The Bill Simmons Podcast - A Lakers Revival, KD vs. Kawhi, GSW-Kings Bliss, and An NBA Weekend Recap With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to recap the start of the NBA playoffs! They discuss all the Sunday games including the "Zombie Heat" stealing Game 1 in Milwaukee, Lakers-Grizzlies, Russell Westbrook's impact in the Clippers' win vs. the Suns, and Timberwolves-Nuggets (1:26). Then they cover the Saturday games including the Warriors-Kings instant classic, the Knicks' win over the Cavs in a physical Game 1, 76ers-Nets, and Hawks-Celtics (1:02:30). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, basketball, basketball, basketball. It's next. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey.

And it's on Prime. All season long, watch Prime Monday night hockeyL hockey. And it's on prime all season long. Watch prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays. The biggest goals can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on prime prime Monday night hockey. It's on Monday. It's on prime. This episode is brought to you by my old friend Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day, all the gangs here, you're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for beer.

Or how about when you're standing at the grill and the smell of sizzling burgers is in the air? Moments like that. Or when you want a light beer that tastes like beer, that's delicious. You don't want to load up on those heavier beers, and then you only have two of them. Then you feel tired. Your stomach feels full. Miller Lite, it's your friend. It just accompanies whatever else you're doing. You're super happy with it. Opening an ice cold Miller Lite can signal the beginning of Miller Lite. It's your friend. It just accompanies whatever else you're doing. You're super happy with it. Opening an ice cold Miller Lite can signal the beginning of Miller time. Miller Lite is the light beer with all the great beer tastes we like. 90 calories per 355 mil can. So why not grab some Miller Lites today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network,

where we covered Succession Episode 4 on the Prestige TV podcast. It was me and Sean Fennessy and Joanna Robinson. We broke the whole episode down. Things are getting very interesting. That's already up on the Prestige TV feed. Monday night, new rewatchables. Chris Ryan made the choice, one of his all-time favorites. We did Alien, one of the most influential

sci-fi slash horror movies of all time, if not the most influential. It's up there. It's in the conversation. This was a Hall of Fame episode from us. We were in person. We were in our new little studio that we built in the Spotify empire.

And we had a great time. So that's going up Monday night. Stay tuned for that. Coming up on this podcast, the one, the only Ryan Russillo and I are going to break down all eight round one NBA games, man. It's just too bad. Nothing happened. Oh wait, a shitload happened. It's all next. First Pro Tip! All right, we're taping this part of the podcast. It is 945 Pacific time. Ryan Rosillo is here. We're going to go for, I don't know, close to two hours. That's going to be followed by an all-new Dr. Pimple Popper right after the podcast.

That poor guy, his wife died and he had three softballs on his head. And now he's got to go on a TLC show. What is that show? It's not anything I'm going to watch. That's got to go on a tlc show to what is that show it's not a real show on t on cable yeah i just think there's this weird thing where people like watching these things but you know i understood like some of the zit stuff like she's in there with a full-blown chainsaw and imagine being imagine being a timberwolves fan and you sit here watching this game and then it's like wait is the Evil Dead have a different trailer? No, no, that's the TLC show.

Like, fuck off. Would you rather watch Dr. Primple Popper or Rudy Gobert for five more playoff games? I don't know. It's a toss up. Let's start. This was an action packed Sunday. We taped our whole Saturday stuff earlier today. I can't believe what this whole weekend,

it was one of those blur together. I kind of glazed over. I'm having ADD problems now. Clipsons. Wow. Wow. Russell Westbrook, three for 19, and yet was somehow one of the three most important players in the game.

Reminded me of UCLA Westbrook when he didn't really know what he was doing, but was so impactful and was just touching everything and all over the place. Kawhi versus KD. And a Suns loss that felt like a tiny bit more than a loss. Here's what I noticed, Ursula. Those guys have not played together very long.

And the continuity stuff, when you watch a team like Denver, like we're taping this during the fourth quarter of Denver, Minnesota, those Denver guys have all been together for a while. That Suns team, the moment you get punched in the mouth a couple of times and KD had that new guy energy, there's a couple of moments where he was just kind of standing 30 feet away from the basket. It's like, you're the 15th best player of all time why is deandre ayton getting you know isos at the foul line like he's joel and beat um look i'm not in full sun's panic but i didn't think that was a good loss for them what'd you think yeah i'm not gonna panic at all uh there are plenty of game ones as i try to remind myself every single year where you're like remember when you thought that

after game one and then it was like the series went the other way but it is alarming because the Clippers without Paul George are not a good basketball team I guess they're okay but if you look at their defensive rankings you know even since the all-star break with this group there's not much there and yet in this game I think the thing you hit on is, okay, what are you actually going to do with the ranks? I think two things happen. One, I have no fucking clue what Monte Williams was doing at the end of that third quarter. They kind of lost the game in that third quarter. You're talking about Booker and the subs?

Yeah. They were up 77-68. Torrey Craig hits a three. They were down 16 at one point. You feel like, okay, they figured this thing out. They're home. They're going to win it. And then the Clippers closed on a 13-4 run.

And at 2-58, everybody is out except for Booker. So it's Booker, Jock Landell, Schammett, Okoge, and Ish Wainwright. And then they blitz defensively credit to ty lue who's like okay so booker's bringing it up they blitz him and then phoenix is like oh shit like we haven't to your point like what are we going to do now well you got to bring a second guy up to at least give you an outlet and then go play four on three even if your talent is at a disadvantage against those other guys and it happened a bunch of possessions in a row. And you're like, why would you do this?

So I'll be curious if we ever see that again. No backup point guard for them either, which wasn't open. No, the campaign part of it is a problem. And then the other part is exactly what you were hitting on. They were playing Plumlee so deep, and they brought Zubak in later, but they're playing him so deep in the drop coverage, and they were setting the screen so high for Chris Paul with Aiton,

where all of a sudden, Chris Paul actually has a really good look, or it's an Aiton look that's really good because Plumlee played so deep back on one of them. We're like, you can't do that again. Chris Paul missed way too many shots during that stretch, and you have Durant watching it all, and then it happened like three times in a row, One of them were like, you can't do that again. Chris Paul missed way too many shots during that stretch. And you have Durant watching it all.

And then it happened like three times in a row. And even though they got good looks, you could tell it was like, hey, we're going to change this. And then they changed something up with Booker. They used Durant again. Chris Paul's just not consistent enough offensively in making shots for you to think that that's your first option. As you mentioned, Durant is watching it all happen. So those would be the two things. Yeah, Durant was at the Sam Houser role a couple times late. Five minutes

left, we need a basket. To me, it's like I would just run Durant and Booker. I'd like to see somebody stop some version of one guy setting a pick for the other and let's just see it. But Paul was two for eight. He had 11 rebounds, 10 assists. But Aiton had 16 field

goal attempts, which I don't love. Listen, they have a lot of guys on this team. Where are you with Aiton now? Have we done a lot on this or no? To me, Aiton is the guy you kind of like, like when

we do rewatchables, we have like the that guy category and sometimes the guys are overqualified to be that guy. But I think he's a that guy. I don't want him prominently involved in the last four minutes of what really should have been Kawhi versus KD.

That was what was looming the whole time. I wrote this down actually. I was thinking about it as they were going head to head, they were guarding each other a couple of times. This is like the best rivalry that never actually became a rivalry. Like these guys came,

I know KD came in in 07, but he came in a year out of college. Kawhi had been in college a couple of years. He comes in in 2011. So they're around the same age range. And they had the San Antonio, Oklahoma City for the first couple of years of Kawhi had been in college a couple of years. He comes in in 2011. So they're around the same age range. And they had the San Antonio, Oklahoma City for the first couple of years of Kawhi's career. And KD was at a different level, right?

In 2012, OKC beats them in six. And Kawhi had nine points total in the last two games. KD finished that series with 34, 14, and five, right? So he's at a different level. By the time we get to 2014, Kawhi's becoming more like Kawhi. San Antonio beats OKC. He goes on, he wins finals MVP. 2016, we get them head to head. Now they're pretty close. KD's still better, but Kawhi is inching up there. OKC wins that one,

and he had a better team. 2017, that was when Kawhi got hurt by Zaza in game one. We never got to see it. That was when Kawhi was an MVP candidate. That was when it really should happen. And then 2019, that was the finals when KD was hurt and he came back and he got hurt again. And we didn't see that either. And now four years later, they're going at it again.

But it's just like, man, this should have been awesome. I love watching them guard each other. I think Kawhi gives KD in a lot of ways the most problems of any forward of KD's career. And I was watching that today like, man, we should have gotten this 20 more times. Yeah, you're right. How about that last possession where Westbrook ended up getting the free throws? I don't know why Booker had to defend him that way, but Durant face-guarded Kawhi, and they couldn't get him the ball.

And I rewound that just watching it all going like, this is exactly what you're talking about, going, these two dudes. Because I wondered what the matchups, like this whole series is this matchup kind of fascination where I imagine it's going to look different at different times. I have to think Monty has two major adjustments to make in this one based on what we've already talked about. But Westbrook started on Durant and I was like, man, I probably should have factored in Westbrook wanting to take his soul because the energy that Westbrook played

with, I don't know that Durant was like totally ready for it and then the funniest thing about this game is that it's basically no matter what you think about westbrook you're right after this i don't know that i've ever seen a game of a player it's like the most wide-ranging opinions are all right here and he had two or three of the biggest plays on that though i didn't think he had this kind of game still in him at this point in his career. This incredibly impactful, aggro, kind of hustle play, deflection, offensive rebounds, steals from behind, huge offensive rebounds in traffic. He hasn't wanted to be this guy for a while. He's wanted to be the, you know, I'm Gilbert Arenas in 2006 guy.

So I was actually surprised by uh by how impactful he was i'm not sure i've ever wondered like if his effort level was going to dip i mean the only time with him with the lakers which is always kind of weird how this consistently plays out of this the lakers games weren't real like it somehow was all the lakers fault and you go i don't know like remember the abc game where lebron didn't get the foul call after he traveled um and they acted like it was the sequel to fucking cast like i mean mr griber it was unbelievable mr griber great call like westbrook in that game once his confidence is gone you're like this is even worse you know like i used to

not like you when you had too much confidence and now you don't even want to do anything everybody's playing off you and then you know like that's that's this game was superman to westbrook when they when he's trying to be clark kent when he's at the diner yeah he's that it's superman to diner westbrook but in this in this game i wasn't quite sure because they went on that run at the end of the third when they took them out but that might not really be on westbrook so then i was wondering like what's lou going to In this game, I wasn't quite sure because they went on that run at the end of the third when they took him out. But that might not really be on Westbrook. So then I was wondering, what's Lou going to do with him again?

When you looked at Westbrook with the Clippers, the fourth quarter closing minutes have all kind of been all over the place. And since the All-Star break for the Clippers, he's sixth and fourth quarter minutes post-All-Star. So you're like, okay, because it depended on what he wanted to do. He's got the Powell decision. It was great to see Terrence Mann out there not quite enough Terrence Mann no and I think Bones is still like you're scared to death of him even if he's going to make some shots he's gonna but the rebound that led to the first Kawhi three that made it 106-101 was all him then the other offensive rebound and then the tip ball and then making the two free throws were even the announcers as it was happening so I mean then making the two free throws where even the announcer says it was happening.

So, I mean, he was the difference at the end of the game, and that's what's so funny because he also had stretches where I was like, what is Lou going to do here? Well, you knew he was going to take, I texted you this, that he was going to take either the biggest shot of the game or one of the biggest shots in the last minute. A minute before it happened.

And he took a three. They got the rebound. I thought of this during the game, and I wish I had thought of it before the series because I wasn't really counting. I figured we'd get to the playoffs, they'd be like, man, we can't play this guy. He's an offensive liability.

We got to patch it together with Terrence Smith on the stands. There's two people in this series that he has history with that probably gives him confidence, right? KD, he grew up with. And he was kind of that, as KD was better on that team,

but Russ was kind of the alpha on that team in a lot of ways. So he's looking at KD, he's like, I've known that guy since I'm 19, I'm not afraid of him. And then Chris is somebody he really went toe to toe with and won a few of those.

He beat him in 2014. And I always thought was somebody that gave Chris problems because of his athleticism. And he just never seemed afraid of Chris. And always was kind of overpowering him. It was like those UFC fights when the guy tries to move up and wait. And the other guy is just too big. So I thought watching today, I was like, he, he seems really comfortable in this series, really comfortable going at Katie, really comfortable going at Chris.

And maybe he is going to be a bigger asset. Listen, I'm going to admit defeat on this. I thought this would, I thought he would have been a wave by now. I really did. I thought this was going to be three weeks and out like Iverson on a Memphis that year was like, Oh, here comes Iverson. He's going to help. And then he was like, eh, you got to wait. This is the opposite. They really needed

his offensive rebounding in that game. Who else is offensive rebounding in that team? Well, Zoo, but yeah, that's it. The thing with Zoo too is like Aiton

is just not strong enough for him. You know, I just wonder when Aiton, and I think it's his personality, so to pretending it's going to change is fucking stupid. But, you know, it's like personality, so pretending it's going to change is fucking stupid.

But it's like, are you ever going to get mad that you're not better? You're so gifted. You're so strong. You're so athletic. And then when you watch certain rebounds or he's fighting Zubats, not that Zubats is actually easy to move around. But I'm left a little stunned by this one just because Kawhi was brilliant. Yeah, we didn't talk about Kawhi enough because he, what did he go, 40 plus? 38.

It was also interesting where you have a game where he thinks he's the best guy in the game. KD thinks he's the best guy in the game. I feel like Booker probably thinks he's the best guy in the game. And Westbrook always thinks he's the best guy in the game. I feel like Booker probably thinks he's the best guy in the game. And Westbrook always thinks he's the best guy in the game. So you have four guys in the game who are walking around their chest out. Kawhi had some, he dusted off some classics, like some just classic, oh my God, those little floaters in traffic, the little like hesitation before he jumps up. Just such a hard guy to guard. It was an absolute delight to watch that game.

I really had a good time. If Ballmer hadn't conditioned his heart with intense peaks, I would be afraid he's going to die during a game. They showed him a couple times. It did look like... Towards the end, but then I thought, this is kind of like one of those guys in the you know pacific islands who's been diving for his

entire life and you're like how long can he stay down there be like no no he's he's conditioned for this and so anyone else i'd be like is anyone worried about his heart just going out but i just feel like he's lived his life at such a level of intensity that he's actually going to live forever. Who are you more worried about, Balmer or the Dr. Pimple Popper guy with the three things on his head? What do you think his hinge picture is like? Is that guy in Raya now from the ad? He's like, yeah, you know that girl from bones um i we didn't talk about how that my whole table thing with westbrook how he takes stuff off the table and bring stuff to the table i think this was like for the table hall of fame this is

probably the game you send where somebody's three for 19 but was arguably the mvp of the game you send where somebody's three for 19, but it was arguably the MVP of the game. Just classic. Classic Russ. I don't care who you are. And this has gone better with him, with the Clippers, but they need him. They at least need somebody that's not scared. It's one of my favorite things you've ever talked about

is that idea of who does your number one guy think he is? And one of the great examples you made, and it wasn't like you were saying carmelo was lebron or you know at the time kobe or whatever it was but at least mellow like you said this and it was very clear it was like when mellow looks in the mirror he sees an equal to these players even though we all know he's not an equal but that's that's actually a good thing now it can just become like a little too absurd good thing. Now it can just become a little too absurd where you're going,

all right, this is a little too much confidence out there. But with Paul George being out, this isn't, hey, does he fit the minutes tonight? But the weirdest thing about it all too, and again, I'm not trying to sound negative about it. It's like, would you want this in game two from Westbrook if you were a Clippers fan? Like, I'll give you the same stat line. Do you want this in game two from Westbrook if you're a Clippers fan? I'll give you the same stat line.

Do you want it? Well, there's two things that are going to translate to the rest of the series. One is his offensive rebounding. And the other is something our friend Raheem Palmer pointed out. And he's been pretty consistent. He really liked the Clippers to at least make this a series. And he was a little more lukewarm on the Suns than others. And the biggest reason is because he doesn't think they shoot enough threes. And he was like, with the way basketball is being played now, these teams are getting between, you know, 13 and 23s a game. Right. And the Clippers like today, I mean, the Suns today, they were six for 19 from three. So they only had six. They're only getting six extra points.

Everybody they're playing against is like 13, 14 and above. So I thought that was an interesting point. But at the same time, it's hard to overestimate how little faith everyone had in the Clippers. I looked at the odds on, I think, Saturday morning. The Clippers were 50-1 to win the title. They had the same odds as Miami. Now they're 30-1 on FanDuel. Yeah, Miami's a play-in.

This team's sitting here. The weirdest thing about the Clippers all season long, too, you look at the net rating, they're behind teams that they're ahead of in the standings, but you kept being like, wait, they're still the five seed the five seed like what the fuck but it just speaks to the west and how weird it was they ended up with um a winning record on the road by a game which was rare in the west but they weren't good against teams over 500 there's a lot of numbers baked in there where you're like like the sun should not lose this despite it being new despite them

not having a good bench if you look at the plus minus on the bench stuff the Clippers dominated them in that yeah but uh I I have to think that you know your first point about this game is the best one you can't let Chris Paul just run high pick and roll while Booker and Durant watch it like it's over you can't be doing that the whole time anymore and you have some other actions off yeah Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure they'll adjust. All right, let's take a break and then we'll talk about... Oh, we got two other ones. We'll talk Lakers next.

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forgot to do with the Clippers thing because we were so blown away by Russ, but Lakers-Grizzlies, here's my question for you. Is it apology time? Do we owe Rob Palenka an apology? Put together a pretty good team. I have no idea if Davis and LeBron can stay healthy.

Davis got hurt twice in the first half. One of the times it was he said he couldn't move his arm anymore. And it seemed like, oh, this is it. We had a nice little run with Anthony Davis. Then he came back in the second half. He was fine. Your text predictions today, like all time weird shit going on with you.

I was calling. I was. I was like five minutes ahead of seven things today but um the austin reeves thing i think they get credit for like i wasn't even drafted and we've been talking about i think they should get credit for it today's the first day you've been nice if they drafted them um no they get credit for that they get credit for using one of those picks to build up their bench. How noble of you. Thank you. But I like their team. I actually like watching them. I hate that it's a Lakers team, but I actually kind of enjoy watching them. I don't know. They did a pretty decent job for just to use one of those picks

to kind of round out that bench. And then you look at the way the West is going. Phoenix is already in trouble. Go on down the line. It's like, all right, if they can just keep those top two guys healthy,

they are in the mix. I was laughing when I was seeing this on first take because people were saying this in like January, February, March. Watch out. Don't let the Lakers get there. And it was ludicrous.

It was clickbait shit. But this is starting to feel real to me, Rosillo. And it's hard not to think about, especially with Giannis getting hurt and who knows how healthy he's going to be. It's for the first time, my dad said it on Thursday on this pod. And it was the first time I really thought about it. And of course he was ahead of me on it. But the Celtics Lakers for the first time at least seemed conceivable

and good god if that happens you're right uh the earliest exploration into this topic I was like are you guys fucking high like come on like no. Like, no way. This isn't happening. And then I think five minutes into this game today, and that's before Ja left with a hand injury, which looked awful. Yeah. I'm watching this game play out. The Giannis injury happens later. Then you have the Suns part of this. You're like, okay. And then you think about-

You have Warriors last night. Warriors already down 1-0. Yeah. And then you think of Sacramento. And then I think everybody's waiting to see what Denver looked like tonight. They were awesome. But there was this moment where I hit you up, and I was like, did the Lakers just go to the Western Conference Finals? And I even think we were through the first quarter of this game at Memphis. And again, that's not normally how I operate, but there's a path, and it's not crazy. It's not. You looked at

just all the breaks they got with this Grizzlies team. No Steven Adams, no Brandon Clark. Jaw gets hurt in the first game. The Grizz had some dudes out there that you're like, whoa, really? This guy? He's the Grizz had some dudes out there that you're like whoa really this guy it's gonna he's he's in in a fourth quarter right now really and then you on the Lakers side I like that their lineup's

a little malleable it's not the same five guys every time you know normally people don't like that but no no I'm saying like you know, you have your basic two, and I think Reeves is just in there now. So it's those three. And then the other guys kind of move depending on who's shooting well or what they need, you know. Schroeder was huge in the playing game. And today, Russell was actually like half decent

and did a couple things, and everybody's confident. And Rui, Rui's the story. And Rui was, well, I just don't know if we're getting the Rui thing again. That might be a once over two weeks thing. We probably don't know what we got today.

No. AD was awesome and then we thought he lost his ability to move his right arm. And we thought he tore his rotator cuff. And then he was back

and so that was good. Then he did. But the blocks, like all of it looked really challenging for Memphis there pretty quickly because you were like,

okay, what are you going to do here? And you're going, well, Jaron Jackson got LeBron James in the post a couple times. But what are you guys going to do? Start throwing it down to the block like a keem? And Jaron Jackson was really good. They needed him to carry them offensively for times, and he was that. And again, the score got so ugly there at the very end where if you didn't watch him, I think it was a bit of a blowout.

But it was a game throughout, but I felt like the Lakers were going to win it the whole time. I did too. Davis, I did not even put him in my top three for defensive player of the year and I didn't think he played enough games. If you're talking about the most impactful

defensive guy in the league, just ceiling, who has the highest ceiling in a game defensively, it actually might be him. If he's really into the game and invested and throwing the kitchen sink, I thought he was really, really, really, really good today. That was one of the best Davis games I could remember watching. Statistically, it wasn't amazing, but I just felt like he was all over that game in the right ways. I thought he was really in it. He didn't seem soft ever. And I thought Jackson was throwing a lot at him. And I don't know. I was impressed. What was weird is LeBron was probably the fourth best Laker in that

game. Right. I mean, he's obviously not the fourth best Laker, but he was the fourth most impactful. They didn't really need him. There were times when he was just like hey this Reeves thing's working this is like three minutes left in the game he didn't do the I'm LeBron now I have to have the ball he's like Reeves keep going they can't they can't figure out this pick around with you keep doing it yeah they ran something where LeBron was watching it. And it was like for three plays in a row. Yeah, yeah. And it was kind of, you know, it was kind of cool, actually, because it was working. And it wasn't like, hey, we're going to make sure our guy gets his. There's going to be other times that's not going to happen.

Rui will probably have a bad game. You're right. You could see a different line of combination there at the end. But there was a moment where when you're watching it, you're going, okay, so Memphis is bringing off, bringing who off the bench here? Tyus Jones is terrific. We all love him. Thank him.

Kennard, who is just to knock down shots, but Aldama played 24 minutes, and he was like a real part of the rotation and was trying to guard against other guys in the front line because Zeta Tillman, you know, the problem is for Taylor Jenkins in this one, you're going, okay, well, how can I go small? Can I put Jaron Jackson at the five? Do I have enough players? And then it's like, well, I need Tillman kind of body-wise in there. And then I thought, you know, there's a couple of highlights from the announcers today,

but like even Mark Jackson at one point, once Jaron Jackson got LeBron a few times in the post, like he got him a couple of times, whatever, of a deal nobody's gonna run their offense that way anymore and jackson was like well anthony davis should be playing him and you're like well no like when tillman's in there that means anthony davis can roam off of him especially when jaw still healthy and playing in the game because now to your point like when ad's in there helping off a tillman because you can help help off the fucking xavierman. I'm swearing a lot tonight. I apologize. It's late. You know, Ja has something to worry about.

So, like, that didn't make any sense to me at all. But when you started, like, feeling out that Memphis, like, the Memphis options versus the Lakers options, which is why the Palenka turnaround here. This is one of the best in-season turnarounds on building depth, even if I don't like they gave up the unprotected in, what, 27? Or the top four protected. Aldama was 24 minutes today. He was a minus 23. I don't love plus minus,

but it felt like a minus 23. It felt like he was in the wrong game. And I don't know, three, four years down the road, if he's going to end up being a good player or whatever. He shot it a lot better this year. That's part of it. He was positionally in areas where you go, are you guys seriously going to try to pull this off four times? Adams

I think would have swung this series. I don't think Memphis can win this series. Especially, we don't know what's going to happen with Ja, but I just, in general, unless Davis or LeBron goes down, I just think that they're too big and too strong. And the, all the role guys, you know, the LeBron thing goes either way, right? With the supporting cast, we've seen ones where the supporting cast, where he actually makes them worse and they get psyched out and you get the worst possible versions of them as players. And then there's other times where he really, these guys like gain confidence from being on his team, which is the same trait Jordan had, you know, and I look at the guys on this team, like Rui Hachimura on the Wizards was a fucking, you know, like Joe House, our friend,

couldn't wait to get him off the team. He was just like, that guy, he'll play hard for a quarter. He will disappear for an hour. But Rui Hachimura in today's game was the guy. That's why you end up going ninth if you're him in the draft. Because people think like, oh, there's your ceiling. This big physical guy who on the one hand has the size to guard bigger guys. On the other hand, can either space the floor or he can take you down low.

I was really impressed. I don't think he can do that every game, but they just gave up a bunch of second round picks for him. Because he's not. Right? I know, but they gave up three second round picks for him. He was under 30% from three. So I'm just going to go ahead and put that one down. We're probably not seeing that Ruby.

He was awesome today. Probably not this series. Look, that turnaround. You just need it once, though. And Beasley, they'll get one Beasley game, right? Out of these next six. Maybe. He'll have one where he hits like four threes. I don't know how Memphis was this series. Do you?

I don't see it. I don't. I think if we had Ja like in the zone that he was in in November, December, where it just seemed like he was kind of levitating above the floor as he's dribbling and just athletically seems superior

to everybody in every game he was in. But I don't think he's that guy anymore. Now he's got a fucked up hand. I don't see it. Plus, it's going to be these Laker fans, they haven't had a chance to really celebrate this team in a real way

yet, right? This is LeBron's fifth season. LeBron's been on this team more than longer than he's been on the Miami teams, which seems crazy. But the only really fun LeBron season was the one that got cut short by the pandemic, and then they played all the playoff games in the bubble. So the, this is like the first time really for Laker fans, you going back to like 2011, you know, the last time they've been to

meaningful playoff games. I think it's going to be a real atmosphere. You know, I, I know I make fun of Laker fans. I lived there there for 20 years. One thing I've always been stealth impressed by is the atmosphere in those Laker games. I think they have really good crowds. I know you do too. Yeah, I wouldn't even say stealth. That makes it sound like it's a surprise. These fans are awesome. I think people think it's like douchey, oh, celebrities

and people showing up. It's not like that at all. They have good fans. I'd put Laker fans up there with anybody. Me too. Losers. All right. Let's go to, let's go to Bucs.

Wow. Okay. Are you taking it? Cause a lot of people hit me up today going, how big is Simmons victory lap going to be on the zombie heat as I was so dismissive of them all the time? Well, I gave up on them after the playing game against Chicago. I thought for sure they were going to lose on Friday night.

So I don't think anybody, their fans gave up on them. Did you see the crowd on Friday night? It was like 8,000 people there. Have you ever seen less people at a, at a do or die game in the history, like since the seventies. That's a good transition. I think the heat fans are what other people think.

Laker fans are. 100%. It's exact. You're exactly right. I think they get the Dodger fans in the late, the Dodger fans have good fans too, but they do, you know,

they show up late. They leave early. Have you ever been there? I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of it's tough to get out to go to a game so hero breaks his hand and because the heaters zombies and classic zombie heat they just regenerate the hero limb with gabe vincent and they're fine and kevin and kevin love they just kind of pull their arm off and put their kevin love arm on and then they just kind of waddle around

as the zombie heat. You know, as usual, somebody plays the heat and has an injury. Giannis, probably the most indestructible guy in the league. He gets hurt driving, driving. We thought he broke his back. He didn't. But Butler was the best player in that game.

Butler had real Butler's zest. the Bam-Brooke-Lopez matchup is not awesome for Brooke Lopez, the defensive player of the year. There's just... This isn't going to be a walk. And I thought it was, and I'm kicking myself.

Well, I've given up on the Heat. I think I gave up on him like even though i thought they were going to beat atlanta they get out rebounded like that i was like okay whatever and then even beating chicago i went all right you know unbelievable streus has 20 in the first half yeah it felt like a lucky win and so going into this game i'm just like they don't score enough they don't score enough they had 111 points with eight minutes to go. Now, I don't know what you're supposed to do with the result here. I'm not going to do a ton with it

knowing Giannis played 11 minutes. The weirdest thing about him falling down on a block charge decision is he smashes his back. He gets up. He makes the first free throw. He misses the second one. Then he looks like he can't walk. Then he got the ball. As Dwayne Wade once said, the recuperative power of leather.

Once anybody's hurt in a basketball game, as soon as they get the ball, they're healthy. And then he drove through everybody again. So I was like, oh, okay, we're good. Then he left. And then he sat down. Then he left again. This isn't an aside. The charge shit has to stop.

Okay? It has to stop. We have to figure out a way to call it the way it was always called for years, where the guy's in position and it's a beat. And then if you get trucked, then it's a charge. That's what it always was. And somehow the refs allowed this thing to evolve into something the last, I'd say, 15 years

is when I really started to notice it. No, it was 20. It was Jason Kidd started it. Jason Kidd is to blame. Well, Duke really started it. Who? Duke is really responsible for all this. But Jason Kidd was the one who mastered the,

I'm jumping in front of this guy and somehow freezing my body for a quarter of a second and I'm getting a charge. Right. But it was always a beat. There was never any debate about legal guarding position shit. It used to sometimes be like you already had to be there once the guy had been in the air and made his decision. You couldn't undercut him this way. So now we have bodies, especially now in the playoffs. I can't believe how physical these last 20 hours were, first of all. Bodies all over the place, whether it was Ja and his,

Giannis on his. This isn't about- Randall. Randall was a wrecking ball. Randall, that's another thing, is that Okoro's thinking in that spot, okay, I can get in front of him. Everybody's moving, by the way. Nobody's in position. Everybody's moving, and Okoro's going in to get the charge. But now the counter to the charge, as we all know for years, is the Euro. The problem with the Euro against a guy moving into a charge position is that guess what happens on the Euro? Your elbows swing, and now everybody's getting elbowed in the fucking face because the only counter to this is to Euro out of it, and you kind of have to swing your elbows up to present the ball to one side to bring it to the next one. I'm actually not in favor of having something else give the offense an advantage with how terrible the

offensive player is, how often they are rewarded for initiating the contact, especially a smaller player. So I don't necessarily want to take away the one thing as much as I hate charges. I don't know that I want to make it even easier for guys to score, but there has to be an emphasis on trying to get defense back at the rim. Maybe get rid of verticality where like, look, if he hits you and it's not vertical and you're both in the air, like, sorry, you know, there has to be something that gets us away from guys. Credit for the toughness, the balls of the player to be like, I'm going to do this. But we are putting the best players, the most athletic players in danger

as this keeps happening more and more, where you're rewarding for somebody just sliding in underneath them. And it's happening way too much. Rant over. Good rant. Enjoyed it. Do you have a tip jar? I thought it was good.

I have one thing to add. Okay, go ahead. I do have a story I have to tell you later, though. What's that circle? What do they call the, what is it, the charge circle?

The restriction, the restricted area. Restricted area? Yeah. I actually think they should extend the restricted area. To the three-point line?

Well, I would do it like halfway to the paint. I would just make it that as far away as you have to pull it back where anybody who's driving in the basket and is taking off toward the rim. Put it there. And then and then that problem gets solved because we had three times this weekend, including two of the best players in the league, got hurt on that play. So, you know, especially in the playoffs, where everyone's going balls to the wall. Right. I actually think it's kind of like when somebody really gets their knee busted up in a football game,

and I'm like, you know what? I'm shocked it doesn't happen more often. Or like when somebody steps in somebody else's foot going up for a rebound, and they turn their ankle. Like, it really doesn't happen as much as you would think it would happen. It speaks to how incredibly coordinated all these dudes are.

It's the first weekend and we may be down two guys. That's the other lesson with all this, even with Giannis, is one heavy hitter is going down. Usually we get two that alter the course of all these playoffs. I wonder it makes you look at Milwaukee completely differently. I'd also say if Milwaukee, if Drew and Brooke and Middleton, who's really good today,

like even without Giannis, you should be able to beat this Heat team and you got stomped. So I don't know if that was a, well, Giannis isn't here and now it's weird. And, you know, we can argue about open shots and contested shots, but when Giannis isn't there now and nobody's helping off you, I'm sure that's a bit of a wake-up call. It makes Brooke look entirely differently defensively now that Giannis isn't there on the low help. It's also some of the times you're like, oh, I love Drew Holiday, but can you really go get me

a ton of buckets? And then Jay Crowder, who we spent four months talking about, just goes out there and misses shots, although I know his overall three-point shooting percentage is pretty good with Milwaukee this season. I'm not going to say anything. This game isn't going to make me think anything until I know some overall three-point shooting percentage is pretty good with Milwaukee this season. I'm not going to say anything. This game isn't going to make me think anything until I know some more about Giannis,

but I still think there's a sliver of like, hey, this is pretty disappointing considering the talent between the two teams. If the rest of those guys are as good as we keep saying they are, and I do think they're good, this shouldn't have happened. But you could also say, hey, look, they lost their guy. They were freaked out. This is what happened.

Whatever. They did get a. This is what happened. Whatever. And I would believe that too. They did get a good middle team game though. Yeah. To me, it's the same issue they had in that Celtics game when the Celtics trounced them in Milwaukee. What was that? Three weeks ago, four weeks ago.

I think these scoring forwards are real problems for them. It's their kill is heal. Tatum got whatever shot he wanted against those guys. Butler was doing whatever the fuck he wanted against those guys. Butler was doing whatever the fuck he wanted today, you know, and I don't know how you solve that. It's a steady stream of it's Crowder. It's Middleton who I don't think is the same defensively anymore.

It's, you know, you go into the Grayson Allen, Connaughton, Wesley Matthews, all those guys. Ingles ends up being your like size match for the other big, but Tatum went by Ingles for that entire Celtic game three weeks ago.

And I don't think he can guard Butler either. So I just don't think they have the person to stop that. And the problem for them is. It's supposed to be Jay. It's supposed to be Jay Crow. He couldn't do that last year. So you got the Celtics coming up for them. You have, if you're looking at the West, you have LeBron James.

You have Kawhi Leonard. You have, if you're looking at the West, you have LeBron James, you have Kawhi Leonard, you have Kevin Durant, like pretty much every team except Denver and Philly has one of these guys and they haven't shown to me that they can defend them. Now,

you could always just say, well, just put, have Giannis defend them. I haven't seen them play that card because they love Giannis, you know,

Roman. I think they would do it. I think that's what they're going to have to do in a series. I'm sure they probably would. And look, if Giannis comes back would do it. I think that, I think that's what they're going to have to do in a series. I'm sure they probably would. And look, if Giannis comes back and he was just hurt and whatever,

like, I don't think they're in trouble or anything. It was just a very weird result for one major reason, but. Well, we'll see what happens with the honest. They said the x-rays were negative, but for him to be that crippled by an injury,

I thought was concerning. Hey, speaking of crippling, it was an incredible Reggie Miller day. He said about Kevin Love, taking charges has really defined his career. Kevin Love averaged a 26-13 one year, made a second team on NBA,

got traded for the number one pick of the draft. I think he had a pretty good career. I don't know if charges would be the number one thing I would go to. He said, Portis could be starting for 29 other teams, but he accepts his role here. 29 feels rich. Nine? Would you go nine?

Over under nine. Would you go nine for Portis starting? I haven't done the work i this is all new i uh i'd have to i'd have to dig into it it feels like it's lower than 29 29 feels high i was trying to figure out how he's starting for the celtics and i couldn't get there but after we finish the pot i'm going to go back and sketch out some more lineups maybe tobias harris off the bench? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe Jalen Brown, six man,

so Portis could start. Then he tried to land the plane on this Giannis Hero thing in the fourth quarter where he... I rewound it and I should have done the whole transcript. I think he kind of fucked up

what he was trying to say, but what he ended up saying, whether it was his intent or not, was that Hero is a bigger loss to Miami than Giannis was for Milwaukee. And I think he was trying to praise Milwaukee's depth.

But his ultimate point was that Hero is a worse loss for Miami than Giannis is for Milwaukee. And there was kind of silence after. And it's like, okay. It wasn't great. The announcing i thought the van gundy i thought that team was really good i really liked gus johnson and greg anthony they were fun i thought there was some tension though i thought

there was some tension tonight because greg anthony started talking up yokich and greg is awesome and he was like yeah he's the best passing big ever. And then there was a pause and Gus Johnson was like, well, what about Wilt Chamberlain though? He led the league and assist and Greg dismantled it. And then like, I think we went to commercial and Greg was still on it. And I felt like I was like, man, Greg is really, really giving him the full scope of this. And I felt like Gus got real quiet for like five minutes or so. Gus was pissed. He was like, I thought he led the league in assists. Can we talk about the Kevin Love piece of that Heat series?

This series are just... He was really good for them. And it made me go back because as you know, and we talk about this later when we talk about the Cavs, I still don't understand how they get nothing for Love.

Like they just, they let that go. I'm aware. But I went back and looked at that Cavs box score. Allen and Moby basically played like over 80 minutes combined in that game. And their backup big was, I guess, Dean Wade. Like they have no backup center.

They have no backup big basically at all on the Cavs. So what happens if there's foul trouble? I just can't wrap my head around it. And he looked pretty good in that Miami game. I don't know. I like having experienced guys who've been in big games, like dated back to 2016, Richard Jefferson, who everybody thought was done, you know, and comes in. And if you watch game seven of the 2016 finals, guess who's fucking out there in crunch time? The guy who's been in a bunch of big games. I still think that's worthwhile, and I don't know why the Cavs punted on it.

But anyway, he was really good today. Yeah, and that was after he was, I think he played like 14 total minutes in the play-in games. It looked like he was washed up four days ago. Yeah. By the way, people just want these play-off play-in games to live in such a

vacuum here. You can't even find the box scores. No, if you go to his game log, it's the regular season, and then it's the playoffs. Then you have to go back to the team schedule. He played 14 minutes combined in those games. I've never once told you that you were wrong about this Cleveland thing. It's just you are... Are you working on a movie with HBO?

Is something going on? The Kevin Love thing? I don't like, I like the Cavs. I don't like giving up assets. Can I read you this Raheem Palmer tweet and give me your reaction? Sure. Raheem, second reference today for our guy Raheem the Dream. This is him on the Bucs.

They've consistently had these underwhelming offensive performances in the postseason during the Mike Butt era that everyone has forgotten about because they won a title in a year when Kyrene Harden got hurt. And then the following year, Middleton got hurt. So they got a pass. I don't know if I a hundred percent agree, but I think there's a little something there. Cause I do think they start to look a little less efficient

than some of these other really good playoff teams. But then you watch them go into Sacramento and put up 134 or 138, whatever that was. It's like, they're fine. But I don't know. It made me think. I'm watching it the rest of this Miami series. So Miami's a really hard team to play.

Well, look, they were the second worst offense of any of the playoff teams last year. So he's not wrong. I mean, I think only Chicago was worse than them. And then the year before that, when they won everything, they were 11th. But I think even like the best player, like we all know when Giannis doesn't look like he's carrying a team

offensively, we all know what it looks like. But ever since the title, like you're right, Raheem's right. Because after that moment and then Durant not being able to stay healthy, I just kept like, okay,

cool. He doesn't get into a jumper. It's smooth. Right. You know, it's, it's got the middle. It's a little bulldozer ish,

but I also saw a guy completely overpower everybody, you know it's it's a little it's a little bulldozer ish but i also saw a guy completely overpower everybody you know even though look i i liked him more last year in the loss to the celtics in that series i liked him more in that series than probably any other series because he what he had to do on his own and how he did it and how he went about it uh but the stats would back up palmer totally but that's what happens. Before we go to break quickly, nuggets, T-wolves.

I guess my question for this one is, does, is there an NBA player right now with a lower approval rate in the go bear? If we're doing tracking polls, like Connor Roy is like, Oh, trying to get to 1%. Con heads, the con heads. There's some decor Roy is like trying to get to 1%. Conheads.

The Conheads, there's some decimals, might be able to get there. He might have to spend some money to get there. Is Gobert at 1%? I don't know who's left because once Utah turns on you. He swung that elbow into Shea on Friday. I was like, Jesus fucking fucking Christ today he bowled over Jokic and they didn't even call it um he's just those big swinging elbows he's a fucking menace I hate watching him play basketball it makes me mad anytime he this is all sports hate

it's not real hate um anytime he like he blocked Jokic today it just made me mad I'm like fuck Gobert got one damn it that. That was a great block. It was. The other thing, too, is he's also a bit of a flopper, which is weird. He bitches a lot. When Mitchell and him were both in Utah, they started tracking

his passes to him, which is pretty apparent. They didn't want to pass it to him. Do you see other guys pass to him? He had an alley-oop attempt in the OKC game where he fucking caught it and the rim blocked him. Do you remember? I remember that, yeah. Look, when he is at his worst in some of these clips,

and so then you add it all in, and if you're a Timberwolves fan, you can keep lying to yourself, but you know deep down you're not really lying to yourself. You're just hoping. And then, of course, it looked a little different against Denver when you weren't playing against Jalen Williams,

who's probably a backup power forward instead of starting at center. 6'6". And Sharich, your backup center, is a backup small forward. So that wasn't a great matchup for the Thunder in that one. But I thought the Kyle Anderson thing was kind of nasty tonight because they're getting smoked. Christian Brown's been really good for them. Brown was doing kind of the Pat Bever annoying thing

where nobody's more annoying than Pat Beverley or Lowry with that where they wanted to grab the ball back from you when there's no rush for it because you're not going to get it inbound soon enough. It's a great dick move. It's a total dick move. I hate it. Brown wasn't even at the Pat Bever Lowry level with it. But what Kyle

Anderson did there by throwing his elbow up into him was fucking nasty. And then the funny thing is he then falls down and Brown didn't even do anything. He wasn't even doing anything except kind of getting away from the whole thing. The reason I bring it up is that I'm telling you right now, Kyle Anderson is toasty.

He runs real toasty. And if he's calling Gobert a bitch the whole time, we should probably defend Gobert a little bit more, but none of us are going to. So 1.8 approval rating? Is he at two? Christian Brown, maybe? The Gobert heads?

I have the winners of the weekend for me would be the, uh, the nuggets as a stealth winner, just because of how this whole weekend played out in the West where I, the continuity thing. I, I said this when they made the trade, we talked about it the day of the KD trade about how unusual it was to add

your best player during a season. And the continuity thing, it's just going to be a subplot, this whole playoff run. You got a big microscope on it and you got guys who just don't have reps. Then you have, if the Kings can somehow knock off the Warriors and the Nuggets, the four left will be like the Nuggets, the Kings, the Lakers, and then whoever comes out of that Suns-Clippers series. I think the Nuggets are better than the Suns and the Clippers with home court. So I don't know. I picked them to make it before the year.

I picked it before the playoffs. Who did you pick? I had Denver before the year, and I had Denver before the playoffs. And who do you have coming out of the East Boston? I never changed. I just kept Milwaukee Denver. Cause I was so mad that I jumped off Kansas city in the football last year, heading into the playoffs.

I'm like, I'm not doing that again. I'm sticking with my preseason pick. Um, but I think if you, if you ask me who I feel better about in a conference, Milwaukee or Denver, I it's probably even like heading into the playoffs. I feel better about in a conference, Milwaukee or Denver, it's probably even.

Heading into the playoffs, I felt better about Milwaukee. Now, I think it's actually lined up pretty nicely for Denver. Because if they have... Who do you think they'd rather play? The Suns or the Clippers with Paul George? If you're Denver. I guess you could get back into

the bubble history of blowing that lead. Oh, having success against the Clippers, yeah. Yeah, wondering if the Clippers, like, are there enough people around still? I mean, you know, a lot of the core guys are still around as far as like some motivating driving factor there. You know what I'm not doing after one weekend is falling for this game one check. Okay? Yeah.

Because I think the West is wide open. I think a lot of these teams are close. I'm surprised by the Suns' loss, but I didn't think they were going to sweep them. Like, I never think anybody's going to sweep anybody. The shitty thing about the Suns' loss was that you would have expected CP to have a good first game. I wasn't expecting the two for eight in game one. I was

expecting it in the fourth game and seven nights kind of thing. But the fact that we started out with the super mediocre Chris Paul game made me nervous. Look, every time I thought he would have like the week where it felt like it was coming together, like Chris Paul was kind of like a solo Golden State Warriors where there'd be a couple games. I go, all right, you know, we're heading the right direction. He had these two injuries, like a hip injury when you're older is like a solo Golden State Warriors where there'd be a couple games. I go, all right, we're heading in the right direction. He had these two injuries, like a hip injury when you're older is like a really awful injury. I thought his looks were really good, but

as the biggest Chris Paul fan going, I don't know why you would let he and Aiton run a two-man game with Durant and Booker watching. I just don't. I think you... Chris Paul's going to have a really good game somewhere in there. He's not going to just suck for the entire series, but he shouldn't be dictating

the whole thing. But that's my lesson with all of this. You're right on Denver. They smoked him tonight. They weren't even that good tonight. And it's to have both of those big guys have to move around and follow Jokic and then follow the power forward and Gordon, who's moving constantly

like watching Minnesota try to move with them you're like okay this is going to be bad and Anthony Edwards you know has had some real disappointing kind of late season stuff here even though he was great in the last regular season game against New Orleans they needed really badly like he was incredible in that one but

yeah you know I think we'll probably feel a lot different about all of these teams in a couple of days, except for, you know, maybe Denver or Boston, Atlanta. I can't imagine that one turning around. So I'm just not going to let the one game freak me out because I think that's it's always ends up being a huge mistake. Sage advice from Brian Rosillo. We're going to come back and talk Saturday games.

Do you want to tell your tip jar story before we do that, though? How long is it? How long do you want it to be back and talk Saturday games. Do you want to tell your tip jar story before we do that, though? How long is it? How long do you want it to be? I don't know. You can give me like the two and a half minute, three minute version. Storyteller, Bill. Sorry. You know what?

You do you. It's now like past 1030 LA time. You do what you need to do. Tell us the story. I'll make it quick. I have these lovely neighbors. They invite me to do stuff all the time. They're retired, but I don't think they are retired.

I think they're doing all right. And they're so nice to me, and they invite me over all the time. They play music. They have beers. They have people over, and I say no literally all the time because when they're getting after it, the kid's got bills to pay. He's got to be down here watching games. Yeah. So it was the Monday when there were no games

and they said, will you please come meet us at comedy, you know, this comedy thing tonight. And I was like, yeah, I can do that.

You know what? Yeah. I want to go see, I want to see them. I want to show to them that I appreciate the endless invites, you know,

because it gets weird. You start going like, oh, we invite this dude all the time and he never wants to do anything. Like he become that guy. Yeah. Like, I don't know.

Fucking you're not going to get invited anymore. And so I show up, grab a beer with him. And I was I was tired. It was like a non night, you know, where I was like, oh, don't do anything. I was like, no, go see him. Go see him. A guy gets up and does stand up and he fucking bombs bill worse than anyone i've ever seen bomb And he was bombing so bad that he was kind of losing it on stage while it was happening

And he didn't notice the light flickering to tell him his time was up. So he just kept going So what should have been five minutes of bombing? I think turned into 12 minutes And he was doing like physical comedy once it started going off the rails and he was doubling down on it He was like impersonating a dog and it was going worse and worse and no one was laughing. And then I started laughing uncontrollably looking at the couple that I was with because we all knew we It's the setting, the emotions. And again, I don't really care, but you want it to end. And then finally he was like, is my time up? And the guy's like, yeah, seven minutes ago. He goes, yeah, I thought so and he left Jesus what does the tip jar have to do with this

oh I was just thinking about like you know tip your servers I've been in a comedy club when somebody bombed and you're right now I've never been in an orgy but i think there's probably moments in an orgy that could be just as uncomfortable and embarrassing but stand up is with clothes on probably the most awkward it can get if it goes if it goes south

what happened to yours not the orgy would add mine yeah mine? Yeah. Give me the setting. Late 90s Boston, back when the AOL readers and one of the AOL readers was a comedian and was like, hey, you want to come to my show? I think it was on Boylston somewhere. Wait, so somebody who was reading your first online stuff? Yeah. He was like, man, I love your stuff. You got to come to one of my shows. I'm like, that sounds great. I'd love to. And I go and it's like 27 people.

And the guy just completely bombed. And then I had to talk to him after. Hey, man, that was great. What did you talk about? Did you have to? Was he not funny? Was it really bad? He was like, ah, you know, I couldn't, you know.

Crowd. Everyone's a hero in their own story, as Dave Jacoby always says. Right. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I screwed up that one. You're like, yeah, yeah, that was it. As I keep watching them, because anytime I'm in New York City, I go to the comedy cellar, even though they ripped me off the last time I went.

You got to come out with something good. There's one constant. You have to like throw everybody off with that first one because they want to laugh they want to laugh they bought tickets you have 100 approval ratings starting the set right there's a couple drinks in them they want to have a good time i see people laugh at shit where i'm like that wasn't even funny like why are you giving this guy laughs? And this dude, he even started blaming us a little bit, which is always one of my favorite moves when it's actually our fault. Yeah. But then in a weird way, I was like, in my head, I'm like,

there's no way you're supposed to be going this long. This is going on forever. People are looking around. I think one guy lit a cigarette and it's not even a lot like it was going bad and then i start being like keep going internally i'm like make it worse the uh movie funny people the apatow movie which i think the first hour that movie's great but it has that scene when Sandler does the act, but he's going through some shit.

And the crowd's so ready to laugh, and he just gets dark and weird. And they're all kind of like, what the fuck's going on? It's the only time I've ever seen that captured in a movie correctly, of what it's like to be in the room when a stand-up just goes south.

And you're like, ah. And there's that tepid laughter. Not really. That movie has a real planes, trains, and automobiles right turn. Yeah, the director's cut will be interesting in 20 years when they're like, there's some stuff in the last 40 minutes maybe that could go. We just did Alien for Rewatchables and Ridley Scott did a director's cut in

03, like 24 years later where they only gave him like $4 million to make the movie. And there's some stuff that bothered him. And they found all this footage in this London warehouse. And he's like, you know what? I'm going to fix the stuff.

And it's, it's absolutely better. I watched the original and I watched the director's cut it's about the same length it's better it moves faster like it had good you know sometimes with some clarity and some distance you can see some things okay so that's one of my favorite movies because of how long it takes like i feel like it builds all of this anxiousness so as director's cut, you're saying it moves a little bit better. I would never want that movie to move faster because I like how slow it is.

It's like a whiff too slow in the initial cut compared to... The flow is better in the director's cut. It's all about flow. I haven't watched it in a while. I defer to you, so I haven't seen it. But what I always love about that movie is that you were just expecting,

you knew something was about to happen and they made you wait forever. And normally that doesn't play anymore. That's what we talked about on the pod, not the step on the pod, but the concept of a thinking man's horror movie and a thinking man's horror movie and a thinking man's sci-fi movie where they make you use your brain versus where we are now, where it's

like jump scares and they're just going for it and everything. Back in the day, they would really build. When there was no hoops the other night, I watched Easy Rider. Yeah. When's the last time you watched Easy Rider? It's been a while. Yeah. Slow? Well, no. No, not at all. It actually has a very today opening, right? There's the drug deal.

Although I don't know why you'd be able to just pull a cocaine deal at the airport right next to where planes are landing. And somebody wouldn't eventually be like, why did you guys park you guys park here right but again that'd be picking nits yeah it i think any of those movies that are that old and look we're looking at this thing being what over 50 years old 1969 if you don't want it to hold up if you go into that movie not wanting it to hold up then you'll win cool all right but if you allow yourself to like think of how kind of counterculture it was or whatever and just how simple it was and the soundtrack and that they basically were like shooting it to almost like show america i forgot dennis hopper directed it and that those guys all wrote it too yeah um and then you know it actually kind of politically at the end is pretty,

you know, like, oh yeah, that's right. I liked it. I really, I remember watching it when I was a kid.

It had been forever, but I forgot, well, at least I didn't think I was old enough to understand what a big deal that movie was

when it came out. I don't know if it's rewatchable, but. Yeah, I don't know the rewatchable cutoff line is probably like 1972.

Deliverance was 74. Godfather 72. Downhill Racers, the early 70s. And that one really holds up nicely. Why don't you guys do 60s month? 60s month? I'll take a look. I'll talk to our producers. All right, we're going to take a break and we're going to talk about the Saturday games, including Warriors Kings, which was incredible. That's next. When you ride transit, please be safe. Yeah. Be safe. Because what you do, others will do too. Others will do it too. So don't take shortcuts across tracks. Don't do that. In fact, just don't walk on tracks at all. Not at all. Trains move quietly, so you won't hear them coming. You won't hear them coming. See, safe riding sets an example. All right, so let's go backwards on the Saturday games.

Warriors Kings was the last one. It was a Saturday night. It was awesome. I thought it was my favorite game that I've watched this year. Where'd you have it? Was it way up there, all the way up there? Where was it? My favorite game of the entire season?

I think it was for me. It's up there. That was awesome. I mean, so far this weekend's been great. So even coming off the plane other than the last one minnesota one did sacramento show you anything in that game before we get to our big questions did they show you anything from that game that made you say oh i kind of underestimated these guys a little bit well you know i i don't know

if it's that uh i think everybody was kind of waiting around. If Golden State had put it on them, it would have been, perception-wise, the most damaging, right? Like, oh, the defense of having to chase around Golden State all night didn't impact their energy on offense. They won by attacking the shit out of Golden State. I mean, Monk 14 free throw attempts. So that was the one thing that jumped out to me was like, these dudes are attacking in a way in game one where they knew how important that was. So I was really impressed with that. You?

Yeah, well, same for me. And it was one of the rare times where a halftime interview with a coach, I actually learned something where they said Mike Brown told whoever the sideline reporter was, we need to go faster. We're actually not going fast enough. And then you could feel that in the second half. Did not seem sustainable. And they sustained it. Part of it was the energy in that building was out of control, which leads me to my question, Rosillo, the big question for the series for me. If the Kings did pull this off, I was always drifting toward the Warriors side of things. What would this mean? Is this a blow it up moment for them? Is this the end of the career? That was where my head was at when we were doing the Wind Horse Pod. If the Kings win this, I think you could make a case it's the most emotional non-finals win anyone's had since the We Believe Warriors when they beat Dallas in that round one.

You saw the emotion. I was thinking about how long. 2005, what were you? You were in Boston at that point? Yeah. Did you even have a regular radio, radio gig or were you like moonlighting for ESPN? What were you doing? That was when you got into it with John Dennis. Like, like think how long ago that was. My daughter was born in 2005. Yeah, it was 29. That guy's career took off. Uh, let's see.

Yeah, I was, I was struggling struggling man i i was at the rate i mean i had a radio gig i was on five days a week but we were doing you know all red socks stuff i was making 25 grand a year year three i think so uh things weren't awesome for me but you're right like that's why i thought it was funny when they put together all this playing stuff the announcers keep making fun of like none of these playing-in games count as playoff stats, but not regular season stats. And yet I'm glad like remember how Sacramento was flirting with the play-in. I was like, this better not be one of those baseball things where it's like, well, we made the playoffs last year.

Like you made a single elimination game after 162. And for this crowd that, you know, deserves it. And that's, that's look on top of it. They almost lost their franchise that you know deserves it and that's that's look on top of it they almost lost their franchise you know so there's so many elements to this where it's like wait did we end up with the worst owner oh we're actually gonna get to stay like the emotional ups and downs of being a sacramento kings fan the last decade and a half are true yeah so i think you're on it i mean i hadn't really thought of anything else emotionally, but I mean, who else has almost lost their franchise that now has this moment? to bet. Let's go. Let's talk. Wait, you name your price. I'll take it. And he misses it, but just climbing the hump, not just with that Warriors team, the big brother,

you know, within the vicinity of Northern California, but then getting over the hump with Curry and Clay and Draymond. And we've had 10 years of these guys now, you know, this is, LeBron is always going to be the North star for all these things. Giannis is the best guy in the league. And then this whole Warriors run is the other big thing that's going on right now. And if they extinguish that in round one, they knock those guys out. That would be, I think, the single biggest emotional thing since that We Believe thing. Because the We Believe thing was awesome. That was one of the best basketball moments of the 2000s thousands that didn't happen in the finals. I went back,

I looked at what was the best Sacramento home playoff game since last night. I went back to 2004, found myself in a YouTube rabbit hole for game three, Minnesota,4, Sacramento 113, OT, Peja, game tired in regulation, and then the Wolves won in OT. They end up winning the series in seven, KG 30 and 15. But the best home playoff win they've had, you have to go back to earlier round one that same year, game five, Dallas 2004.

They win by one, 36 for Bibby, who was so good in that series that Cuban decides not to keep Nash. I went back and watched the end of that one too. Dirk missed like a 20, maybe a 19-footer. Pretty open to save the game. Missed it. Dirk Nash era, done. That was their last good playoff win,

Rasul, was 18, 19 years ago. Yeah, I know everybody's kind of on the Golden State thing will be over. First of all, all I have to do is split. And so I'm not going down this road yet. I'm not going down the road. Me neither. I still think they win the series.

And Curry's still too good. Even if they were to lose the series, Bill, Curry's so fucking good that whatever it would, I think the only thing that you if you were saying big picture as you as you framed it wouldn't the question be do they decide to try to load up whatever assets they have for a guy that just feels like tier wise he raises their second or third best option or what the Lakers did, where you use an asset and you try to get,

you try to deepen your depth or try to do something. You know, the Lakers, who were way more reckless than the Warriors were with how they built this stuff. The Warriors did that. We're going to try to have two errors at the same time thing. The Lakers were like, fuck this. What can we trade?

We'll sell anything. We'll trade every second round pick we have. We'll give up our first. We don't care. And the Lakers, I arguably in a better spot right now in the West. Now some of that's luck, just how the schedule shucked up for the Lakers. But I think with the Warriors, the big thing to look at is just the money and especially the new CBA. And just how realistic is it to be able to carry four major money guys on the same roster? You know, with Draymond is close to 30 and Klay is over 40 next year. I think he's at 43.

Curry is going to be the most expensive guys in the league. And you have Wiggins on top of everything else. And Poole. Is that even palatable? And Jordan. So, you know, whatever happens, I don't think this will be the same team next year. But to me, like, it's weird.

The Warriors lose. I thought they answered some questions I had about them on the road. You know, if they box out two guys in the fourth quarter, they probably win the game, right? I weirdly leave that game if I'm the Warriors going, no, we're fine. We just needed to grab a fucking rebound. Monk went crazy. Fox, we can't stop.

We probably can't stop him anyway. But the Monk thing, you know, that might happen one more time in this series. You're laughing. You were so good with Malik Monk. You could pronounce his name like most of the season, and then you've reverted back. Listen, I'm going to have my speech impediment things, and that's just who I am.

We all have a couple names we struggle with. I just will never get it. His is rather easy. His is Monk. It's Monk. Yeah, think of the religious name. I always say Monk. I know, and that's why I just started laughing at you,

because you had fixed it this year yeah well listen it's the playoffs we've just been watching basketball over and over fair fair he was awesome that was why i voted for him third for sixth man of the year um yeah but that's not really who he is i mean he's great everybody would want malik monk that was insane bill he took 14 free throws made all of them he was driving he was taking guys off the dribble. Golden State felt like with Wiggins back, who I thought looked terrific. I don't know that I love him being the three-point option on both of those shots late there. and Gary Payton II over Poole and DiVincenzo because they wanted to answer something defensively, and it still didn't work against the attacking of Fox and Monk. So, you know, I know Kerr after the game, and we could do this with any of the close games, right?

Hey, something here, something there, the other side field, which they completely ignore all the little things that happened. You know, the sad thing as a Steph fan, I'm a Steph fan, and like that corner three off the clay drive of the baseline will now be forgotten forever in history. You mean the moon ball over the shot clock? It seemed like he was out of bounds, and he was going to hit the basket support.

Yeah, and you're like, Sacramento's losing. Okay, Sacramento's losing. But that kind of stuff happening, I think that's the best positive of this whole deal, is that stuff's happening. Steph's going off in the second half. Oh, shit. I think clay shot selection could be a little tighter um and Sabonis wasn't having a great game and yet you know the emotional part of that it looked like Sacramento which is kind of the underlying thing from the all year long this group that's in their first season

together plays together like a group that's played multiple runs together and that's's what I, you know, from the beginning of the season, when you first watch them, like, man, they're really in sync with each other and everything's really good here. But Monk, who gets like two free throws a game, ending up with 14 of them, that would probably be the number one thing you're talking about if you're Golden State staff going, okay, that can't happen again. And then Fox hitting half of his threes, you know, they answered it, especially in a night where Sabonis, you know, gave him, well, that can't happen again. And then Fox hitting half of his threes, they answered it, especially in a night where Sabonis gave him,

well, I know, he's always going to impact the game because of his defensive reboundings. Well, you think you get more from Sabonis, less from Monk. But Fox... Trey Lyles? Big minutes? Fox would be the thing that I would be

scratching my head about today if I'm the Warriors. What do we do? It wasn't just that he had a big game. It was how easy he was getting whatever the fuck he wanted. I tweeted this last night. I was trying to think of the great downhill guys. To me, KJ

in the 90s is the all-time downhill guy where just guys are backpedaling as he's driving. I've never seen anybody. If he had the car, we've talked about this. Mitchell has that. I think Mitchell has a lot of that. Not like KJ in the 90s. Mitchell settles for the step back too much.

Fox was just like, I'm going at you. I'm going to get whatever shot I want. I might get that little pull up from 12. I might just go all the way to the basket. And I have you on a yo-yo. And the Warriors were like, nobody could guard him. They finally had to play the Peyton card, which, you know, that really puts a lot of the offensive bird.

If you're going to play Peyton and Draymond at the same time, now I can kind of figure out what you're doing offensively. So I just thought Fox to be the best player in a game where I thought Curry played really well. And I thought Clay shot the ball really well. Fox was definitively the best guy in that game. Great sign for Sacramento. It was the opposite of what you would expect from a first playoff game,

right? Yeah, that's it. That's the lesson in all of it that they, they looked like they, they were coming back from losing game one at the end of game two. Like, okay, all right, this is how it works. And yet they did it in game one.

But I just feel like all the years of watching these series, when we haven't seen two teams go at it like this, we'll watch game one and go, oh, okay. And there's a lot of times where game two looks completely different. So we'll see what happens. This did feel very early 90s-ish. That when basketball had that run where it was just so up and down and there were so many good offensive players.

I do think they can replicate versions of that game for the rest of the series. It'd be very hard for these two teams not to play entertaining basketball games. You know what I mean? Yeah. You might have a game where there's a blowout, but for the most part, this is it. Yeah. Yeah. When they played each other in the regularout, but for the most part, this is it. Yeah. When they played each other in the regular season, you were like, okay,

if they play each other in the playoffs, this is going to be awesome. And it was. It was a great win. It was probably, you know, in a weekend where the games have felt pretty good so far. Obviously, we're not taking this with all of them completed. I'm with you.

Big day for the Malik fans. Really was great. Just a big smile on my face yesterday. Uh, Nick's calves. I thought, I thought someone was going to leave this game in a stretcher. It,

it looked like they were playing the game in the dark at 10 at night at a, at an outdoor playground. Guys were just crashing into each other. Randall, it felt like he almost hurt, how many Knicks? I mean, how many Cavs? Like five?

Or he just bowled into guys? He was throwing the ball off people's faces. It was just this really physical, ugly game. I looked at the shot chart after the Cavs. They must have missed 17 shots in the paint. I mean, they missed shots that I'm sure they're going to look at the game tape and be like, we're actually fine.

Like, we missed a lot of good looks. I don't know what happened to Garland. My big question for you from this game, we talked about it during the season. Why did they think they were set at wing? Because Okoro and Levert going 2 for 13

and they have Osman out there in crunch time trying to guard Brunson. And you're just like, you guys could have fixed this. The irony is Josh Hart was on the other team who's probably a gettable guy, right? There were guys out there that maybe they could have made a play for.

And it would be interesting if that decision comes back to haunt them. Because it really felt like they were four on five offensively in that game. Yeah, when you watch them the regular season, you're absolutely right because it was supposed to be a coro because you figured you had enough offense. But if you have bigs who can score, and I hope we're on the same page here, that Mobley offensively is still somewhat limited. There are nights where his energy is enough, but if you're actually going to him multiple times

of possessions to work guys and score, he's not really there yet. And Allen is a throw in offensively. So it turns into the Mitchell Garland game. And I think it was a little, you know, even though Mitchell was kind of unstoppable, I don't always love that stuff because then it feels like other guys aren't involved. And Garland doesn't even take a fucking shot in the fourth quarter and they play those guys. So then it gets to like, did you see garland's his actual box score yeah 43 minutes took 13 shots he had one rebound zero assists it was like basically they turned him into mario chalmers in 2011 and you and i are card carrying members of the Garland club.

That's a waste to him. He should be a way bigger asset in this series. Anyway, I interrupted him. No, because you know, like any of these games, there's all these different things that I keep thinking about, right?

With this one, I was like, man, you know, Mitchell's hitting enough shots where you can kind of justify some of this. But if a Coral isn't hitting that corner three, and if you look at his three point shooting over the season,

you'd be like, Oh, Hey, you know what? He's still somebody you have to kind of honor a little bit. Knicks didn't give a shit. They were off him. He missed his first five that he even took,

and then they ended up closing with Osmond against Brunson because they wanted some size on him. The problem is that Mobley's on Randall, and Randall spaces you out. So now Mobley's caught in this, like, how much can I help? That last drive where Brunson went left hand and the left side was open and Osmond actually was content. It wasn't like he got completely torched by him. Mobley couldn't get there in time. Mobley couldn't get

there in time and that also leads to the offensive rebound. 17 offensive rebounds in this game. When you look at the minutes for Cleveland and Bickerstaff likes playing his dudes. Garland 43, Mitchell 44. He played the entire second half. Allen played 43.

And now you have Mobley chasing Randall around. This is 17 offensive boards, the two to close the game. There were four in a row in some other stretch where they scored all four times after the original miss. So the Knicks deserve luck. And you know what I also thought was kind of interesting? Brunson gets his third foul, right? Yeah.

And that's in the second quarter. With a lot of time left. There's like five, six minutes left. I think it's 7-12. Yeah. I got to double check the notes here. And the Knicks survived it. Well, it was their lowest scoring quarter, 9-12.

9-12 is when he sat. Tibbs sat him the rest of that quarter, which is kind of stupid for a guard with a third personal foul because usually if your guard isn't an idiot, you're like, hey, you got three. Don't reach in. Yeah, right. Just don't be stupid about this.

He iced him out the whole time, and then Brunson's coming back and you're i was like i wonder if he looked this good because everybody else is fucking exhausted on the perimeter and he basically got to take an extra quarter off and he's great and he's he i'm gonna i'm gonna do something that you hate when i do it but um i was thinking of the whole game i thought it was a bad becker staff game you know i i I really did. I didn't understand the rotation stuff. He just quit on Rubio. He saw six minutes of Rubio.

He's like, I'm good. So I guess cross him off for the series. LaVert is one of those guys that if you're not going to basically give him the car keys and let him drive around the neighborhood, you might as well not even play him. But the Garland thing to me is the most inexcusable. You and I are very sensitive to when Cleveland's seesaw shifts

too much toward Mitchell, as much as we like Mitchell, because we like Garland. I didn't feel like they tried to create anything for him at all in that game. And I bet in game two, Garland will be the guy they try to fix. New York was doing some stuff with Mobley where they were basically super happy to have him catch the ball at the foul line and drive to the basket and either kick to the sides or go for a layup. They weren't really afraid of him at all. He was bad offensively. It was a bad Cleveland game and they almost won. And I think that would be what I took a fire with them. Like we missed a million shots. We had only one guy play well, and we almost won. So let's regroup. But if I'm a Knicks anything, I feel awesome about my situation because my guy went head to head with Mitchell and outplayed him down the stretch. So just fundamentally,

Mitchell was awesome. Our guy was just as good. We had that. Yeah. There's nothing else to add about how great, I mean, Brunson's just that good. Anytime you think there's maybe this minor limitation on him, it just doesn't exist. But I look, I don't really like the coaching stuff because I usually think it's on the players. I don't understand how you can watch Garland play an entire fourth quarter and not get him a shot

and be like, hey, we've got to work something where he's coming off the ball or have him bring the ball down. We get the switch. He throws it to you. You throw it back to him. And this is always as great as Mitchell is as capable as he is. He's going to have some huge night. He'll probably hit a fucking game winner,

but there is a single mindedness with him where even if it's working a little bit, then you've got other younger players that are kind of like watching it all happen. And Lavert like, dude, he, all he did was come in and miss every shot

and not play defense. If that's what you want, cool. Yeah. It was tough. Well, we'll see what happens with Mobley. This is an interesting inflection point for him. I actually thought he shut down Randall basically from midway through the second quarter on. He ate him up.

And I know Randall's hurt, but Randall looked awesome. And I was watching and I wrote down in my notes, like it was, Mobley couldn't get the distance with Randall with that little step back, herky jerky stuff he does. And by the middle of the second quarter, he had it. And it was like, when you watch a boxer, like Chavez was like this, but Chavez would be too far away. And then by the fifth round, he's like, okay, I'm six inches. Now I'm nine inches closer. Now here's my distance.

And then the guy was fucked. And I felt like Moby figured out Randall as that game went along. All the Knicks fans in my life were like, Randall drives us crazy. He's putting up stats, but he drives us crazy. And Brunson is easily the most popular Knicks since Carmelo already.

And he's starting to climb up the ladder. They've never had a guy who gives them confidence in the end of the games like this. Going back to, I guess, like Sprewell was like the last guy. Or that Sprewell on Houston era of like, man, we can actually go toe-to-toe with these people. Yeah, Melo was a hometown guy, except for the part where he moved to Maryland

when he was really young. Yeah, Melo was like, he's from five different places. Did you have a question for that series or did I, did we already do kind of your material? I don't really have, I don't have a big picture question. Yeah,

I think the games are going to go kind of all over the place. I could see both teams blowing the other out in one of these, but we expected it. It's probably my favorite series going into any of the place. Yeah, okay. I could see both teams blowing the other out in one of these, but we expected it. It's probably my favorite series going into any of the first rounders,

so to see that kind of game, it's not far off from what I'd expect. I don't know there's a huge gap, and I thought that last regular season game where the Knicks put it on them was real.

Some of these late results in the regular season, I'm like, I don't know what to do with that. That one felt significant, and I think that's what we saw in game one at Cleveland. The Kevin Love piece of it

where they had this big contract figure for him, and they just bought him out. I still, I just would have come up with a better solution. We talked about the Hayward thing, whether it would have been worth it to roll the dice with Hayward and carry his contract next year as an expiring versus just not getting anything from Love. Nobody in the

league wanted that contract for next year. Would he have played in that game we watched yesterday? I think he would have. Well, you know. You got to get crafty. You can't just be like, we're just giving away this giant expiring. Especially with the Okoro piece. Unless you feel like Okoro's ready,

maybe they just feel like they're a year away and it didn't matter to them. But it's just weird to me they didn't improve that. Let's take a break and then we get to talk about Trey Young. This is going to be fun. Celt Talks went as we thought. Did start to get the feel of, could this be Trey Young's last series in Atlanta? Because I'll tell you, this is a Celtics fan. The most scared I was was when he wasn't on the floor.

When it was Murray and it was Bay and Bogdanovich and picked two other guys. It was like, ah, this is the lineup that could actually be pretty interesting for us. I just thought he was a liability defensively like he always is. They ate him up. They have so many different guards to throw at him and it's just hard not to think this is the worst possible nightmare matchup for the hawks it's an awful matchup with trey because it's like oh cool i got derrick white i'll switch

into marcus smart and okay now i'm gonna to switch into Jalen Brown or Jason Tatum. Like the thing I do if you run the two string, you know, granted, they don't do everything the way they used to pre-Quinn. But then there was the moment where, you know,

even though they came on late, I actually thought the reason Atlanta got back into this, even though I was expecting everybody to kind of blow like a 20 point lead, is that Celtics, it was so fucking easy. It was

embarrassing. If you're just listening to this and you catch the beginning of this game, it was so embarrassing how easy it was. They were talking after the game about how the defensive strategy was to have them take mid-range twos, which, whatever. Okay. Has anybody thought of this? The Celtics took one mid-range two, I think

if you look at the shot chart in the first half. Whatever the plan was they were so bad on defense as you saw like i almost think boston must have been like holy shit this is the easiest playoff game ever and then they're up 30 32 it gets down to like 12 but the thing that i noticed in regards to the trey part and we could go on and on and on about trey uh is that quinn went to put him back into the game at like four something minutes he was at the scores table three minutes uh he was like three and a half it was in the three and a half range right and then dejante hit a shot and then he capella had a dunk and I think they cut it to 12.

That's right. DeJounte had the layup. And so it was 3-16, and Quinn talked to Trey. And then Horford hits the three. The game's over. They're down 15. And then they put Trey back in. So it kind of avoided the Quinn bench Trey.

Trey benched for the entire fourth quarter narrative that comes out of the game right but something happened something happened there where they were going to put him back in and then it was like maybe do we have some fake run in us so maybe we'll hold off I don't I've been looking for it after the fact if I missed it I apologize but it felt a bit like the Seth Wickersham piece years from now where they were like when he didn't put trey back in at the four minute mark you knew it was done it was it was never going to be the same it's brutal they're not gonna am i overreacting on that i i don't i noticed man i was noticed the same thing i hopped on barrett's off the pike pod yesterday and we

talked about it too it was he's at the scorer's table and it was weird. This is the best guy on the team, allegedly. Right? The roles are reversed. This is Tatum at the scorer's table with the coach going, I don't know if we should put you back in or not, was the vibe. They're not going to miss as many threes as they missed. On the other hand, I don't think it matters because they're

never stopping the Celtics offensively. The Celtics would just have to do the first two months of EMA offense where people are just jacking up terrible shots and Marcus is like, I'm going to try to get 30 today. It would have to be all self-inflicted wounds on Boston

for Atlanta to stop them at all. Yeah, which is totally possible. It's funny. You see somebody look dominant and then you're like, oh, this is sweet. I don't know. I almost wonder if you should play Atlanta in game two because Boston's going to prep for this game going, these guys suck. We don't even have to really execute all that hard.

And you're right. It's like the 13-point home favorite in week five in NFL playing, like, you know, this team you think you're going to roll over and then they're down 7-0 in the second quarter. Or they're up 14-0 and then at the half, you're like, how is this 17-10? How did that happen? Look, Trey Young's now 8-49 from three in his last seven playoff games. The most attempts with the fewest makes

in a seven-game span in playoff history. He did not shoot it as well this year. There's no way they're going to shoot that poorly again. I wouldn't think, but to your point, the defense, like how's that going to get fixed here? And they have all these guards that can just attack them.

I mean, if anything, Marcus was so excited to take it to the basket against Trey. It was actually counterproductive for the Celtics. I listen, if he's not going to shoot the ball that well from three, which he hasn't really all year, and they tweet those rules,

so the whole lurching into other guys thing, which was a huge advantage for him a couple years ago, it just doesn't have the advantage anymore. He still gets it too much. I mean, the dude still took nine free throws a game. But not like two years ago. I mean, it's just a little different. His career high was nine and a half attempts per game

from the free throw line in his second year. I was like, oh, so the league wants to make this guy a Hall of Famer? Like, what's going on here? He was at 8.8 this year, man. So I agree that the hitting the fucking ejector seat into the guy trailing, you know, where Steve Nash one time in a game two years ago was on the sideline going, that's not fucking basketball.

Like, like it was the very beginning of the season. Steve Nash was like beside himself going like, you should have seen me at home. And nobody was even watching that. And I, I think I agree, but at the same time,

like he's still getting the new one is drive hard where you're parallel, you're parallel with your defender. Yeah. And then you flail up and then you take the shot. So you're parallel with your defender, and then you flail up, and then you take the shot. So you're not driving straight into somebody so you can never be the charge. You're driving with them, and they're like wall to wall with you. And then you lean into them and throw it up, and you're like 10 feet out from the side. Honestly, this would be being nice about it, so we'll just move on. DeAndre Hunter, I'm going to give you... You've coined this.

I don't know if it's an official Rosillo. Maybe you call it the Rosillo points, but the I forgot you were out there game. He was out there for an hour, and then he took a three and missed. I'm like, DeAndre Hunter from three. I'm like, oh, he's on the Hawks. I forgot. He'll do that. It was an all-time... Did he miss the first quarter? Where was he? The Rob Williams piece of it where I'm just, other than my own

kids, I don't think I've ever, and Gronk, I don't think I've been more scared for anybody just sitting on my sofa than every Rob moment. And when they're up 20, I don't think they should play him. I want to talk about White really quick because he bumped Grant out of the rotation, basically. He played 39 minutes in that game. Grant's out.

They went eight-man rotation. They're playing more guards. Hauser got like the token 10 minutes for the eighth man that probably would have gone to Grant. Maybe they're saving Grant for Milwaukee, but it's like, it took Joe Maz six months to realize,

Oh, I need to play Derek White. He's the third best guy on my team. And White was absolutely ridiculously outstanding yesterday. Like really, really, really high level. Good.

Like I really just, there's such a good game. And I listen, I thought they should have gotten to this point sooner. At least they got there. But I don't think we see Grant unless there's a Milwaukee series. I actually kind of think this is what the rotation's going to be. They got up 30 and didn't play.

Yeah. Hauser got the 11 minutes that maybe you could see Grant getting other than, well, Brogdon and then Rob Williams is coming off the bench right now. But if Rob doesn't play a game, I think, does Blake get those minutes or does Grant? Like, that becomes a 50-50 coin toss at that point.

And look, they're trying to prove a point to him to some degree as an asset. I think this is all really good for him. If you're the Celtics, like, yeah, you didn't even play in game one of the playoffs. Like, we're going to talk about the contract yeah I think from a leverage standpoint some of this stuff seems

purposeful to me but then on the other hand he hasn't played well I'm sure he feels that way and you might be right and I honestly can't wait if he's on a new team for the first Grant sit down interview about this all playing out the way it is but he hasn't been as good this year.

He has not. And specifically defensively, which is weird to be young and kind of drop off. But do you think the Celtics would try to win at the negotiating table while costing themselves valuable minutes for him? No, I don't think they would do that. No, I think it's the two together at the same time.

He hasn't really earned the minutes, but I also think this is a pretty decent outcome if you were like at four for 55 and he's at four same time. He hasn't really earned the minutes, but I also think this is a pretty decent outcome if you were like at 4 for 55 and he's at 4 for 80. And now guess what? We're not in that neighborhood anymore. Now we're in the 3 for 30 kind of range, if that. It'll be more than

especially with the new TV thing. Well, I thought he got offered more than that actually. Kelden Johnson, I had heard was the desired deal which was what was that four years yeah four years 90 maybe that's what Kelden Johnson got four years 90 yikes

four years 80 plus? Gotta say that Derek Whitetrade was for Brad to just do that and Horford, two of the better ones. Wait. It's just hard for me to imagine a guard

playing for what he's supposed to do. A guard playing basically better the whole season but especially in that game. I was glad America got to see it um i'm glad boston got to see it because they couldn't figure it out last year and you're you know anybody that watches more than just celtics games you're talking to your celtics buddies like this guy sucks what's wrong with brad stevens you're like he doesn't there was a body language thing with him that he that's gone no here's the deal if he looked like if he looked like train man, people would freak out. He's got sham at everything, not just sham at face.

He's got sham at everything. Net Sixers. Look, the Sixers are almost definitely going to win this series probably pretty easily. I just don't understand how you play the Sixers and you don't try to spread them out with multiple guards. If you're not going to do that, then don't even play the series.

That's your one chance. Spread them out and shoot threes and try to make Harden guard people, try to put some miles on Harden, try to make Harden, he's playing a little too much defense and he stubs his calf or whatever happens. And if you're not going to do that, I don't know what you're trying to do.

You know how certain stories like there'll be some tragedy and you're like, how come that didn't get more play? You're like, oh, well, because there was an election. Yeah. Or how come this isn't being, you know, and it's like, like really it's not so much about what we prioritize it's just or maybe it is about what we prioritize but like it doesn't mean we don't care about something it's just something else got in the way it happens all the time right you look back and like how come that wasn't a bigger deal i think when the nets blew this thing up in the beginning of february and the record i think the last time we could look at it would be,

I don't know, 32 and 21. It was like 12 games over 500, yeah. Yeah, 32 and 20, 32 and 21, right around that range at first because it's two separate transactions. So they were like, let's say 11 over. They finished 45 and 37. So I think when they made these trades, they were like, oh, they're going to fall off a cliff.

They don't fall off a cliff. There's far more interesting NBA stories. This isn't even like, you wouldn't even put this in the show rundown. But because they ended up with that six next to them, Bill, it felt like, it was like, man, the plucking nets. Like, look at this team. And you're like, do you realize

they actually were below 500 the whole time? So them getting stomped by the Sixers is what's supposed to happen. They're not good enough. And they have like, they're a bad physical matchup, too, for this group. If they had done the you-get-to-vote-for-who-you-play rule, which I still like, even though it puts some chip on your shoulder stuff, but let's say Milwaukee's there at one,

and they could have played, they get first pick, right? You can play any of the teams that are left. You can play the Heat. You can play that are left. You can play the Heat. You can play the Hawks. You can play the Nets. Or you can play the Knicks. Which one do you want? They take the Nets, right?

Yes. And then probably the Hawks? Yeah, I'd rather, I mean, even with Miami's offense, which apparently is going to show up now in the playoffs and Strews is unbelievable in the second playing game I mean the Hawks are so predictable and I just think they're kind of fucked but from a talent standpoint

even if there's all these pieces we like outside of bridges like we're talking about the fourth or fifth options on good teams like there's a lot of guys on Brooklyn I like but not to be the second guy in a playoff series. Dean Witte,

not one of my favorites when he's in the role he's in right now, where it's like, I got this, guys. You could even hear it in that weird Kuzma stuff last week where

there's... He said something like, I could be the third best guy in a finals team. And it's like, you could? What are you talking about? In-season tournament finals team? Yeah.

What finals team? The G League finals? He's just, he's a little too competent to be a third guard and not nearly competent enough to be like, let me run the whole offense through me. I don't know. I would still like to see them spread it out and go bombs away. Bridges has been the one big winner. By the way,

didn't what he did was credit I thought was really good with Dallas. When they brought him in, I went, oh. The Washington thing was really weird because he was kind of like a man searching for an island and then he gets the contract and you're like, wow, he actually ended up getting that. But as talented as

he is, he's a really talented dude that can do a lot of different things but it's really about how he finds a way to fit in and i think with a void after bridges like him going i've fucking got this john lucas meme style it it i don't know i think i think what happened in dallas is like the best version of him because he kind of knew the pecking order of like, I'm not going to have as much freedom. I think D'Angelo Russell kind of falls in that a little bit. Like when D'Angelo Russell feels like there's zero repercussions, it's like the worst version of him. And now I think we see with L.A., despite, you know, look, the Timberwolves game wasn't very good, but it's a more subdued version of him.

Can I ask you a question about the Nets? Yeah. How many times have you forgotten Ben Simmons is on the team? Never? Or sometimes? They mention him casually during the game and I jolted. I forgot he was even involved.

What an amazing turn of events. It's actually like it's moving up the rankings for most improbable. Right? When Richard Dumas just disappeared off the face of the earth it's actually like it's moving up the rankings for most improbable, right? Like when Richard Dumas just disappeared off the face of the earth after his 93 run, it's like, I get it. He had some substance issues. Like it makes sense to me. He's just, we're not talking about him anymore. Simmons thing is, you know, under 25 years old and an all NBA player.

And now is just, you know, it's almost like sean livingston style it's just out of the league i mean clearly we all know he's on the nets but i was having like a moment as i was watching harden and i was thinking about all the ben simmons and bead stuff where all these people from philly used to argue that they actually could play together and it was like it's not based on basketball it's just you fucking hoping yeah you know and like your thing moves when they have good games together so that was the basis of the analysis. It would have been fun to have him in this series, though. Right.

But anyway, so then to see Embiid with spacing, to see Embiid with spacing where you can't help off a Harden who was really good. Tobias Harris, who, you know, we want to talk about the disappearing game. He's kind of the captain of that team. He was so aggressive. Should we call it Tobias? Yeah, I think we should. Because that's always the Tobias joke that I make too often. I'll just be like, oh my god, the Sixers

have Tobias Harris? Welcome back, Tobias Harris. No, he's been here for an hour. No, and he was terrific and everybody's hitting threes. I think McDaniels was like the seventh guy to hit a three in the first half. They shot the hell out of the basketball. But to see Embiid with actual real spacing as opposed to the Simmons stuff, which then gets back to the trade where you're like, man,

did the Nets solve their fucking problem? Like, when you start thinking about who could be traded for who, right? Like, John Wall could only be traded for Westbrook and vice versa. And then you're like, who could Trey be traded for? I'm like, I don't know. Who could Gobert be traded for? Who could Cat? Again, these really early, because Cat, this is too soon to do that to him.

But you start to have these inner dialogues, and you're like, okay, well, Harden was quitting, and Simmons refused to play. So you're like, I guess that's why they get traded for each other. And you're like, fucking Daryl lucked out. He must have private moments going, I can't believe i ended up with this even if it's a diminished version from p carden as opposed to the mess that this could have been or the trade where you're trading simmons for three bit pieces realizing you're number two talent wise doesn't match up to the other contenders number twos like i know we spent a lot of time on the transaction but i couldn't help but think

about it just going look at this and beat with spacing and shooting and decision making in a playoff series where granted they should smoke them, but this is all about the second round. The foul line stuff he's doing, which he perfected over the course of the last two years, but it is, it is turning into one of those things. And I think Jokic has some of this too, where you just, you're watching. It's almost like football. How do you stop this? What's the right defense? Is it, is it like, do I just put six D backs in? How do I stop this?

Uh, the Celtics are about as well equipped as anybody to, to stop it because they have size. They have multiple guys to throw at him. And, um, my whole thing is I'd rather, I feel this about anybody,

I'd rather have somebody score 50 points than give up 30 wide open threes. I'd just rather have him score and let everyone stand around and watch it. I feel like I'm better off doing that. I totally agree because if everybody's making shots, they're playing defense harder, they're boxing out. I mean, it's all connected. If you're sitting around watching somebody go off like cool for that guy but you just know it's human nature as a basketball player you're just not going to play as hard the rest of

the way like remember pop in 2005 when they did that to nash that now go ahead nash go get 40 a game nash is like but i you're you're cut i have no one to pass to i i guess i'll score again and it completely fucked their team up that's's what I would do with Philly. Like, Embiid, have 50. Go ahead. But I know you love, like, the revisionist history, like alternative paths. Yeah.

And this isn't new or groundbreaking stuff, but to see it play out and it all be together. You know, Embiid gets hurt last year. Harden was hurt, so we didn't really get the full brunt of it. The Simmons thing, we still weren't sure quite how that was going to play out because it was like man if he actually is just healthy with the nets he's going to have all this freedom on these cuts with all these other dudes around him like your life will actually be pretty fucking easy man and you're out of philly you're not the number one pick there and to think like what could have happened like what you would get sliding doors, like what you would get for Ben Simmons. The sliding doors.

Yeah. Well, remember Sabonis was available on eBay for three months. And I remember talking to you about, I thought if you got a sell on Simmons last year before Harden popped up, just take Sabonis, figure it out for a year. At least he's an asset versus this declining asset. I think that Halliburton Heald package was available. There was stuff that they could end up with, but I think they really believed in Simmons. You go back and read the stories from a year plus ago, and that's why this guy's great. It'll only take a couple of weeks to wind him back into shape. Nobody seemed

to be alarmed that he was living in England, in LA, and didn't seem very interested in playing basketball during his sabbatical. Clutch dropping him was the final ignominy of the whole thing, right? Even Clutch was like, we're out. Okay, but that was after they... I remember that summer, and it was like, he's never playing for Philly again.

Yeah. And I was like, okay. And then I remember even going like, oh, cool, he didn't go back injury. Mysterious, although it isn't a mysterious back injury because it's happening again, which is what teams always fear. And it's like, no, no, no. It's just like mental well-being.

And I was like, oh, okay. There was a knee at one point. There was some knee stuff. There was some impingement. There was some soreness. Just seeing the heart and Embiid thing look right and spacing and what he's been able to do and probably winning an MVP. And you're like, you got lucky at the right time because all Kyrie had to do was play

and Harden would have been more into it. And I don't blame Harden. I don't love guys just going, hey, I'm going to suck now for a while, trying to get out of here. But I don't blame Harden forever going like, oh, so what's the deal with this team? Well, the flip side is Darryl was patient until the right deal popped up. He never wavered from like, I'm not trading this guy for parts. I need an asset back. We talked Sixers Nets for 12 minutes, 13 minutes there and didn't mention that Harden actually looked pretty good.

I think we did. My big red flag with them was, what's he going to look like? Is he going to be limping around? I thought he moved really well for where he was two weeks ago. I thought he played great, but we'll see. I'm not going to be changing my Harden playoff stance against the Nets.

Me neither. Before we go, today's Retradables is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Whether you move to a new place or stay and put this season, you need SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe secures your homes with sensors that monitor

every window and door for intruders and door and outdoor HD security cameras to keep an eye on everything. Hazard detectors guard against fires, floods, and carbon monoxides. Which guys got traded to a new home

and looked really good this year? I guess Rui Hachimura. That was a good one. Well, it took a little while. Mike Conley looked okay on the T-Wolves. There's been some good ones. Sometimes KD on the Suns. We'll see how that goes.

Sometimes being in a new home can help. Just like a team needing some defensive glass, a home needs the right protection. There is no safe. Like, simply safe. I didn't even tell you what we're doing for retradables because you're versed on it. Here's my question for you.

Have the Lakers officially won the Anthony Davis trade? How many times have you done the second? How many times? I'm doing it again. Did they win? Have they won? They didn't even get the pick swap this year, the Pelicans, because they finished with the worst record.

So here's what it ended up being. Ingram, Lonzo, Josh Hart, Mo Wagner, a 2019 first that was DeAndre Hunter that got traded for 8, 17, and 37. That became Jackson Hayes, Nikhil, Alexander Walker, and Herb Jones. A 2022 first, that's Dyson Daniels. A pick swap at 23. And now a 24-25 first is the only thing left in this trade. So basically they get Ingram, Dyson Daniels,

and the pieces to trade for CJ McCollum, basically, which we could argue whether that was awesome. And then Herb Jones was the second rounder thrown into a piece of this versus what we saw from Davis today and the ceiling that it gives you and LA already won a title. I was adamant like, hey, look,

you win the trade if you win the title, but man, they gave up too much. I think I have to wave the white flag. Rosillo, they might've won the trade. Palenka. Well, they already wonillo, they might have won the trade. Palenka. Well, they already won a title, so they won the trade. But even if they didn't win the title, would you say they won the trade? I feel like you've changed your mind on this like 17 times.

That's what I do. I admit defeat. Was that the most annoying? I admit when things change is that the most publicly annoyed you've ever been with me let's see here no the way you answered that you're like yeah welcome to the show I was on

this Davis trade they gave up 180 cents to the dollar island but now you look at it and it's like Lonzo's probably never going to play again like he might have to be a medical retirement Island. But now you look at it and it's like, Lonzo's probably never going to play again. Like he might have to be a medical retirement, you know, that has to be factored in. DeAndre Hunter, we just joked about earlier in the pod about he was in a game. I didn't realize he was out there for an hour. That was the number four pick that year. So basically it's Daniels and Ingram and some pieces for CJ McCollum. I'm trading Anthony Davis for that.

Now, it could come back to Haunted next year, but think where we were six months ago when we were like, oh my God, they might get Wimp and Yama for that pick. They didn't even get a pick. They didn't even get to swap. Yeah, that felt like the most non-talked-about underlying factor in being like, we need to improve no matter what because we can't have

that happen where it's going to be like a haunting thing and everyone will be fired and they'll be doing 30 for 30s on this. So let's not have that happen and we'll just improve everything. I feel like six hours ago when Anthony Davis said he couldn't feel his right arm, you may have said, hey, did the Pelicans

win the trade? And if DeAndre Hunter gets 30 in game four and ties the Hawks Celtics series, will we revisit this next Sunday and be like, you know, did the Pelicans win the trade just based on Hunter the asset, even though they moved him?

Herb Jones? What if Dyson Daniels makes all NBA in his third year? Hey, Rossello, this doesn't mean I'm not going to flip my opinion on this trade eight more times. This is a record. I didn't say it was over. I just said right now.

Name a transaction you've talked about more than this one. Pfft. I mean, recent NBA trades? Probably not. I just think it's crazy that the Pelicans, they got so much for that. So much. And now, four years later,

it's like, alright, well, we missed the playoffs again. We had a worse record than the Lakers again. Where are we? And now the Zion piece of it too, right? Yeah, that's fun. Did you read the Griffin quotes about Zion? Yeah, it's just a miscommunication.

Okay. Which part are you talking about? Griffin had that thing. He's like, this is partly on him. He's got to do a better job of taking care of himself. He was the most upfront with being a little disappointed in how Zion takes care of himself that I've seen. Okay, well, anyone down there knows the deal.

I know. I'm just saying what they've done publicly. They're very delicate about it because that's the new operating procedure with the NBA. Even if your main guy is fucking up a little bit, you don't say anything about it because you don't want to make him mad. Yeah.

But at this point, what's he going to do? Demand a trade? Like, okay, cool. He's completely out of shape. That's why he doesn't want to come back and play and this is and this is not a cashmere little number situation where i think the the photograph this isn't derrick jeter walking to spring training where it looks like he's at a bad angle the videos that were posted of him dunking like hey look at him usually those look awesome

i was like nobody was even defending him and they looked pretty bad and this is unfortunately kind of his mo it just has been and i think they've been very protective of it but the fact that like he had had media availability that he didn't want to do after he would say he would do it it kept happening over and over again and then he finally does it and he kind of fucked it up and whatever maybe he's just young and he hadn't talked to anybody for a long time but it's

really unfortunate because I think the thing is they're protective because everybody really likes him you know I think that's part of it it's not that they think he's a bad I've never heard anybody say like oh he's a bad guy or anything like that I don't even know if I would say it if I'd heard it and like some sadness about who surrounds him and whether he has a North Star in his life that could help him. Well, hey, you know what you would do?

And granted, we could talk about how young everyone is in this stuff. And you get older. I think I always know that I get more sympathetic to it. But I'm also like, yeah, well, most of us aren't the hopes of an entire city. Okay? more sympathetic to it but i'm also like yeah well most of us aren't the hopes of an entire city okay most of us are not you know looking at nine figure investments as well some of us but we're not looking at these investments in ourselves we're in your early 20s you have to kind of handle it a certain way um also maybe the worst city for him to live food wise I think what you'd hope is like hey Zion like this summer you have one conversation with somebody he can at least

connect to at some point and be like hey so this hasn't really worked out has it like a doctor a doctor with ozempic or like hey maybe we just overhaul the entire program wanna do that or maybe you talk to the hawks maybe we just overhaul the entire program. Want to do that? Or maybe,

maybe you talk to the Hawks. I wouldn't trade. Maybe you start taking superstar swaps. Maybe you talk to Portland. Maybe you talk to, I don't, name five other teams. The Wiz.

Are we doing this right now? No, we're not doing it. I certainly would, would, he's, he's? No, we're not doing it. I certainly would. He's off my, he's not being traded list. I'll tell you that much. The Retradables was brought to you by SimpliSafe. We'll do Anthony Davis again next week.

Every week, it's just going to be Anthony Davis. No, when Dyson Daniels lights it up. Yeah, we'll bring it back. Two years from now. Yeah. SimpliSafe name, best home security system with 2023 by U.S. News and World Report. CNET is editor's choice in 2023 for home security.

If you're moving to a new home, you want the best protection. Remember, NBA teams with best protection can also achieve some top ratings in the postseason. There's no safe like

simply safe. Priscilla, I will see you a week from Sunday. We'll see. We'll see how many topsy-turvy things happen in the playoffs. And this podcast was produced, as always, by Kyle Creighton, Steve Cerruti. Russillo will be back, what, Tuesday morning?

Tuesday morning. We've got Katy Perry. Katy Perry. Fantastic. And I'll be back Monday. Rewatchables. We did Alien. It was fucking awesome. Hall of Fame episode. That be back Monday. Rewatchables. We did Alien. It was fucking awesome.

Hall of Fame episode. That's coming Monday. Don't forget Succession Prestige TV podcast as well. I will see you on The Speed on Tuesday. I don't have On the wayside