Goeiedag, enchantée and welcome to this week's episode of Eight 2 Four presents: All-NBA Team of the Week. A lot of things have happened in the basketball world. The NCAA tournament is down to its Final 4 and Duke is the only favourite left standing. Can they take it out? Giannis has made a claim for MVP this week by embarrassing Embiid in his own house and dropping 44 points on KD and the Nets, while sending the game to overtime with his only 3 of the game and winning it by sinking 2 crucial free throws. The Suns remember what losing is, going down against the Ja-less Grizzlies, you could even say starter-less Grizzlies, because Bane, JJJ and Steven Adams didn’t play either. That could be interesting for a Western Conference Finals match-up. The Hawks haven’t lost a game since our last show and now hold the third longest winning streak in the league, first time this season! Paul George is back for the Clippers, where they’re holding out hope for Kawhi to return for the Playoffs as well. And Manu Ginobli is headed for the Hall of Fame. With only a week left to go in the regular season, we’re going to focus on 5 of the best players this season that we won’t see again until next season. This is the last chance we’ll get to see them and give them some time in the spotlight. Get ready for your All-NBA Team of the Week!
PICK #1
Our first pick of the week is Immanuel Quickley of the New York Knicks. Overall, Quickley has had a disappointing season, much like everyone else on the Knicks. Even though he’s playing more minutes, he’s been taking less shots than last year and making fewer of them. His rebounds and assists are up slightly but nothing to write home about. Yet none of this is his fault. He is not getting the time on the court he needs to improve himself. It is something that a lot of fans and media around the league have been saying for most of the season, Coach Thibodeau needs to let the young guys play. The Knicks have a huge problem, they’re in the middle of a rebuild with a coach who refuses to let young players get time on the court to learn the game.
Thibs is in love with starting his experienced vets. Alec Burks is starting point guard after the Kemba fiasco, and has Evan Fournier running alongside him. If Rose would be healthy he’d be the third guard in the rotation. Even though Quickley has played in 73 games so far this season, he only missed 4 games so far this season, he was only allowed to start in 2 of those games. In only 10 games this season, he was on the court for over 30 minutes. For a team that is losing more than half of its games, it is incredible that developing youngsters is not on their agenda. Quickley is not the only one struggling with the same problem. Obi Toppin barely gets a look even though he has improved so much over last season, and when they added Cam Reddish at the trade deadline, Thibs did everything he can to keep him off the floor too until he got injured.
Last season was a blip, a lucky accident, that’s caused more damage than anything else. Because of last season Thibs was allowed to run the team the way he wanted this season, not considering the Knicks’ future. This will need to change going forward, with the Front Office either needing to let go of Thibs or moving some veterans away from the team. I would look at a line up next season of Quickley, RJ, Reddish, Randle and Robinson. You could even get rid of Randle and put Toppin in that group and let them all grow together. The Knicks will likely end up with another top-10 lottery pick but they can’t afford another talent to waste away in Westchester while these oldies struggle to win the Knicks some games. Sometimes I wonder if the Knicks are just playing a waiting game for that superstar, who could potentially be available at the end of this season, that star who grew up in Westchester and would love to come home and win the title in New York. You guessed it, that guy is Donovan Mitchell. If they can get him, he’ll likely have a say in how, and who, the Knicks will be playing in the future.
PICK #2
Our second pick of the week is Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers. Tyrese played 50-odd games in Sacramento and he will end up with about 25 games for Indiana by the end of the season. Either way, we wouldn’t have seen Haliburton play any games after the coming week. Which is too bad because Tyrese has proven to be great to watch on the court. In his second year in the league he’s shown us flashes of his potential, carrying the Kings for long stretches early in the season when Fox was not playing well at all. For a minute it seemed like he would be able to lead the Kings to a playoff spot but we all know the Kings are not allowed in the playoffs.
Then he was traded to Indiana, in the most surprising trade of the season. Indiana decided to blow it up. They signed Rick Carlisle as their new head coach at the start of the season who tried to work things out with the roster at the time. But he couldn’t get things to work with Sabonis, LeVert, and the rest. First, LeVert was traded to Cleveland, then Sabonis, Lamb and Holiday were traded to the Kings. In return, the Pacers received a lot of young or injured players, highlighted by Haliburton. It allowed them to tank for the rest of the season, focusing on a good draft pick this offseason and starting again properly next year. Because it’s not like they have a bad roster, they just had a bad season with a lot of injuries.
Looking at their potential roster for next season, we have Brodgdon and Haliburton running the guard positions and Ricky Rubio and Chris Duarte as their back up. And with McConnell, Hield and Stephenson they have plenty of other guards walking around in Indiana. TJ Warren will come back from his injury eventually and Myles Turner should be excited that Sabonis has left the building. Add Jalen Smith and a few other young potential role players, and you have a great roster. Considering they’re likely to add a top-5 pick to this, the Pacers should be back in the Playoff/Play-In conversation next season.
PICK #3
Our third pick of the week is Saddiq Bey of the Detroit Pistons. I’ve been struggling to decide whether or not Saddiq Bey is a good player or a great player. It started in February last year. I hadn’t taken much notice of Bey until then, but all of a sudden, you could say almost out of nowhere, he won Eastern Conference Player of the Week. Not Rookie of the week, no, Player of the Week. Yes, he had a great stretch that week, but it was a surprise nonetheless. I kept an eye on Bey since then, but there were no standout performances. He was a good player, nothing more, nothing less.
Then came the game against Orlando, a couple of weeks ago now, where he dropped 51 points. You could say that Orlando is one of the easier teams to play against, and you would be correct, but dropping 50 points in an NBA game is not something that happens every day. Less than 160 players in the history of the league have done it. Legends like Reggie Miller, Paul Pierce and Tim Duncan only did it once in their careers. Current superstars like Doncic and Jokic have only done it once so far. And yes, occasionally some average players slip through the net, like Corey Brewer and Mo Williams, but this 51 point performance from Saddiq was different. He had very little help from his teammates with Cunningham not playing this game and Orlando throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him to stop him.
I don’t expect the Pistons to be good all of a sudden next season, but with Bey, Cunningham and a reborn Marvin Bagley, this team now finally has a core to build around. I’m assuming Jerami Grant will be traded away on the offseason, to secure more young talent and/or picks and it would be very unfortunate if the Pistons miss out on a top-3 pick this draft. So the Pistons have time to grow and build and in a few years, they’ll be a tough Playoff contender in the East. And if everything goes to plan, Saddiq Bey should be a great player on that team. Or a good one, I mean, I’m not sure.
PICK #4
Our fourth pick of the week is Franz Wagner of the Orlando Magic. The youngest of the 2 Wagner brothers is one of the outsiders this season to take out the Rookie of the Year trophy. Behind Scottie Barnes, Evan Mobley and Cade Cunningham, Franz has been playing really well in sunny Orlando. Averaging 15 points per game, 4 and a half rebounds and nearly 3 assists per game, he has contributed to this scrappy Orlando team in a big way. He has played more games than anyone on the roster, starting all of them, and really only Anthony Cole has had a bigger influence on this team than Wagner. His best game this season was against Milwaukee, just before the New Year, when he put up 38 points in a 7 point loss against the NBA Champs.
He left their last game very early with an ankle sprain and didn’t return, so hopefully we’ll get to see a bit more of him before the end of the season, but I can imagine that Orlando will not want to take any unnecessary risks and they’ll just shut him down for the season. Which would be too bad because Franz hasn’t missed a game yet this season. Because he still played for 20 seconds against the Raptors before rolling his ankle, the game still counts and his record is still perfect. He’s the only Magic player that hasn’t missed a game yet this season. In fact, only 6 players this season have played in every game so far, so that’s a pretty impressive stat, especially for a rookie.
Looking ahead, Orlando has a good team with plenty of talent on it at the moment. Wagner is joined by Cole, Mo Bamba, Wendell Carter Jr, and Jalen Suggs, who was actually quite disappointing this season but he did miss a whole bunch of games. You can add another top-3 pick to that list and they have some older players that could earn them some substantial return on the trade market. I’m thinking Terrence Ross, Gary Harris and Robin Lopez. Much like Detroit, Orlando still has a lot of growing to do, but the core is there. All they need now is a bit of patience.
PICK #5
Our fifth pick of the week is Domantas Sabonis of the Sacramento Kings. After 4 and a half years in the East, Sabonis is back in the Western Conference. After a year with OKC, where he was drafted, he was collateral in the Paul George to OKC trade alongside Victor Oladipo. I always figured Indiana won that trade right up to the point that OKC flipped PG to the Clippers for SGA and a boatload of picks which ignited the OKC rebuild. But that all seems like a very long time ago. This season, Indiana needed to blow it up and the Kings needed to take a gamble to make it to the Playoffs. That’s how Sabonis ended up in Sacramento, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to push the Kings into the Play-In spots.
Now, we need to be careful because of all the teams included in this week’s podcast, the Kings are the only team that are not technically eliminated yet. They’re 3 and a half games behind the Spurs and that 10th spot, with only 4 games left to play. So, you know, the Spurs AND Lakers need to lose everything, while the Kings need to win everything. Considering they’re playing the Warriors, Pelicans, Clippers AND Phoenix in their last games, that’ll be tough but you never know. It would be incredible if they can pull it off, especially considering neither Fox or Sabonis have played in their last 5 games and might miss the rest of the season too.
Let’s assume they won’t make it, which means that their gamble didn’t pay off. The Kings will take the record of the Clippers for longest Playoff drought ever at the end of this season and chances are that they won’t have the team to break the drought next season either. We can assume that West will be stronger next year than it is now, with the Lakers out for revenge, Denver, Clippers and Golden State at full strength. Things will need to change in the offseason for Sacramento but that is a message they get every year. At least they can add another top-10 prospect to their current roster but at some stage they will need to be able to take advantage of those young talents. Hopefully having Sabonis in the dressing rooms from training camp will be able to make a real difference.
This is our All-NBA team of the Week. Please share our podcast and give us 5 stars. If you have any questions, you can contact the show on eight2fouroffice@gmail.com. Thank you for listening, ballers out!
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