Which NBA Western Conference Teams Got Better?
Grant is BACK. To celebrate his return, he and Dan go through every NBA Western Conference team and decide whether they will win more or fewer games in 2024-25 than they did last season. CHAPTERS BELOW.
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CHAPTERS⬇️
0:00 – INTRO, GRANT IS BACK!, STORY TIME
6:09 – Criteria
7:05 – Phoenix Suns
13:31 – Portland Trail Blazers
19:27 – Sacramento Kings
26:58 – New Orleans Pelicans
33:38 – Memphis Grizzlies
35:55 – San Antonio Spurs
40:10 – Houston Rockets
45:40 – Los Angeles Lakers
51:49 – Los Angeles Clippers
55:41 – Golden State Warriors
1:02:59 – Dallas Mavericks
1:07:23 – Oklahoma City Thunder
1:15:57 – Minnesota Timberwolves
1:20:45 – Utah Jazz
1:36:35 – Denver Nuggets
#nba
12 Comments
1st
Which teams did you disagree with? Let us know, and don’t forget to subscribe 🤘🫶
shout-out to the grizzlies for making their segment so easy 😂
I really enjoy these podcasts. You guys stay on track, are fair, well informed, aren’t insulting differing opinions, and are entertaining. Keep up the great work!
Minnesota got better by virtue of ANTMAN just growing just turning 23 and Jaden having more confidence offensively.
As a wolves fan, I tend to agree that the regular season record might be worse, mainly due to trying to integrate young guys and trying different lineups to be more flexible in the playoffs
Klay Thompson, Naji Marshall, and Quentin Grimes are upgrades over Tim Hardaway Jr. (27 min over 79 games), Derrick Jones Jr. (24 min/76 games), and Josh Green and (26 min/57 games). Come on now. Plus, Dallas was wrecked by injuries over the first half of last year. Absent injuries, Dallas should be considerably better. Dallas didn’t have Kyrie, Lively, Green, and Kleber over 20 games each in the first half of the season, and PJ and Gafford weren’t on the roster. That’s 6 of their top 8 rotation players, which includes 25-5-5 from Kyrie.
Most popular podcast to this fan!
Karlo Matkovic, Yves Missi, Trey Jemison, and Daniel Theis will be good enough to make the Pels a top 3 team this season. They all play defense, they all provide value offensively. Ingram will take and make alot more threes because he may be auditioning for the Spurs all season. If he can impress them throughout the year/playoffs, no doubt they’ll go after him in free agency next summer, should the Pels choose to let him walk. Also, if Zion is injured and bi is traded for a center, the Pelicans are a bottom 3 team in the West.
The guy who wrote that Sabonis and DeRozan are two of the most overrated players a year ago thinks the Kings will be worse after adding DeRozan. I'm shocked I tell you. Shocked. (To be fair, Grant has grown on me after I started listening to these podcasts. haha)
I think Dan's analysis of the Kings is spot on about the Kings offense being the problem and the fact the team will miss Barnes size and length on the defensive end. If you watched any Kings game after Monk and Huerter went down, the only player who could get his own bucket was Fox. That was a significant problem. Barnes, for all his warts, being able to handle big wings like LeBron or Kawhi for even short spurts of time had value and now puts more pressure on Keegan to handle these assignments. If Keegan, knock on wood, misses any significant time, then they are in trouble.
great pod!
Great to see Grant back. Loved the episode as always. Couple of points:
1) As a NO fan, I obviously hope you're right. But I really think you're underestimating the loss of depth. Depth was the reason they won last year, not their stars. They lost Valanciunas, Nance, Daniels, Marshall, and Zeller. That's their starting center, their closing center, one of their best perimeter defenders, a do-everything glue guy, and their third string big. These players mattered and helped them win last year. With players like Zion and Ingram always getting hurt and with questions about fit in the starting lineup, the depth is even more important than it is to other teams. They replaced their depth with a very good but not transcendent star, a role player big, and a rookie. Their center rotation is currently the worst in the league, and I'm not seeing a good path to fixing that outside of an unexpected Ingram trade. I'm bracing for massive disappointment, unfortunately.
2) If Wemby is healthy, you should be right on the Spurs. But I don't understand why everyone is assuming he'll be durable after seeing it for one season. Shouldn't we trust the sample size of the entire history of the NBA over a single season? I know all these predictions are made assuming good health, but it's just a trend I've noticed recently where people seem to think Wemby is going to be an iron man now. I hope he is, for the record. (Actually as a Duke fan, I hope he gets injured for this year only and they get Cooper Flagg and destroy the league for a decade.)
Sorry, I didn't expect these points to be this long when I started writing them. I was thinking one sentence each.