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00:00 Okay. Anything else on physicality?
00:04 I don't think so.
00:06 I think we got all of our most passionate speech out at the end of our last episode anyway, so we can keep firing away here.
00:13 Okay.
00:15 Well, let's move on to part two of our episode today.
00:18 Brandon Miller, and you can see the title there.
00:22 Why is nobody talking about Brandon Miller?
00:24 He's been pretty exceptional as a rookie, coming off of in and out of ankle sprains, starting, not starting.
00:33 Like he's had, it's not exactly been a consistent role for him.
00:37 He's clearly playing a little bit hurt.
00:39 He's clearly playing with a revolving cast around him.
00:42 All while he's been remarkably consistent for a rookie.
00:45 Like it's one thing you probably can't say about many rookies, but I went through and I looked through some NBA rookie rankings for this.
00:52 NBA.com has him fifth, CBS third, Sports Illustrated has him fourth, The Athletic has him fourth, The Ringer has him sixth.
01:01 He's pretty clearly been there, I think, like consensus, a top three to four rookie in the class.
01:07 And let's just put it this way.
01:09 This is a class that also includes Chet Holgrim.
01:11 So you can say that he's the number two overall pick.
01:13 He's been a disappointment.
01:14 But really, Chet has had another year.
01:17 And so really, like for those purposes, he's the third overall pick in some respects.
01:22 So he's right where he should be.
01:25 We talked about Brandon Miller after a couple of weeks.
01:28 We talked about how it's going to change.
01:30 Defense is going to start taking stuff away from him.
01:33 And there's going to be a growth and a learning period.
01:36 I have to say, I haven't really noticed too much of that yet.
01:39 He has adapted pretty damn well on the fly.
01:41 Yeah, he really has.
01:43 The one thing that stood out to me over the last week or so, especially when he's been starting at two, nonetheless,
01:48 with Lamello injured, where he's looked very good, I think, on both ends of the court,
01:52 he's developed a ton as like a passer or just pick and roll ball handler, playmaker.
01:57 That seems like when he was early on in the year, just getting his feet wet in the NBA,
02:02 was kind of just trying to get himself settled by just putting the ball in the hoop,
02:05 doing what he knows how to do best, starting to iron out his shot a little bit.
02:09 I think he was at, what, like 7% or something crazy like that through the first week of the season.
02:13 He's now up to 38%.
02:15 So he has been on fire in the last, really, like the last month plus almost.
02:20 It's just a long-range shooter, great ball handler and playmaker for his position.
02:27 His assists have gone up over the last 10 games or so, with his turnover numbers and usage rate,
02:32 or turnover numbers staying the same and the usage rate also going up.
02:36 With more opportunity, with more reps, he's just doing more.
02:40 He's not getting any less efficient.
02:42 He's just scaling up slowly and steadily, but he's doing it very well and very efficiently so far.
02:48 The NBA Kia rookie ladder, I believe, has him as the fifth best rookie in the class right now.
02:55 To me, you're right, it does bump it down a little bit with Chet,
03:00 but it's just not going to do it justice because he's been so good,
03:03 and this is such a good class that, for the Hornets, I really don't know if they could have asked
03:08 for a much better start unless he was going to come in and just be like Luka Doncic,
03:12 which would be a tall ask.
03:14 So very impressive last couple of weeks from Brandon Miller.
03:18 I mean, I would say outside of the Lamella ball, he's had the most impressive rookie season
03:22 I've seen from a Charlotte Hornet rookie.
03:25 Absolutely, absolutely, I agree.
03:27 He has been absolutely exceptional.
03:30 Just look, the defense, he has been over-rested on defense.
03:34 He's picked up quite a lot of fouls, reaching in, like some poor closeouts.
03:38 There's absolutely some stuff he needs to clean up on that end,
03:41 but you can still see the IQ and the high effort.
03:43 It all comes from a good place rather than from a lazy place.
03:47 It's not that he's out of position, it's that he's just trying to make a big play.
03:51 So the defense, I feel like he has got exposed a little bit more than maybe in the first week
03:56 or two in the season, and I think that's partially matchup-wise.
03:59 He's had some tougher matchups so far, and they keep putting him on all these primary scoring options.
04:05 But like you said, his usage is up to, I think, 18.5% from 17% it was for the first half of the season.
04:13 And just like the shooting splits just project to be really damn good as a rookie.
04:17 I mean, this is NBA starters this season who have the same shooting stats as Brandon Miller
04:24 in terms of from the mid-range, from three.
04:27 And these are all above his thresholds, basically.
04:30 These are the players who currently match his shooting splits who start in the NBA.
04:36 Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Duncan Robinson, Michael Beasley, Jalen Johnson for the Hawks, by the way,
04:44 and D'Angelo Russell. That is good company.
04:48 And all those guys, apart from Jalen Johnson, who's almost kind of a similar rookie in some ways,
04:53 are all like multi-year, like some of those are the best shooters and players in the NBA.
04:58 And Brandon Miller's shooting splits are right up there on a team that has struggled to generate good looks
05:04 in the first two weeks of the season, playing in the NBA for the first time.
05:08 I mean, my excitement for this kid is just absolutely off the roof.
05:13 I think he is going to be, people talk about Chris Middleton being his peak.
05:18 I think it's like his floor. I think he is going to be a multi-time all-star.
05:22 If he is this good this early with this IQ, that size, when he gets stronger, it's going to be a real problem.
05:30 He's already learning how to pick up fouls. I posted a little video the other day where he's learning how to get those NBA foul calls already.
05:38 I just can't hold back how positively I feel about Brandon Miller.
05:43 And I think he is going to be probably like the number two option on this team by next season.
05:48 I think it's going to happen that quick. It's going to be an exciting watch.
05:52 And I'm just confused how nobody is talking about it in the NBA media space.
05:58 Everyone loves good rookies, right? This always happens.
06:01 If Scoot Henderson was this good, we'd be getting podcasts, articles about it every week.
06:07 And I think I saw Chris Vernon, I posted it on my Twitter the other day.
06:11 Chris Vernon from the Ringer said that the Charlotte Hornets, they always listed Detroit and Toronto
06:17 just like aren't interesting. They don't even have any good rookies or anything interesting.
06:22 I mean, how good do you need a rookie to be, man?
06:25 There are not many good rookies who have been this good this early while playing injured in a rotating cast in a role that is changing.
06:35 I mean, right now he's averaging 14 points per game.
06:38 He's shooting 60 percent at the rim, shooting 50 percent from 10 to 14 feet and from 25 feet and beyond.
06:46 He is shooting 42 percent.
06:48 You literally cannot ask for better efficiency from a player that's still adjusting to the pace and the physicality of the NBA
06:56 to be better than that on offense.
06:58 He is the perfect release valve and secondary scorer, playmaker, shooter for LaMela.
07:06 That is the exact type of shooting scoring wing that you want to pair with a player that has the type of creative playmaking
07:13 and flair and just overall talent that LaMela has.
07:17 So it is about as good as we can ask.
07:20 I think the reason that he's not being talked about is just because the Hornets have not been good, which is unfortunate.
07:27 But then again, how often are teams with good rookies actually good on a league-wide scale?
07:32 So I don't know what the issue is, but he's definitely not getting the credit that he deserves.
07:37 I do feel that way.
07:39 So have you ever heard of Google Trends? Do you know what that is?
07:42 Yes. Yeah.
07:44 So Google Trends, for those who don't, is something where you can basically see how much a person is searched for,
07:50 basically how popular is a term or a person over a period of time.
07:55 And over the last 30 days, I compared four rookies, Scoot Henderson, Brandon Miller, Ocel Thompson, and Jaime Jarcus.
08:03 And what Google Trends essentially does is give each of those different search profiles a rating
08:10 based on how popular they've been on the Internet.
08:14 And 100 is like the most popular. So 100 would be Taylor Swift and a zero would be James Plowright.
08:20 OK, that's roughly your trend guide right there.
08:25 Brandon Miller is a 24. Scoot Henderson is a 35, despite him being injured and not playing for a good period of time and being awful,
08:34 which, by the way, some people say, well, because he's been bad, that's why he's got spoken about more.
08:38 And there is something to that, like bad news is sometimes more clickable news when it comes to NBA media.
08:43 I get that. Ocel Thompson has got a ranking of 40 and Jaime Jarcus has got a ranking of 20.
08:52 So like Scoot Henderson, Ocel Thompson, both playing on teams that are as bad, if not worse, than the Charlotte Hornets.
08:59 And like both have just been talked about generally more than Brandon Miller.
09:04 And I know Ocel has had some great games. He's filled up the box scores and he's been NBA league past darling kind of guy to watch.
09:13 But Brandon Miller is contributing more to winning basketball right now.
09:16 If you want to go down like he doesn't affect winning that type route, Brandon Miller is like a key part of that.
09:22 Whereas Ocel Thompson is on a terrible Detroit team, which has won two or three games,
09:27 one of which which was against the Charlotte Hornets, where they surprise, surprise bullied the Charlotte Hornets in that game.
09:33 But it just shows again, like there is something here where everybody wanted Brandon Miller to fail.
09:39 Everyone was clowning the Charlotte Hornets for selecting him.
09:42 And he is just quietly going about his business, doing it in his very controlled, non-loud way.
09:48 And people just seem to be putting their heads in the sand because they don't want to go back and like admit like it was the other way around.
09:56 Now, I would be like, Brandon Miller is trash. Scoot Henderson would be, you know, what were they thinking? Blah, blah, blah.
10:02 But because they have prior beliefs about Scoot Henderson, everyone's going, well, we have to wait.
10:07 Well, we have to wait, you know, the injury for Scoot. And so it just it just frustrates me that Brandon Miller isn't getting the credit that he deserves.
10:16 And like you can clown the Charlotte Hornets all you want, but you've at least got to put that thing in there that is like, but Brandon Miller, he is going to be a star because I'm telling you, the kid is coming.
10:27 Yeah, it is really unfortunate that, you know, biases inform every aspect of NBA discourse at the national level or really, I guess, just any level.
10:36 But, yeah, I think I completely agree with you. I was one that made the Chris Middleton comparison pretty frequently myself during the pre-draft process.
10:46 Fully comfortable with being wrong with that already. I've accepted it. So, I mean, now we can only go up.
10:52 So very much looking forward to watching Brandon Miller for not only the next couple of weeks with Lamello out, but just the rest of the year in general.