The Most Interesting Players In The NBA This Season | Double Dribble

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Mo Dakhil (1:35)

Welcome to the Double Dribble podcast with Dubin and Doc Hill. That's Jared Dubin, author of Last Night in Basketball. Make sure you subscribe to the newsletter. He's been pumping out season previews. I believe this morning it was the Utah Jazz. If my tired eyes read it correctly, everything's a blur right now, Jared. Everything for me is a blur.

I read my emails. I don't know if I actually take any of it actually in, but everything is a blur at the moment. I'm Mo DeKio, former NBA video coordinator for the Clippers and Spurs. Almost forgot which teams.

Right for Bleach Report, podcast all over the place. You will find me on NBA TV pretty much on Sundays this season, and I will be doing a Twitter Live on opening day for the NBA. So make sure, X Live, excuse me. Make sure you check all that fun stuff out. We decided today for our trope, for our topic. We're just going to do who we think are the most interesting players going into this season. As has been the normal occurrence on this podcast, one of us comes completely well-prepared, has done all the research, has done all the homework, and one of us just kind of goes, I'll wing it. You can figure out which one is which as the podcast goes. But Jared, how are you doing today?

Jared Dubin (2:56)

I'm doing great, man. I'm excited to talk about the most interesting players in the league. And I definitely did way too much homework for this one because I wrote down one player for every single team, just in case we had overlap on our most interesting players. And at the end, once we go through all of our most interesting guys, I can run through quickly who my most interesting player for each team was.

Mo Dakhil (3:17)

Yeah, I actually think that would be a fun sort of add-in at the end. That's a good idea. So let's just start it off. You did the homework, you did the work. Who is to you the most interesting player going into this season?

Jared Dubin (3:31)

It's Walker Kessler.

The Lakers obviously traded a significant amount to get him and then gave him a massive contract. And he just has, there is so much pressure on him to be so good this season, really on both ends of the floor. We've talked obviously a lot of times about the pressure on him defensively because of the shortcomings the Lakers have, particularly on the perimeter with Luca and with Austin Reeves. And then even if they start somebody like Mamu next to him in the front court, he basically has to be a defense unto himself this year. And then we don't know really what kind of pick and role player he is. Because as I've talked about before, he hasn't really had a pick and role partner. Obviously nobody is like Luca, but he hasn't had a pick and role partner really at all. Because earlier in his career, he had like declining Mike Conley, and then he had Quiente George before he got good. Like last year was the first time Quiente George was good, and Walker Kessler didn't play last year. He only played five games. So there is so much pressure on him on the defensive end of the floor. We have no idea what to expect on the offensive end of the floor. And we don't know if he's going to stay on the court because he only played five games last year.