Thinking Basketball Podcast.

My name is Ben.

Welcome to another episode.

We've made it to February.

What a stretch of the season.

I have a hot take, Cody.

I now think the most important stretch of the NBA season takes place from the end of December into the All-Star break. Have I said that before? You said it to me. You haven't said it live to like the world, but you said it to me before. Yeah. Do you want to elaborate? Well, I was realizing recently that this is kind of my favorite part of the year. And then I was checking notes and

sort of things that have happened in the past going all the way back to like 2022. And I noticed

a lot of great critical things happening in December and January games, you know, folders and

notes from January and December and even early February. And then 2024, I had more. Last year, I had a ton. This year it's starting to pick up. And I'm realizing, like, this is the part of the season in today's NBA, where teams are maturing and you're kind of starting to get to see what the product looks like when it's put together. It's very hard to do that after the All-Star break in any meaningful way anymore. Early in the season, yes, there's a lot of excitement and it's fun, but stuff hasn't really sorted itself out. If you're the Charlotte Hornets, you haven't really got your flow going yet. You know, you haven't figured out everyone's role. The young players, the rotation hasn't been quite as established. And the last thing is, we used to think of this as like the dog days, and it is hard sometimes,

if you're the Oklahoma City Thunder to kind of make your way through January because you know

you want to play until June.

But for the rest of the league, highly competitive games where you are still playing or ramping

up your intensity because you've figured out your

role. So when I watch a team like Charlotte, it's like not only are they getting healthy and

things are clicking and the young players are figuring it out, but the offensive systems coming

together as a coach, you can probably put in a little bit more. And then even though the hornets

aren't great defensively, like defensively, they're bringing a ton of intensity to their games because they're finally at a place where they're probably going, hey, we now have an identity. We know who we are as a team. So this is just a pattern for me in this decade of tuning into these games kind of around Christmas and that period right through the All-Star break.

Of course, the All-Star break is now like a week off.

And it feels long after the All-Star break.

You know, it feels very long.

But this stretch, this like six to eight-week stretch, I feel like there's a ton of valuable

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