Are The Portland Trail Blazers In The NBA Cup’s Group Of Death? | Danny & Dusty

Are The Portland Trail Blazers In The NBA Cup’s Group Of Death? | Danny & Dusty

I’m going to just continue to beat people over the head with this because of all of the things the NBA does get wrong, I think making people care more about NBA games by adding a little more juice to it, no matter how small, is a good move. And everybody, for the most part, pans the NBA Cup stuff. But we did get juice out of it. We got the Bucks and the Pacers hating each other. We got good games. We got very stupid courts. There’s just a little bit more. And if if you can add just a little bit more juice to stuff like that’s good, right? Yeah. Like it just just a little bit more. Again, it does it’s it’s never going to be the thing that you’re just like, “Yeah, yeah, I’m really tuned in.” May you know what? Maybe it does. Maybe it does eventually go into something where it does mean more like with basically every cup competition in every other sport. Uh use the four nations in the NHL. That was a massive springboard for them. Yeah. Absolutely. And everybody’s like, man, it’s whatever. And then we were all locked into it. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was replaced the all-star Yeah. festivities. But they made something that that didn’t have juice have juice again. Mhm. And in the early regular season, what word did I just use? I have a stroke. Good god. In the early regular season, the general fan doesn’t care. And if you can make the general fan care, good. Now, the tournament’s going to start Halloween night, October 31st. It’s going to be a part of uh Amazon Prime got a hold of this. So, now you’re adding a little bit more appointment viewing to it. And what they do now, not now or what what they’ve done is for the cup groups, they do the draw. Mhm. You know, the the thing in like if you’re talking about soccer, they do it the best when when they do the um uh the Champions League. The great part about that is they just have the pouch with the chips. And the biggest club on the world could play a team that qualify for the Champions League from the smallest league in the world that that qualifies for the Champions League in round one. or two of the biggest clubs in the world can play in the very first round. It’s like, who knows? You know what I mean? Like, and you get these these cup draws. Now, they split them up East and West. In the West and Group A, this is for me very clearly the weakest group. The Thunder, the Timberwolves, the two banner teams in there, the Western Conference Finals opponents. Then the Kings Suns and Jazz. In group B, the Lakers and the Clippers. So, you get the LA tie, the Grizzlies, Mavs, and Pelicans. There’s only one real doodoo team in there in the Pelicans. Um there’s going to be a draw with basically everybody else some capacity. In the final group, group C. This is what you would unequivocally call the group of death. No matter which conference we’re like, this is what you mean talk about draws like the one that they’re just like what the hell happened here? The Rockets, Nuggets, Warriors, Blazers, and Spurs. Yeah, you probably have two of the three. Not probably. You have the two of the three best teams in the Western Conference in the Rockets and the Thunder. I’m excuse the Rockets and the Nuggets. You have the Warriors who they’re still trying to figure out what the hell they are with Jonathan Kaminga and what but they’re still the Warriors. They’re still the Warriors again. They’re good team. And the Spurs who have the number two overall pick, Victor Ramayama on the way up and dear Fox and Steph Castle and it’s like they’re probably going to be a for a 41, you know, 500 or better team. Like if they’ve went 42 and 40 this year, that wouldn’t surprise me. Would that surprise you? No. Uhuh. And then the Blazers and you’re like, well, maybe cup cup viewing won’t be as uh great for the Blazers this year. I will say I was in the building for the Cup games they had. There was extra juice in the building, not only from the fans, but from the players. They’re like, “No, you you can you like there’s a lot of like eye rolling about it.” And then come game time, everybody’s looking around like, “Yeah, no, this feels different.” Yeah. And like the the the jokes that were being made at the NBA finals is that the cup games had more pomp and circumstance around them than the finals. The reason you’re saying that is not because the the cup games didn’t have pomp and circumstance because the finals was lacking what the cup games were. Yeah. Which again, NBA getting many things wrong like not putting your finals on a platform it deserves to be on. Oh, the list is long. Yeah. not televising the starting lineups or all of the things that go around it. And now here’s the thing. This is on Amazon Prime. Yeah. What has What has Thursday Night Football become? It was already point viewing, but it’s become appointment viewing. Do you remember the first game that was on Amazon? How everyone was blown away by the coverage? Not just like who they had on the desk and how they were setting up the game. It was the best picture anybody had ever seen for a football. They’re like, “Oh, these guys are taking this serious.” You know, you can you could watch the game either in the standard form or you could be a nerd like me and watch the live analytics and the tracking and everything that kind of went around it. They rolled the red carpet out and they’re like, “This is just a Thursday night game that we’re just this good at this.” Yeah. Now, if Prime does that with this, I don’t care what the ratings are. Make it matter. Give me all the glitz and the glamour and just make me feel good. Yep. This this is where the NBA can make some hay and Amazon does not become the behemoth that they are without doing things the right way. Yeah. Now, we can talk about their delivery services and making delivery drivers pee in bottles and all those kind of things, but as far as their branding, their marketing, how they do things, particularly in sports and in live events, no one does it better. You could make an argument maybe for Apple doing some stuff that’s pretty impressive, YouTube doing some stuff that’s pretty impressive, but I would say Amazon is first in class, first in slot in their live event presentation. Would you disagree? They they they’re they are so and well, especially for being so new. They came out and said, “We are going to conquer this space.” Yeah. Which is kind of terrifying because Amazon taking over the world is not that far away, right? Yeah. That’s another discussion. But just run through the Eastern Conference real quick. In the A group, you’ve got Cleveland, Indiana, Atlanta, Toronto, Washington. In the B-group, Boston, Detroit, Orlando, Brooklyn, Philly, and then in Cgroup, uh, New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, Miami, Charlotte. God, the East sucks. Yeah, that’s rough, man. That’s rough. Somebody had a comment on uh my podcast the other day and I didn’t have time to answer it um with what I was talking about. Like why does why is the East so bad? I think somebody actually texted in the other day too. Um and the short answer was luck and ownership. Like if you look at ownership in the East, the Raptors are in shambles. The Wizards are finally starting to figure stuff out. The Celtics just got sold. The um Charlotte Hornets just got sold. The Miami Heat. Mickey Eric is not a guy who dabbles in it because he lost a ton of money and then was able to kind of gain it back postco. Uh the Knicks and Dolan 25 years obscurity and now they’re, you know, they fired their coach after the best year in a quarter decade. And then luck, LeBron was the number one overall pick, but then goes to Miami, then goes to LA. Like look at the the top picks and the ones that have hit and the ones that have mattered. Who who here is like the top picks like Cleveland, Evan Mobley really good, but Donovan Mitchell came from the West. Yeah, Darius Garland really good but not that guy. Pacers, none of those guys are top picks. Hawks, Trey Young, but is he that guy? The Raptors, Scotty Barnes is good, but not that guy. Washington, they don’t have a guy. The Celtics, it’s been a while. They got Tatum and Brown. Pistons, Cade, Orlando. The reason why they’re getting better is because Fron and Paulo. Yeah. The Nets gh the 76ers. Now VJ Edgar might be one of them ones. But Paul George was a guy who was in the East and went west. Now he’s there. Embiid. Yeah. Knicks. Yeah. They’ve got Cat now. Cat came from the West. Brunson was second round pick. Milwaukee. Giannis into the lottery. Also from the West. Uh Chicago. Yeah. Nothing there. Miami. Bam. Harrow. But like you’re end of lottery guys. Yeah. Charlotte like meanwhile look at the west chat now SG and Jaylen are you know 11th overall picks right Minnesota and Edwards number one Sacramento gh uh the Suns book but he end of lottery Jazz but the Lakers you’ve got LeBron and Luca the top picks Memphis jaw top pick Jiren top pick Dallas Cooper flag before that Luca like you just got to go down the list New Orleans Zion Rockets, you’ve got numerous top picks. Denver, not one of them ones because you got the luckiest draw you ever had in the 41st overall pick in a Certo commercial, right? Man, but Golden State, they got lucky because the Minnesota Timberwolves took two point guards in front of Steph Curry, right? And found money in Draymond Green. Jimmy Butler, last pick of the first round. Portland, they’ve got some good picks, but San Antonio, number one overall pick, number two overall pick, number three overall pick. Like, it’s luck. That’s what it is. Yep. Absolutely. And then ownership. Yes. And that’s that’s where you kind of see stuff all kind of shape out. But I’m I’m mildly excited for the NBA Cup and Amazon Prime and everything they’re going to kind of wrap around that. Yeah. I’ll be excuse me interested to see how coverage changes this year with the new networks. Um, you know, because yeah, just hopefully we’ll get rid of a lot of the ESPNification of the NBA studio shows. We can only hope, you know,

To say the Trail Blazers got a unlucky draw for this years NBA Cup would be a bit of an understatement.

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