 What's the word, y'all? I hope that you are taking a step back and appreciating all the crazy performances we've been getting in the NBA. Let's just talk about this season. A couple of days ago, we dropped a video about Luka Dodgers's 60 point, 21 rebound, 10 and six game. And we talked about how according to game score, it was the six best performance in the history of basketball. We even argued that it probably is higher considering the stakes, considering he got his own rebound off a miss free throw, threw it up to fours overtime and then went into overtime score more buckets. It might have been higher than that. Well, today, was it a week ago? Luka had that stat line today. Donovan Mitchell had 71 points, 11 assists, 71 points and 11 assists and some my career rookie 12 minute quarter stuff and also eight rebounds. And one thing that is getting lost in the shuffle is the fact that they were down by 21 points and they came back at one. He had 71 points, one of six people in the history of this great league to crack 70. And he beat Devon Booker's. That was one of the things the guys were saying in the discord today. He just had the one up Devon Booker to prove he's the best student guard in the league, whatever. I cannot believe the performance I just saw. We talked about Luka's game being the sixth greatest individual performance according to game score. Donovan Mitchell's is the third greatest performance in the history of hoops. We just watched that on a random Monday night and the top of a new calendar year. This is ridiculous. And you know what? I want to get my love to Joel and B2. We talked about some of the greatest performance of all time. Joel and B2 had won a couple of weeks ago. Well, I think it was top 10. So I don't want his game to get lost in the shuffle when we talk about Luka and Donovan Mitchell's game. But Joel and B2 was great too. We appreciate that, Joel. So I'm gonna talk about today and a couple different perspectives, okay? We got the perspective you're seeing right now. This is Kenny Beachham, the basketball enjoyer. And the second perspective is Kenny Beachham, the Bulls fan. Because as you can imagine, you know, it's a little bit different between the two different perspectives. He just had to be my team then. It just had to be the Bulls giving up this tonight. I just, I still can't believe how everything went down. But in the midst of all of this, one thing I saw on Twitter, not just of one time, because one time I looked past a few times, is the take that they're not overly impressed with a performance like Donovan's or a performance like Luka's or a performance like Joel's because all the stats right now are so inflated that it's kind of boring. And I'll be the first to tell you, bad take. Yes, we do have inflated stats, but still bad take, y'all. If you're not really familiar with stat inflation, let me introduce you to something. This is a prime example of stat inflation. In 2003, 2004, which was the first season I got into basketball? So that's a Page Story Okavitch. He's one of my favorite of all time. Page Story Okavitch averaged 24.2 points per game on crazy true shooting. And he was second in basketball and scored with 24.2 points per game. This is 20 years ago, not even. And the same 24.2 would have him ranked 20th in the league right now as far as points per game goes. So because the league is shifted so dramatically from just 20 or so years ago, people are seeing these performances to say, eh, not as impressive because we see it more often than anything. And listen, there's a part of this take that I agree with. When people say 40 is a new 30, I honestly do believe that. Right now we are 35-ish games into the season for majority of teams, which means that we're almost at the halfway point and we still have around seven people averaging 30 points per game. Kevin, I'm round enough for you with your 29.7. We have seven people in the league averaging almost 30. So yeah, I can agree with 40 being the new 30 as far as impact as far as wow factor. But still, I can't look at a performance like tonight and saying, eh, it's not as impressive because it didn't happen in 2003 where things were slightly different. And you know, there's this old saying that history repeats itself. And I think we're going through that cycle in the association, right? When the association was first put together, the pace was in all time, how shots was getting up. It was not a lot of resilience, if you wanna say that, from getting buckets. And that's how we get to the point where Will is dropping 100 in the game or he's getting a 50 rebounds seed, like just crazy, crazy individual statistics. Then eventually the NBA decided, we don't really love this idea. Let's implement some rules to make defense more prominent in the game. And that's when we got like hand checking and like illegal offenses type stuff like that. And that's when we saw the point per game, the pace, and all things in hoops kind of go down. And that's how we get to like the 90s and the 2000s where it was so much isolation basketball. I kinda like, when I go back and rewatch too early 2000s ball, I'm kind of amazed that I fell in love with the game then because I'm taking the current version of the game where offenses are more free flowing versus a random auto-generated play. Oh, that sounds hella disrespectful to like the previous era, but it was just so much isolation basketball because that felt like the only way you can get a bucket. And I say that everything happens in a cycle because now we're back on that trajectory where we're getting these crazy, crazy statistics again. And you know what I think partially boils down to? I mean, people are just smarter and think more advanced. I think part of it has to do with advanced analytics. We found out that the super long two point shot ain't that great of a shot. So let's get our feet off the line and hit a three. We found out that isolation for the seventh best play on your team ain't a way to run a good offense. And we saw teams that didn't necessarily play a ton of isolation basketball go out and win a bunch. And then we went to the era where we were talking about the long two point shots where nobody was taken to. So that was maybe five years ago. It was either a layup or it was a three point shot. Daryl Morey put that in everybody's brain, that advanced analytics. And now we're finding out today that the mid-range jump shot is still a viable way to score baskets. Just maybe get the toe off the line. If you're gonna take a midi, make it a midi. Don't make it a long two. So now we've accepted the things that were working in those previous eras, but added on this other part of ball. And now because of that, we hoop it, y'all. At the end of the day, we hoop it. And I think from an outside perspective, because we keep seeing these super high scoring games compared to like 80s and 90s, a lot of the old haze is what I'ma call them. Other people that would have takes like this. Always look at the game of basketball nowadays and say like, oh, there's no defense being played when in reality the rules have changed and players are just more advanced now. Not to mention the three-point shot has advanced everything. The season with Paige Stoyakovic was second in the league. He made three three-pointers a game and that same three three-pointers would put him 20th in the league right now. So a lot of things has changed and yes, we've had inflation, but I don't think that should take away from what these players are doing. But I do believe that it's gonna make it a lot tougher to compare players across eras because well, the rules are different, the game style is different. And the only thing that seems to be true is the fact that the little orange circular thing has to go in the other orange circular thing in order to get points. And tonight Donovan Mitchell was ridiculous. I mean, we were watching this together in Discord and once that third quarter he started popping off, I think he had one point, he had like 14 points in the third quarter and that would make him 30 points total because he only had 16 in the first half. We had Discord and that boy Dairy said he going for 50. And I was like, I was jokingly saying now he not gonna go for 50 because he gonna start settling. He never did. He continued to just cause more foul trouble, get to the free throw line. And I mean, I think he took 25 free throws in this one. And I mean, if you're hitting 20 out of 25, you're gonna have a big stat line. But obviously the big thing is the way he closed this one out, missing his free throw, very similar to Lucas from just a week ago, which is crazy. Getting his own rebound and just going back up. And in that moment, I had already knew that the game was won by the Cleveland Cavaliers as a Bulls fan. I saw how all the momentum was shifted and everything. But when they went into overtime, they had a, I ain't gonna lie to you, near 0% chance of winning that game. You know how demoralizing it is for you to be up 21 points and some dude hits overdrive and he drops 40 something points in the second half. There was nothing we could really do to stop this man. That's how I always feel about these super crazy performances. Like it's not much I can really say other than damn. You know what I'm saying? That's how it feels. So shout out to Donovan Mitchell. That's a big win. I mean, they beat the Bulls the other night as well. So they got the little back to back and they won both games and both of them ended up being really close. And that's not good for the Bulls considering there was no Darius Garland and no Evan Mobley in these two games. But I'm gonna shift the gear slightly and look at this game from a Chicago Bulls perspective. Just Bulls fan perspective. Give me a second. You can check the tapes of this channel for the last four seasons, I'll say, of us doing videos similar to this. And I would always say, I don't really commentate about officiating often because I know that they have a tough job and obviously they're not gonna be perfect. And I'm not even gonna talk about the fouls that Donovan Mitchell got because that's not super relevant for me. The thing that bothered me the most as a Bulls fan when it came to the officiating is the fact that Alice Caruso got called for a lane violation two times in the fourth quarter for overstepping his bounds, which is true. He did it. He did. It's not a call you see often in basketball. Honestly, you see it like maybe 1% of the time that it happens because it happens on every day I'm free throw. I'm not mad that they called it that way. I'm mad they weren't consistent because in the shot that Donovan Mitchell put up that he missed and got his own rebound, lane violation. Again, if you're gonna call it, call it. You know what I'm saying? That was my only thing because Alice Caruso did break the rules, but also Donovan Mitchell. And I'm assuming that once a two minute report comes out they're gonna say the same thing. But that's just the thing that bothered me the most. I mean, the Bulls then deserve to win this game. I know people hate when I say stuff like that because I really only say it about my own favorite team. But I mean, you don't blow a 21 point game and allow a dude to drop 60 ish and be like, ah, we got out of there with a win. Let's smile and get on this jet home. No, they did not deserve this one. They did not deserve this one. But yeah, the officiating was, I would argue that it was bad both ways. And I'm gonna always say, compare it to MLB. There's an account named baseball, UMP cards or whatever with a grade. Every single game that an umpire has, they give it a score. They say, here you miss calls, here's your right calls. Boom, you did very good. Oh, damn, you did terrible. And those things go viral. When you have an UMP that plays it terribly or calls it terribly, yeah, it goes viral. I would love to see something similar in the NBA. And I'm not just saying that from this specific game, but I think it would just open the eyes to some of the bad things that goes around. I mean, even the game previous to this where Demarda Rosen tried to go for a game winning shot, he was fouled. In the last two minute report, they said he was. There's nothing we could do about it. The last two minute report is basically just a aha jokes on you. We messed up. Nothing you could really do about it, but it is a part of the game that could be fixed. And I just don't, I don't know the recipe for it. I don't know the way we do it, but just if we call the game consistently, then no big deal, same thing in baseball. If we know that this UMP is calling it low, then we can adjust ourself to start batting that way, if that makes sense. If we know that they about to call lane violation every time, we will be better at it. If you're calling it 66% of the time, and the one time you missed it was the most important one. Like what am I supposed to say? All right, so I'm out of that. I'm actually super impressed with Donovan Mitchell though. We always knew Donovan Mitchell was great. I mean, the argument for Donovan Mitchell for the longest time, maybe not even so argument. I think most people agreed for the last couple of seasons that Devin Booker was the best shooting guard in basketball and Donovan Mitchell was kind of just second for his entire time in Utah. I know, I know I might just be saying this for recency bias or the fact that Devin Booker has been out and you can see without Devin Booker, that team is running around what they has chopped off. They can't do a damn thing. But the way Donovan Mitchell has played this season, I think he might have taken the first best shooting guard in basketball. And he's undoubtedly the best acquisition so far this season. There's nobody even close to the impact that he's brought to the Cleveland Cavaliers. So it was cool for the Cavs fans. Obviously not so cool for the fans of the team that I support. I tell you that. Last year I do want to give a lot of love to Clay Thompson. His 50 point game go kind of get buried after the 70 point game from Donovan Mitchell. But he did that in arguably one of the greatest games of the season so far, double overtime. And I know Hawks fans are hot because they stayed up on the East Coast, the Eastern time zone to like one o'clock to get gamed by Kevon Looney, who was breaking his own personal records and everything. So shout out to Clay Thompson and the Warriors in general because I thought without Steph Curry they were gonna lose 100 games in a row. They have not. Luckily for them it was all at home and for some reason something is going on in San Francisco when it got to that chase arena, chase center, because them boys can't lose there. It looked like they might, but they can't lose there. So shout out to Clay Thompson, Kevon Looney, Draymond Green for the big three down the stretch. Anthony Lamb got a clutch steal or whatever. So shout out to them. Last before we get out of here. I'm recording this a little after one o'clock center time here. I do wanna give a lot of love and a will wishes to DeMar Hamlin. Legitimately the scariest thing I've ever seen in any sports ever. And hopefully by the time this video is out we've heard some good news and everything is, I know things are gonna be better but in a better state. That's all I'm hoping for right now. You know what I'm saying? Let me know down below what you think about point inflation or stat inflation, the NBA, non-Vermittu, whatever you wanna talk about I'm there in the comment section. I'll see y'all tomorrow.