I time the Uncrustable perfectly today, just like you could not have done it better. I'm not sure if it's like twenty minutes twenty five minutes, but if you can get it when the jelly is still a little bit cold and it's like a little crunchy, o oh, man, knocked it right out of the park. I usually save until three, but I tried something new today and I think I'm onto something grape.
Yeah, oh yeah, okay, I'm all in on the grape man.
Like I've now only started to buy only grape. I don't buy the strawberry yet. Really, I haven't tried it. There's like new flavors, but I'm all in on the grape.
There is quite a few. There's like a honey one. I mean, let's be clear, it's not anything groundbreaking. This is a peanut butter and something else sandwich. There's honey ones, there's strawberry jamda. The Uncrustables, though they don't miss well, I'm.
Just afraid that they're, as the kids would say, they're doing too much. They're trying too hard. Just stick with the basics. At least that's my opinion. We've got doney on the program today RSL was able to get a win. The Voice of the Utes, Bill Riley, stops by Sam Monson for some football. But on a Monday afternoon, it's always going to start a week with my buddy Tom Haberstrow to talk a little pro basketball.
Tom.
Happy Monday, buddy. How we doing.
Oh, I'm doing great. FCC champion Staples Wreckers. You're talking to an alum of the raining champion FCAC Staples Wreckers. That's right, that's right, Spence. I had that in my back pocket before I came on.
You know, you don't have to rub that in.
I'll just encourage you to go look at the box score from nineteen ninety six at Staples High when your boy just took Pete Van Sicklin and Ernie Verina to school.
Well, I don't know if you know this, and it is for another time, but the suburban teams in the FCAC are now raining. They're now dominating the FCAC, which is very different than when we were growing up. But I digress. That is another topic for another conversation. And I am here in Portland. I am in studio for this four game trip that the Blazers are on the road. And they just finished up a game against the Cleveland
Cavaliers in overtime. It was an amazing game. And the reason why we had pearl Jams starting up is because I am here in the Pacific Northwest coming to you live from Portland, Oregon.
I love it.
Are you a fan of the PMW as those of us out here like to call it?
Yes, yes, And it's there's such a great food scene and people are very friendly. It's just there's like so here at the hotel, there's a you know, a purel dispenser, like a hand sanitizer dispenser, and it says, spread joy, not germs. Love. To me, that is Portland in a nutshell. Is there's just on something as just random and basic as a hand sanitizer machine. They gotta make it weird. They got to make it fun. Spread joy, not germs. Worse to live by.
Keep Portland weird, man. I'm telling you, I've got buddies up there. And if you watch like propaganda news, you believe that the city is dad.
It's not. It's very much great.
Do not watch the news and believe what they tell you, Just go and experience it. How often are you able to get up there, because usually you do all this stuff via zoom right or in the studio in your house.
Yeah. Yeah, I come up a couple times a year, and I got a cousin, one of my close cousins here in Portland, so it's always great to come. The food scene is outrageous. I have that Top Chef podcast, Pack your Knives. If you're a big fan of that show on Bravo Top Chef, you can listen to that. And I got to eat at one of these Top Chef restaurants called con Gregory Gordat, And like, man, every time I come to Portland, I'm just blown away at the food scene, the beer scene, like all the arts
here in town. It's just a great I love coming here. Besides, you know, this is the only pro sports team in the four major sports here and they really care about their Blazers. And I know Salt Lake, you guys are experiencing this too. Is just like they're adding, you know, they're adding an team there, and I gotta imagine, does this mean that the Jazz lose some of their real estate in the sports conversation, I'm wondering. I'm curious.
It's a good question, and you know, I've often drawn parallels between Salt Lake City and Portland. You know, they have an MLS team, and their soccer fans are are very intense and it's a really cool soccer experience like we have here right now. The hockey club's presence has not seemed to dilude the fan base when it comes to attendance for the Jazz. You know what's interesting, Tom, is we got some TV ratings data a couple of
weeks ago. And when you know the Gobert, Mitchell Quinn teams, when they were at their peak, the Jazz were second in the entire league in local NBA ratings, the Warriors were won and this was like two three years in a row. And now the Jazz are like third to the bottom and they have the second worst drop as far as ratings go locally. So there's information available to indicate people aren't watching the games at home as much
as they typically do. But I think I've been to maybe nine or ten games, and every game I've been to, and look, I will admit to being a snob. I only go to the games where the good teams are actually playing on the other side. Because the Jazz, you know, we know the deal. But every game I've been to Tom that Arena has been packed. The Jazz fans continue to show up. At least from my vantage point.
Yeah, and Blazers fans too, is that even though they're going to this rebuild, the attendance is strong. And we just on the broadcast side, have the highest increase in year over year audience numbers. The ratings have increased by see something like sixty percent. And you know, the team right now has the second best defense in the NBA. The Blazers do since they made this lineup change Shade
and Sharp out of the starting lineup. Timani Kamara is a beast and Will Hardy has talked a big game on to Monic More loves that guy, and it reminded me, you know, like the Jazz, they would love a player like that. And I've always said that Hammani Kamara is
like the Walker Kessler of the Rudy Gobert trade. Is like a kind of like an afterthought, a throw in that people aren't really excited about at the time of the trade because they don't they're not familiar with his game, and then later on they're like, oh, like long term,
like Walker Kessler's he's a real piece. Like he's a really good young player in the same way that Tammani Kamara, who's this all World defender on the wing, second year player for the For the Blazers, he's like the real gem of that Damian Lillard trade, where it's like, yeah, he's not as good as Drew Holiday right now, but down the line, if the Blazers can get Timani Kamara to develop on the offensive end, they've got a real like Jimmy Butler type, Derek White type and at the
time just a second round pick, no one thought anything of it, but just like Walker Kessler, a real deal player.
I'm glad you brought up Walker Kessler because I wanted to revisit a topic that you and I covered to start the year and having kicked it around lately, because it's just been difficult to create interesting narratives for a team that's unserious about winning. And you know, Jaden Springer's
signed a three year deal. I don't know if that means that they're super high on him moving forward or they just need players on the roster, But to start the year and to start the season, for me, whenever I would go on a different radio show or a podcast, I'd get pretty much the same question, which is who's around on the team when they're good again outside of marketing and look, they have a lot of work to do to make sure that they're good in the next
four years, or they have Lowry like they are more than one or two pieces away. But just generally speaking, I mean, Walker clearly has played himself now to that conversation, he's been so good this year. If there's one real positive development for Jazz basketball twenty four to twenty five, it is Walker Kessler. So I am more than willing
to put him on that list. But if we look at this group of first and second year guys Keante George and we take Walker off the table and we place him next to Lowry, is okay, we know we've got something with you.
Two.
Caanta has been better since well we asked him to come off the bench. There's a lot to like about the progress Isaiah Callier has made. You can't shoot twenty five percent from three and be a lead Garden Pro basketball. Taylor Hendrix's hurt, We'll put him on the shelf.
Cody Williams. It does not look good at all.
So if you look at these first and second year players, if we say Tom that Lowry and Walker are around, is there anybody else you're willing to put in that category as of now?
Not right now. No, I don't have the confidence yet. I'd have to see more of Cody Williams. He looks just too thin, too unsure of himself. He looks like a child out there a lot of times. And I think without Jdubb, I'm not so sure I'd have the optimism. JDub being Jalen Williams's older brother who's an absolute star in today's NBA, who had forty plus points, and just the Oklahoma City Thunder are not where they are without Jalen Williams. But Cody Williams hasn't inspired me to make
me believe that he's a real deal player. But you know, look, last year, we had a lot of questions about Scoot Henderson, and I kept coming back to the point that he's super young, and it's hard to grade these guys when they're nineteen, when they're twenty years old, And that's what I think is the deal with you know, Cody Williams is that when he started the season, he was nineteen, and I just don't think he's there yet. I don't
think he's an NBA player yet. But these guys we need to grade them in year three or year four. And Walker Kessler is another example of he had a good, good rookie season, but to really see what they're gonna be, you need like three or four years before you make that evaluation. And Cante George, I'm not there yet. Cody Williams not there yet. Isaiah Collier, like you said, has to be more efficient, but you really love the playmaking
and the attack mentality that he has. But for me, it's Walker Kessler and Larry markinhen.
All right, just for our Jazz fan listeners who are very interested in the current landscape of these prospects rising up draft boards. Now, ultimately the bottom three teams will all have about a fourteen percent chance, and the Jazz should be in that bottom three. We'll see what happens, but they're clearly trending in that direction. They're resting their vets every night. It seems to me, Tom that it is Cooper flag and then there is a massive gap between everybody else.
But are we.
Going to have people like some of the ziggers when people zag, like when wembin Yama was available, and people like, well, I kind of like Scoot, You're like, no, it's stop doing that.
It's him, right.
Is there anybody else that's in the Cooper flag cul de sac or is it Cooper Flag and then everybody else in this draft process?
Yeah, it's Cooper Flag and everybody else to me, you know, some of these guys. I got to see Duke in person a few weeks ago at Cameron Indoor and Mallley Walk the big man and seven foot two. He's he's going to be a really good NBA player, But he's not even in the same stratosphere as Cooper Flag. Cooper Flag.
The fact that he's averaging, you know, twenty two nine and five per thirty six minutes, you know, to keep the grade on that scale for all players in college basketball, no one has the productivity, no one has the upside. And by the way, he's the youngest guy in the class. That's what I don't think people realize. He's eighteen years old and doing this. He just turned eighteen, So he's
not only the best player in college basketball. And dude, like the dude from Auburn right, he's like twenty four years old. They're in the same conversation for Player of the Year. And I'm just sitting here, like they play two different leagues. Like the fact that that guy, and as good as he is, he's like four or five years older than Cooper Flag. So what are we doing here?
I know this isn't like who's the number one overall should get Player of the Year, but it's just amazing to me that Cooper Flag is playing head to head with a guy who's like five years older than him
and still putting up extremely good numbers. Look, you know, the Blazers fans, they're kind of in this very difficult position is they know that Cooper Flag is right there in the next year's draft pool, and yet the Blazers are one of the best teams in the NBA over the last month, and so it is this kind of like I just I just hate that this is the conversation for the NBA is like, when you have a good team, I don't want to have to be like, yeah, but they're missing out on Cooper Flag. And that's a
tough thing. With the incentive structure, as you've lived it there in Utah is there should never be a system in place that makes fans feel bad about winning, and
that's unfortunately what we've created with the draft. And even though they've done those those flattening of the odds to curb tand and to disincentivize teams from trying to lose, it's still unfortunately a big part of the conversation is whether teams like the Phoenix Suns or the Miami Heat the Golden State Warriors, should they really go for the playoffs or should they tank for Cooper Flag And unfortunately we are still in that conversation no matter what the
league has done in the recent years to curp tanking.
One more Jazz thing here if we operate off a fun hypothetical and say, okay, finally, Lady Luck shines on Salt Lake. Finally, the Utah Jazz received the lottery luck that they've never received in the history of this organization.
It's crazy that they've.
Only been to the lottery nine times for a team that plays there basketball in Salt Lake City. They've never moved up, They've only stood pat or moved down. And they are able to grab that number one pick and we enter next year, Tommy with a front line around here of lowry marketing, Walker Kessler and Cooper Flag. First of all, tickets would be flying off the shelf and
they would be very popular. But second of all, from a basketball standpoint, we got something now right, Like that's now something the fan base can say, Okay, now here we go.
I can see a future.
And I don't think that those three guys can't play together. I mean, you look at Cooper Flag. He's kind of a Luca in the sense that he is a He's a hub of your offense and is marketing the hub. I don't. I don't think Mark I like and marketing as a tall clay like Klay Thompson. He's an amazing shooter, but he's not a guy who's gonna be ball dominant and running the offense and playmaking for everybody else. That's Cooper Flag, Like I see, that's the vision for this dude.
Is like KG. Like KG was a guy who is the hub of the Minnesota Timberwolves at his peak, and yeah, the Boston Celtics. KG wasn't that guy, but man like peak KG, he very much was a point big And I see the same thing with Cooper Flag. So if you have Walker Kessler and his rimp protection, and then you have the weak side help protection that a Cooper Flag gets you overnight. If they can find, you know, some shooting around those guys overnight, the Utah Jazz would
be a playoff team. I firmly believe that is the impact, the effect of Cooper Flag.
Let me ask you, just because you'll be good with this, you live there. I've always wondered, So, Durham, what's like a two hour drive from Charlotte roughly.
Something like that.
Yes, So is there anything that would turn Charlotte's or just that area North Carolina into a pro basketball market in a way that we haven't seen? Like Charlotte's gonna be one of the three worst teams I think, along with Washington and Utah. If the Hornets get number one and they put Cooper Flag next to, you know, next to ball, is that is there anything that will turn that area into a pro basketball market that we haven't
seen so far? I thought it was going to be more of a natural fit than it seems to have been.
It would one percent put people back in the seats for the Charlotte Hornets. The whole city is ravenous for something to cheer about the city just got an MLS team, right, They've got this LaMelo Ball kid who's like just turning the corner and trying to be a winning player. But the roster they're breaking it down to the studs with the new ownership. And you have to remember, the Charlotte Hornets had the longest sellout streak in NBA history at one point. They were a huge market in the nineties.
During the nineties with Larry Johnson, Alonzo Morning, Muggsy Bogues, they were huge, and especially so in the local market, and it was impossible to get a ticket to go see the Charlotte Hornets. So it's there. There is this kind of this this this sense that we've got a huge fan base of basketball with UNC with the Tobacco Road right here, that if Cooper Flag, coming from Duke, can come here in Charlotte and be the face of
the Charlotte Hornets, it'll change everything. And he is a very very serious basketball player in the way that there are a lot of questions around LaMelo Ball and how serious is about winning. He's never been on a winning team. That's not the case of Cooper Flag. There are no questions about his desire to be professional, desire to be a winning player, and to do all the little things
to win basketball games, and the other thing. I will say, the Utah Jazz and the Charlotte Hornets are very similar in this sense where they always feel like they are the bridesmaid, never the bride when it comes to the draft lottery. I'm going to remind the listeners here the Charlotte Hornets and the Bobcats history in the NBA draft, because it's crazy, all right. Number one in the Dwight Howard draft, who do they get at number two? Echa Okafer.
The Charlotte Hornets could have had Dwight Howard, but instead they got a Mecca Okafer. In the Shaquille O'Neal draft, of course, the Charlotte Hornets didn't get the number one overall pick even though they are the one of the worst teams, and they ended up getting the number two pick. When Victor webbin Yama was the number one overall pick. The Charlotte Hornets ended up at number three. In of course,
the Anthony Davis Draft, they couldn't get number one. They ended up at number two to get Michael kick Gilchrist. The fall off between these generational bigs, and the number two or number three guy that the Charlotte Hornets ended up getting has been outrageous, it is it? The fans always say, you know, there's something that the league will not let us get the number one overall pick, because look at this slew of generational bigs that come through the NBA, and we always seem to get the number
two pick. And hopefully for Hornets fans that changes. Hopefully for Jazz fans that changes. But there's only one Cooper flag, and unfortunately those fan bases can't get they can't all get Cooper Flag, and so for many many fan bases, this is just gonna be another year losing.
That is brutal.
I don't think I've ever heard anybody articulate that draft history before. That's a baby's breath away from several franchise pieces.
Goodness, all right, Tom.
Let's move off the Jazz now and let's get some big picture thoughts about what's currently happening in the league. What are you willing to say about where the Lakers are at today and winning six straight games, Luca kind of taking over as the centerpiece against the Clips the other night, and Lebron really certainly not looking near his age. Are you willing to say that they need to be put in the category with OKC And I'll say, Denver,
maybe that's your Tier one in the West. Are they a legitimate threat come playoff time?
Now, I've got OKAC in its own tier out well, I got Denver and the Lakers in that set, and the Golden State Warriors in that second tier. So out on tomafinder dot com, I tear out the contenders by five star, four star, three star, two star, one star ratings.
And this morning just released my newest title tiers. The Lakers are upgraded to a four star status and I look at their performance with Luka Doncic, and it's all about Lebron looks rejuvenated, Like he looks like prime Lebron right now, in the sense that he's trying a lot harder on defense. He's everywhere defensively, he's running out in fast, fast breaks, his transition game. It looks like they breathe new life into Lebron. And Draymond Green said this about
Jimmy Butler the acquisition. Right after they got Jimmy Butler, he said, we're gonna win the championship you said it over All Star weekend, and it's because of belief capital b belief. And in some ways I see the same corollary for the Los Angeles Lakers as Lebron believes. I think he gets Luca on his team and he believes like he is the one, Like Anthony Davis is great, but he ain't Lukasajic. And the way that they have
chemistry out on the floor is insane. They have been nineteen assists from Luca to Lebron already, by far the most the assist recipient of Luca's assists is number one is Lebron. And the crazy stat from Dean Oliver, who's the you know, the godfather of NBA analytics, who wrote
the bible of NBA analytics called Basketball on Paper. He just he works for the ESPN's analytics department now he runs it, and he just tweeted out that the shot quality of Luca's assists to Lebron before he shoots the ball, an average player would shoots seventy six percent on those shots. Think about that, Luca is finding Lebron in spots where the average NBA player would shoot seventy six percent. And of course Lebron is way higher than that because he's Lebron.
But do you know how hard it is to get defenses to forget about Lebron James or miss him, or lose him, or not even lose him. Just Luca can place the ball in Lebron's hands and ways that no one else can't. Like when you look at those touchdown passes that Kevin Love used to throw to Lebron in Cleveland, Luca's doing it like three times over. Like every time that Luca gets a rebound, now defensive rebound, Lebron's running
down the floor and getting a wide open layup. And that's what's scary about this is that Luka Doncic is already has way more chemistry than Dwayne Wade, than Chris Bosh, than Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving. It seems like he has way more chemistry with Lebron James than any of those guys had at nearly lightning speed. So Lebron's already
got this in like five games playing with Luca. So I think I think they're in the four starts here because they don't have the bigs that I think is required to beat you know, all the teams that they need to beat in order to get to the NBA Finals. But on Basketball Illuminati this week we had Brandon Payne on who's Steph Curry's trainer and one of the great
coaches skills coaches in the NBA, longtime shooting coach. He was just talking about how he thinks that the Lakers are every bit a championship contender as the rest of them. Calves okac in Boston. I might not go as far to say that, but I think they're just in a tier below the Oklahoma City Thunder because of that chemistry between Lebron and Luka.
All Right, before I set you loose, I'll ask you a similar question. But we move over to the East and on Friday night in Boston, Donovan Man, when Donovan cooks like that, it's just a lot of people around here kind of missed those days. But he went for forty one, and the Calves stormed back in the second half and they took care of the Celtic. Say, look, the Cavs winning is not new, but they're fifty and ten, they've won ten straight and they're seven and a half
games out of Boston. At what point do we stop with the whole Boston and everybody Else's narrative and start to talk about the Calves in a more serious way, especially with the trade they made that You've talked about grabbing DeAndre Hunter, which kind of went under the radar because you know Luca was traded.
Yeah, DeAndre Hunter, I think could be the missing piece from thirty two points yesterday against the Blazers, where you know Tamani Kamara was busy locking down Darius Garland four sixteen shooting from Darius Garland and here comes Dedre Hunter, like, oh, I can carry this offense down the stretch. They didn't have that before the trade. Now they have this piece DeAndre Hunter, who's a big wing. I think he's I
think he's a four. He's a natural four in today's modern MBA, and so they can go small like they did a lot in that game yesterday with Jared Allen on the bench, and have amably at the five, and that's dynamic is huge. I'd picked the Cavs as the favorite out of East right now. They're forty three and oh with a lead going into the fourth quarter. They have not lost the game with the lead, and going into the fourth I think the stat was thirty eight and one after a lead in the first quarter, so
going into the second quarter with the lead. They've only lost one game this season. They're just they're relentless. Kenny Atkinson's done a great job there, and I think Cleveland is right there in that top tier. If you go to Tomdfinder dot com you can see my tiers, my title tiers that they do every week, and I haven't changed. It's Cleveland, It's Okay see, and it's Boston and then
everybody else. I think Boston's really good, but man, Cleveland's coming for them, and I really believe that they should be on the same title tier as Boston.
The raigning champs staying at the Nines, No.
I'm staying at the highest regency by the Convention Center.
Well go, what's that restaurant that haven't the Nines. That's a good spot. You got to hit that up.
So the chef there, Gregory Gordet, he opened up his new restaurant after Top Chef, and that's the one that I went to when I first got Oh. Okay is con and the nine restaurant up top is very good. But the chef behind that has now has his own restaurant, and it is it is awesome. And the Blazers the Blazer there's probably something like this in Utah and Salt Lake where like the jazz players and the jazz part office guys love to go there. That's what this restaurant
is is. It's called con K a n N by Gregory Gordet And that's the spot in Portland if you want to hit up a really good restaurant. If you're visiting, go hit up con if you can get a reservation.
All right, my guy, where could everybody? And by the way, here that's Vaulters. It's the Italian restaurant Vaults. That's where all the NBA guys like to go. So next time you're in Salt Lake, hit that up. But before I set you loose, where can everybody go?
Find your work at?
Tom haraschro on x Tom Thefinder dot com, Yahoo Sports. In the Blazers broadcast, we got a Philadelphia seventy six tonight. Very exciting. Uh No, Joel Embian and who knows about Paul George?
All right, buddy, thanks for the time. Enjoy rip City and we'll chat too.
All right. Thanks. That's