Hoops Tonight - NBA Team Rankings: Nikola Jokic & Nuggets are ENORMOUS frontrunners for NBA title

some of their younger players as well. And then the second half of the show, we're gonna do our full season preview. Like we usually do, We're gonna go over the offseason changes, their depth chart, talk a little bit about what I expect to see from them this season, and then talk about why I have them at the top of my list of contenders, specifically over each team. You guys are the Joe Before we get started, subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow me on Twitter at Underscore

Jason L Team. Also in video content on Instagram and TikTok this year, so follow me there as well. Don't forget to drop mailbag questions in our YouTube comments, and don't forget about our podcast feed Under Hoops tonight. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the Nuggets are two and one so far in preseason. Michael Porter Junior hasn't played yet, but all four starters have played and have played well.

They all have logged net ratings of at least plus seven points per one hundred possessions, so they're picking up pretty much right where they left off. Yokich has been great. He's four out of six on hook shots and floaters, right at that two out of three like he always is. He's eight of nine at the rim. He's fifty five percent effective field goal percentage on jump shots. He's run twelve self creation possessions either picking rolls, ISOs or post ups and or excuse me, he's run eight of them

and he's gotten twelve points out of them. That's a point and a half per possession. So yo Kicch is you know more or less what you expect to see from Yogicch. Jamal Murray has been exciting. I talked a lot in the player rankings video this summer. I put him at number sixteen if you guys remember, and one of the things I said was like one of the things that he needs to actually be on the level of his peers, and I have him higher than most people because I value playoff success so much compared to

other people. I get crap for that on this show all the time. Right, But like, in order to get up to the level of the Shay Gildes Alexander's and the Devin Bookers and some of the other guards at the top of the league, he needs to demonstrate that he can do it in the regular season. And then we got to media Day and Mike Malone basically said the same thing, challenging Jamal Murray to demonstrate that he could do it over the course of the regular season.

Now in the preseason, it's tough to kind of like put those numbers together from the standpoint of them playing limited shifts, right because they're trying to keep their minutes

down in the preseason. But if I extrapolate out to per thirty six, which per thirty six is an imperfect way to kind of take like a limited shift and turn it into what that production would look like in a normal NBA game, Right, Like Jamal Murray actually played about thirty three minutes per game last year, but a lot of the best players in the league kind of hover in that thirty four to thirty six minute range, So it's a way to kind of extrapolate out right, Well,

Jamal Murray is averaging twenty five points in preseason so far per thirty six minutes to go with three rebounds and nine point four assists per thirty six minutes with just one point nine turnovers per thirty six minutes. So that's twenty five, three and nine. That's all star production.

If he does that for a top four seed in the Western Conference, especially coming off of a championship run where he was playing like a superstar, I think he's going to get onto the All Star team at that point, potentially even make All NBA depending on how things go. And what's crazy is he's putting up that twenty five three and nine per thirty six despite going just two for twelve from three so far in preseason. He hasn't been able to dial it up from there. His mid

range has been on. He's seven for nine from the mid range. He's shown the strength and patience you're accustomed to seeing from Jamal Murray around the rim. He's five for six at the rim. He looks super, super comfortable in their offense. You can literally see things slowing down for Jamal Murray. He's got such a great understanding of what his role is in this offense as he kind of manipulates help defenders and waits for things to develop.

He's taking great care of the basketball again, guys, like fifteen assists in three turnovers so far in preseason. It's hard to not be excited about what that kind of bodes for this particular regular season. And it extends beyond a bunch of different things. Like a lot of people have kind of painted the Jamal Murray experience as like, oh, he's just a postseason player, and I've pushed back on that.

If you guys, remember what I said was he kind of started to take this leap during the twenty twenty bubble, right. That was when he was going toe to toe with Donovan Mitchell, when he was hitting big shots against the Clippers, when he was hitting big shots against the Lakers. That was when I kind of saw Jamal Murray kind of is sending into a great playoff player, one of the best guards in the league. Right, But then what happens the same thing that happened to most of the players

that played in the bubble and deep playoff runs. We had that really quick, like two month turnaround before we started the regular season, and he came into that following season kind of a shell of himself. It would be it would have been weird if he came into the season just locked in and ready to go, right. A lot of the core players who played in the postseason struggled at that point, right, Like the Heat got off

to a weird start that season. Anthony Davis before his injury, you know, a third of the way through the season, he was only averaging like twenty one points per game. So like a lot of the guys who went on deep bubble playoff runs kind of struggled to start the next season. And everyone's like, oh, it's the bubble's fake. No, that's not what it was. The guys were just tired. They were tired because they just finished playing in October

or late November or late September. For Jamal, they had just finished before they had to roll up into the next season, and it's just difficult on players' bodies. Right then Jamal actually literally gets hurt and then that whole

following season he misses the season. And then last year he was kind of working his way back from the injury, and I've talked a lot on this show about the difference between actually being healthy and actually trusting your limb from the standpoint of your mentality and your willingness to plant hard and make super explosive moves and so like, I don't think it's a coincidence that it wasn't until kind of the later portion of the season and into

the postseason that Jamal Murray really started to look like the old Jamal Murray. So I don't think the narrative that Jamal Murray's not a good regular season player is

necessarily fair. I think he became really freaking good in the playoffs in twenty twenty, and he's never had a normal regular season since then where he's either not coming off of an injury or you know, coming off of a playoff run literally a couple of weeks before, right, So I think he's just gonna come into the season and continue to cook at the same rate he was

cooking last year in the playoffs. And make no mistake, he was cooking like a superstar in the playoffs last year, which is why I ranked him at number sixteen in our player rankings, ahead of a lot of guys that have better reputations around the league. But I thought that was an encouraging start to the preseason for Jamal Murray. Casey P looks locked in. He's made eight of his eleven jump shots so far in preseason. Aaron Gordon's jumper has been off, but he's been great in every other

area of the game, as you can expect. But the guy that's really jumped off the screen in preseason a guy I've been looking forward to catching up on. I've been hearing all this talk about Julian Strawther, Julian Strawther, and obviously, like the Nuggets made the fewest changes of all of the contenders this year, right Like, if we go down my list of the six top tier contenders, it's like the Bucks when got Drew Holliday, and the Bucks went and got Damian Lillard. The Celtics got Drew

Holliday and Christops Porzingis. The Sons got Bradley Beal and upgraded their role players. The Lakers got significantly deeper, brought in gatee Vincent Andorium Prance, a couple of fringe starter level players in the NBA. Right like the Warriors, went and got Chris Paul and brought in Dario Saraz. They all made like these pretty significant changes to their roster,

and then U Gets basically brought everybody back. And so I've been prioritizing my coverage surrounding the new teams because we're talking about what's new and what's different, and so I've been excited to finally kind of come here a week before the start of the regular season, which is literally today, a week before the start of the regular season, and kind of touch base with the Nuggets and finally sit down and watch Julian Strawther. And it's been amazing.

It was for those of you guys who aren't kind of in the loop on this. He was a late first round pick, a player out of Gonzaga, like a scoring guard wing who's six foot six with a six or nine wingspan, primarily played off the ball at Gonzaga. Would take some movement threes and things along those lines, but didn't take a lot of pull up jump shots, didn't run a ton of pick and roll compared to some of the higher volume ball handlers in the league.

And he's coming into preseason and just looking like a classic on ball scoring threat. He's averaging twenty points per game so far in preseason in just twenty two minutes per game. He's shooting fifty eight percent from the field, fifty percent from three. And most importantly, he's brought something that none of us saw coming out of college, and that's like real fluidity in his dribble pull up jump

shot game. He's got great feel understanding where the opportunities are to take pull up jump shots, like there are little gaps and pick and roll coverage, like when the big shows not a great time to shoot, but right as he's recovering back to the role man, that's when there can be an opening between when the guard recovers and when the big is rolling away right, soft spots in the mid range that can materialize. Right, He's got a really good feel for that sort of thing. And

most importantly, he looks super, super confident. He's methodically working off the bounce getting to these spots and just looks like he believes he's going to make them. And guess what he's made damn near all of them. He's made nine pull up jump shots so far in preseason. Excuse me, he's taken nine pull up jump shots so far in preseason, made six of them, five of them are pull up threes. On all jump shots so far in preseason, he's at

seventy six percent in effective field goal percentage. He's hit them off the catch, he hit them off the move, he's hit them and pick and roll, he's hit them in ISOs. It's been really truly impressive. And again, it's not just a dude hitting shots, because we've seen that, we've seen a role player come in and knock down his catch and shoot threes, right, That's not what this is. This is a confident score that is demonstrating something that

he clearly has been working on all offseason. He's run seven pick and rolls and the Nuggets have scored fourteen points on them. That's two points per possession. That's insane. He's shown the ability to capitalize on the soft spot. He's got a beautiful floater. He's taken six floaters in preseason and made six or made five of them, five out of six. This is like incredibly high level shot making and he's doing it. He's doing it at the

NBA level now. And I know it's just preseason, but I think especially when you factor in the type of role he's gonna have on this team, coming off the bench and looking to be aggressive as a score in bench units. These are the quality of players he's gonna be going against most of the time. This is the guy who straight up did not have a pull up jumper in college. He made twenty of them all season last year on low efficiency. So this is clearly a guy who's been in the gym all summer. This is

not something that happens overnight. I've told you guys, like when it comes to improvements in ball handling and shooting, it is incremental. It happens little by little by little. And so when you see a guy make a gigantic leap, that to me is such a great indicator of work ethic. Why do you think I've been so high on guys like Jabari Smith Junior? Right When I see guys go from a turning a weakness into strength in such a short period of time, that to me is a great

indicator of the intangible stuff. And look like the Denver bench needs some guys to pop. When you lose Jeff Green, And when you lose I mean Jeff Green wasn't great last year, but obviously they trusted him over some of the younger guys like Zignage and Peyton Watson. Right, So, like when you've got Bruce Brown out of the picture, when you got Jeff Green out of the picture, you need guys to step up into these positions and show some pop and you know, like one for two. I mean,

Jalen Pickett's been a little bit uneven. I think he's kind of a weird player. His release is a little slow, it's a little funky, it's got a little bit of a hitch in it, And I'm not sure what to make of Jalen Picket at this point, But like Julian Strather, legitimately looks like he could be really, really good. It looks like it could be a huge win for this

front office. And you can kind of envision lineups with like him and Reggie Jackson with like one of the starters and like Zeke Nag and Peyton Watson just being really young, really athletic, and have the scoring punch with guys like Reggie Jackson and Julian Strather to make to at least give yourself a fighting chance to float those minutes. Right. I always love Gonzaga guys too. They kind of remind

me of Villanova guys. Like every guy that comes out of Gonzaga just seems to know how to play within a winning context and it it knows how to like like do the little things. Mark fu just does a really good job coaching those guys. All right, let's take a look at our Nugget season preview or number one,

number one Denver Nuggets. I was talking with Logan, our head of content here at the volume, and he was trying to guess the top three or four of my power rankings, and he had thought I would have a different team at number one, and then I told him I had the Nuggets at number one, and he goes like, oh, yeah, that's right. You're a loyalist of the banner. And I've never heard that expression before, but I'm stealing it from Logan, and it's the catchphrase of this show now, this show

hoops tonight is a loyalist of the banner. Winning to me means absolutely everything in the NBA. I've told you, I told you guys, the Nuggets fans in particular, this several times over the course of the last couple of years, like yeah, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to winners, but once you've done it, to me, now I give that same benefit of the doubt to you.

Was I a guy who was somewhat lower on Jokic than the consensus over the course of the previous few years, Yeah, but now that he's proven that he can do it at this level, I'll defend him to the dirty end. And to me, like, look, I've seen a lot of guys push back on ring culture, and like, I understand that there are some downsides to ring culture. There are different kinds of conversations to have about basketball, right, Like, I think we can be a fan of the game

and appreciate things that go beyond winning. And obviously God knows I do that. But in the big picture, why do we do this? Why do you root for your team? Why does anybody work as hard as they do in the off season? They forget about basketball, think about anything that you do in your life. Like if you if you're trying to be great at a thing, what drives you is the desire to win. Winning does matter at the end of the day. And like, I understand that not everyone sees it the way that I see it,

But to me, like the championship. The Larry O'Brien trophy is completely sacred, and like, when when you've won that, it has to mean something. And to me, like, and we're gonna talk about this when we get to the competitors. I have basketball reasons why I believe Denver is my

championship favorite, and we'll get into those. But also, like, there's nothing theoretical about Milwaukee or theoretical about Boston, or theoretical about Phoenix or La are theoretical about the Warriors that to me can overcome the tangible, real accomplishment of the Nuggets kicking everyone's ass last year. I think that should matter, you know, Like I want bragging rights, and I think it goes both ways. If you lose, you get motivated to get back to the top, But if

you win, that's got to mean something. So I've got the Nuggets at number one for right now. We'll talk more about the reasons why here in a little bit a little offseason recap. They lost Bruce Brown, Thomas Bryant, Jeff Green, and Ish Smith. They added Justin Holliday and a couple of draft picks in the late first early second Julian Strather and Jaln Pickett. We talked about earlier the depth chart. Right now, they're a little finn but

we'll talk about that in a minute. At guard, Jamal Murray, KCP, Reggie Jackson and Julian Strawther. At forward, Michael Porter Junior, Aaron Gordon, Christian Brown, Peyton Watson, and Justin Holliday. Just In all Day is kind of like a guard forward. Christian Brown could technically be a guard forward as well. At center, Nicole Jokic, DeAndre DeAndre, Jordan Blatko, Consar and Zeke Naji. Dignagi's another guy that can kind of kind of masquerade as a guard or excuse me as like

a forward as well. Depth concerns. A lot of people talking about depth with the Nuggets, but these are these are the same types of concerns that surrounded the Nuggets last year. Right All the things that I could say about the Nuggets this year, do they have a good enough bench? Are are can they withstand a significant injury? Can they defend at a high enough level? All of those things were the same questions surrounding the team last year, and they kicked everyone's ass. And so again, like I

try not to Galaxy brain this kind of stuff. Are are they going to be able to like, are they gonna be able to withstand a significant injury? Probably not.

But I could say the same thing about every one of these teams, Like, if Jamal Murray gets hurt, the Nuggets aren't winning a title, sorry, right, But if Dame gets hurt, of the Bucks winning the title, no, Like I would argue even the Celtics are kind of precariously on that debt line because they don't have the high end half court shot creation, right, Like if jaln Brown or Derek White gets hurt, like, they probably can't win

the title. The Lakers, if Lebron James, even if Austin Reeves went down, I'd immediately be thinking the Lakers have no chance, right, the Warriors their core six or seven guys type of thing. Same thing goes with the Suns, Like, none of these teams can withstand a significant injury. The league is too talented, it's too a deep and wide open, and there's too much parody at the top. So I don't think that I don't think that that's a valid criticism when the same could be said about any of

these teams. Now that Bruce Brown loss is significant. He was like a sixth starter for the Nuggets last year. As a matter of fact, he was fifth in scoring for the Nuggets in the postseason. He went for double figures in fifteen of their twenty games in the playoffs and had some pretty significant matchups that he dominated, most notably against Angela Russell in the Lakers series. They used him for twenty seven minutes a game throughout the entire playoffront.

So that's significant. Now that brings to the next question. Okay, Jason, you are saying that they've lost Bruce Brown, who's this significant piece, and they didn't bring in anybody who's of any sort of significant influx of talent, right, Like, I like Justin Holliday, But is he even in the same stratosphere as a player as Bruce Brown. No, like these younger players. I really like Julian straw the But like, how many times an NBA history does a rookie come

in and monumentally swing championship hoods? Never? Right, like can Zeke Najee and Peyton Watson come in and play at a similar level to Jeff Crean, DeAndre Jordan front line or Thomas Bryant front line. Like, yeah, I think that I think they can, but those were that that's a pretty low bar, right, So, like, I don't think there's

anything significant that they did as an improvement. So the question is if that's not the case, And the Bucks got better added Dame, and the Celtics got better added Drew and Chris hops porzingis right, and the Lakers got better adding Gabe Vincent Andorian Prince and bringing everybody back for the continuity and bolstering their backups position, and the Suns brought in Bradley Beal and and brought in better role players than they had last year, and the Warriors

bringing Chris Pollock. If that's the case, why do I still have the Nuggets at the face as of as the favor of favorite still And it's really this simple to me. They still have the most unguardable offense in the NBA. All you most of you Nuggets fans might be aware of, uh swipe a cam he covers the team. He's actually gonna be doing a show this year with with Matt Moore and Adam Morris, two guys you know,

I think you do the Lockdown Nuggets podcast. So if you haven't met Cam, You're gonna meet him this year. But I went on his show last week and we talked for like an hour and forty minutes about a bunch of stuff around the league, but we talked a lot about the Nuggets, and we talked a lot about their specific playoff roun last year. And you know the thing is is, I I really do think that the talk of the defense from the Nuggets in the playoffs

was a little overrated. And the only reason I mean that say that is the Wolves were a bad offense all year, the Lakers were a bad offense all year, and the Heat or a bad offense all year. So I do think that there's something to be said about like the Denver Nuggets offense not really being challenged to the point where like you could actually find out what

they're capable of. But on the other side of that coin, the Timberwolves, the Lakers in the Heat were three of the very best defenses last year, as specifically within the postseason context, and those rosters that were available, because obviously there were some roster changes along the way, those were really good defenses that the Nuggets cut to pieces, like

utterly demolished. There were little moments here or there where the Lakers got some stops, or the Wolves got some stops, or the Heat got some stops, but at the end of the day, the Nuggets were able to solve those defenses. And so, like, the reality is is, in order to beat the Nuggets, you need one of two things to happen.

You need a team that is a truly elite offense and a truly elite defense, which we'll go through the contenders, but I don't necessarily think one of those teams exists right now, or you need one of the core Nuggets players to get hurt. And so, from that standpoint, to me, like I can count on the Nuggets offense to find

a way to score against anybody in the league. Is there a team that can hold them to that level that those defenses did last year, because God knows what it could have been if they faced four offensive minded teams, right, Can they find a team that can make them work as hard as some of those defenses did, but also make them pay on the other end. I don't know if that team exists. Because you can't say whatever you want about the Nuggets defense, the Jokics, pick and roll coverages,

they use the schemes that Mike Malone implemented. They worked well enough against the teams that they played against last year. And so I mean, like, I don't necessarily see a team that can solve that specific problem. And like, here's the thing. Will the Nuggets repeat? Probably not, just because of what NBA history tells us, Right, Like, the last team that even won their conference two times in a row was the Golden State Warriors with Kevin Durant and

Steph Curry. So every year we see different teams win their conference and different teams win the championship. That's just kind of the nature of the NBA at this point. Too much depth of talent, stars are linking up all over the place. It's just really really hard to dominate the league the way teams have done in the past. Right, But that said, is there any single team that I'd

pick over the Nuggets? Like, for the Bucks, they have a real perimeter defense issue, and they're also super vulnerable from the standpoint of depth and injuries to their core players. For the Celtics, did they really alleviate the Jason Tatum half court offense shot creation element? Not really? And they sacrifice depth to upgrade at point guard and center for

the Suns. I really don't trust their ability to get into a damn rock fight and defend and rebound and be physical and be able to knock down pull up jump shots while doing that, not to mention just the general process of taking pull up jump shots primarily in your offense and us never really seeing a team win

a title that way. The Lakers have all the depth in the world, but they lack perimeter defense too, And then we talked about this ad nauseum all summer, but their shot making is a huge weakness against the top teams in the league. Unless we see some gigantic improvement from Lebron and ad and then the Warriors, I think they're clearly worse than all those teams, even though I'll always consider them a competitor a contender because of their

starting five. They're older, they're smaller than everybody. They lack depth as well. So like again, if I had to choose the field or to choose the Nuggets, I would probably choose the field, just because of what NBA history tells us from the same point of just parody and how you have to get lucky now to get injury luck. You gotta get a match up here or there that breaks your way. You gotta avoid one of the top teams in the league because they happened to choke and

lose early. Like you, I'm not criticizing the Nuggets last year, because every title has been like this, Right, Like the Nuggets didn't have to face the Celtics or Bucks and primarily faced limited offenses, and they were a limited defense. They got a little bit lucky. Right. Looking at the Warriors, right, you catch the Lebron and Ad messing around with Russell Westbrook thing, and how that kind of removed them from

the equation. The Sons, who are the best team in the league all season, there's this weird COVID thing, and then Luca mentally dominates them, and all of a sudden, you have a pretty limited Dallas Mavericks team in the conference finals, right, and then you get to face a Boston Celtics team that's obviously very good but is led by a super young superstar. They got scared in front

of Steph Curry. You go back to twenty twenty one and it's like, wait, the Paul George No Kawhi Clippers were in the conference finals and Trey Young and the Hawks were in the conference finals and Giannis had to play a team with no top ten players to win the trophy. You know, you go back to twenty twenty and it's like Kevin Durant and Steph Curry are on their couches for Lebron and Anthony Davis to dominate everybody

in the bubble. You go back to twenty nineteen and you have the Kevin Durant Klay Thompson injuries, like it's just You go back to twenty eighteen and you have the Chris Paul injury when they're up three to two, Like every champion gets lucky. That's just the reality. It's such an important part of the equation. And so in a league this deep, it's it's hard to imagine things

breaking right for the Nuggets. Again just based on what happens in recent NBA history, but there is no singular team that their specific situation appears better to than Denver for me, so in a wide open league, and this again, I want to be clear, this is a basketball case. It's not just I am a loyalist of the banner.

I do believe the Nuggets deserve to have the bragging rights throughout this entire season, but also fundamentally, they have the best player in the world, the most unguardable playoff offense in the world, and they have proven the abilit to take limited offenses in the playoffs and guard them well even if they defend well on the other end of the floor. And Jamal Murray has proven multiple postseasons now to be able to produce at a superstar level

as a legitimate number two alongside Nicole Jokic. That makes him a say for bet. They also have the best home court advantage in the NBA statistically, It's just hard to go any other direction right now as a pick than the Denver Nuggets. All Right, two mail back questions before we get out of here today versus from Felipe, Most people have Phoenix above the Lakers, even though they can't guard Jokic or ad How would you see a

potential Phoenix Denver in Phoenix LA matchup? So Denver in LA, in my opinion, are the two most physically imposing teams in the entire NBA other than maybe the Milwaukee Bucks, right, and that's really more of a Yiannis thing, right. Their front lines are just massive with the Lakers. It's like you have to deal with Anthony Davis, you have to deal with Lebron James and his big physical matchup attacking. You have to deal with with Ruby Hatcha Mura and

his big physical matchup attacking. They're going. They're big all at all these positions, right, even their guards. I mean they're not as athletic as they should be. But D'Angelo Russell can post up smaller defenders. We saw him do that to Steph Curry a lot in the postseason last year. Right, we go to the Nuggets, they're huge. It's it's Nicole Jokic, probably the most physically imposing center in the league. It's Aaron Gordon, you know, in that archetype of big, strong

role player forward. He's one of the top three or four guys in the league at that position. It was a great rebounder, six foot ten. There was a play in the game, remember Game one in the NBA Finals, that they just opened up against the heat by just giving the ball to Aaron Gordon the post and him dominating everybody. They play a six ' ten to three in Michael Porter junior. Jamal Murray is a big physically imposing guard who can inflict that on smaller guards around

the league. So the Lakers and Nuggets to me, are the two most physically imposing teams, and in order to beat them, you have to hold up under that physical onslaught And like, I have no doubt that the Sons are gonna win a shit ton of regular season with all their offensive skill, but like there is there is something to be said about playing in a physical environment and the impact that has on your ability to knock

down pull up jump shots. In general, it's really difficult to knock down enough pull up jump shots to be an efficient offense. But when you factor in doing that against the team that's beating you up on the other end and wearing you down and making those jump shots even harder, I don't think it's a coincidence that most pull up jump shooters go down in efficiency when they end up in settings like that. We even saw Steph Curry have his least efficient postseason or postseason series since

I think it in like five years. It was back to like the twenty nineteen series against the Rockets because they were so damn physical with them. The Lakers were all over the place, Like I just I'm not a doubter in the Suns in what they're capable of from the standpoint of their ceiling with all the talent that they have. To me, it's just a simple reality of

the way playoff basketball goes. It always degenerates into a knockdown, drag out fist fight, and the teams that rely on really tough shot making as a posed to as like a as like a counter, like the Nuggets made a lot of tough shots Yo Kitchen Murray, crazy end the clock shots in key moments throughout the postseason. That was not their bread and butter. They made those shots when they needed to as like a ceiling razor. For the Suns,

that is who they are. In that first preseason game that Booker, I'm gonna check up on the Sun's more recent preseason games later this week, But in that first preseason game, Booker, kd and Beale took twenty one shots in what fifteen or sixteen of them were pull up jump shots. That's not their counter, That's not how they rescue possessions at the end of the clock. That's literally what they do every single possession. So I just don't trust that in a seven game series the way that

I trust Enver. In LA final mail back question, I was curious why you don't talk about the WWNBA during the offseason, considering the WNBA playoffs occur when NBA basketball is in its off season, and it would give us some basketball content to go over. Also, I am just interested in analysis on at WNBA games. I'm watching the WNBA finals now and their style of play is very different from NBA ball. So I don't cover the WNBA

for the same reason I don't cover college basketball. I am a big believer and like, if you spread yourself too thin, all it does is sacrifice the quality of work. There are a lot of people out there that cover THEWNBA and do a really good job. But for me, like, in order to be the best NBA analyst that I can be, I need to devote my attention and energy towards the NBA and so like, I have a very specific calendar, right like from basically now all the way

through to the middle of June, it's NBA basketball. But then when we get to the middle of June, like immediately after that, I'm going to start looking at draft prospects, and I'm not going to watch a ton of college hoops. I'm going to watch specific film on specific players and specific traits that might be able to translate to the

NBA level. Then we get in to the free agent period right in July, right, and then I have NBA Summer League, right and then my wife and I like to go on vacation for a little while, and then when I get back, like there are specific things that I want to do every single summer. The player rankings

are something that are very important to me. To me, that's like kind of a really fun part of the NBA off season is like where are these guys at in terms of bragging rights going into this following season? And also, if anything, I'm looking to cut back in how much I work in the off season. I was talking with my wife the other day, but after we got back from Japan, because I took like sixteen days off of work, which was the first time I had taken a significant chunk of time off since I got hired.

And over the course of the following ten weeks, I did fifty five videos and that's literally five and a half per week, and I literally I've talked about the powers that be already and I've talked to my wife, like, I'm not doing that next year. Like it just I just I need to eventually take it a little easy, especially with how hard I go during the regular season.

So it would be a disservice if I did a half assed, bullshit job covering the WNBA, and I don't see any sort of opportunity in my schedule to do it well, and so I'm going to leave it to the people that do it well and just focus on my specific wheelhouse, which is the NBA. But that is a great question. I'm not one of those guys who hates on the WNBA or thinks it's boring. Whenever I do flick channels and turn on a WNBA game, I enjoy it because I love basketball, and I'm super impressed

by the individual players. I have really enjoyed women's college hoops. I really enjoyed the w the Women's National Tournament. Last year. I wanted to order the Sabrinna Ynescu basketball shoes from Nike, and they straight up don't make them in my size, so that was a huge bummer. Like, it's not an anti WNBA take, it's just literally the reality of my predicament from the standpoint of time management and me not wanting to put out, you know, half aster bullshit content,

but great question. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. Don't forget to keep dropping mail back questions in the YouTube comments. We're now officially done with the power rankings. We're gonna do probably two more preseason reactions this week of some kind, and then probably on Monday, we'll probably do some form of season predictions episode of some kind, and then Tuesday we are covering Nuggets, Lakers

and what is it Warrior Suns. I'm not even sure what the second game is, but we will be getting into the usual routine of covering our daily NBA live starting next Tuesday. I appreciate you guys rocking with me this summer. I know I announced a new YouTube channel yesterday. I don't know when they're officially launching it, but it's supposed to be this week, so just keep an eye on the When it's actually official, I'll start announcing it

at the beginning of every show. But I think one of my biggest goals this year is to build that YouTube channel into something significant. So when that does happen, if you guys could take the time to subscribe. I would really appreciate it, but again I appreciate you guys and all your support over the course of the summer and for supporting through those lists. We will be back tomorrow with more preseason reaction contents. The volume