- 11 hours ago
Seth and Sean discuss some annoying Rockets questions folks keep pushing like "was the Durant trade worth it?" and "are the Rockets a better team than a year ago?" as well as it looking like Tari Eason may have been playing a little dirty with Vince Williams Jr.
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00:00There's a lot of this going on right now, Seth,
00:02with the Rockets kind of teetering a little bit in the eyes of Rocket fans.
00:06And look, I know they're still in line to have a home playoff series
00:08to open the playoffs, and they've got Kevin Durant on the team.
00:12They pretty much beat bad teams into oblivion for the most part.
00:16And when they play good teams,
00:17they actually play pretty good basketball for big chunks of the game
00:20and then are prone to giving up leads in the fourth quarter.
00:23And they need a point guard, all that stuff.
00:27There's a lot of people asking, was the Durant trade worth it?
00:31And then they're using the second question I see a lot of
00:37as a reason to justify or not justify the Durant trade,
00:41which is, are the Rockets actually a better team than they were a year ago?
00:44In other words, the people who are saying, no, I don't like the Durant trade,
00:48are people who are going, well, look,
00:50the Rockets are probably not as good a basketball team right now
00:54as they were this time of year.
00:56I mean, the record's about the same.
00:57Right.
00:58But they're just not playing as consistent a style of basketball
01:00as they kind of found their way to last year.
01:03I mean, they ended up the two seed in the West last year.
01:05They were objectively a good regular season team last year,
01:09and it just feels like the lack of a point guard this year
01:12and the lack of a killer instinct on defense and all those things
01:14have the Rockets fans out there feeling maybe a little bit sour about the team,
01:19but not to the extent where I'm going to say
01:21I wouldn't have made the Kevin Durant trade.
01:23The Kevin Durant trade has been objectively and subjectively
01:28a very good trade for this.
01:29He's an MVP candidate, right?
01:31Right.
01:31I think that the Kevin Durant trade is only bad at this moment
01:39if somehow you could go back in time and say,
01:41hey, by the way, Fred Van Vliet's totally going to tear his ACL
01:44right before the season begins.
01:47Because I think sometimes maybe people would feel like it's an oversimplification
01:54to frame it that way, you know, to talk about the absence of Fred Van Vliet.
01:58But if you're talking about would this team be a better team than it was last year,
02:03which a team that had Fred Van Vliet on it,
02:05would they be a better team than last year's team if Fred Van Vliet was on it right now?
02:09I think, yes, 100%.
02:10You would be getting a better version of Amon Thompson.
02:13You'd be getting a better version of Shane Goon.
02:16You'd be getting a better version of pretty much all of your younger core.
02:19And you'd also be getting a better version of Kevin Durant.
02:22Yeah.
02:22And Kevin Durant's been just fine, obviously.
02:25But you'd be getting a better version of all those guys
02:28because this is why point guards matter.
02:30Yeah.
02:30It's a big deal.
02:32Even if he's not a top 10 point guard, the complete absence of a viable point guard,
02:37you're getting the worst version of all those players.
02:40So the trade was made when Fred Van Vliet was going to be the point guard.
02:44Yeah.
02:45So, no, I can't say it was a bad trade.
02:48No, I can't either.
02:49Because if you – right, the Van Vliet injury is too big a variable.
02:51Let's pretend Van Vliet gets injured either way, whether Durant's here or not.
02:55But – and so what you're telling me is that this team without Fred Van Vliet,
03:01that Dylan Brooks, Jalen Green, and whoever they would have taken with the 10th pick
03:07makes this a better basketball team than having Kevin Durant on this team.
03:11And the answer to me just is flat out no.
03:13However you feel about what this team looks like this year compared to last year,
03:17to me that doesn't factor into the answer to the question was would I do the Durant trade
03:24or was the Durant trade a good trade?
03:26Yeah, it was a good trade.
03:27I mean, if you don't have Kevin Durant on this team
03:29and you've got no Fred Van Vliet and no Steven Adams
03:31and you're running out there with Dylan – and Dylan Brooks, who, by the way,
03:34just broke his hand, he's out for like a month for the Suns.
03:38But with Jalen Green out there, like Jalen Green's your go-to bucket guy,
03:42you know, like that's – that ain't working.
03:44And it does.
03:44The bad – the worst trade they made was the no trade at the trade deadline.
03:48Right.
03:48That ultimately becomes, man, whatever they felt about Amon Thompson
03:52and Reed Shepard's development, it's that they either expected those guys
03:59to make huge leaps in their ability to play point guard in the second half of the season
04:04or they genuinely punted on a season in which they had traded for Kevin Durant.
04:09Yes.
04:09That's the part that's tough.
04:11Yep.
04:11It's that really the criticism all needs to be about how have they managed the team
04:16since Fred Van Vliet got injured and are they delusional about Reed Shepard?
04:21Are they delusional about Amon Thompson?
04:24Are – is Raphael Stone on a different page than Eme Adoka when it comes to the usage
04:32of those point guards or how they're using them and all of that?
04:35This becomes a lot more about roster building after the Van Vliet injury
04:41and then also Eme Adoka's perhaps inadequacies as an offensive-minded coach.
04:45Yeah, or at some point you have to mix Aaron Holiday in because he's an actual point guard
04:48instead of having him be a coach's decision DMP every night.
04:51I don't know.
04:52Now, your folks over at Underdog Seth had an interesting post yesterday,
04:57and it's funny because it's a picture of Jabari Smith, you know,
05:00just out there on the court with the – you know, just standing out there on the court
05:04and a picture of Kevin Durant during the introductions at the All-Star game
05:07where he's looking directly into the camera with this look on his face like,
05:10mm-hmm, because the caption is Jabari Smith's per-game averages
05:16since the Durant Burner DMs leaked.
05:19Oh, yeah.
05:20Jabari Smith has turned into an All-Star basically since the Burner account of Kevin,
05:25alleged Burner account, leaked the messages including some insults or criticism of Jabari Smith.
05:34He's got 22.3 points per game, 6.7 rebounds, and he's shooting 68.4.
05:42That must be his true field goal percentage, and then he's shooting over 50% from three-point range since
05:47then.
05:47Yeah.
05:48He's been unbelievable from distance.
05:50Embarrassment is a hell of a motivator.
05:52Yeah.
05:52You know, fear, greed, embarrassment.
05:56You know, fear and greed are probably right up there near the top.
06:00Yeah.
06:01Embarrassment and trying to come back from embarrassment, that is a very powerful motivator.
06:06Big time.
06:07Or even if it's not embarrassment, if it's just grudgery.
06:10Yeah.
06:10If he's just got a grudge and he's got a chip on his shoulder and he wants to prove it,
06:15again, to Durant that you shouldn't have said that about him.
06:19Like, okay, cool.
06:20Yep.
06:20Maybe that's what it is.
06:21Very small sample size.
06:22Whatever it is.
06:23It is.
06:23Yeah.
06:24We'll hold our breath, but whatever works.
06:26The other thing rocket-wise that I saw yesterday, Tari Eason is catching some from people on the
06:31play.
06:32We'll have the play-by-play for it right here, but if you watch the game against Utah the
06:37other night, this was in the first half while the game was still close, and Tari Eason is
06:42running down on the wing.
06:44Josh Okogie, I believe, is bringing – just stole the ball, and they're coming down on a
06:48two-on-two that became a two-on-one because Tari Eason.
06:52Tari Eason bumped Vince Williams Jr. to the floor, and in the process, Vince Williams Jr.
06:57suffered a nasty, nasty knee injury.
07:00Here you go.
07:01Okogie with a steal.
07:02Okogie with a drive.
07:03Comes back to Tari Eason, and he dunks it in.
07:06That's the energy that Josh Okogie brings, man.
07:08He's one of the best defenders I've seen getting beat and catching up.
07:12We've got a jazz player down and hurt right in front of their own bench, and it looks like
07:16it's Vince Williams Jr.
07:18After the Kogi steal, a little bit of a chuck there by Tari Eason, and then he kind of stepped
07:22on his foot and planted, and his leg buckled.
07:24That did not look good.
07:26Prayers for Vince Williams, man.
07:29Dude, it was nasty.
07:30There's one particular angle of it where it's just – it's hard to watch.
07:34Yeah.
07:35Your guy, Dr. Chow, there's two people that chimed in on Twitter about this that I think
07:39are worth reading here.
07:42The first one is Dr. Chow, at ProFootballDoc, 6score.com, former team doctor for the Chargers
07:50who looks at some of these videos and then gives his sort of video diagnosis of it.
07:54He says, horrible hyperextension, knee subluxation, dislocation, multiple ligament tear with ACL plus,
08:04surgery, and season over, next season impacted.
08:07It's about as bad as it gets.
08:09So this was a nasty injury that a lot of the basketball community, Seth, is looking at
08:14Tari Eason as, man, this was a dirty play.
08:16Like, he pushed – you know, for no reason.
08:19You can watch from the angle from behind the basket where the players are oncoming.
08:23Yeah.
08:24You can see Tari Eason goes – veers and goes out of his way to make contact with Vince
08:28Williams.
08:29But it also – it's not like it was the dirtiest play that ever was or anything.
08:34Whatever, you know, Jocelyn, they've been doing earlier in the game where he felt like
08:38he had to take a little bit of a shot at him.
08:39He didn't blindside him, you know.
08:41The end result is driving the dirty evaluation of it.
08:44The knee injury is what's making –
08:46Right, the end result is what's making people say that it's dirty.
08:49Yeah.
08:49Yeah.
08:49I don't know.
08:50It's like if I – you know, every now and then, like, maybe you just want to playfully
08:53throw a Tide Pod at your co-host and it accidentally hits him in the eye, is it really that
09:01great
09:01of a crime just because the Tide Pod hit your co-host in the eye?
09:06I'm Vince Williams, everybody, in this analogy.
09:09I would argue that most people would say, no, it was just a bit of tomfoolery gone awry.
09:14That is what most people said afterwards.
09:16Yeah, now if you had lost your eye.
09:18Right.
09:20What are people saying about it then?
09:21They're saying you're a horrible person.
09:23That was dirty pool.
09:25You were aiming for his eye.
09:27Yeah, I know.
09:28Which is there's a zero chance that was the case.
09:30There's a zero chance that – because you know how – you know it was a 0% chance of
09:34that happening?
09:35It's because if I were aiming for the eye, there's no way in hell I would have hit your eye.
09:39That's exactly right.
09:40That's exactly – that was my favorite part of you apologizing to me.
09:43He's like, Sean, I totally didn't mean to hit your eye.
09:44I'm like, I know that.
09:46I don't know if I did.
09:48I really wanted to, but it was a moment of passion.
09:51I'm sorry.
09:52I totally aimed at your eye.
09:53Here's the other – here's the other tweeter, poster on social media, and that would be –
09:59you know if it involves Tari Eason, who it's going to be, Seth.
10:02The momster.
10:03Yep.
10:04The momster.
10:04Tari Eason's mom, Taroya Eason, retweeted the video of the injury and said,
10:11Vince, to Vince Williams, to you and your family, I'm so sorry.
10:14To some of you Twitter bans – and I don't know what that stands for.
10:18Help me out on that.
10:19Woke up this morning with –
10:20Oh, I know what it means.
10:22Okay.
10:22Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah.
10:23It's two words that I should not definitely be saying.
10:26Yeah.
10:26Gotcha.
10:26Okay.
10:27On the radio.
10:27Well, one I said earlier, the B word.
10:30I said that earlier.
10:30I shouldn't be saying it.
10:31The other one you and I are not going to say.
10:32One that we definitely should never say ever.
10:34You and I cannot say it, yeah.
10:35Yeah.
10:35Woke up this morning with B.A. intentions.
10:40Yeah.
10:41Tweeting, B.A. bleep.
10:43We don't do B.A. bleep.
10:45We do real bleep.
10:46If you've watched my son's past injuries –
10:48Ooh, I like how she capitalizes the M and the S in my sons.
10:52Also, you know, almost like you do with God.
10:55Yeah.
10:56I mean, she made her son a proper noun.
10:57You would know how many men run into him at full speed.
11:00That wasn't a dirty play.
11:02That was basketball.
11:03How can you shove someone in the shoulder and tear their ACL?
11:09That was rhetorical unless you're a doctor.
11:12Dirty plays are premeditated, sought after, even in split seconds.
11:17Highlight reels are for gamblers.
11:19Start watching basketball.
11:20Ooh, I feel like that's a shot at me right there.
11:22You know, the biggest thing about this was, I would say, there's two –
11:27I don't like it when people combine two tweets into one,
11:32that you say you're sorry to Vince, yet at the same time you start trashing
11:38and tearing down a bunch of other people.
11:40It makes it hard for even – it makes it hard for the person you're being nice to
11:45to respond in a way where you're not also kind of maybe selling out people
11:50who are defending you or whatever.
11:51That's a good point.
11:52That's a good point.
11:53Yeah, yeah.
11:53Boy, the – boy, you bands out there got under the momster's skin, man.
11:59I'm telling you that right now.
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