The Denver Nuggets feel inevitable

it's time to turn it up. We have another sample though, of this. This one comes when they were down thirty five to a Toronto Raptors team. We also get into a ton of news from around the league, including an update on alprin Shangoon squad. Okay, Anthony, let's get a move on it.

and it's like thirteen. It's a third quarter, and for whatever reason, Jokic is just being extra aggressive, and I said, I think the Nuggets are gonna win this game. I'm not gonna like it. And guess what, Guess what, Guess what. Denver won that game. They turned the heat up and blew the doors out of Toronto in the fourth and they cruised to a six point win, a twenty eight point turnaround like it was nothing, Like it was nothing. Yokich went off my gud thirty seven, fifteen, and twelve

for another triple double. But more importantly, all of his teammates didn't matter they were having a bad night. He just decided, I kind of want to win this one, like I kind of want the one seat. So all of that to say, when the Denver Nuggets decide they want to play basketball and do it seriously, not anybody in the league stands a chance. No lead is safe, no team can feel confident that Freddy Krueger's not coming. It's surreal. When they decide I'm putting my teeth into

this meal. Nine ozer run is so normal you don't even blink, you don't even notice it. Just like I think they've I think they've scored like seven straight times and the other team hasn't, like eh, unlike those Golden State teams that just bombed you to death from three Okic comes in like a snake and they squeeze you to death like an anaconda with like the most gross hook shots from three feet from the basket you've ever seen. Like you're like, yeah, that should go in. It's literally

a yard stick away slow asphyxiation. Now, I am sorry, night night sleep masks. They're putting quarters on your eyeballs. Other teams, even good ones, they just get shut down completely. This team feeds off Jokic, and when he gets serious, they get serious, and you find a way. Did you shut the other team down? No matter what they've got going on, they hardly broke a sweat winning the championship last year. We knew they weren't gonna have a problem

with Miami. We thought they might. We've made a lot of noise about it, but like in our hearts, when we went to bed, we didn't think Miami was gonna do shit against the Nuggers, Like this team is fucking cooked and it's all on you Jog's shoulders. It happens to be on both sides of the court. We were clowning me. Included Nikola Jokic's defense. But Nikola Jokic is averaging like two steals game right now, Okay, that is normal. He'll get you a block and two steals on a

night tonight. Basis he on the ball in pick and roll is insane. This is what Michael Malone had to say about Nicole Jkic and his defense. People criticize Nicola because he doesn't average three blocks a game, but if you really are a basketball purist and you watch the game, you see he's got some of the best hands in the game in the NBA, bar none. He's never gonna out athleticize anyone, that's for fucking sure, but he is

going to outsmart you. And that gets us to the real point of this, which is who are the top three players in the league that are the most mentally high IQ basketball players. There. I would contend there might not even be three, there might only be two. One is Lebron James. The other is Nikola Jokic. Always makes the right decision, sees where the game is going, like

he've already seen it before. Some of the best vision you've ever seen in Nikola Jokic, And when he decides that it's winning time, he can do it all by himself if necessary, Just ask Toronto. All right, let's move on a lot of quick hitters from around the league to get to first of all, things are going well in Orlando. How do we know this? Well? The Magic have moved from the high lottery to fifth in the

East with the chance to take the four spot. They've gone from twenty one wins in twenty twenty twenty one to thirty seven and counting this year. What's the reasons? One Paolo ben Caro Bronz Bogner sugs, But the more important one is jamal Mo Mosley, a coach who has overseen the growth of a very young team and now he's getting a reward. He's now agreed to a four year extension that will keep him in Orlando until at least twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight. To me, this

is well deserved. Remember jamal Moseley wanted to be the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks and they said, no, sir, we're going with Jason Kidd. Wow, that's rough. Imagine Dallas being coached by this Jamal Moseley. Other teams in similar spots, Charlotte and Detroit come to mind. They're terrible. They're living squarely in the bottom of a dirty dumpster in a hell hole in some random third world country, but not Orlando. Their only real problem is that they don't have a

ton of veteran leadership. They may have too much talent, so they're guys like I don't know Jet Howard, who's six foot nine. I don't even seen him on the floor at all.

head covered in a towel, tears in his eyes. That's never a good sign. It's never a good sign. But the news actually could be worse. Woch tweeted this out. Houston Rocket center Alpern Shangun has escaped major injury on his lower right leg, suffering a severely sprained ankle and a bone bruise on his knee. He's been one of the breakout stars in the league this year, averaging twenty one to nine to five great three ankle sprain, which is really bad. Not catastrophic, but pretty damn bad. That is.

That's like almost needing surgery, but not needing surgery. It is a complete tear of the ligament. That means he's getting shut down for the year. Probably gonna be back in like six months, definitely by the time the season starts. I don't doubt that he's gonna be ready for the season. It sucks that he got hurt. Pretty much means that the Rockets playing chances are dead. But holy moly, glad it wasn't an Achilles or an acl or an mcl Moving over, moving on, I went over in a recent episode.

Why I think Victor Weberinyama is having the second best rookie season of all time behind the Man from Another Dimension? Well, Chamberlain, here's another reason to love the Spurs Slenderman. On Monday night, Golden State rookie Trace Jackson Davis Road drove into the lane laid down a highlight worthy hammer of a dunk on Victor Webbanyama. The Warriors bench, of course, went insane,

crowd went insane, social media lost its fucking mind. So yeah, like Victor first game of probably his NBA career that he got posterized, and then a fascinating thing happened after the game. A French reporter asked, of course, I'll ask Victor, hey, does it hurt to get dunked on like that? Mentally? And Victor said, getting dunked on is nothing. It's part of the game. I dunk on a lot of people, and a lot of people dunk on me too. But I think I block more off and then I get

dunked on. So that's the positive. I think I block more off and then I get dunked on. Come see me in the lane, Come see me near the rim. Fam I got you. I'm sending your shit all the way out into Row thirty four. I swear this guy. I love some Victor weibin Yama. We've been pumping his tires for two straight years now. It's like the world combined to create a perfect basketball machine. He's like AI.

He's got a little supercomputer chip inside of him, and he's just uploading all the raw data and putting it into full execution mode. As soon as he steps on the court the next time, he'll make us. This is what a Greg Popovich says. We've seen this basketball automation automaton once before in San Antonio. Greg Popovich remembers this. He said this after the game, Victor will make a step back three, and he won't act like it's the

first step back three that's ever been made. He's just got more or less the Tim Duncan sort of attitude on things. That's just who he is. Tim Duncan may not have shown any emotion in his Hall of Fame career, but play some talk to some people who played against him. They hated playing against him Duncan. They will tell you his shit talk game was stone cold. He was a killer, will slice your throat. Watch you bleed over. Watch you bleed out while he stands right over your dead cold body,

just like Victor wemen Yama. Lightning apparently does strike twice in the exact same place, multiple generations in a row. Time is a flat circle for the San Antonio Sports Spurs, just one ping Paul ball away though for Portland, just like it was for Hakeim Elijahan. So time still is a flat circle for us too. It appears all right. Moving on, Grant Williams is as polarizing figure. When he left Boston, his former teammates joked that the locker room

will finally be quiet. Then he went to Dallas. His teammates joked that they wish he would have stayed in Boston. They did not like him much. He got moved at the trade deadline to Charlotte, where he has been like slightly effective I guess thirteen five and two thirty six percent for three. But now that he's been gone a hot minute from Dallas, there are some very funny stories coming out about his limited time there. MAVs legend who knows why he's in the building. Michael Finley dropped one

this week. One day in practice a player on our team. I won't call his name out, but it was Grant Williams. He decided he wanted to get under Luca's skin. He felt Luca didn't come that day ready to practice. So, to make a long story short, this is bad. They had a scrimmage going and he's talking trash to Luca up and down the court. So finally Luca says, okay, And I tell you, Luca decided to go on a twenty six to six run by himself. You could ask anyone.

I am not exaggering. It was a twenty six six run by himself. He showed us everything, the threes, the post us, the floaters, everything by him self. I love everything about this quote. I do. I love the whole thing of Like, I'm not gonna say who it is, but his name's Grant Williams. Did you even need to say, Michael Finley that it was Grant Williams because we know already that there's only one player it could have been. You think Tim Hardaway Junior is like, Luca, you're not

in shape today. Oh what have you been eating? Like? Oh, you got bags under your eyes, Luca? Oh do you have your shorts on?

you give us some good stories. Moving on, Finally, there's a lot of buzz about post All Star Game unders, which means low scoring games post All Star Game, abysmally low scoring games. We got a seventy two to seventy nine game the other day. We got to watch Philly play in the garden, and that's what it was. They scored seventy nine points twice. Remember a couple of months ago when everyone was upset because the scoring was crazy,

when Luca scored seventy three in a game by himself. Well, it's not just Tom Haberstrow who's breaking down these numbers anymore. It's a story that's picking up steam. And it was also Ethan Strauss who wrote the original article. Mark Stein joined in on his substack and wrote this total scoring across the league had significantly decreased since the All Star break. Before the All Star Break, teams averaged one hundred and fifteen point five points per game and twenty two point

seven free throws per game league wide. The NBA's composite scoring average hadn't been that high at the break since the nineteen sixty nine nineteen seventy season. So apparently the drop of a three point eighty eight points per game is the largest dip in the post All Star game period in NBA history. Probably nothing happened to precipitate that, though, Like that's just probably completely random for I don't know,

the last third of the season for thirty teams. Like, probably nothing to see here, right, Like those watching the games know that the refs as a whole probably just calling the game exactly the same, not swallowing their whistles at all. Why though, Why are the refs swallow their whistles?

I don't know, Like no way. It was like a mandate from the league that got embarrassed by one hundred and fifty five one hundred and forty eight game in which everyone claims that there was no defense being played and they never wanted to play defense. There's no way that Adam Silver decided to make a call and say I'm tired of this shit, right There's no reason for that. What we do know is that the NBA games right now are slog Those two sixers Knicks games were basically unwatchable.

In the first game, there was one hundred and fifty two points scored, which would be a low under in an NCAA basketball game in the MEAC. In the second, the Knicks scored one hundred and nine and the game still was one hundred and it was twenty points under the total score that the Vegas thought it would be. So yeah, this kind of changes everything we were led to believe. This was the new age of scoring. Anytime, any point, somebody go out for sixty seventy, When would

somebody score one hundred? To replay of a Tuesday Night Blackout special at nineteen nine too that you didn't get to see until the next day. God, I hope this trend does not continue. What's happening with the NBA. Let's get back to scoring, folks. I want to see some buckets. And finally, we end the episode with an interview with Sports illustrates basketball insider Robin Lundberg. Robin joined bet MGM the night where I was joined by my co host Nick Ashew. So let's get right.

of people look at as a potential finals matchup. Now, it was a close game once again, we're talking about Jason Tatum in the clutch again, and you sit there and wonder whether that is going to continue to be a theme the entire year. But just big picture, what did you take away from that matchup between those two teams, given the potential that is a finals matchup.

and we don't really talk about the Nuggets. But when you look at something that is unstoppable, the two man game of Jokich and Murray is about as unstoppable as anything I can recall in my NBA fandom, because Jokich is so big, you know, Trista had replied to a tweet I had last night that I said, Jokich is a combination of Shack, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson. He's so big, like Shack, he always gets exactly where he wants to be on the floor and controls what he's doing.

He can see the floor like Magic, passes the ball, and he's got that touch like Bird. He's maybe he has the best touch of a big man ever. And then you partner him up with a point guard who can play pick and roll, pick and pop, break you down off the dribble, and a four man and who can rim dive and catch it and finish in Aaron Gordon.

the entire season until maybe the last two weeks. They've just been sitting in the middle of the five spot, hanging around offensively, okay, his point Zion has been working defensively, eighth best in the league, second in the league in deflections. How high or how far do you think that this Pelicans team can go? Because they're a lot bigger than some of the other teams that they might face in the first or second round of the playoffs.

is a legitimate concern with him going forward. But one thing I think we've seen in today's league is that they have been successful at creating parody. I mean, you look at the odds there on the side of the screen, so many of those teams are kind of bunched up. Like I said, I don't think anybody's beating the Nuggets, but the odds makers will tell you the Clippers aren't too far off. And then when you look at the rest of these teams, they're all right in that mix

around the same odds. So do I think the Pelicans are going to make an extended run. No, I don't, because if they run into the Wolves I like the Wolves better if they run into the Thunder.

certainly in that grouping. And I think between the play in tournament and what they've done with the salary cap and some of the CBA changes, one thing I think the NBA has successfully done is create parody where we're no longer talking about the star stack teams as much, or can we get three guys together on the same team, or it's just this team and that team and nobody else. I think there is a big mix of squads that are on the same playing field.

about a month. But let's say that Karl Anthony Towns is back healthy by the time we get to the playoffs. Good to go Minnesota Oklahoma City at full strength. Out of those two teams, we know young teams kind of have to go through a couple of seasons of just losses and learning what it's like to play in the playoffs,

very different than the regular season. But out of those two teams, the Timberwolves in the Thunder, what would be the team that you'd have at least a little more confidence in in the actual playoffs.

It all depends on the health of Kat obviously, but I do like the way the Timberwolves are constructed for the playoffs, given I think they can defend, given they've got a guy who can break you down and score

in any which way. In Anthony Edwards, and to what you said about the play in Tournament, you could make the case the play in Tournament is gonna save the entire season or at least the playoffs, because Luka Dancic, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Lebron James would all be in danger of missing the playoffs entirely if it weren't for

the play in Tournament. Now, at worst, you're gonna get to see them in what constitutes a many playoffs to get in there, to face teams like the Wolves and the Thunder, and then at best, you know a bunch of them actually do get in there, and we're seeing more series going forward, and really, you know, we've seen those guys, We've seen Lebron and Stephan the play in Tournament in recent years, and otherwise they'd be sitting at home and a lot fewer people would be tuning in to the East Robin.

been injured and missed this time. But if he can get right and can get out there for a few weeks to be ready for the playoffs, maybe there's a chance he can actually make it through the playoffs this year because he already had the injury which was sure to come in the first place.

reason I talked about the Miami Heat. People act like it's crazy that the Heat would make a run again. How is that crazy?

what the Nets are doing right now. I mean, look, going forward, there's a chance they could fix the situation because if you go if you press fast forward a year from now and you're going into next summer, they have their own draft pick. They're capital clear because Ben Simmons will finally be off the books. They will have that surpus of draft picks going forward like the Phoenix

Suns picks. But do you trust, you know, the current regime to execute that, because right now it does feel like they're kind of saying, oh, yeah, we'll land another star at some point. That's not much of a plan. That's not much of a plan. And you could make the argument it's the worst current situation in the league, but really it's because of the first James Harden trade, I think even more than the second James Harden trade.

has exceeded what we thought he was in Phoenix. He's just not the And that's the problem with the Nets is they don't have the guy, you know, and I don't know how they find the guy. If they have the guy, we'd be talking about them in a much more favorable situation.

our YouTube back. Just watch the old episode until I'll start fluting.