Episode 18: Poeltl is pronounced "Yak"
Welcome to the Red Black Comeback Podcast, a podcast that is ostensibly about the rebuilding efforts of the Toronto Raptors and the Portland Trailblazers, but it’s about so much more than that, including but not limited to the NBA at large, the WNBA at large, basketball at large, large people playing basketball, the Portland Fire, the Toronto Tempo.
My name is Dave.
I am one of the co-hosts.
His name is John.
He is also one of the co-hosts.
I am in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
John is in Portland, Oregon.
John, how are you?
I am doing pretty well, Dave.
It is now halfway through the season, so that’s exciting.
We get to look back, do some navel-gazing, you know, evaluate where we are, where we’ve been.
Also exciting, we can talk about this later, but the Portland Fire did a schedule release yesterday.
Oh, I know, I know, I know.
You’re going to have to bring this up.
It’s very, very good.
It is very good.
It is very good.
But yeah, how are you, Dave?
I’m okay.
You know, as you say, we’re halfway through the season.
That, to me, only really means that we’re in the end of January in Toronto.
It’s very cold.
I like the cold, but, like, a lot of people don’t like the cold, and I get that because the cold, you know, kills you.
But it’s very, very cold, bitterly cold.
Like, go outside, your face hurts.
Why do I live in a place where outside hurts my face, I think is the old joke.
I’m very grateful for this moment.
I know that sounds really cheesy, but, like, that’s how I am.
I’m kind of sort of in that practicing gratitude shit because, like, you look at the news, the world’s fucked, and at least for right now, that world fuckedness isn’t coming to my door, so I just want to make sure that I recognize how lucky I am for the terrible shit that’s happening in the world not coming and landing on my head.
Of course, I’m going to just touch wood right now.
Well, Dave, so not coming to your door, but you know something, somebody is coming to my door tonight.
Is it Santa?
Is he late?
No, unless his name is R.J.
Barrett, injured.
R.J.
Barrett is coming to your door?
Is that why he’s injured?
Have you been injuring him?
Oh, you mean Toronto’s in Portland, and you’re going to the game tonight, and you don’t know how to do a segue.
Yeah, I was doing a great segue.
Were you?
Yeah, I think it’s flowed quite well.
Thank you very much.
Reasonable people can disagree, but let’s start there.
So Portland and Toronto are playing tonight.
Last time Portland and Toronto played, I was there in Toronto, and of course, John’s going to be there tonight, so it’s really, really fun.
Last time the Raptors and the Blazers played in Toronto when I was there, Raptors won by three or five?
Three, I believe.
And tonight, I’m not 100% sure what’s going to happen.
We got a lot of guys out.
I’m not 100% sure where your guys are.
Why don’t we talk about that?
Why don’t we start talking about Portland-Toronto tonight, the battle for the soul of RBCB?
I don’t know.
We’re going to have to workshop that.
But you’re going to the game, right?
Yeah, yeah, I’m going to the game.
It should be pretty fun.
I was at the game last night as well.
The Blazers beat the Heat.
Always so sweet to beat the Heat because— Now you’ve got to do another rhyme.
Yeah, I know.
I was realizing that as I was saying that.
No, you just basically did that Raymond Holt meet from the street.
Could be good to eat.
Like, you were doing that thing.
P.
Andre Brower, you were a real one.
And that was a moment of silence for Andre Brower.
Go ahead.
Candle in the wind.
All right, so yeah, the game last night was great.
One of the things about Portland right now, and I know I’ve talked about this on the podcast frequently, is that their injury state is obviously a huge impact on their schedule and their performance.
But we’re at the point in the season where we’re starting to get guys coming back.
So I actually go to the official NBA injury report before every game, and I hit refresh basically throughout the day because it changes.
Because you know how they are.
They’re like, oh, questionable or out.
And then at the last minute, it can change to probable or available.
So honestly, I actually never know until I actually either turn on the game or arrive in the arena to know who is actually going to be available on the roster.
Do you mind if I just jump in for a second here?
Yeah, please do.
So I have been made aware, and by made aware, I mean I told him to do it, and he did, and he told me he did it.
I’ve been made aware that one or two of my Dynasty Fantasy guys now listen to this podcast, and I’m pretty sure a few of them did before.
But the guy I’m specifically talking to knows exactly who I’m talking to.
He knows that I’m talking about him.
And so this is a message for him, but it’s also a message to all the other Dynasty Fantasy players, regular redraft fantasy players out there.
John is talking about how he checks the NBA injury report every day to figure out who’s playing, who’s not.
I am a relatively good Dynasty Fantasy player or fantasy player, whatever.
And the one I go to every single day before game time, a couple of hours before game time to see if there’s news, and then about half hour before game time to check starting lineups, Underdog has a Twitter account, and I don’t like spending time on Twitter because it’s awful now, even though it used to be the best website in the world.
But Underdog, among other places, will post NBA news over the course of the day within a fantasy context, obviously, but the fantasy context is who’s playing, who’s not, who’s starting, who’s not.
And so that’s a tool that I use religiously just to make sure that I know who’s in, who’s out, who might play, who has a minutes limit, who is a game-time decision, and so on and so forth so I can make good roster choices.
John, you’re not a fantasy player, but I would heavily suggest that as well.
Obviously, Twitter is a fucking cesspool now, and it sucks, but we can still carve out value.
So instead of going through the NBA injury reports, you should probably just check for sort of a digest.
I think Underdog’s like a fantasy or a betting platform or something like that, but generally speaking, Underdog is almost always right, and I’m pretty sure that they’re getting their information from some sorts of feeds like that as well.
Now, are they getting it from the NBA injury report?
Maybe, but I tend to notice that the fantasy platforms and the betting platforms, for obvious reasons, are almost always accurate in this regard.
Okay, go ahead.
Yeah, so I don’t know if you’ve been to the NBA injury reports, but they get updated every 15 minutes league-wide.
So every 15 minutes, there is a new update.
And so looking at the injury report for tonight, it was most recently posted.
Actually, it’s going to be updated in about one minute.
And as of last posting, Toronto Raptors had listed R.J.
Barrett and Chucky Hepburn.
Actually, R.J.
Barrett is questionable.
Chucky Hepburn is out.
Colin Murray Boyles is questionable.
Jacob is out, and Jacoby is out.
And the Trailblazers side, nothing has been published yet.
They have yet to submit theirs.
Well, I mean, what will we be waiting for, right?
Like you said, okay, so the first text I got from you today, this morning, was that the Raptors are going to win because Danny’s out.
I’m paraphrasing, obviously.
I don’t think you actually want to actually say that on mic, that you think the Raptors are going to win because I don’t think you actually said that.
But the context of your – the gist of what you were saying is that Danny might be out.
What do we know about that?
So when I left – so when I was at the game, I actually saw him sort of wincing while he was on the court.
He got subbed out.
The trainer immediately came over and was working on him.
He did not go back in the game.
He sat on the bench for about 10, 15 minutes, one of those big – I actually don’t know what’s in the pack.
You see them.
There’s these giant medical things that they strap around their back and their waist.
Probably regular people like you and I don’t have access to whatever is in those things.
But anyway, he had that on his back sitting there.
I’m pretty sure it’s just a heating pad, bro.
It could be, but it’s like the super biggest heating pad I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, it looks like an oversized WWF belt, right?
Kind of, but he goes on your back, yeah.
WWF, I mean the World Wildlife Fund.
Yes.
Anyway, so he sat there on the bench for about 15 minutes or so, and then he got up and he and the trainer went back to the back room, to the locker room, and didn’t come back to the court the rest of the game.
At one point, I saw Joe Cronin get up from his seat and go back to the locker room.
And so at that point, when I was messaging you, I was like, oh, I’m pretty sure should hold that against the people on their broadcast.
The Amazon Prime basketball broadcast is really, really good.
And the NBC slash Peacock stuff is really good.
I don’t like some of the Peacock stuff, but it’s funny because for like 20 years, for more, I’ve noticed that the pitch and the tone and the timbre and the quality of conversations, arguments, postulations about the game, both from professional commentators and hobbyists and fans and fantasy guys and people with podcasts and people with blogs, I’ve noticed that the commentary has been really bad.
Like, it’s like people aren’t really watching the games.
It’s like people don’t really understand the nuances of the games.
It’s like people don’t care about certain things.
They only care about like dumb conversations about, oh, is LeBron better than Jordan?
Who gives a fuck?
We’ve been having this conversation for 20 years.
It’s pointless.
Oh, is LeBron better than Jordan?
Is Jordan better than fucking George Mikan?
Like, who gives a shit, right?
And I think that was ESPN.
I think ESPN prioritized a certain kind of commentary that emboldened like the dumbest people alive to think that being a basketball fan or being a fan of your team was about like, oh, blah, blah, blah.
Your favorite player ain’t shit.
My favorite player is the best.
Like, it’s just so super dumb.
And, you know, the inside the NBA guys, I think they’re very, very entertaining.
But for years, the conversation was like, these guys don’t actually talk about the game much.
And Chuck and Shaq don’t know all the players.
And, you know, it seems to be more about entertainment than actually like creating something that, you know, helps the average fan or helps the hardcore fan understand and appreciate the game more.
And now you get these new guys coming in or old guys in the case of NBC coming back in.
And the basketball coverage that we’re seeing is so much better, right?
You know, like the Amazon stuff with like Nowitzki and Steve Nash and Udonis Haslam and Blake Griffin.
I think Taylor Rooks is on that.
I’m not 100% sure, but I’ve only watched those on like I see that after the fact.
I don’t actually watch the Amazon broadcast.
I watch the League Pass broadcast that sometimes incorporates the Amazon broadcast or the TSN broadcast that sometimes incorporates it.
But the long and the short of it is that Amazon helped Amazon coming in, Prime coming in has now, OK, now we’re going to talk about basketball.
We’re going to talk about this, that.
And then NBC and Peacock, same thing.
And now ESPN has to sort of raise their game.
And I’m very, very hopeful.
I think the state of basketball coverage can only go up because number one, it’s in the fucking sewer right now.
But number two, like I think that the next generation of fans, though they are mediated quite heavily by their participation in sports betting and fantasy.
I think the next generation of fans are going to be very, very, they’re going to be better for this.
And I just want to say that out loud.
Like there was this clip a couple of days ago.
I can’t remember exactly whose air it was on, but it was on somebody’s air.
It might even have just been local, but it was like Colin Knipple explaining to the people on the like in the video who were putting this on television, like how he does X, Y, Z or how he knows how to like how he knows where and when to come up and deliver screen so that somebody can whatever.
And it was really, really educational.
And I guess all I’m really saying in all this is like if you listeners out there want to really and truly appreciate the game more, even if you’re a seasoned fan like me or like John or people who know more than us.
I think that I think that, you know, before the season, Adam Silver said some bullshit like, oh, NBA, it’s a highlights league.
This is why it’s okay that people can’t see the broadcast because people only care about the highlights.
And I think that that’s true.
But I also think that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you tell people that all they should care about is a shade and sharp dunk or a Steph Curry three, the moment and not like the entirety of the game, then that’s what people are going to think is important.
But if you watch the Amazon Prime broadcast or the NBC broadcast, a lot of the individual broadcast, you’ll see a lot of people who really, really, really want to talk about the game and not like, you know, who the star player is dating or like some other bullshit.
So that’s sort of like my rant here.
But it’s a nice rant, right?
I actually really quite like a lot of the stuff that I’m seeing.
Prime, you guys keep doing your thing.
NBC, you keep doing everything.
ESPN, they’re eating your lunch because you were dumb for 20 years and I have fucking no sympathy for you.
Go ahead, John.
I need to drink my coffee.
Yeah, so I’m going to sum up what Dave just said, which is you are what you eat and people will eat what they’re fed.
And right now, competition.
Bro, that was beautiful.
I love that.
Thank you.
And right now, the competition in the market is actually creating a better product for us as fans and viewers.
And it’s great.
It’s a good time to be a Blazer fan.
And let me cut in by saying, again, listen to what John just said.
Competition in the market means the cream rises to the top, right?
And now, like, resituate that idea everywhere else.
I knew you’d bite on that.
Well, yeah, because I live in fucking Canada where there’s like three telecommunications companies that they run shit.
And Canada, I think, still has like the highest mobile phone.
No, no, you already had your one rant, Dave.
All right, go, go, go, go.
So tell me, tell me, what is a John Hayes game day prep?
How does that go?
Because I can tell you mine, but I want you to tell me yours first.
If you’re going to the game in Portland to the Motor Center, how does that look?
Like, don’t get, like, you know, you finish your work day at five o’clock, then what happens next?
It’s pretty straightforward.
I mean, well, as I mentioned before, I’m already checking the injury, especially this season.
I’m checking the injury report basically every 15 minutes up until the time at which I leave.
Games here start at 7.
Tip-off actually is at 7.15.
The doors open at 5.30.
The sweet spot for getting to the Motor Center is around 6.20 to 6.25.
So if you work backwards.
Contextualize that.
The sweet spot is 6.20, 6.25.
What does sweet spot mean for you?
Sweet spot?
Yeah.
Sweet spot.
Sweet spot.
That’s like our new show that we only talk about blocks.
Yes, sweet spot.
Coming this fall to Amazon Prime.
That’s right.
No, the sweet spot is around 6.20, 6.25, which means that you can get a either free on-street parking or one of the cheaper lots if you drove.
The mass transit in Portland is good, but getting to the Motor Center is actually not all that great other than near in.
So 20, 25 minutes, 6.20, 6.25 means you can get a really good parking spot.
Part of the other challenge is having a parking spot that lets you get out after the game in a relatively straightforward way.
If you don’t know where the Motor Center is, it’s situated right next to one of the major interstates and a couple other major cross streets in the city.
And so they actually block off a few of the directions and they force you to go different streets that you might not want to go to depending on where you’re starting.
Anyway, all that to say where I live and where I want to park when I’m going, 6.20, 6.25.
That also gives me plenty of time to walk over, get through security, get a beer, maybe get a snack, get my seat.
And I like to be there when the team comes out from the locker room.
I like the hype.
It’s fun.
I like watching the entire shoot around.
I like seeing who’s – because that’s also the first chance, like I mentioned before, that’s the first chance that I actually get to see who is playing that night.
If they’re dressed down on the court warming up, that’s how I know.
So that’s kind of my pregame ritual.
Other pieces of it are I pick out what I’m going to wear, appropriate amount of blazers insignia or whatever, depending on who’s playing that night.
So you wear blazers gear to the game?
This is actually one that’s very important to me.
So you absolutely wear a blazer?
At a bare minimum, I wear blazer socks.
I have like four pairs of blazer socks.
At a bare minimum, I wear blazer socks.
But usually I try to wear like a blazer’s hoodie.
Sometimes I’ll wear a jersey.
I don’t always wear the jersey because I feel sometimes that’s like a little too much for me.
Yeah, no, I get it.
I mean like but the thing is like wearing a jersey, wearing the team’s jersey to the team’s arena to watch the team play, it makes sense.
And it’s not gauche.
I worked in music for almost 20 years and I was a journalist for a long time in that area.
And I used to always think it was gauche to wear the band’s shirt to their show.
I used to write about this and now I just think that I was a jerk.
Like wear whatever you want.
But like me, I don’t wear the only – okay, so for Blue Nice work.
Anyway, yeah, so that’s my, that’s my, that’s my summary.
You know, the Western Conference is, is, is kind of a little wild.
And you know, with Jimmy Butler going down with the ACL tear, you know, the Warriors are just going to continue to fall.
I’m actually going to up my prediction for the Blazers.
I had said eighth.
I actually think seventh is very, very good.
I like it.
I like, I like, I like the confidence.
Let me give you two reasons why.
So first of all, the Trailblazers have the second easiest schedule in the second half.
They had the third most difficult in the first half.
People are coming back from injuries and they own the tiebreaker over the Lakers and the Warriors.
So you heard it here first, folks, Portland Trailblazers seventh seed in the West.
And I actually don’t disagree.
I think that Butler going down basically takes the Warriors out of playoffs.
I think the Clippers have Harden and Zubach and Kawhi Leonard and a bunch of question marks, but like, I still don’t take them seriously.
I don’t take the Lakers seriously, but in my defense, I don’t think you’re, are you supposed, are we supposed to take the Lakers seriously?
Or is it just sort of like, hey, the Lakers are a team.
No, I don’t think so.
So I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more about Portland.
Just a couple of things about Portland.
Portland is actually one game over 500.
Congrats.
Eight and two in their last 10.
They’ve won four in a row, 13 and 10 at home.
Need to get better away, 10 and 12 away.
And they are actually getting outscored.
They average 116 and a half points a game and they allow 118 points a game.
Now let’s go over to my Toronto Raptors.
We’re currently fourth in the East, 27-19, six and four in the last 10.
They’ve won two in a row, 13 and 10 at home, but 14 and nine away.
14 and nine away.
I’m so impressed by this statistic, just this one.
Because to weather the storm of the injuries that Toronto has dealt with and still consistently went on the road.
And like, it really sort of speaks to the sort of the mettle of this group.
We could score a little bit more.
We’re averaging 114.3 points a game, but only allowing 112 and a half, which is kind of incredible to me.
We’re sixth in the NBA in points allowed per game behind Oklahoma City, legitimate title contender.
Boston, very, very good team that might get Tatum back.
Detroit, number one seed in the East.
Houston, who is basically built to play defense.
And Phoenix, who Jordan Ott has these guys playing on another level.
I’m very, very impressed.
I think that Darko should get some, I don’t know how the coach of the year voting goes.
I don’t think he should get any first place votes, but if it goes first, second, third, the way that it does for like MVP, I think Darko should get some votes.
I think that he’s done a great job.
I think that he’s a real good motivator.
And I think that there’s a culture of accountability in Toronto on defense.
And I think that if you don’t play defense, you don’t play.
Grady Dick came into the NBA as like, hey, he’s going to be a three point shooter.
He’s a scorer.
He can fill it up.
And Grady Dick, Jacoby Walter, another guy who was thought of as a guy who’s going to fill it up, and they can both score a lot.
That’s fine.
But Toronto Raptors fans will know that these guys are making their money and that they’re really, really endearing themselves to fans with their effort on the defensive side.
Every game you watch, Grady, and obviously Jacoby’s been hurt.
He’s like, I think he’s been seven games in a row with a hit pointer.
But every game you watch, Grady’s doing something like a hustle play, like running after a ball and saving it or like gambling on a steal, missing it, but then coming back into the play and getting it when the guy is like, ha, ha, ha, ha, he didn’t get it.
And then Grady will go get it.
He did that literally in a game that I watched, in the game that we watched against Portland when I was there myself, my buddy Ryan were there.
So one thing that I think I love about Toronto and you love about Toronto and I love about Portland, and I think you also love about Portland, these teams both have a lot of heart, both have a lot of grit.
And I think that the game tonight is going to be a lot of fun for those that can watch it.
I think so too.
And like I said, I think I said the Vegas line is three to Toronto.
I think I said the Vegas line is three to Toronto.
I don’t, you know, like, as I’ve said, you know, I occasionally bet on sports through an app, but like I’m talking about like $150 a season, right?
And once that money’s done, and I don’t take it seriously.
What I do is I put in like three or four like parlays that have like a, like they’re like 200 to one.
And every now and then it’ll hit and it’ll pay for the 50 that I missed.
And I just do it to see if I can, the intellectual exercise, right?
Like, can I think about what the game is going to go like?
Can I think about the game script?
Obviously you can’t predict an injury or whatever, but like, okay, so it looks like, okay, third quarter, they’re going to have to, okay, oh, I’ll bet Marcus Smart to get 10 points.
And it’s an intellectual exercise.
And I got the idea from a book called The Biggest Bluff.
And it’s Maria Konnikova, who’s a New Yorker writer, decided that she was going to try to learn how to play poker and ended up being a professional poker player.
She was mentored by a poker legend named Eric Seidel.
And the gist of his coaching, his teaching her was like, make the right decision.
It’s not about results because there’s so many things you can’t predict.
It’s not about whether you end up winning or not.
It’s the thought right.
It’s the decision right.
It’s the idea right.
And that’s the only way I do it.
I also think that app-based sports betting is ruining a generation of young men and making people think that the way to be a sports fan and to be a basketball fan is to be betting on the games while you’re watching it.
And in certain cases, there’s a lot of people who don’t know anything about the game, don’t care anything about the game.
They just bet on the games based on whatever.
And I think that’s fucking stupid.
And I think that it’s cancerous.
And I think that the fact that this is legal is insane to me.
Polly Market being illegal is insane to me.
We should not be able to bet on everything because being able to bet on everything literally changes the reality of those things.
And if you don’t realize that, that’s crazy.
I know that I’ve gone a little editorial.
But yeah, the Raptors and Blazers game, I think it’ll be very good.
But like I said, the Vegas line is three to the Raptors.
I’m not 100% sure what that’s about.
My guess is that that line will change when clarity on Denny’s health is up and clarity on RJ’s health is up.
Because if RJ’s playing, that means we have four of our five starters.
That’s quickly who, quickly, by the way, against Golden State the other day had a 40 piece.
It was the most efficient 40 point game in NBA history.
Did you know that?
Record-breaking.
Nope, I did not.
It was record-breaking.
So quickly against Golden State on Tuesday the 20th, Tuesday?
Yeah, Tuesday the 20th, quickly had 40 points.
He went 11 to 13 for the field, 7 of 8 from three, 11 of 11 from the line.
His true shooting percentage was 112.1%.
That’s the most efficient 40 point game in NBA history.
Epic.
And so we got him.
If RJ’s back, he’s going to slot in.
Scotty’s obviously there.
He’s going to slot in.
And Brandon Ingram’s there.
And we had been playing call-and-murry boils at center with Yak out, and then call-and-murry boils got hurt, his thumb.
So I think Sandro goes in.
But Sandro Mamoukalashvili has been just a revelation.
The other day against Golden State, 14-12, four assists, two steals in the block.
He was a plus three, shot 62% from the field.
The other day against Sacramento, Mamou was 22-9 and four.
22 points, nine rebounds, four assists, plus 15 from the field, shot 57%.
Whenever I watch Mamou play, I remember that he was just sort of languaging on the San Antonio Spurs bench.
And before that, he was like a guy with a funny last name that Milwaukee had.
And now he is like a potential borderline starter on an NBA team, and it just goes to show how much talent there is in the league.
And really all a lot of guys need is opportunity.
And I think the league, I think there’s some problems going on in the league, but I think the league’s in a very, very good place talent-wise, right?
Like it just goes to show that Mamou, like not that it’s the barometer for anything, but like if you were in a fantasy draft for like a redraft league, nobody would