Nick Wright predicts downfall of Brooklyn Nets, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving | Colin Cowherd Podcast

I try to watch half an NBA game every night in the treadmill. That's my goal. So I get on the treadmill and I watch half an NBA game, usually like an East Coast game. So I watch Brooklyn and they're playing really well. Really well. And this is where I tend to be in my career. I do football heavy, Super Bowl ends, I go skiing or I go to Mexico, come back, and then I'm totally into the NBA. NFL draft, NFL free agency, but I'm an NBA fan. And I kind of block it off. I do Labor Day to February 10th as NFL. It's so funny. I'm just real quick before you get to your question. I know people kind of perceive me as an NBA guy because I'm like the LeBron guy, but I'm the exact same way. So I might watch a little bit more because of the coast I'm on and I've got season tickets. So I go to some games and do that. But as far as the media I consume, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I don't listen to any NBA podcast right now. I'm not reading it. Like I am. It's to me, this is it. Football season is football season with a few big time NBA games mixed in. And then the moment I get back from vacation, it is nothing but hoops for the next four months and then go on another vacation. And then we're in the NFL again. And this is just like the cycle that, but go ahead, but go ahead. So one of the reasons I don't, I think there are a lot of people in our profession, especially NBA people that they watch this early season stuff. And I always kind of think timeout. I mean, last two nights ago, the Celtics gave up 150 points to the Thunder. Thunder, without their best player, without SGA. So it's not even. Some teams are rested. Some are exhausted. Who'd you play the night before? It's like the San Francisco 49ers. Everybody that plays them the next week. Or 214. So in the NBA, if you play, you know, if you play the Celtics the night before and they're arm wrestling you and playing defense the next night, you're probably not going to play well. So I watched the Brooklyn Nets and here's my takeaway on them. They're the Phoenix Sun Steve Nash team. They are totally built for the regular season. You come in light rest. The guys come in after shoot around. They get 30 minutes of film putting their shoes on. They watch them. And then you got to face Kyrie and Durant and Simmons. And it's a hard matchup. You put them in a series and I can go at Kyrie six times defensively where he won't play. I can put Simmons on the foul line in any big spot. That Brooklyn is tough with little prep. Infinitely beatable with equal rest. I agree with that. I think that's a smart take. And but they also, I will give them credit. Since Kyrie came back, they're 18 and three. They lost one game in December. Here are, I got three potential issues with Brooklyn. The first one is Kyrie's, you know, you ever been to like a construction site and they have that little thing that the days without an incident and every day it ticks up, it's like 46, 47. We are approaching the most Kyrie days without an incident we've had in about six years, which means that some bitch might be going back to zero any moment now. Like there's, there's a chance that thing is getting reset. So everyone's like, oh, Kyrie's on his best behavior. I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's been six weeks and that's good, but I'm not, I'm not booking that as the norm. Okay. That's the first thing. Yeah. Second thing is this, I, and this is a good thing and a bad thing for them. Durant is playing some, some from an offensive perspective, some of the best basketball in league history right now. So I put a thing on the TV show yesterday where mba.com will break the court down into zones, like not just quadrants, but like, there's like 18 of them. As far as where you take your shots from, right. And red, if the, if the color beneath you is red, it means you're below average. If it's the color of the court, it means you are average. And if it's green, it means you're above average on those 18 zones. Kevin Durant had 15 green, two beige, and one red. The one that was ready has taken two shots from that area. I think he'll probably make the next one. It'll turn beige or green and another one. He'd only taken five shots. So he is from every scoring zone on the court. Well above average, every single one. And I was like, wait, is this true for all the great players? Nope. I look Steph. It's like half of them. He has his spots. LeBron. It's like a third of them, but he's killing you at the rim. Luke, it's the Durant is great everywhere. And he is taking tough shots. So the good thing is he's an amazing player. The bad thing is they need him to continue a level of offensive efficiency that would make prime Jordan blush as far as what he's doing in the mid range and all of that. And the last thing is what you said, which is they, the Ben Simmons in the playoffs part of this, no one is talking about and no one is thinking about, but it is a major concern. I want to say one other NBA thing to you. Cause Giannis in his last seven is averaging 40 and the other night at 55 and the bucks are a game out of first place. So here is why, in my opinion, Giannis and Luca have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt. They are the two best players in the league. Giannis one, Luca two. Every other great player in this league, either this year or in the last few years, if their second best guy isn't there, the team struggles to win half its games. LeBron lost AD team can't win half its games. Steph a couple of years ago, didn't have clay. They missed the playoffs. Jokic last year, didn't have Jamal Murray. They're the 60 Durant this year. Kyrie was gone when he was going to sabbatical. There's whatever you want to call it. They're, they're dead in the water. Luca last year, didn't have a second best player whole second half of the season. Playoff runs like, okay, I'll just take us to the conference finals. Giannis hasn't had Middleton all year. He's played seven games, seven games. He played, didn't play well. Cause he's still hurt and they're a game out of first. That is those two guys are at a different level. The, our teams can be contenders even without our second best guy. And if you give me our second best guy, we'll probably win the whole damn thing. Uh, everyone else, no matter how great they are. And I threw LeBron in there too, cause he's still unbelievable. They need their full cast of characters, not to win any games, but to contend. The Bucks can contend based on the power of Giannis alone. And I think the Mavs are showing they can do that with Luca too. Very good. What do you make? I a year less than you, buddy. It's really, what do you make, um, of the offensive explosion in the last two weeks? I, I can tend, I would say every season has what they call the dog days. And I think after Christmas, there's a three week lull when you're still experimenting with some defensive rotations. You're not near the trading deadlines. You're not showing off people yet. Um, you're giving certain players rest. And so we're in the dog days are not the end of the regular season because seating really matters. It's not right up to the trading deadline because you're trying to show off certain people to move them. These are actually, even though the season only starts in October, the dog days are like day after Christmas until like January 5th, the 10th and nobody's playing defense, right? Okay. So I listen, I think that's part of it. So I'm really glad you asked me this. I'm really glad. And I have a much probably longer answer than you anticipated, but I think you'll like this. So here, so the NBA right now, it's 113 points per game is the league average. Um, it's the highest it's been in a very long time. Some context though, other than the last couple of years, in the last 50, the highest scoring year was 1985 when everyone's like, Oh my God, defense was so hard. And they punched in the face. It was one 11 per game in 1985. The only time it was pride pre 1985 higher than this was the early sixties. Uh, this is a sidebar, but I think you'll like this 1962, uh, the NBA averaged 118 points That was 118 in 1962. So whenever, what else happened in 1962? Well, we'll average 50 a game. Oscar average, a triple double your guy, dragon fly Jones. Part of the volume pointed this out. Elgin Baylor averaged 38 and 18, but he only played 48 games. Colin, he only played 48 games because Elgin got called up as an army reservist and could only play for the Lakers when he was on weekend leave. And he took coach flights and then dropped 38 a night on folks and then had a 61 point finals game. Okay. So why do I bring all that up? 62 when all these crazy records were set different game, they're playing the breakneck pace and no one can make shots. So it's just shoot, miss. You get a rebound, shoot, miss, get a rebound. Okay. So throw those records out 1985. Why would that be? So high school wasn't three point line. It had been invented, but people barely shot it. Yeah. The ABA folded. The NBA hadn't fully expanded and you had massive talent. There's too many good players, too many good players. Then what happens? Late eighties, NBA expands early nineties. It expands again. And all of a sudden NBA finals games are 85, 83. And you look around and you watch the bulls jazz. And it's like, that's Jeff Foster and Jeff Hornacheck. And I don't want to just say white guys here, but it was a lot. And, and like it's, and, and it's not, but people don't want to say that because so much of the NBA is wrapped in like the Jordan legacy. They're like, no, the nineties were great. No, they weren't. So now we go here. Three point line, huge parts of doing it. Undeniable. People are taking a bazillion threes. Here's the other thing right now. If someone were to say the three best players in the NBA are Giannis, Luca, Jokic. Well, that's interesting. So now we're getting guys from Greece via Nigeria, Slovenia, and Serbia. Giannis the other night, he, he, he crossed up Chris Stapps and got to the rim. I'm like, okay, that's a seven foot four inch Latvian trying to guard a seven foot Nigerian Greek kid out on the perimeter. I'm not saying this because it helps my LeBron goat argument. I'm saying it because it's obvious. The players are better, way better players are way better and you have the entire world to choose from. And so, yeah, the defense isn't as physical, but the game is smarter than people understand it better. They understand where the efficient shots are. The three point shot has proliferated. We're about to bring over a seven foot one inch French alien who's shooting step back one foot threes. Like guys, it's just better. And it's not to me a coincidence that you go back to the mid eighties, there was a scoring explosion. It's like, you have, oh my God, you have magic. You have Larry, the ABA is folded. You have Jordan come in, you have all these great players come in and there were every team, like all the great teams had like four hall of famers. And so that's my answer. So yes, I agree with you. I think the, what I think is going to be interesting because your point is the scoring will go down a bit, you know, once teams care more. Well, right now it's at one 13 and in 1985 was one 11. So if it goes down just a little bit, we're going to be scoring at the same rate as they did in the mid eighties. And there's, you know, there's, that's going to be hard for people to reconcile, but that's why I think it's happening. I also think here's the other thing, because there have been a ton of 50 point games, but they've all been by stars. I, it would be concerning to me concerning their own word, but more noteworthy to me. If it was, I don't know if you remember this guy, Tony Delk, he played at Kentucky a long time ago. He once had a 50 point NBA game and he's kind of known as like the worst player to score 50. That sounds, but you know what I mean? Yeah. If a lot of average guys were dropping 50, I'd be like, Oh, these numbers don't mean as much, but it's like, Oh, in B dropped 50 and Booker and Donovan Mitchell dropped seventies a lot. I'm not going to lie. That was a lot, but it was also, he had 58 at the end of regulation. And then when I'll be honest, it's the best players in the league dropping 50. So that kind of makes sense to me.