Welcome to the Omnisports Podcast featuring your host, Bobby Labida.
Hello and welcome everyone back to another week of the Omnisports Podcast.
It's me, Bobby Labida, your sports friend, and I am here to get you caught up on the
latest in NBA basketball.
So if you decided that last week was your time to catch up on succession after all the
memes and you didn't watch any basketball, don't worry, I got you.
This week's episode is action packed.
We got another Bobby is a dumb dumb.
Can you believe it?
I was dumb again.
Following that, we have my three storylines of the week.
We have our news and notes and we're going to talk about a lot of stats today.
We're halfway through the season.
Many teams have played 41 games and I think it's time we do a deep dive on some stats.
And we'll end the day with a little fantasy tip for those who are willing to stick around.
But before we dive into all of that good good, we have to talk about the sponsor of this
week and lucky for all of you this week's sponsor.
This week's episode is brought to you by depression because that's what I have as a Los Angeles
fan.
Lakers, they suck.
Los Angeles Rams losing the playoffs.
Oh, and you lost to your former quarterback.
He traded away because you didn't think he was good enough and he you didn't do it under
good circumstances.
So you feel like you did this guy dirty who did nothing wrong other than not play so good
in some important games.
Jared Goff, I'm sorry.
So as a as a Rams fan, as an L.A. fan, I have a lot of depression.
But the great thing about sports, it can always get worse.
Bobby is a dumb dumb.
This is the second time this year I've had to do a segment on Bobby is a dumb dumb about
Victor when Biana this time, it's a little different before I said his name wrong.
And then the last episode, I gave him the wrong age.
I said he was 19, which was silly of me because he's 20.
So Victor, I'm sorry.
Clearly your brilliance has blinded me to many basic facts about you.
And I'm so sorry.
In my defense, you just turn like I think he turned 20 pretty recently.
Actually let me fact check myself so I don't have to make a third segment about Victor
in this podcast.
January 4th.
That's when that's when he turned 20.
So I was only a little off.
But don't worry, we will be talking about a 19 year old later, Gigi Jackson.
That's what we call foreshadowing.
Normally we play an audio clip before the storylines, but this storyline, I don't think
really needs an audio clip in really unfortunate news.
This past week, the Warriors postponed a couple of their games.
And the reason is very sad.
Their assistant coach, Dejan Mejojovic, during a team dinner had a severe heart attack and
the entire team watched as he later passed away.
And that was so traumatic that the NBA decided to postpone two of the Warriors games.
And so this is really sad.
I think it's really hard.
You know, we're dealing with humans, we're all human beings.
And to witness something so traumatic, the entire Warriors team, especially with the
season they're having is just like an extra layer of difficulty.
And so all those who know Dejan are Warriors fans.
We're so sorry for this.
And somewhat, you know, heartening reaction to this, the Raptors coach who was very close
to Dejan, the first game of the Raptors after he passed away, the first play he ran was
a play he learned from Dejan to honor him.
And the Raptors played with a lot of heart and won.
So Dejan, you've touched a lot of hearts.
You've made a lot of people better at basketball.
And I hope you're doing that wherever you are right now.
And I think it's interesting, typically, probably pre-COVID, we don't see a cancellation like
this, but with COVID, it became more common to postpone or cancel sporting events.
And so I'm sure it's hard for the fans who had tickets, but I think, I think humans come
first and needing time to grieve makes a lot of sense.
So my heart goes out to anyone affected or involved.
And I just want to dip, let me, let me see that man.
I just want to show you guys why I got kicked out of the game right here.
This is in the first, this is in the third quarter with 1.28 left to go in the third.
And right here, you can watch, you can watch, go back and watch.
All right, you gotta go.
Two to tie, three to win.
5.2 left.
No timeouts left for the Brucks.
Here comes Dane.
Oh no!
Dane time!
In what was one of the wildest games so far this year, we have the Sacramento Kings against
the Milwaukee Bucks heading into overtime.
And during this game, Mike Brown was ejected.
And after the game, he showed reporters clips from the, his laptop.
He like opened his laptop and was like, look at this buddy.
And he got fined for it.
Though I thought it was hilarious.
And Dane finally had his first big game winner with the Milwaukee Bucks.
If you are unfamiliar, Dane is known for having soul crushing three pointers that are way
too far away that you should not take as the last shot.
But Dane chooses to, and when he chooses to, he wins more often than not.
Three.
G.G.
Shaq here.
I don't have any questions.
I just want to say congratulations, young fella.
You played a great game.
And the people that know who you were, they know who you are now.
I'm so proud of you.
Congratulations on being ready, brother.
Well, G.G.
It's an honor to get to hear your voice.
Appreciate you.
Thank you.
Well, G.G., you could tell it was Shaq.
He was mumbling.
What you just heard may have been the cutest moment of the NBA basketball season.
G.G.
Jackson of the Memphis Grizzlies scored 23 points.
Following doing this, he's 19 years old.
He's the youngest player in the league.
He had an interview and he thought it was going to be with the local broadcast.
But lo and behold, over his headset, he hears Shaquille O'Neal, Hall of Famer, one of the
best ever to do it, asking him questions, which led to G.G.'s face looking completely
shocked and dismayed in such an adorable and earnest way.
And sometimes it's wild to think about these athletes that at one point they were young,
bright kids just like hoping to one day be players to make it big.
And then they have these moments.
So G.G., shout outs to you for having a great game and shout outs to you having a conversation
with Shaquille O'Neal.
I hope it went and was everything you dreamed of.
News and notes.
Two to play in the third.
Fun game here in the Twin Cities.
Look at the moves by Edwards.
Swap.
Oh, it's slamming.
Woo hoo.
Anthony Edwards skies.
Are you kidding me?
It may be weird to start a news and note segment with audio of a play, but Anthony Edwards
this week did, I think, my favorite play of the whole season where he threw the ball off
the backboard with an assist to himself and slammed it down.
If you haven't had the chance to watch the Timberwolves and or specifically watch Anthony
Edwards play, he is magic and it is so fun to watch him.
He's so athletic.
He's so gifted.
And just what I love about doing this podcast is I feel like every week I'm talking about
some new amazing talent.
And so if you're new to basketball, this is again maybe the best time to ever get into
it because there's just so much talent.
So along with talent and things happening in the season, we also have some trades.
The Raptors are at it again with another trade, but this time with the Pacers.
So the Raptors receive in this trade Bruce Brown, Kira Lewis, Jordan Neuwa, two first
round picks via the Pacers and a conditional 2026 first round pick via the Pacers.
What a conditional pick is, is that you don't automatically get it.
There's certain conditions placed on it.
Obviously those conditions are how good the team places because that can affect the draft
pick.
Pacers receive Pascal Siakam, who had been looked at as a trade asset, finally traded.
And the Pacers also receive a future second round pick.
And the Raptors got Christian Coloco, who they promptly waived.
And so the Raptors made another big splash, which I think probably in the long run will
be good for the Raptors.
And for the Pacers, I think this is a really good move.
You get a really talented player trying to integrate him, especially while Tyrese is
getting better and coming back.
And I think this could move the needle a little bit for the Pacers.
In my opinion, it doesn't put them in championship contender territory, but it definitely pushes
them closer to being in that territory.
And the Raptors, they're playing for the future.
Bruce Brown, who they acquired, there's a good chance he could be traded to another
team.
But that's something you'll notice, and as you're paying attention to this season,
there might be certain teams like the Raptors who end up making four or five deals because
they're just trying to move so many assets.
And so as we get closer to the trade deadline, really pay attention.
It seems like every year it gets more dramatic and more talent is moved.
Expect over the next month me to talk more about trades as the makeup of the NBA will
gradually change.
And if I didn't let you know about those trades next season, you would look and go,
who's that guy?
Why is he wearing that jersey?
And speaking of wearing different jerseys, the All-Star game is getting closer to us.
February 18th.
I hope you're all excited for All-Star Weekend.
All-Star voting just ended a couple of days ago.
If you were voting, I hope you got your picks in.
In a future episode, I may talk about who I voted for, but the starters will be announced
this Thursday and the reserves will be announced at a later date.
So pay attention.
It's always exciting to see who gets picked for the All-Star game.
Expect a lot of anger by fans who felt like their player was disrespected.
And this matters a lot to players, not necessarily the All-Star game itself.
That's actually they usually don't care at all about it, but becoming an All-Star because
there's financial implications.
If you do well, right, that can be used as a bargaining chip in a contract agreement.
And some contracts do better based off of how voting works.
Usually that's not All-Star voting, it's like end of the year season voting, which we'll
talk about when the end of the season comes up.
But just expect there to be a lot of drama and arguments over the next couple of weeks
when people are upset, when inevitably someone really, really good is left off the All-Star
team because there's just too many good players.
And All-Star folks, you have 11 per team, but for all NBA, we have 15.
Let's have 15 players from on both teams.
Let's have 30 of the best players.
That's my pitch.
Listen to me, NBA, I'll fix all your problems.
And for the last bit of news, we may have had our finals preview this week.
The Denver Nuggets played the Boston Celtics in what was a really close game that ended
up being 102 to 100.
And many people would probably bet money that this would be the finals matchup.
The Celtics have been close the last couple of years and were in the finals two years
ago and obviously the Nuggets won last year.
And all I can say is that we would be so lucky to be treated a series of this, though we
may go blind from looking at Derek White's bald head.
In this segment today, first, we're going to look at the major stat leaders in different
categories and then we're going to really look at what the playoff picture looks like.
But first, looking at stats, I think right now is a great time to look into stats.
I haven't talked about stats really a lot in the last few episodes and I feel like it's
time to go hard.
And the reason for that is we're 41 games into the season or a lot of teams are and
that's the halfway point and a halfway point feels like a natural place to check in.
So I'm going to go over some of these major categories and some of the leaders.
Not necessarily going to talk about every single person in the top five of those categories.
I don't want to spend too much bob down in numbers, but I'm going to try to highlight
things that I find very interesting.
So first, we'll start with the category with names you may not hear a lot.
First we have the three point percentage category where your winner currently is Grayson Allen
with forty eight point six percent or as my girlfriend calls him Grayson penis Allen.
I don't know why, but just whenever he scores a touchdown, both she and I scream penis.
So I said he scores a touchdown.
Oh my God.
I'm looking for he gets a three point shot because that's really all he shoots.
As you can tell, evidenced by his great three point percentage, you also have Lonnie Mock,
Lonnie Walker and Malik Beasley is second and third, which continues the trend of if
you're a Lakers player, when you're on the Lakers, you can't shoot a three, but the second
you leave, you can do it.
And then you have Kevin Durant, who's the only high volume shooter, three point percentage
shooter in this statistic.
So for for your fantasy purposes, Kevin Durant is probably the most useful for you.
But Grayson and the others deserve an ad going into field goal percentage.
You have a bunch of names you probably expect.
You have Jacob Podol, Daniel Gaffer, Jared Allen.
You have maybe not expected, but makes sense.
You have UBAC and Jalen Duran, all of these folks are big guys who shoot close to the
rim and so they have a high field goal percentage spanning anywhere from sixty eight and a half
to sixty four point six, which is really high.
Usually you want at least a 50 percent field goal percentage.
So when you're 15 to 20 percent higher than that, that's significant.
Looking at steals, one thing I want to know in third, you have Tide, Kawhi, Leonard and
Paul George, so good on the Clippers for getting a lot of steals at one point six.
Then in second, you have Donovan Mitchell with one point nine.
But your champion right now is Shay Gillegas Alexander at two point two, which statistically
is quite a significant jump from the one point nine with steals when you're dealing with
a category that's so low.
I expect he's going to win this.
And you know, Shay is having an amazing season and will probably be easily a top five MVP
candidate, in my opinion, especially if the Thunder keep doing really, really well.
Next looking at blocks, you got your big, big guys.
You have in fifth Anthony Davis, who was first for a lot of the year, but has gone down a
little bit.
Not so much.
He's gone down.
I think more of the players around him have gone up.
Chet Holmgren, the rookie, though it's the second year in the league, he's still a rookie
because it's his first year playing in fourth.
Walker Kessler from Utah, who does not get a lot of minutes, but Walker Kessler, I heard
a statistic recently, has some of the best rim protection numbers of the last couple
decades.
So if you're trying to trying to score, don't don't don't try to score on Walker Kessler.
Then you got Brooke Lopez.
But your winner in blocks per game by quite a lot with three point two blocks per game
is Victor Wen Benyama.
And I imagine he's going to leave this category for a very long time.
So if you care about blocks draft Victor early in your season next year.
Looking at assists, most of the candidates in the top four make a lot of sense.
But in fifth, who may surprise you if Fred fan fleet new to the Houston Rockets, but
definitely not new to the league in fifth with eight point five assists per game.
Fourth you have Nikola Jokic with nine point one.
You have Luca Donczas with nine point two.
And then you have a dramatic jump up with Trey Young at ten point eight.
And in first still you have Tyrese Halliburton at twelve point six, who is putting together
one of the best assist seasons of all time.
He this season had back to back games where he got 20 points and 20 assists, which is
only done by two other players in NBA history.
Tyrese I hope you get better and you're able to leave the Pacers to the playoffs.
Now looking at rebounds again, you've got some usual sex suspects here in 50 have Janis
in fourth, you have Jokic and third you have a D and second you have Rudy Gobert, potential
defensive player of the year candidate.
And in first in rebounds per game, you have the Montez.
So bonus from the Kings who's been playing amazing this year.
He's been getting a lot of stats, but if you actually watch, he's really he might be currently
the best player in the Kings, which as a deer and fox fan, that hurts to say.
And in points per game in fifth, you have Kevin Durant at twenty nine point two and
then you have four players above 30 points.
You actually have four players above 31 points per game, which is astonishing.
Normally in a season, it's impressive if a player is above 30 points.
But with 31.1 points, you have Shea 31.2 points, you have Janis, then you have a pretty big
step up at thirty three point six points with Luka Donska.
And then with 35 points a game, which is the I think third highest would be third highest
of this of the century.
I'm not looking this up, but it feels right because I think Kobe had 36 one time and Harden
had 36.
And then of course, back Jordan way ago had 36, 37, something like that.
But Joel and be 35.
We'll see if he can keep it up.
But if it matters to you, if you're playing in a fantasy points per game, Joel and be
it is currently your leader in getting the most fantasy points per game.
But enough of just looking at some of the best players who you can expect on some of
those all star teams we were talking about earlier.
Let's look at how the teams are doing again halfway through the year.
I think is a great time to be looking at some of these big picture things.
So I'm going to be breaking the NBA down into five tiers, historically bad, appropriately
bad, meh, playoff contenders and championship contenders.
So starting off with your historically bad and the reason this tier exists this year
is because there's actually multiple teams that fall into this category.
So who are these teams?
Well, teams I've been ragging on a lot of the season.
You have the Detroit Pistons at four and 38, the Washington Wizards at seven and 35.
And then you have the San Antonio Spurs at eight and 34.
If you want to put the Charlotte Hornets in there at nine and 31, I think I think you
could do that.
So you got four like historically bad teams and then you have a few teams who are appropriately
bad.
And what I mean by this is not every team is going to be good.
You expect some to be bad and these teams are bad, but in a manner that doesn't feel
historically problematic.
So you have Portland, you have Memphis on the West, you have Toronto, Brooklyn and possibly
Atlanta unless they get their stuff together.
They're kind of all on that periphery, honest, the just kind of the bad you expect.
And then you have the Mea and in this tier, I think you just have a few teams.
You have Golden State who is currently struggling.
That's probably where Atlanta belongs is in the Mea tier.
You have Chicago, you have possibly Houston.
Maybe I don't think you have the Lakers, though the Lakers are fighting hard to get into that
category and that's kind of it for that category just because we have a lot of teams that will
be in the playoffs or are scraping near near that and a couple of teams in the Mea category
still have plenty of time to get there.
I'm not going to spend too much time on this tier because it is a lot of the teams that
could be potentially playoff contenders.
So if I haven't said the team yet, it's probably there, but I'm going to get now into the championship
contender category.
I think there are potentially six teams I could see in the finals and if I'm wrong,
well we'll call myself out.
We'll call out current me and the future.
So future me can be mad at past me who's present me.
It makes sense, but I think you have three teams from each conference.
So again, the East I think has been easy this whole year.
I think you have clear three top teams.
You have the Sixers, you have Milwaukee and you have Boston.
I think is clearly at the top of that tier.
You know, they're four games ahead.
They have the best record in basketball and pretty much they always are competitive even
in games they lose except for that one game against Milwaukee we talked about last week.
And then in the West, I think you have the Denver Nuggets who are obviously contender.
I think the Clippers are a contender.
And while I think Oklahoma City will end up getting the first seed in the West, I don't
consider them a contender just yet.
I think they need a little more playoff experience and maybe they'll prove me wrong just like
the Thunder from 2011 and 12 did.
But I think the Minnesota Timberwolves would be my third team that could do well in the
playoffs.
I think last year we were all so sour on them after the Rudy Gobert trade and things that
didn't work out that we're constantly kind of ignoring the fact that they've had the
best record consistently in the West throughout the whole season and they have the best defense.
And I think that's going to matter a lot.
I think Anthony Edwards has taken a step up and I think he could be a true superstar and
I think he could be someone that really can apply that offensive pressure because my worry
with the Timberwolves is not the defense, of course, but it's the offense.
But I think Ant could really carry that team offensively if he needed to.
So this week in our trends and streaks, we looked at the leaders in the different major
stat categories.
We also just looked at how the NBA is doing in general.
But like I said, don't turn away because we got a fantasy tip for you.
And it's not just a fantasy tip, everyone.
It is a life tip.
And that is don't give up.
Don't ever give up.
Now, many of you just completed week 13 and depending when your playoffs are, you might
have anywhere from four to even eight more weeks of fantasy basketball.
And this is a time of the year where I'm seeing it my own league.
People are getting a little worse at putting people into their starting lineup, moving
injured players.
And you could be a person who sneaks into the playoffs because someone doesn't follow
through as much as they should in setting their lineups.
The NBA season's hard.
It's a long season.
It's hard to stay active and engaged.
It's really easy at the beginning, but it's kind of harder in this middle mushy part of
the season.
So if you're able to stay engaged, maybe make a trade with someone who's not paying close
attention.
These are all things you should be doing because every year I feel like in any fantasy sport
I do, there's always someone who's like, oh, I started one in seven and then I won the
championship.
What matters in fantasy sports is getting to the playoffs because anything can happen
any given week as long as you give yourself a chance to do that.
And if you give up and stop paying attention now, you're not going to give future you a
chance to do that and win that sweet, sweet money.
And if you're not playing for money, I know you want to win those bragging rights.
I know you do.
So don't don't give up because if you do, I'll cry.
I'll cry and don't make me please.
I don't I don't want to.
But I do want to thank you all for listening to another episode of the Omnisports NBA podcast.
I'm your host, Bobby Labida.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please give us a review or like, please check us out.
We are on Spotify.
We're anywhere where you can get podcasts, I think, assuming that the producer of the
show did his job, aka me.
And I just really want to say I've really enjoyed this journey so far with all of you
this season.
If you're enjoying, please feel free to reach out at Omnisports423 at gmail.com.
I'm happy to hear any suggestions here.
Any reasons why I'm dumb and need to correct myself in the future.
So please tell your friends and follow us if you want to on TikTok or on Instagram or
on X.
We have a YouTube which is currently doing actually pretty well.
So I would love for you to check out.
We have a lot of content that is not podcast related or even basketball related.
But don't worry.
There's always sports related here at Omnisports.
And I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week.