 What are some things happening in the NBA that you wish more people were talking about? That's what I asked on Twitter last night because we had zero games and I was just trying to figure out what the heck do I wanna talk about? What do I wanna do? So as a guy that watches as much basketball as I do, obviously there's a lot of storylines and things happening around the league that I either don't get a chance to talk about or I completely, completely miss. And this is an opportunity for us to get flowers from for some under talked about players slash team. But before that, I wanna let you know that I just put out a podcast we had Nasred on. Very busy dude, as you can see, he's in a car right now doing that interview. He's a busy dude, very cool dude. I'm just saying, the link is in the description if you wanna support or watch the episode with Nasred. Like I said, I will continue to promote the Can't He Beat The Podcast every chance I get. We're starting to get more and more NBA plays. It's a beautiful thing. I got some more in the back pocket, just coming out soon. Also coming out soon are these hats and an entire shooting stars collection for the Enjoy Basketball brand that is coming out on Thursday. I'll give you more details about that in tomorrow's episode. Let's get into some of these things that we should be talking about. The first one comes from OptimisticKT, Sanderic Lively being the second best player in the draft and starting at center for a playoff team when he's the second youngest lottery pick. Brankin' these young dudes is kinda irrelevant to me, but we can definitely, definitely give our flowers to Sanderic Lively because from the very first moment he walked on the NBA court as far as an official game in the game against Wimby, a lot of us open our eyes like, oh boy, is this the guy? Cause again, I don't watch college basketball, but I remember when the draft was happening, we were doing a live stream and my guys that do watch college basketball, I was like, yo, that is the perfect center for Luca Doncic. He's relatively raw, but once he starts to put it together as a rim roll, as a defender, well, Luca Doncic, that can be kinda scary. And we're just 19 games to his NBA career and we're starting to see that. Like he started off, of course, that first game against Wimby where he looked like the better rookie, but his minutes have changed a little bit, whether it be foul trouble or Jason Kidd finding out different rotations and stuff. That last game against OKC was his best game of his NBA career. And ultimately they ended up losing that game, but from the very first moment to the very end, he was what? The second best player on the Dallas Mavericks? You can argue that he was what? The second best player on the course, again, specifically that game. And he was talking about Shay on the court, he was talking about J-Dubb, J-Homegren, like he might be a player that gets up for these type of things, because now that I'm thinking about it, he had the good game against Wimby, he had the great game against Kshet. He's just looking at these other bigs in his class, because again, Kshet was last year, but anyway, in his rookie class, like, hold on, I can hold my own. This draft class in general just has a bunch of really tough defenders or guys that project to be really good defenders from up top of Victor Webnyama. Again, I'm adding, chatting this one. The Thompson Twins, even though I'm in Thompson as in played a ton. Anthony Black, Balau Kula Bali. I mean, we can go on and on and on Hameh Hakez. We can go on and on and on, like the defensive potential of this draft class as a whole. And Derek Lively sits towards the top of that list because we talked about him being a raw talent. If he could put it together, he don't look as raw as a lot of people anticipated, in my opinion. Like, yeah, he's not going to be a duke that's going to put the ball on the floor, a hezzy, and go up for a strong lay. But rolling to the rim, good hands, good defensive instincts, where there are a lot of times where they were running pick and roll with the OKC Thunder. And let's say it was Josh Giddy as the roll man. He was able to just play some drop coverage and recover enough to block a bunch of shots in this game. And we just looking, I'm just talking about the shots that he were blocked, but the ones that he changed just by him being at the rim and so on and so forth. He's been amazing. And when you have a guy like Luka Donchis that can put the lob on the money for you every single time, I can only see him getting better and better and better. The next one is Brandon Swoles, my fall Brandon. I know that's probably not how you pronounce it. Jalen Suggs figuring it out on Twitter. I have this little series called Jalen Suggs Moments. I know it's a bad title series, but it is what it is. When I'm watching OKC, I'm sorry, I'm watching Orlando Magic Games and I'm finding a moment for Jalen Suggs, right? Because he is such a high energy, very emotional basketball player, there are so many moments throughout his games where like you can count it as a Jalen Suggs moment. So I got to pick a choose, which out of the seven moments is worth tweeting about. Jalen Suggs has become one of my favorite role players in all the association. Some of y'all have been around here for a long time. You know of a thing called the Kenny Pharrell All-Stars. I'm putting together my ballot this year other than the season. Jalen Suggs is one of the captains. You can argue that at all of the perimeter defenders in basketball so far this season, Jalen Suggs has been the best or you can't get further than number five without mentioning the name Jalen Suggs. And also he's now shooting with 37% on four three-point attempts per game. Like the three-point shot is coming around and you add the defensive intensity and stuff. Like when you look at that draft class, you look at the top guys, you feel like Jalen Suggs did not live up to expectation. I can understand that obviously he's at what, fourth, fifth overall pick in the entire draft. But when you take it at face value at the player that he is right now at 22 years old, you can feel pretty good about that draft if you're the Orlando Magic, especially since they're one of the better teams in the association through the first month. Jaden McDaniels-Goat says small market teams dominate it. Now the idea of a small market team is up for debate because like, okay, so here's a good article that tells you like these are the large markets, these are the media markets, right? So like the teams that are playing really good basketball right now in the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Denver Nuggets, Orlando Magic, technically are not small market teams. These guys are the smaller markets. But we kind of group all of these together. If you're not the LA Lakers or the Chicago Bulls or in New York or Philly or Dallas, you kind of looked at it as a small market team. But a lot of these teams have put it together. And there is a tweet the other day by Brett Usher. Let me see if I can find it. And it was about Anthony Edwards. They say Anthony Edwards needed a bigger market but the dude is 22 and has already been to the playoffs twice and he was in a hip movie and has a signature shoes, the best player or tied for the best player in the league record-wise. And then on this, Cal Coolsman said big markets don't matter anymore. Which I think has become in the reality. Like, I felt like when I was younger and I'm only talking about, let's say, five to 10 years ago, when you need, when you wanted to do these type of things, you wanted to be in movies, you wanted to have a poppin' signature shoe, you needed to be in one of the top markets. Now between him, Giannis, Jean-Marin, Lamello, you don't necessarily need to end up in one of the bigger markets to have a successful off-court career. It was like, man, if you wanna be poppin', you better get to LA, you better get to New York. And that's not the case anymore, y'all. And now though, I feel like NBA front offices and so on and so forth are, I'd say it's smarter now than they've ever been, where you're able to build in these smaller to media-sized markets without having to go out and get one of the superstar free agents, draft the whale, making the trades, and then bringing people in that will love the city. So it is cool to see, it's cool to see that it is balancing the self out where it's not just I'm in California or I'm in New York for me to be successful as a player when championships or be a marketable player. I like this when the emergence of Kobe White and the consistency of Patrick Williams now they'll be in the sideline. Tony Hawk, Skater Boy, said it's been two games, brother, let's not get ahead of ourselves and you're right, but you're also wrong because I want to root for these dudes, okay? Also, is that a free-in? That is this free-in. One of the best shows of the season, I'ma say that. My number one show of the season. No, it is kinda cool. I talked about it briefly on the Kiddy Beach podcast, but Kobe White has turned into a different player, which is cool. I'm not even just looking at just two game sample sides for Kobe, it's gone back for a couple different games or so. Bulls fans are just kinda happy to have a new life in the team over the last couple of games and hell, you can argue that they were scheduled loss of the Pelicans or you can argue about the Milwaukee Bucks struggles defensively. I don't really care to see my two of my younger players, my North Carolina players go out and play good hoops over the last couple of games. That's, I don't think it's something that most people care about or should be talking about, but I'm just saying, keep your eye on Kobe White specifically if you have not been watching Chicago's Bulls ball because he's been looking better and better every single game. That's all, that's all I'm saying. Ben says to consistency on defense, Alperin Shagoon has played with this season. There has been a lot of talk about his offense, but his defense has been slept on. I just butchered the heck out of that tweet, but you understand what I'm saying or what he is saying. And I agree to an extent, right? I think Alperin Shagoon has been significantly better this year than his first couple of years in his NBA career, defensively, but because he is such a great offensive player, the defense will always be under appreciated, I would say. And I feel like unless you come into the league as a guy that it's immediately a defensive and a positive impact, that the idea of you being a poor defender is gonna follow you until the masses really get into your game. Like, Nikola Yoko's a perfect example of this. Now, Nikola Yoko's was not a very good defender the first couple of years of his career, but slowly he started to put it together. And now I think most people recognize that Yoko's is not one of the best defensive players in the league, but he is an adequate defensive player. And if you have the offensive upside, like Alperin Shagoon in the offensive production, like Alperin Shagoon is starting off in year number three, and you can say that every year he's getting better defensively, that you can feel good about him being your five, because at the end of the day, I think that you need to have an adequate to good defensive center to hold you down. And most playoff series and most times you're trying to go on a run. Now, it might be a little bit early for the Houston Rocks to think about going on a run, but you talk about them building what their future of their franchise is, to have it that LP is not this revolving door defensively or have it so he's not one of those defensive centers that doesn't give effort or doesn't understand the defensive side of the ball. It just means a lot for their future. I think I personally have to tap in a little bit more to his defense to understand whether or not, you know, what being a sand here is completely true about it being slept on or whatever. But I do recognize that he's not a bad defender anymore, but is he better than maybe I think? I don't know, I gotta watch more, I guess Houston Rocking game. Chris said, this man being the MVP. I love it, I love it, I love it. Now I wouldn't go that far personally, but hey, if you got him as your MVP or you got him on your MVP ballot, I can be mad at you because the Aaron Fox has been amazing. Last year he took that first jump. We were like, okay, clutch is playing in the league, the Sacramento Kings are in the playoffs, yada, yada, yada. He has taken another jump on top of that. It's so cool to see as a Deer and Fox fans to see that next jump. Because we knew if he put his hand down and got to the rim, there was not really many people messing with him. We knew, especially based off last year, did that mid-range jump shot is silky smooth and that's his go-to spot in the half court. But now he is attempting 8.33 pointers per game, which is five more per game than last season. And he is shooting 37%. I don't know what you do about that. If you were guarding this man, how do you stop him if his three-point shot is coming along? Again, 13 game sample size we'll see if it holds up the entirety of the season. But 37% adds another element to this man's game when he was already not unguardable, but close to unguardable. Like the idea has been, well, you slow Deer and Fox down, you can not neutralize him, but you can mute him quite a bit. This season that is not the case. He has been a significantly better half court player this year versus in the transition. And that don't even make sense. When I say that aloud, it doesn't make sense, but all of the numbers in the eye test says that's true. You try to slow these boys down and it hasn't mattered this year. Give him a grenade. Give him the ball with five seconds left in the shot clock. He gonna make some magic happen. The numbers say on grenades, last couple seconds of the shot clock, he has had a 1.25 points per possession which puts him in the 93% tile. You know how demoralizing it is to play defense for 20 seconds and still give up a bucket? Deer and Fox has given you that bucket. I don't know, I just been impressed with everything that Deer and Fox has brought to the table. And they have a few players on their team that are not playing to expectation. And eventually if you feel like those things are gonna average out, right? Like he and Murray can take, like starts to shoot the ball better or Harrison Barnes gets back on track. You look at this team and saw that they were the 3C last year and you feel good about them being, because you look at before the season started, I think a lot of people recognize there was like 11 to 12 teams that are gonna be competing for 10 spots. And I know a lot of people left the Sacramento Kings off like, oh, the second year after the big year is the harder year. When you think about what Deer and Fox is doing, you think about some bonuses production and you think about the means averaging out for the rest of the players, you feel pretty good about the Sacramento Kings keeping their spot in the playoffs. There are a couple other ones like that I kept seeing like Tumani Kamara. I have not watched a ton of Portland Trailblazer games and have an opinion about him, but now that I see a lot of people talking about it, I'm gonna try to lock in a little bit. Mitchell Robinson was one that got a lot of love and I talked about him a little bit on the podcast where he has become one of the, maybe the second best player on the New York Knicks so far this season because of his defense and everything. Overall, there are just a ton of stuff that have gone under the radar. And we might have to do a video like this every couple of weeks so we can all get caught up on hoops. Leave a like, subscribe or watch or listen to the podcast when I was reading Spotify, Apple, YouTube, it's everywhere.