The drive blowing along on a Wednesday afternoon. Happy up day two. Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving to you the day early. Plenty of sports action to come over the holiday and the weekend that follows. A bunch of hoops included. They're in some NBA Cup action. Continues on to discuss that, of course, the very interesting Utah Jazz moment and more. Howard Beck, the ringer for the NBA Daily Assist today brought to you by bout Time pub Howard, how are you my friend?
Are you love? Love coming into the dulctone of Big Hit Todden the Monsters.
There you go. That was just for you. It's just for you.
Love it great.
Appreciate you for joining us each and every week, of course, as you do here on the station. Happy early Thanksgiving to you. What's the uh? What's the holiday look like for the Backs?
Well, we have a long standing tradition that's more like friendsgiving. Because of the fact that we live in New York, our families are in California. So we will be heading up to uh Westchester County, north of the city tomorrow to hang with some good friends of ours who've been kind enough to take us in over the years. For
over a decade now. But first, of course, first porter, despite the fact that it is going to be raining overnight and well through the morning, we are going to trudge out to uh Midtown Manhattan and watch the parade. Is something we've been doing since our daughter was very small. Again tradition with that same family who's taking us in for Thanksgiving. And yeah, we're just stubborn and weird and we're going to go sit there and get soaked and watch balloons go by.
I love that. I love that. It's like such a I don't want to say stereotypical, like New York Thanksgiving. It's just like what you actually think of Thanksgiving, the Macy's Parade, you know, the the New York the friends at the at the parade. I'm just going to kill a turkey with a bow and then cook it. That's that's our Thanksgiving.
I mean, that's exactly how I thought things went in Utah. So I appreciate you confirming it's everybody's just yeah, yeah, that's well, good happy hunting, good luck. I hope I hope you can. Hope you can track down the cranberry sauce too. Those are tricky though they're very evasive, as I understand that the cans of cranberry sauce, you've got to really shoot very accurate.
The tags are hard to acquire as well, so we'll make sure we get all the fix. And speaking of that, howurd what is the most underrated Thanksgiving dish?
Oh Man, that's a good question, you know, this is it's funny because I feel like in the era of social media where we can like just throw up poles and lists and takes on everything Thanksgiving, like everything's got to be ranked. Everybody's got to trash each other's like favorite thing, like what you you like the marshmallow on Yam's thing? You're crazy, like you know, you know, like
there's not a single Thanksgiving dish. It's somebody Like I didn't even realize until the last several years that there's a whole contingent of people out there who think that turkey is overrated, Like now, yeah, well, like what and that Thanksgiving meals are overrated and the whole thing. I don't know. There's just too much social media, too many takes too much time. I don't I don't, I don't know what. I don't know what the underrated one is? All I know is I love all of it.
You're you're a fan of the balance Thanksgiving roster.
I just I just want to just just absolutely gorge myself. Yes, it's all good. The only question is like how to to to dole it out on that first time through when you're putting on the plate because it's just not enough room. You know you're gonna go back for a second round, and I don't want to have too much tur at the expense of you know, the sweet potatoes or the homemade rabbioli that one of the people who comes to this event every year makes. It's it's tricky.
I gotta I gotta save room for all of it. And of course I mean huge, huge, huge pumpkin pie guy another thing that people have weirdly decided to go contrarian on in recent years. But I love pumpkin pie. I could eat it year round, And yeah, I got to save room for that.
See I liked it.
After all the years, you still haven't got it figured out. You know, you're trying out new things every year. On that first time through, I find myself in the same thing one year over. Did it on the rolls the first time through, second time, you know, maybe too much turkey, you know, and then you you try.
To paste it and space it.
But as a decision maker on a very important day, you know, you've had to try and use different strategies.
It's all a part of how blessed we really are.
I love a good role, but I'm thinking, actually the strategy should be avoid the bread. Bread is filling, even if even if it's the greatest freaking dinner role, like, yeah, you're just gonna you don't want to fill up on rolls. There's so much other good food.
And this is true. You you have to be, you know, vigilant with the bread and the stuffing because while it is good. While a good a well cooked role is phenomenal, and the stuffing is good, it's so it'll it'll fill up your stomach immediately. So you gotta either save it for last or just get a small serving go from there. All right, Howard NBA cup action last night?
Uh?
What had what had your uh? What had your attention? Last night? The Lakers and the Suns go to battle. Obviously, Phoenix gets back their stars and they looked good in doing so. Victor wembin Yama showed well against the Jazz in there when they're the Rockets move on as the winners in their group after beating the Timberwolves. Of course, a good matchup between Milwaukee and Miami, and then the
Bulls get to win over Washington. What's what's had your intenna's going with the NBA Cup and and what do you make of the results from last night?
As you may recall, I don't care about the Cup at all, So I'm just watching these games like I'm watching.
Any of.
It is I mean it literally is. We can pretend that there's something more at stake, and we can project and say, look how hard they're playing. Teams play hard in November. Team like they do? They just do. I know people think they don't. Some other Cup has made them play harder.
It hasn't.
This is like very much projection by people. There are some great games I watched. I was most at tuned to Houston and Minnesota last night, and the Rockets are just super impressive, and I think, you know, the Timberwolves are still kind of figuring things out right, Like it's Evencenzo and and Randall, the two guys they got for Karl Anthony Towns, Like they're still trying to figure out the chemistry there and fit and the rhythm and all those things. But they had a nice, nice game last
night from from the rookie Dillingham. Uh so they you know, Mike Conley's out, they got to figure out to do a point guard and so so bling him. I thought showed well. But but the Rockets in that game ire just just super impressive. Like they are. They're athletic, they're long, they're energetic, they are just playing their butts off. It feels like every second of the game. And they're they're interesting right like they're I think they're third in the
West right now. Young team that made a bit of a leap last season, but it wasn't clear if that was just one of those kind of late season surges. Is this for real? The West really good? They don't have one guy to just hang their hat on. Like Jillen Green is really good, but is he gonna be a perennial All Star? I mean I don't think so.
Jabari Smith's really good, but a perennial All Star shng goun Like they're all really good, But I don't know that you've got a top ten to top fifteen talent there among any of those guys not guaranteed, but the collection of them all. Yeah, and Amen Thompson and Dylan Brooks and of course Fred van Vliet. Like it just works. It's a it's a team that really hard and has a lot of youth and athleticism. Emaio Duck has done a great job there. I was, I don't want to
say skeptical. I was. I was not completely sold in the Rockets coming into the season, and right now it's hard not to be. Even if they don't have a traditional, you know, cast of stars that you don't normally see on a contender. And I'm not saying they are a contender, but they're legitimately really good because of the collection of talent they have.
Yeah, I mean we're one month into this thing. Their togetherness and their defensive culture is real. I love what they've built all together, and like you said, they play really, really hard. As you look at this first month, I mean, there's so many things that could change between now and the end of the year, But thirty days into this thing, in your eyes, what is.
Real to you?
Yeah, I mean that's a great question. We're almost at the twenty game mark. We're getting close. And that's usually you know, teams always say, you know, twenty twenty five games, maybe thirty in that's when things really have started to settle into reality. And look, there's some surprises, right. I knew the Cavs would be good, maybe top four in the East, but seventeen and one, like, nobody saw that coming. The Warriors have, I think, exceeded most people's expectations, even mine,
and I was always a Warrior's believer. They've been phenomenal. The Rockets we just mentioned, I'm still waiting. I'm like, it's kind of a waiting seem mode on a couple of teams. Like the Bucks started out terribly. They've rebounded recently. Giannis has now hurt, but the Bucks seem to have finally kind of gotten some sense of who they are now and some stability. The Pacers are kind of underachieving still.
The Nets are overachieving, which is just weird because the Nets, this was a season set up for them to tank. They orchestrated a move to get their their own draft pick back from Houston on the belief that they would be terrible, and instead Jordi Fernandez, their rookie head coach has been incredible, and they're eight and ten, which is, you know, not great record, but it's far better than
they were supposed to be. And they're blowing the tank, they're blowing the Cooper X sweepstakes, and of course we're waiting for the Sixers to get healthy. And I remain I don't want to say a Sixers optimist, but I'm not going to bury them until we get to a point where either the record is so bad you know in another month that you just you know that there is no digging out of it, or if they're bad
when all their stars are actually healthy. Like the one thing we haven't seen with the Sixers yet is what happens when Tyree Spect see Paul George and Joel Embid are actually all playing at the same time. Because that was the whole point of the exercise of getting Paul George. They're very top heavy, and so as a result, when you don't have multiple of those guys, you're just not
going to be very good. And so the Sixers are three and thirteen and they look terrible and everyone's ready to bury them, and there's been some drama as well, but I still think that's a team that if those three guys are healthy and playing the way we know they can next spring. I don't think they're a team anybody in the East is going to want to have to deal with. I think that they still have potential
to make a deep playoff run. I think the skepticism from everybody else comes with the yeah, but they're never going to get healthy. Well, all right, we can't see the future. I get why people believe that, but I think we need to wait and see if there's a healthier outcome here somewhere.
Let's see it in a little bit on this dynamic a little bit more. Howard you mentioned, of course we're twenty ish games in for a lot of teams. That's way too few games to get a good feel of the hierarchy of the league. But it does appear we have a little clear mark of delineation in the East where Cleveland and Boston are kind of way out front of just about everyone else in the conference. Is there anyone that belongs in Tier one in the East with
Boston and Cleveland? And then on the second part of that question, you look at the West, there are ten teams within three and a half games of each other, from one to ten. You can't really see a clear mark of delineation. There is there a Tier one in the West, and who may belong on.
That in the East. If you had asked me before the season, I would have said Boston's in their own tier, and then there's a fight to decide who gets to be their biggest threat, and whether that was going to be New York, Milwaukee, Philly that would have been my list, and then Cleveland hovering in there. I wasn't entirely sold on the Cavaliers again, a first year head coach, not
a rookie head coach. Kenny Ackintson was head coach in Brooklyn before, but Kenny in his first year with Cleveland doing an incredible job there, so I didn't see that coming. I still think that the Celtics, especially now the poor zingis is back. Yes, by record, they're the second best team in the East, but let's be real, they're the defending champs. They've got everybody back and Peyton Pritchard's having an incredible season so far too, so their depths looks
even better. The Celtics are still the favorites. I think they're still still Tier one, and I think Cleveland is the lead of Tier two in the East, and I think the are still figuring things out with towns and you know, a you know a little bit of reshuffling in their roster. They picked up Michel Bridges in the
off season. But I think some combination of Cleveland, New York, maybe Milwaukee and again maybe Philly those that's the group that's battling it out to see who gets to be in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Celtics and see if they can take them down. But I think the Celtics are still clearly the best team in the East, regardless the West. I mean, I think everybody coming in the season, it was kind of the consensus out there
that the Thunder was going to be their year. And you know, they've got a one game lead on the Warriors and Rockets as we speak. They've had some injury issues of their own. Obviously, chet Holmbrin's still out for a while, Hartenstein, who was one of their big off season pickups, was out for a while. The combination of
talent and depth, it's probably still Oklahoma. And then again we're now saying, but who's that you know, who's in the mix to challenge them, and that part's really hard to figure out, Like, are the Rockets, as we just discussed, are they for real? Are they? Are they that level of real? Are there? Are they ready with all that youth? I think the Warriors have a shot, but it still feels like a stretch up with the Warriors in, you know, in a finals conversation, given you know, they don't have
a lot of elite talent. After Steph, the Sons needed to get healthy. They finally got guys back, like they're in this conversation somewhere. The Grizzlies, you know, always having health issues, but have a have an argument to make here. And then the Mavericks and Nuggets you know, are sitting down there, you know, surprisingly low in the standings. The
Mavericks obviously had injury issues with Luca being out. The Nuggets just can't quite refine the magic they show it at times, and then they you know, you know, get crushed the other night by New York. But I'm not ruling out the Nuggets in this conversation, and I'm not ruling out the Mavericks in this conversation. I think the only teams that I don't think I don't think either of the LA teams are really in this Dell fate. Eventually,
I think Minnesota will still be heard from. I think the Timberwolves will rise again in the West and be part of this conversation. I don't know what to make of the Sacramento Kings right now, but they should not be eight and ten.
Yeah, I thought they'd be better than they have been. And I joke, I made the joke yesterday. Well, Jay Crowder has been picked up. It's all fixed now. But by no means did I have them, you know, hosting the Western Conference finals. But they were big on trying to take a step forward, and quite frankly, they've taken a step back, and it looks bizarre on some of
the losses they've had. They've been lifeless at times like that jumps out to me with a team that kind of came in saying, all right, let's take a real step forward. To me, the record is one thing. It's the lifeless level of performance that jumps out at me. Are there other teams out there just with the quality of play that has surprised you in this early going.
Of the year. A little disappointed in the Indiana Paters. Yeah, I've always been a big tyrese Albert and guy. And he's just not depending on the night, because I've seen
this come and go. But you know, he's a player who, on his talent alone and on some of his just some of his accomplishments over the last couple of years, you could say, Okay, Perennial All Star guy, who's gonna be in the All NBA conversation, But he's you those guys generally play with a certain amount of swagger and a kind of consistent assertiveness, and especially when you're the guy with the ball in your hands most of the time, you really need to always be aggressive in an attack mode.
And I'm not saying he's been passive. He just some of the swagger that I have loved about him, where he just has a confidence out there and he's trash talking and he's you know, you know, just just enjoying himself. Like he's fun to watch when he's at his best. I feel like some of that spark has been dimmer this season or just inconsistent. But the Pages were a team that I that I thought would be a little bit more of a presence in the East, and right
now it feels like they're they're just missing something. I'm not sure what what you know, what you could put a finger on, but it feels like they're just a little bit off.
Yah, are most looking forward to maybe uh storylines that you're you're most dialed into heading into uh little Thanksgiving break for us here on on on the radio side, we got four days off before we're back on a on a Monday. Give us, uh, give us the lowdown on what we may see in the time in between.
I have not looked ahead at the games. Obviously. The whole NBA is off tomorrow, happily, so we get cord ourselves. I don't even know what that is. I will not be watching football. I'll watch a parade and then I will gorge myself. But no, I mean, you know, look, the NBA picks back up on Friday. There's nothing. I don't know if there's any one thing this weekend. I'm more just kind of curious, you know, over the next few weeks how things settle in. Because December fifteenth is
the unofficial startup trade season. It never really actually happens that way, but that's when everybody signed over the summer. Most guys signed over the summer anyway can be traded. And we are getting close to the point as we opened the discussion with of teams having to decide, all right, are we actually this good? Cool? Are we actually this bad? What are we doing now? Like the Nets, I'm not saying this facetiously, the Nets cannot afford to be this good.
They're gonna have to start trading some of these pieces because they need to be They need to be worse. They've got their pick and they and they need a franchise star and they don't have that on their roster now. And so it's nice to have a bunch of guys overachieving and winning games unexpectedly. It's fun for the fans, but they need to probably trade like a shrewder and Dorian Finney Smith. So I'm more curious to see if
teams get some clarity in the next few weeks. The New Orleans Pelicans were supposed to be at you know, one of the better teams in the West, but injuries have just wrecked them, and you know, they've got to I think despite all of that, they've got a lot of interesting talent there and you know, are they going to decide maybe this is a year to take a step back, given that things are already kind of out
of control and they're four and fourteen. It's it's it's decisions like that that I think you know are going to come into focus over the next couple of weeks. And so, yeah, nothing this weekend, but over the next few weeks, I think we start to get a clear picture of what the actual pecking order is.
Well, that's kind of what we come to you for anyway, right, not necessarily asking you to break down the Lakers OKC matchup in specificity. We're we're talking big picture NBA and the storylines as the season goes along with one. Howard Beck of the Ringer at Howard Beck makes it easy on all the social media as you can just search for him there and always appreciate his time. Howard, Happy holiday, Happy Thanksgiving, and we'll catch up with you. Actually not
next week. It depends on your schedule. I know you're you're busy for the next little while, so we'll catch up with you whenever we can over the next three or four weeks.
Sounds great. Happy holidays, guys, have a good one. We'll talk soon, all right, man.
Enjoy the parade and the rain right yeah. Enjoy the football, Howard Beck of The Ringer, Brought to you by our friends at bout Time Pub