Southwest Division Preview (with Keith Parish)

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Wes Goldberg (0:31)

Welcome to RealGM Radio with Wes Goldberg. On today's episode, I'm gonna be joined by Keith Parish from Fast Break Breakfast to preview the Southwest Division in the Western Conference. We're getting into a bunch of stuff. The Dallas Mavericks, New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets, all these teams made some small changes to some very big changes. We're gonna break them all down, get to the bottom of who got better, who got worse, and then make some predictions. All of it coming up next.

Keith Parish is here to preview the Southwest Division. We're gonna make some predictions at the end of the show, but I want to start with who got better, who got worse, and Keith, it's weird because two of the teams in this division made real major changes, and yet I can't figure out if they got better or worse. I'm talking about Dallas and New Orleans. I'm sorry, Dallas and Memphis, rather. New Orleans made some changes to the coaching staff, but it was Dallas and Memphis, the team that you're most closely associated with. I can't figure, maybe we start there. Did either of those teams, they made a lot of changes, but I can't figure out if they got better or worse. Where did you land on them?

Keith Parish (1:41)

So Wes, this is the issue I run into every single season over on my show, Fast Break Breakfast, because we have this butter or parquet thing we do that is about if they got better, and you have to decide what are we judging them against? Better from where? And in the way we do it is better from the theoretical healthy squad that the team finished the year with, which is weird with tanking teams. We're like, I don't, how do I even judge? And if you want to turn it back even further and say, are they better than last year when they started the season with Jared Jackson Jr. and John Moran on the roster?

No, good. No, absolutely not. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, for the Grizzlies, they turned it all over. I do not think they are better, although they should not be tanking in the first month of the season or maybe ever. If the lottery reform rules work out as intended as far as the Mavericks. Yeah, they have to be better, right? Just if we include the return of Kyrie.

Wes Goldberg (2:43)

So, all right, let's start with Dallas.

Keith Parish (2:46)

Okay.

Wes Goldberg (2:47)

So, they add, so they, you know, kid out maize in. I like what they did, right? I like taking a flyer on Zachary Reza Shea, although I don't like Zachary Reza Shea as a player at all and Denver liked them as a prospect, but I understand as a low risk flyer, like why not? Right? Santi Aldama, I like that. Marcus Sasser, I like that specifically in terms of helping bolster the bench.

They think this Biberovic guy can actually be like a real player for them. We'll see. They lose Clay Thompson, Chris Middleton, Marvin Bagley, Brandon Williams, Ryan Nemhard, Dwight Powell. Maybe they're going to try to bring him back, but it's unclear.

So they just sort of mix around like the bench guys. They kind of lose some vets. They bring in some young guys, take some flyers on them. Again, I like what they did. They draft Merez-Johnson with the number nine pick. It was sort of the first reach of the draft. But to your point, the real big addition is getting Kyrie Irving back who didn't play at all last year. We don't really know what he's going to look like, but he's going to look better than whatever they had last year anyway, for a team that won 26 games, 26 and 56 last year. So I do think that tangibly they're going to be better just because Kyrie Irving came back, and that counts for the sake of this exercise. But I would also say that that probably counts for Memphis, because yeah, they lose John Morant. John only played 20 games for Memphis last year.

Keith Parish (4:07)

Right.

SPEAKER_1 (4:08)

It's like, how much more awesome is that?