Portland Trail Blazers

Uh, Golden State is 19th.

Uh, the Blazers 20th.

Like, basically the entire Western Conference, other than the three teams that I named, is, um, i- is behind the Lakers, not in front of them.

Uh, Lakeshow1997 asks, "Where do the Clippers rank?" Uh, 29th.

Yes.

And you spent time scouting for the Portland Trail Blazers, which is, uh, you know, you know, which is how your relationship started.

Can you talk about that and, you know, your ex-

No, no, no.

Well, you guys know how, like, this is in the business that we're in.

Like, there's a whole lot of assumptions that are being ma- you know, that just are made.

Most people will assume that, like, I have th- that I got the job in Portland because of my relationship with Damian.

Yeah.

The, the, the truth is, you had him for $8 million.

Like, you weren't paying anything for Deandre Ayton because the Blazers obviously were paying most of it.

Uh, I thought Ayton...

Yes, I think people were disappointed 'cause they wanted something that, to be honest, is probably not Deandre Ayton anymore in his career.

Yep.

And then Portland.

Hmm.

They're gonna get to the rim a ton, just like they did last year.

John Moran is the big swing factor.

They were a good offensive rebounding team last year, which was one of the indicators that I looked at very strongly for this list because that just tends to in- increase these, uh, inflate these ratings.

So I do think there's some Portland potential here, but there was just too many unknowns about the fit and Jaw's availability and all these things.

I couldn't go there, but I wanted to give them a shout-out.

I am looking at that frontcourt and thinking, "That is tough." That's tough.

Uh, Portland.

All right.

Donovan Clingan, a lot of potential.

Robert Williams III, I think, has had sort of a resurgence, uh, in Portland.

I thought he played really well last season.

Those are two guys who matter.

He'll- he's a big dude in, in height, not, not width, [laughs] I guess you could say.

Go ahead.

I think you're going to go the Trailblazers.

No.

Close,

I'm going to go with the Utah Jazz.

The Utah Jazz go from a 22-win team.

I think that this team is, frankly, I think that this team is better than the Clippers, the Trailblazers, the Warriors, the Pelicans, the Mavericks, the Grizzlies, and the Kings.

They're just flat out better, and that catapults them all the way up to the play-in, and at least last year the play-in was only 42 wins, but last year we did see an abnormal amount of tanking going on.

Who is Dwight Reith? Well, he is going into his fourth year in the NBA this past season.

He averaged 2.9 points and 1.2 boards per game for the Portland Trailblazers, but shot 41.8% from three years.

His third year in the NBA, all spent with the Trailblazers organization, spent time in the G League and with the big Trailblazers.

His averages have gone down each year.

Because I want to go back a couple years, and it's important.

I think I mentioned the journey that he got here.

he's not your typical fourth year nba player while wreath is 30 years old so he's not necessarily the youngest guy but he had a stellar rookie season with the portland trailblazers team in 23-24 that wasn't very good he averaged 9.1 points per game 3.7 boards per game but he also started in 20 games for portland that year and as a starter he averaged just a shade under 14 points a shade under six boards and actually a shade under two assists per game and his best year this past this best game this past season was against Oklahoma City when OKC was 8-0 and hadn't lost a game, yet Portland beat them 121-19.

I think they came back from 20 down in that game.

We'll see if that continues.

I suspect it will because the Blazers last season took a lot of threes for that franchise.

So I suspect they're going to continue that.

Now, with Norman Powell in the mix, you figure they'll continue the three-point shooting.

And, you know, come the end of the season, I'd be surprised if not one of the at least one of these guys, you know, ended up emerging as a meaningful rotation player on this year's Bulls team and really started to grow their value in the NBA.

And you just look at last year's Portland team.

I feel like we were having a pretty similar conversation here during two days on the Blazers and.

I thought Tiago Splitter did a great job developing guys like Caleb Love, who was an undrafted rookie.

What he did last season, only 2.9 points, 1.2 rebounds in 8.1 minutes per game.

He only appeared in 32 games for the Blazers, but that's because half of the Blazers roster was centers last year.

So, and you know, they drafted your guy, young Hanson.

So, you