Nuggets best team in NBA, Thunder title defense, Timberwolves leap | Northwest Division Predictions

are the Joe before we get started. To subscribe to the Hoops and I YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter, Underscore JCNLTC. You guysn't misshow announcement, so forget about a podcast fore you wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating in a review on that front. Jackson's doing incredible work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Make sure you guys follow us over there. The last one at least. If you guys want to get mailbag questions into our mail bags, drop them in the full episodes on YouTube in the comments and we'll get to them regularly throughout the season. Our next mail bag will be the week after we finish this season preview series. All right, let's talk some basketball. So we're starting with the Denver Nuggets today. A little quick recap of their offseason.

They lost Vlaco Konsar, They lost DeAndre Jordan, Michael Porter, Junior, Dario Sarich, and Russell Westbrook. They added Cam Johnson, Tim Hardaway, Junior, Bruce Brown, Jonas Valenschiunis, and essentially adding Deron Holmes who's coming back from an achilles tear, a guy who was drafted in the first round last year but got hurt in training camp, I believe, or either right before training camp,

but he's gonna be coming back this season. Then another guy they added this summer that I'm gonna have my eye on is Kessler Edwards. I'll have to compete for a roster spot. But his per thirty six numbers were pretty impressive last season. In addition to being a big, physical perimeter athlete, he averaged ten points and seven rebounds per thirty six minutes with a two point five to

one and assist to turnover ratio. Shot fifty percent from the field forty one percent from three ninety two percent from the line, so fifty to forty ninety A good playmaker relative to most role players in that type of slot. Two point three stocks per thirty six minutes. Another guy that I think has a decent chance to impress in Nuggets' training camp, So no way to look at this as

anything other than a massive influx of talent. I have issues with the guy like Jonas Valancunis in a starting role, but he's unquestionably a substantial upgrade from DeAndre Jordan as a backup center. Cam Johnson is a better player than MPJ, but I also think he's a better fit than MPJ in this phase of the Nuggets contention window, which will

dive deeper into here in a minute. It won't be hard for Deron Holmes to be better than Dario Sarach was, and I think that the combination of Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Junior is a big step up from Russell Westbrook coming off. So this is quite simply the best roster that Nikola Joka just had to work with in his entire NBA career, and it's a big part of why I'm so high on the Nuggets coming into this

particular season. Let's start with the Cam Johnson fit. We've talked about this plenty over the summer, but i'll go over quickly again here. I think Cam represents an upgrade over MPG in two clear areas that I think will help the Nuggets on both ends of the floor. First is the fact that he's just a much better ball

handler than Michael Porter Junior. The lack of reliable ball handling outside of guys like Jamal Murray and a little bit of Aaron Gordon was a big part of why Denver had to take high risk options like Russell Westbrook

or leaning a lot on a young Julian Strawther. Now Mike Coel Porter Junior could scale up his offense a bit, as we've talked about over the years, especially versus lower level competition, but mostly in handoffs, and again that had some limitations as you went against the higher level teams in the league. I think Cam Johnson is just a much better ball handler than Mike. He should be able to actually run action both with Jokic and without Jokich

on the floor. I also like this in the context of Tim Hardaway Junior, who should be able to come in and run many of those same dribble handoff actions that Michael Porter Junior ran with nikolea Jokic. In short, the team has substantially more offensive firepower. Now, if you, as a Nuggets fan, are worried about the catch and shoot side of the catch and shoot side of things, yes,

Michael Porter Junior was taller. I'd argue at like pure stand still shooting because of his height and the slight increase in percentage, he's a little better than Cam Johnson there, but it doesn't really manifest much in the percentages. Cam was forty percent on catch and shoot threes last year, so was Michael Porter Junior. Cam was forty four percent on unguarded catch and shoot threes. Michael Porter Junior was

forty five percent. So not much of a statistical difference there, even though we can admit that Michael Porter Junior is probably a little better just because of his size and that specific side of things. The second piece here is

the defensive end of the floor. In last year's version of the team, Christian Brown was their primary point of attack defender, and then if they ran into a situation where they needed to guard another perimeter player that would handle the ball, or if it was a bigger forward that was handling the ball, they would have to deploy Aaron Gordon there. They had no choice because Michael Porter Junior is not a good perimeter defender. When Michael Porter Junior is locked in, he can be a solid weak

side defender. He could protect the rim a little bit. He's a solid defensive rebounder, but he can't guard on the perimeter. I'm not saying that needing to deploy Aaron Gordon on the perimeter is the reason he got hurt, but at this phase in his career, with the mileage that Aaron has on his body, I'd prefer to not ask him to do that as much. Certain matchups like Lebron, James Kawhi Leonard, some guys that might be too strong

for Cam. Sure, but I think Cam is a perfectly fine option to be your secondary point of attack defender behind Christian Brown. That should allow you to keep Aaron Gordon in helpside more, keep him rotating at the rim, keep him there for defensive rebounding. Aaron Gordon had a little bit of a drop off in his rebounding last year. Wasn't just injuries. A lot of it has to do with how often he had to be deployed on the perimeter. I just think that that's a better all around foundation

for Denver's defense in general. I just think Km's a better player than Michael Porter Junior, but he also is a better option on both sides of the floor for this phase of where Denver is in their title contention with Jonis Valentcunis. The big thing I'm looking for is scheme consistency. In years past, Denver would go small when

Yokich was off the floor much of the time. They tried centers, obviously with to no avail, but they would mostly go small and they do more switching on defense, and Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray would mostly go matchup hunting, and frankly, it just didn't work in the large sample. They didn't really have any other option though, and that's

really the big difference here. They didn't have any options that they could go to other than that going small, switching, attempting to pick teams apart through matchup hunting with Gordon and with Murray. Having yonas will allow them to play a very similar style on both ends of the floor. To the way they played with Nikolea Jokic right dribil Handoff's two man game with Jamal Murray. Yonis can pick and pop a little bit. Yonis can play out of

the post, especially against favorable matchups. No, he can't do any of that stuff as well as Jokic can, That's not what I'm trying to say. But against inferior NBA talent that's coming off the bench for teams, he can be reasonably effective there, and it allows you to continue to run the same things that you're running. Even on defense. You can continue to run your higher drop coverage, perhaps with a guy like Deron Holmes operating on the back line behind Yonas when he has to come up to

the level. It's not necessarily about winning those minutes with Nikole Jokic off the floor. It's just about not hemorrhaging points the way they had been last year. Once again, Denver lost ten points per one hundred possession when yokich was off the floor. That's just that's gonna make it really difficult to win basketball games in the playoffs. In one hundred and eighty three possessions with Yokich off, they lost by thirty one point one points per one hundred possessions.

That is devastating to you, to your chances. Despite this, they pushed OKC to seven and might have won if Aaron Gordon didn't get hurt. To be clear, it's not just about Yonas either. I want to be clear as you kind of look down the roster. To me, it's about everything. It's about having Bruce Brown, it's about having Tim Hardaway Junior. It's about having Yonas Valanciunas. It's about having options. I once had someone tell me money doesn't

give you happiness, but it gives you options. And I felt that personally last week when we were moving up here to Denver. We were doing our last phase of our move. It was a three phase move, and we got a trailer and we were driving it up through up Interseate twenty five and we hit Albuquerque and rush hour traffic in the morning, and literally I blew a tire on my truck and I was able to get a tow truck and I was able to get a

couple of tires and get back on the road. I remember when I was much younger, my wife and I were moving from Charlotte to Tucson, and we had all of our stuff loaded up in two cars, and we had our dogs with us, and it was a twenty eight hour drive, and we were so broke. We literally couldn't afford a hotel, like literally because of the dogs and knowing that if you wanted to get a place that would allow dogs or that would charge a dog fee, it was going to be like three or four hundred

bucks for us to spend the night. We couldn't afford it. And so we pushed through the night and it was terrifying and I probably shouldn't have done it, and we damn near got ourselves killed driving through West Texas in the middle of the night, as I'm damn near falling asleep on the road. I didn't have options then, whereas something far worse happened driving up pulling a trailer, But I had options. I was able to get a tow truck. I was able to get the tires. I was able

to get us back on the road. In the past for the Nuggets, when they would be watching the wheels come off, quite literally, David Adelman would look at the end of the bench and he wouldn't have those options, right, He wouldn't have this player that can go out there and patch the holes that could make things work in

those units when Yokic was off the floor. This is what I mean when I say going beyond just yonis so for instance, like one of the things that Mike Malone would also do over the years is he'd be like, well, I'm just going to stagger the starters more in with the bench unit and just have Yokic carrier. Inferior units have much more flexibility to do that now because I know that Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Junior can score

with Nikola Jokic. I know that those guys Bruce Brown can run regular pick and roll and inverted pick and roll slipping out of it with Jokic, Tim Hardaway Junior can run many of the same dribble handoff actions that Nikola Jokic ran with Michael Porter Junior. They have the

options now to put more of their talent. They could run Cam Johnson, Jamal Murray, and Aaron Gordon with Jonas Valanciunis, or in a bench group with Gordon at center and have more talent on the floor during those units wellout having to wear everybody out in the past, they have to push minutes to do that. In general, this depth,

it gives them options. It gives them the ability to commit more to the defensive end throughout the entirety of the regular season because of the just the ability to keep everybody's minutes down and ask people to do more game to game, they have so much more in the way of options. He's looking at his hand of cards and he has like three or four different ways that he can try to attack the situation. That did not

used to be the case. And again, it's not about winning necessarily those minutes, but maybe losing the Yokichov minutes by one or two points per one hundred possessions instead of by ten to fifteen points. That could massively improve their chances both night tonight in the regular season and when they get to the playoffs. As for the defensive end of the floor, I thought last year was a good example of them straight up switching, like flipping the

switch right. It's a concept that's very dangerous. It's a concept that has burned veteran teams over the years, but it has worked a few times in NBA history, and it usually is teams that have won championships in the past. To be clear, the Nuggets did not lose because of their defense. They guarded Oklahoma City about as well as they possibly could have a combination of having some high end defensive personnel like Aaron Gordon and Christian Brown, they're

weaker defenders. Nicole Jokic and Jamal Murray both have very high IQs, which allows them to scale up in those situations just by being in the right spots as part of the game plan. And credit to David Adelman. I thought he did an excellent job of keeping Oklahoma City off balance by constantly mixing up coverages and using a lot of zone. But they were a brutal regular season defense. This year, I expect them to be closer to that

twelve to fifteen range. One because of depth. Like we just mentioned, more good players means less of a necessity to conserve energy night to night throughout the season because you can keep people's minutes down, you know you got enough good players to do it. And then two belief. I think this team's going to go into training camp feeling like they have the opportunity of a lifetime to hoist the trophy again this year. That should lead to more buy in throughout the season. I think this is

the best team in the league. I think Jokic is a substantially better player than Shake Gildas Alexander. I think this roster is tailor made to his strengths. I think if they can stay healthy, if they can get anything close to the Jamal Murray they had in twenty twenty three,

I think they're gonna win the trophy. They have their vulnerabilities, especially against the second tier teams in the West, like Minnesota has given issues because of their center rotation, the Lakers because of Luka Doncicz Luca can cause some problems for their pick and roll defense. But I still think they're better than both of those teams, and I think they match up really well with Oklahoma City, so they're

might pick to win the title this year. We'll get into the actual contender rankings the week after we finish our season previews. Today's show is brought to you by our new presenting sponsor, hard Rock Bet. We are still a month away from basketball tip off, but with hard Rock Bet, the action never stops. The WNBA Finals start this weekend. If you haven't placed your first bet, now is the perfect time. Bet five dollars and if it wins, you don't just get your payout, you also cash in

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win the title. But this isn't like a Denver with Oklahoma City way down here. The gap is very small to me. If anything, I'd say they're on the same tier. I just would pick Denver to beat Oklahoma City in a series quick off season recap, they're basically the same team, plus nikoloatopicch is coming back from an injury that caused

him to miss all of last year. I actually think Topics could end up having like a decent sized role on this team, because, as Indiana kind of exposed last year, they do have a little bit of a ball handling deficit, and I think they could use someone to help them run their offense. For stretches help with some advantage creation, especially when Shay is off the floor, so I wouldn't be surprised if he plays quite a bit this year. The story of the Thunder is going to be internal

improvement in this season. It's been an arms race in the Western Conference all summer. The Nuggets added a bunch of talent. We just covered that. The Lakers are getting a better version of Luca and a massive upgrade at center. The Rockets. Obviously they lose Fred van Vliet, but if they can pull off a trade for a guard, they'll be a top tier contender. The Clippers added a bunch of depth. We covered that the other day. The Warriors,

if they get Horford, will be better. We covered that the other day the MAVs will be a pain in the ass after being out of the equation last year. The Spurs will likely join the mix in the Thunder. Rightfully, for the record, they stood pat so if they're going to keep up, they need internal improvements. Last year's Thunder

would lose to this year's Nuggets in my opinion. I mean, hell, last year's Thunder damn near lost to last year's Nuggets, right, So what does that internal improvement look like for Oklahoma City to maintain the gap between them and the rest of the league as they get better around them. First

and foremost, Shay's game management. She had a remarkable regular season statistically, but his efficiency plummeted in the postseason, and I thought his inconsistent game management was a big part of how they had such an up and down postseason run. Some nights he'd come out and do a great job of setting up his teammates and looking for advantages, picking his spots as a score and keeping everybody in rhythm. And another Knights, he'd come out gunning, and he'd take

the team out of rhythm. The stats here, we're insane. When the Thunder won in the postseason, they had a one to twenty offensive rating. When they lost in the postseason, they had a one to ozh three offensive rating out of the sixteen playoff teams. If you took all their offensive ratings just in losses, that ranked eleventh out of the sixteen teams. In short, their offense was awesome when they won and legitimately terrible when they lost. Now two

Shay's credit. Every time the shit hit the fan and the Thunder found themselves in like a must win situation. I thought he managed those games extremely well and he got the job done. That's the beauty of everything that happened with the Thunder last year. In many ways, they showed the warts of their youth and won anyway. And

that's what's scary about the potential future. Outside of Game four of the finals, Game four of the Finals was the one time I thought Shay kind of had a bad floor game in a big spot, but even then, he came alive down the stretch in the final minutes, made the big plays, got the win that they needed. But this year, at all likelihood, the margin for air

will be smaller. The top six teams in the West are just better than they were last year, so Shay becoming a more consistent game manager would go a long way towards them helping avoid an upset. Ja Dubb's overall development Jada was incredible in this playoff run, and for that reason he ended up cracking my top twenty players in our player rankings this year, but he was inconsistent

as well as many young players are. Like when Jay Dubbs scored at least eighteen points, the Thunder went fourteen and two, when he failed to score eighteen points the thunder went too five. The biggest piece was mostly his three point shooting. He was five for thirty four from three in those seven games where he failed to get to eighteen points. He did really it seemed like right towards the end of the Nugget series it like clicked for him. You could tell he like realized that no

one can stop him from getting to the rim. It felt like one of the big aha moments for him in his career. He's just starting to realize that he's one of the most gifted basket attackers in the NBA. We went over some of the stats in our player rankings video that showed he's already one of the most gifted drivers of the basketball in the entire league. But if you can balance that out with the reliable three point shot, that's where he's going to become a very

dependable night to night player. And again, when I'm talking about this and I'm about to talk about chet in a second, I'm not trying to be super critical of these guys. I'm pointing this stuff out as a as a reason to get excited these guys. How many teams. You don't how any fans around the league are looking at their team and they're like, we kind of are what we are. We just have to hope we have

enough pieces. Like Oklahoma City can sit there and go like, I don't know how much better we're going to get this year, but these guys are going to be better. It's very possible that even just over the course of the season, like sometimes guys take leaps in big spots, like you could have Chet figure it out and it could all click in a big Western Conference finals series. That's a potential that this team has that many teams around the league don't have. With Chet, it's his offensive development.

I thought Chet was phenomenal on defense in the entire playoff run. His combination of rim protection and his ability to switch out onto guards was a huge part of how Oklahoma City reached the level they reached defensively on their way to get the trophy. But obviously on offense it was an adventure. Right. He had six twenty point games, but he had four single digit games, and similarly to Jay Dubb, it was tied to the team's success when

Chet scored at least thirteen points. The Thunder were thirteen and three. When he failed to score thirteen points, they were three and four. Obviously, a big part of that offensive rating we talked about in losses showed up in a variety of areas. He was forty six percent on layups in the playoff run. Obviously a player of his size, he just needs to get better at finishing around the

rim through contact. He took twenty six off the dribble jump shots and only made six of them, so he either needs to massively improve there or kind of trim that fan out of his game. We'll see, it'll probably be a little bit of both. He shot thirty two percent on catch and shoot jumpers, including thirty two percent when he was unguarded, so he's got to be able to knock down open shots. And again, these are not criticisms. You literally just won the title and Chet is twenty

three years old. He's going to get way better, and when he does, he's gonna be one of the best players in the league. Like I genuinely believe Chet has like Anthony Davis level two way potential. That's what he's capable of getting to. He's obviously years from that, but he has that capability and how far he gets in that direction this season is going to be a big part of whether or not they can stif arm the

rest of the Western Conference. And again, like whether it's Chet or it's Jadub, or it's Shay or it's guys like case on Wallace, or whether or not Nicoleo Topitch ends up succeeding in a decent sized role, that will be the difference in whether or not that can stiff arm these teams or not. The West is an absolute beast. The top six teams are insane. I found the stat the other day and I found it very interesting. The big reason Oklahoma City got to sixty eight wins wasn't

that they outclassed the West. They only won three more games against the West than the Los Angeles Lakers did. Led by old man Lebron James, they went twenty nine to one against the East. That game where Oklahoma City barely lost in Cleveland, that was their only loss against an Eastern Conference team all season. This is not an unbeatable team. As I said, I have them right there with Denver as the best team in the league. And again, all of those teams below, whether it be Houston or

the Lakers or Minnesota. Minnesota Anthony Edwards got his ass kicked last year. You don't think he's coming back with a little bit more of an attitude, a little bit more of an effort to improve in the areas where Shay kicked his ass. We're going to talk about it in a second. The Clippers are a threat, Golden State's a threat. These are all upset threats, right, and then Denver's right there with them. This is not going to be easy for Oklahoma City to repeat. They're going to

need that internal improvement. But to make it very clear, if they do get substantial leaps out of Shae, out of j Dub, out of Chet, they'll kick everyone's ass and they'll hoist the trophy again as the first repeat champion since twenty eighteen. Moving on to the Minnesota Timberwolves, relatively on event for off season. They lost to kill. Alexander Walker is really good player that I like, but it's a big loss for sure, Luca Garza and Josh Minatt.

They added Joan Bearinger in the draft is like a super raw French big and some end of the bench guys. I think it's more likely that we just see more of like Terrence Shannon and Jalen Clark rather than a guy like Johnny Juzeng, for example. But we'll see the Timberwolves painful. As a Lakers fan reminded me last year that they are one of the best playoff teams in the NBA, regardless of how they look on any given

night in the regular season. They're just sodamn big and sodamn strong and sodamn physical and athletic and sodamn competitive that they can just physically overwhelm you over the course of a series. But in each of the last two years, they've run into a combination of three things, an elite defense that can protect the rim, and a superior superstar on the other team that could pick apart Minnesota's defense, and in both cases, their impressive playoff runs came to

screeching halts. Now, on the defensive end, there's only so much you can do with the supreme superstars of the NBA. But I do think it's worth talking about the game planning, like I do think Chris Finch was foolish for having Jaden McDaniels pick up Shakeous Alexander that far away from the basket. That was foolish, but I don't necessarily think it changes the outcome of the series. It's just like

one of the things it's worth mentioning for. As good as Minnesota's defense was, both Oklahoma City and Dallas lit them up, so game planning obviously is going to be part of it as well, getting the most out of your defensive talent. But the biggest issue was their offense. Minnesota logged a one oh four offensive rating in the four losses versus Oklahoma City. That's just not going to get it done. It starts with Ant. He's got to

become a more resilient, less variance dependent score. I talked a ton after the Western Conference Finals about how Shay badly outclassed Ant as a mid to short range score, and I thought it was literally the difference in the series. Shay outscored Ant one fifty seven to one fifteen in that series. If your superstar gets outplayed to that extent,

it's almost impossible to overcome. Now, what I said at the time was that Ant needed to build out reliable short range scoring, the ability to use his size and strength to get closer to the against the elite perimeter defenders of the league. But also to have a shot that he can shoot over the rim protector so he doesn't have to contend with those guys at the rim. So I was relieved when Shaan Sharani had reported last week that Ant had spent all summer working on his

post game and his mid to short range scoring. That means Ant is paying attention to what happened. It means he went back and watched the tape. He went back and looked at the numbers, and he saw where the area of opportunity was. We shared these stats during our player ranking series, but I want to share him again. Ant posted up twenty seven times in the twenty twenty four playoff run and got one point one nine points per possession. That's awesome. He posted up just seven times

total in the twenty twenty five playoff run. It was a thing that really worked for him and he like straight up abandoned it. There's a lot of talk about Ant's playmaking, and it's certainly something you want to see him to continue to incrementally improve on over the years. But he's averaging six assists per game on a two to one assist to turnover ratio over the last two

playoff runs like he's getting better. He'll continue to get better there, but his supreme gift is scoring the basketball, and right now he's struggling to do that against the absolute best defenses in the league. That's where he needs to become more reliable. That heavy shift towards three point shooting and helped him in true shooting percentage in the

regular season. It helped him hit higher scoring volume. I'm not saying he needs to stop taking threes, but he was six for thirty one from three again in the four losses against Oklahoma City. Because that's something that can happen when you rely on heavy, high volume three point shooting. Building out a reliable short range scoring game. It will help him go bucket for bucket with guys like Shay

and the best greats in the NBA. I thought the Julius Randall experiment went about as well as it could have gone given the clunky fit. He shot better from three than you would think, like he was forty percent over his last twenty one regular season games and then thirty nine percent in the playoffs. He also provided like a face up and low post creation element to kind of get the defense into rotation. I hated his game two. In Game four against Oklahoma City, it felt like he

was like openly pouting on the floor. But I'm trying to cut him at least a little bit of slack, just simply because Oklahoma City embarrassed a lot of guys with their defense in that playoff run. In general, I think he fits the identity of the team really well. He's a big, physical ass kicking forward that can really

leverage that physicality in the postseason. He had twenty seven offensive rebounds in the playoffs, and he was a pretty efficient twenty four points per game before the Minnesota series. I think that that trade and that experiment worked out about as well as it possibly could have given the way it looked at the time of the trade. Those two guys ultimately control this team's destiny. The defense is

the defense. They definitely need more from Chris Finch and game planning, like we talked about to prevent your defense from just completely falling apart against Luca and SGA. More mixing up of coverages, including some zone, more willingness to adjust when things aren't working. I don't think the Nikil Alexander Walker loss greatly affects their fortunes like he wasn't in their best five. He's very good. I like Alexander Walker. I wanted him on the Lakers this summer, but like

he's not in their best five. And I do think in the regular season, guys like Terrence Shannon and Jalen Clark can be productive enough to prevent much of a drop off there, and one of those guys, one of those two dudes will end up popping just enough to be able to give you a shift or two per game when they get to the postseason. They also match up really well with Denver, which I think is a strong foundation for a case that Minnesota could win the conference.

They just need to be able to score the ball when they face an elite defense that can protect the rim. So essentially, what I'm saying is they've got to be able to handle Oklahoma City if they can get there, and that's going to depend on Julius Randall avoiding those disaster games than the Edwards becoming a better and more reliable score hopefully built around the idea of short to mid range scoring as well as the incremental improvements as

a playmaker. The pathways there for Minnesota, like it's easy to see Minnesota gets on the opposite side of the bracket from Oklahoma City and Denver, and Denver upsets Oklahoma City. You get Minnesota Denver in the conference finals, repeat of what happened two years ago. All of a sudden, you're in the finals and you're probably favored when you get there,

but again that's not guaranteed. There's a chance. There's a good chance you run into Oklahoma City somewhere along the way, especially if they end up with the one and two seed. So at that point you're going to have to solve that puzzle when you get there. Right, We're going to go more quickly through these last two Portland Trailblazers off

season recap. They lost dere And and Andrey Simons. They added Drew Holliday and Damian Lillard, who's going to miss all of the season, and Young Hansen, who was their first round pick at number sixteen. Kind of an interesting pick. Most draft boards graded him as a second rounder. My guy Sam Vessini, who is the person I trust the most with the draft, he had him at forty eight. The Blazers also had just drafted Donovan Klingen, so I guess they're looking at this as like a center by

committee thing. I was looking at some quotes and apparently they're looking at as like Donovan Klingon is your big, physical ass kicking center, and then Yang Hansen is basically like your finesse you know, offensive skill oriented center. The Blazers have some really interesting young talent. Shade and Sharp had a bunch of really big scoring games down the stretch of the season. Although that was a lot of like high usage chucking. Denny Avdya really popped at the

end of the year. In his final thirteen games. This is crazy. Denny Avdia averaged twenty seven points, eleven rebounds, and six assists, and he won his minutes. And he did it on fifty two percent from the field, forty six percent from three, and eighty two percent from the line. And the big thing is, like, again, you see a lot of noise at the end of the year, especially with teams that don't really have anything to play for.

They put the ball in the hands of a bunch of random do dudes, and sometimes they can put up numbers like I like Shaden Sharp, but I don't expect Shadon Sharp to be a guy that's gonna average twenty six points a game like he did down the stretch of the season. Right Like to me, like the major on ball stuff isn't really coming forward for me as something that I think he's ready for just yet. But like the Denny Ovdyus stuff, I view that as real.

You know, maybe not to the extent is of him like averaging twenty seven points per game for a whole season, but especially with the Scoot Henderson injury, who apparently tore his hamstring the other day. I wouldn't be surprised if they start with Denny as like their primary shot creators start the year. And I wouldn't be surprised if we're twenty games into the season and Denny's averaging like twenty five points, ten rebounds, five assists on sixty percent through shooting.

He's just he's a really gifted offensive player. He shot pull up threes insanely well. He's got forty one percent on seventy pull up threes with Portland. He showed that in ball screens when guys would go under. He showed it in ISO out of dribble combinations on like step backs and things like that. He's got like real downhill burst you'll see it in ISOs where he'll just catch and he'll get a big on a switch and he'll just hit the gas going to the right and he'll

dust somebody off the dribble. He'll in a ball screen if the BIG's not up at the level, he'll get downhill into the lane, driving clothes out, so he'll hit a really hard like left handed or like a jab step to the left and then drive to the right where he gets really good first step quickness. He's got some bullyball to his game where he'll just power through guys. He'll drop that right shoulder and just go through guys

all the way to the basket. He's got like really nice change of pace on his drives, like in ball screens, he'll put the defender in jail and trap him on the backside and hit a little floater or like a step through something like that. He'll like burst downhill and

then slow way down with slow down steps. His bigs jump around him, and then he'll find a little angle he'll euro or he'll slide through some weird gap where it'll look like he's driving towards the left and then somehow finish on the right as he swalloms through the lane like it's honestly a little Luca Lights. Sometimes he's he's got pump fakes and like up and unders and step throughs where he'll get to little short floaters and

short jump shots. Honestly, I think it's a really impressive move from this Portland front office to find an underappreciated talent in this league. And to be clear, I wasn't watching the Wizards a ton back then. I wasn't aware of this upside myself. But he has my attention now

and I think he's really really good. As I was digging into the Portland tape this morning, you know, you're gonna see a lot of noise, like we talked about, but in that noise, you're gonna see things that you think are real, And Denny Avdia being like potentially a legitimate like shot creator in this league is something that I think is real and I'm really really excited to

watch him this year. Tamani Kamara and Drew Holliday will make a formidable pairing of defensive weapons, and they have a strong defensive center rotation with Donovan Klingen and Rob Williams. They don't have their clear foundational superstar yet and I'm not sure if Scoot hender will ever be that, but

they do have some really strong foundational pieces. I think the main goals for this season are find out if Denny is good enough to be a championship number two, give him the ball a ton, and then see what the upside is trending towards with guys like Scoot Henderson, if he can be healthy and shade and sharp right. If they're not, then it's time for you to start planning how to get that foundational superstar again. The thought process is, you need a number one, you need a

number two, and you need complimentary role players. And you don't know what complimentary role players you need until you know what your number one and your number two are. And I think getting Denny and like seeing that upside and we'll see. It's got to you know, it's one thing to do it for twenty games or whatever. At the end of the season, you got to you gotta figure out how to do it. Over the course of

a season. There's gonna be attempts to figure him out in scouting, and teams will figure out ways to guard him better than they did. There was a lot of like going underpicks on Denny. There are certain teams that chase him over, Like I watched the game with the Knicks where they chased him over the entire game, and that's where he showed a lot of that like putting

the defender in jail type of stuff. But then there are other games where dudes are dying on picks and it's like, yeah, if you're going to hit pull up threes at forty percent, they're gonna start chasing you over the top. Right, We're going to see the league try to figure Denny out and then we will find out if Denny is worth building around as that like secondary star on a real team with real chances. But Portland's going to be a really fun league pass team this year.

I wouldn't be surprised if they got up around thirty to thirty five wins. But we will see. Lastly, today the Utah Jazz. They lost Jordan Clarkson, John Collins, Colin Sexton, Johnny Juzang, Jaden Springer, and they added Mobamba, a bunch of vets that they'll probably trade or buy out at some point, like Kyle Anderson. Kevin loved George's Kniang and

use Nurkic. A couple of really interesting draft picks, like Ace Bailey out of Rutgers, who's the He's like a tough shot maker that can't make tough shots yet and a lot of unrealized defensive upside, so, in other words, like a big upside pick. So well if he can reach that upside. And then Walter Clayton Junior is the guard out of Florida who made a name for himself in the NCAA Tournament in a deep run. I don't

have a ton to say about the Jazz. They don't feel like they've made any progress towards their big picture plans. They clearly don't have their franchise superstar yet. I mean, Ace Bailey has that upside, I suppose, but that's a long shot. It's certainly like a half decade away. And I like Lori Markinen is a potential number two for

the right superstar. We're going to talk about him in the context of the Detroit Pistons in the video coming up on Monday, but he's twenty eight years old now, so I'm not sure how he fits Utah's timeline unless you have a plan to bring in a superstar that's older. Right. I continue to see reports coming out of Utah that they have no intention of trading him, which makes no

sense to me. Like, I get that he's a great guy and a great player, and you like having him in the organization, but he's a great vehicle with which to give your team more opportunities to find the foundational superstar, which you don't have yet. There's no young player on this roster below the age of twenty five that has real big picture upside other than Ace Bailey, who you just brought in and we've never seen play in the

pros and in college was a mess. Right, So I guess this year there's some interesting stuff, right, Like we'll see if the Jazz trade Lori to a contender. We'll see if Ace Bailey pops it all. But I'm kind of unfamiliar with where Utah is trying to get at this point in time. All Right, guys, It's all I have for today is always to sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. We'll be back

on Monday, going back out yeast. I believe the Central Division, if I remember correctly, so I will see you guys. Then