Hoops Tonight - NBA Power Rankings: Wemby & Spurs BREAK OUT? Clippers & Heat SCARY or WASHED?

something simple like a player to score a touchdown. Go to the Draftking Sportsbook app and make your bet today. You can also bet on who's gonna win the Super Bowl right now. DraftKings has the Kansas City Chiefs as the favorite at plus five hundred, followed by the San Francisco forty nine ers at plus six hundred. Ready to do a touchdown dance of your own? New DraftKings customers bet five dollars to get two hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets instantly and get one month of NFL

Plus Premium. Download the Draftking Sportsbook app and use code hoops that's hops, that's code hoops for new customers to get two hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks and at one month of NFL Plus premium only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours.

Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler in New York call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine and Connecticut help is available for problem gambling called eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and Resort in Kansas twenty one plus. Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bonus bets

expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For eligibility terms and responsible gaming resources, see DKNG dot co slash ft ball. NFL Plus premium offer available only to new and former NFL Plus subscribers. Additional NFL Plus premium terms at NFL dot com slash terms. All right, Well, good hoops and I here at the volume heavy Monday, your buddy Hoba. If you guys had an incredible weekend,

well we got a jam packshow for you today. We are finally turning our attention forward to the twenty twenty four twenty twenty five NBA season, We're gonna do a bunch of season previews on twenty different NBA teams. As part of this series, we're gonna do a power ranking style and here at the start. In the beginning, we're gonna go three teams per day, and then starting next week we're gonna slow way down do one team per

day as we get to our contender list. Today, we're gonna be starting with the San Antonio Spurs, the Los Angeles Clippers, and the Miami Heat. You guys know the drip. Before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLTS. You guys don't miss you announcement, So forget about a podcast feed wherever

you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. And then keep dropping mailbag questions in those YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them throughout the rest of the year. And then one last note before we get started, I'm currently in the process of moving my studio to a different room in the house. So and we're also going to do some updates, especially to the Two Suns podcast studio that I do with with my buddy Luke. That's going to be behind this. But we're doing a bunch of

new furniture and a bunch of new stuff. So it's just gonna be a little bit construction zone over the course of the next couple of weeks, so bear with me. But it'll be nice to have some new digs for this season. It's also a little echoing in here, so I'm sorry about that, but we're gonna get some acoustic foam and stuff in here that should make that better in the long run. So as we turn our attention towards next season, I want to talk about a couple

of different things. We're gonna cover twenty teams in this series in three different tiers, and the way I have these tiers listed out are the first tier that we're going to go through. Those are the nine teams that we're gonna hit this week. Those are good teams that need more firepower to truly contend for a title. So these are teams that have solid foundations, they have good players, but they just don't quite have enough juice to really

realistically feel like they can win for playoffs series. These are trade candidates. These are teams where we can see if something might change over the course of the season, but at this point I view them as long shots to win the titles we're going to start in that tier. Our next tier, which we're going to start next week, is going to be that if things go right contenders.

These are teams that have enough talent to compete for a title, but they have significant holes or significant question marks that make it almost as likely that they would lose in the first round as they would make a deep playoff runt. So these are teams that certainly have that upside, but the question marks are pretty substantial. I have seven of these teams. We're going to hit them one at a time starting next week, and then after we get through those seven teams, we're going to get

to our bona fide top tier championship contenders. These are teams with a ton of talent, very little in the way of holes and weaknesses. Anything less than a conference finals appearances and a conference finals appearance for these teams would be deemed a massive failure. And I have four teams in that tier to start this year. You guys know, the drill during this season, like these, all these teams can jockey up and down based on how they're playing.

I will add teams or remove teams from the top tier championship contenders or from the if things go right tier, based on how things go. We're gonna do power rankings, probably on Fridays, similar to what we did last year. But this is just kind of an initial baseline before

we see any of these teams. These teams play, and there's likely to be lots of movement because, as you guys know, once the teams actually start playing, we tend to learn a lot more than we can just from simple roster roster changes as far as the tiers go. This first group, so this uh these first nine teams

that I'm hitting this week on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We're gonna be hitting them three teams at a time, So we won't go as far into depth with them as we do with the top eleven, but we still will talk about their seasons, there are changes that they made to the roster, and just expectations for them this year. And then, as I mentioned, we're these next two weeks, we're going to stay on our summer schedule. Of going three times a week, so we'll go Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

We'll run breakout clips on the other days. But as soon as we start getting real basketball, which is October fourth, that following Monday, we're going to shift back to going five times a week, and you guys can count on getting a good mix of these kind of season previews as well as preseason game reactions before we head into the actual season. So one last thing before we get into the teams what are we looking for in a

basketball team's ability to contend? I want to talk a little bit from the outside looking in at the entire league on just certain things that we talk about. These are going to be a lot of different concepts that I've talked extensively on the show before. We talked about it in our like what did we learn after the

NBA Finals, We talked about it through the year. These are pretty consistent basketball ideologies that I have that I believe matter at the NBA level, And so I have five that I'm looking at with these teams as I start to evaluate them heading into the season. Number One, what's your overall depth of talent? It's an eighty two game regular season. You might have a key starter miss a month or two months. You might have two starters miss time. You could have a star miss a substantial

amount of time. The overall amount of talent you have on your roster is what matters within the eighty two game season in terms of your ability to weather guys being in and out of the lineup. If you've got a core seven, that's awesome and you feel really good

about your playoff chances. If you can get their healthy, but your back end of your roster isn't very good, then you could run into issues where you're going into a couple of weeks of hoops where you got four good players on your team and a bunch of guys that are kind of playing outside of what their pay grade is, right, and you could have issues. So depth of talent is something that we're going to be factoring in too. Advantage creation. Do you have high level offensive

players that can create advantages? The simple kind of you know metaphor I used it to break this down is if we were playing King of the Court and I had let's just say, five average high school players playing King of the Court, and I had you standing as the defender locked in right on the guy to start the possession, they're going to score at a certain rate.

But if I move that defender to the midline and I make him close out before that offensive player goes to try to do something, the score rate is going to skyrocket. At the high school level, but even at the pro level, it's gonna go up substantially. Guys are converting spot up possessions that's substantially higher rates against a closeout. Then guys are converting in ISO situations or even lesser quality spot up possessions where the defender doesn't get sucked

as far into help. Right. So, having high level offensive players, your star power on offense, and they're ability to consistently generate advantages makes for easier basketball for your role players. There are a lot of NBA players that can play well with an advantage, but that can struggle when that advantage isn't there, and so that's a very important piece. Thirdly, aggregate offensive skill. When you have that advantage, and now we're playing driving kick basketball, do you have a group

that can consistently pay it off? The two kind of like bookends of this example that I would give you guys, or take a look at like Boston and how anytime Jason Tatum would run a ghost screen with Derek White and get a little bit of an advantage for him, or beat Luka Dancic off the dribble and make that first kickout pass, it's just beautiful driving kick basketball because they have so much ball handling, shooting, and passing ability

on the floor. Right. Juxtapose that with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who are consistently playing a lot of guys that struggle to dribble shooting, pass guys like Rudy Gobert, Jam McDaniels, Nikhil, Alexander Walker, Kyle Anderson. All of a sudden, it doesn't matter that Anthony Edwards is getting double teamed almost every time he touches the ball because they can't capitalize on

it on the weak side. And that was a Minnesota Timberwolves offense that struggled all year long and then struggled mightily when they ran into a tough matchup in the

Western Conference finals. Right. So that aggregate offensive skill, the totality of your team's ability to capitalize on advantages is something that I'm going to be looking very closely at for what's your strong base defensive scheme, Like, what is the thing that you count on over the course of eighty two games to run defensively and that's gonna work against the majority of the opponents that you run, Like, do you have a good base drop coverage scheme? Do

you have a good base high drop scheme? Do you have a good base you know, switching scheme that you use defensively? What's your like base defensive scheme. Is it something that's gonna work reasonably well enough over the eighty two games? And then lastly, defensive versatility. How vulnerable are you to certain types of offensive players? Can you defend

certain ways? There are different ways, Like if you run into a specific matchup where it's really quick guards that space you out, but you don't have athletic guards and so you can't contain the basketball and so you're dead

to rights in rotation all day. That was an issue that the Lakers had with the Sacramento Kings last year, right, the Oklahoma City Thunder and how they struggled against physical frontlines, right, Like, there are matchup things, matchup weaknesses that certain defenses can have, and if you don't have another look that you can go to to just make it so that there are less of those holes that could potentially get you beat.

That's something that can make you a stronger team. So again, overall depth of talent in order to weather the eighty two advantage creation, to give your lesser players easier opportunities aggregate offensive skill. How good are you at capitalizing on those opportunities. What's your base defensive scheme? And do you have the ability to tweak things defensively as you run into tougher matchups down the line in THEL So, those are the main kind of concepts that I'm gonna be

looking at again. We're gonna be hitting three teams today, three on Wednesday, three on Friday, and then we'll hit into our top eleven contenders one at a time starting next Monday. So first and foremost number twenty, the San Antonio Spurs. Let's take a quick look at their off season.

They lost Dominique Barlow, DeVante Graham, and Chatti Osman. They added Harrison Barnes BJ Boston from the Clippers, Malachi Flynn Chris Paul from the Golden State Warriors, and then in the draft Stefan Castle, a really interesting big guard out of Yukon. We covered him a lot during the draft, so you guys can go further back on our video feed to find some some more content surrounding Stefan Castle.

Their depth chart going into the season. At guard, Chris Paul, Devin Vessel, Stefan Castle, Trey Jones, Malachi Branham, forward's Keldon Johnson, Harrison Barnes, Jeremy Sohan, Julian Champaigne and Sandro I'm not gonna butcher this, so please bear with me, Mamukelashvili, okay, and then at center, Victor Wembin Yama, Zach Collins, and

Charles Bassi. As far as they're starters, my guess is they'll start Chris Paul and Devin Vassel together in the back court, and then I think you'll see Harrison Barnes and Jeremy Sohan at the three and four, with Victor Webman Yama at the five. I think that's a pretty straightforward starting group with the guys that they have. I think they've u Keldon Johnson Moore as a bench weapon. At this point. Let's talk a little bit about what they do on the defensive end and then we'll talk

about the offense. So on the defensive end, they were pretty standard drop coverage team. At the tail end of the year when mamo Keloshphili was playing more, they were running some drop with him as well. They were actually dropping with both him and Wemby, but with Harrison Barnes

and Jeremy Sohan. My guess is what they'll do is they'll switch two through four any actions that involve those three players, but then they'll hedge with CP three and any sort of guard screens where the guard is setting the screen, and then they'll drop with Victor Wembanyama And like even with CP three and Wemby in actions like that's as good at drop coverage big, you can partner with three to make it easier on him. He doesn't need to be completely attached all the time. Wimby's so

good at bothering ball handlers in ball screens. I think that's kind of like a nice partnership there to make an achievable defensive role for Chris Paul. They ran a little bit of zone last year. They were twelve in zone frequency. They ran two hundred and twenty nine possessions. I was middle of the pack. The numbers are interesting because they finished twenty first in defense with a one fifteen point six defensive rating, but they were one eleven point two and Wemby was on the floor, which is

really good. So like for perspective, the Miami Heat, who were also going to talk about today, they were fifth in defense last year at a one to eleven point five defensive rating, So Wemby at won eleven point two when he was on the floor basically was an elite defense. He just only played twenty nine minutes and they just got absolutely thrashed every time he was off the floor, So that's why their defensive rating wasn't very good. My guess is Victor's minutes will go up this year. He

played what twenty nine something last year. My guess is he's up around thirty three minutes per game this year. With Chris Paul and here and Barnes just two savvy veterans who've been in the league for a long time, I think that'll help with consistency of effort and communication on the defensive end. So I think it's reasonable to think that the Spurs could move into that like fifteen range defensively, maybe as high as ten, but in that ten to fifteen range I think is an achievable goal

for them defensively this year. Now the offensive side of the floor is where things I think are going to shift in a big way for the Spurs, Like adding CP three just fundamentally alters their style. Right, because last year this was a heavy ball in player movement team. They were seventh and passes made per game, they were second in assists per game, a lot of like standard five out stuff, a lot of Victor Weman Yama kind of operating is at the elbow, running dribble handoffs, looking

to turn and score. It was much more equal opportunity on offense. And they also ran in transition a ton ran in transition a ton A lot of ball and player movement, not as much pick and roll. Right, They were sixteenth pick and roll frequency, second in transition frequency. I expect those numbers to change with Chris Paul. I expect the pace of play to drop in them to be a little bit more methodical, and I expect them

to be a higher frequency pick and roll team. And one of the main things that I'm looking for, I want to see Victor Webbin Yama give more opportunities to score on the role rather than constantly having to operate with the ball in his hands. And the guy that I look at here, Guys that I look at here as examples are guys like Anthony Davis and NICOLEA. Jokic. So like, as we know, NICOLEA. Jokic is this devastating post up weapon, this devastating five out folkrum on offense. Right.

Anthony Davis less so in those regards, but similar in the sense that he's a screening fom for the Lakers and their guards. But he's also a guy that you can run through the post. He had his best postseason,

a post up season of his career. Right. But what drives a lot of the success for both Jokic and Anthony Davis as offensive players is they can catching the pocket around ten to fifteen feet from good passers that are setting them up and those the players who have the ball in this case Austin Reeves and d Loo or Lebron for the Lakers or you know, Jamal Murray

for the Nuggets. Those offensive players are high powered enough that they pull things towards them enough that the pocket is nice and open there for yo kitchen ad to get a lot of these like easy floaters and quick catch like maybe an ISO move, but like a quick ISO move when the defender who's the screen defender is out of position rather than squared up with them right.

Kind of a similar context to what we were talking about earlier when we were talking about King of the Court right and so Yo Kitchen ad supplement their offense with all these really high quality role touches. Victor Wiminnyama last year was sixteenth in role volume, so there were fifteen bigs who got more opportunities to score on the role. He only had one hundred and seventy six possessions all year. It's like a little over two a game. So like I want to I just want to see Victor get

more of those opportunities. Like Rudy Gobaer had more catches and opportunities to score on the role than Victor wenbin Yama did last year. I'd like to see that number go from that one to seventy six, closer to two point fifty, maybe even three hundred for Wemby, that I think is something that CP three can help him with. I just want to supplement again, Like we know what Wemby's upside is, but the more we can kind of like get him easier opportunities to kind of supplement his offense.

That's what can lead to some really high efficiency in volume scoring seasons. I think floor spacing is going to be a big thing for this team, and I think both Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes help in a big way there. So as a team, the Spurs were twenty seventh, so fourth worst in the league converting spot up possessions at zero point nine to eight points per possession. Harrison Barnes was a seventieth percentile spot up guy last year

at one point one zero points per possession. Chris Paul was an eighty sixth percentile spot up guy at one point one point eight points spot up possession. Both of them shot over forty five percent field goal percentage on unguarded catch and shoot jump shots, so you just have a much higher level set of off ball offensive players too in situations where Wemby's operating with the Rocks. So in summary, I think it's a substantial increase in shooting

and ball handling, which obviously were two major weaknesses last year. Obviously, Wenby has another year of experience. We saw how well he played at the tail end of the year which I'll give you guys that stat that I gave you the other day again here in a minute. But then he even had an impressive competitive run with Foeba so at the Olympics. So here's one last crazy stat to kind of set the stage for the Spurs this season.

In the final forty five games of the year last year, which again that's more than half the year, the Spurs were plus twenty eight when Victor Wmenyamo was on the floor, and they were minus two to oh two with him off. That's raw plus minus. So like, they were positive for more than half the season with Victor Wembenyama on the floor, and then they were massively negative, and that was with a really weak roster. You're giving him a lot of a veteran kind of like help this season. Obviously he's

a better player now than he was last year. So a lot to be really optimistic about as a Spurs fan. Now as we know there's thirteen teams trying to win in the Western Conference, Teams like Houston they're trying to win, teams like Memphis, they're going to be right back in the mix. They weren't in the mix last year. San Antonio's trying to win, and so will they get into the play in We'll see they'll be fighting in that range.

My guess is they'll be in that eight to twelve range, and whether or not they actually get in is going to come down to just how dominant Victor wembin Yama is in his second season. All Right, Number nineteen The Los Angeles Clippers quick recap of their offseason. They lost bj Boston, Mussa, Diabate, Paul George, Mason, plum Lee, Daniel Tye, and Russell Westbrook. They added Mo Bamba. He's a stretch five, really good above the break shooter, but kind of a

mixed bag everywhere else. Nick Batoum was one of my favorite three and D guys in the League's really good mobility and length to defend guards. Chris Dunn one of the best guard defenders in the league. Derek Jones a guy who just had a phenomenal postseason run as a perimeter defender. You can kind of pick up the theme here, a lot of good perimeter defenders in Los Angeles playing for the Clippers. We're gonna get more in that in

a minute. And then Kevin Porter Junior, although the league is apparently restarting an investigation into his domestic violence issue, so we'll see if he actually ends up playing, but he's on the roster as well. Their depth chart going into next year James Harden, Norman Palll, Terrence Man, Bones Highland, Chris Dunn, Josh Primo and Kevin Porter Junior at guard at Ford, Kawhi Leonard, PJ Tucker, Derek Jones Junior, Nick patom A Mere Coffee, and Kobe Brown, and then at

center of y Kazubas, Kai Jones and Mobama. My guess is that their starting lineup is almost certainly going to include James Harden, Terrence Man, Kawhi Leonard, it A, Vikazubach. It really just comes down to who you're going to play at the three, and I look at two options there, either Nick Patum or Derek Jones. Derek Jones I think is a little bit better and more versatile defensively, I think Nick Patum is a better shooter and close out attacker.

So it's going to really just be about, you know, if Kawhi Leonard's just really really damn healthy and Terrence Man is kicking ass at the point of attack, maybe Tyler leans more towards shooting and close out attacking at that position. But if they're struggling on defense, or if they want to keep Kawhi off ball as much as possible to save his legs, maybe they end up going

with Derek Jones. We also never know with this kind of thing how much agent relationship played a role in terms of the contract, So it's very possible that there was a promise to play like like Derek Jones under the impression he's supposed to start per kind of the negotiation surrounding his contracts. So we'll see, but my guess is it'll be bitwo more Derek Jones playing at the three.

We know on defense they will run drop coverage with Zubox, but they their preferred scheme under Tylus they want to switch, especially late game situations. That's what they just kind of go to as their as their kind of foundation. Defensively, they're really really athletic on the perimeter, not at the forward position like the big forwards, but like guys who

are going to be guarding opposing twos and threes. You're not going to find many better defensive cores than what the Clippers have Terrence Man really good, Chris Donn really good, Derek Jones really good, Nick Batoom really good. They're gonna get after the basketball, They're gonna defend well at the point of attack, and that I think is going to allow them to be competitive over the course of the regular season. And that really is my main takeaway on

the Clippers heading into this year. I think this is going to be a really good regular season team. They're younger and more athletic than you'd think, Like their shot creators are older, like James Harden's older, obviously, Kawhi Leonards older, Norman Powell as like a close out attacker shooter. He's older,

he's thirty one now. PJ. Tucker's obviously really old. But all the other guys, all the other role players are relatively young, you know, Like there's a lot of guys in their mid to late twenties that are really good athletes on this roster. And when you combine that with I still think, you know, we have our question marks surrounding Kawhi and James Harden in the playoffs, right, Like, will James Harden be able to get separation and get

to his shot against an elite defense, for multiple rounds. Like, we know how that story goes, well, Kawhi Leonards, knee hold up, we know how that story goes. However, James Harden is still one of the best regular season offensive engines in the league. He averaged seventeen points, five rebounds

in nine assists a game last year. You know how many players averaged at least sixteen points and eight assists in the entire NBA last year ten ten guys, and Harden was one of them, while playing alongside two other bald domin it stars. Right, So, like, really impressive season there. Shot creation numbers were incredible. He's an eighty seventh percentile pick and roll player, eighty sixth percentile ISO player, both right around one point one points per possession, which is

really good. So, like, I can count on James Harden as long as he's healthy and on the floor to be a really good regular season shot creator. That's gonna help you set a high floor for the offensive end of the floor. Right, Kawhi Leonard, we know he has his health issues, but aside from the year he missed the entire season, he plays fifty games at least, Like you're probably gonna get fifty games from Kawhi at about

near MVP level, right. So, like with those two guys kind of raising the offensive floor and just all of the quick, feisty perimeter defenders that they have, I think that's just gonna lead to a high regular season output. And so again, whatever whatever your issues are with this team in the postseason, they they're gonna be a good regular season team in my opinion. They have depth of

talent we've talked about. They've got shot creation as far as aggregate offensive skill that other these pieces that we talked about at the beginning of the show. Without Paul George, I'm a little worried about their shooting, but not so much with their like main players. It's more of a depth thing. I think, like if guys missed time in the regular season, they could be a little bit light

on shooting. But then there's also multiple ways to provide spacing, like you can you can provide spacing driving closeouts too. Derek Jones Junior last year had a season where the shooting was somewhat inconsistent, but he was really good at like driving the slot, so like he'd catch on the wing.

And again, there are a lot of like these baked in driving lanes in basketball, right, Like, if you're on the left wing and the balls on the right wing, and your defender's kind of towards the midline, and James Harden just throws a swing pass to Derek Jones and he immediately catches and rips to the left. There's a baked in driving lane there because his defender is sitting on his right shoulder like in the lane and closing out that way, And so Derek Jones provided spacing that way.

So like, I'm not super worried about it, but I wouldn't say it's a strength on this team. They have a strong base defensive scheme, and the one knock I really have on them is their defensive versatility. This has been a consistent issue for the Clippers over the years. Whenever they do end up going switching, teams start to hunt their centers. When they start to go small, They're not nearly big enough in terms of the overall aggregate

side of their lineup. So like, I'm not a big fan of the defensive versatility this unit, but that's more of a playoff issue anyway. So not a perfect team by any stretch. But like, without Paul George. There's not really a championship ceiling there, but I think they have a really strong regular season foundation, and I actually think they have a solid chance, even as a team that doesn't really have a chance to win the title, I think they have a solid chance to like stay out

of the play in. Like if you told me the Clippers finished with the five seed this year, I would not be shocked, just with the sheer amount of regular season kind of engine, type of talent that they have. All Right, last team for today, number eighteen, the Miami Heat a team and that is more or less the same type of team they've been for the last few years. But we're going to talk about him a little bit. Off season recap. They lost Caleb Martin, they lost Patty Mills,

Orlando Robinson, and Delon Wright. They added Alec Burks, who just came off of a nice little bench run with the New York Knicks in the postseason, Josh Christopher kalel Ware, a super athletic stretch five out of Indiana. And then just even though these guys may not play a lot this year, I want to shout out a couple of Arizona guys. I'm a Tucson guy So Pella Larson and Kashaw Johnson, two guys I really liked watching with Arizona,

are on the team at least for training camp. Depth chart at guard Tyler Harrow, Terry Rozier, Josh Richardson, Alec Burks, Pella Larson at for Jimmy Butler, Duncan Robinson, Heywood high Smith, Jim Hawkes Junior. Shout out Jime. We did that interview earlier this summer. Nikola, Jovic, Keishaw Johnson, bam Out of Bayome, Kevin Love, kellel Ware and Thomas Bryant are your centers. So hard to know what to make of this team

after last year. On the one hand, Jimmy gets hurt, right, so you can't take too much from the playoff run, and they stole a game in Boston classic Miami heat fashion right, just grind it out. But on the other hand, according to Cleaning the Glass, their core four guys Terry Rogier, Tyler Harrow, Jimmy Butler, and Bamata Byle. They played together two hundred and forty one possessions last years are roughly two and a half games two games ish in two

hundred and forty one possessions. They got outscored by two point one points per one hundred possessions. According to Cleaning the Glass. That's bad on both ends if you remove Terry Rozier from the equation because he obviously came at

a trade deadline deal. The Terry the uh Tyler, Harrow, Jimmy Butler bam At a bio trio played nine hundred and ninety three possessions and they were just plus three point eight net per one hundred posessions, which is fine, but it's not in the same stratosphere as the other cores around the conference, like the Knicks Jalen Brunson, Isaiah Hartenstein, og and ob eight hundred and seven nine possessions plus twenty seven net, plus twenty seven points per one hundred possessions.

The Celtics Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum, Derek White twenty seven hundred and ten possessions plus nine points per one hundred possessions net. That's really really good. The Bucks Giannis Dame Chris Middleton sixteen hundred possessions plus sixteen nets. So like the top teams in the conference, when they have their

main guys on the floor, they kick ass. The Miami Heat don't just another random middle of the pack Eastern Conference team like the Cleveland Cavaliers Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, and Jared Allen eleven hundred and ninety possessions plus four point one net per one hundred possessions. So like even the Calves, who are just kind of a random middle of the pack standard team in the Eastern Conference, they don't. Even the Miami Heat can't, even with their core, match

that level of production, which is major league concerning. Right, Jimmy just wasn't as good as he was last year. Bam does continue to make small strides as an offensive player, but he's still nowhere near as good as as he needs to be to be a real driver of high level offense. Right, Tyler Harrow is a pull up jump shooter who isn't particularly good at hitting pull up jump shots. He shot below forty percent on him last year, got

to zero point nine to eight points per shot. Like, if you're a professional pull up jump shooter, you need to be over a point per shot. Tyler Harrow's not there. So the core just isn't as effective as it used to be. A little bit of a decline from Jimmy the other guy's not really havn't enough. We'll see what a full training camp with Terry Rozier can kind of do for them. Maybe it loosens things up for them on the offensive end. And I'm excited to see Bam

maybe with some more two big looks. If kelll Ware and his ability to shoot and protect the rim kind of translate, you could see a version of the two of them playing together, which saw what that looks like, a much crazier version of it alongside Anthony Davis with Team USA. Right, But like we'll get I'm excited. There's some things that I'm really looking forward to seeing with Miami, but nothing that really drives for me a change in

opinion of what this team is capable of. I wonder if they're a candidate for an aggressive and risky deal, like I have a talent ad type of deal, So like if someone like Zach Lavine or Brandon Ingram or Julius Randall got off to a good start, I wouldn't be surprised if the Heat tried to make some sort of aggressive move like that. But there's not really much to get into with Miami. They're more or less the same basketball team that they've been for a few years now.

The one real piece of optimism, like if I was trying to like talk myself into a more aggressive Miami take, what I'd say is last year they were fifth in defense, and now you're getting a full training camp to try to incorporate Terry Rose year, which will hopefully add more offensive upside. And then the last piece of optimism is

Jimmy Butler. He had a bad year last year down the board, his numbers were down, he got hurt, missed the playoffs, and he's also more or less in a contract year, right, so like, maybe you just get this big, like fuck you bounce back season from Jimmy Butler, and maybe that could turn things around. But it's just it's tough. And the other thing is is the rest of the East is rapidly improving, right, Like, the Magic will be

better this year than they were last year. The Pacers will be better this year than they were last year. The seventy six ers will be better this year than they were last year. So honestly, the mind Heat looked like a playing team to me again, but obviously they have the upside of a potential trade if they decide to get aggressive at some point during the season, but right now I have them at eighteen in my power rankings. All right, guys, that is all I have for Day one.

We'll be back on Wednesday with three more teams. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show, and I'll see you guys then the volume. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. They would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.