The Bill Simmons Podcast - Boston Wins Game 2, Plus NBA Draft Stuff, Nets/Hawks Advice, and the Next Lakers Coach With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the Celtics' Game 2 win vs. the Mavericks, more Tatum struggles, Jrue Holiday's brilliance, Kyrie's slump, the keys to keep Dallas's hope alive, series predictions, and more (1:25). Then Bill and Ryen talk about the puzzling 2024 NBA draft (1:05:18), get into Jimmy Butler's uncertain future (1:24:30), and offer up offseason advice and fake trades for the Hawks and Nets (1:33:42). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, game two of the NBA finals live from Boston. Next. 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 gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day, all the gang's 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 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 Lights today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action. FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season

because you have to go into the season thinking, I think Pittsburgh's going to be good. I think the Chargers are going to be good. I think Seattle's going to be good. And then trying to back what you think in those first few weeks and then zag the other way if you were wrong. You could bet on new and fun markets on FanDuel

like to catch a pass, same game parlays, highest scoring game across the Sunday slate. Offensive TDs in the next drive. They have so much stuff, it's crazy. The app is safe and secure and easy to use. And when you win, you'll get paid instantly. Plus, look out for FanDuel Squares this season. Here's what you have to do.

Visit FanDuel.com slash BS to download America's number one sportsbook. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem called Win 100 Gambler or visit rg-help.com. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network, where we have a new episode of the rewatchables coming on Monday night. We did breaking away because we're, it's definitely a sports movie month.

It might even be a greatest 70 sports movies month. They might just might happen breaking away, which is just an all timer and holds up beautifully. Please go check it out. You can watch that episode on a ringinger Movies YouTube channel as well, where you can find all the rewatchables plus the big picture with Sean Fennessey. It is on that YouTube channel.

So please check that out. Coming up on this podcast, Priscilla and I are both in Boston. We're going to react to game two of the NBA finals. Then we did a bunch of stuff for the second half of the podcast. We played a little, what would you do with Atlanta Brooklyn, did a bunch of stuff for the second half of the podcast. We played a little What Would You Do

with Atlanta Brooklyn, talked a little Caitlin Clark and the Olympics and a bunch of the stuff that's in the Zeitgeist. Jimmy Butler? Yeah. That is all next.

First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, taping this 1120 East Coast time. I'm in Boston, Massachusetts. I went to game two of the NBA Finals. So did Ryan Brasillo. It was, I wrote down on my way home, multiple heart attacks, turnovers and missed threes, could never land a knockout punch.

As many Tatum questions as answers, Porzickus might be hurt. And we somehow covered it. We're up to nothing. Those are my initial notes. It was just a classic heart attack special. And now they're in the driver's seat and it's going to be a very tough team when you're 78 and 20 in the season to conceive of them losing four to five times. That's why I want to start there. Where is your Nick Chubb level right now? My what level?

Nick Chubb, running back. Ever heard of him? What's my Nick Chubb level? I don't know what that means. Just level of arousement, excitement. Your self-serve 2-0, Bill. Like, where are you? Let's start there.

Let's start there. Let's take the floor. I just want to know how you feel. I love Drew Holiday. He is 2004 Patriots personified. He was unbelievable again tonight. I think he had 26 and 11 rebounds and zero turnovers. And he guarded Luka and Kyrie for as much of the game as possible. And in the second half, it didn't seem like Luka was psyched to have Drew on him.

I thought he was the steadiest best player on the court on either end other than Luka. And that trade, the fact that Milwaukee makes this big move for Dame, they trade Drew to Portland. He ends up on Boston five days later and he's been their best player in the finals. It's just crazy how that worked out. Milwaukee makes this big trade to beat Boston and gives Boston the guy who's been the difference maker in a bunch of these games.

Where do you think... I just thought of this. This could have been a whole title for a pod. But the anger rankings of other franchises watching this series play out. Where's Milwaukee? Is there anyone higher than Milwaukee? Is Minnesota?

I still think Minnesota should be so mad going like, Hey, we probably matched up better against Boston. If cat, you know, I know we've covered the cat stuff already earlier on the pod today. I just, just out of the top of my mind,

I'm like, I wonder how many other franchises are watching this going like, are you fucking kidding me? So that's a great question. I'd put Denver first because Denver matched up with Boston the best and they just have to be like, Oh my God, we're out in round two. And now, you know, watching 20 point lead to Minnesota at home in a game seven and blew it. So I'd put them first. I would put probably Milwaukee second for giving Drew Holiday to their biggest rival in the East. And then, you know,

Minnesota has to be watching this series going, oh, that's what we should have done. And we said this, you know, during and after that Minnesota-Dallas series. I just don't understand a lot of the decisions they made, especially with Kyrie. And one of my big predictions I made all week was like, I just thought Boston matched up

really well with Kyrie. I thought that Kyrie praise was some of the most over the top stuff that I can remember with national media talking about whether this was the best scoring back court of all time. Um, just talking about him, like he was Allen Iverson in 2001. And he had 16 points. He was 7 for 18 for 16 points. A ton of hero ball. And Boston just kept throwing guards and size and just kind of making him go one-on-one and take bad shots. And he was dribbling into two guys.

He was throwing the ball to teammates with like four seconds left in the shot clock. I thought he was abysmal. I thought he was so bad in that game yeah i don't think the stats will tell the full story i thought he was awful like i didn't i didn't want to text you because i wanted us to talk about it live on the pod i thought he was so bad yeah because it was a lot of like all right i'll i'll get us there and then he hits a shot he's letting the crowd have it the crowd's letting him have it the whole time and then i was over in this corner where they were really giving it to him again during a time stoppage and then he starts like turning being

like bring it on bring it on and clearly like he has that gear in him so it's not like grant williams being like i'll be i'll be your hero i'll be your villain right i mean this is kairi but you i kept waiting for like these these buckets to to happen and i kept thinking like there was this one one attempt i think it was 189 and he took a three and it was like clearly a i'm just just going to take this shot, which he certainly has the right to take. But yeah, there was just, there was just a lot of him tonight where I was like, this is sort of flashy.

Do you remember that Jalen Brown possession where he stayed in front of him in the first half when he tried to work Jalen? That was unbelievable defense by Brown. They just have a great team to guard him. And I think if you're Minnesota watching this, you're just wondering why you didn't have Daniels on McDaniels on him as much as humanly possible and just try to put him in a position where he's trying to be guys one-on-one because the other thing he's not getting other guys involved, you know, he's got 28 points in two games,

but it's not like he's setting guys up. He's not creating when he creates like an alley-oop. Like now when pj washington has an open three i just kind of shrugged and i know he had 17 but he was one of five from three then they had to run threes too right they had to run gafford as the number one option offensively in the third quarter because that was the tatum thing that we need to spend some time on and what dallas was attacking and then you've got jones who's over three from three like all of these things okc's going to be watching this just like you said with minnesota going oh so now you guys are going to turn back into the shooters that we weren't afraid of as opposed to making everything and taking

turns looking like steph out there so i don't even know that kairi has anyone to pass to right now that i'm even afraid of they had two lobs the corner three thing is non-existent because nobody's helping because everybody can play straight up defensively for boston yeah well the other piece you know it's the finals and you're on the road and it's a different kind of spotlight which was one of those as somebody who likes the celtics i was counting on it's like cool pj washington and jones were making threes in these earlier rounds, but they've made two corner threes. They've made two corner threes in two games. Well,

and they, and you made the key point that PJ was passing up threes by the second half. And he made a couple of good drives and little floaters. And there's that weird little Euro step jump hook thing that goes in sometimes, but the Celtics were, I mean,

they couldn't have been happier when Jones was open with the ball from 24. They were like, knock yourself out, dude. They weren't even guarding him. He went 0 for 3 with an air ball. PJ wasn't making threes. Kleba, who, you know, Dallas over and over again has been able in the last like four or five minutes of these playoff games, they turned into the 2004 Pistons on defense. I don't really understand it, but they were scrambling with Kleba, but he couldn't make a shot either. He doesn't want to shoot.

He's done this now twice in this series where he's been on the right side, the right break, going left to right, and he has a catch. I'm like, okay, let's see. His shoulder must be messed up to the point where he doesn't even want to shoot, which is a huge problem because he's actually pretty good defensively.

You could think, all alright, if the lively Gafford stuff isn't happening, then maybe we can give it a different look and go five out and it opens up some of the stuff for Luke and Kyrie, but now Kleba would be somebody I would be saying, if you're the Celtics, being like, don't even close out on him until he makes two of these. Yeah, and Boston

was doing some funky stuff in this game that I liked. They were playing three guards. They were playing White and Howd and Prard a couple of times. And they're in a situation where, you know, they missed so many threes. Hauser came in and had a, had a one man rock fight. I think he was 0 for 5 and all five threes were open. But when you think about how many threes that the Celtics missed, you know, we were saying before the series, I thought, I thought Boston and six was my pick because I thought there'd be one game that Luca just won by himself. And I thought there'd be one game where the Celtics just didn't make any threes.

That was tonight. They didn't make any threes and they somehow won by seven and they somehow covered. They were 10 for 39 from three, but on the flip side, the Mavericks were two for 17 on the, on the non Luca threes. And, you know, if you're looking at them, you had 89 points in the first game, 98 points in this game. And you and I look for the same things when we watch these games. Sometimes it's like, Hey, do I like the shots you're getting? And B am I worried about the shots you're getting? And in, am I worried about the shots you're getting? And in this case, I thought Dallas just had a lot of possessions where I just didn't like their shots. Luka made some crazy, crazy threes, one-legged stuff.

But for the most part, I didn't like the shots they got. And I don't really know what the fix is. They don't have another creator other than those two guys. So if they're going to shut out Kyrie, what's the fix? Well, what we liked about it was it was two on-ball creators, which I think every team needs is like a default thing

to go deep into the playoffs. And when it was working for Dallas, you're like, okay, but it's because all the other stuff was working too. And there are certain things with Minnesota where I would say that's going to be incredibly frustrating

for them. But then the other stuff that Boston does on offense where I think Minnesota can't even be mad about it because this is the whole point of Boston. When Boston's at its best, it's five out. It's five different shooters. It's four guys that are pretty good with the ball in their hands. And that's going to put stress on Dallas' defense in a way where Minnesota, they could ignore all these other players. So we've been over that.

So I think there's some things in Minnesota where it's frustrating. And then some things where you have to be realistic where you go, well, I couldn't pull that anyway, so what am I even trying to do? But Luka had 20 points with 10 minutes remaining in the second quarter. And looked like he was headed for 60. He hit one shot and the crowd made that groan where it was like, and we've been at those games a couple of times. Me and my dad were when that groan happens,

you're like, Oh no, this is going to be one of those games where Luca has like 54. And but he had more assists. There was other things that were happening too, but go ahead. Yeah. Well,

I remember that I looked up at one point and it felt like dallas was dominating the game and luca was hot and it was like 35 29 right they're up six that's the whole first half that's a good that's a good sign they're down the building they're down four they're down six they're down two they're up four when the entire first half is playing out the way it did of course luca getting off to that incredible start but from that point on where he had the 20 at 10 minutes left in the second quarter, he had only five points over I think the next 17 plus game minutes. You're like, wait, now he's not even involved with the scoring, certainly at the pace, but now it's kind of non-existent. And the whole game in the first half, I think you agree,

I think that's what you're saying, is that it felt one way and the score consistently said something different the whole time. Yeah, I wrote down in my notes, it was Boston 36-35, took the lead. Seven minutes left second quarter, big white three for the lead. Luka 20, I wrote down. Tatum was one for seven. And I wrote Celtics two for 12 from three and winning, three question marks. Because it was just unclear how they were winning

because Luka was playing well but the thing is nobody else in Dallas was playing well and that was the big thing you mentioned that there was a little tiny Gafford stretch there and he had a couple big offensive rebounds PJ made a couple plays but if Kyrie's going to take 18 shots for 16 points

they're not going to be Boston in any of these games, right? They're going to have to have somebody beyond Luka who can score. And I also felt... No, they need 60 points from those two, and then let me know what happened with everybody else. Yeah, they need to be in the hundreds, because this Celtics team, it's just too hard for them to be under 100.

But sitting up close watching Luka, I thought he got... First of all,, kid, there was a couple more. I actually liked how kid coached in that game because there were multiple moments where it felt like they were going to get like the Celtics were going to blow them out. My dad and I kept, we were talking like, this is it. We're up 10. This is the run right here. And they would miss a three, but kid felt it. And I think in the third quarter, he just decided I can't take Luca and Kyrie it. And I think in the third quarter, he just decided, I can't take Luka and Kyrie out. Because I think he was going to try

to stagger the minutes. And he just was like, all right, fuck it. And left those guys in. But they, he just didn't, like they put Jaden Hardy in the third quarter.

And I think he was hoping like, oh, Jaden Hardy, rational confidence. And Drew's like, I'll take, I'll take Hardy. And that was it. We never saw Hardy.

But they just, they just can't score enough points. And this is the first time, you know, in these other series, they would keep it close, keep it close, keep it close. And then Luka would steal the game down the last four minutes. But I think it's too hard for them this series. So for them to flip it, what happens? What would be like the three things you think? Like Kyrie would have to, I think just, it sounds stupid, but he'd have to shoot better. But, you know, 18 shots, I didn't

mind the shots. Yeah. I mean, Kyrie going 12 for 18 instead of seven, 18 would be one thing. I don't really know those roll guys, I guess. Could you say, all right, Jones and PJ, if you go eight for 12 from three, that'll help. But I don't trust those guys. So it's really the defense and the stuff that I thought they stumbled into the last five minutes, really, when it was 103-89. And then all of a sudden, it just felt like Boston couldn't score anymore.

And they really felt like they unlocked something defensively. And I think that's what they're probably going to concentrate on. Like, maybe this is how we win. These games have to be like 92 to 89. That's the recipe. Yeah.

But that's just saying like, Hey, let's do this. Cause I want to, I want to talk about like the biggest thing Tatum was terrible, which I know we're going to talk about. So I'm not jumping ahead. Cause you have this look on your face.

Like I'm screwing up the, the outline. I think that's an after the break combo. I'm ready to have it. It was awful. So I was wondering, because when I originally, as game starts, I'm looking for like, what are they looking for? They wanted to get Tatum on Luka as much as they possibly could. Their decision was let's attack Tatum where I'm going, whoa. Because Tatum's a very good defensive player, but it seems like they were just trying to put miles

on him and try to wear him out is my guess. Yeah, and Luka was actually beating him, but then there would be these Kyrie possessions and they were like, put Tatum back in it. I'm like, man, is this, because I kept thinking like, oh, is there something else coming from this where then there's a

lob waiting? I counted two lobs in this game. Yeah. We mentioned the corner three stuff that didn't happen. Do you think Jason Kidd cared more about the take than he did winning game two, that Jalen Brown is the better Celtic? Was that your first take tease? Jason Kidd said it's not about the game or the finals. It's about the take.

And that's why we put Tatum in a blender. JB's the best Celtic. Listen, the fact that he did that made me feel better about the Celtics' chances because doing that after the first game, to me, said that Jason

Kidd didn't like how the series was going. That's a move you make when it's 2-1 or 3-1. He played the card after one game. He's playing the let me start a Tatum Brown thing. I thought it was bold but it made me think that he feels like he doesn't have that great of a hand

in the poker game. Do you think he comes back after the four game threes like honestly Revolutionary War started in south carolina uh that's a great call because i think it it was because people were like what do you think i was like i'm shocked that somebody did it clearly he did it for a reason but these guys have been together now going back to the 17 18 series series. Like maybe if they were 23, maybe it would get in their head a little bit,

but like Tatum's actually, his passing was good tonight, but, uh, I just didn't think it was going to affect those guys going through the wars that they've already been through together. I was amazed by it because it was so clear he was doing it for a reason, hoping it was going to work.

And your point's awesome. Like that's a game four move. Yeah, that's like a we're down 3-1. Let me throw this against the wall. Holiday said after the game about Tatum and Brown, I feel like how they play together and how they work together is something that is sacred and something that can't be broken. Wow. And I think I agree. I've watched those guys for a long time and I just feel like, I feel like they're on the same page. I don't feel like there's ego with those guys at all. I just don't.

I don't see it. Let's take a break and we'll talk about Tatum. The NBA finals are here and FanDuel is giving you the chance to win alongside the champions. Right now, new customers get $200 of bonus bets with a winning $5 bet. That is $200 to use on same game parlays, live bets, and so much more. Depending on how you feel game two went, you could bet the entire finals, exact score,

what the exact sequence of wins are going to be throughout the series. You can bet finals, MVP, all kinds of things. There's no better place to bet all the finals actions than America's number one sports book, especially if you love doing those same gay parlays. Just download the app, take a shot, an extra 200 bucks. Just go to FanDuel.com slash BS to get started. FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. You must be 21 plus, 18 plus in DC and president in select states.

Game, prom, call 1-800-GAMBLE or visit rg-help.com. First online real money wager only. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawal, but bonus bet which expires seven days after receipt restrictions apply. Seat terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com.

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 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 Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal

and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right, Jason Tatum is now 56 for 158 in eight NBA final games shooting, which is 35.4%. He finished 18-9-12 with 12 assists. And a lot of them were nice assists. He was 6-for-22 with 12 assists, and a lot of them were nice assists.

He was 6-for-22 shooting. Guarded Luka a lot. Rebounded. Played hard. Body language was the first half. He was bad, man. He was bad. Yeah, the body language was bizarre

because it got to the point that... Because he wasn't playing well. Nobody's in a good mood. No one's body language is awesome when you play as bad as Tatum does for somebody that's supposed to play really special, supposed to be finals MVP. I don't know that anybody would ever have great body language playing the way he just did tonight.

I mean, as bad as he was in game one, tonight in person was so much more horrifying because of just seeing somebody stuck in between decisions. Like, he was shot tonight mentally. The level is a body language and this is why I brought it up. Tier four? Sorry. Let me think.

Yellow? When somebody makes a shot and they do the thing where they look up at the sky like, finally, thank you. That's when I get concerned. Because you're the fifth best player in the league. You shouldn't be surprised that you just drove to the lane,

got fouled and finished a layup and you, it should be like a fist pump. Like finally I got it. His was more like a, I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and finally something went my way. And that was what scared me and my dad. Cause we were like, like key words,

Sedona like keyword Sedona below Delta I just didn't like it I thought second half it was better but first half it was alarming Luca does that all the time he's pissed a bunch of them haven't gone in

about damn time this was different Tatum did not instill a lot of confidence in that first half and it was the big at halftime it was what everybody was talking about in whatever section you were i was like what the fuck's wrong with tatum what's wrong with him and then somebody else would be like nah he's having a good game no he wasn't man like whatever now he's got five eight assists whatever like i look at because i know people just can never get past this talking about kairi but like kairi was awesome compared to tatum i mean this was he got put into every action so you could say oh no he

was tired he was tired he's stuck in between like what he wants to do and when i looked at the first game you go okay his first shot attempt was at 319 of the first quarter all right he had two field goal attempts in the first quarter but you were looking at it where it wasn't always a zone but it looked like a zone the way they were paying attention to him and i thought his first good look was like a dunk with two and a half minutes to go in the first half like that was the first good look was like a dunk with two and a half minutes to go in the first half like that was the first good look but here's the point is they were up 37 20 after the first quarter because everybody's firing porzingis is great so like that part of the tatum thing is like all right then they're up 58 29 so it's like what am i really even looking at here because this game was tighter throughout you're paying attention to the longer stretches of tatum like the six

turnovers in game one were all terrible they were all bad and i thought at some point he had figured out hey the help is constantly coming up that's where that drew holiday thing is happening time after time and then there's that derrick white little baseline thing that you can look for so that part of tatum's game it looked like it was coming around but every layup was like coming off the rim but then it was all wearing on him four fast layups those hard layups to the basket that sometimes when he's not going well he'll just miss those and that reminded me of 2022 watching it but that's where i think down the stretch it just started getting uglier and uglier he was one of seven in the fourth quarter

and it looked like when he was catching the ball, I don't know if you'd agree or disagree. Like the thing that always scares me with a player who's really special and Tatum is, is you're like, Oh, he doesn't know what he wants to do because none of it's working. And that's where you're like, maybe just give the ball to somebody else then. So even if you look at, I like on ESPN, you can do the play by play and you can just look at the shot chart for individual guys. And the thing my dad and I were talking about, the last piece for him, because I don't think he's a finished product yet.

I know some people, he's played over a hundred games. Now I feel like, I feel like there's, no, I'm not ready to go there yet. Cause I think, I think there's one other piece to his game that he just, he can't figure out. And here it is. I'm looking at the shot chart. He didn't take a single shot in that like foul line paint anywhere from eight to 15 feet around the foul line, which the Mavs were giving him over and over again. And if he beat his guy off the dribble, it was either I'm going to the rim or I'm going on the rim and kicking out. And it wasn't just like, I'm just going to stop and take this little 10 footer, which is what makes Lucas so special is Luca gets by people. And then it doesn't really

matter. He'll shoot on anywhere in the court. And I just, for whatever reason, Tatum cannot unlock that piece mentally of just, I'm just, I'll just shoot from 12 and I'll make it. And it's something he used to do earlier in his career. And I just, I don't get it. I got to tell you, Bill, I love the work here on the shot chart. You're looking at it. Yeah. Look how empty I'm looking at it. It is around the foul and it's Chris Paul land is deserted. That's a great way to put it. The Chris Paul shot is the thing. That's why I don't feel like he's a finished product yet. Because what he needs is the Chris Paul shot.

Because he's beating these guys off the dribble. And then he does know what he wants to do after he beats them. And the Mavs are just like, we're going to protect the rim on you. We want to make you go fast and whip layoffs against the backboard or kick it out. And if he had, if he ever gets that 12 footer, it'll be something. But I just don't think he's a finished product yet.

I know that's crazy. No, but now, now I understand what you're saying. I mean, I still kind of disagree, but I just think sometimes when people have absurd numbers when they're young and they're like,

Oh, imagine when he's 27 and you're like, well, what do you think? You're just going to give this guy 40. And I know that's not where you're doing with Tatum. And tonight was so bad. It's an efficiency thing.

Like last night, or excuse me, game one, I watched all of his possessions and his drives again. I was like, man, they are showing him a ton of traffic, and he's just not ready for it yet. And the six turnovers, all of them are bad. There's not one where you're like, oh, that one kind of really wasn't on him. They're actually, it's kind of rare that you could have that many turnovers and not have a couple where you feel like, ah, that's not that bad. There's not one where you're like, oh, that one kind of really wasn't on him. It's kind of rare that you could have that many turnovers and not have a couple where you feel

like, ah, that's not that bad. But tonight, I thought, okay, he'll probably look at this a little differently. He'll be more aggressive. He's going to be ready for that help. And that's where the passing came in. The close of the game, I was you just see it. You could just see it. It's like he doesn't

really know what he wants to do. And as they were about to piss that lead away, did you want the ball in his hands or did you want it in Drew or Brown's? Granted, a lot of Drew's work was coming off of the Tatum drives, so there's still value of what he does and how much he attracts the defense his way. But did you want the ball in his hands

when it was like a 9-0 run there by Dallas? It was 103-89, and then all of a sudden it was 103-98. The Celts did the thing that they've been doing for the entire Tatum Brown era, where they had a lead and they slowed down, and they basically go into a four-corners offense and get a lot of shots near the end of the shot clock. And all of their bad habits came in. It sounds, it's just crazy to complain about a team that's 78 and 20 and is up 2-0 in the finals. But this was, this game was a microcosm

of a lot of the stuff that has gotten the Celtic fans worried over the years. And I do think if Luka was healthier, I think he would have stolen the game. Because the big thing that I felt, especially in the second half, was I just didn't like the way Luca was moving. And, you know, I'd heard some, they did that weird thing with the injury report before the game where they said he was questionable to play.

Obviously, he was playing. I talked to some Celtics people who said there were people sitting near the bench during game one and a couple of times he came out and just kind of pointed to his knee. Like he had a problem with the side of his knee. And I don't love the way he's moving. And I don't think he was moving like this last round. Like if this version of Luca we're watching this round was in the Minnesota series, that series is probably different. If Luca gets hurt and sits out the rest of the series, worst title ever. Now that would be head games by a kid.

Watch this. Luka out for game three. Now what are you going to do, Boston? But here's the thing. He's pointing to his knee. He had a jog bra on of some kind of wrap around his chest on maybe the brown collision that was pretty violent in game one. So then it was like, what is it?

And it was an upper body thing that he was even downgrading. He kept pointing at like a rib or something? Yeah. Right. So he's, I'll give that he's hurt. I'm not dismissing that. I'm just telling you he's first team all NBA. When I'm hurt, you're going to know I'm hurt.

Fair. Did you think he looked better last round or this round? I think he looked better last round. And there was a stretch even tonight's game where I go, is he more hurt now because they're down 9 or 10? Oh, it's one of those. It's like stuff kid's poll. I think he's a really dramatic guy out there.

Do you think I'm crazy on that one? I mean, I can't imagine anybody's watched him and would think otherwise, or they just haven't noticed it. Well, I saw him in the first round against the Clippers twice, and I didn't think he was moving great in that series. I would agree.

And then I thought it was even worse against Oklahoma City until he closed and then I thought Minnesota looked awesome. So he may be dinged up and there'll be something or whatever. I'm just telling you, when he has something that is bothering him physically he wears it like not just a shirt but like

he wears it like not just a shirt but like he wears it like a fucking stove like pipe hat is that what it's called what did abe wear stovepipe yeah stovepipe hat one of the things that i think wasn't helping him was that they have all these different guys that can try to attack him and i don't know what the numbers are. Cause we're taping this right after the game, how many times he had to defend somebody one-on-one or fight through a pick or stay with somebody. And you know,

that's Minnesota does they're not putting the miles on you. Right. It's basically, and was their only creator from the perimeter. Um, there's really nobody else. And then guys, right.

So it was just a much easier series for him. Um, I, there's really nobody else. And then guys run. So it was just a much easier series for him. My guess is that Dallas comes back in game three and shoots better. But if I was a Mavs fan, I would be concerned that the Celtics haven't shot the ball yet that well and that they actually have had some really good road games,

not just in the playoffs, but all season. Like I don't, to me, this is an, Oh, this is what happens. Series doesn't start.

Like I think either of those teams could win on either floor. And I could totally see the Celtics going into Dallas and game three and really shooting the lights out. Um, it's a fascinating, what do you think the line is for game three, really shooting the lights out. It's so fascinating. What do you think the line is for game three, by the way? Boston minus... Do you think Boston's

favorite in game three? Yeah. Dallas is favored by one and a half. Whoa. The Celtics are now 10-1 favorites to win the finals. What's the finals MVP now, by the way? Where's Tatum now? MVP is now almost midnight.

Tatum is even odds. Jalen Brown, plus 185. Lucas, plus 650. And Drew Holliday is 9-1. And if I had to vote, I would vote for Drew right now after two games. So you're surprised that... You're not surprised that Dallas is favored?

Because there's a matchup argument here, especially with the advanced stuff of how much Vegas and every model has loved Boston um and I god I'm I'm a little surprised that you could get points with Boston even with the there's a lot of good there's a lot of good game three team down 2-0 no you're talking back home you're talking to captain you can't fake desperate. But this is a bad basketball matchup for Dallas. It is. No, you're right.

It's a bad matchup for them. And you had to hope Luka could continue the superhero trend that we've seen now, by the way, for a few weeks. And the supporting cast, he had to do what he's been doing with the supporting cast maintaining and right now they're they're not even a factor it's just so funny how different it feels when those guys catch the ball now maybe it'll be different at home um and i certainly respect dallas and luca enough to get. I guess I'm just with something still at play here. Here's the point I actually should make.

If I'm a Dallas fan, I'm furious. I'm furious they lost game two because this is the game that everybody in Boston has been worried about for six months. That, yeah, even if they get there, they're going to have that awful game where they stink it up from three. They were 6-30, Boston was,

and they were up 83-74, okay? And then, they gave us, as you pointed to, this had every single Boston fuck-up setting. They did everything in this game. Tatum was awful. They couldn't make threes. Luka was torching

them. And then, they're up, and they give up the 9-0 run and the whole building's like are you seriously about to blow this game are you seriously going to do this is this going to be the atlanta hawks week all over again with the nba championship on the line like one of you guys can't get a bucket with all of these options not one of you is going to get a stop they did all of those things in the last two and a half hours and Dallas still couldn't win the game. And that 9-0 run was coming off Porzingis seemingly getting hurt.

Yeah. And then he's limping on. Everyone's watching him going, ah, he looks hurt. We should take him out. Possession. They don't take him out. Dallas has the ball. They don't take him out.

Possession again. They don't take him out. Kyrie beat somebody off the dribble and Porzingis has to chase down block behind as he decides not to go for it and lets Kyrie have the layup. And an hour earlier, it would have just blocked it. Then Joe calls the timeout. And he said afterwards that he's fine, but he did not look fine to me. And I thought he tweaked it. So you have the KP tweaks is whatever. And then the Celtics go in that crazy funk um but drew when it was 97 89 that was when kp tweaked his leg they called time out and then the big sequence was drew getting that steal when they kind of trapped alice in half

court and drew gets the steal and ends up hitting the three they get get a stop. White hits a three. Crowd goes nuts. So you knew they were probably going to win at that point. 103.89 with three minutes left. And yet, somehow, 103.98 with a minute 15 left. Dallas gets a stop. Washington comes back down. And White, who is basically the greatest shot blocking guard since Michael Jordan. I don't even know who to put.

Once again, makes a great thing. And they were saying afterwards, like apparently Jalen did a slight shove. I thought the refs missed a bunch of shit on both sides in this game. I just didn't think the refs were awesome. And I don't think it really hurt either team. I mean, I don't think it benefited or hurt anybody.

They just, there were missed calls. There were guys getting shoved. I thought the game had like a weird flow to it partly because of the refs um yeah it was physical it was definitely i'd rather be physical i'd rather be that way than the mistakes um it just depends on who you're rooting for and you're only going to pay attention to the calls that went against your team you're never going to look at it the other way saying like oh that probably should have been called that was kind of a gift there why did they call travel there but not on one of the other guys i just thought there were a lot of moments

we're like what the fuck was that uh yeah i would i would give you two when tatum drove in the first half and looked like he ran into a brick wall and it was just like a tackling session at the rim i was like wait they called that on the floor oh yeah that one that's right that one was like, wait, they called that on the floor? Oh, yeah. Remember that one? That's right. That one was like, wait, what? Yeah, you know when the players are just looking at each other in complete confusion, you know it's a bad call. Everybody was confused. Because he was trying to lay the ball in and got fouled.

Right. I'll give you one for Dallas. I actually think there's a few in the second half where if you were Boston, you probably get the memo at some point, like you can probably do whatever you want at the rim right now. You do whatever you want. And there was, that Tatum

one was weird because they called the foul, but they didn't want to give him the free throws. I thought at the other end, it was like no layup was safe. No layup was safe the way it can be in other ones. It's like you can ones. You can kind of get into it a little bit and some contact at the rim, up high, up low, but they're going to let you play.

Tony Brothers getting worn out by the crowd. The home crowd, Bill. They were letting Tony B have it. Listen, Tony B took some abuse. The Kyrie Sucks chants were consistent. And there were some jokes about Luka's weight. I'm just going to be honest. A guy in my section told him he looked fat.

And Luka turned around and told him to go home. It was an actual exchange that happened in the third quarter. Yeah. The one I liked the most, and I don't know if it's true, but I kind of want it to be true. There was a big Kyrie sucks chant going on when Kyrie lined up on the free throw line outside of Horford so he was taking the big man spot and he weighed Kyrie Kyrie kind of like looked back and and he just he can't help himself

like he gives these state of the Kyrie addresses constantly, and they're fucking so boring. And Horford, you're right. After the first free throw, the chant died down a little bit, and then Horford kind of were like, no, let's keep these going. Yeah. And I went, whoa. He did that for the Gafford free throws too.

Yeah, Horford's a little bit. He'll go to the end zone section and he'll try to uplift them. Kyrie probably has the most at stake the rest of this series on Dallas. I mean, I think Tatum, the Celtics are in a good spot if they win the title. There will be some nitpicking, but ultimately, Hey, he was the best guy in a final statement. How much are you going to say the Kyrie after the two week Kyrie celebration about that? This was one of the great offensive players of all time. And he has 28 points in two games.

And by the way, is averaging 22 in the playoffs. And I was making this point last week to you that Jalen Brown for the last four years has been a better scorer in the playoffs than Kyrie. Jalen Brown's been a better scorer this year and Jalen Brown has outscored him in both games. And, you know, I just think sometimes there's certain players and it doesn't matter what the sport is, where your eyes tell you that they're better than the actual results. And Kyrie, this is who he's been the last six, seven years. The guy from the 16 and 17 playoffs who was 27, 30 a game consistently and was unstoppable. I don't think he's the same guy anymore. I think he's still a really good offensive player against certain matchups and certain teams, but I think you can take him out.

Well, I thought the defense on him was terrific, but I also think he just had moments where he wasn't playing in any kind of system. He was like, I'm going to make some of these ridiculous shots because he's capable. So I can't really ever blame him for wanting to do that stuff. But I thought every time he decided like, okay, it's my possession, it just becomes easier to defend.

Not to stay in front of Kyrie necessarily, but everybody else is like, okay, well, what are you going to do, buddy? You going down there? Can we between your legs a little bit? Like, oh, you're going to go do this? You know what it is? You know what it is?

It's sports movie offense. It's you're watching the sports movie and the other guy on the other team's like, they're talking shit and the camera's next to the two guys. They're talking shit. He's like, okay. And he starts going,

doing his legs, trying to beat him off the dribble. It's like above the rim. Eric needs it above the rim. That's really good. That's kind of the offense that he has. And it's not in the flow of anything and nobody else is involved. You know he's getting 50 now in game three as we talk about this, right? I don't think

there's a scenario where he gets 50 against the Celtics team. I think it would have to be a seven overtime game. What about the Mayan calculator? I'll tell you this. I w I was in, uh, I was in,

you know, I'm in Boston. I went on FanDuel and I did just for fun. I did a parlay, like a same game parlay, which actually, Oh, look at you.

Um, but one of the things was Kyrie all adjusted under 25 points because I just think it's going to be really hard for him to get 25 points. You know what else I put in there in that same gamer? A Derek White block. Derek White block, one block every game for Derek White is like minus 160. It's like the lock of the playoffs every game. He gets a block every game. It's like guaranteed he's going to have an awesome block at some point in the four quarters. Today he had two,

but he had that like, Kyrie went for the layup on him and he stayed up in the air and kept his hand up and blocked it. Guys, I've never seen a guard block like, he's like 6'2". And then Drew's probably one of the other great shot blocking guards.

You know what I love about Drew is how good he's at, and I know he's always kind of done this great shot blocking guards. You know what I love about Drew is how good he's gotten at, and I know he's always kind of done this, but maybe it just feels like he's doing it against bigger and bigger players. Like seeing him do it against Cleveland, seeing him hit that layup against Siakam. Oh, that triple up fake lefty layup? Yeah.

Yeah, the number of times he gets the biggest guys who are just right in front of him going, there's no way you're going to get this shot off against me. And he can't go to Ben, go to your son and say, hey, look, lock of the century of the week. It's these Derek White block totals we're going over. So like you are going

to either SC or you're going to Bridgewater. What do you want to do? No offense to Bridgewater State had a lot of buddies that went there played linebacker for one semester you know another thing I love about Drew is watching

him only a couple guys can do this hopping the screen where the guy kind of sticks the leg out a little bit and he can hop around the screen but stay in front of sticks the leg out a little bit and he can hop around the screen, but stay in front of the dude. And it's just like watching, I don't know. It's like watching like a Kung Fu movie or something. He jumps sideways, but then goes backwards and he just keeps his position. You're like, how did, how did he do that? It was like that move Kyrie

had in game one when he beat Horford on the baseline. I was like, how did he do that? It was like that move Kyrie had in game one when he beat Horford on the baseline. I was like, how did he just do that? I don't even understand how he got by him. Edwards was doing that in the Denver series too with Murray where he would hop by these Jokic screens and somehow stay coordinated. The list of guys who can do that is not long. Caruso

can do it. It's a short list. Suggs fighting over screens is one of my highlights of the season. Suggs can do it um it's a short list Suggs fighting over screens was one of my my highlights of the season Suggs can do it one of the things I always think is kind of funny like afterwards when these teams and the Pacers did it and I like Carlisle but the whole 78 missed calls in games one and game two like okay cool and then of course my all-time favorite was the Daryl Morey referendum after his team couldn't make a fucking shot. And when you watch the games

live and the number of times we were like, okay, they have to let all of this stuff go or we'd be sitting here for four hours. But guys were chucking other dudes into screens tonight. There was some stuff that was happening on the screening. Yeah, Kleba was shoving Porzingis

five feet. I was watching it going like, this doesn't seem normal. And then Lively would actually get involved with it. And I think both teams were doing it, but it depended on your perspective throughout, where that would be the whole point if you wanted to release some sort of official manifesto. By the way, I'm on the official side as I build to this point, is how do you count those? Do you just count every single time something physical happened against one of

your guys away from the ball and you're like hey don't stop until you get to 60 infractions like awesome right because it's just way easier to do that's why whenever that stuff happens i'm like i don't care i don't care what your count was because i know you're not counting the other ones what's the old chris paul move of just start doing it in the first three minutes of the game. And as soon as they never call it, then you're good. Now you can do it 50 times, right? You just club dudes on the side as they're dribbling up. He was the master at it. Um, big picture. I'm going to give you two bets that are on FanDuel right now. I'll give you three. Celtics sweet plus 270, Celtics in five plus 175, Celtics in six plus 490, or Celtics in seven plus 490 are just the Boston winning the finals bets. Which one of those seems, if I told you the series was going to go seven or four,

what would you pick? I'd pick seven. So you think Dallas can fire back? So you're expecting a big... Well, you gave me a sweet for seven. I never think anyone's going to get swept. I never do. Because I just think human nature kicks in too often.

I still am a little surprised that you can get Boston plus points because it's a bad matchup for Dallas. It just is. For all the different reasons we talked about the whole thing, we knew it would be a bad matchup. I just figured that Boston would have this game and they'd lose this one and they'd be going back to Dallas 1-1. But Boston won. Boston won the bad Boston game.

Yeah, I would pick the sweep over the seven just because Boston hasn't really played that well yet and they're up 2-0. They shot well for three in game one. You don't think they played well in game two, dude? They were up 58-29 and they cut to eight with

four to go. They gave up a 29-9 run in game one, though. I can't say they played awesome. I think they played awesome other than the close of the first half into the first eight minutes of the third quarter.

And that was the only part of the game Boston didn't know. What did they shoot from three in that game? They were 38% game one. Right. Right.

But they haven't had the game because they do this once a week where they have the game where they're like 22 for 40 from three. One of those, my point is they haven't had one of those games yet when it's just like NBA, uh, NBA gym flames shooting out on the flip side. Kyrie hasn't had a good game yet. So if you're a Mavs fan, that's what you're banking on. And I think that's it. I think if he doesn't have a good game in the series, they're going to get swept. I don't think they can win any of these games if he doesn't play well.

If he's going to have 16, 12, 14, 17, 18, like that's just not going to be enough. Unless they do the, let's turn this into the mid-2000s finals. Let's make these 92 to 89 super physical. Let's go that route. Slow it down. Because they tried to play fast, I thought, in the first half.

You could see they were trying to get in their actions faster, especially with Kyrie, trying to speed up what they were doing offensively. And it worked for about a quarter, and then the Celtics caught up with the pace on it, and it didn't work after that. Especially since they started missing threes. I don't think it's sustainable for Luka to be having to defend

as much as he is more so than against Minnesota. And then also when Kyrie's not going to show up and no one else is going to make any shots, the corner threes are nonexistent. There's no lock threat like there was against Minnesota. It's like, hey, Luka, can you get 60? And we hope they miss a million shots. Tonight has to be, I just left the arena going like,

I can't believe if I'm a Dallas fan, Boston did like three of the bad things all in the same game. And they still won. Maybe, maybe Jason Kidd could say he thinks Peyton Pritchard's the best player and then the Celtics will play him more.

Because this may not be a Peyton Pritchard series. They ran a play that they've ran a couple times this year at the end of the third quarter and it worked. And he banked a running three in. That was a huge momentum shift. And then did the Peyton Pritchard thing, which I love when he does it. Started doing that.

That's what I do. Coming back to the bench and high-fiving everybody because it was a set play and he actually scored. He did bank the three in, but I'm not sure if that was intentional or not. I just feel like every minute

that he's out there, granted, he only took two shots tonight, but you know he was 0-7 in the first game. He, uh... Yeah, and then he transferred it. He did the it follows and he transferred

the evil being to Hauser. Can we predict a Jason Kidd mind game move for between game two, game three? No bigs. Hardy, Josh Green, Luca, PJ, Kyrie. There's nothing he could say to the media, though. He's got 72 hours here I don't know it sounds like you may have something

cooking what do you think he'll do probably a lot probably something about the officiating and some things he didn't like probably planting the seeds on how they're defending Kyrie or something like that that would be my guess.

The other move is talking about how they need to be more physical in the finals, especially when you get to this level, it's going to be a war and we're not showing enough fight. He's going to do like the kind of prodding his dudes to just be basically knock the Celtics around a little bit and see, yeah, it's a pretty, it's a pretty, uh, you know, mellow Celtics team for the most part, maybe try to, uh, intimidate them a little bit would be a move and kid love, you know, he was on those nets teams that were, uh, played with Kmart, uh, with tumblehead, the elbows,

but I could, I could, that Dallas in 2011 was one of those teams right he might call his own team out he might say hey PJ you're missing Derek Jones you're missing we need to get Lively more involved with a Kyrie and I doubt he's going to go I don't think you go at Kyrie

I think it's a constant massaging thing where you show how appreciate he is I don't think you can go at him at all. Kyrie, you're doing great. Please, Kyrie. And you're just not going to mess with Luke because it's not like unless you want to do like the coach's son thing where you yell at the coach's son to get the out of shape kid to pay attention who's picking his nose. You're not going to say anything to him. Do you think he does that?

I saw some guys who were afraid to shoot. I saw some guys who were afraid to shoot. I saw some guys who were afraid to protect the rim. Kliba's arms might not work. That might be the reason he's not shooting, but I would, the Kliba one really stood out. Oh, you know what would be a good one for him? Here would be a good one.

I thought the two toughest guys in the game were their two guards. Because then it's insulting his team, but it's also kind of a backhanded compliment to some of the Celtics. But he says Pritchard and Hauser. Then it really gets cranked up a bit. I'm excited to see where this goes.

Well, it's just a classic 2024. They could sweep and they could finish 80-20. And people are like, Tatum shot 36%. It's just one of those teams. Is he a superstar? I know he's the finals MVP, but is he good? So far, that would be the most fitting thing ever. They win game three.

Luka's not active for game four. Boston sweeps. They're in Dallas. They didn't play anyone. Tatum shoots like 29%. They would have lost in Denver. Jalen wins. And then local radio is immediately being like,

do you have to trade one of them now? Do you actually have to trade Tatum? Can these guys coexist? They'll be duck boats. And people are still going to be like, huh? I don't know. We'll see.

How many teams should they have lost to if the injuries hadn't worked out for them? Should they have lost to Milwaukee? Ding. There's one Denver. If they just had it screwed up game seven, there's two just go through. Yeah.

That, I mean, look, they figured out something with the math and they figured out the switchability on defense and the fact that their best players don't have to be awesome for them to win close playoff games, which is something that a lot of other teams cannot say. How about we do this, though, for just a second?

If they weren't able to, look, pull this off, it looks pretty good so far. I think most people would agree. They're 10-1 favorites, so it looks solid. Yeah, the run of injuries, I think most people would agree. They're 10-1 favorites, so it looks solid. Yeah. The run of injuries, and look, a lot of teams have injuries that happened in their past. This was more exaggerated because it was just all of these guys all over the East, right? You could really start making the list longer, although I don't know how Brunson's broken

hand is on the Celtics somehow. But there has to be some, and no one's really going to do this. But if they were to win the whole thing, Bill, I think there's also like a fair conversation that's actually complimentary of the Celtics being like, hey, you know what? When they decided to flip their tough guy, Marcus Smart, right, for Przingis in this deal, when they traded – The heart and soul of the team. Yeah, right, heart and soul of the team.

I don't see a lot of those pieces anymore. When they traded Neesmith for Brogdon that led to Drew a little bit later, like the Celtics built real depth. They built incredible depth with people that could be trusted. So is it their fault that they had more depth than some of these other teams? And, of course, like no Giannis Embiid constantly being a question mark in all these different games. Halliburton going down.

Mitchell. Like I'm not trying to tell you this was tough. I do think that there's a positive though on the other side that's completely ignored with valid criticism about the opponents. But the compliment should be, hey, the front office. Think about how great of a job Brad Stevens has done here. And it almost feels like this weird afterthought because Ainge had drafted the other

two guys. Yeah, the KP and Drew trades the combination of those and and the ball I think the Brogdon thing and then Derek White like to go the balls the balls to trade smart and how that went over in Boston and how upset people were about it and just like people you and I talked to about bass smart they traded smart that was crazy why'd they do, you know, it led to a bunch of good stuff. The Drew trade was, I think, more logical, but being able to build a sustainable So the finals would erase that. It would be their first title in 16 years. But it's an amazing success story with really what goes back to trading Garnett and Pierce in the first place, if it happens. Doing that trade, which leads to the Tatum Brown picks, and then doing these second ones. And over and over again,

they were proactive in the right times, which I think you could say the same about Dallas. But I do think whatever happens the rest of the way, people are going to talk about, it'll be a yeah, but title. I know it is. That's how it's going to go. It's going to be a yeah, but.

You were pretty fair about the Lakers bubble title, So I, I know, I know you, you would hope for the same fairness. Well, I'll tell you this. I'm waiting to see how LeBron interjects himself into the finals this week. And I think it's going to be effusive praise about drew holiday, how he's the one guy in the league he always wanted to play with followed by some sort of story about how he was pushing the Lakers hard to trade for him and Palenka didn't get it done or something but LeBron knew that Drew was he he knew this was going to happen I could see that because last week I thought he played the Kyrie thing really well that's good what he wouldn't give to have Kyrie again no that's good be like I thought he played the Kyrie thing really well. That's good. What he wouldn't give to have Kyrie again.

No, that's good. Be like, I can't believe the Celtics ended up with Drew. That was my number one target. I tried to tell everyone that's who we should get. Be a good one. All right, we're going to take a break and then we're going to throw it to the other part of the podcast, which we taped earlier in the afternoon

and is very enjoyable and has a lot of NBA talk in it. Celtics up 2-0, unless you have any other stories from the crowd or any Boston stuff that you saw tonight. I saw nothing. You know what I like that they're doing? They had Char as the hero among us in game one and then Matthew Slater today for game two.

I like bringing out the popular athletes they really i thought supercharged the crowd i thought that was cool and in general i thought the energy in there was great it's just so funny that there was 10 points during the game where the crowd was like the roof's gonna come off uh miss three roof's ready to come off ah miss layup and, they just could never get over the hump and make this, this awesome game, but maybe it'll happen. And it had to be louder game one,

right? Yeah. The KP, the, uh, the KP stretch when it went from whatever tie game, the 3720 was the loudest. I can remember it being since,

um, you know, probably two years ago. I wasn't at the Tate and Philly game. I got something for you. Oh, you weren't there for that one? That was probably pretty nuts. I wasn't at the game seven, but I heard that was a really good crowd.

I think they've done a really good job making all the stuff right around the court feel more packed than ever before. I just remember there was more space, and now that there's very little space which doesn't make it easy to navigate it feels like there's just extra rows now and it just fills in in a way i don't remember it when i used to live here but maybe i don't know maybe i'm just older and i feel more crowded um i went up and did the celtics pregame show with Scal, house and Tom.

Yeah. Oh my God. So you want to hear something funny? So it was great. So I walked up and there was just this one angle of me to be able to like get through the crowd and then just go to security guy. And I didn't even look at who was at the desk. And there's this pretty put together.

You could tell like former law enforcement guy white guy older than me and he looks at me because i'm like kind of coming up to be like hey you know i think i'm going on here soon can i get through and the guy's like i don't know who you are and i don't know what you're talking about i was like i'm totally okay with you i don't expect anybody to know but the producer's right over there i'm in the next block and they want me in and then he like was looking at me and then i look and realize he's adam silver's bodyguard so he saw me like kind of beeline oh towards the set and thinking why is this guy like walking so aggressively like in a straight line and then being like, Hey, I'm, I'm going up there. And there was like a back area, but I wasn't,

people can pretend, but like, I'm never rude in those situations. I never expect anybody to know anything, even though I, you know, had this big badge on and he's like, look,

I'm here with Adam Silver. Like, I'm not, I don't know what you're talking about, who you are or who the other guy is or whatever. I'm here for Adam. And then I kind of like put it all together. We both put it together. I go, Hey, you must've thought like, what is this guy doing? whatever. I'm here for Adam. And then I kind of like put it all together. We both put it together.

I go, hey, you must have thought like, what is this guy doing? He goes, exactly what I thought. He thought he was like, you're like an assassin. Yeah. I was like, I can't believe Seattle's gone. So then we both like. Disgruntled Sonics fan from 07.

In the moment, he's like, I can't believe you left Clark off the Olympic team. He's like, dude, that's a different commissioner off the olympic team he's like dude that's a different commissioner that's different it's not adam that wasn't adam so then it was just this awesome moment of like both of us laughing i was like you must have thought he's like i was ready to tackle you and i was like i did not want to be tackled and then the producer comes over and he's like ryan we're over here we're over here so adam silver your guy is on it and then was also like what i love with people that are in some sort of authoritative position because granted those

people can have terrible attitudes because they're dealing with so many assholes especially it's something like this a big event we had this moment of like relief where it was oh yeah like i was wondering what your deal was and i could see why you would think I was in charge of this whole set, because I'm security. I'm in front of the entrance. And we all worked it out, man. And then I said hi to Adam. And then I went on, and it's pretty funny, because Scal, Eddie, myself debated Tatum Brown. And I was like, look, I don't want to do this. Jalen Brown's Game 1's probably one of my all time favorite Jalen Brown games I loved it but Tatum's a better player and Eddie probably wanted me there for the post game is there an alternate universe where you just live here and you're like

battling Felger on some different station and doing the Celtics pregame post game and really enjoying the fucking shit out of it would you want to do it for like a year? No. Okay. Me neither.

Do you think about it sometime? It would be a fun... Do you like to do that? Do you ever do the alternative, choose your own adventure, Bill Simmons stuff? No, it's just like... You never do that? You never think like, hey, if this didn't happen or this didn't happen? No, I'm saying like right now,

would it just be fun to do it for a year? Oh, if I'm doing anything fun for a year? No, I'm getting league pass in St. Bart's and I'm doing like a boat thing on the weekend.

That's the closest I would be. Are you going to Haralabob? No, I can't afford Haralabob. Division three St. Bart's basketball team? No, I can't afford Heralabob. Division 3 St. Bart's basketball team? No, no, no. I mean like St. Bart's and then get better at boating and then just keep

doing this. It was probably because my buddy and I had had a few drinks but we were doing, he was like, what could you do right now? Because he's got kids, they're driving him crazy. And he was like, could you do this? And I went, yeah, I think I could do that. And then he was like throwing, it was basically, it was a list of like seven different things of like, could you do this? And I was like, yeah, I probably could do that. He's like, come

on. And then it would just like over and over and over again. He just kept, he also- Is there a world where you could just be a bartender at Barney's Beanery for like five days a week? Not at Barney's, but there was talk. Oh, like Manhattan Beach maybe. Yeah. There's been a few jokes about would you actually do like a Sunday shift here? Like non-NFL season? I couldn't do an NFL season. I i mean no matter what we have to do on

sundays but then could i do like thursday nights maybe during the nba season would i want to would i have my towel so now you're talking kyle's language right maybe maybe it'd be better if i owned a place and i was like hey the owner's here on Thursdays. He checks the register. See, that now sounds like a sitcom. Podcaster? Yeah. I don't know. I feel like they already did that. NBC replacement schedule. Sports media personality opens a bar.

What if you made it more like The Bear, where it was cool? We've got Topher Grace. He's interested. What a great setup with The Bear bear when the guy's like, I thought you were dead. He's like, no, that's my brother. It's just such a good line in that show where he's like selling stuff. The guy's like, I thought you were dead.

He's like, no, no, I'm not dead. We got to go to break. And now it's time for today's hard to handle segment presented by State Farm. When you get a new car or new home, your first reaction might be to say things like, I can't handle this. But what you should say is something that can help. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. So let's get into some moments this week that really gave fans a show. Game one, NBA finals. We're sitting there in the stands. The Celtics come out before the game. No Porzingis. We look at the Jumbotron. Horford's in the starting lineup, not Porzingis. And we're like, what the heck is going on? And a few minutes later, Porzingis comes out, crowd goes nuts,

comes in midway through the first quarter and just starts making everything. And within, I don't know, five minutes, we forgot that we had complete anxiety that Christoph Porzingis was not going to play in the NBA finals because we had no idea what was happening. That's the thing. You got to know how to handle moments like that. The crowd got into it. When things feel hard to handle, like when you need help protecting what matters most, remember to say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. State Farm, there to help answer insurance questions about your car, your home, other things that matter to you, whether it's on the phone, online, or on the award-winning State Farm mobile app, which I highly recommend. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Visit statefarm.com to learn more.

Whether in the game or in life, the right coverage can make all the difference. Securian Canada gives you that coverage. For more than 65 years, Securian Canada has been helping Canadians build secure tomorrows. Their insurance solutions are designed to help protect you and your loved ones financially, giving you the peace of mind to focus on what truly matters. Find their products through banks, credit unions, and associations. Or visit SecurianCanada.ca. Securian Canada. insurance designed for life.

RBC has helped millions of young Canadians turn their most likelies into most definitelys, making their ideas happen with scholarships, internships, and skill development, plus resources for artists and athletes. Learn more at RBC.com slash support youth. All right, so we're taping the second half of the podcast on Sunday afternoon before the finals game, because we wanted to bank some stuff. There's some NBA stuff happening. There's some draft stuff happening. Being in Massachusetts with access to FanDuel,

where you could just be like, ah, screw it. I'll bet on the NBA draft. I was looking at the odds and I've kind of settled on a hot draft take opinion, Priscilla. Would you be shocked if Klingon was just the number one pick? Not even close to being shocked. Okay. So he's, as we're taping this, he's 15 to one on FanDuel to be the number one pick. And I've talked to some NBA people the last couple of weeks and especially in person this week. And it feels like he's the only one in this top five that people are like, I at least know what that guy is. And I wonder if that just

trumps all the other stuff in this draft. Because like we talked a couple of weeks ago about the way to think of this draft is just to slice off, pretend there's a top seven that already got drafted. And now we're starting at number eight. And when in a normal draft where you slice the top seven off and you get to number eight. And when in a normal draft where you slice the top seven off and you get to number eight, teams start drafting a little more toward need than they do for best player available. The point is that I'm not sure

there is a best player available. And Klingin is just shot blocker. He's been really successful. He won a state title in high school. He's won two in UConn, although the first time he was a bench guy. But, and you kind of know what he is. So you don't think it's crazy either. No, I'd say in the conversations that I've had

about the draft, which are still somewhat limited, but it's a more fun draft to talk about with teams only because they'll be like, why do you guys all think this? And that happens every year, but not like this. and i try to remind everybody like hey i'm not in charge of everything so and i don't even have a mock draft up but that's your point is that there's a lot of teams that they don't have to be tasked with the actual decision of who to take one or who to take two but it feels like there's this growing momentum of a lot of teams being like man the buzz is that these mocks are just assuming sar uh resashay in this way that it's not even close to their boards and i guess this was starting to happen at the combine a little now again i know the counter to this is always a really simple one it's like well it's easy to do that when you know

you don't have to worry about the pick and then when you have the pick it's a little bit different but it gets back to the great neil O'Shea line where he was like, if there were no mocks, the drafts would actually play out much differently. But it becomes consensus. You decide to go outside the box. And then if you're wrong outside the box, your owner's like, what are you doing? Why did you take that guy two years later? So you're absolutely right.

Like, based on what you're saying with this, I feel like the draft is the most exciting thing because not because of the talent, but because of like a lot of just underlying, like, Hey, you guys are assuming way too much in the media. Right. So I look at like Phillies at number 16 and normally be like number 16, maybe in this draft, number 16 might actually, you end up getting a top five guy because there's going to be so many misses, right? There's going to be so, like the number seven pick might just be a complete bust. The number 10 pick might be a complete bust. But the way I was thinking about the draft was

those NFL drafts where you kind of know a quarterback's going to go third, but the team that's picking third, it doesn't make sense for them to pick, but you kind of know just looking at it, well, somebody's going to trade up then and take them because somebody's going to want him. And I feel that way about Klingin. The more I watch him and the more I read about the draft and it's just like, you know what he is. If you're a team like OKC and you could just move up from 12 to one with assets and just be like, all right, we get this guy. This is kind of what we need and we'll overpay for it a little bit. Or, you know, Houston could move up from three to one, but he just seems like the sure thing. I look at Sar, like Sar didn't even average 10 points a game in New Zealand. You know, the French swing man,

who knows? That guy was like in an offensive funk for most of the year until the last month. So a lot of this stuff doesn't pass the sniff test to me. Like Shepard, really good college shooter for one year. It's a 30-game sample size, but he's 6'1.5". And we hit the playoffs every year where those guys just get routinely hunted. I find it hard to believe he's going to be the number one pick. So you just start crossing guys off. And then it's like, all right right could Klingon be go bearish like maybe right possibly sort of yeah the rim protection in college is unbelievable and

you would just love to see some shooting from him but he took nine threes his entire career so then you go okay, can he develop that? But the free throw percentage is at 56% for his career. So usually that's something with someone where you're like, hey, the three or the overall field goal percentage outside of the paint isn't that great, but the free throw shooting percentage is something. Teams constantly talk about that.

And with Klingin, I think it's just a simple like, okay, well, at least you know, to your point, he can move around on defense. He was unbelievable at the rim in college. I mean, it was hilarious watching Illinois be like, I think we're going to get this guy in foul trouble. And you're like, you guys need another plan. Like he's destroying you at the rim every single time. And I think OKC is interesting, one, because they could just pay it.

And I don't know if Presti would be like, well, I know I can probably do whatever i want to do with any transaction but do i just overpay because i have a surplus of picks well if they evaluate them that way like what's the point what's the point of like oh you know we got rid of a 26 first and i felt like this was a bit of an overpay memphis has been mentioned a lot with clinging too but i like that one too memphis is at nine and the other thing is these teams can trade up in stages, right? Like they, like Atlanta could say to them, we don't want to fall below four or we don't want to fall below five.

And OKC Memphis would be like, cool, because Detroit is at five. They don't know what to do. They don't want to take another young guy. So maybe we've tried to flip spots with them, get to five, and then we can give you five plus more stuff. The thing with Klingon, I was even thinking about it going to the finals game on Thursday, where it's just, you know what's really good sometimes?

Having a tall guy who can front some shots. And if we're at the point in this draft where I'm not positive what everybody's super elite skill is, and he has the best tracker to read, I mean, him going against Edie in the, in the, uh, in the NCAA tournament and doing really well against him, I think was important. You know, I also think he now granted I'm not Mr. College basketball, but I did watch a lot of stuff cause I was bored on a plane. He does have good hands. He's not clumsy, right? He's got good hands and he knows he knows where to go yeah he knows how to put his hands up and maybe that's enough and maybe for this draft it's kind of like having the game manager quarterback where you're like i manages the game cool okay

it's tough for the other two guys too because like when you watch sar granted he played his overall numbers aren't great because he played 17 minutes a game for perth and and he just wasn't taking a ton of shots but when you watch him run you go oh my god like look at this guy like they don't make a lot of guys there's not a lot of human beings that are running around like this dude on top of the three-point shooting percentages weren't great but he was taking him it was it was something at least with him where he sees himself 19 years old now like developing it out and whenever you're watching him or even resha who you're like man this guy can really like some of the catch and shoot stuff is really good and look how big he is and look how he runs the floor even though i think he plays a little

bit smaller than he is and so when you're watching him as like prospects you go oh wow like i could see sar but you're constantly thinking about him as like the eighth or ninth pick. Yeah. And that's why it kind of sucks for both guys, because when you're watching his potential first, you're going like Zach just he's a really smart player. There's some really cool small stuff that he does, the way he's screening off the ball and the way he comes back around to it. But I was like, he's not really like if you're going to be the number one pick and you're going to be this good. And I'm looking at you as a score beyond just the shooting. It's like,

I'd love to see you create a little bit more off the dribble. And you're like, that is not based. You know, I'm still pretty limited in what I've watched, but you just don't see a lot of it. And then you're right. Like,

sorry, you get lost. Like you throw in one of the games. You're like, Oh, I have to wait for him to come off the bench in one of these. So, well,

the other thing was, sorry, they do the, he he the best thing and the worst thing about him is he feels like he's a guard trapped in a big man's body and whenever i hear that i'm like you know what that's not i don't consider that a positive i don't really want a guard trapped in a big man's body i'd rather just have a big man and notice he's a big man but that's what's funny about talking about drafts like this and and this is why I'm being really careful about, this is just like blink test,

me reading this stuff, watching highlights, and just having this 50-year experience of what works and doesn't work in the draft. And I just think when you get closer to the draft, teams get more and more comfortable with, I actually know what that is. And that's what they take over like, man, I hope this is it.

We've seen the most mistakes happen when people keep their fingers crossed and go, oh, Darko, you should have seen this workout he had. It was amazing. And it's just all like hypothetical. When you're just drafting on hypothetical in the top three or four, gets super dicey. Even Edwards. And that was such a weird year because there was no tournament and it was a COVID year. Nobody got to work them out, but he was still, you know, one of the biggest high school prospects. He still had a good, good college year, right? That there was at least some things to point to this SAR. Like I just don't know how you evaluate that. It's fucking crazy. It's, and it's, there's job protection pieces to it too, where it's like, if you're wrong,

now your owner's just fucking side-eyeing you. Like we took this SAR guy. He can't even, he's in the G league. Thanks. Thanks for that one. So I don't know. I think this stuff factors in. If you're a good GMm you're golfing with your owner all the time you know you're just in that first tee box and you're just going man this draft is weird it's the weirdest draft you're just working them right you're like i just hope we get a player right i don't even it's 50 50 the guy will even be in a rotation for us but think about the instinct of like survival and just to be fair like sar coming off the bench there's plenty of international guys back in the day too and it would always be funny because the scouts would go to watch some international guy

and then sometimes the coaches would get really weird about the attention it's almost like a caitlin clark thing where you're like this guy who's like the eighth best player in our team but you guys are going to draft him in the lottery because he's 6 10 and he's 18 years old well like i'm not going to play him in the second half now. There were a lot of guys that you looked at when you were getting ready for the draft. You're like, that's weird. He doesn't really even start. So it's not like Sar is the first guy ever. That's the Marvin

Williams corollary. Remember? He couldn't start on North Carolina. And it was like, oh, Atlanta is probably going to take him second. And all of us were like, what? Based on the potential. He was pretty good. I get it. But it was just, I want you to be able to start for your own team in college. Yeah. But wasn't Booker off the bench? Was he? I don't remember that.

I thought he played big minutes though. Did he? I thought he was like 26 minutes a game for them. Look, Marvin was the same thing, but I'm just double checking. They took him over Chris Paul. That's where it fell apart. Yeah, right. That's obvious. I'm positive Chris Paul is good. Watching basketball.

That guy's going to be in the league for a long, long time. The Reed Shepard one is the other one that is. Yeah, Booker came off the bench. He played 20 minutes a game. Seriously? Yeah, I'm just pointing it out because I remember, like, it can't be a hard and fast rule.

And there's almost no hard and fast rule in sports here. I'll give that. As well. But, look, I like Marvin. And when you watch Devin, you're like, wow, this guy looks like he's pretty good. Booker didn't go second, though. No. Every time we talk about these guys, you're just going to come back around to like, I

can't believe I have to take one of them. But that's kind of where we started, though. Think about where we started this whole thing, where I think you and I are both hearing from teams that it's like, don't start writing this stuff down in pen because it seems like there's been this this sar zach back and forth one or two deal and then the questions are at three can it be castle at three can be clinging or three which i think clinging probably feels like the hottest name of like be ready for maybe something a little bit weird but i kind of can't wait now i can't wait because i think we might be in for some big surprises it's like a a bad NFL draft because the other one that I like for number one,

who is way down there, he's 100 to 1 on FanDuel. I don't understand that. It's Castle because Castle is another one where you're like, I know what this guy is. I don't know what the ceiling of it is, but worst case scenario, I know what it is. I know he could be on a really good team. I know he would be able to defend. There's some point guard upside with him.

There's some, maybe he was used incorrectly offensively in Connecticut because how good they were and on a different team, there might be more there, but worst case scenario, I get somebody who's just a really good athlete who can defend multiple positions and switch and do all the things I need to do if I'm winning. Maybe, maybe that's enough for this draft, you know, 101. You're less bullish on that one.

Um, well, I love the, I love the payout on it. Then the castle part. And I know you didn't mean to say incorrectly because you can't be like, Oh, they used them wrong when they win another title and they just didn't need them offensively. I know exactly what you mean so i'm not like

trying to correct you like a french open broadcast but when you have spencer and you have newton there wasn't really going to be an opportunity for castle to be a point card and that's been the thing that his group has been banging the drum on throughout the entire pre-draft process is that he's a point guard. He's a point guard. And I don't know if it's because they're trying to – I don't know how many people would scare away in this draft. His floor is probably five, right?

Now, he's had some nice offensive games, but I'll admit, what we saw, it never looked like a point guard. It didn't. And I didn't watch his high school stuff, so I'm not informed to just cross it out. But even in the times that he had the ball at UConn, I'm like, wait, this guy's a

point guard? And it was funny because I was talking to him. Well, let's be honest. He's not a point guard. I think he feels like he can play a point guard. I think both of us are aligned where you're either a point guard or you're not. You can't talk me into thinking you might be a point guard. But I think his of us are aligned where you're either a point guard or you're not. You can't talk me into thinking you might be a point guard. But I think his point is he probably wants to be able to handle the ball more than he did.

Because I started thinking about the bigger guys, and I don't want to just come up with a list that makes it sound like I'm right while I'm admitting some other people. But if you think about the history of these bigger guards that are like, actually, I'm a point guard. You're like, what do you mean? Like Chris Dunn or Emmanuel Moutier or Jarrett Culver? Does it work out a lot?

Iguodala was a really interesting one. If Castle's Iguodala, then he should go number one. That's the thing. What if Castle's slightly poor man's Iguodala? He may have just had Spencer and Newton and Caravan

and all these unbelievable players. Maybe they were just all in his way. But I watched a lot of UConn, and I never thought pre-draft we'd be hearing, oh, no, no, he's actually just a point guard. Again, I didn't watch the high school stuff, but I've seen plenty of guys that said they were point guards in high school, and it's like, were you, were you, or were you just the guy who scored all the time? Cause you had the ball and you were that much better than everybody

else. Cause you're going to be a lottery pick in two years. Well, do the exercise again, cut out the top seven picks, pretend there's a top seven ahead of everyone in this draft. And the first pick is the eighth pick, et cetera, et cetera. And Castle going ninth in a normal draft would seem totally reasonable, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's some of these guys I really like at seven or eight or not. Right.

The Reed Shepard's the other one that's fun because the shooting stats are amazing. He puts together a great mixtape. There's his worst case scenario is 15 years from now, there's an incredible Reed Shepard was a problem, exclamation point mixtape of all his Kentucky and some of his crunch time stuff. But I don't think he's Peyton Pritchard.

But my question would be, how much better than Peyton Pritchard is he? And that's what I'd want to know if I was going to take him with the third pick in this draft. Is he a bench guy? Is he a starting point guard? Do you feel like he could be a poor man Steve Nash? Do you feel like he can play off the ball with a bigger guard?

I just have questions. I love that you're talking about him as if he's not as good as Peyton Pritchard. But that's the other question is, what if he's just Peyton Pritchard? Would you take Peyton Pritchard with the third pick in this draft? Probably not. I don't know that people loved it when Ainge took him when he took him the first time around.

So he measured out all right, probably what you expected, just under 6'2". I mean, the shooting, you want to talk about somebody else coming off the bench that's going to go really high. I mean, He only started five games in college. The shooting numbers are just so absurd that I think this is where you look at the Spurs and go,

can we get a shooter and a wing? Can we get a shooter and a wing? Imagine if San Antonio had won the lottery. Maybe do they put Klingin next to Weminyama to say, we're just going to put another body. But then are you actually worried about him getting in the way?

Or you can't imagine that they'd want to put Saar with him. I don't know. I feel like they want... Don't you feel like they just want wings who can handle the ball a little bit, throw an entry pass, and compliment

Wimby? Just be able to get the ball to little bit, throw an entry pass. Entry passes would be awesome. Compliment Wemby. Just be able to get the ball to him and be able to switch on defense would be the only two things. Everything else would be a bonus at that point. Can you switch on defense? Can you throw a pass? Do you think the entry pass is going to become the 300-game winner in baseball? Like, we'll track the last guy that could throw an entry pass i there was all this bill walton stuff was was running over the last couple weeks and there was

a couple like bird just throwing an entry pass to walt and then cutting around him and i was more impressed just like the entry pass how he would bounce it get him at the certain thing it feels like just a lost art but also nobody posts up anymore so maybe nobody had maybe no side to throw it i'm really glad you said that because i didn't want to sound as old as we just sounded during those last 30 seconds because if nobody's in the post to throw it to wire why am i but it's just it would have been nice for him beat at times it would have been nice to not have it be so hand trying to do it you know what the new version of the entry pass is? Is the Tatum-Luca type posting up at the foul line and throwing that little bounce pass

when they have the guy on their back would be the other one. Let's switch to Jimmy Butler quick. Did you see the clip of Butler at the Sparks game talking about number 22? And then, yeah, he did a tweet. And there's just a lot of breadcrumbs being dropped, really, from that Pat Riley press conference and some of the stuff Spolstra said.

And Miami's making it clear we love this guy, but we're also really disappointed with how this season went, is the read I'm getting from them. We want our best guy, if we're going to pay him this much money to play basketball more, and we want to have more success and we appreciate 23 and we appreciate 20, but moving forward, we're, we're not doing this anymore. And then you have Jimmy and the other side, you know, winking at the Lakers and it just, we're still, we've been here a lot of times when the Lakers. And it just, we've been here a lot of times when the breadcrumbs start dropping,

I take notice. The first thing I thought of from the most recent footage is that's why he tells his assistant, he's like, stop telling me I need to sign up for Raya. I don't need to. I'm good.

I just, I show up in a jersey and it's on um the other thing where this all started was maybe it's pre-Pat Riley basically calling him out for talking shit about the Celtics I mean that was a really rare thing that happened he didn't basically called him out he called him out yeah he he did something so many other GMs are so afraid of doing because there'll be times you'll hear stories about, well, why did you do this? Why did you do that? And you're like, we're always in fear. We're living in fear all of the time. Now, 30 GMs may not agree with me with that, but there's enough GMs that live in fear of doing all the little extra things, catering to the star the entire time for just that fear that one day he's going to walk in and say, hey, I actually want out of here. And you have Riley on the other side just going, nope, I'm going to go out of my way to publicly criticize you, even though you're the face of the franchise. And Riley may have done it without any idea of a backup plan. Now, maybe with Riley having this many decades in this sport, maybe he's on the short list of guys with enough juice that can pull it off and do it. But then you'd, you'd have to also want to do it.

And Riley clearly wanted to do that the same way when LeBron left Miami. That's the big one. He got out there and he called him out. Yeah. Yeah. And he got out there and he was just, he was letting him have it in a way. This is hard speech.

Yeah. Right. This is hard. You're not supposed to bail just because you didn't win the title one year. It's hard to win the title. This is great. It's one of my favorite moments. I would add to what you just said, though.

Riley's old. And I think old people hit the point sometimes in all aspects of life where they're just like, fuck it. Yeah. It's like the old Jerry Seinfeld joke about old people backing out of the driveway where they hit a point where they're just like, fuck it. And they just go back. They don't care, fuck it, and they just go back. They don't care if cars are coming, they just go backwards. Yeah, naked guys at the gym, same thing.

Like there's a certain age, I believe they get together, like you hit 70, they all have a meeting, they pull you aside, and they just say, hey, balls everywhere. It's over. We don't have to worry about it anymore. I'm convinced as soon as you,

if you're still in the gym lifestyle at 70 years old, I'm sure that somebody reaches out to you. Like, oh, I saw you have a birthday coming up next week. Here's the protocol. So I think that about first first base coaches to first base and third base coaches balls out. Anyway, I interrupt. Because we agree there's there's something that happens. And certainly Riley is north of that age and also whatever accomplishments you would need to feel comfortable doing that and also the job

security on top of everything else because the butler's thing's still unsettled and if it were unsettled maybe they're like hey he's older and this there's ceiling so I don't even care but he may have done this if he was just extended in 32 years old who Who knows? Well, and then the other piece of this ecosystem where teams aren't allowed to tamper, but teams are allowed to put it out there off the record to reporters like, like a Philly situation.

We have a lot of cap space. We love Jimmy. Just kind of put that. Who doesn't Philly love, by the way? Philly loves everyone. Go down the list on anyone who makes more than $20 million a year. They love them. just kind of put that. Who doesn't Philly love, by the way? Philly loves everyone. Philly's in on it. Go down the list. Anyone who makes more than $20 million a year,

they love them. But he's somebody that, I don't know if they have the assets, but the Lakers one is pretty fun because you could put salaries together with picks. I think they'd have to, I think Miami would have to get a third piece.

I don't think they're trading. I just always feel like they're a team that needs the player coming back and they've really never prioritized draft picks. So keep going. Right. So if they're doing, if it's like Rui Hachimor and Gabe Vincent

and multiple picks, I don't think Miami is going to be like, oh, cool. Now we're out of the Jimmy Butler business. Like they, they want stars and big ass players. So if they're moving Butler, whatever version that he gets from whatever team would go somewhere else to get somebody that they actually want, like the McHale bridges, Brandon Ingram, whoever

they talk themselves into. I think that would be why you do it. The bigger question for me is just, does Miami feel like they just had this incredible run at the blackjack table with Butler, right? Four years, they made two finals. He played great. He's probably a hall of famer now. It couldn't have gone better. And now it's like 2.30 in the morning. And this is like when I'm at the casino and they're starting to vacuum and Sal's like, let's go. And I'm like, no, no, one more hand.

And I think Miami's like, they're vacuuming. We should go. Let's go cash the chips in. And that's what I wonder with this Butler thing. Are they just like, this is only going to get worse. He's older. He's got a ton of miles on him. He misses 20 to 30 games every year.

We've peaked with our... The East is better. The West is way, way, way better. And we are paying for past performance now. Let's move on now. They lucked into Butler, too. I mean, they... Miami finds a way where

whether it's all the guys going down there to start at the Heatles, there to start the heatles they had the right situation they had the right star in place already remember when all of those guys did their extensions were like why do those guys do shorter rookie extensions like why was that why was Carmelo Carmelo never got the memo right right but he wasn't on the text thread so and that was that was the next extension I don't i don't believe that was the extension because lebron came in um seven years prior but when i think about that it's like okay i'll give you some credit but i don't know if it's just the heat way like the

heat way was at an all-time it was a 52 week high in 2023 the whole heat culture deal and all that kind of stuff but sometimes i think there's a mistake of just believing because of that and then figuring out a way to get off the white side stuff and then getting butler in there that they're just supposed to luck into the next one well you forgot anthony carter in 2003 that was the best one because that if agent fucked up his contract they were able to get rid of him, basically. They were able to steal Lamar Odom from the Clippers and then a year later get Shaq

because of Anthony Carter, basically. So they've had some positive luck moments that they took advantage of. Well, big time too, because the Shaq part of it, remember, it's because he wasn't going to get the extension from LA. LA makes their choice. They move on from Shaq. And then Miami's like, we'll do it and it completely works out but those last couple

years for shack were going to be dark and then luckily they had a new owner syndrome deal in phoenix with robert sarba being like this is going to be awesome it's like this goes against everything that you guys have been doing basketball wise here for a while so you could go through a bunch of franchises to say hey that worked out or they got lucky there were all these different things but it feels like miami more than any other franchise we just assume i guess it's going to happen again and we can read the breadcrumbs and all the flirting and all the stuff that butler wants to do and he's a difficult guy he's a difficult guy but he's their guy and he was their best option at the time i don't i just never see them in rebuild mode. I just don't. I mean, not with Bam.

Well, Bam's... Not with Bam and Spolstra where you're like, no, I'm agreeing with you. You have Bam and Spolstra, and you have some good peripheral pieces, and then you have the Butler piece. But they still need that one score, and at least Butler's that.

Whatever his limitations are and the frustrations of how he treats the regular season and maybe talking yourself into a ceiling that's a little bit higher based on the run of 23. I love Bam. Every team should want a Bam, right? He's like one of those guys. But I don't know how aggressive they would get.

Maybe they're just afraid of what Butler's going to be like without an extension, and that's what they already know and why this is already happening. Or it's like the classic little both sides winking at other people at the bar, but ultimately they're going to get back together. But I just feel like there's a lot of smoke

and we're going to take a break and then we're going to talk about at least one team that I think could be involved in an impossible Miami trade, but that's next. Discover a world of possibilities with or without milk. Visit Nespresso.ca to learn more or a Nespresso boutique near you. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons, two scientists, one movement disorders coordinator,

58 answered questions, Two focused ultrasound procedures. One specially developed helmet. Thousands of high-intensity focused ultrasound waves. Zero incisions. And that very same day, two steady hands. From innovation to action, Sunnybrook is special. Learn more at sunnybrook.ca slash special. All right, coming back.

We're going to play for the rest of the month through the draft, a game of what would you do? Where we're going to pick teams and they come to Rossello and I and they say, guys, we need help. What would you do if you were us? And we look at their whole situation and then we try to offer them counsel. So we'll start with the Atlanta Hawks who we talked about earlier, have the number one pick.

And the thing I keep hearing from people is that if it was an over of one on FanDuel, Trey and Murray get traded and the over is won and you could bet under, push, or over that some people seem to think both of those guys are getting traded is a thing I've heard. And from different people who don't know each other

who know things. That they're just like, you know what, we get the number one pick. This didn't work. We got to the conference finals at one time. Let's just try to blow this up.

Could you see it? So that would be a trade trade and a Murray trade. So two separate trades. I would bet the one number. I think that's the safest. It's the safest. So if it was FanDuel, the push would be I think probably minus 120. The over

would be plus 300, two trades, and then zero trades would probably be like plus 200. But yeah, or maybe the push is even at better odds. So which one? Which one do you think is going? Well, look, Atlanta fans aren't going to, like, cool, Rosillo's going to do another Hawk segment. You don't need to do another trade thing.

But that's who I would trade. Yeah. I'd want him out of there. And there's a couple reasons why. We could talk about the basketball part of it. Clearly, he's the most talented player on the team. There's the star part of it. This is the guy that kind of moves the needle in our city.

This is the guy that helps us feel more relevant. It's the kind of lamello ball challenge that i think charlotte will continue to face where it's like we kind of this is kind of who our star is it's like all right but what's the goal the guy there's video of him on a go-kart just driving around on the roof of a building that's our star i think the videos of him leaving the arena are are far worse than any go-kart thing but yeah look like a young guy who's a famous athlete with money driving a certain way like in a tiny city no it's yeah right you know right it'd be nice yeah so playoffs once yeah so trey's got two years left 43 million this year 46 million next, early termination option at 49 million. DeJounte's deal with Atlanta is actually pretty good. It's pretty shocking. 25, 27, 29, 31.

So his 31 million, yeah, his $31 million option in 27, 28 is 8 million or excuse me, 12 million less than Trey's number for next year. So I wonder what DeJounte would be away from Trey. And even though the clutch thing, I think is... So when Trey left clutch, I think all of our first instincts were, okay, wait, well, that makes the Lakers thing more challenging. But what if I were to present it to you this way? What if clutch is like, cool, now DeJounte gets the team to himself and Trey will help our other two guys in LA?

Does that mean Clutch doesn't want to help him at all if LA and Atlanta want to do this deal? I don't know. I think that's the first instinct that we all had. Yeah, I'd never believe that. Maybe they're not fired up for it, but ultimately if it's the best trade for the Lakers, they're going to support it, right?

They're like, no, you can't go after him. You left our agency. That'd be crazy. So then with the Lakers, you have to figure out, all right, it's going to be Reeves and who else, and then it's going to be how many picks. So you get the D'Angelo player option thing where he's probably not going to do you any favors. Well, wait a second. You don't think it makes sense for the Lakers to trade for Trey Young, do you? I don't see how that improves any aspect of, of their ceiling to win a title. They're going to get worse defensively. And they, and they have LeBron who's going to be in year 22 playing power forward and taking plays off. And like, I just, I think that would be crazy. The only reason I like it for Trey is that I think he has to go somewhere where it's not him and a bunch of unproven people because he got the keys to

a franchise and he got to kind of do whatever he wanted. And that's why whenever I hear about Trey going to San Antonio, like even with women, Yama and what we expect him to be and how big of a star he already is, he's probably too young and not established. I don't know if Trey would defer to him. I think for Trey's best basketball,

he has to learn how to defer a little bit more, and he would do that with LeBron and AD. But the Lakers part of it, I'm just trying to figure out. You like that team's chances against Oklahoma City, Minnesota, Dallas, Denver? Because I do not. Do you have a trade where you pick them as a top two team in the West that I'm not thinking about? I actually have an Atlanta trade that I like more for them.

But just go on big picture. I'll get to that in a split second. Keepers for Atlanta. Okay. All right. Jalen Johnson, keeper. Yeah, totally. We both like him.

Still in a rookie deal. I like Okongwu at 14, 15, 16, 17. Solid price. Little below market for where the center position I think is. And I like the limited stuff I saw from A.J. Griffin. I wouldn't call him like a, wouldn't include him in a trade keeper, but I think you have him.

But I think everyone else is available, including Hunter, who was pretty decent last year. And then Bogdanovich is 16 this year, 16 next year, team option, which is a really good bench guy for a contender. Capella's on an expiring at 22 and a half. Atlanta's picks, they have number one pick this year.

Protected Sacramento pick next year. San Antonio can swap picks with them in 26 and they're giving their 25 and 27 picks to San Antonio, which is the other big piece of this. If you're blowing it up and you're going backwards, you're risking San Antonio having the first pick in the draft with this Cooper flag and the Brockton kid where everybody loves the 25 draft. So you have that

too, where it's like, how bad would you potentially want to be? But back to the Lakers, doesn't it make more sense for them to trade for Murray? Isn't the price less? It's a cheaper contract. Cause I was, I was looking at it like they could do that. They could put the Vincent Vanderbilt contracts together. They're they're picked this year.

They could draft the guy, then send them after they're 29 first rounder and they can do a swap in 28 for Murray and be done with it and keep the 31, but not give up quite as much and get a guy on a cheaper deal. I thought that made more sense for the Lakers. I'm not against that for them either. Yeah, I wasn't doing this

because I thought this solved all the Lakers' problems and made them the favorites in the West, the same way your Murray trade doesn't exactly put LA ahead of any of the teams that we're excited about in the West. So unless there's some weird Donovan Mitchell thing or something that exists where it's like, okay, Jimmy Butler is on the team.

I mean, we can toy around with some of that stuff. Would you trade all that stuff for Jimmy? Vincent and who? So are you talking, is Reeves in it? I think Rui has to be in that. I'm just, I'm not trading, I'm not trading Reeves to get a third star because I feel like I need four stars to beat.

And not that Reeves is even a full star, but I think I need three stars plus Reeves to even think about competing with the top four in the West. If Reeves is in the trade, I don't see how there's an upgrade when we're in that Murray Trey kind of class of guys. I don't see how that works for them. But I'm already on the record. I think it's over for them. I don't think it matters what coach they're going to hire. I just think, I think it's a wrap for them. I think the West has moved toward these four or five other teams. Everyone else has younger guys that are in their primes

and they have more assets. Yeah, I was really looking at this more from the Atlanta side of it, of what could they possibly do, but I'm thinking if they could keep one of the two, I'd want to keep DeJounte, see what it's like with him not having he and Trey, which they're both guilty of.

Where you could just see that it just never felt like it just dawned on me a few months in, I was like, these guys don't play basketball together. They're out there at the same time, despite how often they would split up their minutes, but you're going to start with them, you're going to close with them. Those minutes when you close, that's really who you are as a basketball team, and I just felt like too many times I was watching them, like, these guys aren't even playing basketball together.

And the example I always use is when Jimmy Butler was coming along and Derrick Rose came back from injury and they were on the floor together. But it was kind of like this internal battle with five guys on the floor for your team at the same time. So I don't like trading Reeves at all. The D'Angelo Russell thing makes it complicated because he's not just going to opt in to do you the favor and then be traded somewhere where he doesn't want to go.

No, he's already said that. Wait, can we go back to something you said earlier about Trey? You were talking about the relevance. Yeah. Right? That he, the reason you'd be hesitant to trade him is because of the relevance. To me, that makes him an asset with certain teams

that might actually care about that relevance. Because, like, there's a couple of Trey spots I like more for him and actually for Atlanta as a possible trade deal. But one of them is Brooklyn because, and we're going to talk about Brooklyn next with the, what would you do? But Brooklyn's in this weird spot where they don't have their pick in this 25 draft. Right. So you have to decide, is that pick a sunk cost? Almost like it was in the Tatum and Jalen Brown drafts where it's like, we suck and that pick's going to really come back to haunt us, but we

can't think that way. We just got to do what's best for us. Or do you go, eh, you know what? That would suck if that happened again. We need somebody that could at least make the fans go, oh, they have that guy. So they could go one of two ways. And we're going to talk about them in a second, but either trade Mikael Bridges and really try to rebuild or try to get a second star and be a little more relevant, try to be like a six, seven, eight seed.

And if Atlanta said, we'll trade you Trey and you can give us back to Simmons expiring, but we want all your Phoenix first. We want 25, 27, 29. We want all of them. And we want that, 27, 29. We want all of them. And we want that swap you have too. It gets a little dicey with the swap

because I don't know what Trey's value is. But basically, would you trade Trey for Simmons and the Phoenix first if you were Brooklyn? And then you could put him and Bridges together and now you have the foundation of something. No, not even close. Because that 27 Phoenix pick, depending on where that goes could be more

valuable than the number one pick today so you so if you're brooklyn i guess we can talk about them now because these two are a little unrelated you're not worried about the 25 draft you're just doing what's best for your team for the rest of the decade and you're not worried about the possibility that that pick might go to um what's it houston yeah houston and that might be cooper flag or it might be the brockton kid i i wouldn't be making the only time i would ignore like a long-term timeline is if i felt like kind of our OKC complaints with the trade deadline, where you're like, man, it really looks like you could use a big, like some of these rebounding numbers, like check its beat up in some of these games, like whatever. And man, you're the one

seed. And I know this all feels ahead of schedule with how young you are and all these things, but maybe now is the time where they wouldn't even have to blow up all their future assets. If I'm Brooklyn, I have no idea what that team is. I just, I don't, but I still really like Bridges. I think about Bridges when he first got there post Phoenix and how well-rounded of an offensive player he was. He showed us things that we never really saw in Phoenix that made us think like, okay, it doesn't mean he's a one for a title contending team, but he's clearly better in a role where he has the ball more. And then it just kind of turned into a free for all with Brooklyn. So if I'm Atlanta and you know,

I'm getting, well, she's, I should look at it this way. If I'm Brooklyn and I'm trading for Trey young, who I know is an attraction is going to sell jerseys. The fans are going to be into it. And I'm not like that much better.

I don't want to start trading these Phoenix picks down the road. Cause I look at the Durant part of it. I look at how much of a mess that whole thing has been. I think those Phoenix picks could be really valuable, or at least right now that's how I would look at it. So I wouldn't be in a hurry to trade any of those. I agree with you. I thought that was the most interesting trade possibility

out of all the trades. And the only reason I thought of it with Brooklyn is the Knicks have taken back the city and then some, right? The whole Brooklyn era really, from the moment Prokhorov showed up, has been just a comedy of errors and almost and what ifs. And basically, they're in the same spot they were in in the mid-2010s again with Bridges. I don't think you'd have to give up all that, by the way, for Trey. I don't think the market for him is... Even if you do the LA thing,

I would love getting Reeves back if I'm Atlanta, but I don't know that I'm supposed to get all their picks, too. All the Lakers' picks, too. That might be kind of... If that's even a possibility. I was just wondering if I'm Brooklyn, do I need a face?

Do I need a famous player? And is there value in this guy killed the Knicks, and this guy has a rivalry with the Knicks, and this guy's a dog? The Trey trade that I was more excited about. Well, there was one house I already signed off on this for Trey for pool and Washington's number two pick and a 26 first. And you got to give me a little more because I took pool's contract, but basically Atlanta would then trade train and end up with the first and second in this draft. Maybe Johnny Davis is in there. Uh, but this is my favorite And this ties back to our Butler combo. Trey for Hero and Robinson.

And Miami's picked in the draft. They'll have to draft the guy and then trade him. And then they're 29 unprotected first. And that's the trade. And you basically turn him into Hero and Robinson and some assets. And then if you're Miami, you keep Butler. You have Bam. Trey, heat culture. just the kind of guy.

He's a warrior. If you go back and watch him in the playoffs a couple years ago, that guy, he's unafraid. He's our kind of guy. He's competitive as shit. I don't know. It just would seem like the kind of trade where I'd be like, oh man, and then the more I look at him, I'm like,

ah shit, that might actually have been a good trade for them. You have me interested because I don't know why but I like him in Miami for some reason and by the way he's doing all the same stuff they would have wanted from Dame right yeah conceivably yeah I guess I guess I never really felt like Trey was better than Dane.

I'm not saying he is, but if they were willing to trade for an offense-first guard who took a lot of threes and couldn't really guard anyone, then maybe they'll trade for the younger version of that. Yeah, it shows a lack of interest in guarding. It's like, oh, is that a screen coming up?

Oh, man. Screen again? I hate those. I hate screens. Why do they do those? I didn't get to this one. Next one, though. Next one, I'll be ready for it. I think this is really important for Trey, though. Who do you want to be?

What do you want this to be? And sometimes Westbrook was given the ultimate freedom at Oklahoma City, that MVP year. Okay? And the stats are outrageous, but it was his thing. And I think you look back at that and you go, what was that really? What was that year?

Is it statistically one of the greatest seasons a player's ever had, or is it the most tailored season we've ever seen an organization allow a player to have you know what it actually was it was the kevin durant didn't break our franchise and we were able to survive and we pulled off and yeah and we got in it and we got the mvp with westbrook and we survived. That's how I see it that season. Yeah, but I think it's both of those things. It would be great if you were an awesome player and you kind of got to just

do whatever you wanted with the franchise. But I think for Trey long term, there'll have to be a moment for him maybe to be somewhere else where it's like, look, we really love all the things that you're capable of doing. Because clearly he's an unbelievably talented player. But there just needs

to be maybe some teammates you respect way more than the guys that you've played with or didn't respect in Atlanta. Maybe it's an Uncle Pat. Sits him down. Talks about his

50 plus years in the NBA. Some of the stuff he's seen. I remember when we got Bob McAdoo, former two-time MVP, or 1975 MVP. You know, he just wanted to win. It's all about winning. He stayed. He stayed for you.

And if they were to say, like, well, were you worried about his defense? You'd be like, well, the hero's not here anymore. Right. We've gone sideways um murray for the homes bagley contracts washington's number two in a 2028 swap you like that for anybody i just don't like these picks i know there's gonna be players we're gonna be wrong about the draft well there'll be something that'll happen within a year two years from now i'll be like hey remember nobody thought this draft's gonna be of know there's going to be players we're going to be wrong about in the draft. There'll be something that'll happen within a year, two years from now. I'll be like, hey, remember nobody thought this draft was going to be... Of course there's going to be a couple good players that none of us see. That's the way

the draft works out. We're going to be wrong about players all the time. But the problem for Atlanta to hit a reset button, this is not going to be the kind of player with the number one pick. I think it's the same thing for Washington. Yeah, right. So maybe... I like my favorite trade trade is the Miami one.

My favorite trade haul is Brooklyn Miami one. My favorite Trey Hall is Brooklyn. And Brooklyn is just like, we've got to get a star. We can't be irrelevant again. Those unprotected Phoenix things, man. I mean, wouldn't you think, like, do you think Phoenix is a happy ending three years from now? I would want those Phoenix picks. So maybe what would you do for Atlanta? It's like, get those fucking Phoenix picks. So maybe our what would you do for Atlanta is like, get those fucking Phoenix picks.

Get those. Those are good ones. I have one Murray trade for you that I really liked, and it involves the Orlando Magic, favorite team of our beloved producer Steve Cerruti. There's a fun wrinkle with Orlando where they're under the cap. So they could just absorb his contract basically Murray. Um,

but they also have Anthony black who was a lottery pick last year and they have all their firsts. And is there just something there where it's like, we'll take Murray into our cap space. We'll give you black and we'll give you like our 2026 first, let's call it a day. It's pretty good. I like it better than the Trey stuff that people have with Orlando

because this version of Trey I would not want in Orlando. Maybe that Heat version I've been just fantasizing about here in my head for the last few minutes because I really like that idea. I think that's one of the best fake Treys you've ever presented to me. Thank you. Murray, unless they love black, and there's some stuff from him just in his rookie year. I know he's really limited offensively at this point,

but you watch him play. I was like, man, I like the way this guy plays the game. I like the way he carries himself, interacts with his teammates, and he carries himself with the spirit of somebody who will someday be the leader of a professional basketball team. I agree with you. I don't know that I went

that far with it. I don't know. I was feeling, I was feeling generous. I think he's still going to get like 20 a game regularly. And I don't, I don't know if that's in his future.

And it could just because there's other options that are in his way offensively. But if you brought Murray in and that's all you're giving up, you're a better basketball team tomorrow. Well, especially if you feel like... Like Murray out of nowhere? Yeah. Yeah, if you're looking at the East and you're looking at Philly,

who has two players right now, and you're looking at Milwaukee, who's in a really, you know, I think a little bit of a creepy place where they have this older team and really no way to do anything. And then you look at the West and the West is just getting better and better and better. And you're not going to be able to really get better unless Dame somehow goes back to being Dame from a few years ago. But go through the East, Miami, unless they make a move, they seems like they've at least probably leveled off. And Orlando might think like Cleveland's,

they're clearly going to pick between Mitchell and Garland and who knows what kind of roster they play out. If you're Orlando, you're like, we might be the second best team in the league next year. Could we be in the conference? Could we be OKC last year, this year in the East? Could we just randomly get to 52 wins out of nowhere, you know, with the talent we have?

Especially if Franz starts hitting threes again. I can't imagine he's going to consistently shoot this poorly the rest of his career. I just, I don't understand how it got that bad. And with Murray, I mean, he was so three-point happy this year. And I know Orlando is looking at it as like they have to, whoever they bring in, if he's going to have the ball a lot, has to give him some kind of spacing and some kind of shooting.

And the shooting numbers for Murray from distance, I mean, he was not afraid. I think he took like seven a year this year. And the numbers have been pretty good, even though I don't think he came to the league that way. So our advice for Atlanta is, worst case scenario, trade Trey to somebody that really wants him and is ready to pay 120 cents a dollar for him

and keep Murray. But potentially trade both if you're getting awesome trades, but you can't come back with both guys. You have to at least pick one of them. Yeah. Brooklyn. But just to finish the thought,

but also to remove both of them and then go, okay, we've got the number one pick. I don't think this player that you're taking, even if everybody's wrong and the first pick ends up being a five-time all-star and all that kind of stuff, you are rebuilding because all the options are either limited players and probably what they would be, or it's going to take a while. It's going to take up just a lot of development and the guy's going to have to have the right attitude to build on what we're seeing so far. Well, and they're in the same spot Brooklyn's in where they don't have their 25 pick

in this draft that potentially has two superstars, which is just an awful spot to be in. Brooklyn's got that. They've got Nick Claxton as an unrestricted free agent, which is terrifying because there's a sense of desperation with Brooklyn. Like they don't want to lose Nick Claxton, but I also would not want to pay him.

I think the going rate for somebody like him is in that 17 to 20 range, but he'll probably end up making more than that. And any dollar over 20 million a year, I just don't feel like is market value for what he does. The Simmons expiring gives them trade possibilities that they didn't have a year ago when that had two years on it.

They got Cam Johnson at 23.5, 21.6, and 23.6. They have a Schroeder, Dennis Schroeder expiring, and they got Finney Smith who's got two more years at 15. This could go any direction we want. I'm going to give you my number one suggestion for them. And this will be music to your ears. I'm all in on trading for Darius Garland. All in.

If we're hitting this situation with Cleveland, where it's like they have chosen Donovan Mitchell, Donovan Mitchell, and there's been a lot of breadcrumbs dropped around that too. Like he's actually staying. He's the most powerful person in the franchise. It's going to be him and Mobley. I think part of that has to do with the fact

that he knows he can't go to the Knicks because the Knicks like who they are and they're not going to mess with the Brunson thing. And he doesn't want to go to Brooklyn because everything they would trade for him, then he's just there by himself. The Garland thing, he breaks his jaw last year. He loses a bunch of weight because he's eating through a straw.

Then he has to play the second half of the season, being worried he's going to get hit in the face, right? Which is a real thing. We forget. We're watching on TV. You have an injury like that, you're driving the basket. You're just thinking every time you're worried about getting hit, um, he's playing off the ball more than, uh, more than he probably wants to because of, of Mitchell. And I just think his, his stock is lower than it should be considering his age and some of the pedigree

stuff we've done. And if I'm Brooklyn, can I have him and Mikael Bridges? Can I just end up with that? And then I can figure out the rest and I feel okay. That would be my number one choice. Do you agree? I can't believe you brought these names up. We didn't talk about this ahead of time because I was wondering if Mitchell is staying based on the Cleveland hat theory I was throwing around.

But it just didn't seem like, hey, Mitchell's going to leave. Mitchell's going to leave. So they go all in on Mitchell. They have to break up their backcourt, much like we just talked about with Atlanta. Would you do bridges for Garland? So you go, okay, we get in front of the bridges problem, and now we have Garland to your Trey Young point. I know he's not as flashy or as sexy.

I like, well, but Trey's been the better player, so let's not get ourselves there too much. So Bridges for Garland, just nothing else on either side. You'd have to put in some salary to match up with Garland. But if you're breaking it up for Cleveland, I just don't know how you get, I don't know how you get Garland to Brooklyn without bridges. Unless you want to start throwing in all these other picks. So I had Cam Johnson,

Schroeder's expiring in the 27 and 29 Phoenix first for Garland. That's a, that's a big price. But if I'm Brooklyn, I think I'd do it because I really believe in Garland. And if we're both wrong

about him, so be it. Been wrong before, but I'm in on that guy. I think there's a unique chance here. Listen, Jason Kidd,

who's a better player than Garland at the time and turned out to be one of the best 40 players ever. There are two moments in his career in the first like six, seven years when he just became a little bit of a distressed asset compared to what the talent was, right? Dallas moved on him quick. They traded him. And then he had the domestic violence incident with Phoenix and they unloaded him to New Jersey. I don't think Garland's as good as Jason Kidd was, but I do think value-wise, he's not as high as he was a year ago. And that would make me want to trade for him because I still believe in the talent. And I think he's a gamer and I think he's fun to play with. I think for the record, we have to say Garland's not even close to Jason Kidd. That's what I said. I said that correctly. Kidd is one of the 40 best players ever. But you're right about Garland

because the end of it, and he misses a bunch of shots in that Celtics series where the whole thing was a mess anyway. Yeah. Especially with Allen. Great time to trade for him. It's like, ah, what happened?

And it's like, then you, in October, there's the athletic piece about Garland's so happy. He has his head on straight. People don't realize he couldn't eat for two months and it lays out the whole thing.

There's a Bridges trade I like more than the Cleveland one, but I really like that one. Well, there's two actually. If they're cutting ties and they're just like, you know what, let's start over. I think there's two teams that could really want him. Houston and OKC. And Houston and OKC both have the assets and the stuff to be like 130 cents on the dollar here. Right. So Houston's got the third pick, Cam Whitmore, and they have the swap rights with Brooklyn. And they could just be like, we'll swap it back. You can have your pick back and we'll give you the number three pick this year and Whitmore give us bridges. Is that too

much? How many picks is it again? It's the number three pick in this draft, which is really like the number 10 pick. And then they have swap rights with Brooklyn in 25. So they could say, well, we'll basically cancel that out. That's just not enough for Bridges. He's too good. He's too young. And Cam Whitmore? No, I know. I was aware of the Cam Whitmore part of it. I loved Cam

Whitmore this year. So you want one more? Would you want one more? Because they also have Brooklyn's 27. I need something. I mean, it really depends on bridges. Are you going to tell us you're out of here? Well, the Knicks are trying to get him. The Knicks are planting the flag on it hard.

I need something bigger than Cam Whitmore coming back as a player. Third pick? I like Reed Shepard. Stephen Castle? Stephen Castle Stephen Castle um the uh there's the

Trae Young trade we mentioned before would you do Bridges for Cat well OKC Bridges for Cat we can talk about in a second

OKC would do Giddy they have the cap space so it would just be Giddy for Bridges because OKC would have the cap space to absorb Bridges. They have the 12th pick.

They have the best of the four-team swap with OKC, Houston, Clips, Philly. So they could give that to Brooklyn. They have all their other picks. But basically, the 12th pick, Giddy, and a couple other picks

to get bridges. And then if you're okay, say you're like, we're really going for it now. Here we go. We got Shay. We got J dub. We got door.

We got bridges. We got chat. That's our crunch time five. That would be incredible. It would be unbelievable. But is, is Brooklyn in the trace stuff stuff we were talking about tray being the face of what they need moving forward brooklyn because like i just would try not to

worry about that stuff like hey the knicks are starting to own the city okay well so now we have to do what we have that sounds good on a podcast but not if i have joe sigh staring at me going nobody care people made fun of my kids at school today. Nobody cares about the Nets. What's your plan? The interesting one with Joe Sy, though, is after the Durant-Irving experiment, he'd probably think he'd be like,

maybe I'm not desperate to just do whatever is possible to bring in a star, even though every team would have done that to get Durant at the time. So is there, is there a trade? Do you look at the thunder picks bill and go, there's a package of those picks where,

yeah, it's fine. And now we're just, we're starting it all over, all over again. Yeah. I mean, well,

that would be that trader. That would be the, uh, the Houston trade next. Well, the next, yeah, the Houston trader, the next, if Randall wasn't the Knicks. Yeah. The Houston trade or the Knicks.

If Randall wasn't in it and it was just basically Bogdanovich, you can wave immediately and then you just get all their picks. There's a, there's a fun, it did make me, I think you're going to like this one. I'm pretty good at predicting what, predicting what trades are going to like. I think you're going to like this one. Bridges and Schroeder to the Pelicans for Ingram in the Lakers 2025 first. And if you need me to throw a little more from the New Orleans

side, I'll throw in a little more from the New Orleans side if you need more. Yeah, I love it for new orleans because they were probably too small the backcourt now when you think about herb and bridges and trey murphy and all this length yeah how about those three guys with zion yeah because i think whipping that out there Ingram's another guy post-playoffs, too, where you go after the Dort series, you're like, oh, who would want that guy? Now, granted, whenever you re-sign him, you're probably not going to love that contract.

And I agree with you totally about the Nick Claxton thing. I was like, I like him, but boy, I'm not going to like paying him. That's a good list. I like him, but boy, I wouldn't like paying him. It's a fun all-star team. Claxton's my center, just FYI. Yeah, Ingram, whatever his new deal is, and I think that's probably why New Orleans,

in a very frank way, David Griffin afterwards, we've tried it, we had some things we liked, probably can't come back looking like this next year, which is pretty rare for somebody to say it. So yeah, I really like that one for New Orleans. And the difference between this and the OKC one where it's like, so I get giddy and maybe some things.

Yeah. It's like I get giddy. Uh, Ingram, you could at least say, Hey, this guy's actually like pretty good. Just hopefully door doesn't get traded to the Easter conference.

I wonder if, if we've hit the point where maybe the picks don't matter as much as we think they do. Whether these teams just don't care. I'll go back to that trade I mentioned earlier about Trey for the Simmons expiring and the three Phoenix first. And you rightly recoiled. And you were like,

oh, man. I'd want to keep those Phoenix first. Sometimes I wonder what happened with the Mavericks and some other teams that just said, fuck it. Like you look back, I hated the Anthony Davis trade. I thought the Lakers gave up like 200 cents on the dollar for him. Now you look at all the stuff they got from it and it's like, eh, you'd probably do that

one again. You know, uh. Durant might be one of the only ones where what they gave up for him versus what they've gotten back and the lack of success they've had with them is really like, oof. Mitchell and Gobert, those trades, I don't know if you'd run those back if you were Utah and Cleveland, but at least you could say, or Minnesota and Cleveland, but at least if you're Minnesota, you'd be like, hey, man, we beat Denver. You know, and if you're Cleveland,

you're like, hey, Mitchell's one of the best 15 players in the league. You do that 100 times out of 100. Well, I think the going price, though, it just kind of became like a standard of, well, how much does it cost to get into that place? You're like, this is what you should expect to pay at play.

And for the Stars, it was, it's going to be three firsts, And it's probably going to be a swap in there. And we're going to push for uncontacted. And you're going to have to give up a player you like to. Unless it was somebody that you felt like, okay, who else are you competing against? And that's what the Rudy thing was. There wasn't

a huge market. If you want to play the results part of the Rudy trade, you could say, well, of course it worked because they're a really good team this year and they beat Denver. If Cadet hit some shots, who knows how that series goes? Even though Donchik was so unstoppable, I don't know that I can talk myself into Minnesota winning three more games against them. Townsend hit some shots? I know, any, right? A shot? The cost, it's basically like if you could trade more picks, like would all these guys go, would Durant be seven first rounders? You know what I'm saying?

The default price always seems to be three. We're going to find out with Trey, because he's going to be the most interesting test case. And we'll find out if Charlotte decides they want to get out of the Lomelo business. But I just don't know if people care about these picks the same way. Mainly because if it doesn't work out, they're not going to be there anyway. R, what would you do advice for Brooklyn is? If Trader keeps Bridges.

Well, I want to keep them. I like them. And I think it's hard to find somebody just randomly who's a top 30 player. Is Bridges a Well, I want to keep them. I like them. And I think it's hard to find somebody just randomly who's a top 30 player. Is Bridges a top 30 player? Yeah. I think he's in the 30 to 35 range. Okay. So, and then Claxton,

what's your cap on a Claxton contract? Four years, 85? But see, the problem is, you go, okay, we're not going to dollar 85 million. And then some of the teams like well we have to use our cap space on somebody and then you lose nick clackson for nobody maybe or do we love enough from noah clowny that we're like see you nick i would let clackson go if it was over 20 million i just think that's how you lose if you're paying non-all-stars like nick clackson was on the team last year and they weren't good if you're paying non-All-Stars, like Nick Claxton was on the team last year and they weren't good.

If you're paying non-All-Stars over $20 million, I think that's a recipe for just sucking. That's the surest thing we know about the NBA in the last 20 years is that specific salary range where it's not quite franchise player money, but it's that level below. That's where you get absolutely murdered. The range used to be $15 million.

It used to be $15 to $16, but now it feels like it's $20 to $25, and that's the murder range. You don't want to be there. Is there a way they could do a Bridges for Garland and Allen deal? Can we have Jared Allen back? You probably need to split those guys up too. That was our bad. Yeah, you guys signed Claxton?

I think that was the most fun trade. I think my top two favorite trades were trade of Miami and then your Bridges Garland just straight up swap. I love the trade of Miami one. I love it because it checks the box of if you're a bad team and you're trading for Trey, you're probably just getting the same thing all over again. But if you're the heat, I think this is where the heat culture comes in. I think it's real. I think with the Simmons expiring, Brooklyn also has

a couple months to figure this out. They don't necessarily have to figure out what they're figuring out in July. They could also say, hey, let's wait till October. Some team starts out slow, some team's unhappy, and maybe we move then and get our guys. I'd love it just for a change of scenery piece from ESPN.com or whoever wants to do another Esquire feature on Ben Simmons. Atlanta, are you ready? Like ready for what? Fitz? What if we sent you to write a ringer feature about Ben Simmons? Like we just got you into that mix. I would do it. Would you go?

All right, we'll talk to the agent. Before we go, who do you think the next Laker coach is going to be? This Hurley story is so weird. I feel like there's something wrong here. I understand why he would want to do it. Living in LA is actually awesome when you find a place that you would like to live. So that's not it. It's the Lakers. That's a big deal. If you're a lifer in basketball and the Lakers want you to be their head coach, but are they going to pay him all that money when it's a family that isn't on the richer side of the NBA ownership deal where they really going to pay him

that much money? Like 120 million for seven years. Yeah. So if it's the money, okay. If it's the Lakers, all right. Lifestyle.

Sure. No problem. All of those things. But it just, it felt weird to me the way it went along that all of a sudden it was like, wait, this? Can we bring a conspiracy bill? Please do. Woj, once upon a time, wrote a book about the Hurley family. I think has pretty good ties there. We know JJ was talking to the Lakers for a while and probably wanted real money, right?

JJ's making money as a podcaster. He's making money as an ESPN announcer. And for him to give up a life that he seems pretty happy with to take on this crazy Lakers job, he's going to want to get paid. So it felt like two weeks ago, JJ had the job, but then I'm not sure what happened.

Maybe he wanted too much money. Maybe the Lakers wanted to put a little pressure on him. Maybe Curly, who I think just signed an extension, maybe he is looking at all these crazy NBA numbers where all these coaches now are making 10 million or more a year. And he's thinking, shit, I'm actually still underpaid. Maybe I have to float something out that I'm interested in the Laker job. And then if you're the Lakers, you're like, this is great. We get to steal headlines from the finals, right? People are talking about the Lakers again.

Hurley, oh my God, whoa. We'll do the meeting. And then we ultimately end up with JJ and Hurley gets an extension. And that's how this plays out. That's conspiracy Bill's take. I don't think it's a crazy conspiracy at all. I don't. Because if you know, I don't know what JJ makes.

I could probably guess. And I could also guess that he's doing it in a way where if he were to do this a long time, you know, much like you, Bill, I mean, there's real money out there to be, if you can start your own company and then somebody wants to acquire you later on, uh, those numbers can be more than what NBA coaches make. So as much as I would think if you're a JJ or Hurley or whatever, like, Oh my God, I could be the head coach of the Lakers. I would imagine that means a lot. Yeah, but if you're already making a ton of money, you're not going to go to the Lakers and be like, well, I'll go.

Especially JJ, who's so young. If he wants to coach at some point, he can coach. He could probably build this company for five more years, sell it, continue to get better with the NBA stuff that he's doing at ESPN. I mean, clearly the guy's got some goals and an execution plan here, and he would have to delay all that, and he could still do all of those things and then become a coach a little bit later on

unless the Lakers is like the absolute thing and you never know, like the timing of things. You can't just assume you're going to be offered the Lakers gig five, seven years from now. But I think the money part of it was right because I was like, for Hurley to do this, it's probably like a hundred million dollar contract with the new salaries that are going on for NBA coaches. It went on a massive- Which changed since he did that extension. Yeah. Because there's a couple of big deals

that happened. And same thing for JJ. He's looking at that. I do think there was a money piece. There's a competitive need. I agree with everything you said about JJ. Just play this out. Try to build value. It's the same reason doc took the buck's job. You know, doc was super happy. He was already getting paid for a job. He got fired from, he was living in LA.

He's playing golf, having a great time and didn't want to coach again. And then Milwaukee calls him like, Hey, do you want to coach Giannis? He's like, I do. That sounds great. Because he's competitive. These guys have been competing their whole lives. And when you pull that away, I think you miss it.

So with JJ, it's like I could become the Lakers coach and I could coach LeBron and Davis and a team that's going to spend money and is always kind of relevant in some way. And this is one of the best jobs in sports much less basketball you get competitive about it we first of all we're totally on the same page on that one yeah so if that's the driving force i mean i understand that but there's a number when you're making as much money as JJ might be making now and could be making down the road where you go all right match it if I'm I'm not just here at ESPN chopping it up late night

on one of the studio shows and then doing a couple games and then even if you want to say it's the NBA finals like I probably guess where he's at at ESPN for that number but the number for him and this sort of feels weird but it's just part of the story the number that he could potentially obtain by building his own media company and all the value that comes with all that kind of stuff that's where I would think where he's like yeah I'm competitive I miss it I want to come back I want to prove I can do this I've always wanted to coach it's the fucking Lakers I get to move back to Manhattan Beach this is going to be incredible I can't oh, you thought I wanted to do this like for some sort of passion discount. Right. Five million a year. Well,

cause the other thing is he went for the Charlotte job too. Right. And they took Charles Lee, but he also interviewed for that. So that tells me he really wants to coach. I think he really does, but he also, they maybe made the mistake of floating it out there that he was getting the job. Cause I know you heard the same stuff I heard. And it seemed like it was locked down. And then all of a sudden, we have this Dan Hurley story. So, and then there was the Woj Shams thing. You can't sleep on the Woj Shams thing either.

Shams reports that JJ's getting the job. And then Woj comes back with a, wait a second, which I think is a piece two. Is he getting the job? What about Hurley? And then boom. So now one of those two guys is going to be around. It's a fun story.

It was certainly a big topic at the finals. It was who's going to win the finals and then what's going on with the Lakers or the two conversations that are happening in the finals right now. And then the distant third is, who the fuck is going first in this nba draft what is happening the monty williams to the lakers rumor is my favorite rumor of the offseason i love it would you do if you were detroit would you say

you can have monty in our fifth pick to take that contract off our hands it's like a salary dump. Pick swap. Five for 17 and take money. That's more fair. Yeah, Monty, he has a great relationship with LeBron. He loves LeBron. That's the funniest outcome. That was written a couple times, right?

I texted you this week. That's my favorite dream outcome is the Monty Williams trade to the Lakers is the most fun of all of it. And just everyone talking about what a special guy he is. And this is great. And just kind of dumping last year

under the rug with the Pistons. All right, we got to go. Rossello, this was fun. So our final advice is Atlanta trade, at least one of them. We prefer Trey. And then for Brooklyn,

um, you're, you're pro keeping bridges, trying to build around them. I'm, I'm like, whatever you, if you can get some crazy bridges,

they'll do it. I'd have to know more about what he's like internally. Cause I am look for a younger player who's somebody I like, who I think is really talented but not talented where it screws up everybody else. I don't think he's a narcissist as a basketball player. If he's on board, then I'd want to explore that a little bit more. But if he's not, then I would be totally aligned with you on, all right, we'll probably just do this now before we have to face the weirdness.

It'd be funny if two days from now it's like, two days from now it's like, trade me to the Knicks. I want to have that whole segment. You're probably right. By the way, You're probably right. By the way, you're, you're probably right. But I, if I were running, like,

I just would never be in a hurry to give up somebody before he makes it. Like, I know that's, you could count on that by saying, well, you better get rid of them before then everybody knows that he wants out. It's like, I don't know.

Some of these guys demand trades. They still get three firsts and some players back. So we can talk about declining value and all that kind of stuff. I just, there's a lot of these players that we always move around in our fantasies. And I, sometimes I'm just kind of like, I don't,

I wouldn't want to not have Mikkel bridges on my team. I loved him last year. I loved what I saw from him last year. And I don't know what the hell happened this year. Well, I think I do, but just had to watch. That's good to see.

So, all right, thanks. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Russillo. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creighton. As always, remember, you can watch clips and complete episodes of this podcast on my YouTube channel. Just search for Bill Simmons.

It is youtube.com slash at Bill Simmons. Also, bring our movies where all the rewatchables are going, including Breaking Away, which goes up Monday night. I will see you on this feed, I think on Tuesday. Don't hold me to it, but I think it's going to be Tuesday. Go Celts. I don't have a few years with him. On the wayside, I'm a bruised son. Never, I said, I don't have a few years with him. Must be 21 plus, 18 plus DC, and present in select states.

Fandle, offering online sports wagering, Kansas Center Agreement, Kansas Star Casino, LLC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLE or visit Fandle.com slash RG. In Colorado, DC, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Vermont. Call 1-800-NEXTSTEP or text NEXTSTEP to 533-42 in Arizona, 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut, 809 with it in Indiana, 800-522-4700, or visit ksgamblinghelp.com in Kansas, 877-770-STOP in Louisiana, mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland, 800gambler.net in West Virginia, 805-224-700 in Wyoming. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York.