The Bill Simmons Podcast - Boston’s Heart Attack Trip to the Finals With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the Celtics toppling the Heat to punch their ticket to the NBA Finals, Miami’s near comeback, takeaways from the series, another big playoff performance from Jimmy Butler, a huge moment for the Tatum-Brown era in Boston, how the Warriors match up with the Celtics, and more (1:54). Then, they discuss Steph Curry “the malleable superstar,” the Timberwolves signing GM Tim Connelly to a megadeal, the Lakers hiring Darvin Ham as their head coach, a strange story out of MLB, and more (54:35). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, we're going to be talking French Open, Stanley Cup playoffs, baseball through the two-month mark, a little Monaco. Oh, no, we're not doing any of that. We're doing Celtics Heat, game seven. It's 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

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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Here's my schedule this week. I'm doing this podcast Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. I am doing the rewatchables on Monday and Wednesday. That's right, it's a two rewatchables week, including a special episode on Monday where we go through all the categories, picking some new ones for the podcast

as we head toward 250 episodes. The listeners helped us out. Very excited to narrow it down and tell you what categories we added. And then on Tuesday, don't forget, the Prestige TV podcast, we're wrapping up. We own this city. Me and Big Waz, Sean Fantasy tapping in for Chris Ryan.

And on Tuesday's pod, talk a little Top Gun too. If you want to hear Top Gun stuff sooner, I would check out the Big Picture podcast with Sean Fantasy. And if you want to hear Stranger Things reactions, The Ringerverse covered the first six episodes in two podcasts. Natalie Rubin, Joanna Robinson. They broke it down. My daughter is badgering me to

come on on Tuesday to give her review. I don't know what's going on, Stranger Things. We'll see if that happens, but there you go. Coming up on this podcast, Ryan Russell and I are going to talk about Celtics Heat Game 7, and we're going to talk about a bunch of other NBA stuff. Maybe we'll get to Jock versus Ph fam as well. It's all next. First, our friends from Pro Jam. All right, taping this. It is 8.41 Pacific time. Just watched the Celtics make the NBA finals. And it couldn't have happened any other way if you followed this team for the entirety of Marcus Smart's career and Jalen and Jason's career

and everything that happened this year when they started out 25 and 25 and they have been really dominant a lot of the time. And then there would be close games when weird stuff would happen. They have a 13 point lead with 3.34 left to play. And they just sniff bath salts and chug some vodka shots. And all of a sudden, Jimmy Butler is taking a pull-up three

with 20 seconds left to make the game 99-98, and he front-rimmed it. Did you think it was going in, Rosillo? Yeah, I did. You did? I did. I mean, the whole time I thought Voss was going to win the game. I've been on this the entire series.

But that one, for them to be that bad that quickly. And honestly, once Miami Heat fans started leaving with under two minutes to go, I was like, that's actually a bad sign. That's a bad sign. But let's just back. This was a torturous basketball game. It had like, what was this like for you. There was no other way for this to happen. There's that quote in a league of their league of their own. When Tom Hanks, his character, the manager was like, this is supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. And the Celtics have kind of embraced that, right? This is who we are. We're a rollercoaster ride. But when you're up 13 and Butler's played the whole game and, and it's basically a wrap and Tatum to his credit and almost to his detriment, they're doubling him and he's just making the same good pass over and over again. Marcus is like, I got this, guys. I think he missed six straight shots and there was a Jalen Brown

charge thrown in there. At some point, it was 98-93, my wife decided to watch the game with me, which was great, but also, I don't know, not a great idea because she sees a side of me that's probably not awesome. And when it was 98-93, I thought I was going to have a seizure. I was like, oh my God, they're going to blow this game. Like, I don't, 100 points wins this game.

I don't know if we can get to 100 points. And it's just, this is a heart attack team personified by Marcus. That was his whole career in a nutshell. Missed all those shots in a row. And guess what? Made the free throws

that sent them to the finals. That was Marcus in a nutshell that whole game. He was really good. Two-minute stretch, terrible. Yeah, he carried their ass at the beginning of the third quarter. He was great.

He had like nine points right away. And, you know, there's a bigger topic that we'll get to as we talk about the finals a little bit here. But you know what Miami's going to do? They're going to sell out. It's going to be two with Tatum, if not a third guy shading towards him. Horford couldn't

make anything, although he was terrific in other parts of the game. Rob Williams, in the limited minutes he was out there, looked scared to death, and he didn't even have any rebounds. Rob Williams was terrible, and I think he was hurt because it didn't even have any rebounds um he was rob williams was terrible and i think he was hurt because it didn't seem like he had any lift but i actually i think they should have played tice over him he was that bad and then jalen yet by the seventh time you play

against him in a row if you're miami you know exactly what once he puts it on the floor crowd him have somebody come over and swipe and then that's an adventure the entire time so tatumum was, I know people can look at it and say, all right, three field goal attempts. And this is always, this can be a mistake. There can be players that just don't take enough shots because they're not comfortable. Okay. But with Tatum, it isn't a comfort thing. The inbound turnaround of Butler was insane. The three that made it 93-81 felt like maybe that was the defining shot of the game. And that was a nasty shot. He's kind of leaning to his left side past the break. But all of the plays to Smart were the right plays.

And so Smart's wide open. And you're thinking one goes down and you're not even worried about the Butler part of it. So yeah, the Smart's... Every Smart shot was wide open. Wide open. Wide open. And I think Miami was just like, we're just Marcus, knock yourself out. We're just going to give you these. The one he made was actually a really tough runner in the lane where he was sideways and then got it back up towards

the rim. So I know there's plenty of other times where I go, Oh, here we go with Marcus smart. He's going to try to take over. But the problem is, is that he's still decent enough of a shooter and they're so wide open and everyone's on Tatum. I think the frustrating thing would be, hey, you know what they're going to do. They're doing it the entire time. You guys have to figure

some sort of counter off of this. There has to be some screen to the other side where Jalen's catching it on the move into the paint and then he doesn't have to dribble because he's in good position. Just something else

instead of Tatum going, all right, you got the ball out of my hands and smart's wide open. But that was... So you didn't think the Butler shot was going in even though you thought at 98-93 they were going to lose it?

That's before the Strews three too. I couldn't believe he was taking it. It's hard to criticize anything that dude did. He played all 48 minutes. All 48. It was spectacular. And it was really just him and Bam and like a couple Lowry plays

and nobody else in the team showed up. I thought he had a lot of runway. I thought they were getting most of the calls, the 50-50 calls. We're going Miami's way. It's a home game for them. And I just thought he was going to attack Horford and put a body on him

and try to get a three-point play. So there's that split second where he has the ball and he's approaching. And I'm, I'm just like, Oh, I'm thinking three point play in my head. And when he pulled up,

I was actually relieved. I can't explain it. I was like, I, that, that, why, why is he doing that?

Cause I just assumed he was going to go to the basket. He front rimmed it, which is not surprising cause he played 48 minutes. They get the rebound and, uh, you know, then smart has to make to the basket. He front-rimmed it, which is not surprising because he played 48 minutes. They get the rebound and then Smart has to make the free throws. But I just thought the way the momentum in the game was going, I think you have to go to the basket on that play.

If the roles were reversed, I would have wanted Tatum to go to the basket. Yeah, I don't blame him for taking the shot, so I'm not going to be that critical of it. And you could say, okay, Horford's backpedaling. There isn't really help there. You should be able to get to the rim.

And that's where Butler's at his absolute best. Who knows if you get a foul call? I think you'd have to get murdered to get an and one and a made layup with that one. If he missed it, maybe they give him the two free throws.

I could also understand him not wanting overtime considering what he had done. And, you know, the Miami part of this series where I have to give him more credit than I gave him before it. They were really impressive

because of their toughness. Certainly seeing that game six. But my biggest problem with them all the time was what's the offense going to look like when you really need to figure out a way to get past this Boston defense? Six plus minutes into the fourth quarter for their lives, they scored six total points. You can look at the final part of this and say Miami won the fourth 21-18, but it was good defense on Boston, but it was good defense on Boston, but it was also Boston. What the hell is Smart doing rolling the ball up?

You want to run the clock. What are you doing? And so it felt like, first of all, these teams were exhausted. I think it gets thrown around a little bit too much, but at the end of that game, it was like watching it, you're going, these guys are toast. They're toast. Who's going to survive this? That's usually a game seven though.

You'd think back to like, even going to some of the finals, like Piston Spurs, 2005 Cavs Warriors, 2016. You know, it's a great one when we did the rewatchables and it was Jordan's first title against the Lakers in the clinching game that the end of that game,

seeing people just, they can't in Jordan having the only one that could find these reserves of energy. Right. Because it's like a game, each game's a game and a half and you're going every other day. It was 82-79,

11 minutes left. My notes were, where is Rob, why is Rob W. playing? Where is Tice? Is Smart really going to lead the team in shots? Really? By the way, he did.

He took 22 shots. He led the team in shots. And? By the way, he did. He took 22 shots. He led the team in shots. And they go on this run. Miami goes 0 for 9. All of a sudden, the Celts are up 90-79. Tatum hits a 3, 93-81. Tatum hits that other two at the shot clock, 95-85. And then by the time, three and a half minute mark, it's 98-85.

And the game fell over. It did. And they just couldn't, 85. And the game fell over. And they just couldn't finish it. And it was just classic. It's why I love this team and why this team is probably taking months off my life. I mean, I'm texting my dad, like, are you alive? When it was 98, 93. And he just texted back, no.

I'm like, did my stepmother text that? Did he actually die? What happened? Um, but, uh, but they ended up pulling it out. I, what is the, when you think back on this series 20 years from now, what are you going to think? I don't know that I've seen a series change as much game to game as this one did and yet I never really deviated from how I felt about who was better that's so I was thinking when it was 82-79 there's a timeout or somewhere around there there's a timeout and I started to think about this podcast and I was thinking about a segment of all the times of my life in any sport when I was rooting for a team that was clearly better than the other team, but then didn't win the playoff series. And I just started going down

this dark journey in my head. And I was trying to figure out, would this be the worst Celtics playoff series loss of my lifetime. Where it's like 2010 finals, like yeah, there's nothing worse than winning the finals. 1985 game six, 1984 game seven against the Lakers. Those were awful games. But I can't remember definitively leaving a series going, we were definitely better than that team.

How did we lose? It happens in baseball. It happens in hockey. It happens in baseball all the time. Even football sometimes where you just go, wow, what just, you know, like if you're. Yeah, that's the sport. If you're minus two in turnovers and you have all this yardage. We had that one fumble, but in basketball, the right team usually wins. And with Hero in the shape that he was, it's just like Boston had more weapons. And even Van Gundy, it was 98,89. And he was talking like the series was over. And I'm thinking like, we need to at least get to 100 points. But anyway, if they had blown that,

I just, it would have been unprecedented in Celtics history. It's never been a series. You couldn't come up with another one where they had lost to what you thought was a inferior team, like we just saw. Yeah. And I don't even want to call Miami inferior because I have so much respect for... When I went down that rabbit hole, I thought of two series that the Celtics won when we had the inferior team. The 84 finals when the Lakers just blew it.

I mean, the Celtics were smarter and savvier and they over and over again just kind of stole plays and moments and sequences and they were just tougher. And we left that series and we were like, wow, we were just tougher than those guys. It's one of those series where you're like, yeah, we're just tougher. And same thing in the 87 Piston series where it was like, that team was better than us. We had Bird, we were tougher. We just wanted it more. And I think if Miami had won, that would have been the series. If you're a Miami fan, you leave it and you go, we just, they weren't

as good as those guys, but we wanted it more. We were smarter. We were savvier. We had more playoff experience. We broke those guys. We were tougher than them. And that would have been the legacy of the series. Yeah, you're right. I don't mean to be because I'm sitting here two weeks later with more respect for Miami than I had

before it. Me too. Because I went, hey, they beat Atlanta. They suck. Philly's a mess. And then after game two, I was like, yeah, okay. Smart's back. Williams back. All right. This makes sense. But if you did look at just this game, Boston controlled the entire game. They controlled the entire

game. Double figures for what? 44 of the 48 minutes. Something like that. I don't know. 80% of the game. They're double figures for what, 44 of the 48 minutes? Something like that? 80% of the game, they're double figures. They're up 15 after the first quarter, and then they got up again. In the second quarter, what was great about it for Miami, and I thought most of the fouls were legitimate, man.

They're swiping at Butler, and he finishes every time. Granted, the Lowry things are in a separate category. The end of the first half where he flops in front of Horford on the rebound, and then he dribbles just right in a smart and falls down, and they give him the free throws. If everybody played basketball the way Kyle Lowry does, the next time the NBA TV writes her up, all the networks would pass. They'd just be like, we're good.

It's really an art form. I've never seen anything like it. No, it sucks because no one else should do it, and I can't believe refs don't have more pride in going, this guy got me four times tonight. Like the next time I have to see you get hit by a car before I call one of these things. And that's my Lowry rant.

It's over. The rest of the fouls, when they got all the free throws in the second quarter, I thought they were all pretty legitimate. You know, self-defense foul on those guys. And what was so great about the first quarter for Boston was the intense effort to get out in transition push and they were controlling the defensive boards they had the coach that we wired the coach he's like push push push right it was like f1 and so

you've got Emei talking that up defensive board controlling I think it was 13 fast break points in the first quarter and then zero in the second. Right, because the free throw stopped everything. And there's some weird half court concerns with this Celtics team for long stretches, unless Tatum's going to hero ball them out of it, which is just really hard to do against a team like Miami that's smart and has some dudes and gets after and fights with you in the fourth quarter. So it was a strange game because I look at the second quarter i'm like okay now it's close to the half but it's it's close in the second quarter because of just an absurd amount of

free throws which were all deserved and it's going to shut the game down and then when they get up again i'm like all right yep they're better they're going to win this game and then you have just this weird last minute and a half that almost ended up being one of the most historic collapses not just in celtics history but would have been NBA history. No, and don't think I wasn't thinking about the Ray Allen shot when I was in the building for that, because that was a condensed version of what we were watching, where it's five points, 27 seconds left, and the game's basically over and people are leaving. It's 53-38 in this game in the first half.

Celtics have the ball. There's like two plus minutes left. Tatum dribbles into traffic, loses it. Jump ball. Wins the jump ball. Smart gets it, but does that thing where he dives and he just doesn't keep it. And then Strews hits a three.

Tatum takes a terrible three. Butler takes a three. Timeout. To your point, halftimeime it's like what the fuck how what was the score at halftime

it was 55 49 it was like it was 53 38 it was 53 38 10 seconds ago and it just over and over again

it's funny with these playoff series you really you know you watch every second you're absorbing it, especially for me because I was able to go to a couple in person. And you just develop such an intense dislike for certain guys

in the other team. Like Bam with those end of the shot clock, lollipop prayers that just, I think they went in 90% of the time. Lowry just hooking guys on rebounds and the charges he takes. And it's just, I'm just so happy to see that team go. That team is Jason Voorhees. They just wouldn't go away.

Even today, Butler and Baylor are the only two guys that play. I don't even know how they were within 15 points. It's the same thing after the start of the fourth quarter. It's a seven point game. It's 82-75 and Miami comes comes right out bam gets the dunk where i don't know what the hell rob williams is doing on that one he was he came off a bam to help on gabe vincent so there's two with vincent and that's the bam play that destroyed him two years ago right and they've done a really good job containing that

you know it's it's not a back cut he just he just rolls behind the defense you know the defender hoping that he's going to come up. But against Gabe Vincent, you don't have to do that. And he does that. Then Williams gets stripped at the rim underneath. So you're like, okay.

And that was Struis. And then Butler gets a two. And now all of a sudden, it's 82-79. And then Butler took a hero three to tie it and he missed it. Yeah. It was 82-79. He took... Look, he's not a hero three to tie it and he missed it. Yeah. It was 82-79.

He took, look, he's not a good three-point shooter, but he was in such a zone in these playoffs. And I think, you know, weirdly, I think he elevated whatever his stature is because now he has this whole postseason plus 2020. And I think the bubble thing, I'm not saying that was a fluke, but that was like his one kind of moment. Now I think he has two moments

because the stuff that he did in six and seven, 46 minutes game six, 48 minutes in this game, the Celtics didn't know what to do against him. It was basically like, please get tired. And then he finally seemed like he got tired in the second half, right? Yeah, I mean, I thought everybody was tired

and I thought, okay, well, I thought everybody was tired. And I thought, okay, well, they're really not going to sit him at all. Because then there's that weird game of what version of him do I get? Like a depleted 48-minute version of him. What version do I get if I play him 44 minutes? Can we survive those minutes? And then they tried the hero thing in the first half. He had nothing.

He had nothing. And then he missed that. They ran a play for him, and he just bricked it at the front end. And and then i'm like is he in a hoodie like shouldn't we have somebody on this yeah because when they were showing him back in the white hot heat playoff shirt i think he had a hoodie on underneath it so again i could have been wrong but it was like hey is hero gonna come back in i'm like dude he's best he's basically in jeans, isn't he? I promise Spoh didn't want to play Butler 48 minutes in this game. But I think in the first half at one point, I think he had scored like half their points. Something like that.

Bam had more in the second half, but it got to the point where they couldn't take Butler out of the game. He's 13 for 24, got to the free throw line 11 times, but I think most of those were in the first half. I thought he got it free throw line, maybe 10 times, 35 points, nine rebounds. It was another like LeBron style kind of impact, you know, like, I don't know what more he could have done.

I don't really know what more Bam could have done. Bam put 46 minutes in that game. From a Celtics standpoint, just thinking about the next series, Horford had 14 rebounds, but it looked like his legs were shot. I think he needs to break. But the Rob Williams thing I think is the big concern.

Because to me, he looked like he was 50% in this game. And again, I think I would have played Tice over 50% Rob Williams. So we'll see what happens with him in the finals. Let's take a quick break and then we'll see what happens with him in the finals. Let's, you know, let's take a quick break and then, then we'll keep going.

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Max bonus $25. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling problem? In Arizona, call 1-800-NEXT-STEP. Connecticut, 888-789-7777. In Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia,

1-800-GAMBLER. In Michigan, 800-270-7117. 1-877-770-STOP. In Louisiana, 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help in Michigan. 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. Tennessee red line is 800-889-9789. And in West Virginia, 1800-ber.net. So Tatum goes 26-10-6. Brown goes 24-6-6. Marcus hits the big free throws. We talked about this last time. They lose to the LeBron Cavs twice in a row.

They lose in the bubble to the Heat. I felt like this was a weirdly big era game for them. Huge. I actually, I was a weirdly big era game for them. Huge. I actually, I was going to some dark places during the game. Like what, if they don't lose this, what's the move?

Is it, we do, we run it back. Is it something broken here? Can, you know, you're just thinking like, what is the hump for this team that they can't get over?

Because to, to lose to this Miami team would have been bad. I mean, you see the way, how tight they were and especially like Horford, like it's just people milling to Horford. It was like watching the one big guy in the Little League team.

You know, that just when they win the Little League World Series, everybody just gravitates to one big guy. The chemistry is great. I wonder now, will this team be unleashed in the next finals? Like they had to get this last test. We see this in basketball a lot, right? Can you get over the hump? Can you get over the hump? It's like the hardest thing is to get to that last, like 3%

of whatever series you need to get over. Will this unleash them or is it the same problems for them against the Warriors? It's a great question. I don't know the answer. And I think about the same exact thing because every time you do this long enough, whenever you watch games, all you're doing is thinking about the seven or eight segments that you have baking in your head. That might just be us. It sucks, actually.

We're in segment hell. Because there was the all-day Boston talk show call-in of break these two dudes up if they don't win this one. We were never, you and I were never on board with that ever. To be totally fair, when they were terrible again around January, I said, I'm open to the conversation in a way I've never been open to it before, but I still know that the end game is you're probably going to lose the trade when you trade somebody like this. So I'm not saying you

have to do it. I would at least take calls now and go, what would it even be? What would even be out there? And then I'd still probably say no. So I'll share that. But then it turned into the, everybody wanted a broken up and I don't, I don't know that that's, I don't know that it's true.

I think there was just a lot of questions being asked about a team that was 500 over 200 games. Yeah. What was that? They, I forget. 100 and 100 over 200 regular season. I think the dad did the tweet things turn.

I never got to the break it up thing. I might've, I never got to the break it up thing, but I, I hit a place that you did where at some point you had to at least start having the conversations for like a year from now. Like, yeah,

it's just at some, something has to happen positively that makes us think the East was pretty weak in 17 and 18 and then the bubble, who the hell knows. Now the whole league is better. Does this framework of a team make sense? It always comes back to the

point guard thing. I thought Smart, the way he pushed it in the first quarter and then you mentioned earlier when he kind of carried them in the beginning of the third quarter he outplayed Lowry in the series that was one of the reasons they won right even though Smart got hurt

even though he sucked in game six because he was on one leg in this game I thought he was more impactful I don't know how hurt Lowry was Lowry certainly didn't seem in incredible shape but the one thing with Lowry I will say

god damn every shot he hit felt like a shot that they absolutely needed when he made it you know where it was like the Celtics had real momentum or coming out of a timeout after the Celts had made a three and that was always when he would come through,

but he just couldn't do it consistently. And then there was a lot of Oladipo in the fourth quarter too, which I thought was surprising. I'm not even positive I would have played him. He had that one really big three. So the trail three where Butler turned it back to him off a transition, that was a huge, huge three. I would agree with you on the Lowry thing.

It feels like when you need something that's that's always one of my favorite things about like great point guard so i can't stand the other stuff but i still have enough respect for him that hey can you get us something can you can you get us something can you find a way to get us because i think he probably has better instincts with that than smart does yes as as more of a traditional point guard even though he was so good playing off of van vliet uh when he was in Toronto. But let's get back to the Tatum-Brown thing, because I would... I think you were onto something

that's really... I don't know if it's smart or if it's just a way of looking at the finals, where you go, okay... And as I've said throughout this whole thing, the first three Eastern Conference finals, I never want to hear about it. It was fluky they were even in it, and it doesn't mean that, oh, you can't win with these guys. This was going to be totally different.

This was going to be a completely different kind of loss in that, all right, what is up? How could you have not closed this team out? Yeah. You had more talent than the other team, and you lost. And now that they do, do you think, this is all be guesswork, do you think it unleashes some calmness in their personality and their games where... Not to say you're not just as intense and the stakes aren't even higher in the finals, but you got past this thing that there were going to be a lot of confidence against, and this will be a theme that comes up for the next four days. For whatever reason, from when Stevens was the coach and then E-May this year, they've just always played the Warriors well. Smarts always played Curry well. They've always had too much size on the wings, and they've always had these up and down games where they've just looked really comfortable against them. Kurt Goldsberry tweeted, the Celtics are the only team with a winning record versus the Warriors since Steve Kerr took over in 2014. So I don't understand it. I don't really have an adequate basketball explanation

other than that I think because of the wings, I think they just give the smart Tatum Brown thing has just given the Warriors problems over the years. Kerr has a lot of respect for these guys. He coached them in the Team USA stuff. I think he really, really likes and respects the team. And the Horford-Draymond thing is like an interesting little matchup.

They just... Across the board, they really match up well with this team. I was surprised. The Warriors are favored on FanDuel. I was really surprised. I thought this, I know they have home court, but man, you think like the Warriors beat up Denver team,

Memphis, no job. We talked about this Thursday night. And then the Dallas team that just stopped making threes. This Boston team seems like the best team they've played by a considerable margin, I would say. I feel like Boston matches up really well with them. And there's something about the way

they defend Golden State that's always been a little different. I did an eye roll when they talked about missing out on Durant to Golden State during the recruitment. I thought it was such a weird thing because the Celtics shouldn't be happy about coming in second place in a free agent race.

But part of it was that Boston felt like they'd sort of unlocked this way to defend Golden State. And I had mentioned it to somebody, and they kind of explained to me that Boston does approach Golden State a little bit different defensively, and it's talked about. And because they have these defenders, they have so many switchable guys, especially with this group, that it is a challenging thing for Golden State. But I do think the vaguest part of this has to do with if they make this... They're trying to figure out a way to not get all the money on

Golden State, so they make them a little bit more of a favorite. Because I still think, even though we know it's not the same Golden State team as prime Golden State, which isn't an insult, by the way, it's that there will probably be a lot. I think there's probably a lot of people looking at the Warriors going, oh, here they go again. Oh, man, that line went up. Oh, no. Keep going. Sorry.

What was it? 145? No, it did go up. Now it's minus 160 Warriors plus 130 Celtics on FanDuel. It was minus 145, right? Yeah. Now it went up. There's been Warriors action.

Surprised. I'm not, though, because I think the public sentiment would be, oh, Golden State's back at it again. You know what was a strangely big thing in this? And you talk about this later in the podcast because we taped that part already. I had a couple audio difficulties, by the way, during that, so I'll apologize now.

The Clay looking like Clay in that last game, I wonder if that swung the line at all, because I thought that he was specifically a really good matchup for the Celtics team. Cause you saw with Struess today, they're just going to stay home. They're not going to give up threes. I thought part of the game plan today with Jimmy was like, let Jimmy cook and have the twos, but we are not letting Struess and P.J. Tucker beat us. P.J. Tucker only played 17 minutes in that game because they just weren't giving me up the corner threes or any kind of threes

like they did the last game. I think they're going to make Clay try to beat him off the dribble, would be my guess. And again, Smart has done really well against Curry over the years. It's been a good matchup for him for whatever reason. Especially when he takes him out. Right, especially when he... Oh, we have that thing too. We get to litigate

the smart dive unit. I forgot about that. Yeah, I'm surprised. I thought the line would be closer. But what do I know? Because it was when the Celtics before game six

were plus 140 for the finals. So they had to actually make the finals and then the line never moved. So people didn't, they didn't see something they liked. Maybe they watched the last minute and a half. Yeah, I think they watched the last two

minutes of the line move. The last time these two teams played in the finals, can you guess? 1970 time these two teams played in the finals, can you guess? 1970. Oh, wait. I don't know. Go ahead.

I think it was 64. Oh, yeah. I don't know. It was when Wilt and Thurman were on the same team and they were the San Francisco Warriors. But when they should have played, I think was 1975.

We were headed for Warriors-Celtics and then the Bullets just stuck it to the Celtics. I think Kavlice were headed for Warriors Celtics and then the Bullets just stuck it to the Celtics. I think Kavlicek might've been hurt. And then the next year, Celtics made the finals and the Warriors were supposed to show up. They blew a game seven at home to Phoenix.

So they ended up never playing. And then 2018, it could have happened if Jeff Green didn't have 19 points in a game seven in Boston. Yeah, I remember doing a couple pods with you too.

I think you flirted with the idea that Boston matched up well with them in 18 as they got through Cleveland. That was a total homer pick. It was like,

are you sure about that? I was like, we got a lot of guys to throw at Durant. Just watch out. Semi? Durant's throw at Durant. Just watch out. Semi-Poggiolet? Durant's nervous. Durant stopper.

So the Celtics, is this a happy-to-be-there thing, or you think this team now believes? I actually think they think they are the best team. Even if they didn't always show it. I don't know. Look, they had a harder path than Golden State did. Yeah. And that's what I kept, you know, granted, Middleton was out against Milwaukee, but beating

the Bucs in six and seven, and I'm like, you're going to lose to Miami six and seven? Like, how's that going to happen? So, you should feel tested. The rest is monumental for them. But, you know, this is, it's one of those weird things because it still feels a little monumental for them. It's one of those weird things because it still feels a little new. This is the first version of this Golden State team. Hell, we didn't even get to see it all season long.

This Celtics team, I think, has now proven itself enough getting through the East that you should be able to buy in on it. What if Boston looks really stagnant in the fourth quarter and Marcus Smart has to ISO everything because Golden State's selling out and Tatum's running through things where he's getting matched up with Klay and then into, well, now that you switch into Draymond,

but you get the point. There'll be some version of this where Celtics' offense isn't going to look great and Curry gets going and Klay gets going and if it happens in game one, if you pick Boston, isn't going to look great. And Curry gets going and Klay gets going. And if it happens in game one, if you pick Boston, you're going to go, I'm in trouble now on this one.

Because that moment's happening against Golden State where you're going to be helpless. It's going to happen against them offensively, even with Boston's great defense, because it's just who they are. So I don't know how they respond to it. You would think well, considering the way they've been tested in the previous two series.

A couple of good signs if you're the Celtics. A lot of double-figure leads throughout the playoffs. I don't know the exact number, but it just felt like in over half the games, they had a 10-plus lead in the second half would be my guess. They had seven road wins in the three rounds, including three in Miami.

That's not nothing. They had two in Milwaukee. They won do-or-die games on the two in Milwaukee they won do or die games on the road in Milwaukee and in in Miami which ain't nothing

and that's why I don't I don't know if home court matters in this series that much because I don't think Boston has been an awesome home team either

we've watched them lose like you think they easily could have lost game one Brooklyn that was kind of a miracle and then over and over again Milwaukee and Miami were able to go in there and take games the games that Dallas game

near the end of the regular season they lost at home there's another one near the end that it's just any kind of close game it felt like they didn't take care of business at home like they normally did they were weirdly more comfortable on the road which I guess if you don't have home court, isn't the worst skill

to have. And on the flip side, Golden State, how the hell do you know that team game to game? They could hit 23s any game. I never know what I'm getting from Wiggins. What if Wiggins is just good for two weeks? Wiggins, I think, as weird as this sounds... All right.

How about this? Key role player in each series. It has to be Wiggins for the Warriors, I think. Yeahins, I think, as weird as this sounds... All right, how about this? Key role player in each series. It has to be Wiggins for the Warriors, I think. Yeah, because I think I know what I'm getting out of everybody else for the most part. Yeah. You need his size. You need his defense. You need his rebounding.

I might say Looney. I might say Looney. Because Looney was so good. I keep going back to that game, too, when all the times he got... We might see more Bialisa in this one. Yes. Because that's one thing that Ime did stay with.

He always wanted to stay big when Miami went small. And Miami didn't really have much of a choice. I mean, they're a small team to begin with, but sometimes they'd go even smaller. Van Gunney would point it out. And Ime would stay big with the guys. Look, I thought Grant had a really good first half, his cuts.

And then, man, like Oladipo tried to get him in the baseline and Grant just stays right up and Oladipo couldn't get past him. I mean, you know, we give Grant probably enough shit on the pod because, you know, we find him slightly annoying. I love him. He's like the little brother I always wanted.

I know you do. And he deserves credit because I thought, you know, he got into foul trouble and all that, but there's just some bigger options here for Boston to go up against a Golden State team that hasn't really had to worry about it all that much. And part of the Memphis series, even though I thought they were better than them,

it was a resurgence of Adams who was on the scrap heap for a good chunk of the playoffs. He was like, wait, so Looney could be, because they have no other size, yeah, Looney could be a really important piece of this. Just trying to keep the other team honest on the rebounds and contests.

Offensive rebounds will be big for the Celts. But ultimately, it's the best player in the series that usually is what works. You had the ones where it's like Gian player in the series that usually is what works. You know, you had the ones where it's like, Giannis is clearly the best player in round two, but Boston's whole team was better.

In this case, the teams are pretty even. I just think they're different. I just think they're different. It's going to be, like, it won't be weird, like, what the hell's going on in this Miami series. I think there could just be massive swings game to game in this one where you'd think, okay, well, like, when Miami would win, I wouldn't go, be massive swings game to game in this one where you'd think, okay, well, when Miami

would win, I wouldn't go, how is Boston going to beat them? I think you could have that. I want to get back to the home court thing because I gave you a little bit of shit before the playoffs started. You were talking about the garden and going, it is an advantage. I started paying way more attention to it throughout when we had the last

round of teams. You're right. You're right. Miami, forget it I mean, Miami, forget it. Milwaukee wasn't what Boston was. Brooklyn isn't. And the new Golden State setup is just not what Oracle was. It's just not. And everyone will tell you. Yeah, Boston's crowds have been great and the performances have not been great in front of the crowds, which I don't fully understand. I have an

important point, though, about this finals. And it's going to sound like a Homer point. And I swear to God, it's not. What? No, it's not. Don't label the Homer thing on me. Get out of town. Round three was not great from a quality of play standpoint, right? Either series, we can agree that that

didn't have a barrel of fun watching either of those. Round two, except for Milwaukee-Boston, was pretty bad, basketball-wise, for what the possibilities were. I think Memphis Golden State might have been able to go up a level if Ja hadn't gotten hurt.

There were some games in that series, though. There was the Ja Game 2 thing. But I'm just saying, I won't be calling you over the summer and be like, hey, I want to do a rewatchables about dot, dot, dot from round two, unless probably it was the Celtic Buck game. The Miami Phillies series was really disappointing.

And then Dallas Phoenix was just bizarre. I don't, the way that thing fizzled out, I was just unprecedented. I think the Golden State Boston series is going to be a really fun series to watch, regardless of who you're rooting for, who you bet on, whether you're just watching because you like it.

I just think styles make fights, as they always say with boxing. I think the styles really match up in this. I think both teams will be able to score on each other. I think it'll be really free-flowing. And, you know, it's a weird spot for me

because I love watching that Warriors team. You know, obviously I'm going to be rooting against them and rooting for my team, but I just really respect how they play.

I like watching them. I've watched more Warriors games than anybody except the Celtics. It's going to be weird that that's now the team standing in front of this team. I just, I really respect how they put it together. I respect how they play.

I like their guys. I like the fact, the continuity. And now I have to work up a healthy dose of hatred for some of them. Draymond will be easy because he does all the Draymond stuff. It'll be easy to be immediately turn him into a villain. But, I mean, how do you root against Klay? I know I'll figure it out, but goddamn, that guy didn't play

for three years. You'll get there. Quickly pool. I'll figure out a way not to like him. Be Elitza immediately. I'll be like, look at this guy. See that little elbow through. So I'll be able to work. And then Curry, I just can't root against. I just can't. So if Golden State wins, you won't be upset? No, I'll be able to work and then Curry, I just can't root against. I just can't. So if Golden State wins,

you won't be upset? No, I'll be super upset. I'm just saying like, I'll never be like, fuck Curry. How did you get away with that? Like, I just like Curry. It would have been weird

if it were Dallas because then you would have, could you have gotten to dislike with Doncic by game three? Oh, Dallas, I would have turned on right away. Yeah, Cuban on the bench.

Yeah, chasing kid. That would have been easy. Curry, I'll be interested to see how I work up the Steph Curry animosity. I know it's in there somewhere. I'm not going to be able to. There's no way. But it's gone.

I'll be able to get there. You will. I'm not worried about you. I'm not worried about you. I'm just not going to be able to sit there and be bummed if Steph has 50 in a game. It's not worried about you. I'm not worried about you. I'm just not going to be able to sit there and be bummed if Steph has 50 in a game. It's not going to happen.

Well, maybe 50 is a lot. I think this series is going to be fantastic. Now, from a big picture, where Celtic standpoint, do you think this will be the only time we see these two teams in the finals against each other? Are you talking dual dynasties?

No, I'm just saying, these are two young teams that I think are in a nice spot right now for the next two, three years, right? Yeah, I think it's unlikely. I think it's still too flat at the top and it's all going to change because two guys are going to move this summer

and we may not even know who it is and there'll be another guy that wants out at the trade deadline. There's just too many moving pieces, and I still felt like Milwaukee could still be in this right now. Well, that was my next question. Who is the most bitter right now at this series? Milwaukee.

I agree. Milwaukee's got to be like... Middleton's healthy. We might not even be talking about this. Yeah, I did that 10 years ago. I did the footnote title column, where I was like, I don't like the word asterisk because it's negative, but footnote,

just like a little note, this team won the title, and then a little footnote underneath, hey, this also happened that season, and that was probably one of the reasons. The Middleton injury was the biggest thing. You could say maybe Kawhi, but Kawhi just hasn't really been healthy the last five years so is it fucking shocking that Kawhi

wasn't in there? Look I don't even think about the Clippers right now and then I think you gotta include Phoenix but what guarantee do we have with Phoenix that they were gonna be Golden State well and also we go back to that New Orleans series now the Phoenix New Orleans and it's like that should

maybe that should have been more alarming that this goofy Pelicans team that got thrown together was just trading haymakers with the Suns that were 64 and 18. We should have been more scared in retrospect. Maybe, but I wasn't thinking that when Phoenix was up 2-0.

Against Dallas, right. Yeah, that's fair. This is going to be fine. And I felt like it was more like when the Clippers were super proud of themselves years ago before they got Paul George and Kawhi and that, what do they take the Warriors to six? And they're like, man,

Pat Bev played on Durant. And you're like, eh, whatever. Like they were fine. Like, I don't, I don't think it was that big of a deal.

And maybe, I mean, maybe you could be right there, but I, I feel, I feel better making the assumption that I think Milwaukee would have beaten Miami than I would have Phoenix,

which is going to be Golden State, because Golden State was going to go really small. And then even as much as I like Aiton, despite how unpopular he is as an asset right now, that might've been challenging for them at times. One of the Celtics fan text threads I was on. How many do you have? How many different Celtics?

There's a couple. It's good that you can label them now on Apple. We're talking about after Friday night, which was just a devastating loss. We were able to do the pod right afterwards and then talking about it after. My buddy Hench. We were texting.

I'm saying like, if we end up losing this series, I'll look back at that game and say that it's just going to be a catastrophe of a home loss. But if we get by Miami, it just kind of goes away. And the example I used was 2018 Red Sox. They had that crazy extra inning game against Dodgers that Evaldi threw like 120 pitches or whatever and went to the 17th inning and Ian Kinsler had the throwing error. And it just felt like the worst loss that had ever happened since like 2003. And oh my God, I'm going to see this game for the rest of my life in my head. And then they just won the next day and then they won the World Series. And then that loss

just kind of vanishes. There are these purgatory losses you have that they don't haunt you because the season turned out okay. And I think that's how I'm going to remember the game five Milwaukee and game six of Miami, where it's like just horrible rock bottom, but now it's okay. Were you rock bottom after that? That Dodgers game to me, I was like, all right, they're fine. I seriously thought

because of all these save their ass in a loss. I'm not rational with baseball. Like, wait, you have those tough baseball losses. Did you stay for that whole game? Were you there for the whole thing? I didn't go the extra innings when I went the next day with my son, which was the Steve Pierce

game. That was amazing. You would have stayed, right? You got to. It's the World Series, right? Oh, 100% would have stayed. All right. Just making sure. No. Are you kidding? Things are going well for you. Stop it. I just wonder if you like a certain status. You're just like, hey, let's get a helicopter home.

No, that loss because that Red Sox team, it was such a peaceful season. They won 108 games. I couldn't believe they were that good. All year long, I'm like, wait, they're this good? It was the least stressful baseball season of my life. And then

that extra inning game happened. I don't know. I had a weird feeling after the extra inning one because I just went like, Evaldi was a superhero. Yeah. And then I said that extra inning game happened. I don't know. I had like a weird feeling after the extra inning one because I just went like Evaldi was a superhero. Yeah. And then go, okay, they didn't have to ruin everybody

for the rest of the series. This could actually be a good, I mean, I wasn't thrilled when they lost certainly, but I don't know. We got into Ian Kinsler

throwing errors and I didn't expect that to happen. So you can take over again. Well, it's purgatory losses. What's the worst loss of your career? You can't have them in football. Give me your worst

losses. For what? Just ever? Anything. Yeah. It's 86 Red Sox. 86-6. Right. That's number one for all of us, right? It is for me. Not only number one, it's, I mean, it's not even, you can't even come close to it. There's no way to even approach

it. And then 78 playoff game is probably two for me. Yeah, I was too young for 78. So wait, so 03 game seven Yankees? That's going to be closer to game six than any Celtics loss is. 03, which one?

Before they won four straight? Yeah, Wakefield. Boom boom oh the the 2003 yeah yeah no that's that's in the top five i think that's number two it was weird though i had to work the next morning i was doing morning and afternoon at the zone i don't know why i said yes to that because i'm such a hard worker and everybody i knew that i knew it would pay off there sporting is a reward me for all my hard work. It didn't happen. No, it was the opposite. I was sleeping in my car in the parking line between radio shifts.

And when they lost that one, I was just like, at least I don't have to do these double shifts anymore. So I had like this weird, selfish thing because I remember just watching it and I knew it and I go, Wakefield's probably going to get, you know, the problem with him is that one pitch goes awry and then Boone hits it out. And I just like turned off the TV and was like, fuck it. And then set my alarm for four in the morning. And then because I knew so, like, because that part I was at that stage a year prior, I would have gone crazy a year later because I had to get up and then go talk about it.

And then my co-host cried. We started the show at 6 a.m. and he was crying, which doesn't happen a lot. Wow. Radio. Yeah. Yeah. I had was crying, which doesn't happen a lot on radio. Yeah. I had to write a column that night. I don't even know if I had to.

I just did. I was up till like three in the morning writing a column. The next day I went to Kimmel because I was working for Kimmel and I went in and around like 2.30, 3 o'clock, I was so bummed out and despondent that I called them and I was like, I need to go home. I'm going to take the rest of the day off. And I left that I called them and I was like, I need to go home. I'm going to take the rest of the day off. And I left, I left work and I went home. That's a good personal day.

All right. So what other ones, what's your worst Celtics loss? Cause I'm trying to figure out like this would have been it. If Butler hit that three, this might've been it. I wish I think we already covered, but I don't know if we covered it well enough because if they lose,

that's, I think one of the worst collapses, I don't know if we covered it well enough because if they lose, that's, I think, one of the worst collapses. Like, what are the worst NBA collapses ever? Yeah. Is that like Portland Lakers? Ray Allen shot? I think it's worse than the Ray Allen shot.

No, Ray Allen shot has to be number one. Okay, but the thing is, is at least it was LeBron and Wade and Bosh and Ray Allen. I mean, this was... I know, but they just... They missed two free throws. Yeah, but this is streus off of curls.

I know. This would have been unquestionably the worst Celtics loss of my entire life. Right, because at least when Magic hits the hook shot, it's Magic Johnson. And they were better than us, but at that point, there was this irrational confidence

in that banged up Celtics team. Bird was at the absolute peak of his powers. He just hit the three in the corner. This is the prologue of my book, basically. I would have believed anything from Bird at that point. And then Magic hit the skyhook, but then Bird missed the shot in the corner or the pseudo corner

to win the game. Back rimmed it by like an inch. That was the worst part of that game. This would have been worse because this was like the 86 Game 6 World Series collapse where it's like, oh my God, what happened?

I thought we had the champagne out. Okay, the other one though, they're up 3-2 against the Lakers and they lose Game 7, 83-79. They lost the fourth quarter by eight points. So I think if you go back and when you're watching that, you're like, hey, Boston's going to win another title.

Could have been three in a row. This is crazy. It's funny. I felt the opposite. I felt like they were hanging on that whole game because Kobe was so bad and the Lakers were just hanging around.

Kobe was, when he started out, like two for 18 or something crazy. But you know what? I'm looking at the No Perkins. I'm looking at the game log.

This is so ridiculous. No, that game was, the Lakers had the lead with like six minutes left in that game. Yeah, they did have the lead. They came back. I never felt like,

I felt like they would have been very lucky to steal a game seven in the Lakers. This is different. This is like, you're up 3-2 in the series. You have game six at home. You have a better team.

You're this six-year odyssey to get to the finals. And then you just collapse. You're up 13 with three and a half minutes left at 98 points in the game. You're just going to end at 98 points with Marcus Smart just missing open threes. I don't know what would happen.

I don't know if I... I actually was thinking when it was 98-96, I was like, I don't know if I'm doing the pod. If they lose, I might just take Murph for like a three-hour walk. Fuck out of here. At least I still care at age 52. The fourth quarter score of game seven in 2010 going into the fourth was 57 to 53 Boston. Oh, yeah. That's only 10 years, 12 years ago.

Yeah. So, yeah, you're right. You can make the case that's the last kind of pre-basketball becomes what it is now game. That was like the last physical rock fight decided three feet around the basket game. The thing with that game was Boston could not get a rebound to close out. No Perkins. Yeah, they couldn't get a rebound.

All right. So Rashid had the kind of smoke coming out of him by the fourth quarter of that game. Now, that would have been that would have been one of the worst basketball losses of all time. What are you talking about? I'm just trying to shape it down. What was their win probability up 13 with three and a half minutes left? It had to be like 99.999 whatever.

Likely very high. I think the worst ones I've seen the Portland Lakers one is really bad in 2000. I think they're up 71-55 the Portland Lakers one is really bad in 2000. They're up like, I think they're up 71 to 55 in the fourth quarter in that game. Something like that.

They're definitely up like 17 and they just completely fall apart. That was bad. The Nets Celtics game, but the Nets ended up winning the series in 02 was a bad one. There's been bad ones, but I think the Ray Allen shot's still

the worst one I've seen that I can remember. Henderson steals the ball as an underrated bad one. Because the Lakers go up 2-0 in Boston in 84 if they win that game, and Celtics pulled it out in overtime. Wasn't great. What are you looking up?

They were up 16 at the end of the third, but not in the fourth. Yeah, I think Portland, I think the Lakers made a shot before the fourth quarter. Brian Shaw, I think, hit a three.

Remember? And I remember them talking about that. They hit the three because I remember I've seen some things since then. And I think I'm not making this up,

but there was this idea like it was a big shot that Shaw hit and then they kind of went to the break going, all right. The thing, especially with this Miami team, the Lowry piece of it,

it reminds me of hockey, where the hockey team, the team you're going against, just has the most annoying guy who's just constantly, after every whistle, three guys are mad at him. He couldn't move, and he was still somehow all over the place.

It was the same shit he did two years ago. I respect him, by the way. He's so fucking frustrating to root against for two weeks. The stuff works. He Jedi mind tricks the refs. They're calling charges where he's moving,

touching the guy and going flying backwards. It's impressive. I'm glad he's gone. I the guy and going flying backwards. It's impressive. I'm glad he's gone. I've already made my Lowry statement for this podcast. Yeah, you did. All right. We're good. So Warriors-Celtics quickly, who do you think wins?

Probably save it for Tuesday's spot. Okay, good. Be back. And then the rest of what you're going to hear is we tape before this game and before I had a triple bypass. 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, let's talk a little more basketball. I was thinking about the concept of superstars, Rosillo, and how we've had a lot of superstars over the years, but then there's a rarer version, the malleable superstar,

the guy who can fit with any type of lineup, which I think is in a weird way. For me, the thing I like more with basketball, and I think like Bird and Magic, Kevin Garnett was like this, Duncan, John Havlicek, these guys that it doesn't really matter what's on their team. You don't have to build a team

specific to them. Because I heard after the Game 5, TNT, the Warriors, and the Mavs, series is over and they're saying, well, Luka was the best player in the series, but, and then he's got to come in better shape. They got to put better people around him, all this stuff. But I'm thinking like, wait, Curry, I know he went 5-17

in game five, but he was the best player in that series. All the things that he does, which you and I have talked about on this podcast a million times, allows them to have really any type of supporting cast for him, as long as it's good enough and as long as they can defend

and they have a little more offense. But he's so special. The space he creates, the Tyreek Hill thing, where the defenses are just so worried about him at all times. The intelligence that he has, how much fun he has to play with,

the spirit he brings to the team. It's all stuff that, some of it doesn't even factor in with stats. But I was thinking about that versus Luka where I don't know if Luka can just fit in on every team. You know, we see like, well, we got to build this certain type of team for him. The Curry guys are so much more interesting to me from a team building standpoint. I don't need to get you to talk about Curry to rave about him. But do you know what I'm talking about here? The malleable superstar? Yeah, because I think that's the

hardest thing to figure out. You look at Luka's numbers and you're in awe of what this guy has done in a very short amount of time in his playoff run. And I feel good for Luka in a way to kind of get out of the first round, put a little run together. After the Phoenix series, you're like, what is this team even capable of? And then you started to see, okay, wait a minute. Talent discrepancy is a real thing between these two teams. But Luka is so dominant and you feel so helpless against him when he's really rolling that I think it's just a nice reflection of why Steph still seems to be overlooked at times because you go,

wait, does Steph dominate the way another player would with these massive numbers and the rebounds and all this other stuff? And it's like, well, he's just, even though he'll take a lot of shots, it's never felt like Steph wants to play by himself. He actually wants to be your teammate. And that's incredibly rare because I think part of it's the personality of a basketball player. And I also think it's the way we constantly freak out about where these guys stack up historically, where I think some of them are just like, if I don't take all these shots, then everybody's going to think I'm soft. And for Steph, he doesn't have to worry about any stuff because his resume is already incredible. But I remember when it was Durant, Draymond,

and Clay, when the four of them were rolling, and there were these plus-minus numbers. So you would go, okay, what's everyone's plus-minus? What's Golden State's plus-minus when these four guys are on the floor together? It was absurd. And then you're like, okay, well, take away one of them. And then Steph still had the highest one. And then it was like, take away two of them. And then you went through every combination, and every combination was always that much

higher with Steph, where I think the team still had some weird plus minus when the other guys weren't playing. There was one play against Dallas in game five where they ran it where the ball was in the left side. Curry runs through on a cut, never touches the basketball, and Klay trails him like a car drafting behind him. And then Klay gets it, and Curry just runs through, and then Klay dumped it to Looney and they got a dunk. There are numerous moments throughout a game where the defense screws up,

freaks out only because of the fear of Steph, which is unlike any other player in the league. Yeah. I think some guys can almost be contagious is the word I've used in the past. In Bird of Magic, they were contagious as passers and they would just elevate everybody else's passing ability. It was just almost by osmosis. You just became a better passer. With Steph, it's the movement. It's hard not to play with that dude for eight months

and just not move better on a basketball court after a while. You almost feel like you're an idiot if you're just standing there. Everyone else is moving around. You're like, no, no, I'm just going to plant myself here. I just feel like we evaluate basketball incorrectly sometimes. Not to sound like the old guys who are now, the advanced

stats thing is now becoming an argument again as the players, the new media, they're kind of rebelling against just stats. It's more than stats, stuff like that. But I do think it's hard to quantify some of the stuff Steph does unless you go to the basic stuff like, oh, wins.

Oh, are guys better when they're on his team? You know, and I think LeBron is an interesting, could have gone either way guy for this malleable discussion because I do think this is the type of player he was meant to be. I think he was meant to be. I think he was meant to be this dude like Bird of Magic who just could float on different teams and just be a chameleon

and assume whatever role. But those first seven years, he just had to be this kind of MJ replica, this scorer who had to shoot all these, just carry this huge burden. And eventually that's who he became. So then there became this narrative that LeBron had to be surrounded by certain types of players. And I actually, I think he was a better player than that. I actually think that's not the case. I think he could have played with anybody and I didn't think he needs to be as ball dominant as maybe the consensus was that he had to be. And the reason I bring this up is you look at 2021 Golden State and the team that they have that's now in the finals a year later and the assets they had versus situations that LeBron was in two different times

where heading into last summer, it was Curry, it was Draymond, Wiggins. Clay Thompson coming off two years of injuries. Jordan Poole. Looney. Toscano. Wiseman. And the 7-14 picks. That's not a team that seems like a finals team a year later on paper. And I think in the 21st century way we think about NBA and team building. And this is, we got a lot of podcast knowledge of this.

Oh, well, you got to do, take Wiggins and take Wiseman and take seven and four and you got to get them a star, got to get them another star. And they actually did it. They just kind of built an actual roster that's really malleable, that can do all these different things. They got young guys that are coming up and getting experience. Moody's playing in the playoffs. And I think LeBron had two different chances in 2014 with the Cavs. When he joined in 2019 with the Lakers, we go through those rosters where it actually is just a more fun version of his career. If he just plays it out with the guys they had versus like,

we got it. We got to get Kevin Love. Got to compete right away. I wish he had done what Curry did in 2021. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because you know, this anytime you're doing a Curry

love fest, I mean, anytime you're raving about somebody, it feels like you have to take shares away from someone else. And I don't love that because when we were talking about Giannis probably put his flag in the ground, he's like, nobody's better than this guy. It's easier to see how Giannis dominates and how helpless you are. It's a bit like the Dodgers thing. It's easy to see it. The Steph thing, if you're not really paying attention to it or you're not watching Golden State all the time, you may lose sight of what kind of impact he has. And physically, he's just not the same as those other guys.

But as far as team building, the other thing I love about Steph is not only is he selfless on the court, he's selfless as the face of a franchise. I don't think there's any other superstar that kind of floats in that top five category of current players that, well, we certainly know, let's just put it this way. LeBron would have asked for some stuff. LeBron wouldn't have wanted Wiseman. He wouldn't have wanted Kaminga, Moody. He'd be pissed about all these guys. Hell, he

wanted to trade what was it, the Sexton pick for DeAndre Jordan. And that's how LeBron does business. And it's hard to get on LeBron's case too much because it did work out when you're going to that many finals in a row. But he is not a partner with you when he's on your basketball team. Everything is about him and it's immediate. And for whatever reason, Steph, whether it's because he's already won titles at an earlier age than he has his MVPs. You know, Boston in 08 is a great example is that when they got those three guys together at the right time, that's why it worked. If they had gotten Pierce, Ray Allen, and Garnett together at 25, maybe it doesn't work.

You know, you have to kind of be over yourself. And Steph, for whatever reason, has always been somebody that's over himself and is the face of the franchise, didn't put the demands on his team like a lot of other players probably would have. And I think Draymond was in that trade for love. And that was a big argument that season. Like, should they, why wouldn't they do that? Go for it now.

It's they're so close. And that organization to their credit held off. They really believed in clay. They believed in Draymond and they just, they didn't really, they, what they believed was that a team built around Kevin Love and Curry defensively might be in trouble.

But I look at the 2014 Cavs. These are all the assets they had when LeBron joined. They had LeBron. They had young Kyrie. He'd been in the league three years at that point. Tristan Thompson was the lottery pick. Young. Dion Waiters.

Young. They had the number one pick, Andrew Wiggins. They had Vera Zhao, who was still a pretty useful role player at the time. They had Anthony Bennett, who was a bust, but we didn't totally know that yet. You could have spun him. They had Miami's unprotected pick in either 2017 or

2018. They had all their picks, and they had some cap space. It's actually a better situation than 2021 gold state. And if LeBron had played the law and that this sounds like it's a LeBron bashing thing. It's not, I just think it's a mentality of LeBron was always,

we got to win now. And I think he was damaged from those 07, 08, nine, 2010 when he didn't have enough help. And from that point on, it's like, I need help.

I need help. My time's now my windows. Now I got to win. And he didn't have an organization to's like, I need help. I need help. My time's now. My window's now. I got to win. And he didn't have an organization to trust like this Warriors team. If you trust that team in 2014 with the Wiggins thing, let's just play it out. We'll draft them. Let's keep them.

Let's see what we have. That love trade might be sitting there in February. If it's not, there'll be another trade. Let's just see what we have with this group. They're in a better situation with the Cavs. Maybe he wins three titles there instead of one, you know? And I just think Curry, if he had been a different type of guy, I think some superstars would have been like, you know,

that had been James Harden in the Curry spot. I don't know, man. Got to get me some more weapons or I'm out. Because that's kind of what the league is. But Curry didn't give a shit to his credit. Okay. So a couple of things, because they didn't give a shit, to his credit. Okay, so a couple things, because there are going to be two things here at once.

One's going to be complimentary of LeBron, and one is going to... It's not even a criticism, but... If you get to four straight finals, you can't really get mad at them after the fact for doing it differently. That team, whatever you're saying about what they could have done in their asset building, they made it to four straight finals and they won one. And they were also going up against maybe one of the three best starting fives we've

ever seen in NBA history once it was 2017. So they were chasing God-level roster when Durant got to Golden State. Now, you could say Steph has this amazing organization and there's more buy-in and Bob Myers is a stud and Kerr all the way down. There's so many other people in the front office that are terrific at this. They have a great track record. There's buy-in.

That's different than when LeBron is in Cleveland for the two different stretches. Okay, fair. All right, fine. You got me. But what's Miami? Isn't Miami the epitome of knowing how to run an organization and having somebody like, if you can't trust Pat Riley, if you can't trust Spoh, he's probably the best coach in the league. I've noticed, hey, he's the the year and then there's this massive gap. I don't care where LeBron was.

He was always going to do it. He was going to do it his way. So I don't think there was ever a lot of trust with decision makers for him no matter where he was. And maybe that's because of the way he started and Steph was initiated in the NBA with far more trust, but still it was Mark Jackson before it was Steve Kerr. So, yeah.

And I just want to say one more time, I'm saying all of this, it's not like LeBron's approach didn't work. It's an awesome point. You know, you think about, I wrote this in 2014 when he left because I wrote a huge column after he left that you can go find on the internet.

It's called God Loves Cleveland about LeBron and the choice he made to leave. To me, it was a basketball choice. It wasn't a Cleveland choice. He looked at the big picture of Miami. They had Wade and they had Boston and him. Super expensive. They didn't really have a roster at all of young people

coming up. It was just going to be really hard to keep that going with Wade's career going the direction it was going, which was down, which LeBron knew, I think, better than anybody. But man, you go to Cleveland in 2014, I don't think we understood at the time how much talent they had. I supported the

Love-Wiggins trade because Love was fantastic in Minnesota. But ultimately, it didn't make a ton of sense to have LeBron and Tristan Thompson and Kevin Love. Right. And then they spent two more picks there. Their thought was that they had to get bigger,

but I do think there's an alternate universe where they just play this out and they still make the four straight finals, but they might have more of a tail than they did at the end. Because you think like LeBron Kyrie coming into his own, he hadn't even happened in 2014. Thompson has a high lottery pick, really good rebounder defender, who I think was a nice fit with LeBron.

And then whatever Wiggins could have brought to them, Waiters as a rational confidence guy, et cetera, et cetera. For where they ended up in 2018, where they had to trade Kyrie, Love's kind of, I don't know, a shell of himself by 2018 for where he was in Minnesota.

And they don't have the young guys anymore. And it's like Jeff Green. And it's, you know, all those dudes. Now, 2019 Lakers is another one. They made the Davis trade. They win the title. We've talked about that. Defensible.

Here's the talent they had in that team heading into the summer of 2019. LeBron, Ingram, Lonzo, Kuzma, Josh Hart, who's a really good role player. Caruso was on that team by that point, really good role player. KCP became a role player on the title team. Rondo was already on the team. JaVale McGee, Zubats, who became a pretty valuable rotation guy for the Clippers. Reggie Bullock was on that team, the 2018-19 Lakers.

And they had all their picks and they had cap space. That's a better situation in a lot of ways than 21 Golden State, right? That's more assets. I mean, you have the Draymond Clay Curry DNA and you have Kerr and you have the infrastructure. But from an asset standpoint, I think that might be more assets. I think the hope would be that Clay's giving us glimpses of him being able to take over a game again in Game 5. So I think it depends on how you grade Clay. At the beginning of 21, okay, maybe you got me.

But Draymond was on a tear on both ends that he played around the injury time where he missed a good chunk. And I think one of the mistakes that we've all had with Klay is when you watch the Knights, and even going back to the Memphis series a couple times, you're like, oh man, is he going to have it? Is he going to have it? And he was making shots, bad angle jumpers.

He was doing some stuff in game five against Dallas where I think you have to look at them differently now. I think you have to start playing with the idea that you're going to get maybe not prime clay, but a more consistent dude and somebody that's a real threat as opposed to what are you going to get out of him. So I get your point on that one, but I also think we're being a little favorable

to a lot of these pieces where Rondo gives you almost nothing in the regular season. Nobody was clamoring for JaVale. Kuzma was this constant frustration that we knew what he was as a scorer. We knew how capable he was. The very beginning with LeBron, it looked like

he had no semblance of how to fit in with that Lakers team at all. It was weird. You know what I mean? And then they were... They didn't really want to either. They split them up so much. It almost felt like LeBron's like, you know what, we're subbing out the different rotations. I want to be opposite of Kuzma

for LeBron. Well, and then the Davis stuff started around February and that, I think, submarine that team. Once that was in the air, all those guys, I think, really suffered from that.

I think what you're asking is if LeBron had a run with Ingram, Ball, Kuzma, Caruso, and then probably some other vet that's cheap. Trade for a big, trade for some stretch five. And JaVale is a really nice backup. I like him. I think, didn't they also not re-sign Brook Lopez, who at that point was still sort of cheap around the league too?

Yeah, you're right. That's another one. Good one. Yeah, you're right. That's another one. Good one. Yeah, you're right. Let's throw Brooke Lopez. It's something else that we've talked about. When you are at the top of the league, and it's not the case right now because of what we're going to see in the finals, but when you're at the top of the league, all we would

do is, who's the Lakers third guy going to be? What can you get for Kuzma this and this? Because it was almost understood after 10 years of it, everyone was in pursuit of any title contender was always in pursuit of that other awesome third all-star. And I think what we've seen the last couple of years is you're actually not chasing that profile anymore, even though we

had it. You're chasing the 21 Warriors profile, which was why I brought this up because I and I think part of it is organization and part of it is that I got to win now. My window is now mentality, but it turns out LeBron's window was 20 years long. And you know, he, in 2010, by the time that was done, they really had no assets on that team. Right. Other than him, when he goes away, it's like basically Mo Williams and Bergeau. I didn't remember who was left 2014.

He leaves the heat. That was another one where it's like, it's just Bosh and Wade and nothing's left. And then the 2018 Cavs, same thing, where they had to give Love the max extension. They had the pick left. They didn't really have anything else. Thompson was moving to a different phase of his career. But I just wish, you know, LeBron's second best player ever,

but just as a basketball historian, it would have been fun to see him in a Curry type situation where he was with the same guys for, and I think it could have been Miami. I just think Wade breaking down pretty prematurely for where he was. Then Bosh goes out a year later anyway,

so it would have been a moot point. But I think it should have been the Miami situation. I think there was a way to build around that in a smart way. I know those guys were super expensive, but you could have kept adding to that with these mid-level exceptions and these biannual stuff. And I think those guys could have stayed together in a different world, but it just wasn't meant to be. I've said this numerous times, and it's not a guess, but Wade

not being available a bunch towards the end of the run with LeBron was incredibly frustrating for LeBron. From 2011, 12, 49 games, 69 games, 54 games. It was like, okay, so wait. I think there was a lot of people, too, before

that Spurs finals, which was his last time there where they got smoked in the rematch, there was a feeling like, okay, he'll probably stay another year and then he'll reassess, which is also something that happened with the Cleveland conversation the second time through. And then once he sees it's taken on water, Nope. I'm out of here. But if the summary of the conversation is, would LeBron have handled this year differently

if he were on Golden State and Steph? Then I think the answer, it's fair to say that yes. Yes. Yeah, he would have made a trade. Yeah. I'm glad you brought up Wade. Wade gave a commencement speech to Marquette. I mailed this to you. And he said, let me give you guys a basketball story. This is Dwayne Wade. Back in 2011-12 season, I was playing with the Miami Heat. I turned 30. I was playing with 27-year-old LeBron James, one of the greatest talents this league has ever seen. Unfortunately, we were coming off a championship loss from the Dallas Mavericks the previous season. After losing, there was a lot of soul searching that goes on. I decided to take a deep look inside myself, my game, my age, my injuries. That self-awareness helped me recognize that I needed to step back from being that man.

It was the most difficult professional decision I've ever made and also the correct one. And I was reading this. It was like, wait, I was there writing about basketball and talking about it on TV during that time. That wasn't what happened. You just got hurt during the 2012 playoffs. That team had a little tug of war between those two guys going for the first two years. And Wade's injuries were what solved the situation where LeBron took over because Wade just wasn't 100% anymore. And that was what solved it.

I thought that was crazy that 10 years later that that was how Wade remembered that. I think you agree. I don't know if there was a Rachel Nichols one in there, but it was kind of like, hey, you know, the whole reason this worked is I handed the keys to LeBron. And you're like, you know what? The whole reason it worked is LeBron decided to come down here. That's why it worked. Well, remember the last season, the fourth one.

It was very weird. It was very weird. Yeah. They rested Wade a bunch in the regular season and put all these miles on LeBron for seeding. And the whole,

the principle was, well, by the time we get to the playoffs, all this rest is really going to help Wade and LeBron will have the second guy. And then Wade broke down in the, in the playoffs. That was why LeBron left Miami.

Wade couldn't hold up anymore, but I thought Wade saying it was an intentional step back. LeBron was the best player in the world. It wasn't close. And it was ridiculous. I thought in 2011, I actually thought they were pretty even going to those games. I,

to me, that was one day one B and I'm not even sure who won a wit. Wade was such an alpha and was just such an incredible two guard. And he was never the same. I think after that first season. Yeah. Prime weight is stupid. It's,

it's, it's weird. Cause like, I sometimes I'll think, do people give him enough respect? And then there'll be quotes like that where I go, no, I think we're good. It's balanced out.

Right. And then for Wade, maybe it was just, hey, it's commencement. Let me put a little syrup on this story. Let me give these kids some reflection, something to think about in their dark moments. I think you might actually believe that. What's interesting about Kobe's career

is there's two different points where there's somebody in the league playing his position who you can make a real case was either exactly as good or slightly better than him. Because TMAC, the first couple Orlando years, if you just go head to head with the teams that TMAC was on and the stats he was putting up compared to kobe plus kobe all the off the court stuff with him and just how unhappy

everybody was playing with him and you're talking about roster stuff with kobe demanding the trade and everything i just everything right well and then just how the shack feud and all that stuff and t-mac was just like 30 a game, just absolutely killing it. Was a better defensive player. And then I think Wade versus Kobe in the late 2000s was more of an argument than maybe people realize. Wade in 2009 and 2011, I thought was out of control. He was so good.

The funniest part about this podcast is that depending, we don't know what's going to happen in game seven, but if Miami wins. Yeah, we're taping this part before. Right. But if Miami wins, and then it turns into those guys talked about

how shitty certain heat storylines were, that's how upset they were about the outcome of the Easter Conference Finals. And they even got a little Kobe in there too. Right. Played all the hits. Let's take a break. And they even got a little Kobe in there too. Right, the answer. Played all the hits. Let's take a break.

I want to talk about Tim Connolly. What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend that powers your scale with no preset spending limit. More cash on hand to grow your business with up to 55 interest-free days. And the ability to reach further with access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express.

Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. All right, coming back. Minnesota,ex.ca slash business platinum. All right, coming back. Minnesota, we didn't talk about this. They hired Tim Connolly. They made him one of the highest paid executives

in the NBA and they gave him equity in the team. And I was like, Tim Connolly's pretty good, but what am I missing? And I just deep dived it. I'm like,

it's pretty good. I think he did a good job. I don't think I'll be bouncing my grandkids on him. When did he become Sam Presti? And I just went through it. And I was kind of shocked by the mixed results. That he had some good stuff and some bad stuff. And I left the whole process thinking, and we'll go through it in a second, but I left the whole process thinking like, wait a second, what is it about this guy? And what is it about how the media has these relationships with these different GMs? And they can just kind of push this narrative that these guys are amazing. We just kind of trust it. This was Neil O'Shea in Portland too, for years, Neil O'Shea. Griffin has this in New Orleans, although it's turned around for him lately.

Sean Marks in Brooklyn, just people telling us how brilliant everybody is, although it's turned around for him lately. Sean Marks in Brooklyn. Just people telling us how brilliant everybody is. And it's like, really? Is anybody that brilliant? I think Presti has probably had the most hits over the past 15 years. But even he had the heart of trade, right? But just in general, how hard is this job? And anytime somebody misses, people go, well, it's a draft.

It's a craft shoot. And I somebody misses, people go, well, it's a draft, it's a craft shoot. And I was just confused. We'll go through it in a second, but what are your initial takes on Tim Conley for that much money? New ownership. And they were asking a lot of people and offering a lot of money. They were told no by a couple other people some numbers that i'd heard that were massive numbers they got other executives big raises which also is i can't imagine what owners are saying to each other about this new group being like hey rod you gave this guy fucking eight million and equity yeah you know although it was always a weird thing with me when baseball gms like it became a cool thing like when i first got a job in baseball 20 years ago and everybody

from that point on started being like, hey, could I be a GM? And you kind of had to go to an Ivy League school to get in back then. But you'd be like, wait, so the GM makes 1.5 and your utility infielder makes 5.5 million? The guy who's the most important person probably for the franchise

makes a quarter of what a guy who may get 250 plate appearances gets. Well, remember the Red Sox that Billy Bean, their godfather, offered him and he ended up not taking it down. It was the end of the money ball. But I think when they offered him whatever, it was so far above what anybody had ever... But they were right. Their instincts was like, this guy's amazing. Why wouldn't we just pay him like he's a left fielder? Yeah. That's why you could sit there and these franchises are worth this much. And you think, well, why don't we just pay somebody who has a really good track record?

I think the Conley argument, and first of all, if you're going to bring up stuff that he got wrong, we're going to go over it. You can do that to anybody. I think Pat Riley is... I was going through a bunch of the executives that I think are the better ones. I was going through Riley's stuff and the track record. And again, there's people under Riley that are really well-respected too. Like all in all, they've done a really good job. But of course, there's always like a couple of years or three years in there where you're like, what the hell are you guys doing? Things don't work out.

They waiters first rounded. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. White side waiters. Yeah. But the Conley stories is like, they didn't get out of the first round for nine straight years. They didn't make the playoffs for five straight.

And he comes in and, you know, look, man, I think... Well, they were good when he came in. That was that 55-win team where they traded for... 57. Yeah, 57. So there's a foundation. Yeah, but that was a weird team too because it was like the one all they had like a lot of depth and the analytics loved them and then you were kind of like all

right how far are they really going to go uh and then they didn't make the playoffs again from 14 and they didn't make it till 2019 so if you were to say overall big picture conley gets the gig and what does he do in just under a a decade, this is turning a ship around and pointing it in the right direction. So in this case, we're going to go through the resume and there are misses. But if you're Minnesota, you're probably a little desperate. You're new to it. You're like, screw it.

It's our point man making all the decisions. So let's just do this. Now, changing the precedent with equity, again, it's going to piss all these other owners off. But I think the big picture thing you have to always finish with on Conley is you look at all the years and go, did he get this thing going in the right direction?

And it's an emphatic yes. So the three, it's Jokic and Murray and Porter. You start there. Jokic, they drafted 41st in 2014, took a flyer on him. He came over a year later. Conley drafted him, gets credit for it. Murray, they drafted 41st in 2014. Took a flyer on him. He came over a year later. Conley drafted him, gets credit for it.

Murray, they drafted 7th in 2016. And that was the draft goes off a cliff right after that pick, right? There was some order. Like the Celtics almost took Murray over Jalen Brown with the number three pick. That was the big argument between those two guys. If they hadn't taken Murray 7th,

I think people would have been shocked. And then Porter in 2018, they took 14th. His medicals were terrible. I thought the Clippers should have taken him with one of those two picks where they had like 11 and 12. And that was another one where the draft went off a cliff. So you get credit, but at the same time,

neither of those picks were surprising, but he gets the credit for all three of those, right? And the flip side, they, now I don't even know how much to ding them on this, but they took Rudy Gobert in the,

in 2013, 27, they traded him to Utah for Eric green, the number 46 pick and cash. It's a terrible trade. I think both of us, I did the draft that year. Nobody was expecting Rudy Gobert to be Rudy Gobert,

but it's weird that that trade's just weird. I don't know how much cash they got. 2015, they took Emmanuel Moutier's seventh. During a draft that if you go back, it's not, you know, the guys in a row, was it awesome? But the Celtics were sitting there offering everybody four

first-round picks because they wanted Winslow so bad. So they just took Moutier. Moutier was a bust. Booker went 13th in that draft. Then 2017 was the other tough draft when they had the 13th pick. Passed on Mitchell. Passed on Band. They took that pick. They traded the rights to Mitchell

to Utah for Trey Lyles and number 24 who was Tyler Lydon. That's one of the worst trades of the last seven years. It's an awful trade. The Mitchell trade's terrible. Because there's two awesome guys there and they trade away

from taking either of them. Two guys that ended up being awesome because we didn't know about Mitchell and we certainly weren't like bam away from a college structure is even a better basketball player. I really like Mitchell. Mitchell, I thought,

had already fallen too far. Didn't you, you, you did that. You were prepared for that draft. Like Mitchell going past 13 would have been absurd. I think the problem is, is like the mock drafts get in your head a little bit and you're watching

Mitchell going, you know, I really like this guy. And then it's like, would you take him sevens? You're like, no fucking way. Sevens.

What are you an insane person? So I did some research on this because you told me hey we're going to talk about it and the segment is is tim conley good yeah no it's are we sure he's good are we sure he's gonna make sure are we sure he's good because the fucking dude got equity to be a gm are we sure he's good let's go through it i thought rudy was like a guy you would pay money at a circus to see behind a tent and see him walk. All right. When I watched him, I was like,

you gotta be kidding me. All right. Yeah. Totally wrong. All the credit in the world to Utah of seeing his, his game and thinking that somehow this is going to turn into what it turned into. And for, even for all the Rudy wards,

if you would watched him before, I don't know if he had an amazing workout with him. When I watched him in the games, I was like, you'd be kidding me. Totally wrong. The Mitchell one's awful. How about Moutier? Moutier is just a miss. Moutier is just a miss.

He was a big guard, athletic. I got why he had the profile of somebody that was going to go high. Wasn't he one of our multiple high school guys? I personally did not like him. I was not a fan. I was out. But that's, you know, Rudy, I got it wrong. Moutier, I got it right. So there you go. One for two.

The Mitchell trade's bad because they still like Trey Lyles from the previous draft and they were trying to get OG Ananobi. So I called somebody who worked with Tim, asked him. I'm like, what happened on all these different things? So I'm just telling you, it's unfair. It's unfair now, the fight that we're going to have. And they

ended up with Leiden, which is a disaster because Leiden goes 24. Because they wanted to go Ananobi right before it. Yeah, he went 23rd. So they got a little cute with it and it didn't work out. I like Ananobi, but let's not pretend that's like they missed out on Larry Burke. Okay. This is part of the Ainge argument that I would hear. Remember Ainge And it didn't work out. I like Ananobi, but let's not pretend that's like they missed out on Larry Bird. Okay.

This is part of the Ainge argument that I would hear. Remember, Ainge had some lean years in there. You're like, what the hell's going on in the draft? Although now. Yeah, this is Ali. Right. But some of the guys he was getting criticized for recently have all turned out to be like high level playoff rotation players, which happened like back to back to back years. Maybe not, you know, four out of maybe three out of five years, three or four years. Anyway, the point

is this. I was like, okay, but Ainge, like for him to see the Tatum deal, for him to see the Jalen thing, like when you're making the biggest decisions that are worth like five, ten times what these decisions are in the 20s, when you're getting those right and getting some

of these others wrong, I want you getting the right ones right. And for Conley, he got a lot of the bigger ones right. Like the Murray thing wasn't a layup. Like coming out, he goes seventh. You could have screwed that up. And Murray ended up becoming, arguably when he's right, what, the third best player in that draft? I think he got 2020 not going after Drew Holiday.

I think they got that wrong. And that is a big picture decision along the lines you're talking about. They could have done a better deal than the Milwaukee deal. And I think they had the same level of desperation. But they had the Gary Harris contract. They had Monty Morris. They had all their picks. They just

could have replicated that draft. The Bucs, they put Eric Bledsoe and Hill, RJ Hampton, two firsts, and two pick swaps. And the Bledsoe was the worst part of that, right? Because his contract sucked. Denver had the Gary Harris contract that was actually pretty tradable. And they just could have had Drew.

They could have put Drew with Jamal Murray and Jokic. And so I think that was a miss. Even though it's not a move that he made, it's a move that he didn't make that I think would have really helped him. But let's give him credit then for the Gary Harris thing. Cause even though now you're looking at Gary Harris who could sneaky be like a nice little signing somewhere. Um, Gary Harris, that was the McDermott in 14. He traded the rights to McDermott for Gary Harris and ended up with Nurkic in that same first round.

And Nurkic, you know, whatever you think of Nurkic is pretty, like when he's healthy, he actually would want. Tell people that trade because that trade is an awesome trade. They traded 11 for 16 and 19, I think?

16 and 19. That was a great trade. I liked the trade when it happened. I was like, wow. Gary Harris was over 40% from three in his third and fourth seasons in the league. And granted ran in some injury stuff the contract got a little dicey for a guy that wasn't really a guy you'd look to to score but i mean gary i think his third and fourth year was like 17 and a half points per game i like uh i didn't like him for four years 84 million

no that's fair but you know it's kind of the going rate on that maybe that's why i don't know so they that worked out for him and then you know when asked about the Jokic thing, I go, what happened? He goes, when Conley came in and ran that draft, he had no one. There was barely any staff because he came in so late and the side left. And he was the singular driving force. There's not like this mysterious side guy that never got any credit. I mean, he's the one that saw Jokic, and he's the guy that drafted the most unlikely MVP in NBA history.

That should be worth like four moves. I'm with you. That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying. Okay. So is that worth equity? I have no counter to that one, Bill. You win on that one. If you want to get a Polish guy who had this incredible draft pick and I don't know, batted 50-50

on everything else, I get it, but man, they treated him like he was Sam Presti. I'll tell you this. Wives hate leaving Denver. Millsap, $60 million. 2017. Millsap, $60 million for two years. Plumlee, $3 for $41 three for 41 harris 84 for four and let

gal and ari go as a free agent traded nurkage at number 20 for mason plumley gave wilson chandler four years 46 million let jeremy grant go in 2020 but it didn't seem like that it was 60 plus million and grant wanted to go be a primary scorer somewhere else. Because when I saw that number, and again, I ain't being wrong about this, I couldn't believe how high the number was for Grant, but it also speaks to the winner's curse of free agency, where it's like, if you actually want someone

that's decent to leave, you have to go crazy with that number. And then I'd heard that Denver was fine paying the same thing, but it also, like once Grant was like, please don't. Right, and once you looked at Grant being able to do whatever he wants, Grant, you're probably going to go 22 and 60. Right.

But there was more there with Grant offensively, and he showed that, especially in that first year with Detroit, and I think that's what he wanted more than anything else because with Denver, you know, a healthy Denver, he's like a fourth option on offense. That goes in the Conley files. He traded a first for Jeremy Grant to begin with, which was a good trade. Drafted Morris

in the second round, which is a good pick. Drafted Bones Highland 25th last year. Bones! He also drafted who's that guy in 2020? Zeke Nijeli? Najee, the Arizona kid? Yeah.

Oh, that was over quickly. McDaniels and Bain, a whole bunch of people. Traded in 2020. Jared Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley, and Juancho Hernan Gomez for Gerald Green in a 2021st. That was pretty rough. My point is it's all over the place. And the Jokic thing,

which is probably one of the best draft picks of all time. If you're going to tell me, look, the guy made one of the best draft picks of all time. He deserves 8.5 million here in equity. I'd be like, all right, I guess,

I guess, but I just wanted to talk it through. So I think we're sure he's at least pretty good. It almost sounds like the Jeremy Grant deal for Detroit. Like we got to pay this guy how much to bring him to Detroit? Like this is what you got to pay him for him to leave. And you go, okay, fine. Like if you do the job for a decade,

you're going to have some absolute fucking whips. You just are. That's what it is. But back to my first point, if you think there are more transactions where you go, wow, that worked out, as opposed to the ones that are really glaring and you think are total misses, but the ship is heading in the right direction, I feel like that resume is a win. What do you do? Minnesota comes to you.

A-Rod and the other guy, the rich guy. The magician? What would you do? Who should we hire? What would you do? Because here we hire? What would you do? Because here's what I would have told them. I would have said, go to Oklahoma City and just completely overpay Presti.

I think he's the best bet out there of all these guys. I said this, I'm not friends with him. I just think he's done, I think his batting average has been the highest. I think the thought he puts into this stuff has been consistently the best. And I just, I just, I would have paid him like 15 million a year with equity because I actually think he could have

built something special around Edwards and those guys. I don't know if Conley can do it, but what would you have told them? Hire Hinckley and short your own company. dump all your players seven year run of, of losing your fans. I'll get really attached to the process. You sell a ton of shirts. Uh, who would I recommend? Who would I recommend?

I, well, I can't share everything I've heard and I'm not trying to do that to sound cool. I just, I just can't. You sounded really cool right there though. Yeah.

Thank you. Minnesota went after a right there, though. Yeah, thank you. Minnesota went after a bunch of names. It could be that when they worked their way down the list, there was always the rumor that Conley was going to go back and run the Wizards. That's where he's from. That's where he started. He was there forever. You and I hear stuff about

it all the time. Remember that Steve Nash was going to go to the Phoenix Suns and run that organization? Remember Doc was going to go back to Orlando another time? I called Saruti during a dinner years and years ago to interrupt him and be like, here's the latest. Doc is going to be the point, man. So I tell you, more than player rumors,

you start to hear these rumors about okay, this guy's going to be the number one guy facing the franchise. He's going to president coach the whole deal. And Doc you know kind of getting that with the clippers later on um which is hilarious i'm sure i i'm just telling you i know there were other high profile people they kicked the tires on and it could be like trying to buy a house where you're offering list and then over list and everybody keeps saying no to you and you're just, what the hell do I have to do to buy a house in this neighborhood that everybody wants to live in? Cause we're in Minnesota. Is that what this is?

It's like we crashed. We crashed when Adam tells Rebecca and they're looking at some place in the Hamptons listed at 13, five. And he goes, tell them 15 million all cash. I taught, I remember, I don't feel like I'm talking out of school. I talked to Thibodeau when he was trying to decide what to do after the Bulls and about different teams because we had mutual friends. They were like, hey, you know the league so well. Why don't you just talk to him and lay out? Just tell him

what you would do if you were him. I looked at all the teams and I decided Minnesota was the best situation, which I don't think I'm the only one who would have thought that at the time. This was like, I don't know, heading toward the summer of 2016.

You still thought you had something really special with Wiggins and Towns, right? Yeah, exactly. It was Wiggins, Towns, it was cap space. Towns seemed like he was at least as much of an asset as somebody like Anthony Davis. Good airport. It seemed like Wiggins was already,

he was like 21 and was already scoring 20 points a game. Great Chick-fil-A in the airport. I think that's important. But it just seemed like the best kind of situation. And he picked it and I was like, great move by him.

Then they get Butler and you think, this is awesome. And then it falls apart within a year. So the situation can look great. Another one was Kerr, right? Kerr had this Sophie's Choice situation of Golden State versus the Knicks. Golden State was the better situation, but Phil Jackson was his mentor. And I remember talking to him about that because obviously we're friends. And he was so loyal to Phil and he knew it wasn't the right pick. He knew Golden State was the right pick. He knew how special Curry was.

He knew. And yet Phil was the reason he was in the position he was in, he felt like. He felt like he had learned so many lessons from the guy and that if he was going to coach, it was like the Phil DNA

and the chance to work with him. And he was so seduced by it and ultimately he made the right call. So most of the times, people make the right call. And the reason I bring this up is I think that Minnesota situation is really good. Cause I think Edwards has it. I do.

I like in worst case scenario, he's going to get the max contract. So, you know, he's there for at least five, six more years. I just watched the Adam Sandler movie, which I'm not going to spoil, but Anthony Edwards is in it. Can it be spoiled? Can that movie be spoiled? Well, I think they kind of spoiled it in the trailer, but Anthony Edwards is amazing. My son afterwards was like, is Anthony

Edwards going to act? What's he going to do? Is he going to be in more movies? I felt the same way. I was like, he was awesome. Anyway, I think Conley made the right move. If you're going to leave awesome. Anyway, I think Conley made the right move. If you're going to leave Jokic, you've got to go to at least another place that has an A-lister, right? You can't go to be like,

I'm going to Charlotte. Let's see what we got with LaMelo. Edwards has it if he stays healthy. All right, but let's not rule out human nature here too. If you're Conley, you've been doing this, what, 20 plus years. He wrote a letter to somebody i think it was a scout with the wizards while he was in college he also played

ball too so this isn't like somebody who just was like i i just love numbers and everything uh you know he's a guy like so you play in college you play in college you know and he was probably lowest on the totem pole for a really long time there ends up with the pelicans under dell demps which probably wasn't the greatest time he's ever had. David Stern lingering over everything. Then he's in Denver and Arturis. Tim, again, I still look at this run as a very successful run by any measurement, maybe not the ultimate success. But Denver's not known for paying people.

They don't pay people. And even if you're so proud of everything you've done and you love who Anthony Edwards is, you've been doing this. He's about my age. I think he's a year younger than me. And you do it that long, and then all of a sudden, you get this kind of financial opportunity. You know what I mean? Like, I just think that-

Oh, he had to take it. Right. Yeah, that's a no-brainer. Yeah. You get this kind of financial opportunity. You know what I mean? Oh, he had to take it. Right. Yeah, that's a no-brainer. So I'm sure like, and I can't emphasize this enough, is somebody that's visited Denver, has friends there all the time. It's great. People that have played there, like no one is happy leaving there. Like people, families love it.

Athletes love it because you can still be an athlete, but you can also still be like a normal person. And there's a million things that do. If people had to point to it on a map, they would never get it right because it's located in a completely different area than I think the people just in their mind, they'd start picking like Idaho and shit. And the weather's awesome unless you just don't like the dry climate. So now we're talking meteorology. But my point is this, is that it's not LA or New York or Miami if you love those things, but it's probably one of the most desirable places to live for somebody who's working in the NBA. It really is. Any of the Oakage. I mean, we didn't mention the Porter contract.

Do you think that's why he left, which isn't a terrible joke? No, I was joking. But I think that's... I don't think that's a plus for them, that contract. If you were doing pro-con for Conley the last eight years, not playing out the Porter thing and just kind of doing what Phoenix did with Aiton, if you were worried about

him physically and just giving him the extension over just kind of, hey, let's... Can we see some more games? I don't even think he's had 100 games yet, is he? Is he at like 100 and 10 games? I don't even think he's at 100 games yet, is he? Is he at like 110 maybe? I just want to, I'm giving that kind of money and chewing up that kind of cap. I just want to see more

games. Just show me a real sample size. So, yeah, so I don't know. What are the good jobs left now? I guess this is a wrap, right? Because Darvin Ham went to the Lakers. Which I know everybody's pumped about, and I'm happy about it.

And I'm like, you go through the cycle enough times, you don't get it, you start getting discouraged, and then he gets this gig, and I think that's awesome. But spare me the headlines on he knows how to fix Westbrook. That was unbelievable. He's a player to player he can fix it i was like so frank vogel is just an idiot yes that's that's what that turned out to be i can't wait i can't wait for that one frank vogel's got to be laughing his ass off first of all frank vogel won a title two years ago and i don't know i'm still trying to figure out why he doesn't have a job anymore

and why he got undermined so badly. I just wish... I like the Darvin Ham thing and especially after Udoka's success where you had this former player who toiled a bunch of years and as an assistant obviously had some real cachet

with the players that he was with and was clearly going to be a head coach at some point. I don't know if this is the job. To me, this was, would have been so much more fun at this doc to the Lakers, which I think was in play until I think Daryl was just like,

I'm just going to have to offer me something. I'm not letting him out. Can I ask you about that? If yeah. Do you think Daryl's choice would be like hey i want doc to be the head coach no this is i have not discussed that with him okay is it so important to daryl to get some kind of asset in some transaction to keep a coach he probably doesn't prefer like that seems kind of obsessive and pointless and now may have prevented

him from being able to do something he wanted to do i don't know if i'm totally guessing i could be completely wrong but i mean i guess well like the key to me was the charlotte piece of this where charlotte just i think was going to be d'antoni but if doc left philly d'antoni was going to be the philly coach so it's just everybody's kind of on hold. And I think the Lakers were finally like, fuck this. We need a coach. This is getting embarrassing. And they went seven weeks. And they were going to lose Darvin Hamm, maybe.

So, yeah, no, I think if I know nothing, I have no inside info, please don't aggregate this. I just think D'Antoni is if you're going to keep Harden, you want Harden to succeed, you think D'Antoni is... If you're going to keep Harden, you want Harden to succeed, you know D'Antoni has succeeded with Harden. I would

guess that would be his choice. But who knows? Yeah, because the Lakers thing was clearly had to be connected to it for it to take that long. It took seven weeks. How is it a seven-week coaching search? What are you doing? You're not in the playoffs.

It's a tough one to walk into because Westbrook, I think, is going to play out how I predicted to you. I think they bring it into the season. And I think it becomes like a December to February kind of deal and not an off-season deal. I don't think the off-season deal exists. So now you got to look at him as an expiring contract. You say all the right things about

we've got to get... You're basically throwing Vogel under the bus all the time. We've just got to figure out a way to put Russ in a better situation for Russ. It's like, really? Is that what you need? So a better situation for Russ is to have the ball 70% of the time. And that situation is not going to exist on a team with LeBron

and Anthony Davis. So what other situations? Should we have him levitating above the court? You either have the ball or you don't. He can't play it off the ball. So I think this drags on into this season. And it's great for us. We'll get a lot of content out of it. Looking forward to it.

Yeah, I'm happy for Darvin. And when you go through that many misses you're not going to start going, alright, well I don't want this because I have all these problems that I have to solve and it's also the Lakers so, you know, you go okay, maybe, you know, I doubt Darvin's going in there being like, okay, we need

to fix all these things before I'm even thinking about taking this, you know. Yeah, no, it's the Lakers. It's one of the most famous franchises. You got to take it. Before we go, what was your take on the Tommy Pham Jock Peterson

Fantasy League slap? Because I thought this was the most important baseball story of the year. I interviewed Jock Peterson at ESPN once. I saw him in the minors and we said hi when I threw out the first pitch in Sacramento years ago. And then I got to see the Jock Peterson experience, and it was like, this guy is just a meathead bred to play baseball.

And then he came up, and I was into the Jock Peterson experience. And we had him on the radio and it was one of the weirdest interviews you've ever done he started like laughing and then he started like there might have been a catchphrase in there he was like yeah and then he was talking about how like i was like weren't you on campus though as a as a bonus baby or like you were going to be drafted he's like man i just had my bike and i was wrong so let's just put it this way jock is unique personality so when then he got slapped i kind of can't believe he didn't fight back because he's not a small guy um or maybe his reaction was weird it was almost like he was stunned right and then he explained it like i thought there was going to be another pivot to this and then i'm like wait this is only about the ir dispute with a roster spot in fantasy so

don't you feel like there has to be more to this i don't feel like we have the whole story yet no nobody gets this upset about fantasy league i don't know i see the harbor grudge for six months where it's like when i see that guy i'm gonna slap him there had to have been another piece some other things had to have said on whatever message board or that no wait they're on a text thread the whole time whatever it was but the way jock explained it was like a 13 year old explaining to his dad why he got suspended i would say 11 year old. I wouldn't. 13 is too much credit. It was the rambling sixth grader who came from home from school wanting to explain why his iPhone doesn't work anymore. Well, the reason I was at recess and I dropped it.

It's like 11 year old. He wanted to give another press conference the next day. I don't know if Sir Rudy can jump on here because the funniest part about our Jock Peterson interview, and it was just weird. It was just weird. I wouldn't say it was good, but you're like, all right, Jock Peterson, Dodgers, coming up next, Ben Roethlisberger. Can he surpass Kirk Cousins in the legacy rankings, CSPN Radio? Legacy rankings. Somebody came up and were like, did you screen Jock Peterson? Did you screen Jock Peterson?

And we're like, what do you mean? Did we screen him? You know, he's a young kid. He's raking. Yeah. And we wanted to have him on. Like, what are you? They were like, well, that was a terrible interview.

We're like, I'm not going to tell you. It's one of the best we've ever had. It's not going on the resume tape. It was really weird, but he was just weird. And that's what it was. It was a weird interview. It was a little different. By the way, changing the channel it wasn't it wasn't so bad that you're changing you were going to stay on the channel you're going to be parking there

was awkward attention yeah yeah so so rudy do you remember we kind of get yelled at after the fact because he wasn't screened properly where it really felt like a manager was like hey that interview kind of sucked let me go in there and kick these guys in the dick for a little while um do you remember that surity Were you with us when that happened? Yeah, it was a bad interview. He was, I don't think he was super into it, but also he had this like giggle that we played as a drop for like a while. And it was just this like, I don't know,

this like childish laugh from like a, you know, a grown ass baseball player who, I mean, he was still young at the time, but it was just kind of surprising. And, you know, he wasn't super engaged and it it was fine like he clearly didn't really give a shit about the interview but he had this like weirdly boyish i don't even know we got a drop out of it that's right yeah and we just kept playing the laugh drop for a while yep and then i just want to be like so wait a minute so it was the new policy here that every time we book any single guest we have to go through and screen and pick up every single interview they've ever done and

then see if they're going to be good on the phone for seven or eight minutes. Like, hey, we had a guy on, little phoner, didn't work out. It was weird though. And I don't know. Can I ask you a bigger picture question about this? Yeah. What's the batting average on baseball players being a successful 12-minute hit on a national radio show? Is it like 10 15 it's low most of the athlete interviews like i cannot emphasize this enough in the beginning when i was doing the overnight 2006 2007 2008 and into 2009 you'd be sitting there and you'd go like oh my god like doug mckavich had a walk-off single in the 10th. Be like, we can

get him. You'd be like, we can get Doug McKavish right after the hit. Are you shitting me? Be like, yeah, we got to feel good. Doug, take us through that last at bat. What'd you see? Doug, what did that hit mean for your team heading into this road trip? You guys are 44 and 60

when like this, what, uh, what could it do for you guys The rest of the way The Gatorade's cold, huh? It's gotta really You're feeling it a couple minutes later Those interviews are so bad The post-game baseball interviews are the worst

We lived for them, man We had a six-hour show And the other thing, too, is that I don't know if people understand this inside part of the the hustle there'd be you know update guys all right and they'd get like 50 bucks from espn and they would they would just be like hey we're gonna go live now to bush stadium they'd be like all right hey it's you know jack jack buck here all right well actually i don't want to use a real name because it wasn't jack buck i don't know why that jumped in st louis i don't know the whole

thing all right we got doug doug schmitz on be like hey doug schmitz with wko1 uh chris carpenter scoreless through six that's live doug from bush stadium back to you guys and we'd be like fucking all right okay you know we're gonna keep our eye on that one chris carpenter six scoreless huge game in the nl central the phone killed all of this once people could look this shit up on their phone there was no reason to go to doug in st louis for updates right but that guy would get like 50 bucks and then doug again make-believe guy would call our producer back and go hey um i'm in the locker room right now and i can get us um david freeze i can get this david freeze to be like holy shit and the guy be very like hey we're going to david freeze live and i'd be like no way we got fucking david freeze the audio is always terrible right so david so

i don't know if you would call it like a runner or whatever he would hand his cell phone in the locker room to david freeze that david freeze like, hello? And you're like, hey, what's going on? Two for four tonight, but a real swing is you're able to take two or three from the Cubs. How did it feel? And then he'd just be like, well, you're going to keep our... And we were so happy whenever we got any of those and it probably dawned on me too late because you come into the business that way until you were like, hey, let's start turning down some of the athlete interviews, especially when it's seven or eight minutes, which, by the way, always proved that there was another version of this could have been much better. And also why I think podcasts are so much more successful in a way or preferable now to radio, not just because the advertisement, because you get all the warm up stuff.

And by minute 10, you should have something cooking if the guy's the right guest. And you got no chance. That's the key point. They need a lot of foreplay. Like a lot. Yeah. Sade.

Yeah, you really need to put some mood music on. They need a lot of caressing and making out. By minute 15, their personality will start to come out. I would say that what I would say to Kyle after we would have the athletes like, ah, that, you know,

it's always like the second half of that was really good or that really got going after like the 20th minute. But because you almost have to like pull them out of the coach speak stuff and the interview speak stuff and just, well, you know, it's a huge game and you got to go out there and give your best. I mean, the hockey players to me are unsalvageable.

They're just the hockey players are just trained to be boring and there's no way around it. You're just not going to have a good 45 minute pocket. Pick a hockey player. It's just never going to happen. Basketball is good. I think some football. I don't know about basketball. I would going to happen. Basketball is good. I think some football. I don't know about basketball.

I would say we had a lot of this. I think some of them are pretty good. Well, some of them are pretty good. And then the baseball is where you get the Jack Peterson guys. These guys are dumbasses. This is why I love Everybody Wants Some, the Richard Licklater movie. There's a million Jack Petersons. They're all movie characters. These are the guys in college when the hockey guys stole our electricity for a whole year and we didn't realize like those are baseball and hockey guys.

We know all those guys. Because the baseball guys, you know, so many of them had no college back in the day either. And then I remember, again, that year I worked in the minors, I get to know a couple of them. And I remember being like, why are you in such a hurry to be shacked up with a wife and getting the family done? And I remember one guy goes, hey, man, I need somebody to stay on top of the cable bill and everything. And I was like, what the fuck? I'm like, that's the dumbest. That's going to be one of the dumbest reasons. It's just like no i need i need somebody to like you know the ability yeah so there'll be you know diet coke in the fridge when i that's what kyle told me about getting engaged he said he needed somebody

to stay after the cable bill sorry kyle who's sitting there i was saying that joke was just sitting there i feel like kyle has to respond no it's alright Kyle won't he laughed Kyle thought it was funny Kyle's mad he's working on Sunday Memorial Day the the athlete interview thing I told you this before when I was doing Sean McDonough's show the only thing worse is the college coach interview

if you have the hierarchy of worse people in an interview the college coaches to me are still number one Dan Peltz still loves it he'll bring them on SportsCenter. Here with Jay Wright. Jay, you got to be happy with your guys. It's always the first question. You got to be happy with your guys.

I never want to hear from a college coach talking about his team ever under any interview situation. I just don't. Okay, but in fairness to Scott, they're so short on SportsCenter and it's's right after, and they'll throw on a headset from an ESPN broadcast. I get it. It's kind of part of the rap. I would say that Scott and I used to argue in the beginning of the radio years of having college coaches on.

He would say something like, Providence is 1-8-9. This is important. I'd be like, it isn't. And I love Providence. Scott couldn't be mad now. I don't want to make Scott mad. No. Some people love college coaches. He would. You've not going to be bad now. It wouldn't make Scott mad. No, he would.

I think some people love college coaches. He would. You've never heard one on this podcast. Oh, I see. I'll have a college coach on every now and then. Shit, I wish I could get more of the football coaches on in the SEC now. You know what I watched today? My dad texted me.

My dad, who just continues to kill me. He texts me, I swear to God, like at around noon. He's like, hey, ESPN, seven minutes left. BC, Notre Dame, or BC, North Carolina, women's lacrosse. It's high game, intense. And apparently he's been on the BC women's lacrosse bandwagon for the last few rounds, which I didn't realize.

And I ended up flipping over and watching it. And it was pretty exciting. Another great call by my dad, but I would not have the North Carolina lacrosse coach on after to get the take. Is one of the Hasselbeck daughters on the team?

Possibly. You know what I don't like about the women's lacrosse? 90-second shot clock. Feels long. Would probably nudge that to 60. Kick a shot in 60 seconds? What are we doing? I didn't know that. What's the men's?

My dad texts me. I don't know. Men's lacrosse is like, Jesus, way more physical than I think it gets credit for. I sent you a picture of Ben Simmons, by the way, who now has these muscles, but isn't working out yet. And I think it could be a summer, big, oh, 30 seconds for men. So 90 for women, 30 seconds for men?

Yeah, see, that's crazy. Might be a little Rusillo program this summer, a little weightlifting. You might have to just... You might have to bring him down to MB a couple times just so you can show him

some basics. He might just want to go to the parking lot and pick fights with people. I don't know what's going on with him. I don't know where the... What's with this frame? He's got this frame on him, too.

I don't get it. Yeah. These people that naturally rip people, I'm like him too. I don't get it. Yeah. These people that, the naturally ripped people, I'm like the opposite. I'm the unnaturally ripped or naturally unripped. Wait,

you're on TV and you're ripped? No, I'm just not, I have no muscle and my son already has all this muscle. They're just random people.

I had a friend in high school who was like this too. These people that just, they don't do anything and they just have muscle. Yeah, there was a kid like Ben in our junior high class. I hated him. He was like benching 135. We'd like go over on the Bowflex and we couldn't even move them.

I want to know what he can bench. See, I don't understand how to help him with any of this stuff. So we're going to have to bring him down to Manhattan Beach. Yeah, send him an Uber down. You can figure it. I know. You sent me the picture. I was at the Angels game last night.

Blue Jays were in town. Good game, by the way. I wanted to go see a Tani pitch in person. Anaheim is fascinating to me. It blows my mind that there's a city 45 minutes away from LA that is big enough to have multiple sports franchises. There's just this whole other area that's not... I don't know how to describe it. And I don't think I quite understand it

other than you get in the car, you go to Anaheim, and you're like, wait, there's another massive city 45 minutes away from Los Angeles, and there's enough people and industry and everything to sustain two sports franchises. No, it would be like if Worcester had a baseball team and an NHL team and Disneyland. Yeah, it's exactly. Yeah.

And it was just 45 minutes from Boston. Worcester, Boston too, but it'd be inland, no water. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it is. I don't get it. They got to upgrade that stadium.

I know that there was a big bill that didn't go through recently. It's that's what it is. I don't get it. They got to upgrade that stadium. I know that there was a big bill that didn't go through recently. It's horrible. It was horrible 20 years ago when I moved here. It was terrible. Now it's like, Jesus, it's got to be one of the worst stadiums. I had never been and I'm thinking, wait, you still like baseball? Let's play two.

You're not afraid. You don't need a pitch clock. You love to keep score. 3-1 put out. What's up? Going to see Otani in person I think is important. I plan on knocking that off my bucket list this summer. How many years is it going to be like this where it's basically Babe Ruth happening again? I don't know. You could get hurt tomorrow. I still haven't seen it in person in Hanoi. I'm going to do it.

My guy Beau Bouchette is starting to come around again. So yeah, my buddy there, Bushman, who's the bullpen coach, got me tickets, and there you go. I've been getting back into baseball because there's been less basketball, so I've had more time. And the Sox coincidentally got going, and the Sox now are headed toward 500

with Paxson and Sale coming back. So they actually might be lingering around because there's so many playoff teams now. As long as you're in 500 in July, you have a shot. So I was psyched because there's nothing worse than when your baseball team's done in like mid-May.

And you're heading out of basketball and it's just like, Jesus. All right, we got to wrap this up. Russello, you got two podcasts this week. We'll be back on mine on Sunday, which will be after game two of the National Basketball Association's finals. And then the draft,

we got that lingering. I'm sure there's some trade stuff that'll start brewing a tiny bit. And there we go. So Rudy, did you figure out your DeAndre Aiton trade yet or are you rolling with Wendell? Oh man, I'm rolling with Wendell, dude. I talked to Ursula about this.

I just don't think he's a ceiling raiser. And I think that the problem is too, is he's not a guy I'm building my team around. The Magic need a guy. They don't need just another guy. And Wendell's contract is probably like a top 10 contract in the league. So no way.

Rusillo, you got to listen to Upside High this week on the Ringer NBA show. It's Charks and Kyle Mann. Charks made a fantastic comeback. It was so great to hear him. He,

how much he loves Chet, I, I, I, I respect it. I'm in awe of it. The case that he makes for it, that it's like hearing an evangelist and a half hour into that pod, I was kind of like, shit, Orlando might have to take Chet. He actually, in 25 minutes, he didn't convince me,

but he knocked me off my team Japari and now I got to spend more time on this. So he was that adamant. He made the key point with Chet that if you watch the final four games that we've had in the NBA, how Chet would have fit into each game. Like he would have played 35 minutes for Dallas. He would have played for Golden State. He easily would have played for the Celtics or Miami.

And he's like, that's the key to me is that Chet could fit on all these styles of teams with what he does. Because I always thought best case there is weird body Al Horford. Like where he's like 17, 13, four blocks, makes a couple threes. But he was so

fired up about it that I got now I don't know who Orlando should take. So anyway. I don't know if it's fair or not, but go back and watch the Gonzaga Duke game from Vegas. And you're going to go, why is anybody arguing against Palo again? But it's one game.

But then it's hard to find the other games for Chet against higher competition where you feel the way you do about Palo or you feel the way about Jabari against, say, Florida. The Florida game for Jabari to me is probably my favorite. I watched the Arkansas overtime loss by Auburn when they were like 22, 23, and one at that point. I have these video clips that I was sending you guys where the under eight when Jabari comes back into that game at the end of the second half. I think he touches the ball twice. And you could see Bruce Pearl when they call timeouts,

they would run it specifically the ATO for Jabari because it was like the only way the coach could be guaranteed. And it wasn't even sure then. And then the other guard we keep talking about with Auburn. So it's weird, man. I did it all week and into the weekend. There's, you know, I'm putting together a list of guys i really like and the guys that scare me a little bit but there are there are strong strong arguments for all three guys like i think that's really you should go back and start like let's do that next

time before the draft doesn't have to be next podcast when is the top three been this good when is the top three been like unclear do we i i I, I, I mean, I'm sure it exists, but I think it's worth, it's worth going back and looking at it because this is pretty rare. Aiden Bagley. Luca was unclear. I mean,

I was riding the Luca. It was, wasn't unclear to me who should go first, but I think it was unclear for how it was going to go. Right. But this is more interesting because it was unclear because Luca's coach had been brought into Phoenix. Yeah. Um, but this is more interesting because... It was unclear because Luka's coach had been brought into Phoenix. Yeah.

But this is more like a legitimate old-school version of like, I have no idea how this is going to play out. You could tell me Orlando's going to take Palo, I wouldn't be surprised. It's the first time I feel like all three guys are in play for each spot. Yeah.

No, I... It's very... I don't know if everybody's just repeating everybody else there's jabari but that's what everybody's saying and i don't i don't know you know i just i feel like people are just kind of repeating each other on the jabari thing yeah all right we're gonna go podcast was produced by kyle creighton thanks to steve sruti dill and berkey as well and uh i'll see you here on Tuesday.