Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the Saturday Slammin' Jam here on the Athletic NBA Daily. On today's show, we're talking to Keith Parrish about the Memphis Grizzlies. We're doing our good, bad, and what? And we'll end the show like we always do with some trivia. But before we get to any of that, Al, tell me what happened in the NBA this week.
Andrew, our top story this week is the NBA Cup. Let's go. We have made it to the semifinals, which will be played tomorrow in Las Vegas. Our final four features the Orlando Magic and New York Knicks in the east and the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs in the west. The Magic made it to Vegas despite losing Franz Wagner to a high ankle sprain earlier in the week.
on a play that sure looked a lot worse than a high ankle sprain. Even without Franz, the Magic were able to defeat the Miami Heat 117-108, led by Desmond Bain's 37 points. The Magic will be meeting the Knicks in Las Vegas, who went on the road to Toronto and easily handled the Raptors, leading by 20 points for most of the second half.
This is the Knicks' third consecutive appearance in the NBA Cup quarterfinals, but their first trip to Vegas. Let's go. In the West, Oklahoma City continued their dominant run, beating the Phoenix Suns by 49 points while setting a franchise record with their 16th consecutive win. OKC also tied the 2016 Warriors for the best 25-game start to a season at 24-1.
OKC's next test will be the San Antonio Spurs. who continue to win without Victor Weminyama. They have gone 9-3 in his absence and beat the Los Angeles Lakers 132-119 to get to Vegas, led by Steph Castle's 30-10-6 line. The Thunder Spurs game on Saturday will be their first meeting of the season, with a chance that it will also be the return of Victor Weminyama.
Now, elsewhere in the NBA, the East standings are an absolute mess, with the No. 3 seed and the No.
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Chapter 2: What were the top NBA stories this week?
9 seed separated by only one game. The Celtics were the hot team in the East over the last couple weeks, going 5-0 and rocketing up the standings to the third spot. But a disappointing loss to Milwaukee without Giannis on Thursday night has stalled that ascent, putting them even with the Magic at 15-10.
Now the Magic have responded in a big way after their four and six start, going 11 and four in their next 15, despite having to deal with yet another injury to a star player. On the flip side, the Raptors have majorly cooled off since their fast start, losing four straight and six of their last seven, with two of those losses being to Charlotte during that stretch.
Another team that has cooled off is the Miami Heat, who have lost five of six, which included giving the Sacramento Kings their only win in the last two weeks. The Cavs, another East team that is stumbling at the moment, dropping five of their last seven and still dealing with Darius Garland's ongoing toe issue.
Outside of Detroit, New York, the East playoff spots appear to be completely up for grabs. Now, in the West, let's head to the bottom of the standings where Derek Queen is forcing every NBA podcast, including ours, to do a segment where they reiterate how much they hate the trade, but you gotta admit that this guy's pretty good. Uh,
In a close loss to the Spurs, Derrick Queen put up a 30-point triple-double going for 33-10-10 with four blocks.
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Chapter 3: How did the NBA Cup semifinals shape up?
He's the 13th rookie to post a 30-point triple-double. If he gets another one, which seems likely at this point, he'll tie Blake Griffin and Michael Jordan for the second-most 30-point triple-doubles as a rookie. I don't know if he's going to catch Oscar Robertson, however, who had 17 30-point triple-doubles as a rookie.
The Pels got their fourth win of the season this week in a game against the Blazers, which saw the return of Jordan Poole, who's been out since early November. The loss for the Blazers was a particularly low point of their season. After a promising start, the Blazers have fallen off a cliff due to a combination of injuries and lack of depth, going 3-11 in their last 14.
The Blazers' defense, which we were once so excited about, you know,
preseason is now a bottom 10 defense cleaning the glass and speaking of being in the bottom 10 let's get an update on the land of the lost looking at the teams with a bottom 10 offense and defense per clean the glass there are currently six teams in the land of the loss but both Portland and Chicago are one spot away they're knocking on the door Wow. To get us back up to eight teams.
Now, we have lost a couple teams. Memphis' defense brought them out of it. And the Clippers' offense has been better as of late, allowing them to escape. Also, don't look now, but I think the next team to escape the land of the lost might just be the Indiana Pacers, who have had the 11th best offense and 12th best defense in the last two weeks, during which they went 4-2.
Now, if you care more about good teams and don't obsess over the bad teams like me, I will update you on the teams that have a top 10 offensive defense. Currently, we have five per clean of the glass. Houston, OKC, Minnesota, Detroit, and Toronto, who is still holding on despite their recent swoon. And those were the top stories this weekend.
Wow. The early season Toronto is doing some heavy lifting right now.
I know, seriously. Okay, Andrew, it is time to share something we like this week, something we didn't like this week, and something that left us confused in a segment we like to call Good, Bad, What? So, Andrew, what is your good this week? My good.
I thought, hey, let's take a look at the best corner three-point shooters in the NBA this week. It's a very valuable shot. And listen, who's doing it best this season? So I had to separate this out somehow. So it's players that have at least two attempts per game and have shot at least a significant amount of corner threes.
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Chapter 4: What impact did Zach Eadie's injury have on the Grizzlies?
My bad this week is about Tyler Hero. Or is it, Andrew? Or is it? Here's the deal. I saw the Dan Lebitard clip going around talking about how this recent stretch for the Heat was basically a worst-case scenario for Tyler Hero because the team was playing so well early part of the season. Everyone's talking about him. And then they start to stumble right as Tyler Hero gets back in the mix.
And this isn't a new idea, of course, going back to their finals run. There's always been this question of whether the Heat are better without Hero, even though we all agree he's a good player. So in the interest of fairness, I wanted to dig a little deeper, try to figure out just how responsible is Tyler Hero for this recent stretch of poor play.
First thing to point out is that Hero has not played in all these recent games. He only played in two games during their current four-game losing streak. Since returning, the Heat are 3-3 in the games he's played. It's not that bad. And per PvP stats, the Heat have actually had a plus-4 net rating in the 191 minutes that Tyler Hero has been on the court.
And they've actually been an even more impressive plus seven net rating in the 122 minutes that Hero has shared the court with Bam Adebayo. Now, these are small samples, but it's hard to point the finger at Hero based on his minutes so far. So what has changed for the Heat? Well, first, the bench hasn't been nearly as productive as they were earlier in the season.
They were scoring, before this recent stretch, 45 points per game, which was the third highest bench production in the league. They're now down to 35 points per game in these last six games, which is kind of middle of the road. But more importantly, I think a lot of this is just bad shooting luck and regression to the mean, because before this recent stretch, where the Heat lost 5 of 6...
Heat opponents were shooting 31% on above the break threes, second lowest mark in the league, and 35% from the corners, sixth worst in the league. During the current six-game stretch, opponents are now shooting 41% on above the break threes and 44% from the corners. They're getting lit up from three in a way that they haven't been all season.
And while you could certainly make the case that Hero probably isn't helping their defense, three-point variance involves a lot of luck. So... I absolutely think there's something to be said about Miami installing this new offense with minimal pick and rolls and now trying to reintegrate a player who last year used over 35 picks per 100 possessions per Cooper Moorhead on NBA.com.
Maybe Levitard is right and Hero does end up getting traded.
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Chapter 5: Why is Jaron Jackson Jr. struggling this season?
Maybe he just doesn't fit with this new style. But I think the early returns for Hero's reintegration have been better than the recent win-loss record might suggest. And it's largely being influenced by some regression to the mean for opponent's three-point shooting. So I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Yeah, he's only played six games, too. It's like, can we just give this a little bit of time? Any six-game sample that you get, and that's the problem with some of these beginning-of-season stats, especially with guys coming back from injury, any six-game stretch is not really going to matter to most teams.
It's the first sample that you get, it's like, oh, this must be the way it's going to be the rest of the way kind of thing.
And I also think as good as their start to the season was, I don't think anyone was looking at this Miami team as like, oh, they're dominant.
Chapter 6: What makes Cedric Howard a bright spot for the Grizzlies?
They're going to be a contender. They're absolutely the kind of team that could lose four games in a row. It's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. So that's my bad this week. But is it that bad? Andrew, what is your what?
this week. Oh, man. So the Los Angeles Clippers, they've been... No!
Leave them alone, Andrew! Leave them alone!
Chapter 7: How are the Grizzlies adapting to injuries in their lineup?
No, can't do it. I have a couple things on the Clippers. Yesterday, Tyrone Liu didn't talk to reporters after the game. And Justin Russo, who covers the Clippers, reached out to them and asked why Tyrone Lue wasn't made available to the media after the game. And he said that the Clippers said that Lue was made available post-game, but no one was in the interview room.
And there was no traveling media that night, which is becoming an issue across the league, is that there's not many media traveling in general right now. Just kind of the state of journalism. friend of the show, friend of mine, Kelly Eco, said that couldn't be further from the truth. I went there immediately after the final buzzer.
At least four people were in the interview room, including a member of Rockets PR designated to transcribe Lou's postgame presser, and we were told that he wouldn't be speaking and left. So, wow. Lies. You know what? Hard for me to believe that the Clippers would ever want to cover anything up and lie about it. Interesting. Yeah, just couldn't believe it. Also, this confused me.
The two-man duo of Harden and Zubats last season were a plus 10 together in a ton of minutes. 106 defense, 117 offense. This season, in 661 minutes, so it's not like it's just this tiny sample. There's a lot there. They're a minus 2.9 together together. And Harden's been good this season. Zubats has had a little bit of a step back. He's been a little bit better lately.
But I think that whenever you're trying to find the reasons why things aren't going well for the Clippers, I don't think that that's where you first look. But that combo has not been as effective. I mean, the swing is 13 points for 100 possessions for those two, which is a lot. Now, the Clippers have looked better lately. They're still not winning games.
But they are at least playing closer games. But that's a number that I'm going to monitor. Does that duo get better? Because if that duo doesn't get any better, that was kind of their bread and butter last year. That was one of the reasons why they were a good team at all. And this year, they are losing the minutes that those two are playing. So it's just been really, really strange.
That's why it's my what. It's like I don't quite understand what the difference is for those guys this season compared to last.
Yeah, they're such a confusing team because you watch that game against the Rockets. Rockets, really good team, great net rating, and they go in and play them so close, and then they just find a way to lose at the end.
Don't even inbound the ball. Don't even inbound the ball. It's just like what – It's they're very they're not not only are they bad, but they are confusing.
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Chapter 8: What challenges are the Clippers facing this season?
Most games with six plus three-pointers. Six plus three-pointers. Most games. Franchise history. Wow.
That... Huh. Mike Miller?
Mike Miller is correct, Andrew, for two points. We got a hot start. All right. Back to Keith. Let's do number three. Jaron Jackson Jr. gets a lot of flack for his rebounding, but he's not the only tall guy with less than impressive rebound totals.
In fact, among players who have played at least 600 minutes this season, there are two other players, 6'10 or taller, who have fewer rebounds than Triple J. Name them both. Now you get one point per correct answer. So these are active players this season, 6'10 or taller, who have played as many minutes as Triple J, but have fewer rebounds. Whoa.
Whoa. Man, how long do I have?
This seems like a hard one. This is a really hard one. Yeah, the first two were kind of fun. And...
I'm like running through every team's roster in my head. Yeah, you got to think of tall guys.
How many minutes did you say? 600. So a lot of minutes. That's a lot of minutes. That's a lot of minutes too. So we're only talking about like high minute guys in the league.
And I got to know people's heights as well.
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