Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 51 points to lead the Oklahoma City Thunder to their 50th win of the season by beating a shorthanded Houston Rockets squad. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni discuss the Thunder’s place in NBA history, Kyrie Irving’s knee injury, and the Memphis Grizzlies losing their third straight game via game-winners. Then, Sean Highkin from the Rose Garden Report stops by to talk about the Portland Trailblazers’ surprising season, Scott Henderson’s growth, and Chauncey Billups’ future.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni & Sean HighkinExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson MoodyRead Sean Highkin here: https://www.rosegardenreport.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What happened to Kyrie Irving's knee?
But yeah, bad. And let's start with the Kyrie Irving injury. Kyrie was going up for a layup in the blowout loss to the Sacramento Kings last night. And it looked like he hyperextended his knee. He then stayed on the court. You know, laid down for a while, grabbing that knee for a while, got up, shot the free throws.
Obviously, first thing that comes to mind, you start thinking about Kobe when he tours Achilles, you know, and shot the two free throws. But man, I was watching the video of that and I noticed, man, he had tears in his eyes. And so. You know, as of right now, like, we don't know what the injury is.
It feels bad, you know, when you see a guy like Kyrie Irving standing there with, again, with tears in his eyes while he's shooting free throws. So, obviously, you know, our heart goes out to Kyrie. But this Mavs team feels a little bit snakebitten.
Yeah, man, my heart goes out to Mavs fans also. I mean, like, obviously, Kyrie is having an incredible season. I think it was worthy of an all-star nod. He got the all-star nod, being able to, like, be an all-NBA type of guy for them this season. Really, really excellent, just all around, really leading this Mavericks team.
And so for him to go down with injury, it's like, what else do the Mavericks fans have to deal with, you know? Yeah. Ticket prices going up and you got Luka Doncic. And even on a serious note, like there's just so much happening in Mavs world right now where you can't help but feel bad for every single aspect of it.
And then you got to wake up every day reminding yourself that Luka Doncic also got traded from this team. It's tough. Really, really tough.
Yep. And still no update on the injured guys, Anthony Davis, Daniel Gafford, Derek Lively. So hopefully that coming this week. So we'll keep an eye on Dallas and hopefully, you know, hopefully Kyrie avoided anything bad. But as of right now, we don't know. It just looked bad. There was some basketball last night that was good. Even though Houston, everyone was out for Houston.
No Shane Goon, no Fred VanVleet. I mean, they started Reed Shepard in his first NBA start last night against the Oklahoma City Thunder. And look, the Thunder took advantage. Shea Gildress Alexander took advantage. Shea scored 51 points. Oklahoma City gets to 50 wins. No other team in the West even has 40 wins right now, S. Yeah. That's kind of sick.
So I have a bunch of OKC stats right now. The first one, I have to say, SGA, by the way, to our conversation about most offensive player, best offensive player yesterday, SGA has the most 20-point games, most 30-point games, most 40-point games, and most 50-point games this season. So he's doing it all, which is unbelievable.
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Chapter 2: How did Shai Gilgeous-Alexander perform against the Rockets?
So if you're in that group, you have about a 40% chance of winning the NBA championship. It was pretty good. One other stat about the Thunder. So they're now 11 games ahead of the second seed in the Western Conference, which is crazy. Unreal. The differential, the gap that they've created for themselves in the West, it's absurd. But there are a lot of teams that have done that in history.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Thunder reaching 50 wins?
Actually, 19 since the 1979-1980 season. which is the year Larry Bird and Magic Johnson came into the league. Only 19 teams have done it since then. 16 of those 19 teams have won the NBA championship. And all of those teams have either made it to the conference finals or made it to the finals. So...
Thunder fans like this is a pretty good indicator for what might happen in June because the odds are in your favor that this Thunder team probably makes its way to the conference finals, probably makes its way to the finals. And most of the time, teams that are this dominant win the championship.
I mean, listen, I feel like this is just a different era. It is.
It definitely is.
They've got to have some scheduling luck come playoff time. I still think Denver is an issue. And they've got to be healthy, right? And they've got to be healthy too, right? And knock on wood, so far, since they got healthy, everyone looks to be doing okay. Okay. Before we move on from this game, let's talk about Reed Shepard, because this was a guy coming into the season.
I had people telling me, you know, this is like Mark Price mixed with, you know, Allen Iverson or, you know, just giving me just a lot of hyperbole about him. I watched some of his stuff. I've seen his tape. I mean, obviously, the guy is good. I watched that the clips from the forty nine point G League game. I mean, he can play. Yeah, I saw a guy who looks like he belonged on an NBA court.
Yeah. I mean, I wish that this becomes more opportunity for him at the NBA level. I think he definitely has an ability to score the ball. I mean, the defensive side of it will absolutely have to come along, but it's just hard to see him getting consistent run in Houston with the way that this team is progressing. There's so many guys on there and Cam Whitmore had a good game tonight.
And that's another guy who's kind of like in and out of their rotation, depending on how healthy they are. Just a team that like, This is not for this season, but obviously for this summer and moving forward, some sort of consolidation trade because these guys clearly need opportunity. They clearly are good enough to do so, and Reid is chief among them.
Yeah, I mean, again, they've got a bunch of guys that are good enough to be in the rotation or starters in a lot of places, similar to Portland and their situation, which we're going to talk about with Sean Hyken here in a few minutes. Let's talk about Memphis. They lost their third – consecutive game on a game winner to the opponent. And in this game, they actually lost Jaron Jackson Jr.
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Chapter 4: What challenges are the Memphis Grizzlies facing?
It's a lot of the internal growth.
Yes, exactly. And also, you know, a move that they made last summer that I think a lot of people saw as pretty risky, which was that trade for Denny Obdia, which you don't really see teams that are
in the category of rebuilding teams right give up draft capital to bring somebody in but they looked at avdia as somebody who a you know he's on a really good contract for what you know for whatever that's worked but also somebody that they felt like positionally fits with the other young guy that they've had is young enough he's just turned 24 earlier this year and skill wise like they felt like there was still some upside there like maybe eventually there's even like some fringe all-star upside there and they brought him in and that move has worked out about as well as they could have hoped for it i think
Him and Kamara have been their two best players this season overall, just across the board.
This time last year, if you had asked me what the Blazers have to be excited about at all, I would have probably not really had a lot to give you because so many of their young guys were either injured, like Shaden Sharp missed a lot of last season with an injury, and then Scoot was pretty rough for a lot of last year.
This year, you look at it, there's a lot of stuff, I think, for them to be excited and to be encouraged about.
So let's actually focus on a couple of these young guys. Scoot is the guy that I think most people will come to and say, all right, well, an inconsistent start to his career, but is starting to figure things out at the point guard level. Me and Dave have talked about this before, where it's like, it's so hard to be a point guard in the NBA. And so that learning curve for Scoot has been there.
What have your impressions been of his second year and sort of how he's got his legs under him now?
Well, he's just kind of gotten to a point where he's a little bit more sure of what he's doing when he's out there. It doesn't feel like he's jumping, going for a layup or something and making a decision midair what he's going to do. It feels like that whole process has slowed down.
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Chapter 5: How are the Portland Trailblazers surprising this season?
he's been at putting kind of a disadvantage, like at a disadvantage because the Ignite was just not a good, I mean, you're seeing with a lot of the Ignite guys, like, you know, it's like Kaminga is still kind of up and down.
Doesn't exist anymore, right?
Right. There's like, they shut that thing down for a reason. Like you're starting to see like a lot of the Ignite guys, even the guys like Scoot and like Jalen Green and Kaminga and like some of the guys that were like top 10 picks, like, it doesn't really come around right away.
And, you know, there was this kind of similar talk about guy, about those guys, Earl Dearon and their careers, but scoot for sure. Really? It's been, it's been like almost two months at this point that scoot has mostly been pretty good. So I think you, at this point you have to start to think he's not just having a hot streak of shooting or whatever. Like he's actually started to take some steps.
Right. What does that mean for for their team, like the roster, right? Like the construction of the team when you have these all of these young guys and you mentioned, I mean, the age ranges. I mean, you've got Scoot and then you've got Denny Advia and DeAndre Ayton who are in their mid 20s. I mean, it just seems like the window here.
I mean, maybe that's the goal is to create a team that that is a little bit more intergenerational and you've got. you know, varying contract types and sizes? I'm not sure. Like, do you have any insight there into what, you know, all of these young guys showing so much promise could really mean for them?
Well, at this point, they just, you know, this is year two of the post-Dame kind of rebuild. What's kind of ironic about this is the team they have right now, would have been an awesome team to put around Dame.
Like you put, you put Dame with likes Kamara, Avdia, Shaden Sharp, you know, all these guys that would have been probably the best team that Dame has had since the, you know, LaMarcus Aldridge, Batum, Robin Lopez, like, like that team. But yeah, This front office has basically just the whole way prioritized big athletic wings that can defend and play multiple positions.
That's pretty much just the type of guys that they go for, whether it's Kamara, who they wanted in that trade with Phoenix, or Avdija, who they just gave up a bunch to get. Those are just kind of the guys that they've gone after, and they feel like... you know, you can find shooting other ways or you can find, you know, some of the other things.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the Trailblazers' young talent?
Chapter 7: How might the playoffs affect team health and performance?
This show is a lot of fun, and so are the Trailblazers. This was an unexpected season, or this has been an unexpected season. If you would have told me before the season started that the Blazers would be a half game back of the Suns in the standings at the beginning of March, number one, I would say, wow, they're making a playoff push. That's impressive. I'm wrong there. The sun stinks.
But number two, I would say, wow, things have gone very right for the Trailblazers. And I didn't even know they were going to put a competent team on the court. They've been so much fun to watch. They've been so good. What's what's triggered this?
I think – I mean I'm with you. If you had told me that on March 3rd when we're recording this, they would be closer to the play-in than they were to any realistic chance at landing Cooper flag, which was absolutely their goal going into the season, was to be with the Charlottes and the Washingtons and the Utahs. Like that was their plan going in. Yeah.
They just have too many good basketball players, I think, to be able to do that. And it's not just, you know, some of the veterans that a lot of people think they should have traded at the deadline, like the Anthony Simonses and the Jeremy Grants.
It's a lot of their young guys that are the guys that they're building around long term, whether that's, you know, Denny Avdia, who they traded for over the summer, or Tumani Kamara, or...
scoot henderson who's really started to put it together the last couple of months after what was a pretty rough rookie season and first part of this season he started to really i think turn a corner in a way that i i know people in the organization think he's made some real steps and then you know the shade and sharp thing has been kind of up and down but he's been playing really well on this road trip so it's the young guys that are driving a lot of these wins
And I think that's the thing that the organization is looking at and saying, you know, this is really encouraging that like it's not just they're winning a bunch of games because they have some veterans who are probably not going to be here long term. But yeah. And so it's messing with their lottery odds. It's not really that type of thing going on.
It's a lot of the internal growth.
Yes, exactly. And also, you know, a move that they made last summer that I think a lot of people saw as pretty risky, which was that trade for Denny Obdia, which you don't really see teams that are
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