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Alex Kennedy Winds Through the West

Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards is primed for a breakout season, according to Alex (@Timberwolves/X).

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Alex Kennedy, Chief Content Officer at BasketballNews.com and host of Running Up the Score, a biweekly live sports show airing every Tuesday and Friday night, stops by to wind through the Western Conference just as the league readies for tipoff. The Nuggets are Alex’s leading squad but far from the conference’s only contenders. Oh, and he has firmly taken a seat aboard the Wemby Train. Who’s coming with him?

2:44-4:03: “This is a [Nuggets] team that has been together, this core has been together for years, and they have so much chemistry. And I think that’s one of the most undervalued things in sports. We tend to get excited about these big, blockbuster moves and player movement, but chemistry and continuity really, really help and go a long way when you’re trying to contend for a championship. … There are a handful of contenders: Denver, Phoenix, the Lakers, and then, I think, to a lesser extent you go and look at Sacramento, Memphis, Golden State, Clippers.”

9:52-13:19: “We haven’t seen a player like [Victor Wembanyama], ever. … LeBron James said he’s an alien. He was like, ‘I don’t want to use the word ‘unicorn.’ That gets thrown around too often. He’s an alien.’ Giannis said he could be the best player in the NBA. I mean, these are superstar players that are raving about him and talking about him coming in and just dominating the league. Giannis even said, he was like, ‘I need to start winning some championships now because Victor Wembanyama’s coming.’ … It was interesting; in the first preseason game that Victor Wembanyama played, we saw [Chet] Holmgren and Wembanyama match up against each other, and it almost feels like the future of the NBA a little bit – these huge guys with crazy length that are kind of position-less that can do a little bit of everything and are super-skilled.” Continue reading

Tomer Azarly: The Clippers Want to “Build Own (LA) Identity”

Patrick Beverley, according to Doc Rivers, is “unstat-able,” and guest Tomer Azarly agrees (FrenchieInPortland/Creative Commons).

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Tomer Azarly of Clutch Points goes in depth and breadth on the special 2018-19 Clippers team that has exceeded expectations despite significant player turnover. The Clippers are back in the playoffs, but whom should they hope to avoid in the first round? Tomer also touches upon what’s made the Clippers so effective, including super-subs Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell, “unstat-able” Pat Beverley, Landry Shamet’s outside shot, reinvigorated coaching from Doc Rivers, clutch play and more. Obviously, the discussion closes with some Kawhi Leonard talk. Enjoy some noteworthy clips/Clips (*Due to dynamic advertising, excerpt time stamps may vary per listener):

10:30-11:15: “That [loss to the Lakers] complicates things a bit more, because they could certainly fall to the 8 seed and see the Warriors in the first round. I think right now Portland is probably the matchup they want to see…The Rockets, I think, are a matchup they really, really do not want to see…James Harden is in the midst of the greatest scoring season I’ve ever seen…The Denver Nuggets pose an interesting threat, but I think their lack of experience, and we’ve seen over the last couple weeks where they’ve struggled to sort of have consistency on both ends of the floor. We’ve seen Nikola Jokic’s lack of patience with the officials. Teams are really going at him and Jamal Murray in the pick and roll, which I think is a very exploitable scenario for the Clippers.”

16:30-17:08: “In speaking to some players, there was that two-day gap between when Tobias was traded and when they made the Avery Bradley trade and the Ivica Zubac trade. And over that two-day period, it was very weird in that they [the players] were just like us. They didn’t know, ‘Hey, are we tanking? Are we trying to make the playoffs? What is our endgame here, because we just got picks from Philly, we just got a young guy in Shamet, Wilson Chandler, those guys?’ And so once they made the trade, especially for Ivica Zubac, once they got solid role players in JaMychal Green and Garrett Temple, solid role players, solid veterans who have played the game for a while, I think it wasn’t that hard for them to put it together.”
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