Utah Jazz. Welcome in an old friend tomorrow.
Quinn Snyder in the Atlanta Hawks in town to take on the Jazz. The red Hot Utah Jazz. Don't mess with Utah. I'm talking to you, Florida. Two straight wins for the Jazz, little road trip action and they sat like half their team and still beat the Magic. A lot of interesting NBA storylines as we have turned our calendar to the new year, and it's time for NBA Daily assists. Whether buddy Tom Haverstrow on a Monday afternoon, tom Happy Monday.
How are we doing.
I'm doing great, man, can't complain.
All right, let's see, we'll do just a tiny bit of jazz here, because you know, it's just it's been interesting ever since they hired Will will Hardy to watch him coach up a group that clearly does not have as much talent as the team on the other side to relative competitiveness.
Now we know the deal.
We don't need to relitigate the past as far as the past couple of years where they've had good records to start and then they've broken everything down.
But they played a good Orlando Magic team.
Orlando was without pieces as well, and the Miami team that certainly is dysfunctional, and they sat a grip of players against the Magic, including marketing, including George, including others. And it's Bryce Sensiba who has a couple of career nights in Orlando and Miami as the Jazz won a
couple of games. I mean, again, is it really something that's all that urgent to break into and dig into topically as far as what it could mean when they're actually good again, Probably not, but in a vacuum, a couple of impressive games, I think from a coaching standpoint from Will Hardy.
Yeah, cent of Bosmen on fire. What a great find. I didn't see him at Ohio State too much, but a late first round pick that coming in to this game or this week, had some good nights but nothing great like this. And now he's averaging nineteen points and six rebounds per thirty six minutes while firing up about nine to three pointers every thirty six minutes. Had a really nice clip. The second year guy is really impressing
as of late and taking advantage of his opportunities. You know, like this is a next man up mentality for every team in the NBA, including the Orlando Magic that I've dealt with really tough injuries from to Jalen Suggs and Franz Wagner and Palo Bankero, but they have a really tough time scoring even with those guys. But to see the Utah Jazz win the game that they were supposed to with Orlando having so many of those guys out
while being also shorthanded, that is really impressive. And they're playing the right way, They're getting to the free throw line, they take the right shots from the floor, and Will Hardy's really coaching them up and you love to see it. You know, it's it's a drag. The NBA season is eighty two games, and you're hoping that they can kind of turn you know, some fans into you know, coming
into the games and seeing some wins. And this this East Coast swing, I think a lot more fans are more willing to go and watch the Utah Jazz now that they've got some wins under their belt.
And I do think there's something there as far as what the fan base here just wants to see. There's nobody here that's under any premonition that this team has built to win now. And I don't think there's anybody here that believes this team is even a year or maybe two away.
But you know the deal.
I mean, you're covering the Blazers now, You've covered the league forever. If you're an organization and a team that's in the middle of a very blatant pivot and a very blatant rebuild, you have to at least give your fans something tangible to hold on to. And if you don't have the talent to keep up with the best teams in the league, things like effort and things like you know, showing up and playing hard and things like, you know, exhibiting the right habits.
And Will talks about this all the time.
I mean, I do like listening to his postgame pressers because Will's one of those coaches. You know, he's pithy, and he's sarcastic the way Popovich is, and he's a little dismissive and stuff like that. But when he talks about basket ball, when he talks about his team, he will give you some things here or there. And this is still the very early stage of what they believe
is a very long game. So from the fan base perspective, I think all you're looking for at this point, certainly incremental steps from the young players, but also a team that's willing to show up and play hard even if they're up against it with the talent on the other side.
Yeah, and you look at the way that they won and just put a beat down on Miami, a team that was hungry to show that they didn't need Jimmy Butler. You know, this is a team that has a lot of pride. Eric Spolstra is the best coach in the NBA. Pat Riley just makes a huge statement against Jimmy Butler, and it seems like the Miami Heat would respond in a way that would show solidarity with the front office and the coach and be like, Yeah, we're going to come out and play really hard and prove that we
don't need Jimmy Butler to win. And then he Jazz came in and beat the pants off of him and sense A bog with thirty four off the bench and me, the thing that jumps off the page to me is the offensive rebound rate. Build the Miami Heat on the boards,
kill them. Thirty seven percent offensive rebound rate against the Miami Heat where they were getting second chance opportunities, making sure that, yeah, if we're gonna miss a shot, we're gonna go and make sure we get those second chance opportunities. Because that for me, like when you have a team that has Walker Kessler on it, you have to own the boards. And then the next game they do the
same thing. They out rebound them Orlando knowing that, like there's gonna be a lot of misshots in this game, Orlando is a ute right offense and making sure they clean up the boards. And they did that. They won the offensive rebound battle offensive rebound rate in both games. And that's what you got to do with Walker Kessler. And I think when you do that, you know they say that rebounding is all that effort and all this stuff.
It's probably a cliche at this point, but you have to play to the strengths of your team, and when you have Walker Kessler on the squad, you have to win the rebound battle. And they have been doing that. They've owned the rebounds, they've owned the free throw battle, and it's just a matter of trying to figure out a way that they can limit these turnovers because if they can do that, they're last in both offensive turnover rate,
and defensive turnover rate. It's the worst turnover margin in the NBA in terms of how often they turn the ball over compared to their opponent. Once they clean up that, they'll be in good shape. But this is what happens when they don't have a pure point guard on the roster. You're gonna get a lot of really careless coughing up the ball. And as long as they keep that and check, they're going to be competitive on most nights.
One more jazz thing, then we'll move on and we'll just revisit whenever there's a report out there. Because I truly, and I've been in this space now for maybe a month or so, I feel like Walker has played his way into the nucleus of what this team not only is now but moving forward into the future. Because he's still so young and so many of his habits have improved this year.
The rim protection stuff is real.
He's improved, He's got a way to go offensively as a screen setter, but he's been better. He to me, has been the number one success story of this team when it pertains to what we've been trying to learn. We know who marketing is that we've already talked about Will They're head coach, who I think is dynamite, But there are these reports that his name continues to surface. Now, the modern day and age of reporting is tough to ascertain what's.
Real and what's not.
But I'm starting to believe, you know, and we've talked about this, nobody is completely unmovable. But I don't know that Danny and Justin are interested in taking phone calls on Walker Kesler right now.
I guess at my point, yeah, it's going to take a.
Couple first round picks for them to get rid of him. I think that's the asking price is going to be pretty seep, especially with the really strong play of late. As we draw closer to the February sixth trade deadline, I suspect that Walker Kestler will get at least a big price of a first round pick. And the question is whether the Utah Jazz decide that that's enough for this twenty three year old shot blocking you know, defensive anchor.
If they can do that, we maintain keep him in the fold and continue to build around him and market in. You know, a lot of teams are gonna want a guy like Walker Kessler. We're talking about one of the top block rates in the NBA, the top offensive rebound rate in the NBA, and he is a dunking machine. So you get a rim runner, screen setter, a guy who knows his role and is going to protect the rim.
And if they get some perimeter defenders in Utah. They don't have them right now, but if they get some perimeter defenders in Utah both at the point of attack and also guys you can really create turnovers and chaos on the perimeter and get in the passing lanes, You're you've got a pretty good nucleus right there. So I think, you know John Collins, he's been out for quite a bit. He's out for personal reasons right now, but I suspect that he will be a hot at the trade deadline
as well. I think he's played himself into a borderline first round pick, probably a protected lottery protected first round pick potentially for John Collins, who's having a career year in the shooting percentages and still productive. You know, a really good scorer and a guy who's shown that he can move the ball well and he's more capable than I think just as a dunker that you know, John the Baptist is nickname coming out of college. We know that he's a big time highlight reel dunker, but he's
more than that. And both of these guys, Walker Kessler and John Collins, have really played themselves into being hot commodities in the trade market. And that's a tough thing. Is the more the better they play, the more you start talking yourself into them as being a foundational piece. And for John Collins is a little tougher because he's
a lot older than Walker Kessler. And a team like the Sacramento Kings, you know, with the ownership already firing Mike Brown, I think they're gonna be a little bit more leveraged at this point to go after someone like John Collins. And that's the type of advantageous deal that I think a team like the Utah Jazz would be interested in. It is like a team that is very desperate right now for a quality veteran to shake some
things up and bring some excitement to the team. I think John Collins the acting price is justifiably a lot higher now than it was before the season.
John the Baptist. That's called knowing your audience.
Here in Salt Lake City, a lot of people probably appreciate that drop there, Tom, well done, well done, all right, moving off the jazz now, and you reference Miami, you reference Jimmy Butler. He appears to be the name that most people are. It feels untenable. I mean, you don't mess with pat Riley, that's just the deal. And so Pat sat him and now we kind of wait to
see how this thing plays out. The hard part, Tom is, honestly, I understand if Miami's like, no, we don't want to move you, because there's a world that exists that it's more benefit for them to actually get the cap flexibility if he ends up bouncing. But at the same time, I don't know. Then essentially you're saying this is a wasted year. And I'm sure there are conversations with agents behind the scenes as well to try to get him
in another spot. You know, in a way, there's a little Chris Paul here, because Chris Paul, for all of his brilliance, just seemed a great on teams and players and teammates and coaches, and after four or five years he needs a new place to play, and Jimmy kind of feels like that same player.
But anyway, how do you think this thing plays out.
I think he gets moved at the trade deadline. I think Phoenix is the most logical landing spot. The tough thing with Phoenix, they're thinking faster than the Titanic. Right now, you're looking at a team that is in twelve in the Western Conference standings. They're out of the playing game. They've decided to bench Bradley Beal and Yusuf Nurkic after getting to a really hot start with some clutch scoring and some hail Mary's that went their way. To start
the season. This team was nine to two and now they're fifteen and eighteen with Bradley Beal coming off the bench with a fifty seven million dollar player option in twenty twenty seven, and he has a no trade clause. Okay, it is an untenable situation for them. So you have the Miami Heat on one side, who are dealing with a very disgruntled superstar playoff Jimmy who you know, for my money, over the last six years with the Miami Heat has been maybe the second best playoff per former Barnine.
I'm not saying most improved in the playoffs. I'm saying the best playoff player, maybe to Luca or Nikola jokicch He's been sensational in the playoffs, and then he got a very desperate Phoenix Suns team that in order to get a guy like Jimmy Brother, they have to move Bradley Beal. The Miami Heat. I don't think want to take back Bradley Beal. I don't think they want to
touch that contract or that no trade clause. I think the move would be a three team deal involving the Miami Heat sending Jimmy Butler to the to the Phoenix Suns, and then Phoenix Suns sending Bradley Beal to Detroit. The Detroit Pistons just lost Jade and Ivy. They have clean tat books for the next two years that they can take in a veteran guy like Bradley Beal as a placeholder contract, and Bradley Beal has a big incentive to
go to a market like Detroit. Not from a lifestyle standpoint, I'm not kidding about, you know, players, I'm not kidding you about players really want to play in Phoenix and La because of the climate and just it's a lot nicer to live and set up shop there than say Detroit. But this guy is coming off a couple of years. In two years, he's gonna have to revitalize his player value on the trade market and try to get another contract, another big contract in the NBA. He's not going to
get that in Phoenix the way things are going. So the interesting part of this spence you know how incestuous the NBA can be. And the front office of the Detroit Pistons is led by arn Tellum, super agent, longtime agent for a bunch of big name superstars and call all kinds of sports. Arles was drafted off of him. Allegedly the show from the nineties about that superagent was drafted off of arn Tellum. He runs the Detroit Pistons. He's a vice chairman of the board for the Detroit Pistons.
And he had an assistant a few years ago named Josh Bartelstein who rose to become an assistant GM and they got hired to be the CEO of the Phoenix Suns under matt Eshpia. That guy is now Josh Bartlstein is now the CEO for Bradley Beal, whose agent is Mark Bartelstein. His father is the agent for Bradley Beal and Josh Bartlestein came from Arn Tellum as it seems like a favor by Mark Bartelstein to hire Josh Bartostein
as part of the Detroit Pistons front office. And then of course this past summer, who to the Phoenix Sun Tire aren't Tellum's son, Matt Tom. So the Phoenix Sons are basically Detroit West and they have a lot of familial ties to Detroit. And I do think that the Bradley Beal no trade clause can be negotiated amongst you know, very influential ears, I mean voices into Bradley Beal's ear.
And so I do think that the Detroit Pistons will grease the wheels for Miami Heat to make the trade of Jimmy Butler to the Phoenix Sons and then Jimmy Butler, I mean, Bradley Beal goes to Detroit and then draft picks go to Miami. They're gonna get some salary filler in Tobias Harris and Tim Hardaway Junior. But really what the Miami Heat want is not a big time, longtime
contract like Bradley Beal's. And I think they want to keep their coffers ready for the twenty twenty six offseason, and this trade would accomplish that with some draft picks that they can move and try to get some more pieces. I think the Miami Heat are going to move Jimmy Butler. I think it's an untenable situation. I don't think they're gonna let it get to this summer where you have a James Harden with Philly situation where he's gonna opt
in and then force a trade that way. I just think they're gonna do a refresh and the Phoenix Suns are desperate enough to make them move.
My goodness, Porter, real quick hop on the mic, because that's quite a story with a lot of ties between a lot of families, and whenever we have a topic like that or content like that, I just feel it necessary to remind our hosts and the community what the official stances of the drive on nepotism.
As you know, as you know, we don't do it. Yeah, you can't win with them, yep, can't win with them.
Not into it, not a fan, so I understand all the dynamics there, but we're anti that on this show. Let me move over into the reports though, because I think I've heard Memphis is involved potentially, that feels like it makes sense. I don't know if Butler would want that, and then Milwaukee as well. All of your reasoning is sound. But before I say you lose, because I know you got to get to it. If it is in Phoenix, what are the other potential landing spots for Jimmy Butler.
You know, I don't think it's Memphis playing style wise. I think it's intathetical to Jimmy Butler. Jimmy Butler at this age thirty five, he doesn't want to play in a running gun system that is the fastest team of the player tracking era. They move the ball constantly there. They have this offense, egalitarian offense where they move the ball crazy. They don't set pick and rolls, and it's just not I don't think a great fit with Memphis. I know they have a hole there at the three position.
I just don't think Jimmy Butler is going to play a high octane offense at this point in his career. I do think that the Golden State Warriors, if things can continue to go south, that's an interesting landing spot for them, especially if they want to maximize this roster for Jimmy Butler. But Jonathan committing cominga getting hurt really hurts those odds of a deal getting done. Outside that,
I don't see Jimmy Butler going back to Chicago. Some people have said, hey, you know, bring him back to Chicago. I don't see that. And I also don't see him going to San Antonio. To me, it's it's all about Phoenix. I don't see the Milwaukee thing happening just reeks of
you know, throwing good money after bad. But I do think that the Memphis Grizzlies, while they are being connected to Jimmy Butler, it makes a lot more sense for me from my perspective that he ends up with Kevin Durant and Devin Booker and try to make a run in the West.
All right, man, Well, I appreciate the time. Some good stuff there. Have a good Tom on the broadcast night, will chat soon, Okay, thanks, bench have a good one, Tom habershow mba daily a sist On a Monday. The Utah Jazz are back in action tomorrow against the Atlanta Hawks. Quinn Snyders in town. The Jazz went down to Florida won a couple of games. They beat Miami and they beat Orlando. See if they can keep it going tomorrow against Atlanta.