Good afternoon and welcome to Locked on NBA on today's show. A certain lottery pick is showing out. Are there teams that should already be regretting not taking him earlier in the draft? Meanwhile, the rockets are 2 and 0 to start the preseason. Are we buying them as contenders? Plus, Brooklyn's bold strategy is put to the test. You are locked on NBA.

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All right, welcome back to Locked On NBA. However you're tuning in on YouTube, run your favorite podcast app. Thanks for making Lockedon NBA your first listen every day. Today's episode is brought to you by Fandual. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you'll get $300 of bonus bets to use across the app. Head to fanduel.com to get started. I'm'm Wes Goldberg and today we're talking about whether the rockets are legitimate contenders and what in the world the nets are planning up in Brooklyn. We're doing it with the help of

lockdown's local experts and as always I have two of the best with me from the Lockdown Nuggets

podcast. He's senior NBA writer for the Action Network. It's Matt Moore, Matt.

Great heat hawks game last night. Like, overtime, preseason game is always a good time. Actually, really enjoyed a lot of the action last night, including, yeah, I'll mention this, Taylor Hendrix, another really good game with the Jazz, very quietly. That kid looks like he might be a player. We might be talking about the jazz a little bit more today. Hayes, the Bulls and Bears creator for Bleacherport, also the host of Lockdown Bulls. I'm riding off a Bears three game winning streak. We haven't won out the byweek in like four years, so I'm riding a high right now. It's been rough for Miami sports. I've got the Miami Dolphins doing a whole lot of nothing and calling each other on press conferences.

Matt's talking about an overtime Hawks game where he literally threw the game away. So not riding as high as you, Hayes, in terms of local sports. But we are in the final week of preseason basketball. So I want to start today's show with some preseason takes. We're going to call this early returns. Hayes, I want to start with you. Has there been anybody who has stood out to you so far in this preseason? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's been a few players that have stood out to me. But Ace Bailey has definitely stood out. I know there's some injury concerns there that the jazz aren't too worried about. but I think Ace, with the way that he's performed, just it's going to make some people regret passing

on him. And I get it. The concern around his agent who he's gotten away from is, you know, is legitimate.

And, you know, there are some character concerns. But when you just look at the raw talent of Ace Bailey,

I think teams like the Charlotte Hornets are definitely going to regret passing on them.

We'll see.

There was a report this morning.

He's dealing with tendonitis in both knees.

It's not ideal.

I mean, it's fine. It's just tendonitis. It's not a huge deal. But for a guy, I continue to kind of wonder, like, why are guys this young dealing with these kind of issues coming in? I just think it's that we continue to have to have a conversation about, uh, diversity of, of athletics early in these guys' career, not over-training them on basketball.

We've got to continue having that conversation.

For me, honestly, the big free season takeaway all the side with Celtics being like,

go look at Boston.

I'm just telling you, Boston does not look like they're ready to be this big fallback team.

That does not look ready.

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