NBA Offseason VIBE Grades (with Katie Heindl)

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**Wes Goldberg** (0:30)
It's RealGM Radio. Katie Heindl is gonna join me here in a second to hand out some off-season grades in a way that I don't think has ever been done before. Let's jump in.
All right, Katie Heindl is here. You could check out her newsletter, Basketball Feelings, where recent topics include Las Vegas, LeBron James, The Odyssey. She is here to help me hand out some vibes grades for some of the more interesting teams this off season. Katie, thanks so much for jumping on. Tell me a little bit, how have the vibes been for your summer so far? You know what?

**Katie Heindl** (1:05)
They've been good. First of all, thanks for having me. Always a pleasure, Wes, to be with you. And they felt a little bit like maybe slow to get started. You know, I didn't, like summer didn't start like that, you know, as it usually seems to.
But I think summer league, post summer league, maybe this is also realizing how much of creatures we have it we are, where that in some way kind of signals like the true end of the NBA season for us. But once I got through summer league and got home, it feels like, all right, like we're coasting headfirst into summer.

**Wes Goldberg** (1:40)
It's so interesting that you say I felt the same exact way. And I think I know what the culprit is. I think it's LeBron.
I think we could blame LeBron because you're right. After summer league, we're like, OK, no news, nothing really to catch up on. Like we can kind of slow down. Like, no, we saw this LeBron thing hanging over us. We got to figure out what's going on that. And now that LeBron thing was in, he does it on a Friday afternoon. Little Friday news done for us. And then I went into this weekend for the first time, I felt like it was just a slow, casual, kind of summer type of weekend. So I blame LeBron James. One of the many things that LeBron has been blamed for in his life. I'm going to blame him for the lame summer.

**Katie Heindl** (2:17)
I was very happy for LeBron. He must feel like maybe it's a nice vacation for him to not go to summer league for the first time in ages. Like when you're not tied to any team, you don't have to go.

**Wes Goldberg** (2:30)
Right. He doesn't have to like awkwardly not sit on the same side as Russell Westbrook.
You know, it was just that there's a freedom, I think, in that.

**Katie Heindl** (2:37)
A real freedom.

**Wes Goldberg** (2:39)
So like I said, we are going to hand out vibes grades for some of the interesting teams that I want to talk to you about. And I'm going to throw you a handful of teams. And you're basically going to tell me, do they fall into one of these three categories? Do the vibes need work? Are the vibes strong or are the vibes immaculate?
And so we could talk about it from there. But let's start with LeBron's new team, the Philadelphia 76ers, Katie. The vibes right now in Philadelphia are what?

**Katie Heindl** (3:05)
Strange.

**Wes Goldberg** (3:07)
Strange, okay. We went off the board right away.

**Katie Heindl** (3:08)
We did, sorry, we did go off the board. They're not immaculate, nor are they bad. I also don't think they're middling vibes. There's some jagged edges to the vibes and some places where I'm like, how is this gonna work?
I also think it's differentiated. There's not like one amalgamous vibe. I think the vibe is sort of different depending on which player you ask. If you ask Tyrese Maxey, he'd be like immaculate. Amazing. Yeah, what did he post the other day?

**Wes Goldberg** (3:40)
Like, I'm feeling like Coach Cal.

**Katie Heindl** (3:42)
Amazing. Yeah.

**Wes Goldberg** (3:43)
Yeah, that's great.

**Katie Heindl** (3:44)
Like, you can, like, Tyrese-

**Wes Goldberg** (3:45)
Coach Cal's vibes are always immaculate.