Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, welcome to the NBA Daily Morning Shootaround, our Wednesday YouTube live stream. I'm Dave DeFore here with Espera Henney, Zena Keita, Andrew Schlecht, out sick. Oof. He's back from vacation and picked up a cold.
Having too much fun after the Thunder smacked the Spurs up.
Yeah, we know the truth. Guys, thank you guys for joining us. If you're watching us on YouTube, if you're listening to the podcast, we appreciate you. But we're also trying to build up our YouTube, so come and check that out. Subscribe to it. We're going to do more live stuff, I believe, by the time we get to the playoffs, you know.
we really might be going live after some of these big playoff matchups. So come and relive, you know, the night before or whatever with us over on YouTube. It's a fun time. We take questions from the chat and try to mix it up a little bit. Kind of had this thought, guys. We're at the halfway mark of the season. Got some questions about the season so far and where we're heading.
Let's just jump right in because it's a lot to get to. If the playoffs started today, guys, Which of the top six seeds in either conference is nobody afraid of?
Man.
Yeah, that is spicy.
That's right.
Who are the biggest frauds? I think is really the question.
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Chapter 2: Which top NBA seed is least feared as playoffs approach?
If I had to rank fear levels for the West, I would probably put the Lakers ahead of the Rockets. That's where I'm at for sure. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's scary to be able to look on the other side of the court and see it's LeBron Luca and Austin Reeves who by themselves, I think even if they can't defend, if they have a good defense, I feel like they could pull off an upset.
I don't know.
That's where I'm at.
Their offense is enough. One, it's packed with enough offensive firepower, but also basketball IQ to figure out some wins. And to me, it would be an intellectual kind of situation where... LeBron and Luka would be playing the X's and O's of maybe we don't have the defense quite yet. I would hope at that point you have something.
But maybe we don't have the defense to be able to compete one-on-one with this. But we do have enough understanding of the angles, things to take away, ways to scheme. Right. To be able to figure out some wins.
I mean, they win games. It's not like they're in the bottom half of the conference. I mean, they do win games. And you can win games on offense. I just think that by the time you get to the serious level, and maybe that's not the first round, but you look at who they, I mean, right now they'd match up against the Timberwolves.
And by the way, I would favor the Timberwolves. We just saw them get slapped up by the Timberwolves for a very similar reason in last year's playoffs, right?
Yeah, this is a great point from the YouTube comments. Donkey16 says, We got to get better handles, guys. This question was solely designed to slander the Raptors despite being the four seed, and I refuse to see it any other way.
And I got to tell you, yes, it was because, listen, they're a little bit of a fake four seed, and it isn't that they're a fake top six seed, but they did take advantage of that early season success. And I think by the time we get to the playoffs, as long as everything keeps going, you know, like well from a health perspective for the Sixers, they're going to be in that top four.
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Chapter 3: Which superstar faces the most pressure in the second half of the season?
Always in that order. Do you have a favorite? The mini. We try and get it under 30 seconds. We rarely get it under 30, but that's always the goal.
Folks will really time themselves, but with spelling bee, I give myself all day. It is really fun getting queen bee. Yeah. I play it when my kids are going to bed.
Do you guys play together? My daughter plays. She likes playing Wordle. If you ever miss a day, there's also archives. That's so great to know. And you have it for connections as well.
Lord help me. I'm just going to be doing that all day, every day. New York Times game subscribers can now access archives for our most popular games. Find out more at nytimes.com slash games.
assuming that you know these that teams are going to go in to win and not tear it down okay for this question which team is in need of the biggest facelift at the trade deadline in order to make a push this season so they're trying to win which team that has some kind of aspiration of winning do you guys think needs to make a trade the most the oh man you yeah xena you go ahead yeah
Yeah, I think they're in my neck of the woods, honestly. The Warriors. And it's just that this window, we keep talking about it, the window. the margin of error, the timing, it's clearly the Warriors. And you think about a team that is $300,000 away from the second apron. And you are constricted and confined to what's available to you.
And you've got a guy making $24 million who is young, athletic, capable, sitting on the end of your bench in a hoodie every night, smiling, enjoying his teammates, not playing, only DNP. You need athleticism more than anything. You really need rim protection. In my opinion, you need size and some rim protection.
And you need a scorer, somebody that can just flat out get buckets, roll the ball out. They need multiple players? I mean, I don't know if they need multiple players. I think they need to make a decision on do we want a scorer or do we want size? I think those are the two. Yeah. Now, yeah, if Jesus come down ā
Got a hell of a crossover. I do, like, I wonder, look, you know, the Michael Porter Jr. stuff for the Warriors is, it doesn't make much sense to me. I understand, like, the thought of getting a shooter out there. I just don't know how this team works with Jimmy and Draymond. Like, Draymond as your best center is still, and that's still great for high leverage moments in the playoffs.
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