00:00I did not get to see the Rockets game live last night.
00:02Oh, okay.
00:03You missed what I think.
00:06I'll be interested to see what the ratings were for the Rockets playing the Hornets.
00:11Not a matchup for the ages or anything.
00:13But a lot of drama surrounding this game.
00:16One, because of Kevin Durant's alleged burner account where he criticized some current and former teammates.
00:21Allegedly.
00:23I don't know how much longer we keep saying allegedly.
00:25We found him liable on the court of Payne and Pendergast yesterday.
00:28But also, LaMelo Ball, who got in a ridiculous traffic accident.
00:34It looked to be his fault.
00:36It looked very much.
00:37I'd love to hear the explanation of how it's not his fault that he crossed over the median and clipped
00:43of an oncoming vehicle.
00:46But he didn't look all...
00:48I saw the postgame and LaMelo Ball didn't seem all that thrilled to be answering questions about it.
00:53He walked out.
00:54He got up and...
00:56He walked out with his pants halfway down around his butt.
00:59Yeah.
00:59And just looking every bit like a petulant teenager.
01:03That...
01:05You know, just...
01:06If you're a Hornets fan, you gotta be like, ah, what the hell, man?
01:10Just what the hell?
01:11Well, it's a good lesson for all these tanking teams.
01:14Is that it works a very small percentage of the time.
01:19And even when empirically it works and you get a player who's a good...
01:22Because LaMelo Ball is empirically a good basketball player.
01:25I don't think he's a winning basketball player.
01:27I think that's been proven out over his first several years in the league.
01:30Is that it rarely works when you tank that you even get a good player.
01:34And sometimes when you get a good player, it's LaMelo freaking Ball who doesn't play winning basketball and plows into
01:41people in his Humvee in the middle of downtown Charlotte.
01:44And walks out in the middle of press conferences.
01:47It was a really customized Humvee or Hummer or whatever.
01:50Yeah.
01:51To the point where I couldn't tell whether it was a Tesla truck or a Hummer.
01:55It was very...
01:56It was very busy.
01:57It was very modified.
01:58Yeah.
01:58It was very busy.
01:59The Durant part of it is the one that I would imagine we're more interested in.
02:03He came out...
02:04He was aggressive as hell.
02:05He came out on fire defensively.
02:08Just...
02:08Saw that.
02:09And played crisp and clean.
02:11He had a steal in the game.
02:12Yeah.
02:12Where he set up...
02:13Got a nice assist off of it.
02:14Yep.
02:15He had three blocks.
02:17He was out there playing, like, dialed in and focused.
02:20And a clean game in turn of turnovers.
02:23Yeah.
02:23He's had...
02:24He's had his highest turnover rate this season since 2020-21, I think.
02:29Mm-hmm.
02:30And he looked like a guy that...
02:33If any good comes of this burner account kerfuffle.
02:39Yeah.
02:39Whatever we're calling it.
02:40Burner gate.
02:41I don't know.
02:42If any good comes of it, I think...
02:44We talked about it a bit yesterday.
02:45It's one that, all right, maybe you get Durant himself really dialed in.
02:50And trying to undo any of the wrongs he did.
02:53But also, look, sometimes...
02:56Maybe Shane Goon.
02:58Maybe Jabari Smith Jr.
03:00Almost out of spite or with a sneer of some sort or what have you.
03:06Really look at this as, all right, man.
03:08Fine.
03:08Oh, cool.
03:09That's what you think of me?
03:10And they get a chip on their shoulder because of it.
03:12That'd be amazing.
03:12Some of this, a little bit of discontent can be good in the long run if that's the way
03:18they approach it.
03:19That'd be amazing.
03:19And I think the Durant thing is the big one.
03:21He was great last night.
03:2314 of 20.
03:25Wasn't really chucking it from three very much.
03:27Just two of four from three.
03:28But just mid-ranging to death.
03:31I got the group text with my sons and they were both after the game.
03:35I was asking them, I'm like, hey, what'd you guys see?
03:37You know, because I couldn't see the game.
03:38They said, you know, all this KD stuff, we don't win this game without Kevin Durant tonight.
03:44Right.
03:44You know, you win 105-101.
03:45They're doing the things at the end of the game they've been doing, which is letting bad
03:49teams hang around.
03:50And, you know, Kevin Durant knocks down a couple free throws.
03:53He knocks down some big jumpers in the fourth quarter.
03:55Here was Kevin Durant after the game with Vanessa Richardson talking about what were the keys
04:01to getting a win tonight.
04:02Kevin, 35 points, including some of those clutch contested middies that we love seeing
04:06from you.
04:07How are you able to set the tone tonight?
04:08Man, we just played together.
04:10We weathered that storm in the first quarter.
04:11They came out and hit us in the mouth.
04:13I think we won this game really at the end of that second quarter.
04:15We was able to, you know, go small ball, get some stops, get out and run, get up a fourth,
04:20two or four point lead.
04:21And that gave us some momentum going into half.
04:23So we stuck with it, man.
04:24Didn't start a fourth quarter.
04:25So at the end of the second, start a fourth, Alpi came out here and got us an 11-point
04:29lead.
04:30And then, you know, we squandered it a little bit, but we stayed in the game.
04:33You know, we stayed with it.
04:34And that's the nature of our team, man.
04:36We got to stay porous through it all.
04:38And it's a good win.
04:39All right.
04:39So that was nice of him to give Alpi a little bit of confectionery sugar there.
04:43And that's that cut.
04:45Give Alpi a little love.
04:46It really is.
04:47And Draymond Green, which we'll play either now or later, Draymond Green will play a little
04:55bit later.
04:56On his podcast, he said what I think a lot of players or anybody else in any job would
05:03say, I think, is, man, what do you say after something like this?
05:07Like, when you walk in to practice the next day when all of this is out on the table, how
05:14do you approach this?
05:15And I think there's really only one way.
05:17It's one of those things you've got to address it head on.
05:20I think that Durant, if I had to guess, I suspect by virtue of him not denying it publicly, I
05:28think he probably owned up to it privately and with his teammates.
05:33Maybe even before that press conference on Wednesday.
05:35Right, right.
05:36I think that, you know, and when you saw him on the phone all during All-Star Week and
05:40everything, you might have been texting back and forth with everybody that may have been
05:44named in any of those.
05:45It's a lot of text, man.
05:46Right.
05:46So I think there's the thing that I think we could say with relative certainty right
05:51now.
05:51Yeah.
05:51The burner account is his.
05:53The one question, and I'll credit Jackson Gatlin said this on Locked on Rockets yesterday,
05:59and I'm glad he said it because I hadn't really thought of this.
06:01All right.
06:02The burner account was almost definitely his, but all of these screenshots and everything that
06:07we've seen of messages or what he said about various players, some of them might be bogus.
06:14They might be doctored.
06:15Right.
06:15So we don't really know exactly what, which of these messages actually did happen, which
06:23didn't.
06:24I don't think that's something that Durant needs to address publicly because then it becomes
06:28a never-ending, a never-ending concession of clarifying this, clarifying that.
06:33But that is something that he might have to do privately and be open as possible with
06:38people.
06:38But some good can come from it.
06:41You get these things.
06:41It's like anything else in any relationship in life.
06:43You get it all out on the table, and man, you can end up with a stronger relationship
06:48moving forward as long as everybody's being honest with each other.
06:51Absolutely.
06:52Absolutely.
06:52And I think the other thing, too, for Rocket fans, you know, you and I talked about this
06:56yesterday.
06:56The complexity of this situation is that they're Rocket fans.
07:00I don't know how upset people are.
07:02Like, Lopez says this all the time.
07:04I'm not upset.
07:05I'm disappointed.
07:06That's how I feel about Durant.
07:08Like, I'm not angry about this because we knew what we were getting into with Durant.
07:11So it's hard for me to go, he has burner accounts?
07:14What the hell?
07:15We knew that this came with the Kevin Durant package.
07:19The complicated part about this is he is easily your best player.
07:23He's your most valuable player.
07:24And I think that's the message we got last night with this game last night is, look, if
07:28you're a Rocket fan who's upset about this or even disappointed with it, if you have
07:32any designs on this team making a run at anything this year, you better get over it because you're
07:38going to need a bunch of 35-point nights out of this guy to make a deep run in the
07:43postseason.
07:43You know what?
07:44And Jackson Gatlin made another really good point on Locked On Rockets, which was this,
07:48that you're now thrust into this situation where you're going to ask everybody to be, hey, be
07:54mature, be professional, move past this, forgive and forget.
07:58But we've got this flipped dynamic where you're asking the 22- and 23-year-olds to be the adults
08:03in the room and overcoming basically the adolescent-like behavior of the 37-year-old leader of the team.
08:12It is weird.
08:13That's a great point.
08:14Yeah.
08:14Yeah.
08:16I like Jackson.
08:17Jackson.
08:17Oh, it's a good podcast.
08:18Jackson and B. Scott.
08:20I like listening to their podcasts.
08:22Yes.
08:22To get clued in on the Rockets.
08:23Yep.
08:24Indeed.
08:24Next thing about, he actually had B. Scott on during the All-Star break.
08:28Oh, a little collab.
08:29A little whammy on that one.
08:30A little collab.
08:30I like that.
08:31Hey, by the way, on the way home from the charity event last night, I got a chance to listen
08:35to Patrick Creighton and Sean Bajani.
08:37That's a fun show.
08:38That was a good way to spend 25 minutes driving home last night.
08:42Those guys do a good job.
08:42They let loose, you know, they get to let loose a little bit at night.
08:45They do.
08:45They do.
08:46They do a lot of the stuff that you and I would love to do, except that there's kids in
08:49the
08:49car.
08:49Except that there's kids in the car.
08:50No, yeah.
08:51At night, it's just jerks like me in the car driving home from charity events.
08:55It's you, a bunch of drunk drivers, a few people that are leaving actual legitimate
09:00jobs.
09:01Ubers.
09:01Yeah, that's about it.
09:02See you next week.
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