Jake Kleinberg
speaker
147 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Jake Kleinberg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The new audiobook by Sebastian Fitzek. Now only on Audible.
Welcome to the Saturday Slammin' Jam here on the Athletic NBA Daily. On today's show, we are talking about the defensive player of the year, our players of the week, and Keith Parrish. is talking about the Grizzlies today. And, you know, if you saw the wheel spinning, you didn't know. We didn't know what was gonna happen on Grizzlies week. We didn't know when we woke up this morning.
I didn't know whenever I was at the game last night talking to Taylor Jenkins prior to the game that he was no longer going to be employed. Incredible. Before we get to the top stories, I do want you guys to please go fill out a quick survey. We love the listeners of the slam and jam, the jammers, the slammers. please go fill out this survey. Theathletic.com slash athletic slash survey25.
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Please let us know your honest thoughts about our shows and also about your podcasting habits. It would be a delight to have you do that. And now, Alex, tell me about the top stories this week.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I'm still just shaken up by the fact that it's Grizzlies Week and that we get to talk to Keith here in a minute.
This is a bad thing. I'm terrified. I'm terrified. I'm terrified of what could happen later when we spin the wheel horrified. Let's go to our bet. MGM line of the week brought to you by bet. MGM. Al, it's Defensive Player of the Year, which is a bona fide catastrophe at this point. You have Draymond Green, who is caping for himself to be the deep boy, and somehow it's working.
He's the odds-on favorite, which, honestly, he's a legendary defender. We don't need to dog on him at all. This is the seventh best defense in the NBA. I can't come up with a statistical reason why I would say that he is the deep boy. There's nothing there. I've done a deep dive on some of the numbers. I can't figure it out.
Yeah, and some of it is that there's just not a lot of defensive stats that you trust. Whereas with the offensive end, it's easy. And so I honestly think that Lou Dort is a very viable candidate to win this award. I've said it on this show, the Thunder have by far the best defense in the NBA. It's not particularly close.
And you ask anybody inside the walls of that Thunder organization, who is the best defender? Who leads the defense? And it's Dort. He sets the tone. He leads them. He defends the best player on the other team almost every night. He shut Desmond Bain down, which maybe that's why Taylor Jenkins couldn't get Desmond Bain freed for enough threes last night. I don't know.
He was one of 12 from the field, one of nine from three with Dort guarding him. Yeah. I think he's a viable candidate. Do I think he'll win? No, I don't think he'll win because he's a guard and the on-offs are not good. But the on-offs aren't good because he's playing against the best players. And they have Alex Caruso coming off the bench, who's been amazing.
And when you look at estimated plus minus... He is. When you look at the actual estimated plus minus on the defensive end on dunks and threes, who's number one? It's Alex Caruso. And he hasn't played enough. He hasn't qualified because he hasn't played enough games. But yeah, I don't know where to go either because I don't think enough people will take Dort's candidacy seriously enough.
Evan Mobley was... chopped down by Udonis Haslam on national television, saying that teams target him, you should never vote for him. I think people will take that pretty seriously. Dyson Daniels is on a team that's mediocre. Jaron Jackson has missed a bunch of time. And you ask around about him, a lot of people think he just kind of jumps for blocks, that he's not that great of a team defender.
And so then, like... That's how Draymond surfaces to the top. One, he's keeping for himself. And then it's like, well, who else is it going to be? It is one of the stranger years for Depoy that I've ever seen. And I'm so curious to see how this all plays out. Honestly, I think... I don't think you should overthink it.
I think you should pick somebody from OKC because they do have a historic defense and one of the best defenses in a very long time. And they're almost three and a half points per possession better than the number two team in Orlando. To me, that should be enough. But I'm not stupid, Al. I'm not stupid. I know that this is probably not going OKC's way.
Maybe we just need Thunder fans to just retweet that more. Maybe the Thunder should send that to voters instead of like a cookie or I don't know.
That's right. Get ready for the Quentin Grimes. He's been great. He's been awesome. He has really done great for himself down the stretch. It was a perfect situation, honestly. If you're Quentin Grimes, maybe Dallas would have still been a good situation.
But it's played out very well for him in Philly, and we'll see what happens moving forward there. My favorite quote, one, I can't quit the Bulls. at any time soon. I'm just, I'm over the moon that they're coming to Oklahoma city on Monday and I get to go watch them in person. I just can't, I got, I'm just so excited about that.
During not this past Lakers game, but the one before Stacey King on the broadcast, Kobe white pulled up like for a really deep three and made it. And it was kind of like a heat check three. And yeah, He said, that's Denzel Valentine range, which like one, it's like super like inside Bulls basketball to reference this.
But it was from the bubble when Denzel Valentine pulled up for maybe like one of the worst threes in Bulls history and misses it. Just like absolutely killing any chance for the team to win. Just like no recognition of like. Time and score. I mean, it's just funny. But the fact that he just like draws back to that just made me laugh. I just thought that was really funny.
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