The Bill Simmons Podcast - Embiid’s Return, Houston’s Weird Weekend, Joker’s Swoon, and a Knicks Gut Check With Zach Lowe

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Join The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe LIVE on Netflix to break down the Rockets keeping their playoff hopes alive against the Lakers, and the Celtics taking a commanding 3-1 lead against the 76ers (0:31). Then, they recap the rest of the weekend's NBA playoff matchups, take a look at Donovan Mitchell’s playoff history, discuss Nikola Jokic’s struggles, and much more! (45:00). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Zach Lowe Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Wohlers Give No Quits. Shop at your Local Duluth Trading Company Store or Online The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠⁠⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're live on Netflix. Zach Lowe is here. Zach Lowe's podcast is coming Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have a new rewatchable's coming tomorrow. We are doing Ghostbusters. A really famous, gigantic movie. Don't forget about Legata, our new scripted narrative series as well from the Ringer.

We're coming. The Lakers Rockets game isn't even over yet, Zach Lowe. the Rockets laid one on the depleted Lakers today. And I'm going to start here. No NBA team has ever come back from 3-0. It's true. It's true. And even you're right that the game is still going on.

I don't even think the 2026 rockets can blow this one. I think we're safe. I think we're safe going live right now, a 25-point lead with three minutes left. I don't think any catastrophe can befall them at this point. But you remember the last time a team got close, It's coming back from a throughout deficit. You probably remember it very, very well, and it didn't happen.

Derek Wade put back. Yeah, it almost happened. And then Jason, I sprained his ankle, and then that was it. I went to Game 7 and Tatum sprang his ankle right in front of us. Oh, that's the meme. That's Sad Bill. That's that game. I think that was Sad Bill.

Oh, what a. Yeah, that started Sad Bill. All right. The Kevin Malar theory, don't let us get one. Don't let us get two from the 2004-A-L-C. Yes, it's Yankees. So the Rockets, they've got one. Now they're coming L.A.

I think it's, they spread it out. So I think it's a Wednesday night game. So I assume we'll have Reeves. Next Wednesday? Two Wednesdays from now? No, this Wednesday. Three days. I assume we'll have Reeves.

No Luca. I've heard Luca's not even, that are not even close yet. Did the Rockets show you anything in this game today that made you think, A, they're starting to incorporate strategy into the series and maybe some things that might work against an old, weird Lakers team.

Because I felt like they had a couple things going today. I mean, thing number one was they actually made Luke Kinnard play defense and didn't let him just hang out. I know, it took four games. Unbelievable. They didn't let him hang out off the ball all the time. I meant Thompson attacked him. And they just, like, he was on Tar East.

And Arisian even just blew by him at one. point, just gave Targis in the ball. Jabari Smith hunted him in a switch. And this has kind of been fun. Without KD, it's been fun to watch guys like Jabari Smith, Jr. get to do a little bit more and really stretch their wings. That was one. And just they have this kind of defensive gear in them when they have their best

defenders on the floor. They can get a lot of steals. Even Reed Shepard, who's getting hunted. I mean, LeBron is just being so mean to Reed Shepard, just constantly. But he had a couple of steals today. They picked LeBron. They picked them at half court a couple times. they can create a lot of turnovers. Lakers had 20-something turnovers the last time I checked.

And yeah, so that strategically, that would be the main one. I noticed those two things. I also noticed they were a little more physical and relentless with LeBron trying to put some miles on him. Reed Shepard came into the game. Wasn't going well. Well, but he stayed with it, which I, because I felt, I really felt like his, there was a fork in the road moment potentially for him, where it was like, wow, could this series be so damaging that it might actually be hard for him to recover?

But I thought he gained momentum as this game went along. And then, you know, last but not least, the leadership of Kevin Durant on the bench. Would you care to elaborate on that? Well, you know, he wasn't there for game three because he was getting round-the-clock treatment on his sprained ankle and couldn't come out because it's 24-hour.

I don't know. They were talking about he was. running on a treadmill underwater. I'll believe any sort of Durant treatment story. But I don't know why we still don't have an answer, why he wasn't out there for game three. There was some weird stuff about how he was actually, they did the walk into the arena before game three

that was on social, I think, for the Rockets and for the NBA. And then that clip was taken down the next day. Just a lot of weirdness. Okay. I was not aware. There was some people saying, the teammates saying, well, we don't know what's going on with him. And then apparently it's all fine now. And it was always fine.

And we weren't supposed to doubt it at all that he didn't sit on the bench. I mean, it struck me as odd that he wasn't out there on the bench. That's normally an injured player is there of that status. It did strike me as odd. And yeah, I mean, who. Od is a good word. I still don't know when this injury happened. Like when in game two, I guess, what did it happen?

But I will say this, like, for all the weirdness you want to ascribe to Kevin Durant and there's been quite a lot, the one constant of this guy's career is he's a gamer. He plays. He loves to play. He played a ton of games this year. He played in the finals. A ton of minutes. He played in the finals against the Raptors when maybe he shouldn't have. And it costs him a year of his career.

Like the guy plays. And so I don't know when this injury happened. And maybe, like, to your point, if they're actually going to make a run at this and we're like a long way from there, given how bad they looked in the first three games, they're going to need Kevin Durant. They can't win three more games without Kevin Durant. It was weird. You and I know a lot of NBA people and it was hard to get a straight answer for what happened on Friday night. And we still don't totally know. It was a little strange.

Yeah. I expected it. It was funny. I was watching a game. and only sometime in the second or third quarter did it jog in my brain like, oh, it's weird that I haven't seen any shots of Kevin Durant on the bench.

Like, normally that's a thing that just happens when a star player is out. They just cut to them. What are they wearing? What's their reaction? Fred Van Vlead is all over the television. True. And, you know, just, but they won tonight.

And they're still winning. They are still ahead, Bill. They have not collides down to 19 with a minute and 14 seconds left. Oh. Well, on Fandole right now, and this might change. The Lakers are minus.

850 to win the series. Safe bad. Again, no one's ever done it. Seems fair. A couple of Houston things. Oh, so the Lakers today, after three, they're down 25 points, and they were two for 13 from three. In game three, they were 12 for 29 from three. In game three, they were also down by six points with 30 seconds left and somehow forced

overtime, which was like one of the only times in the history of the NBA that's happened. do you think this series should be two-two or do you think three one is the right score for the series i think i think three-one is is pretty representative um the first two games i mean they were close they were close-ish but the lakers felt like the more prepared and the better team the whole time and by the way considering that yeah durant has missed what three or the four games luca and reeds have missed all of them and yeah it just this feels like a correct score of the series to me and And I realized like Cades was three, Fred Van Bleets out for the season.

Stephen Adams is like the Rockets are missing lots of guys. It's totally fair. But I just expected better in those in those first two games and particularly the one Durant played. You know who they're also missing? I owe Dissu. Yeah, well. I went on a, I did a Google because I had a vague memory of the rockets kicking the tires with him and went down a tower east and rabbit hole. Do you remember this?

No, informed me. Joe Callie reported on it, who I think he covers them for the sometimes the Bulls. Yeah, he's a beast bulls guy, Bulls, Bulls reporter. Yeah, Rockets would refuse to discuss Tar Heason for I.

Now, Iyo's going to be a UFA at the end of the year, and Tar Hecens is an RFA at the end of the year. So I could see, like, you can make the case he had more value. It's just an interesting, what if? Because I would say, I.O., even before what we've

seen in this series was probably more what the rockets needed than Tari Yason, who's been really up and down and has been incredibly erratic as a shooter and is a little redundant with some of the other guys they have. Interesting trade. I mean, or non-trade. I mean, I don't know that that's true, but it would not surprise me at all if that were true that the rockets shut down that talk because they do value their own guys very highly. They value two-way guys very highly. I mean, I was a two-way guy, but Tari-Eason has obviously much more size. The restricted versus the unrestricted thing. I also just wonder if you know, the rockets, once the injuries

started to mount up and the teams above them look so good, just kind of were like, it's going to be, I mean, Rafael Stone said something like this and has since walked it back, but just like the idea that this is not the year for us to make like big splashy, and not that that's a big splashy move, but we're not rocking the boat because it's just, it's not going to happen for us this year. I understand that logic, but then at the same time,

you're giving Duran a two-year extension for $90 million when he's going to be 38 next year. That would be the counter. Well, I mean, that's, it's been the weird dissonance of their team. Like, it was why I never got the, oh, it's a, this, the phrase blessing and disguise was thrown around much too cavalierly when Fred Van Vlick got hurt. Like, oh, we'll learn about Reed Shepherd and Amman Thompson and what they can do. I'm like, that's awesome.

You're trying to win the championship this year. That's why you get Kevin Durant, who has next year and then a player option in 27, 28. If they lose... I know to report he's picking that up. Wait, if they lose this series in five games, let's just say game five goes badly and they lose. Is he on the Rockets next year?

Had it in my notes. You know... I would lead no. I'm just going to come out and say, I would say I would lead no. So I was a hard no, because I think whatever happened Friday, we won't fully find out

until, as Brian Curtis calls it, the now they tell us story that happens after the year. That's probably going to happen with the Red Sox tomorrow. because the Red Sox who have a robot GM who's put together a terrible roster

and has made bad trades decided it was everybody else's fault and they fired Alex Quora who won the 2018 title with us and five of his coaches it was his fault at least you didn't get swept in a double header

by the Colorado Rockies by a combined score of six to one today why am I complaining about my baseball team to you but it's been a great season I'm having a lot of so So I was in the mindset of obviously Katie's out now. There's too much smoke here.

I don't trust this. Plus, whatever happened, All-Star weekend with the burner. It seems like he'll be moving on, which, by the way, it would be the fourth time he'd be moving on when you count 2019 Warriors. Not the happiest last season there.

Nets. Can't say that was a good chip lollipop. Sons. can't say that was a barrel of laughs. First good ship lollipop reference I've heard quite a long time. Thank you. And now this one, the problem is where does it go? I always say this exercise when I have friends in my life,

we're like, well, they obviously have traded them. I'm like, all right, go on spot track, go on whatever that fan trade site is, and try to find me the team. Be like, oh, maybe he'll go home to Washington. Okay, for who? they have two giant contracts and a bunch of small ones.

Who are they getting? Like just go through all the rosters and I did find a team, Zach. First of all, I feel bad for your friends if you're just lecturing them about trade machine mechanics. They're just trying to have fun and you're like,

do you know, Spotrack? Get on Spotrack. You know what the second apron is? Is it Spotrack? I was just, I don't know. I was just trying to have a little fun. Can I say the names of two teams and I'll bet one of them is your team?

Okay, go. Heat Knicks. No, I had neither. He can't. He can't go to the next. I'm going to veto that. Okay. No, I just think that's a bad idea for everybody involved.

Well, here's, all I'm saying is this. This is, this playoffs already has been a great reminder that the postseason stress tests your roster, like no other environment, like nothing compared to the regular season. If you have a weakness, if you have any chemistry issues, if you have anything, it's naked in the playoffs. They expose you naked. And that's what's happening to the nuggets in a lot of ways right now, which we talk about later.

So like, whatever happens in the playoffs to a bunch of these teams, there's going to be realizations that they learn and moves that they make because of how the playoffs exposes them a little bit. So that's the only thing I'll say about that. That's fair. I like the Miami idea. As you know, I am all in on LeBron going to Golden State next year.

Okay. Can I have Kevin Durant and Clay Thompson join him? Let's go full expendables. Kevin Durant and Clay Thompson to Golden State. Butler's expiring to Houston. We'll throw Quint Capella and whatever else makes the small salaries make it work to Dallas. Maybe they get a second round pick. Maybe Houston gets something.

And we end up with... Houston gets something. Yeah, something. Houston don't get something. They'll get a future pick or swap, whatever. and Golden State ends up with LeBron, Curry, Duran, Clay Thompson, Jemont Green, and Al Horford.

Let's fucking go. The expendables are here. USA! Dream Team! 2004! Run it back. Even I would be rooting for this team. First of all, every game they play, every game they play, sellout. Couldn't be harder to get tickets. Half the fans rooting for the Warriors,

wherever we go. Steve Kirk comes back now, two more years for him. him and we're off. We're ready to go. We already had the Warriors tried to trade for Kevin Durant a couple of years last season and him being like, no. That was two teams ago. Now he's now he's ready to reconsider. He should have gone. Maybe his mistake was he shouldn't do it. For entertainment purposes, it sounds great. I like that. Like Wemby and the Thunder just demand. Everyone's

coming together. All the old guys, we just, we can't beat them apart. We don't like these young guys. They're not ready. Blah, blah, blah. Let's all come together. Kevin Durant, he's been unhappy in a lot of places. You know where he was never unhappy? Defending our country with his American stars with LeBron James and Steph Curry. He fit right in with those guys. He did.

Put him in Golden State. I'm down with it. Let's bring Clay back. Clay's having a rough week. I know you don't follow this stuff, but had a breakup. Oh, I got a lot. You're following that? Well, first, I have a lot of friends whose consumption of the NBA is entirely through that lens. So I got a lot of Megan the stallion, Megan the stallion. A lot of Clay Thompson text from those people. And I was like, I don't have time.

There's eight games this weekend. I don't have time to really dive into it. But she seemed to put them on blast, as the kids say. I don't know what happened. I have no comment. There was some blasting. I hope everybody's happy. I hope everyone is happy.

And that's it. I hope Rocco, the dog, if he's still alive, is happy. I just hope everyone's doing okay. Well, we talk about San Antonio in the next segment, and they were jaw-dropping in the second half of that Portland game. OKC has been jaw-dropping for two straight years. There's no way to solve putting together a super team to beat either of those teams, unless you do the expendables.

I mean, and Curry's like, Curry can, I think, be really good once a week at this point for talking. about during the course of a season, he can, he can't do what he did five years ago anymore. But I think once a week and if he's at and if you play him 60 games and kind of pace him for the playoffs, I think LeBron's the same way. Durant loves playing big minutes. Clay Thompson back home. I don't know.

Damian Lillard. David Lillard. Bay Area Oakland legend, Damian Lillard has a pretty tradable salary. You want to find a way to get him involved in this? Didn't even think of him. Do we have room in the expendables for him? Yeah, absolutely. I actually thought we'd see Dame Liller this weekend.

They got, they kind of wet my appetite with that one. Yeah, can we have a, can we have a moratorium on the eyes emoji tweets teams? Just, you just can't tweet like Damie Lillard doing stuff and I's emoji and then be like,

well, no, it's just a tweet. Just some cool video of our guy, Dame. So what would you get rid of first, the eyes emoji or anytime I foul anyone and I'm any player in the league,

I want my team to review it? No, I like, I like that because it's again, like I like when players are exposed for, I like when anyone is exposed for ridiculous behavior. So I like that. And I will say my favorite motion, though, is the flopping motion. I like how dramatic and broad it is.

And I love when entire benches make it. Sometimes you make it with two hands. I like that one too. Quick on Durant. Might have to save this for. That's early. We're not there yet. Well, you know, he was pretty high in my pyramid at one point.

and he's been going backwards over the last couple of years, basically based on how this decade has gone and some of the things that have happened with his team. Because sometimes with the pyramid, you're projecting, oh, it's going to keep going a certain way, and then you kind of go underneath where you thought, and then you have to reevaluate. He has definitely dropped backward.

Do you think that's fair? I mean, and also a couple of, like, other players like Yokic have sort of, upward. So naturally someone has to drop backwards. Steph keeps, you know, putting up staff numbers every year. By the way, you mentioned, like, the only reason I mentioned Nixon Heat, not the only reason is just because you mentioned Oklahoma City in San Antonio and how can we possibly compete with these teams. So get out of the conference. Yeah, step one to do it is get me the hell over to the east and at least I only got to be one of them. Right. The thing with that, it's funny how people talk about KD

because his career's been so long. They just kind of forget stuff, like how good he was on OK. And those OKC teams were really successful. They made the finals. They had three conference finals losses. He was an MVP. He finished second in MVP three times. They, you know, they unfortunately blew the last two against the 2014 spurs. And they blew the last three to the Warriors in 2016.

And I thought those teams were good enough to win the title and they didn't get it done. But you go to the Warriors where everybody says that, you know, he was carried by those guys. He was fucking awesome those three years. I mean, in the playoffs, 48 games, including the year he got hurt, it's 30 a game and 48 playoff games, 37 and 5. He was the best guy on those teams, and those teams had Steph Curry. I mean, I don't think you need to even do this. He's a two-time finals.

I feel like I need to do it because I think people are forgetting now that how good he was on the Warriors. He won finals MVP both years. There was like in the first one where- This is why I want to bring this up. In the first one where he makes. the dagger from the left wing over LeBron, there was a whole conversation of like,

has he taken the best player in the world belt from LeBron? And that was like a whole thing that happened. And I think he was taking it in 2019 when he got hurt. And then in 21 with the foot on the line against Milwaukee, what he did that series was great. The problem is this decade swept by Boston in 22, lost to Denver in 6th and 23, lost the last two, swept in 24,

didn't make the playoffs last year, almost swept this year, what they won tonight. And, you know, that's put a little bit of a black cloud over everything. It's a really tough career. I think at all the careers, like in the top 30, the toughest ones to really evaluate are him and Will. Will, you can go all over the place with it. You could, you could make a real case. He was one of the five best guys ever. And you can use all these stats and all these things that he did. And then Durant is going to, what is it going to be second in points by the time he retires, all these playoff games, all these minutes, the fact that he's

going to play for 20 years. It's the finals MVP twice. All these really strong cases for him. And yet, it really only peaked when he was on this unbelievable Warriors team. So I see both sides of the argument. I do not think he has helped his cause

the last couple of years. I will say that. And also pretty underrated, or depending on how you consume the NBA, properly rated, like very good defender for most of his career as well. Like just a pretty like a pretty,

like made in a lab all around superstar player, could play with anybody, he could play with any kind of other co-star, just like nothing, nothing bad to say about his game at all. Maybe this summer we should just do like an hour and a half KD pod. Sure.

We might have to just completely deep dive it because I think there's really not been a career like this. Okay, Celtics Sixers. Yeah. Celtics were unbelievable. When Peyton Pritchard scores 28 plus points the last two years, they're 15 and 0. It felt like he had 65 points tonight.

at one point. I was just like, is he just made 12 baskets in a row? Is this ever going to stop? It was Kobe's 81 point game, but he only had 32 points. They're 24 and 1 Rooney scores 25 plus points. That's not where I'm going to start. We finished, we taped a big chunk of this pod right before the South Texas game because there's a window. We want to get stuff done so we can get it up faster. We came out of the room and the game had started and I saw Embed on the court. And as a Celtic fan, I was like,

oh my God, this is great. I was excited that he was playing. Wow. No reflection on Embed as a player. I just think to introduce him into the series halfway through when he hasn't played when he's rusty,

combined with how good I thought the Sixers played on Friday night. And I really thought they found something with the smaller lineups and the defensive identity they had. I thought the Celtics really pulled it out of their ass in that game. And they had to make a couple of huge shots.

Philly easily could have won it. I thought Maxie was really comfortable attacking them. And you could just feel it today. I thought Embed by no fault of his own, completely discombobulated them. And he was minus 25 and it felt that way. Yeah, I honestly, I'm surprised he came back. I just, I mean, it's appendicitis or whatever it is. It's a big deal.

And he came back pretty early from it. I thought he looked pretty good, all things considered. Like, you know, earlier this season, he wasn't dunking at all. And he had an explosive dunk. He had a couple of explosive defensive rotations. All of his pet shots seemed to just roll around and go out or rattle in and out. Like you just so close but not going in. And yeah, you're right that they had, you know, I thought, it's funny.

I watched game three and then I checked the box score the next morning. Maxie was 12 for 31, I think. And it did not, it felt much more efficient than that to me. because I just felt like the Celtics toggled between a bunch of different pick and roll coverages over the courses of game two and three, and he figured out a way to kind of solve all of them and different ways getting to the rim,

pulling up for three, passing. And it felt like an even better game than 12 for 31 to me. And because that game three felt scary for Boston. It felt very winnable for Philly and Pritchard made a huge three. Tatum made a tough three. Like it was a tough, tough game.

This was never a tough game. And when the Celtics make three is like, this, they're very hard to beat. The problem, and this is almost like a basketball IQ test. Because, yeah, he had points. He had good stats. But defensively, he really hurts them against Boston.

Because it's just, you can always pull him into screens and stuff and get threes that you want. The offensive rebounding, I think, is a problem when he's out there. And I just think they seem way slower and more kind of lumbering versus the team Friday night. I thought the Celtics were really lucky to win Friday night.

And if Embed didn't play today, I generally felt like the Celtics might lose tonight unless they had like a Pritchard game or something like that. The thing is Pritchard hadn't done that yet. And he's usually good for that once or twice a series. But I don't know. I just thought it screwed them up a little bit. Like Ubra, I don't think made a field goal. I thought Maxi, it felt like it took him an hour just to be like,

hey, is it okay if I can run some of the offense too? and they were just constantly trying to work him in. I also thought Bona, I thought the Bona drumming combo was fairly effective. And I thought Paul George has been really good for him all series. I think he's gone toe to toe with Brown and Tatum in a lot of ways. And if there's a bright spot for the Sixers in this series, it's that I think they've resuscitated him as like,

I don't think he's untradable. I mean, he had a huge second half of game three. And tonight he was, you know, 16 points on 6 to 13, but made all his threes. He had a couple takes against Jalen Brown. Like he had an ISO against Jalen Brown where he kind of bullied him and and shoved him for the basketball later. I was like, ooh, he's been settling for tough fadeaways a lot. And the Celtics will live with that, even if it's over Derek White or like on a switch against Peyton Pritchard. They're fine with that.

They're not going to double him. But that one was like, whoa, that's, that looked like Paul George right there. Can I like here's. I thought his defense was good too for for the most part, especially. in the first half. I think he's been resuscitated as, it's not inconceivable that you could get rid of him, though. That's a great feeling, right? When there's six years like, he's playing well, now we can trade him. This is like,

we can't even enjoy him playing well. It's already, we're just like, he's playing well. Great. Call somebody. That's kind of how you have to think, though, when you have him in Embeddeed, right? You've $100 million, $110 million of guys that you don't know how reliable they're going to be. So would you have sat and beat? Would you have just said, you know what? Weren't yours out for the series? I wouldn't have played him tonight.

I would have waited for him for game five and I wanted to, I would have, I personally would have waited for game four because I would have been really, really encouraged by how my team looked in game three. Especially because, like, Edgecombe, his threes now and the three losses, he's 0 for 16 from three, right? He couldn't hit a three on Friday and they were still in that game. I don't know. I just, I thought going smaller against the Celtics was really working in their favor because the Celtics were in this, they played Vooch like 30 plus minutes in game three. A lot of Vich. I didn't, I didn't really love 15 minutes of Vouch, much so just 30 in that game. And I thought over and over again, they were using and abusing him in the screens and getting threes over him and just finger out ways to take advantage of him being out there. He's just too slow coming out on the screens. But with the beat out there, all of a sudden, now the Celtics can just play all their centers. Get a lot of, you know, they've 18 fouls with those three guys. Even when Garza was out there, it's like Garza is going to shoot over and beat every time he gets it, which I think he did once.

Made one three. Yeah, I know they're not going to say Abed don't play, but I wonder if he gave Nick Nurse True Serum. Would he have been happy with it? So like your game plan would have been, let's wait till our backs are against the wall. If we lose and it's 3-1, then all bets are off, wildcard, bring them out. But let's give this current team tonight to try to even up. this series after their performance.

I get that. I just think the the mileage on the maxi do everything offense is just going to expire against a really good team and they just need another layer of offense. But integrating that other layer was was a little, you know, slip shot for parts, a little like little wonky for parts of today. So in the Friday game, the Celtics. were 44% shooting and 43% from 3. It's pretty good.

Yeah. Today they made 24-3s. That's a lot. 45%. And I actually thought, I thought they got great shots the entire game. It was actually one of those games. They scored 128.

They easily could add 150. Like they missed a bunch of free throws in the first half. The Js were terrible in the first half. And then the third quarter just became the Js. And I thought really complimented each other well. And then, you know, Pritchard, who's in the running for weirdest career of the decade, where he plays four solid years where I don't even think he averaged eight points a game, maybe like eight and a half.

He wanted to be traded, remember? Yeah. And I got to say, a lot of the Celtic fans were like, this guy's good. When this guy plays, he's going to be good if he can ever get a chance. He just, he's always buried behind guards. Last year, six men of the year, this year averaging 17 a game and is just perfect for the team they have because they do so much of this one-on-one attacks, one-on-one attack stuff. And he's really great at it. He's really like, you saw the whole tricks and everything today plus Reggie Miller's there.

They're going to have to redo his contract this summer, I think. And I think, I actually think they're allowed to extend it, but he's, I think, one of the, the best contracts in the league, if not the best. Seven million a year, right? He is, it looks like according to Spotrack or Spot Track or whoever you said, he is extension eligible this summer. Yeah, he's got two more guaranteed years after this at 7.7 and 8.3. I'd have to look back and re-familiarize myself with how much they're allowed to add on

the extension with the percentage is. It's probably one of those ones where it's like, it might not even be worth it for him to do it. Austin Reeves style, better off like to wait. But I also think he wants to stay in Boston. They're going to have an interesting offseason no matter what happens. They're got money to spend.

They're trade exceptions. He's just a really good player. Like I remember I picked him as six-man-a-year last year. There was like a Malik Beasley, Peyton-Prichard kind of debate. And I was just like, he's just a better basketball player than Malik Beasley.

He defends, he passes, he's tough, he's physical, he can score in different kind. He's just a really good player. Offensive rebounding, you'll sneak innings. It's the only, like, wow, Peter Pritcher has four offensive rebounds today? I sadly took Beasley. I think I was trying too hard not to be a homer

and swung too far the other way of Beasley. So the other thing, I don't want to talk about Tatum every podcast, even though I secretly do. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, you do. He's just, I just can't believe how good he looks on some of these drives. First of all, he played 42 minutes on Friday,

which is nuts. If you told me two months ago, hey, in game three, Jason Tatum will play 42 minutes in a regular playoff game. Like, well, that sounds insane. We're going to do that. Definitely did it. He was explosive.

His three point looks great now. Like he's got a nice snap on it. And it's interesting. He's getting better. Jaylen seems like he's having a harder time getting to his spots than he's had all season. And I don't know if it's because Philly has him scouted really well,

but this is a guy who was scoring on, like pretty easily on people like Lou Dort during the season. In this Philly series, it's just a lot of like, feels like he's like a battering ram trying to just like get to his spots and bang into people and swing his arms.

Like he got, I think he had two offensive fouls today, but it just, either their scouting, him greater is starting to wear down. But I, that was, that worried me a little bit.

I'm not worried. Okay. I'm just, I mean, it's they're clearly a better basketball team with the two of them it's going to go up and down a little bit of who scores the most points who has the ball the most and all that kind of stuff uh there's been games like where jalen i thought uh i can't remember which game it was but there was one game where they started hunting they're hunting maxi all the time but they down the stretch they made it clear like jalen you're going to be the guy to hunt maxi because you're just having a better night um i i'm not i'm not worried about it but i mean the stat that jumps out today is the 11 assists that tatum had i thought he playmaking was awesome. And they're just making, Boston's offense is both beautiful and simple at the same time

and sometimes within the same possession. Those guys just get the matchup, they draw help, and they're just making the bait the simple reeds, and Tatum was just spraying it out. And, you know, just really, I mean, again, 11 dimes. That's a lot. Dream situation is they clinch game five Tuesday.

Nix Atlanta goes seven. and they just get to put their feet up and relax and do the whole thing. I really wish Baylor Shireman would play a little bit more, would be my one critique. I think he's been lights out when he's coming into these games and really additive, and I wish he would get more minutes. Quick mailbag stuff before we take a break. Adam writes in,

the I had to assume a 43-point game feels eerily similar to Jalen Brunson's coming out party post-Luc injury in the 2022 Utah series. are there some parallels for is he starting to bump his free agent salary? He is it like an unrestricted free agent this year. Minnesota can go over whatever to try to get him. But could you see a Jalen Brunson, Nick, somebody going big on him and giving him like $110 million for four years or something? I could, I mean, I'm not sure any of the cap room teams fit, but that doesn't necessarily

prevent things like that for happening. I mean, I could because that's, we're in a world where that's not like max money. It's not, it's a lot, but he's probably worth like 20 plus. I mean, that's probably his value for sure. I think for sure his value is above that.

The Brunson thing is like, well, he, like, could he be the number one option on an elite NBA offense? I'm not, I'm not sure I'm ready to go there because Brunson has the kind of physicality.

But he's a really good player. I was really good. It's, again, like, we talk about it later, but just I don't know what the Bulls were. Like, what's the rush? We did dive into that. We have a good player. We don't want them. Okay.

I was thinking the markets between 20 and 25, but then you put the free agent craziness tax on it. And maybe it does get to like 110 for four years. Maybe somebody's like, this is Derek White. This is like the mid-2020s version of Derek White, Nikila, Alexander, White. Nikiel Alexander Walker, one of these guys that, like, let's invest in this dude. And we think he could be the third best guy on a really good team. And by the way, if they thought that, I can't really disagree. I think he could be the lead guard on a really good team.

The lead guard. Yeah, like the best guard you have, not necessarily your number one score, not your number one playmaker, but like- You need a real apex playmaker then. Yeah. But I think he could be your best two-way guard on a good team. I don't disagree. He's really good. Rob from Philly wants to know if the Ewing Theory Committee was dispatched to Atlanta

to figure out whether Trey Young and the Hawks, the eligibility of that. We did send some people down to Atlanta and they rejected Trey's application. They decided he was not good enough. Oh. Yeah. It's a rare situation because four years ago you might have said so. But nobody was like, wow, what are the Hawks going to do now without Trey Young? And that's like it was too predictable.

Can I can I just like the Ewing theory? I just it's it's I'm a little angry lately about it because it's now so pervasive that when Francisco Lundore, my daughter's favorite player got hurt earlier this week. I got multiple text from people because he's been struggling this season. Is the Uing spirit is the Ewing theory in play for Francisco Linder? No, screw you people. Don't bombard me with that kind of stuff. Well, Dave, do you win a World Series with Francisco Lindor?

Then he's eligible. We did not. Yeah, there you go. Somebody named Duran once had a long Duran email that ends with the question. Is Kevin Durant the Michael Jordan of good stats, bad team guys? This is my point of bringing up to Duran stuff earlier. Like, I'm telling you, people are losing their mind with this Duran thing. These are the e-bills I'm getting.

I mean Yeah I'm the answer is no No The answer is definitely Most of his teams have been Not bad There's been out of bad teams

Kyle wants to know Kyle wants to know Is CJ just Dame with worse PR Oh my God Or is Dame CJ with better PR They're both excellent basketball players Damian Lowe's had a better career Is his PR good?

I don't know Is his PR very good I mean this thing is cool The watch thing school. He's made a bunch of big shots. CJ's awesome. If CJ can beat the Knicks, these two of the next three

and parade into the next round and try to go toe to toe with the Celtics, it's not a closed discussion. I just can't I mean, you have to sit back for a second. I mean, he is like murdering the Knicks in crunch time. It's like he's Michael Jordan.

It's like every play, CJ and get out of the way. And you have to sit back and remember like, he was on the wizard. for like most of the season he was just over in Washington doing stuff and now he's like the biggest clutch force

in the playoffs so forth it's almost like an actor that was on I don't know one of those fire shows on NBC New York Fire is that a show? Probably Chicago Fire Chicago Fire is definitely

he's like a famous movie actor but now it's like oh he's the number three guy on Chicago Fire this is too bad Now all of a sudden he's in, you know, a Christopher Nolan movie. You're like, wow, CJ, he's back. Last question. You and Zach, this is from Ryan from Milwaukee. You and Zach both gush over Yokage all season long.

Well, he might be one of the best offensive players of all time. He's a Cohen on defense, forgets to shoot, how to shoot threes in the playoffs, and he only has one ring. Give me Duncan over him, and it's not close. Did any of us put him above Tim Duncan? I mean, you and I are like president of the Tim Duncan, That's another one that as the years pass, people are starting to forget about Tim Duncan, too. There was this great clip.

He turned 50, by the way. Happy birthday, Tim Duncan. Looks great. And there's this Twitter account called NBA History. And they ran this clip of Duncan, Duncan and LeBron congratulated Duncan after the 07 finals. And LeBron's like a baby. He's like 22. And he's like, hey, great series.

And Duncan says to him, yo, I love what a good teammate you are. keep it up, keep doing what you're doing. Like, he doesn't praise him about how always playing. He specifically praises him on being a teammate and his connection with everybody else. And to me, that's Tim Duncan in a nutshell. And that's why I always ride for the guy. Like he wasn't about the stats. He could have averaged 25 and 12 if he wanted to.

He was very happy 20 and 10 and being an awesome teammate. Like he sounds like a mentally healthy youth sports parent, basically like. Right. I'm so proud of you. Here's this little mini trophy. All right. So we think Celtics win in five? Yeah.

What about Lakers? I'm going to give the Rockets another game and say it gets a little frisky and Lakers win in six. Okay. I not only agree. I actually, I think it's six or seven. I thought LeBron looked a little gaming. You forget he's, I don't know if you know this, but he's 41 years old. You are, I mean.

He looked a little gaming tonight. We do have to have every, and he deserves it. He deserves it. Absolutely deserves it. But we do, it's like, I think it's in the broadcast partner's contract that there needs to be a two-minute soliloquy about LeBron's fitness and how much attention he pays to his body every game. It's just like, it doesn't matter if you do it every game.

It's just, all right, it's an eight minute tomorrow of the second quarter. Grant, Grant Hill, take you, the floor is yours. I want people to start doing that about me. It's like Bill Simmons, 25 years now, columns and podcasts. You know, he walks every day, saunas, eats really healthy. Like this guy, it's amazing how he takes care of himself. Tell people out there who do that for me. Okay.

I'll give it a shot. So you're more depressed about the Mets than I'm depressed about the Red Sox, it sounds like. It's a devastating turn of events. Fantasy had like multiple tweets today. He's like he turns into the Unabomber every once from while and there's these long missives about the Mets. He's having a rough. I mean, it's been, it's a disaster.

It's an absolute, like, this has, the Mets have been, have like the Vince Coleman Firework season, the Bobby Boneya contract. There's like a lot of just embarrassing Mets stuff. This has the potential to just be, they have, I think I saw that they've scored two or fewer runs in half their games this season.

They have the highest payroll in Major League Base. Jesus. Baseball is different than basketball, because in basketball, if you spend money on guys, it usually works out. Yeah. It's like, oh, we've signed Janice.

He's 32. This is probably going to work out. Baseball, you sign somebody and their career is over like the next day. And you're like, we stole you $280 million. By the way, you can't hit anymore?

Longest into any podcast we've ever done before Janus was mentioned and mentioned as a baseball-related aside. No less. Yeah, true. Donis. A lot of time to talk about him this summer. All right, we're going to take a break.

We're going to come back. We're going to talk about an incredible spurs comeback. What's going on with the Nuggets? The Knicks, the Nix game for all the other basketball storylines is next. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandul. The NBA postseason is here, and Fandle knows the only thing better than watching your favorite team. Win is winning along with them. Fandil, the best place to bet the teams, players, and plays during their playoff run.

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Shop at a Duluth store near you or at Duluth trading.com. All right, we just hopped in a time machine and went backwards to 6 o'clock Eastern Time to talk about the other six games in round one. Coming off Spurs Blazers, a terrifying St. Antonio's Spurs performance, Zach Lowe.

This is the one that you're watching the second half And if you're every other playoff team, the hairs in your arms are going up. Yeah. As we're recording this, the Blazers have 32 points in the second half of an NBA basketball game, which by Cabs Raptor standards earlier in the day,

is actually not so bad. Lavish. But an absolutely terrifying Wembe defensive performance in the second half. And then you throw in like, oh, Deer and Fox, hey, I remember that guy, All-Star Deer and Fox,

just making step-back threes over everybody. Spurs are figuring, out counters to all the weird defensive schemes the Blazers are using. But Wemby Wembe was just everywhere and the blazers like the Blazers are not a good offensive team. They're not a good shooting team. They're a horrendous turnover team. So like it's not as if

they did this to the number one or two offense at the NBA, but it was legitimately like, oh my God. They're on the road. That counts for something. Yeah. Also game three when Scoot, I was really having a moment

on Friday night with Scoot. taking it to Dylan Harper. And then we learned a valuable lesson. You don't talk shit to Dylan Harper. And then he put in a facsimile 2000 game four finals Kobe kind of arrival performance. Kobe's a 10 out of 10 on that scale. Dylan Harper was like a seven. But it was like, hey, here's what the future is going to look like when I'm putting this all

together and I look like this all the time. So that was game three. That was scary. No Wembe in that game. Game four, Wembe and the Spurs just, the only other team that can do this is. okay C, right? That could do a 60 to 30 second half of a playoff game on the road. And they've been, yeah, I mean, Oklahoma City has a gear of frenzy that almost nobody can reach. The Spurs, it just looks different because they don't quite have the perimeter frenzy and all the

crazy wing. They've got some great defensive wings and guards, but they have the one guy in the middle who is just everywhere and impacting every play and in four places at once. And you just see everybody looking around like, where am I? So I can't shoot this. I got to shoot. It's crazy. So this is a sweep if he doesn't get hurt in game two, I think. I mean, they were winning when he got hurt, but yeah, they were winning in the first half today. They didn't win. So, yeah, I think, I mean, I picked Spurs and Five. I gave the Blazers a game one way or another.

They're a tenacious defensive team that can cause some problems. But yeah, this feels like, it feels like we're heading toward an appropriate spurs in five. I think that series was a win for the Blazers. They, you know, we know what the limitations are, but when you think about it was a good Drew Holiday series, like kind of validating a pretty weird trade, at least for the short term. They wanted to bring in a veteran guy. Then he was okay. I think, I wouldn't say the greatest matchup for him.

And, you know, they're feisty. There's some pieces here. And I can't wait until they have a coach that makes $425,000 next year. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens when Gabe Kaplan is the head coach of the Trailblazers. Yeah, the Fox thing, the big things for the weekend, other than when becoming a back and looking healthy was Harper and Game 3. And then Fox kind of reminding people like, yeah, this is in here.

I've been scaling it back. Just kind of here to help out, facilitate, get some shots out. But for the most part, that's lurking in there somewhere. We'll see if it lurks in an OKC series. Can we talk about Dylan Harper really fast for Game 3? Because we haven't done a – neither of us have done a podcast since then. I would love to. That was a – I texted some people I know with the Spurs after that game.

I said that was a real effing playoff win game three. That was like a big boy playoff win without Wemby. It was an awesome game. It's a scoot going at him. And then Harper basically from that moment on, just taking his soul out of his body. Still a win for the series for Scoot. But Harper was so good.

And you could just see all the pieces where we're going to go. And I'm not really positive where we're going to go with him. Because when he hits the three-pointer, he basically has every single offense. weapon you need. He can do stutter step, get into the lane, Brunson style. He can just get to the rim. He can play with somebody on his body. He can step back and hit threes. And then he can also kick back out to people with really, like precise passes already. Like he's a really, really, really advanced, advanced, advanced guard. One of the best, I think, rookie guards that we've

seen come into the week that I can remember the last 10, 15 years, right? Who else jumps to mind? at 19 and 20 where you could really see some special shit. Not very many people and yeah, special. That was a game without Wemby that they needed other people

to step up and he and Castle were both unbelievable. First of all, it helps to move up in the lottery three years in a row. Second of all, it's been one of the pleasures of this series.

The Blazers have a lot of kind of power, perimeter players, including one of the all-time great power hybrid point guards and Drew Holiday. And it's been so fun to watch Castle

and Harper be like, oh, we're just kind of babies reasonously compared to you, but we're going to, we have that too. We're going to take it right at you over and over again. It's been so fun. Yeah. And Castle, who was the unsung hero on game three at 33, but Harper, Harper was just such,

such a dramatic second half entrance by Harper into that game that it kind of overshadowed everything else. But Castle has been great. Pretty omnipresent. Even that play that led to the double tactical with Denny started because Denny was really physical with him dribbling up the ball. And Castle finally got tired of it. took them in the basket, did the whole thing.

Blazers, home game, no t-shirts. They were shooting used t-shirts during timeouts into the stands. I don't know if you knew about that. They've gone to some goodwill, grab some stuff, but- Are you worn armpit stains? Like, what are we talking about?

Yeah, yeah, just, you know, not holes in them or anything, but definitely had been worn. I'd still think win for the Blazers. They've rekindled some trade value for some guys, and I'm interested to see what they do this summer. Okay, Cavs Raptors. Yeah. That also happened today.

It did. This was an homage to what year, 2006, 2006, 2005, 2003? I mean, I looked at the score multiple times in the second quarter and had to remind myself that it was the second quarter. So you pick a year from a long, long time ago and an NBA far, far away. 04. Raptors shoot 32% and win. They had 21 offensive rebounds and they had 36 free throw attempts.

And it seemed like they blew the game. And then the calves had a very strange stretch. They're up five. They give up two free throws. They miss five straight shots in the last two minutes. And all of a sudden the Raptors are winning and all of a sudden the game's over. And it was a it was kind of your worst fears for a Mitchell Harding game, right? I mean, I don't even want to put the blame on Mitchell Hardin.

Nobody covered themselves in glory in this game. but Jared Allen and Evan Mobley to combine for 11 points on 5 of 16 shooting, when you're being guarded at least at the start of the game by a combination of R.J. Barrett, who they've crossed match onto a big guy and Yacca Purdle, who can kind of sometimes stay on the floor at a couple nice takes in this game. Like, I understand that the Raptors, they bring in Murray Boyles off the bench. And when he's the only, quote unquote, big man on the floor with Scotty Barnes, they're very switchable, they're very hard to play against.

But like, that's not the entire game. Yeah. And remember the third quarter started, and Cleveland very clearly came out. I was like, hey, Evan, face up against Yacca Perdo, if he's guarding you and score some baskets. And he got two. And I was like, all right, great. Then they switched to match up. They put Purdle onto, or they put Perl onto, I don't know, they switched to matchup one way or another.

They put Perl somewhere else. And they put R.J. Barrett on Mobley, I think. Yeah. And then we just never heard from either of those guys. Again, Jared Allen had a great defensive game, had some blocks, had some air protection. But like, we can clown Mitchell and. Hardin for shooting 12 of 38 combined, but the big guys deserve a little bit of criticism too. Mitchell, six for 24, Kobe O'Mash. Hardin had six turnovers in the first half. And I tweeted

this. I was so disappointed, Barkley didn't make a joke about the Cavs being in Toronto all weekend, Friday night, Saturday night, and then playing a 1 p.m. game. And Hardin just looked like he had woken up a half hour before. I had the same question marks next to Mowbly. He had eight points, nine rebounds and three assists. And you just forget he's out there for stretches. I'm starting to wonder if this is just who he is. We kept factoring in this bump and the ceiling for him and all the potential of what he could be. And oh, wait, maybe he's really a five. Maybe he shouldn't play next to Allen. Well, what happens if he starts making threes? That's going to change him. What we don't see from him is the guys get out of my ways. I'm just going to

wreak havoc here for an hour, right? We need this game. We're up to one. Nobody can get anything going. Just I'm kicking in in a fifth year and I'm going to destroy everybody for about a half hour here. And he just doesn't do it ever. And this is the game you win if you're a serious NBA contender. On the road, tough game, tough atmosphere, tough but like limited Toronto team, not a great team. you win this game and go up 3-1 and set yourself up for the 4-1 win which should be which you know I picked Cads in 7 but like it was sitting there

for them Toronto did not come out like a blaze of glory and this is a game you win and yeah I mean to your point Cleveland all of a sudden like they'll go they'll put Alan and Mowgli together at the start of each each half and then we'll never see them play together again and we didn't see Mowgli for like

most of the fourth quarter I know Jared Allen was playing so well yeah and I think they're caught in this existential dilemma of like all right well do we want to play them together more well that means we have to increase their minutes we don't love the spacing it's getting a little funky i've been mobile these three kind of disappears for a week at a time then okay if we want to go small who do we play when we're small do we want to play more guards do we want to play more of our forwards like tyson and strews and wade all of whom we're okay today and then sam merrill who had been a zero for the entire series came in and damn near swung the entire game and the entire series for cleveland with his gravity and he actually held up okay defensively even against Ingram. But it's like they all of a sudden feel like they're torn between identities in some ways. And it's not this should, I mean, like credit the Raptors. Their defense was sensational.

Murray Boyles is one of these stories of the last month and a half of the NBA season and the playoffs so far. And they made it really hard on the cabs. And the cabs did not have a lot of answers. Yeah, Murray Boyles gets three stars for his game today. And the fact that they can play small with him with a rookie and be okay. But even big picture, let's say the Cavs get through this series and they play Boston down the road. Boston's just going to go small with better players than Toronto has, you know, because I think this is a blueprint now. You mentioned that they were split between two teams, basically.

I would almost say they're split between two teams, but then they're also split between a second version of those two teams where the Mitchell and hardened stuff at the end of games where it just feels like they're both 30 feet from the basket looking at each other and then one of them has the ball and the other one just kind of stands there and watches. It's a little weird. There's some Mitchell stuff I want to get into in a second.

But I just, they leave me cold. I don't think their defense is good enough either. And in this, you know, the Raptors shoot 32% today. But what the shots that were getting at the end of games basically they're playing shed out there as a fifth guy. So Scotty Barnes just trying to beat people off the dribble. He's doing these spin things, then trying to kick out. They didn't really have anybody who could create a good shot.

I didn't feel like, and they still won. I didn't like any of the shots Toronto got. I mean, their best offense for a good portion of the fourth quarter was Scotty Barnes just bring the ball up as fast as you can and see what happens. And what happened was like people kind of got out of his way sometimes or they got in his way and he went through to them. I thought he was awesome. I think Toronto's defense is just taking away so much of the paint and leaving Mitchell and Hardin to be like, all right, we're just going to kind of run pick and roll out here with our guards to see if we can get RJ Barrett switched on to us and then see what happens.

And then we'll hoist a step back three because the paint is like a no fly zone. But we're recording this before Six or Celtics. So we'll see what happens in that game. But depending on how that game goes, that was kind of an underwhelming game three win on the road for the Celtics. I guess no playoff went on the road against a guy like Maxi, who's busting every scheme you throw at him is like ho-hum. But the East is like Detroit's down 2-1, you know, Cleveland 2-2,

Boston is where they are, the Knicks are 2-2. Is Orlando going to win the East? Like, what's happening in the East? I know. It is like unprepared for anything moment. So Darko said this about Scotty after the game. I expect more from Scotty. The way he's playing, he's 60.

percent of a player that he's going to be in two to three years. Scott, he's going to be one of the best players in the league. And he's already one of the best players in the league. So he saved it at the end. But I don't think he's one of the best players in the league. I think he's a really interesting player. And you could see today, like the last piece that's for him to become like the number one guy on an awesome team that has a chance to win the title, I think he's going to have to have the ball. And like, what is his, what's his finishing move going to be? And he might, not have one. He might just be almost like what Igwadala was and some other guys we've seen, like guys who are way better out being your second best guy or your third best guy. For them,

he has to be the best guy. But I don't, I don't see it offensively. I don't know how he jumps up. What's in there, in your opinion for him? I think it's the bully ball and the playmaking. And look, we could debate like what's the best, one of the best players in the league. Like, I had him, I had him third team all NBA and then bumped him off when Luca and Kay became eligible. So that puts you somewhere around the 20th best player in the NBA, something like that. And it has been interesting in this series to see how willing the Cavs are. They'll start with Mobley on him and then they'll go with Tyson or Struce or Wade or whatever. And I keep waiting for him to just dominate those matchups.

And the Raptor spacing makes it hard for anybody to do that. And he has stretches where he does. But I keep waiting for the moment where he's going to force Cleveland to put their centers or whatever, the only Mobley or Allen on him and put those other guys somewhere else. And that hasn't really happened yet. And it's just because of the jump shot, right? I mean, we all know

they're going to try to go under every screen, force him to shoot jumpers. But I mean, I'm not going to sit here. Dude played 42 minutes at 23, 9, and six. I'm all right. And four stocks, I'm good with that. And here's the other thing I would say. They play really fucking hard and they're really competitive. And I like

that. I like them a little more than maybe I did a week ago. I still can't imagine they would win a round or even two rounds. I still think Cleveland should win this series. But if I'm Cleveland, if I'm a coach on the team, or I own the team or I'm in the front office, I'm a little nervous now that we're playing this team that exposes a lot of warts that we have, right? Oh, you're going small. Well, here's Moby to punish that. Well, Moby's not doing that. Oh, you're super competitive and going after every 50-50 ball and pounding us. Like, we're going to fight back with our version

that. Well, maybe we don't have that. And they haven't, the Raptors haven't even had the game yet where they just got lucky and hit a bunch of threes. You know? I don't know if the Raptors have that game. But every team has that game once in a playoff series. There's always a game where somebody goes like 14 for 35 or something.

Could you go over Walter hit one? Just a shot of some kind? We've got to see Grady Dick at some point. But yeah, if I'm the, if I'm on the calf side, I'm a little nervous because I have some fears. There's some guys on my team that have wilted in big situations. We don't have to name them. No, really?

Yeah, we have some really bad playoff losses in our recent pass. I got to do some Googling. I would just start to get, I would be getting a tiny bit nervous here. Can we do the Donovan Mitchell playoff history really fast? I love the Donovan Mitchell playoff history. Go ahead. Lost to Houston round two as a rookie, then lost them round one the second year. Blue a 3-1 lead to 2020 Denver.

in the bubble. Beat a really young Memphis team, then lost to the Clippers in 21 and 6, after Kauai left, the famous Terrence Mann game. Just an inexplicable loss. One of the most inexplicable losses of the decade. Lost to Dallas in 6 and 22. No Luca, the first, I think, three games. That was Brunson's arrival.

And they just kind of cratered as it went along. And if game, Claire, somebody was going to be traded. It turned out both guys got traded. Mitch, Mitchell goes to the Cavs. loose to the Knicks and five. The next year, they beat Orlando in seven in a series that it seemed like they were going to blow, and then they showed up for game seven, got smoked by Boston and five. The next year, last year, swept Miami and then lost to Indian five in a game where

they had more excuses than games won after the series ended. We'll mostly miss the game. Garland was hurt. And Indiana just took their lunch in that series. in that series, just to add on to it, remember DeAndre Hunter got hurt? I think he gave one of that series on a Matherin chased down block. And they were like, I mean, like, they were mad about that.

He didn't get called for a flagrant, I think, if I remember correctly or they wanted to assist. I can't remember exactly what it was. And then they're like, oh, man, what a big loss for Deandre Hunter. I'm like, really? Because it seems like you guys can't wait to get rid of DeAndre Hunter. Now that he's hurt, it's like the biggest loss in the history of playoff basketball. Yeah. I didn't like the way they handled adversity in that Indiana series when it hit them.

Well, if they lose this series, every guy in the team, the coach, everybody is, I think, on the table. I'm prepared for every single outcome, right? Is there one keeper that you would say, well, they won't trade him? I'm prepared for anything. I would say Mitchell, but, you know, Mitchell has a little agency in that whole discussion as well with just the one guaranteed year left on his deal. I'm not going there yet. They should win the series. They should win the series.

But credit Toronto, man. I thought this would be a tough series for Cleveland, and it's going to be a tough series for Cleveland. This is officially who are the tough guys on our team. Let's go. Like, who wants this? Who's ready to bang bodies? Who's ready to?

I think Struis, I liked how he's been playing. I think Jared Allen has it in him. We'll see with Mowley. Hardin, you never know. Mitchell, we've seen it, and he's his playoff, what is he, 28 a game for his career in the playoffs? That's what I was going to say when you went through the team results. I mean, there's been, he's got a couple of dud playoff series individually. There's also been some series, particularly with Cleveland, where it's been like Donovan Mitchell.

Is anyone else coming with me? Am I just going to have to do this all by myself, including that Orlando one, they got it out in seven? Like, his postseason individual play is pretty unimpeachable. Like everyone's going to have a dud now and then even the very greatest players in the world like Yolka is having now. But it's been pretty by and large, very good. Yeah, the only thing you could ding them is the, well, the results, but also 31% from three of the last five post seasons. And a lot of stuff like today where he just couldn't ever really get it going. And I thought what the kind of team the Raptors have is actually like the kind of team you would want to throw at the calves.

And I think that Celtics have a virgin out too. just long wings to put on those guys and really bother them and the ability to play small or big depending on what you do. Well, we'll see. I already think this series is a win for the Raptors, just even. I had Cavs in six. I bet the Cavs won game five. My prediction would still be that the Cavs would go and win in Toronto,

but it's, I just didn't like how the calves look today. Can I say a couple other things about this game? Yeah. How about Scotty Barnes just going to the foul line and knocking them all down late in the game? and eight second violation gets thrown in there. Like if we're going to just going to have a complete offensive disappearance, we'll throw an eight second violation.

I'm not sure I've ever seen that exact kind of eight second violation where Jamal Shed seemed to know that it was coming. And he's like, what if I just jump in front of this guy right now and he jumped in front of Donovan Mitchell? And sure enough, eight second violation. And that's not the first time Mitchell's had one of those either. Okay. I'm going to save.

I'll save the nuggets. Want to do some magic pistons? Sure, let's go. This is, I've said this. I got notes. I got notes on every series ready to go. I've said this to you before. This is a great one seed case for my 223 idea, yet again.

Detroit just on the ropes, really, after being awesome all season. Orlando couldn't have been more disappointing this season, and then ended the season in like a borderline disgraceful way. and now they're in the driver's seat at 2-1. But the number one thing I wrote down and I bolded it, I felt this way after game one, I felt this way halfway through game two, and then the Pistons played one awesome quarter in game two.

Other than that, these teams look dead even to me. And even the net ratings are 105 and 104 offense defense for Orlando and the opposite for Detroit. All their stats are near the same. It just feels like if they played 20 games, I feel like 18 in them are going to be close. And I honestly don't know who's going to win this series. I would not bet on it.

I would not make a prediction for it. I do not know what's going to happen. I think it's also a reminder that sometimes the conventional wisdom about the playoffs being different than the regular season is actually spot on. It turns out everything that we were worried about about the Pistons and Detroit fans yelled and screamed about how they had 60 wins and all this. It turns out your lack of shooting is a problem.

it turns out the lack of secondary creation around Kate is a problem. And it turns out that Jalen Duren is just getting flat outplayed by Wendell Carter Jr. And it looks just frazzled on both ends of the floor, which is fine. He's 22 or 23, whatever he is. It's not fine. It's not fine. I voted for him second team all NBA. I shouldn't have this many voter regrets already and I have like five. Well, okay, fine is, I guess fine.

By fine, I would mean it's not entirely shocking to me that the playoffs have proven much harder for him than the regular season. But it's worrisome that Orlando has pretty easily figured out how to nullify him in this series. Yeah, his face-up game just isn't working. I mean, Wendell Carter hit him with the with the Shay like this guy, this guy. Couldn't believe that. The whole thing with Duren is he carries himself like he's the biggest,

baddest guy in the bar. And Wendell Carter's like, let's go outside and fight right now. I'm right here. Wendell Carter's been a big winner, I think, of the playoffs so far. the inevitable Stu Goga conflagration already happened and it was interesting to see

J.V. Bickerstaff kind of get fed up with both Stu's antics and he yanked during early in either the third of, I think the third quarter of that game after a couple of defensive mistakes and just like sat him for a long time. They took that game obviously seriously and Orlando took it from him

and Palo and Franz made a couple dagger threes. You don't expect those guys. They had dagger threes. That was kind of fun. Did not expect that. Well, the trade deadline, which We were concerned that they didn't do anything major. It feels like it's continuing to haunt them. Kobe White, Dessoonmu, who... Oh, my God.

I mean, out of all the teams that could have Trump, Minnesota's measly offer of four second round picks and our bus lottery pick for D'Soon Mu, I'm pretty sure Detroit could have topped that one in about five seconds, right? Maybe those... Four seconds, three seconds? Like, Jenkins crashed back to Earth. Yeah, that's another one. He played seven minutes in game three. Thompson, his stats are okay, but especially in the last six minutes of these games.

And I would say the same for his brother. He's on the court dribbling around and it almost seems like he doesn't know where the basket is. He'll be just going this way and the basket's over here or backwards and just has once no part of shooting ever. And Kade's been awesome. I mean, if you said before the series, K'd is going to have a 31, 5, and 8 through three games. you would think, oh, Detroit, then Detroit, are they going for a sweep? What's going to happen? They just don't, they don't have any other crunch time offense. It's every fear we had about the Pistons all regular season when we were doing the yeah butts. And look, let's just be clear.

Like, the magic are good. This is a tough matchup for Detroit. It's not like they're, I don't think they're like choking or this is a sort of like condemnation of their entire team construction. There are a young team with some obvious offensive warts playing a team that had a higher over under number than they did before the season. And so, like, it's not entirely shocking that this has proven a tough series for them. Everything you said about a Star Thompson is true. And they just, you know, I thought Detroit went at Duncan Robinson with a little bit more precision and intent in that game.

And they need Duncan Robinson's offense on the floor to sort of loosen everything up. And they just need Duren to play better. Like Dern being a 10.5 rebound, like, OK defensive players, they're going to lose this round if that's if that is what he ends up averaging yeah you need the wild card guy too you know like for the lakers and we're taping this before game four but canard has been something of a wildcard guy for them right you need that oh i did like i oh last night wow 27 of the second half we weren't expecting that i don't know who detraits wow we weren't expecting that guy is it's probably duncan robinson but um they just never got the heat checking thing i i mean it's a really interesting point

you made about regular season versus playoffs because it's funny you have in the east orlando a team that we were all disgusted by multiple points this year and really frustrated by and then you have minnesota who was the classic kept roping us in then making us feel stupid and they'd be like i'm out of minnesota then they'd look awesome again they'd rope you back in and we just did the zigzag with them for six months and then if you just watched them in the playoffs you would think was jada McDaniels, the runner up to Wembe for a defensive player of the year? Or was it Gobert? Did those guys finish two and three? And you see their bench and you just see the the physicality and the intensity that they have. And I promise you, they did not look like that

very often during this season. But they do now. They absolutely do. And I don't know if you want to talk about that series now. But let's go to a break. We'll do a break. We'll come back. and it's going to be a hard one for us. Nuggets, Tim Rwills. It's going great. We'll talk about that next. This episode is brought to you by Square. If you're in the restaurant game,

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Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flame thrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like Habinier, yes.

Save the... Every Day with Amazon. All right, Zach, game four, Nuggets Wolves, which gave us a terrible DeFincenzo Achilles injury that I didn't even see because I was watching the other game within a minute of the start. A really scary ant injury that seemed like it was the ACL because he was holding the side of his knee. Turns out hyper extension, but he's out for the round.

Iowa is 43 in the game and 27 in the second half. And if you only watch this game, you would think he was one of the best 10 players the league. We had a near brawl involving yokech. Very entertaining. Involving the Joker, which is always all bets are off. And Julius Randall came in with a little like Stephen Jackson and the Artesmele kind of energy. I thought he was really going to escalate it. Huge fight in the stance. Lots of video from that. Oh, I didn't see that. There were a fight in the stance between Nuggets fans and Timberlowe's fans? Big fight in the stance. Can go look that up. Wow. What a rivalry. It's even spilling into fandom. That's great. We had,

Maybe not great. I don't know if I didn't see the fight. Who knew? That was a rivalry. Were their children involved? I hope not. I hope everyone's okay. Hopefully everyone was all right.

We had ABC breaking into the game and forcing us to move to ESPN because they had to do an update about the White House dinner, the shooting there. And then after the game, someone stole Joker's underwear and he was really mad about it. Probably more mad than the loss. I don't know where you want to start, but this was probably the drunkest game of the year, replacing whatever. the previous drunkest game in the year was? I want to start with the injuries to Minnesota. Because they're up 3-1 in this series. And if even just Ant were healthy,

they would probably win the series, even though they only have the one home game left and be a dangerous team in the next round. And now Ant availability is in question for an unknown period of time. And Devenzo, the dude is just, a winner and a gamer played every game. He wins everywhere he goes.

He's just such an awesome role player and it's done so well there. That's a heartbreaker. And you knew it right away. You feared it right away. He knew it right away. It seemed like when he was on the floor. So I want to start there because as appealing as it is to start with like, is Yokic having the worst playoff series of his career?

Is Denver, is their window already closed or closing right now for this for this core? What does that mean for the off season? Those are the big questions. I might have to. open a Mikkelope ultra for this. I'm getting upset. I want to sit with the Timberwolves injuries for just a second because Devencenzzo's like just classic central casting, beloved like glue guy role player and aunt is aunt one of the faces of the league, one of the most explosive players in the league, a guy who plays both ends of the floor and has risen up in the

playoffs every year that he's been there. And this team is like has a legit awesome top seven. Like there's starting five plus I.O. and Nas read, and then you go down below that and its bones, has been playing well and whatever. But, like, they are legitimately really good. And if they're harmed going into the second round, assuming they win the series, which I don't think is a done deal, by the way, it just sucks. And all these injuries sucks. And when Castle went out in that game earlier today with the hand injury, I'm like, I just don't want to, I can't watch this anymore. Yeah, and DiFincenzo is out next year. The timing of these, when you, when you get March, April, May range, you're also out for the next season.

I would assume, unless he's on some crazy Tatum timeline that would put him back. I guess, I don't know. He would have to get lucky. I know he flew to New York today and got the surgery. But the thing with him, other than your top seven point, he would swing two halves the series just by getting hot, it felt like. And I thought he was a great wild card. Like, oh, my God, Dante's heating up.

He's not afraid of this moment. And somebody's going to have to fill that spot. Yeah, I should have clarified by top seven. I'm including Devencenzzo and now he's gone. And so we're going to see more Mike Conley. I was very happy, by the way, that Mike Conley threw this all. Confident. Had a moment.

Had a moment in a big, big game. And Shannon got in. I think they're going to need, they're just going to need other guys to just fill time now. The Ant thing was the least surprising injury of the first round because he did not, except for Aaron Gordon. Because Ant did not look healthy. You could tell something was wrong with his knee. And he was also playing 100%.

not favoring it at all. And then afterwards, kind of be like, oh, that still hurts. And it was just scary to watch play by play because he was clearly not healthy, but playing like he was healthy. But that's the crazy thing about these two wins from Minnesota is Ant was in foul trouble

and not great in game three. Ant was doing like pretty much nothing. Like he wasn't even that involved in the offense before he got hurt in game four. And they still win both games. And I'm glad you brought up Aaron Gordon because, you know, he deserves credit for trying to gut out that game, but he just was scary. It was, he was just jogging lightly on his feet.

And he summoned a couple of big jumps for a rebound and for a challenge at the rim. And both times, I was like, oh, no, is this? Like, it was not. And without him and Watson, they're just too small. They're too small for the temporal wolves. They don't have enough force. They don't have enough oomph. And like that's an excuse.

It just is, it is what it is. And now there's just injuries scattered across this series. And one of these teams is going to win four games to go on to the next round. to face the Spurs. By the way... Be a show of themselves. But by the way, I mean, you go back to that Spurs Nuggets

regular season finale. Like, the Nuggets shouldn't even be playing the Timberwolves. Like, both of those teams had it lined up for them. And they, I don't know what happened. I mean, it's not like the Nuggets played all their best guys. David Roddy and all those guys happen.

They just start, they just play, their worst guys played really well for about a half an hour. That's when you start being like, hey, David Roddy, if you ever wanted to take 12 left-handed three, and a half. Like have at it, man, go watch some Mark Madsen film at half time from gaming. Like, you gotta

lose that game and the Spurs should have been like, well, we'll help. I talked about that a couple of pods ago, how that not only swung this series, but it swung that Lakers' Rockets' whole situation in a crazy way where the Lakers just would have gotten, I think, dusted by somebody. And instead, we have

this next chapter in LeBron's legacy, Marcus Smart's rejuvenated, Luke Kinnard is back. The rockets are a complete mess. Darren Gordon thing, regardless, he looks like he's done and it completely changes whatever the ceiling was for Denver. I thought they're going to make the finals. I don't think they're going to make the finals with how he looks. There's some other stuff, though.

There is a lot to unpack. Well, the I-O thing, how long were we on the trade deadline pod we did talking about how fucking stupid that trade was and trying to get, we weren't the only ones. I'm not claiming the territory by ourselves. joining us where probably everybody else who has a podcast and watches basketball, everyone who watched the Chicago Bulls fairly regularly to regularly. This guy was a good basketball player

and he was on a cheap contract and these guys should be the hardest people to trade for and they got him for four second rounders and it was just immediately clear he was the perfect guy to add for them and I don't know where a bunch of teams were with this. I don't understand how you get this guy for four second rounders.

With that said, the stuff he's doing offensively, I did not know. I did not know he had this. Like he was unstoppable. Unstoppable. Denver was like gearing their defense to try to stop him and couldn't stop him. I did not know he could do this.

I mean, I don't know when the first time stamp is of me saying to Timberwolf should trade for I. Oh, Desuvu, but it's like in the fall. It was that obvious. And I do feel like, imagine being a Bulls fan. where almost everything that happens in the NBA playoffs

ends up being a joke at your expense. Like, oh, this guy was just on the bulls. Like you had him on your team. You don't have a lot going for you. You had him. And you're like, yeah, you know what? Yeah, we're going to have to pay him. And I'm like, eh, Minnesota just gets him.

And yeah, I mean, he's just a very good player and he fits them well. And he shot 45% on threes this year. But I did not. I mean, it was the Ios show from start to finish in the second half. Also another guy. And this is a recurring theme in all these series. like just an incredibly competitive guy who really seems to

respect and treasure being on the big stage. You know, like you've seen a bunch of these guys talk about this. Barnes is another one. Like I've really grown to admire Barnes. Barnes is like, I'll fucking die to win this series. I'll do anything it takes.

I'm so happy to be here in the playoffs. And Ios another one. I think Ios is this guy who probably watched the playoffs in April, May, June every year. I was like, fuck, I really want to be in the playoffs. I'm on the Bulls.

Why am I on the Bulls? They're my hometown team. I know, but, um, so anyway, I'm happy for him. And he really fits in with the kind of mentality and energy of this team. And Jada McDaniels, I watched something on the social media today of all the people he's like,

kind of battled with and gone at. He has no respect for anybody. Like this would have been the guy who went at Kobe and Jordan if he was, you know, in those eras. He'd have been like, fuck these guys. I'm not afraid of these guys. And this is the best.

best he's ever played. So to do all of this when you have a compromised aunt who then goes out of the game in game four and still feel like they're probably going to beat Denver. It's pretty crazy. Just a total gutsy performance by the Wolves. Gobert has been sensational the entire series. Sensational. There are a few other things that need to be remarked on in this game.

That Gobert took a three? Well, okay, I was going to go. We need to deep dive the end of the game at some point. but Gobert takes that three. I mean, they're up 13 with six minutes left. That is such an insulting shot. That's like a shot you would take if you're up 30 with two and a half minutes left. They're up.

That's like a very like winnable game for Denver in most circumstances. And Gobert taking that there was like 17 on the shot clock. He took it. That was so disrespectful. And I mean this in a good and a fun way. That was just like, we have you. We know we have you. I'm just going to give myself a 15% chance

to have the target center just combust if I make this shot. That was so disrespectful. I loved it. You know, it wasn't even a heat check three. It was like somebody driving home and they just decided to drive the car with their feet on the steering wheel and stick their head through the sunroof.

It was one of those moves. It's like, watch this guys. That's how confident he was they were winning the game. It was like to put it in your language, it was like a seven-way parlay. It was like Adam Sandler in uncut gems betting on like KG winning the jump ball and five other things happening at once

and he was like, fuck it, I'm doing it. We're only up 13. Imagine if they lost. Imagine if they lost, we would look back at that and be like, why did you, what happened? You know what the funniest thing about that shot was? I thought it was going in. It looked good.

It had this kind of energy for the Timberwolves where it's like, ah, that's probably fucking going in the way this is going from Minnesota. But yeah, what McDaniels has done in this series and how many miles he's put on Murray combined with what Gobert has done to Joker, you know, I was on a lot of text today. I have a lot of people in my life.

They know who they are who get really mad when I compare Joker to Bird and Magic and that I voted for him for MVP and all that. So there's a lot of people I heard from today. I don't have to name them. And you want to do this now? Or did you have more from this game? No, let's do it now.

I feel like you're on the therapist's couch and you're ready to go. So let's go. it's four games in the series. I'm not ready to say that this is one of the big disasters of all time. I will say if they get knocked out of this series and he's looked the way he's looked, it does feel like the best player alive room, the door is going to open and somebody's going to be able to walk into that room now and be to clear the new person.

I mean, I have voted Shade. I voted shit. I didn't vote, but I didn't have a vote. I had Shea MVP and Shea's been number one in Ringer 100 the last two or three times. That's fine. But isn't that already happened? Deep in the recesses of your soul, you thought Joker was the best player in the league. No.

I mean, like, Shea took the belt, I think, this season after the injury. The injury is like a line of demarcation. The injury on December 30th when Yokic got hurt, he has not been the same guy since. And I think Shea has been the best player since then, period. no caveats, no like, well, if I had to win a game, blah, blah, blah. I think he's just been the best guy. By the way, we're probably not going to talk about it because it's a boring series. What he did to Phoenix in game three yesterday was like...

How did it do my notes? 15 for 18? And shit talking? Straight up majestic. And like, they couldn't do anything with him. And defensively, he's a game changing... He makes some game changing plays here and there. It just...

But, okay, I'm sorry, I interrupted the Yokic... Cope. Well, this is a six-year run. six started in 20 they come back and they beat Utah right they come back from in the bubble that was kind of the arrival playoffs so seven years really six they lose two because of the Murray injury he wins three MVP's they win one title that's gonna start to oh they won one title but look who they played people are going to do that um he's 301 years old I wouldn't say he's gonna have a LeBron type of physical arc of state

in shape until his late 30s and being incredible. God only knows what he's going to look like at age 35, 36. The bigger thing for me is the team around him, I really worry like this is like really it for him as a contender. If they can't get out of the first round this year, Gordon's year 13 next year, God only knows what he's going to be like physically. Whatever we saw from Cam Johnson this year, can't say I was impressed. I went from thinking that was a steel of a trade to wondering, like, would Michael Porter Jr. have actually maybe helped them in this series? People, I said it from jump, man.

I know you did. I know you did. People disrespected Michael Porter Jr. The analysis of that trade. And then, and then Tim Hardaway, like, the biggest part of this game, Denver was like, felt like they were going to come back multiple times in that fourth quarter. Hardaway's in the corner, takes a three. It hits the side of the backboard.

Like, I think it would have cut the game to, like, four or six. Next play at Cam Johnson, or the next time they have it, Cam Johnson, wide open on the side. Same thing missed the three. Murray was the only guy that hit a three in the second half for them yesterday. He had two.

Everybody else was 0 for 11. So the supporting castes been bad. Here's what I don't understand, Zach. For the season, they were first in an offense, 121.3 by possessions, 100 possessions.

Their offense is 105.3 in the playoffs. Their last in three-point shooting in the playoffs, they're 16th shooting 28.5. They're 40% field goal 15th. They're not really turning them all over. Their second best and turnovers,

and they're first at getting in the line. They're 33 free throw times a game. And the offense just looks awful. There was one side I saw on Reddit. Denver on open shots is 8 for 36 in the playoffs. And on wide open shots, they're 20 for 57. I don't understand what happened to their offense. And I can't think it's just Gordon.

And I can't think O'Berra-McDain. as good as they've been or this good. They've completely shut down an offense that was humming the entire season. I don't really get it. Well, I mean, a lot of the open shots are Christian Brown and Spencer Jones and Yokic threes, which they're giving them.

Which don't go in anymore for some reason. And Aaron Gordon on one leg, jump shots. So they're open, but they're like not, it's not like Steph Curry's out there shooting catch and shoot. True. I'm glad you brought this up, because when the nuggets fail,

everybody wants to clown on Yokich's defense, which is hit or miss, obviously. Their defense has actually been fine in this series for the most part. They're losing because they have absolutely no answers for Minnesota's defense. And it's shocking to see Denver out of answers because they were the number one offense in the NBA this season. There were nights where it looked so easy for them. And the wolves have just taken them completely out of their game. And they've taken Yokic.

Gobert with a great team of defenders around him has taken Yolkich totally out of his rhythm, I'm totally out of his usual game. And the way I was looking at the tracking data over the weekend, oh, this is before game four. And because I was curious, having watched game three, his postups are down. Like, he just doesn't want to post up against Gobert. Like, every minute that he's out there with Nas Reid or Julius Randall on him,

they should be going to him in the post. And yet they weren't. In the third quarter, the Colbert was out of the game for a while. And I kept waiting for Yokic to take over. And he was just getting the ball 30 feet from the hoop, and they were running split cuts and all this stuff that looks nice. It's like, dude, you have Julius Randall and Nas read on you. You should be like, this is your time.

And then he's also not rolling to the rim nearly as often. And I don't know if it's, I don't know what it is, but I think he knows that they're trying to take that away. And he's just not doing it. And what he's not doing it, he's not compromising their defense at all. And I don't know if there was one play in game three that he finally rolled hard to the rim. And he got the ball in the spot where we've seen him make a floater,

5,000 times. And he went up for it. And Gobert was in the neighborhood rotating around. And in midair, Yokic dumped it down to Christian Brown, who was kind of like right under the rim, but couldn't go up because Gobert was there.

And the possession died out after that. And that play and combine with him, if you look at the tracking data, him rolling to the rim, or rolling into the paint, rolling it all. Like, he's just popping and staying put. Doing that less often has me wondering.

Like, they're just in his head. Gober is in his head. he's out of rhythm. He's not playing the way he usually does. And all those pet paint shots are gone, vaporized. And the Timberwolves have completely taken him out of his game. I agree with everything you just said now to add this. And this goes to the taking him out of his game.

They figured out a way to speed him up to just like, almost like a podcast where Yokic is like, I like when, I like when my podcasts are at 1-2. I'm a 1.2 guy. That's what I am. I like to play at that speed. And the Timberwolves have sped him up to 1-5. And where I've really noticed it is on defensive rebounds when he's like trying to,

he had a couple of crazy turnovers that he hasn't had since like the 2010s in the second half of that game where it's like he's afraid McDaniels is going to come from behind or I.O. or somebody and they're going to swipe the ball from him. So he's getting these balls and he's like a bad at hell going up the thing or trying to do these quick passes.

and he's not, he doesn't have that same calm pace that he always had. Like they've, they've just discombobulated him. And the thing I was telling to the people that were making fun of me today in my life, like people have had bad series, right? And every single great player we've ever had, has had a Lazy series. Yeah, Tragic Johnson. Kobe had the 04 against the Pistons was a classic. Bird had a couple stinkers, like the 88 Piston series is bad.

Jordan against Orlando in 95, everybody has him. I'm just surprised it happened right now for Yokej with what we had seen this year because I really felt like he, in a lot of ways, I know he got injured, he came back,

we were worried about him, but I really felt like he had his mojo back. And I thought this team knew what it was. Now you look at him, it's like Valenstunis doesn't play anymore. They don't really have a backup point guard. it's just a bad matchup for them. And sometimes that happens in basketball.

So they're favored, on Fandall for game five, they're favored by 10 and a half in game five. Oh, with the injuries, sure. Yeah, with the injuries. I think that's still too, I think the way they're playing. I thought it would be like minus six. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen.

Aaron Gordon, just eye test. Like, and the fact that he didn't come back in the game in the second half after he went out. Like, I would just plan on him. I'm mentally planning on him not playing. And that seems like too. many points. But you brought up a very important point, though, whereas as much as you want to make this about Yolkich, and that's, he deserves all the criticism, like Goberra has eaten his lunch and

taking him out of the game. Yolkich and Murray scored 54 points in game four. The rest of the team scored 32. I'm sorry, 42. And Cam Johnson has been nothing. Christian Brown has been nothing. That's two of your starters, giving you, giving you zero. Watson's obviously not playing. And I think there's a real discussion to be had. I don't know if now is the time to do it because we haven't got to the end of the game, which I found delightful. Are you doing this? No, there's just a real discussion to be had about Oklahoma and San Antonio are who they are. And did Denver just flat out miss its chance at a second ring? Is the window closed for them? Because Murray and Yolchut are getting older. Gordon, it just, I think you just have to assume that he's just not going to be healthy

for six straight weeks in the playoffs ever again. I mean, the evidence suggests that they're, And the rest of their team is just not performing up to the level it needs to perform. And it just, you do like things happen fast in the NBA. You mentioned 21, Murray Hurt, 22, Murray Hurt, 23, they win the title. 24, they'll always regret blowing that lead in game seven at home against Minnesota because I think that have been favorites over Dallas in the next round and favorites over Boston in the finals, perhaps. You know, that would have been a good match. Yeah, obviously. That would have been tough.

That would have been. But Boston probably would have been favorite. But that was a, there are three rings sitting there. Two of them, Rob, their chance was eliminated by injuries. One, I think they would have had a real good shot at it. And they didn't get out of game seven. And now it's like, is this hit? Like, are we, are we done?

And if we do think we're done, what the hell are we supposed to do? You know, it's hilarious? I was a step ahead of you for where you were going. And I thought you were going where I'm starting to Egypt. Yolkish trades. Yolkich should Detroit trade everything for Yokkut? Should Charlotte trade everything for Yokch? You want to do it? No.

I thought that's where you were going to go, though. That's why I jerked up. Because I do think, like, this, if you're them, like, we had the window, and now we're kind of stuck with this team. That's the real issue with them. Shengoon, five first round picks, six. I mean, you do really? You're not ready yet.

I don't think Yokage. I think he's a little like Curry, where he's like, I like Denver and I'm happy, and I'm just happy to compete every year. But the San Antonio O KC point has been lurking all year. And this is why I really thought this was last stand for Denver. Like, this is it. You might be able to catch OKC in a back-to-back with Jaylen wins. They've had some injuries.

You know you can play them pretty well. And San Antonio is a year away from being ready. This is like your window. And, you know, I don't know about San Antonio being a year away from that. Well, after this weekend. But I'm just saying, like, youth-wise. But they played them well in the regular season. The Nuggets played to Spurs well in the radio.

My point is next year, San Antonio is going to be better than this year. Yes. Teams that are up 3-1 in a series, there's been 298 NBA examples. Okay. How many do you think have come back? 17. 13. Okay.

Team 285 and 13. How many were coached by Doc Rivers? At least a couple. Minnesota's defensive rating with Rudy is 98.5 in the series? That's like out of the 1940s. Christian Brown his extension kicks in next year

for 125 million for five years it does it does that is going to I think it made the worst contracts with me and Waz in House I think Waz drafted that one

it's now there's been some him and Pertil I think are going to be high first round picks in that draft next year but the Brown thing's tough because if you can't guard

I.O. or anybody else, you can't shut down anyone on Minnesota, any of their perimeter guys, and you're not making threes, and you're not finishing around the rim, and you can't hit free throws. I'm really not sure what you're bringing to the table

because that's kind of the four reasons you're playing. I think that contract was a bet on him improving his three-point shot, which he's done intermittently, and then it always seems to disappear for two weeks, three weeks here and there. And yeah,

I mean, that was a very clear choice of, you know, there's obviously a lot of variables, and variables involved in these choices, including what salaries the players want and all that. But that was a very clear, like, we're choosing you over Peyton Watson,

or if we have to choose one and whatever variables line up, we're choosing you. And Peyton Watson flat out outplayed him when he was healthy this year. And now he becomes a free agent, and they are already, like, apron troubled. And I don't know what they're going to do. This really makes me sad. I do respect, like, if Yok is just going to go down,

my favorite non-seltic to watch other than maybe Curry. If he's going to go down this way, I wanted to go down this way, like Terminator 2 style with the falling into the pit, putting his hand up, down 3-1, just like one last 37, 15 and 17, and just doing everything.

Murray is playing well in this series, I think. He is. I just need, unfortunately against Minnesota, you're going to need more than that. Wow. So you're already,

you've already poured, dirt on. No, no, no, no, no. Listen, I said, I could, I could, no, it's fine. I said that they could still win the series. No, you're an SGA now. You're an SGA guy. Oh, will you stop? You love foul-baiting. You're a foulbator now. Okay, all right. Now, that's who you are. It's fine. Look, if I could bat fouls, I would bathe fouls. I can't, though. I'm just at flat, I'm just an injury risk at this point for any, any

running sporting event. I'm going to get you an O-key, okay, okay-fc-C hat. Is that a thing? No, I'm trying to make the thing. Now, OKC, they're clearly, it's Shay's time now, and if they went back to back, I think whoever emerges from that OKC San Antonio series will be the best part in the league. That's who we will feel has the belt. And that's just how it's going to go. Can we do three minutes on the end of the game?

Yeah. McDaniels, Yolkic? Yeah. First of all, I hope nobody gets suspended. I hate when this stuff happens when they do the film about did someone leave the bench. as you pointed out over text, I think the players thought the game had ended. I thought the game had ended.

Everyone thought the game it ended. But there's one person that's not getting any credit here that I would like to give a little credit to. Mike Conley threw that pass ahead to Jaden McDaniels when he absolutely did not have to. He could have just dribbled out the clock or dribbled up to half court. And I think Mike Conley has a little bit of shit disturber in him.

It was like, let's see what happens. If I throw this pass up to Jaden McDaniels, and you could see Yokic watching. Like as soon as that pass went, Yolkich turned his back to the hoop that he was shooting at and just watched Jada McDaniels. He was like waiting the car. Are you going to do it, motherfucker?

You're actually going to do it? And then he did it. But I want to give Mike Connolly a lot of credit for starting the whole thing. Maybe inadvertently, maybe slightly overtly. I don't know. But that's a great pass by Mike Connolly. He had another assist in an illustrious career. It's a great Mike Connolly.

Come back. Point guard Mike Conley. Joker running at you full speed, angry. It's not what I was. He's first team all NBA with, I'm trying to think other ones. Isaiah Stewart. Isaiah Stewart is Isaiah Stewart is in a league of his own

Jalen Duren it's probably the top three two of them are on Detroit I did enjoy McDaniels McDaniels when he was asked about it was like I didn't know what was happening I just know someone big as hell was coming at him like yep that's that's right McDaniels his energy has I think really spoken

for this Timberwolves team who's clearly knew they were playing with Edwards not at 100 percent and they're still carrying themselves The other take I just want to have on this if you will allow me. Yeah. Is Denver Nuggets, Nicole Enochich, David Adelman, all of you, stop whining. The guy scored a layup against you in garbage time. You're that upset about it? Like, how about just don't go to garbage time? How about try to play better during the run of the game?

The unwritten rules, like, it's not like he did a windmill dunk 360. You just put the ball in the hoop. I think it was that it was him of all the people that did it. Well, then just take the L because the guy talked shit about your entire roster, backed it up and made a layup in garbage time. Then you like get all mad about it. It's come on. The game's going to, on, he made a layup big deal. He doesn't get to see. He scores. He's not like a, you know,

he wants an extra two points. You'll be surprised to know. I completely agree. And I thought Adaman seemed like a loser in the press conference. And by the way, him talking about wondering where, when the, when the,

all the Nuggets fans, everybody who watches this team is like, where's the fight? Why are you guys rolling over like this? What are we watching? Where is like the pride that we've watched last six years? And Adam is like, what do you mean?

I thought we were, competitive? I had it in my notes in the game. In the last, like, from like minute four to minute two of the fourth quarter, the like, not the very end, but they're a little stretch there before the variant. They seem to start playing harder than they had played, particularly on offense. They started executing with a lot more zip and a lot more force. And to the point that I put it in my notes is like, it's too late. It's too late now. Well, do you think Adamant's coaching this team next year if they get bounced in five or six? Because I do not. who the hell knows with these coaching changes. I mean, Tiago Splitter can't get a job. These guys are all getting, who the hell knows with these coaching decisions anymore? Billy Donovan's like, hey guys,

do you have a top six or seven player in the league? Because I would love to have that opportunity to coach somebody really good. You know, who did it right? Monty Williams took all the money, got fired, and was like, you know what I'm going to do? Just nothing. How about I just coach high school,

coach my sons? You can keep paying me eight figures of you. year for as many years as the contract goes on. That's what Billy Donovan. I don't know. I think there's one more year left. I don't think people are knocking on Moni's door. There's been a couple people that have just like, will Adrian Griffin ever coach again? There's a couple of these guys that just come and go and we'll never see them again, I guess. That was a bad ending, Adrian Griffin. Anyway, that's Nuggets Wolves. I think there's my only thing to add from your last, from that brawl was I just really want to encourage people to go back and look at Randall going

to another level. I actually really thought he was going to take a swing at somebody and get ejected. So we'll see if they have suspensions. I watched it again today many times. He seemed under control, under control to me and just incredibly strong. My takeaway from that was Julius Randall is just so fucking strong that if he gets into these scrums, the whole scrum is moving. Whatever Julius Rand, into whatever direction he's pushing, that's where it's going. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca.

All right, Nick's talks really quickly. it was absolute panic time after game three for the Knicks fans. I know you know a lot of them. I know a lot of them too. I was just shocked by the angst. Nicks come out. Guess what? When the Knicks have the lead for most of the game,

pretty fun ride. They took the lead early. Kept they're up by 10, 11, 12, 15, 8, 12, and never gave it up. The only things that I noticed other than that they weren't playing from behind was they won more 50-50 balls. They played through towns a little bit more. It wasn't like he took 40 shots.

And they gave us a whiff of Alvarado. Yep. But the big thing was that Atlanta just sucked. I thought they were just awful. It was a Butterfingers game. I watched with your old Grant Land teammate Rember Brown. Oh, poor Rem. Every time he's come over, I think he's come over for an Atlanta loss,

regardless of the sport. And we were just saying, this is a Butterfingers game. Every 50-50, you could just tell they're going to lose it. Guys in traffic, they're just going to lose it. Rebounds, bouncing off hands, going to the Knicks, and they just really sucked. 10 for 41 from 3 for Atlanta. And I thought the Knicks were leaving Daniels and Jalen Johnson and a congwood. Basically, if you want to shoot that, you're open for a reason.

Good luck. Well, they should. I mean, that should be, you know, the Hawks want to get into the paint and knife around in there and get to the rim and they should go under on screens when they can for all those guys and it's on the Hawks to make it hard through disguise and creativity and all that for them to do that. But I think the Knicks two wins in this series have been two of their very best defensive games of the whole season. Towns has been pretty sound defensively throughout the whole series and including in those two games. And I understand the angst if you're a Knicks fan because this is just

on paper, they should be up three one. This should just be a run of the mill favorite over underdog. a chance to close it out in five first round series. And in the middle of their two pretty emphatic wins are two one point losses, both of which they could have, should have had multiple chances to win and didn't, partly thanks to C.J. McCollum being unbelievable, partly thanks to some puzzling coaching decisions, partly thanks to the Hawks being good. But doesn't this feel like it should be 3-1 Nix and just we're barely thinking about the series because it goes the way these series tend to go? And now... Can I say two and a half to one and a half? That's fine. They better win the game five because you think it was angsty going into game game four if they're down

three to do it landa look out bench karma was great for the series atlanta is 32% from three daniels is i'm sorry jalen johnson's 28% daniels is 14% comminga is 18% comminga i want to single out for being singularly horrific in game four um that was wow it just really just it was like throwing a grenade on the court he just couldn't have been worse We've also seen the flip side of that when he comes in and he's awesome. That's just who he is. He's trick or treat. It was a trick in that game.

But I just wrote down in bold. I do think the Hawks blew their window for this series. I think they could have, if they had come out and thrown a couple punches and made some threes and gotten the crowd into it and gotten the Knicks a little nervous, I would have been really interested to see what happened the second half, but they did not do any of that. here's the only, I mean, I don't, the Knicks are an endlessly fascinating puzzle to me. They look great for one game, great for two games, crappy for one game. You never know what is going to happen with them.

The one thing I would say about the Hawks and their chances is I still didn't love with the way the Knicks half court offense looked in that game, despite the fact that the same simple play of Jalen Brunson setting a back screen for OG and Anobie in the corner worked like 17 times as if the Hawks were just like, I guess we just can't adjust to this. We're just going to let OG dunk eight more times. And then I looked up the numbers because it seemed to be like the Knicks were just, just every transition chance they had to your point about 50-50 balls. And if you go to cleaning the glass, their half court points for possession in that game was like average-ish.

And transition, it like breaks my laptop when I bring up their transition points per possession. That's like that's the Josh Hart stuff, right? I mean, that's the stuff that he brings. And I mean, I mean, the other thing is it's not like the McHill Bridges question was really answered. He played 19 minutes in that game, even though Mike Brown started him. And didn't you think it was weird when Mike Brown was like, I'm not going to tell you who's starting, but whatever decision is made is my decision. I'm like, did anyone think, like, did anyone think it was not going to be your decision? Like, what question are you answering right now? Rick Brunson

was in play. Maybe that was speaking to Rick. Bridges has reached the, it's a bonus, if he does anything in these games part of his contribution to this season, it feels like. But the flip side is OG has been so good and so awesome that the seesaw, the OG Bridges seesaw is now like this, but OG's been so good, they're almost okay with it because they're getting what they're getting from heart. I was, I never understood why they gave up on Alvarado. I know that he wasn't hitting threes for weeks on end and had become unplayable, but I just think in a playoff series, he's annoying and he's the kind of guy. who can come in in the second quarter

and somebody like C.J. McCombs like, God damn it, I hate going against this guy. This is not going to be a fun five minutes. And I think I really value those guys in a series. Well, first of all, he had just an all-time great grand theft Alvarado in the game. He did. Second of all, you just have to add them to your list of when you go through it, guards the Houston Rockets could have and didn't trade for.

That might have helped right now list. I mean, that's, that list is a hundred deep. It's pretty deep. Colin Sexton is like, I mean, watching these games, like, I mean, I couldn't really. Colin Sexton is like, I was right here. Like, I won't, I won't throw the ball away if we're up by six. Well, I think what's funny and maybe not funny about the Rockets is keeping Van Vliet because he was so important as a locker room guy and he wanted to be there and you don't want to put

him in a trade and which I get. That's, that's great. but who has a worse locker room and chemistry than the Rockets? Maybe they could have afforded to trade Van Buit for somebody who could dribble the ball and protect a six-point lead with 30 seconds left. Bridges for the series is 7.3 points a game. OG's averaging a 21 and 9 and he's shooting 52% from 3. And feels like he's hit nine huge threes with the shot clock expiring

and the Knicks having nothing going on. Yeah. Just bailing them out. So we talked before game four, and you were talking about, we were talking about emergency pods, all kinds of stuff, if the Knicks were down 3-1 and a game 5.

It was conceivable that the Knicks were going to be down 3-1 heading into a game 5 to our earlier points. Yeah. It was in the air. You could feel it. I think game five is going to be an awesome game.

If we're talking about what's going to be the most compelling game fives, and we're taping this before these last two games that happened today. These are game fours, so. Right. Minnesota Denver

Denver Game 5 is obviously a must watch with a lot of big picture Yokage legacy stuff at sake and I think Nick's Hawks

would be the other kind of must watch for me Orlando, Detroit they don't even have a we have a game four coming up

because that series has been a little staggered but Nick's Hawks like I still feel like the Hawks could just shoot better and hang around

with them and then just try to get it to the last three minutes and I felt the same way with you about

the next half-court offense. I mean, it's going to be a fascinating game. I'm hoping to be there. You got to go to that one. I would demand you go. My credential application has been filed. And we'll see. These games get crowded and all that.

Do you want me to talk to Bobby Bacala and who are the other Sopranos that go? I don't know about the other Sopranos, but I mean, the NICs have more celebrity fans than the Lakers somehow. I'm going to call Modeon, see if there's extra. ticket. He hasn't been there. I haven't seen him there in a while. Susie, let me give her right.

Yeah, get Susie on the horn. You got to go to that one. But no, I mean, like, De East is, again, who wants this conference other than, I mean, we're taping this before Boston, Philly. If Boston blows the crap out of Philly, let's do that.

We'll do that in the first segment, because Boston will give us, right now it's 11 to 10. So we got to go pretty soon. I got to do a really quick parent corner with you before we go. Shoot. So Amazon Prime, they do the thing where if it's like,

three devices are using it. They shut one down or four. I forget what the number is. So my daughter is using my Amazon Prime, which is fine because she's my daughter. I'm sure yours will be in college someday using your Amazon or one of your other streamers. And I was using two different ones because there's two games going on.

And it logged me out of one of the things. And it was because my dad was logged into my Amazon. So I'd call my dad. My dad's like, well, I can't get Amazon unless I'm on your Amazon. And I'm like, but dad, you, you have Amazon Prime. I do? Yeah.

You guys have Amazon Prime. That's when you get packages or you send stuff. Like you pay for Amazon Prime. I'm positive. And he's like, but that, so my Amazon Prime would get me the games? I'm like, yeah. You have Amazon Prime, which would allow you to use Amazon Prime to then watch the game on your Amazon Prime.

So we walked through this and my wife and I were on speaker just like ridiculing him. Oh, that's not nice. No, we love to make fun of my dad. But I realize they should be doing PSAs. I really think they should, Amazon Prime should have a whole ad campaign like the game is on Amazon Prime. And guess what? You have it. The more you know.

You actually paid for it. The more you know. You already have Amazon Prime. Go to it. Here the button. Then look, the game is going to be on there. You don't have to steal it from your kids. So I just, the streamers things, it's been really rocky this first year, not knowing what games are on.

I went to three before I landed on ESPN for the first game today. It's like a little game show. My 83-year-old father has figured it out. They come over for dinner every once, at least once a week. And they were, I think they came Thursday. And he was like, hey, are all the games on Prime tonight? And I was like, yeah. It's like, you know what?

I'm going to give it a try. See how it goes. I'm like, okay, you don't have to call my younger sister is the one who usually does the. Gets old dicey. No, she does the tech aid to the parents. Like I can't get on the Zoom kind of stuff. But he figured it out and was watching the games. I think it's been a real problem in bars because I mentioned this on a podcast about bars and hotels recently and got a few emails from people who were talking about.

being at a crowded bar with people telling the bartender to put on Amazon and just them just basically like doing the bore at like everyone will get there we'll all get there at some point it's just this is how it was going to go but yeah so to the parents out there the older parents you probably have Amazon Prime stick with it yeah stick with it it's going to happen okay saclow your podcast Tuesday morning yes okay um and then you're going to the MSG with Bobby Bacola and AJ Soprano on Tuesday night. That's a plan. That sounds great.

All right. Good to see you. Thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well. I'm coming back on Tuesday with another podcast. Plus, rewatchable's Ghostbusters Monday. Buckle up. Get ready for that one. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks to Netflix, too. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President D. D.C. Kentucky or Wyoming. Game a problem called 100. or 1-800-My reset. Call 88879-777-7 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or MD-gamblinghelp.org in Maryland.

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