For those who haven’t been following along on the Sideline Specialists YouTube channel, welcome to our 2024 NFL Draft Review series! Tom Deasey, one-half of the hosts of the podcast, has put together videos for a number of the rookies that were drafted in this year’s draft. He purposefully did not watch any game film ahead of time so that everyone could watch along and see the highlights of each player the same way he did.
With that being said, the aim of this series is not to be the most detailed and down to the finest detail scouting report. This is more to take a look at each prospect coming in and deciphering what we can see from their college film and how that could translate to their new professional team!
So, we split up each video by which team they were drafted to and you can find all of the videos below!
The NBA has been going through a lot of issues when it comes to superstars resting or taking games off throughout the regular season. Fans complain that they’ve spent hard-earned money just for players like Kawhi Leonard, LeBron James, and Kyrie Irving to sit on the bench and take a night off.
A few years back, Adam Silver and company formed a couple of rules that tried to combat resting by making sure everyone reported their injuries with better accuracy. There were some limits as to what could be listed as an injury and how many players could be on the list. On top of that, there were some minor restrictions to away games and games on national television.
Now, the NBA has revamped those rules to include some stricter guidelines in an effort to prevent their best players from not taking the regular season seriously. After putting an in-season tournament into the mix, Silver believed these rules would make fans want to tune into regular season games more often.
Two or more stars are not allowed to take the same game off now, while still not being able to take off away and nationally televised games. They have to play at least a higher amount of away games compared to home games because there are more chances at home for the fans to see their favorite players in action.
What the question turns into, is how will this all be enforced? Do you think these rules will work or is it another futile attempt at making the regular season more important? Let us know what you think on X @AtlanticFiles.
To nobody’s surprise, the Philadelphia 76ers are still going through a bit of a rough patch and it looks like it’s getting a little more difficult. James Harden is now injured, the jury is still out on Doc Rivers’ coaching schemes, Joel Embiid is missing games, and the defense looks quite terrible. Did you hit Sixers bingo yet?
James Hardenstrained his foot during the team’s game against the Toronto Raptors. Despite the team losing their first three games, Harden was having a tremendous start to the season. He looked re-energized and fully healthy. Now, the Sixers will be without him for a month and the floor general duties will fall on Tyrese Maxey.
Speaking of Sixers losses this season, there are already six of them in 10 games. At least a few of them can be attributed to some questionable rotations, substitutions, and game plans. Doc Rivers is firmly on the hot seat during this rocky start and I’m not sure if he really even knows it. The defense looks atrocious and his reluctance to play both Matisse Thybulle and Paul Reed isn’t helping turn that around at all.
Joel Embiid has already been missing a big chunk of games and no one seems to know how many he’s actually going to miss with the non-COVID illness and plantar fasciitis that he’s dealing with. For a team that’s trying to right the ship and get back on track toward the playoff race, this is somewhat alarming. That’s not to mention that Embiid hasn’t played all that well to start the season.
Check out what we had to say on the latest episode of Sixers Saturday!
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At the start of every new NBA season, predictions, previews, and outlandish statements are common. During our latest episode, a viewer picked Bennedict Mathurin as the future Rookie of the Year over the likes of Paolo Banchero, Keegan Murray, and Jaden Ivey. Is that statement as crazy as everyone thinks?
While Mathurin is a great player in his own right, this pick for Rookie of the Year was still a bold statement. Especially after getting to see the debuts of Banchero and Ivey on Wednesday night.
Mathurin had himself a good game against the Washington Wizards with 19 points, seven rebounds, two assists, and two blocks on 7-for-15 shooting from the floor and 3-for-7 from deep. On the other side of the debate, Banchero had 27 points, nine rebounds, five assists, and two blocks on 11-for-18 shooting. Plus, Ivey registered 19 points, three rebounds, four assists, and three steals while shooting 8-for-15 overall and 2-for-4 from three.
Those stat lines are all close and they’re all equally impressive for each player. The one standing out would be Banchero as he performed a statistical feat that hasn’t been done since LeBron James was a rookie. On top of that, he had the most points scored in a number-one pick debut since Allen Iverson in 1996!
With all of that being said, who do you have for Rookie of the Year this season?
It’s that time of year again when the NBA takes a poll from all of the General Managers across the league on a myriad of topics about this season, seasons in the future, and even more. One team, and player, that got a lot of love are the Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
One question they always answer is who they think is going to win the NBA Finals this year. Then, they take the votes and show where all the teams land based on these votes. The top four in the East go pretty much as expected whereas the West seemed to be wide open according to the GMs.
Last season, the GMs selected the Brooklyn Nets as the eventual champions with a whopping 72% of the vote. They weren’t going to fall for the same show as last year. This time, the Milwaukee Bucks took home 43% of the vote with the Golden State Warriors behind them with 25%.
Honestly, you can’t go wrong with having the Warriors or the Bucks at the top of the list because both teams either retained all of their good players or their young players got even better. Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo are two of the best players in the world as well.
The bigger debates come after those two. A lot of pundits are throwing the Los Angeles Clippers in the mix since everyone is finally getting healthy again. Then, there’s the Boston Celtics who represented the East last season. What about the Denver Nuggets, Philadelphia 76ers, Brooklyn Nets, and Phoenix Suns though?
Check out a clip from our latest episode to hear what we had to say.
The moment JJ Redick teased the Ben Simmons interview, it caught everyone’s attention, especially ours! Right off the bat, the first teaser was about Simmons’ time in Philadelphia. How is anyone supposed to watch that and not get curious?
In the Philadelphia area, Ben Simmons has turned into a dreaded conversation starter. Everyone has their own side to this argument, but it usually starts with either calling Simmons a quitter or the Philadelphia 76ers dumb. Every single Sixers fan has had the Simmons argument and it’s going to continue until either side wins a championship. Although, even after that, the debate will probably still go on.
Finally, we were all able to hear Ben Simmons give his side of the story in regard to what happened in Philadelphia and where it all went wrong. JJ Redick lobbed up some softball questions about the playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks and the contract hold-out during last season.
Simmons gave some insight into some of the situations with things that none of us have heard about before. After that, there was a lot of flip-flopping and mixed answers. That could be a bias coming out, or it could be reading between the lines. That’s for all of you to decide!
During our latest episode, we reacted to the interview and some of the quotes that stood out the most. Comment on the video to let us know what you thought about it!
The NBA held its annual media day for each team this week. Two of the biggest stars in the game, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, had a lot of drama unfold the past couple of seasons and this past off-season. That means, of course, the media is going to ask plenty of questions about it.
Well, let’s just say that none of us are buying what Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving have to say, and it’s time they start proving it for the Brooklyn Nets fans. This team was essentially put together by Irving and Durant themselves in collaboration with Sean Marks and the Nets front office. They even gave the “okay” on Steve Nash’s hiring as head coach.
Kevin Durant explained he’s fine with being back on the team because he knows that he’s such a good player that the Nets couldn’t possibly trade him for any old return. Now, he sets his sights on redemption from the last couple of seasons.
There’s a lot to unpack when it came to Kyrie Irving’s media day interview. He talked about all the money and the big contract that he gave up to not get vaccinated but doesn’t like that it led to a narrative about him not wanting to play basketball. Some felt the way he spoke made it sound like he thought of himself as a martyr as well.
Let us know how you feel about their media day quotes in the video comments below! You’ll find the rest of our thoughts on there as well!
Every season, each NBA team has been releasing at least one new jersey for the last few years. Some have been alternates, some have redesigned their main jerseys, and others have re-released classics. Either way, there’s normally a new jersey these days with “cool” names like “statement jerseys.”
So, with all of the crazy jerseys, awesome throwbacks that remind us of our childhood, and other jerseys coming out this year, we decided to react to all the ones we hate, love, and everything in between!
As of right now, we have to give the worst jersey of the year to the Utah Jazz. The basic black and highlighter yellow colors are both boring and hard to look at. Why are we making people stick out like highlighters as if they play for Baylor? Come on people, we can do better than that!
The Cleveland Cavaliers, on the other hand, had a great designer work on their jerseys. All three of them use their color combinations to perfection and the alternate jersey looks just as sick. For a team who just got a whole lot better after a blockbuster trade, the new jerseys really fit the direction of the squad.
Check out the clip from our podcast below to see what else we thought on the other jerseys!
This week in the NBA has been one that not a lot of people would have predicted. First, there’s the news of Robert Sarver’s suspension and the announcement of the impending sale of the Phoenix Suns. Then, Doc Rivers likes a bunch of pornographic tweets and gets caught by the internet. Finally, Ime Udoka also gets suspended for a relationship with a female staffer on the Boston Celtics.
The one story that has to be the funniest is Doc Rivers’s Twitter fail. He ended up getting bailed out by the Philadelphia 76ers PR team as they put out a statement that said his account was “compromised.” They removed all of his likes and said he “regained access to his account.”
Could it have truly been a hacker? Well, sure, hackers do some weird things. Is it also fishy that this hacker only liked some tweets instead of doing anything else? Well, the answer is also, yes.
Look, Doc Rivers is 60 years old. If the man wants to look at some explicit tweets like that, more power to him. Next time, he probably shouldn’t hit the like button.
Let’s not act like this hacker just decided to only like some tweets though. Call it like it is, he just accidentally liked them and didn’t realize it would be open to the public. Don’t worry Doc, we got you!
The Denver Nuggets are coming into the latest NBA season with high expectations. Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and company look like a top-four team. They’ve also been rumored to bring back a familiar name in Carmelo Anthony. Remember the days when Carmelo Anthony was in the race for scoring titles while in Denver?
Of course, that got the gears moving. In the NBA atmosphere, we love comparing eras of basketball and different basketball players that probably shouldn’t be compared. So, we needed to debate who would win in a seven-game series between the current Denver Nuggets team and the Carmelo Anthony Nuggets that reached the Western Conference Finals in 2008-09.
Think back to the 2008-09 season for a minute. The Denver Nuggets traded away Allen Iverson after that failed experiment and they brought in the services of Chauncey Billups to run the offense. Billups, Carmelo Anthony, Nenê, Kenyon Martin, and JR Smith all averaged double-digits in scoring for this squad.
Melo was only 24 years old and was putting up a stat line of 22.8 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists, and 1.1 steals per game on 44.3% shooting from the field and 37.1% from three. Interestingly, this was the only season in a stretch of 11 seasons that he didn’t make the All-Star game. During that post-season, however, his stats boosted up to 27.2 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.1 assists, and 1.8 steals per game.
The team has two surefire Hall of Famers in Anthony and Billups. So, looking at the current team, it does seem like there’s only one player that is surefire Hall of Fame. Nikola Jokic is the one that obviously stands out, but does that necessarily mean the 2008-09 team is better?
Jokic has led the Nuggets in win shares every single season since 2015-16. This past season, Jokic had a historic year, especially for a big man, and grabbed his second MVP trophy in a row. He finished with averages of 27.1 points, 13.8 rebounds, 7.9 assists, and 1.5 steals on 58.3% shooting from the floor.
As a team, on the other hand, health has been a big problem. The second and third options of the team Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. have failed to play more than 50 games in a season at the same time since the 2019-20 season. When they were healthy during that season, the team also reached the Western Conference Finals and coincidentally also lost to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Who do you think has the better team? Let us know in the comments of the video below!
