 What's the word y'all? I'm hyped. We are one sleep away from the beginning of the 2021-22 season. A lot of things are about to go down, man. I mentioned before that I'm spending a lot of time trying to go to this channel. We have a presenting sponsor that we're going to announce tomorrow, which is a huge W. We've been wanting to do a presenting sponsor for a very long time and we finally got one and it's the perfect match made in heaven. Met the team, love them, and we turned down some other offers to go with this one. So hopefully y'all show some love for that tomorrow. In that video, I'm going to be giving my MIP picks, my MVP picks and all of that stuff. But in today's video, I want to talk about who I think are the dark horses for the 2022 NBA Championship. Should be interesting, man, because it was hard. It was legitimately hard to pick dark horses. I want you to leave a like on the video if you're hyped for the NBA season and use the comment section. Man, these are my dark horses, but there are way more candidates than the ones I'm going to talk about today. So I want to hear what you guys have to say in the comment section. I feel like if you ask majority NBA fans who do they have in the 2022 championship, you're going to get a combination of different answers. Out East, you're going to get the Brooklyn Nets or the Milwaukee Vultures. Makes a lot of sense, man. The Brooklyn Nets have Kevin Arant, who might be the greatest player in the league right now. They have James Harden. They're probably going to have Kyrie Irvin. I do believe Kyrie's going to end up playing for the Brooklyn Nets this year. They signed Patty Mills. So even if Kyrie don't come back, they got Patty Mills. Blake Griffin re-signed, Paul Milsep signed. Lamarcus all just out of retirement. Who else? Bruce Brown should be better. Nicholas Claxton is going to be better. This team is probably going to be the greatest offensive team of all time. And we're like, what about the defense? In the regular season last year, they had like the 23rd, 24th rank defense. And then we got to the playoffs and they stepped it up. If it wasn't for a Kyrie and a James Harden injury and Kevin Arant's big old shoe, we might be talking about them as potentially repeating this year. So yes, I understand why people have them. And then the other team out East is the Milwaukee Boxmen. They did end up winning the championship. Yannis is looking even more elite than the previous users. It's scary. They brought back pretty much the same core. They lost to P.J. Tucker. But there's a different type of swagger from a team that's coming off the championship. I think in Eastern Conference, those two teams are in a league of their own. So it's kind of hard to try to pick a dark horse for it. But again, there's a couple of different options. I picked one for the Eastern Conference. And now West, I think majority of people say, hey, the Lakers are going to make it to the finals. LeBron James and Anthony Davis have a full offseason, not like the previous year where they had the shortest offseason of all time. They brought in Russell Westbrook. And yes, they have the oldest team in NBA history almost. But I think they got solid pieces around them and most people picked them. But it's not always that black and white. Same question. If I asked you last year, who's going to be in the finals? Most people would have said Brooklyn and the Lakers. That was even before the James hard to try. Oh, Katie's coming back. Kyrie's coming back. Oh, Kyrie's going to be there. And now the Lakers just revamped. They got Dennis Schroeder, Montrez, Harold, but it's not always that black and white injuries can happen. Trades can happen. So these are the teams that I think could potentially make some noise. I don't know. The first one, I might lose some credibility, but I like this team. All right. My first dark horse team. I got three of them, by the way. It's the Utah Jazz. All right. You don't have to click on video. Hit me out. Hit me out. Hit me out. Because the last remember, you have the Utah Jazz. They've been played off the floor against a Kawhi Leonard less LA Clippers and there's no excuse for those losses. I think they lost back to back games where Kawhi Leonard was out. You know what? I was there at the game that Kawhi Leonard got injured. I didn't even realize that Kawhi was injured. I saw him like get all wobbly or lippy, but I was like, I ain't nothing and he was out. I'm sorry to the Clippers, man. They made some huge adjustments throughout the series and I'm winning it. The Utah Jazz. There are no excuses from losing that series at all. I do believe they have a better team mission. They did last year in that series. Their third All-Star. I know Mike Connelly was a replacement to a replacement, but he wasn't All-Star last year. Injury. Don Vimentu injured and Rudy Gobert should have been played off the floor. He was played. He played terribly, but the coach left him on the court. Now a lot of what I'm saying or going to say today is contingent on the stubbornness of whether it be through the players, the ownership or coaching. Because in a scenario like game six versus the Clippers, yes, Rudy Gobert is one of the greatest defensive players in recent NBA history. There's a legitimate reason why he wins defensive player years off the Nessie does, but he does have holes in his defensive game. One thing that I got to give a ton of credit to the Clippers for in that series is Tabran Lu coached his butt off, making adjustments when necessary. They were not afraid of Rudy Gobert. They went right at him. And as good of a rim protector slash intimidator, Rudy Gobert is sometimes most of the time offense is going great offense is going to be really good defense. All right. The other thing is what does Quinn Snyder do when you go against a team that five out Rudy Gobert? Because I went back to rewatch game five and game six of the series. A couple like I guess like a month or so ago to to relive those moments and really figure out what was going on again. Rudy Gobert did not have a good series whatsoever. But if people that were looking at him as a sole reason why the Clippers are doing their thing, I think are slightly mistaken. Mostly because of what was going on. What goes on in the Utah Jazz Defense is, hey, we don't have amazing perimeter defenders, but we have an amazing rim protector. So we're going to funnel our entire defense into Rudy and let Rudy contest. Let Rudy do everything. And when you go five out where we can't funnel anything because now Rudy Gobert has to guard the corner and the defensive scheme was still funnel funnel funnel and let them make shots and let them make shots. And that's how you got Terrence Mann dropping 40 points. Now, I do believe that this year they made some signings and a trade that if a team were to go ultra small like the Clippers did, they might be able to to rally the troops and stop the bleeding. And part of that is Rudy Gaye. Part of that is Eric Pascoe. But then you go to this situation like we're paying Rudy Gobert max money and you telling me against a certain amount of teams. He can't play in the last three minutes. Yep. I didn't say it was a good contract when it happened, dog, but you have to make the adjustments when the other teams are making the adjustments. Adjustments. Tyron Liu out coached Quinn Snyder in this series because Quinn Snyder didn't want to pull Rudy Gobert off the court. Now, they didn't have a ton of great options outside of Rudy Gobert. They could have went like George's knee Yang to guard the corner. But when we go, I mean, with Donovan Mitchell dealing with a hamstring and them just not having elite level perimeter to finish the start off with a step for a step for Royce O'Neill players like Paul George would have been blowing past or just getting past the fender for easy layup. So it put them in a really tough situation and I do believe that this year they're going to be better about things like this. I do believe they're more deep team this year and I think that most people are looking at the Utah Jazz like the way we looked at the Milwaukee Bucks for the last couple seasons. Yes, we know you're a really, really good team, but we need you to prove something in the playoffs. Yeah, you can you can be the top two top three seed of your conference every single year, but we're not respecting you until you make some noise. And this might be the year where the Utah Jazz can make some noise. They obviously have a super dominant offensive player and Donovan Mitchell and a healthy Donovan Mitchell and a healthy Mike Connelly again. You don't know if they're going to be healthy, but those two players been healthy with the depth of Rudy Gaye, the depth of Hassan White side who kind of fell off a little bit, but but as a backup, he's going to be fine. I do believe that they could win a series against pretty much every Western Conference team of all things played into their laps. So that is my first dark horse team. The second one is even even more of a dark horse. But hey, here we go here Vegas odds by the way. So it's Brooklyn LA. The Warriors being tied with the Bucks is kind of weird to me. I think the Bucks will probably have a better chance, but whatever the sons are after that than the Utah Jazz. The Clippers are after that as well. And the next team on my dark horse list is this one. The Denver Nuggets hear me out. If I'm not mistaken without Jamal Murray, the team was like 16 and 7 after his injury, which is extremely good. All things considered. I definitely believe the moment that Jamal Murray went down, their regular season is going to be over that they would they would plateau and not be as good, but they had so many people step up and they had the MVP player, which is Nicola Jokic elevate his game to a whole new level level. Now a lot of this is being the dark horse really depends on when Jamal Murray comes back and what version of Jamal Murray we get because honestly speaking, it takes a couple months. It takes maybe a year to come back from an injury of his and look the same way. But I do believe when they locked up Eric Gordon and a locked up Michael Porter Jr, they were bought into this core and it makes a lot of sense. I think for the regular season, Nicola Jokic is going to be just as good as he was last year. He might not win MVP again, but the narrative is there. Y'all know narrative plays a big part in MVP and we will talk about MVP tomorrow, but a narrative does play a big part if if they are elite still and Yoko just put enough similar numbers for sure. He's going to be in the conversations, but the guy you know who the guy is Michael Porter Jr plays a big part in me putting them as the dark horse because last year once we got to the playoffs Michael Porter Jr had a lot of really good moments, but in the last series, he didn't perform the way you wanted them to. He has 15 points per game on 38% from the field. They needed a lot more from a guy like him. He let Will Barton outscore him in the four game series. So it's it's has a lot to do with Michael Porter Jr. But one thing we've known about Michael Porter Jr for the entirety of him being on the basketball map is that he is a natural born scorer. His defense is starting to come around more and more every single season and when you have a guy like Nicola Jokic and Michael Porter Jr. I don't really know how they're going to play each other, but they have one of the better coaches in the league. This team I still believe could be a dark horse when when when Jamal Murray comes back. I think there's something to say about a team having a super super elite MVP caliber player and the way they can elevate an organization just by being themselves. And I think that that's when Nicola Jokic is so you have that elite level player and you have really good role player slash second third options. There's no limit. There's no limit like I was trying to pick between them and the Dallas Mavericks, but I think the role players behind Nicola Jokic are significantly better than the role players behind the Dallas Mavericks. So that's why I went with Nicola Jokic's Denver Nuggets. Now the last thing out East is rough man. They are a couple different options. I don't know what to think about the Philadelphia 76 is because what the heck has happened in women's tennis. We don't know the Atlanta Hawks or a team that was going around in my mind, but ultimately I went with the Miami Heat. I do believe that the Miami Heat might disappoint in the regular season because they I don't know if they're going to end up being a top three top four seed. I just don't know. I think that they might lack some of the depth you want to see for the regular season. But once we get to the playoffs. I think the secret hit another level now. I know last year and what they let you know what we go discount last year get rid of that year. We ain't talking about it because the players that we've saw for the last couple of seasons, the two players that led them to the to bubble finals did not play up to standard in that series against the Milwaukee Bugs. I I desperately do believe the Milwaukee Bugs were seeking out that series because they wanted their revenge and they were ready for they have been practicing for it all season long. And I don't think the Miami Heat went into that series the same way. I don't think they're going to do that ever again. I do believe that BAM is going to be a defensive player to your candidate. I do believe Jimmy Butler is one of the best leaders in the entire league and the addition of Kyle Lowry helps it out a lot. Now we got to the playoffs last year. I don't know if the numbers prove this with me, but when I was watching them play against the Milwaukee Bugs, Goren's logic ability to create for himself and create offense was a huge part of the reason why they were in some of these games. They got rid of that. But get what I think as a season playoff player and Kyle Lowry, they might have lost a little bit of creation, a little bit of individual creation, but I think overall that's better for the team. Scoring on this team is going to be tough. PJ Tucker, BAM on a bio, Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry. These are some of the most elite defensive players we have in the entire league and they're all on the same team. I don't know what we're getting from Victor O'Ladipo, but if we get 50% of what we got in the MIP year, that's good enough to be a rotational player. I think this team once playoff time comes around is going to be crazy and Tyler hero head of baby. I like I know I know y'all be thinking I'm joking with these things, but I legitimately think that once somebody has a kid, their perspective on life goes goes a different way and they go harder. Listen, listen, I know y'all know the news now, but I went to JJ Reddick's and Tommy Alters, old man in the three live show in Brooklyn a couple weeks ago and in his retirement video, there is a moment where he was talking specifically to his sons and he said, Nox, Kai, my best years as an NBA player happened after you were born. This is this is not a joke. I swear I shed a tear. Why am I getting so emotional when it comes to fatherhood? I don't understand it, but I do believe that Tyler hero is going to be better this year than last year. I think he probably put the more time in and he's starting to really figure out who he is as the player and not just being bubble Tyler hero. Do I think he's going to be six man of the year? We'll talk about that tomorrow, but I do believe this team once the playoff comes around might be elite in a hard team to score on and the offense will come around. So yeah, those are my three dark course teams for the 2021-22 season. I don't know what the heck is going to happen this year and that's what makes good sports. If you enjoyed the video, leave it a like. I'll see y'all tomorrow. NBA season opener. Man, I cannot wait.