Wild West Still Unsettled With Less Than Two Weeks To Go

We also go into a ton of info around the league, including more referee drama, the latest Tim bontent, straw Pole, which is the MVP race, newest votes are out, and Lebron James doing more for his community. Damn, there's so much to go over right now. Nick, It's exciting times Opening Day in baseball. Not that bat matters for this podcast, but there's lots to be excited about. Drop that generic as beat. That should be all right, So we gotta start the episode with where things stand in the West.

It is chaos. It is time for the cleaning lady to come over and take out our trash. There's two weeks left. There's twenty six teams that can make the play in of the playoffs, which is just surreal, and all these arbitrary rules could possibly stop these teams from tanking and they have the biggest event, of course, that has changed recently. The biggest update is the Sacramento Kings.

Sacramento Kings, for the first time in a gajillion years, put a herding on the Blazers G League line up to the tune of a forty point win for the first time in sixteen years. The Kings clinch on that beam as the three seed were me up on that bean baby. As everyone knows, we've been talking about the Kings, been excited about the Kings all year. A lot of people thought that they would falter, but they did not collapse.

They actually got better as the season went on, and now they're not just only going to the playoffs or the play in they'll host at least the first round. It speaks to one how good Mike Brown has been. He's obviously Coach of the Year hands down, but really just how the ownership has changed, and how that ownership has changed the entire dynamic of this franchise. Veck Rando v.

Randy Vay. It's hard to say learned a lot, obviously, as an owner, he had Luke Walton, got Luke Walton the fuck out, made sure to get a competent head coach to come in for him, put the organization in the hands of a bunch of people who knew what they were doing, like Monti McNair, and all of a sudden, couple of good trades, couple of good draft picks, and boom, you are a good team, just like that playoff time.

So Tom Ziller, the thing that I think is really interesting is because people talk about, oh is a sixteen year playoff drought, but it's sort of and Tom Ziller check him out if you don't know him. Tom Ziller wrote an article about just how that under sells understates how bad the Kings have had it in the last sixteen years, because it's not that they just missed the

playoffs for sixteen straight years. Seven of those sixteen years they were under siege the maloof organization, the maloofs as a family, as an ownership group of the Kings, try to actively move the Kings out of Sacramento for like almost a decade, seven straight years. You had mayors getting involved, you had the city's rioting fan base, putting up flyers. Seven years. This dude tried to move the team, tried

to move it to Anaheim. They wouldn't sell to an owner that would say on purpose, we're gonna keep it in Sacramento. Move wouldn't sell to that person. So to call it just a playoff drought is sort of spinning in the face of how bad it was. Then you enter the VEC. He has this plan to rebuild the team, even though we all know it didn't work. At first, hired Luke Walton, get some mullion. He looked like he was gonna be a good coach. Obviously was under Steve

Kerr Tutelich. The VEK obviously likes some Steve Kerr Mike Brown coming from the Steve Kerr tree as well. But when we look back, things started to turn around when a Vek built Gold One in twenty sixteen. Here's what he said about what gold one means. Listen, We're not just gonna build an arena. I want to build the best that's ever been built. He told this to Carmichael Dave recently in an interview. He explained he got the idea of the purple beam from airplanes. What if we

add purple light. It's on the roof. When I'm flying, then I can tell that the Kings are in the house. What a baller. He just wanted like a bat signal to know whether the Kings were in the building or not. He said, I had this idea that people used to gather around a fire in the Middle Ages. They used to gather around cathedrals. The arena is the twenty first century cathedral. So the purple beam is an outgrowth of making the Golden One the center of Sacramento. That's incredible,

What an amazing analogy. Dearon Fox also the Golden One Center. We've talked about this before. I just want to stamp it again. Top three arena in the NBA. If I could create an arena that wasn't Madison Square Garden, because Madison Square Garden is just different. Let's be honest. Madison Square Gardens also pretty old. But if I could create an arena from scratch, Golden One would be the blueprint.

Purple beam in all the glass, atrium, the bar up top, it's standing room only, down to the court, the fact that you can see the court when you enter the building, like stadium vibe, like Roman Colisseum Vibe lit. Anyway, deeron Fox explains what it was like to snap this playoff drought.

the Minnesota Timberwolves. But it is a brutal schedule for the Phoenix Suns down the stretch. They have six games left against the Nuggets, two games against the Nuggets, game against the Thunder, game against the Clippers, a game against the Lakers and the Spurs. So just one gimme game against the San Antonio Spurs. Brutal number five Clippers currently in the five spot, half a game behind the Suns, nipping on their heels, playing really really good basketball right now.

Tylu just moved Nick Batoum to the five spot. He just brought one of the Morris brothers from the starting lineup, bringing his ass onto the bench. They're seven and three in their last ten. They just had an amazing win against the Memphis Grizzlies without Paul George and without Kawhi Leonard Russ for whatever reason, has taken on a new role, not the the bench one. It's a new new rule,

it's a rebounding role. Five left with the griz Pels, Lakers, Blazers, and Suns rough except for the Blazers number six spot Warriors. There are one game behind the Clippers for the fifth seed, one and a half games behind the Suns. Unlikely to catch the Suns, they could steal the five seed. There's five games left to go for the Warriors, the Nuggets, Kings, Okse Thunder, and then you've got two Cupgate games Spurs and Blazers, hm Wolves currently at nowhere in the seventh spot.

Remember we thought they might even miss the play in One game behind Golden State for the sixth seed and to avoid the play in five left easiest schedule of the bunch Lakers, Blazers, Nets, Spurs, and Pelicans. Lakers one and a half games behind Golden State with six left to play, So their teet are tottering on missing the playoffs and being a play in t two times against the Jazz, Wolves, once Rockets, once Clippers, once Suns once. Rough feels like the Lakers are a playing team, doesn't it.

It really does, At least if they're the eight seed or the seventh seed. They only have to win one game in order to get in The nine seed. Pelicans a half a game behind the Lakers, one behind the Wolves, which is why that Pelicans lost last night to the Warriors are so stunning. They need every win they can get every team in the West. He's every win they can get. They've got six games left. They face the Clippers, the Warriors, but also four bad teams Spurs, Hornets, Rockets,

and Blazers. Actually, I think they've got the easiest schedule of the bunch. They can win four of those six games pretty easily, and they're gonna want probably some revenge against the Warriors. And then the ten spot the Thunder half a game behind the Pels. They've got five games remaining, Pacers, Sons, Warriors, Jazz, Grizz Probably two easy games out of those. I could see them beating the Warriors. I could see them beating actually all of these teams, but not every single one.

And then if you want to talk about the outside looking in, the Mavericks, whoa game out of eleventh or a game out of tenth, excuse me. And in the eleventh spot they face the Heat, Hawks, Kings, Bulls, and Spurs, so it's close for them too. And finally in the twelfth spot is Jazz. They're at one and a half games out of the tenth spot. They face the Lakers twice, the Celtics, Ones, the Nets Ones okay see Ones, and

Denver Ones. It feels like the Jazz are done. I think we can kind of put them in a suitcase, pack them up and send them home. It is absolute chaos. I'm really really looking forward to see how this all shakes out. The first round is gonna be a doozy. There's gonna be fireworks every day. You have to google NBA standings. I've never done that in my life. Every day something changes. The Thunder sitting there in the ten spot,

I think they were six two days ago. One win with a couple of losses for your cohorts boosts you up the standings, and vice versa as well. Will the Warriors move up to five? Will the Lakers get a home game in the play in? Will the MAVs miss the playoffs? All these are such crazy questions and we probably won't know the answers until the very last day of the season. And NBA fans, that is exactly what

Adam Silver wants, and it's pretty damn awesome. There's a there's a reason I don't speak ill of the Warriors. There is. I don't know if you think that I'm some sort of lifelong Warriors fan and all I do is big them up and talk about how good Steph Curry is and how Draymond Green's a Hall of Famer or don't worry about what Andrew Wiggins has got going on in his personal life. Stay out of it. Steve Kurz, one of the best coaches of our generation. Like, I

don't say that because I want them to succeed. You don't think I haven't noticed that they haven't been playing well all season. You don't think I'm watching these games. You don't think I haven't seen that they have one of the worst records on the road in basketball. Like, you don't think I think that's a problem. You don't think that. You don't think I don't see it. You think I just want them to know. The reason that I praise them is because I want them to stay asleep.

Complacency is the enemy of excellence, and I don't want the Warriors to be excellent. That's facts. And I know that me talking badly about them is only gonna give them motivation. Did somebody not tell CJ McCollum that because CJ McCollum acts like he's never been on the receiving end of Warriors vitriol. Before Little rewind Machine, CJ. McCollum and the Portland Trailblazers were up fifteen points every single game in the Western Conference Finals against the Warriors, and

they lost every single one of them. They were swept. CJ McCollum should know fucking better. They have been peacefully slumbering all year. They are razor thin to being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, and they against the Pelicans were twenty in a crucial game and they didn't seem to mind. So why the fuck did CIJ McCollum decide he wanted to start chirping at Draymond Green and Steph Curry and

Dante DiVincenzo when he was up twenty. The best revenge on the Warriors is to say absolutely nothing pound them, tell the world how good they are and how they're going to be. Okay, pack up your shit and call your wife and be like, yo, we're about to eliminate the Warriors. Okay. So this is what happened Wednesday night. Like I said, they're up twenty, Pelicans are hidding threes, Golden State sleepwalking seasons on the brink. Sij's chirpin, and

now Marcus Thompson breaks it down like this. McCollum might have saved the Warriors season because Draymond became a madman and woke the Warriors up on a run you've never scene since I don't know last year when they did it a million times. The Warriors were on the brink, so it felt a few admitted it so much after the game. Two nights after brutal mistakes down the stretch cost them a critical game against Minnesota, they were down twenty to New Orleans. What are you doing, CJ? So

he's chirping. Drey decides enough is enough. He starts hammering the Pelicans left and right, body checks Brendan Ingram like he's playing hockey, gets a flagrant one heart foul away from being tossed. So why did he get so mad at the point, I'm gonna put myself out there and then I hope that the guys will back me up, he said. And if they don't back me up, are season's over? Anyway? That was the most important game for

the Warriors season, and CJ. McCollum decided to give them extra motivation like he was some muse I've been amused before for the Warriors, remember nine to one. It doesn't feel good when they used your content or you're chirping to motivate them to excel. In your face. Desperate times, call for desperate measures. Draymond and at halftime lit a fire under the Warriors. Most notably, Steph comes out in

the third quarter like vintage Steph Curry. All of a sudden, a twenty point lead turned into a four point lead in like a minute. That's what they do. You piss them off. You turn around and the lead is gone. Not only is the lead gone, now you're down and they're still talking shit. They were talking shit down twenty and now they're talking shit up five and now you're quiet. Steph hit three threes in seventy five seconds. Think about that. Three threes in seventy five seconds at the end of

the third quarter. A twenty eight footer, a thirty two footer, and a twenty seven footer. Those are really long threes. There's really long ones, and all of a sudden, just like that, your elite is gone. Stop talking shit to the Warriors, and that was that. When Steph does that, they're not beatable. And the funny thing is like not brandon Ingram coming at Draymond or CJ chirping Steph. That was the tipping point. It was actually CJ barreling through

New player on the team, Dante DiVincenzo. Fine player, fine player, but not him like he was a straight blocking dummy. That sealed the deal. Dante very mild mannered kid, doesn't want any smoke, just wants to play basketball. He looks at a column. He's like, yo, why are you taking this out on me? I wasn't even trying to be the tough guy. I'm just trying to hoop. I'm just trying to win games. He runs over to Draymond's like, Yo, let's get these guys. I was ready to just be

a part of this. Now I'm leading the charge as well. And you know what, everyone rallied around Dante DiVincenzo because you're not about to body our guy. You're not about to bully our role player. Insane. Now the sleeping Giant has been awoke with I'm sorry, CJ. It's all your fault. When they win the title, it will be because of you. They will probably give you an honorary ring because you helped save the Warrior season. You're more important right now

than our man twelfth on the bench, Anthony Lamb. You are Bill Freakin Simmons. The story yesterday was that the Warriors are going to ditch Draymond and he's gonna go to the Dallas Mavericks. By the way, that's a lie, just a straight lie. But also we need to really step back and say if Draymond or Jordan Poole are leaving this team. By the way, Jordan Poole had an excellent game last night, it's Jordan Poole. Raymond Green is the second most important player on this Warrior's team. If

you're a car, Warriors are a car. Traymont Green is the engine of the car. Steph Curry is the transmission of the car. What is Klay Thompson the tires? What is Jordan Poole the sunroof? Jordan Poole is the sunroof. Awesome to have. Definitely a luxury that you want. Do you need a fucking sunroof? Absolutely not? Am I paying fifteen thousand dollars more for this car because of a sunroof? No. If the sunroof doesn't get along with the engine, sorry sunroof.

You gotta go. Championship back on, folks, thanks to CJ. McCollum. Can't you just leave good enough alone? Our dubs are gonna be just fine, just like I said, championship caliber team. I'm the only one that's been riding with them so out in Boston. We talked last week, I think about Jaylen Brown. He did an interview with Logan Murdoch. Logan Murdoch works for The Ringer in It JB. Obviously we

talked about this. Talked to a lot of shit about his teammates, about just the world in general, about the organization as a whole. He wasn't really shit talking his teammates, but he was definitely talking about the organization. He was

a little salacious. There were pointed barbs launched at some of the coaching decisions that have been made, some of the organizational decisions that have been made, whether Jason Tatum was hanging out with Kevin Urant too much when his name was circulating in trade rumors and now, which is very surprising to me because Jaylen Brown is the type of player and person that I thought would stand ten toes down on his comments and say yeah, I said it.

He is now walking it all back. Very disappointing. He was asked in his postgame presser about some of the comments coming out of the article, and if you recall and included lots of quotes from other people, including teammates like Tatum, friends like Kyrie very detailed, very well sourced article and apparently not well enough sourced for Jaylen Brown. Jalen Brown had this to say, Uh, in terms of speculation, etc. I can't speculate on anything above what I'm doing right now.

I think sometimes when people write articles, they get taken out of context, especially when writers of their own agendas or whatever. For me, personally, I'm thinking about clarifying some of the things that have been recently said. But other than that, I'm just focused on my team. I'm focused on playing basketball and winning games. Oh boy, what exactly are you looking to clarified? Nothing right now, he says.

Right now, the only thing I want to clarify is that the Celtics need to play better and win more games. If I want to say something in the future about the kind of things that have been floating around, I will. But in terms of right now, I like when people hear things from the horse's mouth and you can see my reaction, my face and everything, how I feel about

how I'm saying. Sometimes those things can get lost in translation, you know, So if I feel the need to do so, I will I keep in constant communication with my teammates and my organization, and we've got to have everybody on board if we want to do what we say we want to do, so right now I'm focused on that. It's almost like Jalen Brown doesn't know how the media works. Hey, we're gonna get your thoughts from your mouth in spoken word form. Those are gonna come out in written word form.

And when you say things, even if they sound nice, when you put them in print, they definitely sound worse. Always, always, always, always. This is a guy who maybe should do some more interviews so he knows how articles are going to come out. Yes, they get spun in the direction that a writer wants to write. You think they're just gonna put your quotes up and be like, hey, here's what Jylen Brown has to say. Boom, that's it. Nothing, no opinions, no contexts,

no set up, no conclusion, no substantiating information, nothing. You don't think he's gonna point out that Kanye West did all this crazy shit and that you were aligning with him and you didn't want to fire him. Yeah, he

did that. So it also sounds like a guy who's like getting a lot of advice from people being like, hey, if you want that Supermax deal, if you get all NBA and they don't offer you that Supermax deal, you better pack your bags and think about going to Atlanta or wherever is the other teams that you think about going, because if they don't think you're all in, they're not all in. He also did not feel the need to

say that anything reported was false, so that's interesting. Including his disappointment with the way that he was dangled as trade bait, he didn't say anything about that. All of this, though, just puts more pressure on the Celtics in the offseason and in the postseason. If they get flamed out early and he doesn't get all NBA and he doesn't get that Supermax deal, the patients from Jalen Brown might just

wear out and shit might just hit the fan. One of the main themes of the second half of this season is charting just how very, very angry players are against the referees. That's the theme of the year I Think twenty twenty three, twenty two, twenty twenty three, the Year of I Hate Refs, the Year of refs Done fucked up. The year of do we need to take this to robo ref The year of let's call out refs by name? The year of do we need to be finding refs and looking into their bank accounts to

see if they're betting on games. It reached the tipping point, of course, when Fred Vanfleet called out Ben Taylor by name, saying that he was terrible. It then went to a new place when Mark Dagnio called out refs. Donovan Mitchell called out refs, Marcus Smart called out refs. The league obviously ref problem. The latest now to weigh in, and I'm starting to come around on him, is Rudy Gobzilla

Gobar the best nickname. After a very sketchy night of refereeing where the Wolves lost to the Suns, if you saw it, it looked very one sided. He unloaded after the game. He said, it's not fair. It's really not fair. Every night. I've been in this league for ten years and I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. But it's hard for me to think they're not trying to help the Suns win tonight. It's hard for me to think they didn't try to help the Warriors win

the other night or Sacramento the other night. It's just so obvious a basketball player that's been in the league for this long. It's disrespectful. It's almost like Rudy Gobert believes that the NBA does not want a small market team like the Minnesota Timberwolves in the playoffs and they would prefer teams like Sacramento. Nice feel good story Phoenix Suns with Kevin Durant, LA Lakers with Anthony Davis, Warriors with Steph Curry to be in over them. Yeah, I

think that's probably true. This also came on top of a rant earlier this month where he told the Athletic Yeah, I get hit in the face every night and no one ever gets a flagrant called on them. It's crazy. No, it's not crazy, because Rudy Gobert got called for five fouls, four of them on the offensive side, which helped the Suns overcome a ten point plus deficit and then win a game in a as we said, a very very tight Western Conference. And he laid it all out at

the end of the press conference. He said, we understand we're not the biggest of markets, and we're a team that I think you want to see Kevin Durant in the playoffs, Steph Curry in the playoffs. You want to see Lebron James in the playoffs. The Timberwolves are just not there yet. How many players are going to have to say something before the league does something. The answer might not be what we want it to be, because

Gobert and Fred Van Fleet are right. The league maybe does want big market teams in the playoffs that are not named the Toronto Raptors in the Minnesota Timberwolves at the expense of them. Stranger things have happened, but I think that's probably right. All right, let's move on. Probably the biggest storyline other than refs that's not happening on the court this year has to do with the MVP race. There are six games left and no one seems to

know what they want to do with the MVP. We are probably headed towards the closest MVP vote in the history of the award, and it's not close. It's not close. I think twenty two right now, twenty two votes is the slimmest margin between MVP winner and MVP runner up. So the latest straw pole came out today and that's Tim Bontemps from ESPN, and just when we all kind of thought Embiid was going to overwhelmingly take it, we got a wrinkle because emb sat out a couple of

big games and the Sixers lost some big ones. James harden as we'll talk about it a little later, has been injured, and for all intents and purposes, we now have a dead heat on our hands. So the straw pole is ESPN's informal polling of votes on the MVP race, and right now, if you can believe it, there are just two points separate and beat in Jokic seven ninety

and seven eighty eight. That's insane. That is crazy to think that we can get this far in the season and that people still don't know who they think that they want to vote for. And this actually they talked about this with Tim Bonteps. They said, hey, maybe you should just ask me after the season is over, because a lot can change in six games. Jokic actually leads in first place votes forty two to forty. But the joker, the wild card in this race is Yannis. Yannie is

the fly in the as oointment. Jannie is the third party candidate, the Ralph Nader. If you will fucking with the two thousand presidential election all over again. He's got eighteen first place votes. Does anyone actually think Janie is gonna win this award? No? Stop voting for y honest, then you know it's a two man award. Okay, don't vote for Jason Tatum, don't vote for Yannis. That is

enough to swing it in either direction for sure. If those eighteen votes had to be decided and sent to either Embiid or Yokic, maybe it would be a little bit more clear. Embiid finished second on forty five ballots as opposed to thirty nine ballots for Jokic, which is why he has such a narrow lead. And personally, I don't have any idea how it's going to shake out. I don't think Vegas knows. Vegas keeps changing the lines every single day, depending on which player has the more

dominant performance night to night. But I do know one thing. Yannis will play spoiler. Are we headed for a recount? Are we headed for We're only voting for these two? Is the Supreme Court going to have to step in? So many questions? The one thing that we know for sure is that this thing can still be won. By Jokic or embiid. Maybe we'relph dater, maybe even be honest, they said. Maybe either way, closest, most entertaining, most controversial,

most heated MVP race in league history. That's all the time that we have for this episode of the Heat Check. Check back Friday for an all new episode. Do not forget to peep the feed for past interviews and episodes. Bonus episodes do drop unexpectedly throughout the week, so make sure you're checking your feed. Please follow us we are

almost to the playoffs. Download subscribe. Tell all of your friends rate review, Tell any friend that you know that is okay with cursing and wants to hear about the NBA. Follow us on the social at this heat Check and at Trister Crieck on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. Heat Check is not sleeping, and neither should you. We'll talk to you soon.