Welcome back to another episode of Small Ball with Kenny Beecham.

Today we're doing pressure meter for not all, but majority of the NBA playoff teams.

Because honestly speaking, if I went through all of them, a lot of these teams have close to no pressure.

You think the Raptors have pressure going into the post season.

No, this is fools go. Not fools go. This is all is all green for them whether their first round exit or conference finalists there's not a lot of pressure for a team that went from one of the worst teams in the league to the playoff so i just picked a specific few that i definitely wanted to talk about uh i'm really excited for this episode i'm having a weird time as an NBA fan i will say we're on a night basis. It's hard for me to contextualize some of the stuff that I'm seeing. And I think that's partially because a lot of the teams that we see right now, we kind of understand who they are. It's just a matter of the match us once we get to the postseason and so on. But also, there are so many teams that are just not good and not trying. So a 10-game slate for me turns into a two games live

and then the rest being highlights in synergy, which is just different. At the beginning of the

season, bro, I was locked, locked into every single team all season long. And now there's a few times

what feels like every week where I'm like, oh my God, that two-way player, I forgot his name when he takes it to the game you know what i mean so i will say for the rest of this i don't know regular season we might go heavy towards the playoff teams but that's what we're gearing up to we're gearing up to see who's going to win the larry o'brien trophy so in preparation for this episode i know i mentioned there are some teams that i'm not going to get to because they don't have a ton of pressure but even some of the great teams across the league where i'm like man this this team is definitely not pressureless but they're lower on the totem pole when it comes to pressure rankings right um and i want to start off with a team like the okay c thunder who is still one of the best teams in the league, if not the best team in the league. And I'm putting this on a 1 through 10 scale. Let's just make it very simple around here. I have the OKC Thunder pressure level at a four. Because it's hard for me to look at a team that just came off a championship that just proved to the world, you know,

less than a year ago that they can do this, even if it took two games, sevens, whatever, they can do this and say, this is a year that they still have a ton of pressure. Now, they're not pressureless because there is some team orchestration things that we kind of got to think about for the next version of the, the OKC Thunder. One thing we've learned over the last almost decade is that repeating in the NBA is really really hard and in the parody of era it might be

virtually impossible so it's not a ton of pressure for them to repeat but i think it's some pressure

in order for them to maximize the roster that they currently have you know could we go into the postseason to be completely disappointed for them?

Absolutely.

But still, I'm looking at, you know, some of the things that they've built, right?

Knowing that Isaiah Hartinstein, Lou Dore, Kenny Hustle are all expiring contracts,

I think you want to maximize the time that you have together.

Knowing that Cheh-Homgren's extension of $41.5 million next season hits in, or J-dubs extension

of $41.5 million kicks in next season, what will put them, not even retaining, you know,

I heart, or Doord, or Kenny Hustle, put them $21 million over the second apron.

You know, this is basically their last year

of having this core and it being cheap if you will now mentioned on the podcast right after the

trade deadline that I read an article about you know how the okayc thunder are moving and it is

showcased that there is a world where the okayc thunder are a team that's going to be willing to go into the second apron. If you missed that episode, I'll quickly remind you that at the trade deadline, one of the smaller deals that happened, maybe the smallest deal that happened that had some real implications is that the OKC Thunder acquired a guy that plays overseas, a guy that probably will never come over but they have his rights in case

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