The NBA Lottery Mafia: Recent Episodes
The Lottery Mafia
Yesterday, James Plowright and I were joined by fellow Lottery Mafia writer Josh Cornelisson to discuss all the deals from Thursday’s NBA trade deadline. We’ve got time stamps below, so feel free to jump around to any trade that interests you:
- Lance Stephenson/Jeff Green — Beginning of the pod
- Markieff Morris to Washington — 2:00
- Randy Foye to OKC — 19:00
- Montijuanas to Detroit — 28:00
- Courtney Lee to Charlotte — 38:00
- Shelvin Mack to Utah/Kurt Heinrich to Atlanta — 48:00
Last week, James, Gabriel, and I predicted the eastern conference lottery teams. This week, we are predicting the West, once again predicting their win total based on ESPN’s NBA forecast. Based on their projected win total, the three of us decided whether that prediction was too high, low, or on point. We looked at eight teams that will or could find themselves in the lottery this season: the Timberwolves, Lakers, Nuggets, Kings, Trailblazers, Suns, Jazz, and Mavericks.
As always [...]
With the NBA season edging closer, it felt time to decide which teams will end up in the lottery, and predict a few that could slip into the playoffs. James and I were joined by TLM writer Gabe Allen, who helped us predict how many wins nine potential lottery teams could end up with.
For the sake of knowing, we predicted the wins of Philadelphia, New York, Orlando, Brooklyn, Indiana, Charlotte, Detroit, Boston, and Milwaukee. Some of these teams are definite locks for the lottery, others, not so much. Looking over ESPN’s summer forecast for projected wins, we di [...]
Last podcast, we looked gave a positive and negative outlook for the Eastern Conference lottery teams. This week we are out west, giving good and bad outlooks on the lottery teams in the Western Conference. James and I switched it up, with myself giving the glass half full outlook, and James the glass half empty.
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The outlook of any franchise is often depends on the perspective one takes. One person may view drafting a senior out of college as a smart pick for a team looking for an instant impact rookie, while someone else will view the pick as sacrificing long-term potential for short-term gain.
This week, James and took a positive and negative spin on the Eastern Conference lottery teams. We originally intended to do all 14 lottery teams, but found out quickly that would take too long (look for the West edition next week). James took the glass half full approach (trying to positively spin the 76ers was asking a lot) while I took the glass half empty approach. Whether we truly believed our o [...]
Markieff Morris was not happy when his brother Marcus was traded to Detroit earlier this summer. Now he’s demanding a trade, saying he will never play for the Phoenix Suns again. The Suns say they aren’t trading him, but just in case they are lying, James and I offered up for possible trade scenarios involving the unhappy Morris. Mild spoiler, but they involve the Pistons, Clippers, Lakers, and Wizards.
Before getting to the Morris trade talk, we elaborate as to why we think the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics could miss the playoffs, despite the general consensus that both teams will. We also slipped in some transfer deadline day talk for all you soccer nerds out the [...]
The 2014 NBA Draft was widely regarded in the months leading up to it. Today, that standard largely still exists, but numerous injuries to lottery players (and a few picks that clearly weren’t correct) had James and I re-considering how the draft would go, knowing what we know now. Would Joel Embiid still go No. 3, knowing that he would miss his first two seasons? Would Jordan Clarkson find himself in the lottery instead of the second round?
Hindsight doesn’t change anything, but it can be a bit of fun. In this episode, we re-drafted picks 1-14. Don’t worry, Wiggins was still our consensus No. 1, but a few high picks found themselves dropping down the board, or out [...]
When we said last week that our podcast would be recorded every Tuesday or Thursday, we meant it. Still, we had to break that promise, thanks to some major delays in the installation of James’ brand new internet service. Finally though, we were able to record, and to thank you for waiting patiently, we will have TWO episodes recorded this week.
Episode 58 deals with rookie extensions and our opinions on the lottery head coaches in the NBA. James and I discussed five players (MKG, Andre Drummond, Dion Waiters, Jeremy Lamb, Andrew Nicholson and Tony Wroten) who are up for rookie extensions, and whether or not we think receive one. Of course we recorded this before MKG signed his [...]
Podcasting is fun, but planning and coordinating a podcast can be difficult. For James Plowright and myself, coordinating this podcast was never easy considering we live on the opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
We last podcasted April 9th. It wasn’t meant to be our last podcast, but both of our lives and schedules grew increasingly busy and unpredictable, and unexpectedly, we took a four month hiatus from the podcast.
To continue, we decided it was necessary to record on the same day every week, and at relatively the [...]
This week’s episode jumped all over the NBA lottery spectrum, as James and I discussed a number of topics including, but limited to:
- Will the Pelicans or Thunder make the playoffs in the West?
- Paul George’s return, and his impact the rest of the season.
- Should Brook Lopez opt out this off-season or wait until next season?
- How much money Bismack Biyombo will garner in free agency, and how his strengths could be maximized by certain team systems.
You’re probably thinking — what happened to the podcast? Thanks to our already busy schedules, trying to coordinate five hours apart, and one false start, James and I found ourselves on an unexpected month long hiatus. Well, we’re back, and joined by the site’s own Zach Reynolds, who has been doing an awesome job covering the NBA draft for us all season.
Episode 54 covers the bottom of the Eastern Conference playoff race, and then moves on to predicting where three players — Khris Middleton, Tobias Harris, and Greg Monroe — might end up next season. From there, we discuss the final four and the potential draft prospects that are participating.
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You’re probably thinking — what happened to the podcast? Thanks to our already busy schedules, trying to coordinate five hours apart, and one false start, James and I found ourselves on an unexpected month long hiatus. Well, we’re back, and joined by the site’s own Zach Reynolds, who has been doing an awesome job covering the NBA draft for us all season.
Episode 54 covers the bottom of the Eastern Conference playoff race, and then moves on to predicting where three players — Khris Middleton, Tobias Harris, and Greg Monroe — might end up next season. From there, we discuss the final four and the potential draft prospects that are participating.
[...]
We are almost a week removed from the trade deadline, but James and I are still sorting through the mess. While Daniel Coughlin provided a detailed analysis of all the trades, the two of us picked our winners from last week. With the recent trades in mind, we then predicted which teams from each conference would finish 9th and 10th–in other words, top of the lottery, but out of the playoffs. While the West was fairly straight forward to predict, it’ll be a miracle of either us of get our predictions right in the East.
The NBA trade deadline is Thursday, so to get ready, James Plowright and I devoted the latest podcast to discussing which teams could be active, and which players could get moved.
We focused on the Denver Nuggets, a team that could potentially be the most active in looking to move players, before moving on to five players that could impact lottery teams if they were to be moved.
We also briefly discussed Larry Sanders’ potential buyout from Milwaukee.
After a terrible start, the Charlotte Hornets are now in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, after going 10-4 in the month of January. What’s more impressive is that they’ve found a way to win despite injuries to Al Jefferson and Lance Stephenson, and more recently, Kemba Walker and Bismack Biyombo. To discuss the Hornets, James and I were joined by Frank Berndt of At The Hive, the SB Nation blog of the Charlotte Hornets (yes, the same one I also write for).
Frank was kind enough to join us last minute, and the three of us talked about many of the current topics surrounding the [...]
We have reached the historic 50th episode of The Lottery Mafia Podcast. I know, we’re just as surprised as you are. To mark the occasion, James Plowright and I dedicated the first 27 minutes of the episode to reflecting back on all the fun we’ve had, and the terrible predictions we’ve made. We also thanked every guest that has ever appeared on the podcast, so if you’ve been on, your name was called.
The rest of the episode was dedicated to discussing the Brooklyn Nets, a team that suddenly finds themselves outside of the playoffs. The team might be up for sale, its star players could be traded away, and they don’t have full control of a 1st round draft [...]
In our first podcast of 2015, James and I discussed two topics; the Dion Waiters trade, and the Detroit Piston’s recent winning streak since Josh Smith was waived.
A disclaimer; we had some not so minor technical difficulties while recording, so a bit of editing had to be done in order to get things right. We recorded last Thursday, and unfortunately the podcast is only going up today. But fear not! The material is still (mostly) relevant.