Andrew Schlecht and Alex Speers discuss the week of NBA Basketball and bring back the Slammies, the made up NBA Awards we've done the last 4 seasons. Then they are joined by Mike Richman of Locked on Blazers to discuss the Portland Trailblazers and their fun unexpected season, Scoot Henderson's potential, the lottery and much more. Then the boys play a fun edition of Andrew vs. the Beat, a trivia game where Andrew is pitted against a beat writer.Host: Andrew Schlecht and Alex SpeersWith: Mike RichmanExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio/Video Editor: Jake Kleinberg Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What are the top NBA stories this week?
welcome to the saturday slam and jam here on the athletic nba daily on today's show we are bringing you the moments of the week the slammies are here once again and mike richmond of lockdown blazers joins us to talk about the portland trailblazers but to start al tell me about the top stories this week
Well, Andrew, the top story this week was the Denver Nuggets, who made firing Taylor Jenkins with nine games left in the season look pretty reasonable because on Tuesday, with only three games left in the season, the Nuggets fired both head coach Michael Malone and GM Calvin Booth.
Now, Malone ends his 10-season run with Denver as the franchise's winningest coach, leading them to the 2023 championship. Calvin Booth, he traded for KCP. He drafted Christian Brown. Two important moves for the Nuggets title run, but things had gotten rockier since then with Booth and Malone butting heads over team building philosophy and roster decisions.
Things came to a head after the Nuggets lost four in a row and looked at risk to fall into the play-in. has taken over as the Nuggets head coach for the rest of the season and got his first win as head coach against Sacramento on Wednesday night. Adelman started Jalen Pickett in the game and only played Russell Westbrook 16 minutes, his lowest minute total since early December.
Reports suggest that Westbrook's playing time and preferential treatment had been one of the issues this season for the Nuggets. Now, after a rocky week, the good news for Nuggets fans is that Jamal Murray, is likely to return on Friday night for a huge matchup with the Memphis Grizzlies. As of now, the Nuggets sit in fourth in the West, one game behind the Lakers, who also had an eventful week.
On Sunday, the Lakers got a dominant 126-99 win over the No. 1 seed Thunder in OKC, a game in which they made 15 three-pointers in the first half, tying a franchise record for most threes in a half. Two days later... It was Groundhog Day because the Lakers were once again playing the Thunder in OKC and once again hit 15 threes in the first half, tying a franchise record for most threes and a half.
Now, the game was much closer this time, however, with Luka hitting a shot with 742 left in the game to put the Lakers up by one. Unfortunately, while trying to shout a couple expletives at a fan after the maid basket, ref JT Orr was in his sightline and assumed that Luka was yelling at him.
Luka was assessed a second technical of the game and ejected, leading to a 29-12 finish for OKC, who picked up their 65th win of the season. The Lakers next game was one of the more anticipated games of the season with Luca returning to Dallas for the first time since Nico Harrison decided his Wikipedia entry needed an update.
The Mavericks played a pregame tribute video for Luca, which left him visibly emotional as the game started. The tears didn't slow him down, however, as he dropped 45 in his return, leading the Lakers to the 112-97 win.
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Chapter 2: What are the highlights of the Slammies awards?
This award goes to the player who changed our opinion about them the most compared to how we felt coming into the season. And for me, listen, I was very wrong about the Clippers, Andrew. You were wrong. We were wrong. There are aspects of getting the Clippers wrong that I can look back on now and say, yeah, I should have seen that.
You know, James Harden playing a full season and being good after he'd done the same thing last year. I could have seen that coming. Like Norm Powell being able to pick up some of the scoring slack, considering he was almost a 20 point per game score several years in Portland. I could have seen that coming. Chris Dunn being a really good pickup after being good in Utah the previous year.
If I didn't have my OKC blinders on greedily wanting that Clippers pick to be valuable, I could have seen those things coming. But the thing I don't think I would have ever seen coming was the jump that Evita Zubats had this season. Now, maybe I could have seen him becoming the anchor for a top three defense since that's been his calling card in the NBA.
And this Clippers team has so many good defenders. But the jump he's made offensively has blown me away. And as I mentioned earlier, what a great week to be talking about him after he has his first career triple-double defensively. putting up 2011 and 10 against Houston.
Offensively, after averaging only 1.3 post-ups per game last season, he averaged over four per game this season, tied for second most per game.
That's a lot. Yeah.
Yeah, he's tied with Shingun and Giannis and scoring a very solid 1.06 points per possession on those post-ups. He had a career high 35 this year. He scored almost 17 points per game, which for me is the definition of I wasn't familiar with your game because I did not know he could have that sort of consistent offensive impact night in, night out. So he gets the award for me.
Yeah, it's a good one. He had a really great season for me. Denny Avdia. So in the Blazers traded Malcolm Brogdon, the 14th pick in the draft that became Bob Carrington, a 29 first round pick and two second round picks. One, honestly, that's way more than I remembered. The Blazers giving up. I didn't remember they gave up that much to get him.
But when I initially made that deal, I really scoffed at it. I got thought, oh, my gosh. What are the Blazers doing? They're so far away. Why are they trading for players? They're trading away a lottery pick to get a player in. It's been just a home run for the Blazers to get Denny He's averaged 23, nine and five in March with insane efficiency.
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Chapter 3: How has Denny Avdia performed for the Blazers?
And it's just very fun to think back to those early tanking days and how obsessed we were with, I mean, Sfima, Hiluk, you know, I was getting into all these guys, Hamadou Diallo and, And Ty Jerome ends up being the best out of that bunch.
It is pretty wild. That is pretty wild that he has become the best player of that bunch. Al, I'm going with the Houston Rockets. I'm just pleasantly surprised by how good they've been and really how good they've been lately because it wasn't that long ago. On March 4th, they were 37-25, looking like a team that was just more in the middle of the pack of the West and they could be a play-in team.
What's going to happen here? Since then, they've gone 15-3 in their last 18 games. This has been a very good basketball team. They've beaten a lot of good teams. They beat the Thunder. Most recently beat him like a drum, in fact. And I just think that Emei Yudoka has done such a good job. I mean, they're getting so much from so many guys.
They have seven guys that are averaging double figures right now. And you think about some of the guys they have on their team, like Jabari Smith and Amin Thompson and Jalen Green, like all top picks right they've meshed pretty well for guys that are selected in the top five of the draft like that, that probably should have a lot of ego. And just being able to manage that
I think it's been super impressive. Shangoon's emergence has been super impressive as an all-star as well. And the defense has just been monstrous. Now, they do need to establish who the star of the team is. But man, you're feeling really good about this team. And they've done it in short order as well. It wasn't that long ago that we're...
that Raphael stone was a punchline to a lot of people with what they were doing. And, and now you like feel great about them and you, you feel like, okay, they're a move away. They have a lot of guys that they could trade away thinking about Reed Shepard. If they need like the centerpiece of a deal, like some teams could convince themselves that a guy who hasn't really played for them is
is the centerpiece of a deal. And they have all these draft picks. Cam Whitmore is another one that you could throw in there and be like, oh, that's a great young prospect. And you could keep all these guys. And you could just add a star onto that team. And so, I mean, I know that they were saying it was overstated, the Kevin Durant interest.
But with the little amount that you actually have to give up for Kevin talent-wise, if you just threw Kevin Durant on this team with the defense around them... I don't know. This is a team that's going to be interesting really fast. And I think, like we said earlier about their odds, I think even without a trade, this is a very interesting team.
And so I was pleasantly surprised at how good this Rockets team has been for sure.
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Chapter 4: Why are the Houston Rockets a pleasant surprise?
And I think for the first time this year, particularly second half of this season, his lottery picks in Shade Sharp and Donovan Klingin and Scoot Henderson have all shown enough promise that you're like, okay, I started to see the vision. And yet he still has every Simons on the roster.
Rob Williams never got traded, not when he first arrived, not after he stuck around after an injury and not before he got injured another time. DeAndre is probably untradeable. Every Simons, you know, still there. And Jeremy Grant, who he gave a massive contract to, even though both him and Jeremy knew Damian Lord was out the door, they still gave him one hundred and sixty million bucks.
So it's like you kind of see where they're headed and why they're headed there. But I think the overall the vision from like pretty decent, competent team, which they've turned into to like actually competitive basketball team remains like a bit mystifying. Is it deserving? I don't know. No one deserves anything in this world. And we all deserve everything at the same time.
So I'm not surprised he got I'm not surprised he got a new contract by any means.
Do you expect Chauncey to stick around?
I do not expect Chauncey Billups to be the coach of the Blazers next year, in part because when they announced the future of the franchise and the multi-year contract for the GM who's going to lead the vision into the future, they didn't mention Chauncey Billups, and they also didn't announce a contracts extension for Chauncey Billups. He has a team option for next season.
He's coached four years here. I think it is misleading to judge Chauncey Billups by his win-loss record, which is horrendous because the Blazers lost on purpose for a good chunk of that. Um, and undoubtedly the best stretch of, of Billups his career has been the last three months. Like he's been that he's been pretty good.
Although I do think often we say coach win good coach lose bad, um, which is maybe a little too simple, but I, if the Blazers were going to keep Billups, I've had a lot, a lot of opportunities to do so. And I believe he will probably be a coach in the NBA next season, but I would doubt it would be for the Portland trailblazers.
So Scoot Henderson, his rookie season was a little bit worrying, but he seemed to find his footing this season, proved his efficiency, shot 38 percent from three on good volume in his final 46 games. So now that Blazers fans kind of breathe a little easier, knowing that he's probably not a bust, what parts of his game does he need to develop for him to take that next step?
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Chapter 5: What was the worst in-season decision made this year?
He's really improved his left hand finishing. That's like a thing he can do a little bit. But I think a lot of it is getting his footwork and his balance when he gets around the rim becomes a problem for him.
Yeah, he's shooting 55% in the restricted area, which is not great for a star. It's a little better than Jeremy Grant's 46%, but we don't have to talk about that. Let's talk about Donovan Klingin. He's the Blazers' big-name rookie this year, seventh overall pick in last year's draft. He's already shown some significant defensive upside this year worldwide.
What's something about his game that stands out to you that might not be obvious to someone who doesn't watch the Blazers every night?
He is a real MF-er. Like, he is... Donovan Klingin is down to brawl. And I don't know that you always see that with rookie big men trying to find the way. Sometimes you see, like... You know, there are some Stephen Adamses out there, right? Like, Stephen Adams kind of came to the league and was like, I'll fight. Like, I'm down to fight. I'll fight everybody. But a lot of young big guys are like...
I got to figure out where maybe they commit hard fouls, but they don't like beef. And I think Klingon's competitiveness, particularly not backing down when guys go right at him and draw kind of silly fouls on him. I think that is an appealing part of his game because just that, just the willingness to like to mix it up speaks well for what they're going to need him to be.
Cause like his future is being gigantic and physical and he's already willing to do that.
Before I ask you about the draft lottery, I did want to ask about Shaden Sharp because he seems to have taken like a kind of nice post-All-Star break jump. You know, he's playing a little better post-All-Star break. How much of that do you feel is real?
Or is there anything that he's done post-All-Star break that you can really point to and feel like, OK, this can definitely carry over to next season?
You know what I think is a myth? I think Mickey Mouse March is a myth. There are times when it is very obvious that you are racking up stats against nonsense teams. There was a game, Shane Sharp's rookie year, where he had 37 boards, 7 assists. 37 and 7. And the team kept pointing to it all the time. One of the only rookies to have 35-5 before his night. They lost by 42 to the Kings that night.
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Chapter 6: What bold playoff prediction can we make?
I'll go eight for Martel Webster. That's a number I do know.
Martel Webster. Okay, here we go. Portland. has had 113 clutch minutes this season. Okay, that's minutes where the game is within five points with five or fewer minutes left. There are only two NBA teams with fewer clutch minutes. Who are they? Who are they? Who are they? And as a hint, kind of a hint, these two teams have significantly fewer clutch minutes than Portland. That helps you at all.
So Portland's at 113. These two teams significantly less. I'm up first. Yes. I'll guess our beloved Washington Wizards. That is correct for one point. Can you get the other team?
Again? Yeah, I'll go to the other end of the spectrum and guess OKC. Wow, Mike.
Yeah, that's it. Got it. Both of them. Boom. Two points. Nice. All right. Andrew, board is yours. Number two. Thank you. Okay. Seven is still available. I just accidentally marked it out. Two. When this player's on the court, Andrew, the Blazers are 6.4 points per 100 possessions better on offense. The best mark on the team, according to Cleaning the Glass. Who is it? Wow.
When this guy's on the court, the offense is hubbing. What about Time Lord? Rob Williams. Good guess, Andrew, but that is incorrect. Mike, you have a chance to steal for one point.
Okay. I think it could be one of two obscure guys, but I'm just going to guess Sterling Scoot Henderson.
It is Scoot Henderson. Wow. Isn't that kind of impressive?
Yeah, I know his on-off numbers suggest that he's good. I think that that's... It suggests that he's good. Well, it's like the Blazers vets. If you look at the on-off numbers, DeAndre sucks. Jeremy Grant, unplayable. Anfrey Simon is normal bad. But I don't want to spoil some potential ones. Maybe that'll be coming up in this trivia. But Jabari Walker and Duop Reith are kind of on-off legends.
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