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00:00They're a 500 team, where's it going to go next, trade deadline, what, week and a half?
00:04Is that where we're at?
00:05I think it's two weeks and two days, 16 days.
00:08Is it that many still?
00:09Oh, we got 10 days in January, and then we've got six days in February, 10 plus six is 16,
00:15it's two weeks from Thursday.
00:16Okay, all right, there it is, two weeks and two days.
00:18So could things be different then?
00:21Sure, they could.
00:22I'm much more interested in this moment because I love sports.
00:27I don't want every single time on a Wednesday when they take the court to be using June
00:34as a backdrop for my assessment of this team.
00:38Here's my assessment of this team.
00:40Can you play four quarters that I'm interested in watching?
00:43You didn't yesterday.
00:44Well, they did Saturday.
00:45Saturday was fun.
00:46Ish.
00:47It was fun?
00:48Yeah, but they're playing the worst team in the league.
00:50Yeah, but I mean-
00:51But that's fine, yeah.
00:52Who are you?
00:53I mean, your team-
00:54Oh my, my name's Mark, who are you?
00:55If this is to the bad teams, and sometimes beats the good teams, and then the mediocre
00:59teams like you, it is kind of a crapshoot.
01:02Right, but this is-
01:04I want to get to a point where you are no longer turning off Warrior Games.
01:08Well, it-
01:09And I think that that is, and this is not about you, but to your greater point, like
01:13that game was so turnoffable where, okay, early fourth quarter and it's 92-62, it's
01:20like, what are we doing here?
01:21Well, by the way, for those of you who are rocking underdog in prize picks, this is the
01:26one thing that you want to avoid in games.
01:29You have to assess, I don't want to, because everybody's putting all their stuff on certain
01:33players, right?
01:35What you really want to avoid is that player who's not even going to play in the fourth
01:39quarter.
01:40Right.
01:41And there were people running around out there in the fourth quarter that game yesterday.
01:45I hadn't even met him yet.
01:47Who?
01:48Is this a 49ers preseason game?
01:51Who are you?
01:52Who are you?
01:53Yeah.
01:54And I mean that for both teams.
01:55There's a bunch of dudes ran out, shorts don't fit right, all this, it's like, what?
02:00Please.
02:01Who are you?
02:02Don't do this.
02:03Don't do this.
02:04You're on TNT, on Dr. King's holiday, and this is what we've got?
02:11That's what the Warriors need to be worried about right now.
02:14By the way, that's why you don't trade Steph, right?
02:17Like you've talked about this this year.
02:19This is a product.
02:21I'm not worried about June.
02:23I'm worried about the product right now.
02:27And it's not just wins or losses, Dibs.
02:30You can't score the basketball.
02:32Do you know how much of a yawn that is when you tune in to watch the NBA and a team goes
02:41seven minutes without putting the ball in the bucket?
02:47Look, this whole, and we'll get to it, that Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley exchange on TNT,
02:54some of you might have heard, Kenny is right for that reason alone.
02:58And again, it was kind of a young versus old conversation.
03:02And the reason that Kenny is right with the young is that you need some things, Jonathan
03:07Kaminga style at least, I don't know if it's Kaminga or whatever, but you need some things
03:12that pop off the television screen.
03:15And Steph still does, not the way he used to, but he still does.
03:19But the Warriors have very, very few others that make people want to sit down, crack a
03:26drink, make some food and watch ball.
03:30That's a huge problem.
03:31Yeah.
03:32And the answer is none other.
03:33I don't think they have any other player that you would look at and say, wow, I can't wait
03:37to watch that player do what they do.
03:40And I'm looking at that fourth quarter lineup you talked about.
03:43You had Pat Spencer, Quentin Post and Lindy Waters all play 12 minutes.
03:48You had Moses Moody play eight.
03:50You had Guy Santos play almost 10 minutes and you had Buddy Heald play six minutes.
03:55And in those six minutes, Buddy Heald attempted zero shots.
04:00So if your buddy and you're being asked to play at least part of a fourth quarter garbage
04:05time and you run up and down and you don't even look to attempt a shot, you don't even
04:10think about getting yourself into some sort of a rhythm.
04:14That to me is a pretty big red flag where you played Buddy for a reason and, you know,
04:19you could have just played Guy and Moses.
04:21You could have played those guys the whole 12 minutes, whatever, but you put Buddy out
04:25there and he didn't even bother to put up one shot in a game where you were down by
04:2934 going into the quarter.
04:33That to me is something to keep an eye on.
04:35You know, I was starting to just ask, like, what's the first question for Steve Kerr?
04:39It might be this, and I want to ask you, too, because I think it's relevant in that
04:44Steve Kerr two weeks ago said that Warriors are suffering from a crisis of confidence.
04:50Yesterday, Steph Curry said this.
04:53Yeah, we have an entirely different roster pretty much, obviously, especially without
04:57Draymond out there.
04:58But you look across, you know, they have besides Porzingis, they have pretty much the whole
05:03rotation still.
05:05And they are the defending champs, so they're coming in with a level of confidence and swagger
05:11about them.
05:12And it's the exact opposite of what we have right now.
05:15So, yeah, obviously great memories, but definitely feels like a long time.
05:19Celtics have a championship swagger the opposite of what we have right now.
05:25So a crisis of confidence and Steph Curry saying we have completely lost our swagger.
05:31So let me ask you this, does confidence build winning, or does winning build confidence?
05:39It's easier for winning to build confidence than it is the other way around.
05:43But when I look at this team, and you think about guys who have confidence because they've
05:48won, Steph and Draymond, to a lesser extent, you could say Kavon and whatever, Moses and
05:55Kaminga, they're younger players, and they were barely factors in the championship.
06:00But for Steph and Draymond, they have confidence because they've done it, they've been there,
06:04they've done that, they've won four titles, they're going to be confident no matter what.
06:08The rest of the guys, Buddy, look at his playoff resume.
06:12I don't even know if he's ever won a series in his career.
06:16And Dennis Schroeder, he's been on eight teams.
06:18And then you want to go to the rest of the guys, Pods and TJD and Lindy and Guy and Slomo,
06:26these are all guys who haven't really accomplished much, if anything, in the league, so for me
06:32it's kind of a two-pronged question.
06:33On the one hand, yes, winning definitely breeds confidence.
06:38Look at Cleveland right now.
06:40Cleveland's never won a title with this group, but they're playing with confidence because
06:43they win every single game.
06:45Same thing with OKC and Boston, a team that they've won a title.
06:50So that core of guys who won the title last year, and that's the majority of their team,
06:55they're confident because they know what it takes.
06:57They were in the finals three years ago, they won the title last year, and so winning breeds
07:02confidence.
07:03But when you've already won, you don't need to win to have that confidence.
07:08So I look at this warrior team, and I look at veterans who, yeah, Steph knows that he's
07:13one of the best still to do it, and Draymond knows what it takes to win, but the rest of
07:17the team, how can they have confidence?
07:19Right, so I'm with you, you can answer the question, I think, intelligently both ways.
07:24Winning builds confidence, confidence builds winning, sometimes you gotta fake it to make
07:29it, all of that.
07:30I wonder though about this specific team.
07:32In other words, are they going to need to win some games in order to build that confidence,
07:39or can the leadership brigade that's there instill the confidence so that they can start
07:44winning?
07:45Like that might be something I'd like to ask Steve.
07:48What is needed first?
07:50What's needed first?
07:51Are you looking for a few wins in a row to build confidence, or are you looking to build
07:55confidence so that you can win a few in a row?
07:58I wonder how he'd answer that.
08:00I don't know.
08:01By the way, you brought up Buddy Heald in the playoffs.
08:02Do you know how many playoff games he's appeared in in his life?
08:05I just looked.
08:06Oh, you looked.
08:07That's too bad.
08:08This is fascinating.
08:09I had looked before, and I had noted in my own brain, which is clogged with a lot of
08:14stuff these days, but I had noted that he'd never won a series before, and I wasn't sure
08:18if he'd just been in one series or if he'd been in multiple, but I do know that he's
08:23never won a series.
08:25The first time he has ever played in the playoffs was last year with the Philadelphia Sixers
08:32when they went to the Knicks in what eventually was a six-game series.
08:39He got in those six games two DNPs and had scored a cumulative total of two points until
08:48they got to what was the deciding game six where the Knicks eliminated the Philadelphia
08:5576ers, and in that game, he scored 20 points.
08:58Now, I'd have to dive into the game to see exactly the way that it all played out, but
09:03something tells me that he got that 20 points because they were getting blown off the floor
09:08and he got a lot of garbage time.
09:10That's his playoff resume.
09:12That's it.
09:13That's it.
09:14One series.
09:15Two games.
09:16Twenty-two points, and yes, six three-pointers in that last game.
09:23Other than that, he has not ever hit a playoff three in his life.
09:27Man.
09:28And so, for him, I mean, confidence for me looking at Buddy Heald is how did I do the
09:33last time I took a shot?
09:35He seems very, fragile's probably not fair, but he seems so streaky that when things are
09:41going good, his confidence is a 13 on a scale of 1-10, and when the shot's not going down,
09:47the confidence goes down to a 2 on a scale of 1-10.
09:50Well, I mean, there's that balance that you want, right?
09:53Like, you know, we've talked so much about Jordan Poole, and it feels to me like, and
09:58Jonathan Kaminga to a certain degree as well, there are times, at least in their career,
10:02where they've got a balance, do I just want to do what the Warriors are asking me to do,
10:07or do I want to go out there and show out a little bit?
10:10Contractually, show the team what I can do, young players go through this in the NBA.
10:14I think you want a little bit of both, though.
10:17You do want somebody who's going to go, I'm going to fit into this team, I'm going to
10:21be a good teammate, I'm going to fit into what the coach is telling me to do, but I
10:25also want to have that healthy ego where I feel like I can really do X, Y, Z.
10:31Buddy Heald, I loved this upon arrival, but the further we go, I start to have questions
10:36about it.
10:37Buddy is literally like, I'll just do whatever they tell me.
10:41That's it.
10:42In other words, I know nothing about playoff basketball.
10:46So whatever Steph and Draymond say, that's it.
10:49That's a good thing, largely, but somewhere in there, there's like, gosh, where's that
10:56streak in you that's like, I got this, right?
11:00I know exactly how to this, that, and the other.
11:04I don't know if Buddy feels that way.
11:06Well, and how could he?
11:07Because he's only been in one series and he was largely a forgotten man in that series.
11:12So he's played a bunch of losing basketball.
11:15So your question of confidence, does it come from winning or does it lead to winning?
11:21I think it's more likely that it comes from winning.
11:24And even this team, and think about when they started 12-3, how was their confidence then?
11:29Their confidence was pretty darn good, and Buddy was unbelievable in the first 15, and
11:33Melton was in and out of the lineup, but he was really fitting in, and everything was
11:38clicking, and Kamingo was coming off the bench, and Pods was doing his thing, and you were
11:43healthy and you were humming.
11:45And then since then, you've been really mostly bad, and you haven't even had a stretch of
11:49like, okay, there's three in a row, there's four of five, there's seven of nine.
11:55Every time it seems like you're about to turn the corner, you go to Toronto and you lose.
12:00Or you get beat by 40 at home.
12:02I think I'm with you.
12:04This particular group is not going to just snap their fingers and be like, all right,
12:09that's it, we're confident.
12:11They're almost going to need to stumble into it.
12:14They're going to need to win three or four or five in a row.
12:17And then, and only then, can that crisis of confidence go away.