All right, happy Thanksgiving, everybody. We're here to do a little bit of a Black Friday,

maybe mailbag kind of Friday thing just because, guess what, everybody? We haven't done these

in a while. So we got together for a mailbag for the in-season version of the mailbag,

not on the Monday, but a fun one to answer some of your questions. So let's start off with Dr. Blah, Derek Kyle, we all here, 17 games in 20% of the season. What aspects of the team

have been at expectation and what have you been surprised by, either good or bad?

I think the positive surprise, let's call it a mild surprise just because he has gotten better so many times.

But I think the degree to which Tyrese Maxey leveled up to start the year has been a great surprise.

I think given the lack of game time for Joel Embed and Paul George, all the guys in and out of the lineup, all the coverage attention that he's getting.

I think he has come in and played the best basketball of his career.

I think, frankly, some of the nights that's been on the defensive end of the floor as well, while other guys on the team are maybe not as engaged.

He's playing at an all-MBA type level, like top 15, top 10 player in the league type

of level, which is not somewhere he's been consistently before.

So that's been the good thing.

I guess the bad thing is they still have not figured out the long-term behind joel and bead problem and it's not to say

that a dembona should be able to approximate joel and bead by being combined with andre drummond

but i think coming into the year we felt at least okay about where they were

in terms of the front court. Hey, they'll be able to, Drummond will eat some minutes, but Bona's

going to come in and maybe take that job, look good in international play, look good in the preseason.

He is expected to return, I think, against the Brooklyn Nets on Friday and start playing some of these

games. But their front court play has been pretty awful when he's in the game and they have

not figured out a way to win those minutes. So that's been a negative surprise. I will say, though,

I think they're right around as a team where we all expected and if you would have told

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