a spoon, Billy Donovan is using me as a spoon the Lakers. You know, I was a spoon and they used me as a fork. So basically, Darvin Ham is trash. That's basically if you don't know how to use Pat Beverly. When every place that Pat Beverly has gone has made the playoffs and he's been impactful in some way, then it's you, sir,

You are the problem. Pat Beverly did the same thing to the Wolves. Every team that he's been playing for he's brought defensive intensity, Clippers, Houston Rockets, confidence, swag, a level of annoyance that gets opposing star talent to I don't know, just get technicals, be irritated, get into fights. Case in point, his revenge game against the Lakers. Did you see this? He had ten point five assists, easy bulls win, which was very important. He wanted to knock

the Lakers out of the playoffs. He said that he had an IG post. He said, I am coming to La get your cameras out, and then ad a full Sharman packet of Sharman in his car, meaning the Lakers are Sharman soft. The shit talking unbelievable scored on Lebron James in this gave the game and gave him the too small gesture. He gave the too small gesture to Lebron James Beverly said, yeah, yeah, I do it to everybody. This is just what I do. I have fun. I was getting lost in the game. I was just getting

lost in the game. I'm having fun. Man. We're not construction workers. We're not guys that have to give up four in the morning or professional basketball players. It's about having fun. That's what we try to do tonight. That's what I try to do tonight. And also, he tried to knock the Lakers out of the fucking playoffs because they did him wrong. And that, folks, is Pat Bevan a nutshell. He lightens the mood, he brings the intensity. He gets soft players to be tough players. Him and

Alex Crucier together are tremendous. And you know what he always does every single time. He always makes the playoffs every time. This bulls team, to me, is a sneaky, dangerous team. They're not going anywhere in the playoffs, but they will be very annoying they play the Boston Celtics. The Boston Celtics are gonna get their hands full of Pat bev in Jason Tatum's face in Jalen Brown's face, and remember Jalen Brown has that mask, so who knows

what's gonna happen there. Remember he broke Devin Booker's nose in the playoffs. I'm just saying, watch your face, watch your butt around Pat Beverly, because Boston's already lost twice to the Bulls this year by fourteen and eighteen points, and that was before Pat Beverly got there. I love that he saved the season for Chicago, that's his hometown,

which I think is impactful. If he manages to win a first round series, you will You saw what he did with the Timberwolves when they want to play in game, to imagine what he will do if he wins a playoff series, and that to me, is good for the NBA. That's all the time that we have for this episode of the Heat Check. Check back Friday, do not forget to peak the feed. I think we have some interviews that we're gonna post throughout the week. Bonus episodes that

are gonna drop unexpectedly follow the Heat Check. We are almost to the playoffs. I Am going to Sacramento, So download, subscribe, Tell your friends, every single one of them follow us on this heat check and Trista cik on TikTok because the Heat Check never sleeps.