Podcast with ESPN 730's Justin Thomas. Why Hairston is Starting, Marv vs. Zeller

[LamarMatic7]

I already mentioned some of the tidbits in the game thread, but here's the podcast itself:
http://lamarmatic.com/2015/10/28/justin-thomas-102715/

We talked about the reasoning for P.J. Hairston starting, the coaching staff seeing Jeremy Lamb and Cody Zeller as bench players, Marvin Williams starting, Frank Kaminsky being the 5th big and possibly getting some DNPs, the fit of Kemba and Jeremy Lin and the team on the whole.

[yosemiteben]

Pumped to listen, turning it on now.

[yosemiteben]

Good stuff Lamar, thought you did well. He rambled a bit in certain parts and thought you probably made the right call generally to let him sort out his statements given that you had the time, but it definitely got a little jammed up when he talking about Frank's minutes and then his playoff projections.

I'll say it must be a tough balance having to defer to guests when you yourself are so knowledgable about the team. He was a bit off on Kemba's preseason when he was talking about his shooting woes, said he didn't look like he improved at all but Kemba shot 45% FG and 35% 3PT, which is pretty significant improvement. I'm guessing you probably knew that Kemba's shooting was up a bit in preseason, would have been interesting to see how he responded to that clarification.

Good call running with that Batum prediction, he just kind of threw that out there.

Good listen and thought you gave him a nice platform, would be cool for you to try to do a check in with him later in the season.

[LamarMatic7]

Good stuff Lamar, thought you did well. He rambled a bit in certain parts and thought you probably made the right call generally to let him sort out his statements given that you had the time, but it definitely got a little jammed up when he talking about Frank's minutes and then his playoff projections.

I'll say it must be a tough balance having to defer to guests when you yourself are so knowledgable about the team. He was a bit off on Kemba's preseason when he was talking about his shooting woes, said he didn't look like he improved at all but Kemba shot 45% FG and 35% 3PT, which is pretty significant improvement. I'm guessing you probably knew that Kemba's shooting was up a bit in preseason, would have been interesting to see how he responded to that clarification.

Good call running with that Batum prediction, he just kind of threw that out there.

Good listen and thought you gave him a nice platform, would be cool for you to try to do a check in with him later in the season.

Thanks for your comment, yosemite! Just my two cents on the podcast experience overall and this specific conversation.

1) I treat this podcast as having the opportunity to speak with guests who have information that people might want to hear. Whether it's a former player or some journalist, I want to let them do their thing. And that's because I don't want to be the podcast where two random friends from reddit talk about Team X and keep sending you the link to it. No offense to anyone out there trying their own thing, but from what I see people might tune in if your guest is credible or note-worthy. Me and some other random Joe wouldn't cut it.

So, yes, I try to let my guest speak his mind.

2) I've found out that it's a bit tougher for me to make points on the fly in English than I would have liked to think. And it's disappointing. Unfortunately, I don't think I would be ready for a two-peers podcast at this point. If someone huger than me brought me in as a "Hornets expert" for his podcast and tried to create a conversation about them, it would be ugly. I would stammer a lot, would mispronounce words and wouldn't be able to make some points. I think my English-speaking prime was in Grade 10 or 11 when I got to practice that much more in highschool classes, haha.

That held me back a bit from discussing the shortcomings of our starting line-up. I think I said that "Marvin is questionably worse than Zeller on defense". Obviously, I think that he's certainly worse than Cody.

3) I think it's the proper etiquette not to disagree with your guest all that much on a podcast. You are in it together at that point so I think that in a way it's just like improv where you don't flat out shoot down someone's idea. So I didn't think that disagreeing about Kemba's percentages would yield a healthy conversation. Especially when it wasn't the main point Justin wanted to make and it's still only preseason. You know just as well as me that Kemba's percentages come and go. It's very likely that it was just a random blip.

All in all, I think he was a very good guest. He told us stuff about what Clifford and the coaching staff sees in players, which we don't hear every day and explained in so many words. Justin might have had a couple of takes that were a tad too long, but, hey, speaking on the fly about these things isn't so easy and, yeah, everybody in this case just wants to make sure that he gets his whole point across and doesn't leave some detail out.