The Bill Simmons Podcast - Gobert Game 2.0, Dallas’s Shame, and Our 2023 NBA Awards With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the Timberwolves sending Rudy Gobert home mid-game after he punched teammate Kyle Anderson, as well as the Lakers' updated playoff path (4:13). Then, they discuss the Mavericks punting on the 2023 playoffs and how this season affects Luka's legacy (24:45). They also talk finalized NBA standings, play-in games, and most fun first-round series (48:39) before debating some last-minute NBA awards and making All-NBA arguments before the ballots are due (1:14:14). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, Masters, Game 82 NBA, and the Go Bear Game 2.0. I can't believe we have another Go Bear Game. We're going to talk about it next. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right.

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for additional details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem called Win 100 Gambler or visit rg-help.com. We're also brought to you by the Prestige TV podcast where Sean Fennessey, Joanna Robinson, and I will be putting up our reaction to episode three, season four. Late, late, late, it's going up on Sunday night because we did not get screeners, but it was one of the biggest episodes in the history of the show. I'm not going to spoil what happens. Everyone will be talking about it on Monday and we will have our reaction in the wee hours on Sunday night. Probably after this podcast goes up, but that's how it goes sometimes. I don't know if we're

going to talk about the Masters with Priscilla. John Rahm put it away. Age 28, he's got a US Open and a Masters already. We are in an unbelievable run for young golfers right now. Rahm is 28. Shefford and Morikawa, they're 26. Justin Thomas, 29. Speed, 29. Hovland's 25. Willie Z's in his mid-20s. So is Cam Young. Fitzpatrick's like 28. It's unbelievable. Even the older guys aren't that old. We're always only 33. So we're always wondering what was going to happen when Tiger finally faded off into the sunset. Who is going to be the guy? And the answer is probably nobody will be the guy. It will be this awesome combination of really good golfers. Any of them can step up and win or come close. Rahm and

Sheffield will probably be the two kind of linchpins that everybody measures themselves against. But for the most part, there's going to be 10, 11, 12 guys here that every time we watch the Open, the US Open, the Masters, it's just guys you're not surprised when they're making a run. Brooks was in there all the way until today, and then he fell apart. Really, really, really fast Danny Rinkle, and you could feel it Thursday too, was the live guys and how the crowd was reacting to them. I was talking to my dad this morning. He's like, I hope Brooks doesn't win.

And I was like, why? And he's like, because he went to the live tour. Screw that guy. And you could kind of feel it all weekend. Even Mickelson. Mickelson gets a 65 on Sunday. And I think he's the oldest person to finish in the top five in the Masters. Awesome, awesome, awesome last round. Makes a fairly hard punt on 18. And the crowd definitely, you know, they applauded. If you looked around, not everyone was even standing.

And it was not like one of the, I don't know, 20 loudest ovations of the weekend. And you think like where he was five years ago, that moment, Nicholson locking down a minus eight in second place for the tournament, how people felt about him five, 10 years ago, and locking down a minus eight in second place for the tournament, how people felt about him five, 10 years ago, that place would have exploded.

That would have been like one of those, ah, and like the long sustained ovation, not the same, same for Brooks. Brooks had a chance to be, you know, probably the most popular American guy in the Live Tour, the baggage from that, you could feel it. You can feel it when you're watching the tournament, when you're in there, in Augusta for it. There's definitely a tainting. So it'd be interesting to see how those guys coming out

of this weekend will feel about it. Because Brooks was as popular as any new guy in the last 10 years. And Mickelson was the second most popular guy behind Tiger of the last 25 years. And I would say the popularity is not the same. Just my take. Coming up, game 82 and a whole bunch of playing scenarios that are just plain bonkers. And the Clippers were in a crazy situation.

The Gobert game. We have a lot to break down. And plus awards. We're giving you our MVP choices. It's all next. First, Pearl Jam! All right, we're taping this. It is 4 o'clock PT. The Masters is wrapping up.

Jon Rahm's about to win. It's a sad day for Rousseau and I, too. The biggest Rudy Gobert fans around. You can hear it in our voice. You know, this guy, we've stuck through Rudy Gobert fans around. You can hear it in our voice. You know, this guy, we've stuck through him through thick and thin. Today hurts for Solo. He got sent home at halftime

of a very important Game 82 game against the Pelicans because he punched his teammate in the shoulder and had to be separated during a timeout huddle. And now this team, they end up winning in the second half, a rollercoaster ride of an Anthony Edwards game,

which we'll talk about. They end up winning. Now they're going to play the Lakers in the 7-8. They might not have Gobert. He might be suspended. Who knows? Jaden McDaniels looks like he fractured his hand punching a wall because he got two fouls.

And Nas Reed is out for the season. It just keeps dropping in the Lakers lap, Ursula. We can talk about that later, but your Gobert reaction first. Well, he sucks. I can't stand him.

You know, all the years I was guilty of in the beginning too you're like man look at all these screen assists and uh you know we knew the trade wasn't gonna be very good i actually thought it would help them with their defensive rebounding which is a huge issue i thought it would help them defensively in the regular season i actually thought they'd have a better regular season but they kind of had to reinvent themselves after the trade i just my is, do you think Gobert goes home and watches the game? He got sent home. I don't remember. I tweeted that I went to the game where Robert Horry threw the towel at Danny Ainge's face. That was the Sun-Celtics game. I was in the building for that.

And I was at the game when KD and Draymond got really mad at each other right as they were about to go into overtime. And it seemed like they were going to fight, and they didn't. But other than that, teammate versus teammate, even acrimony is pretty rare. And actual guys getting separated happens once a year, and a punch, I can't remember. I'm sure it's happened in the history of the NBA.

Guys do get into it with each other in the huddles and that kind of stuff. And Anderson actually runs a little hotter than his demeanor would probably tell you. But Gobert got benched at the end of like four minutes to go of a game. I've lost track where it was like, hey, we're going to switch something up. I mean, it's just, I understand his frustration, but now you're at your second spot. You're not as good as you were in Utah. Everybody that was pro-Gobert made excuses about all the things that we didn't understand. And I was even guilty of it, as I i've said in the past but we knew he was declining he gets traded it still doesn't

really work he's kind of an outdated player and you know when you pass in the basketball you have no idea what's going to happen so when donovan mitchell it's like hey man he doesn't want to pass to go bear it's like well no shit because he still hasn't quite figured out despite you know the defensive presence that he brings to you really what he should be as a role player that comes into the game in defensive specific matchups but for him to get into this this game was so important okay so jayden who can be frustrating at times despite his great defensive ability you know he gets he gets some whistles that i can see where he's kind of like what what the fuck, man? It feels like he gets a pretty heavy whistle at times.

And I thought the play where he got the whistle on the box out, he was face guarding the box out and then chucked the other guy during the select. You're going to get that call on you. So for all of this stuff to look like it's going to fall apart and Ingram goes off in the first quarter, it's one of my favorite Ant games ever. Even if you looked at just the box score, you'd be like, well, he wasn't that great. And sure, he made mistakes, but he had stretches where when you watch him build, those are the moments where you're like, he has another level that he can get to that not many players have. And that's the hope. I'm so glad you mentioned that because Gobert goes out and Towns immediately looks like a different guy. So I don't know,

body language doctor who's always thought the Towns-Gobert thing has seemed weird before Towns got hurt and then after got hurt. Towns was reinvigorated not having Gobert in there. And then Edwards realized he needed to step up. Edwards took the Ingram performance really personally. Ingram was great in the first half. I think he had 27. And Edwards, you could see he was not only took the challenge of trying to defend him, but was talking shit to him. He was getting a little aggro with him. And as you said, Edwards was all over the map in this game.

I think he had eight turnovers. He had a couple awful, awful plays. And then he had some of the best plays that I've seen from his entire career. Some crazy MJ blocks and traffic. Crazy offensive rebound putbacks. A couple big threes. It's all the same stuff you and I have been talking about with him for over

a year. There's just this swagger to him. Did you see that play? You must have seen it. It was like four minutes left. Ingram did that spin move he does and Edwards just dived in front of it and just pickpocketed with his whole body. He just kind of read the move, beat him to the spot,

and just stole it without fouling him, which I don't know. That's not a play you see very often, right? Somebody reads a spin move and just steals it. The one I noticed, it was like 71-69, because the other frustrating part is that Towns got his fourth foul with eight minutes to go, or at the eight-minute mark of the third quarter,

and one of the officials in this game was having a pretty tough go of it um yeah but and it was funny because towns goes to get in front of valence unis kind of in that trans like not full transition kind of like a soft transition and players do this all the time they just kind of get in front of the other guy fall down and then get the call and the officials having a tough game went to call it a charge luckily the guy in the baseline saw what happened but at that point point, you're like, why are you fucking around with this? Like, why are you even putting yourself in a position where it shouldn't have been a charge anyway? And then he gets his fourth foul and he's out of he's he's subbed out of the game.

And at that point, it was like seventy one sixty nine. And Anthony Edwards had a drive past everybody. Then there was all this help on him. He makes the perfect pass. Then he hits a three. And I think the Ingram block that you're talking about is he was already in the air as ingram like he got off of his feet almost undisciplined ingram thinks he has him and then he strips him like on the way down no that was a different play he did that he had the block on mccollum and traffic no he just had a column help

one the mccollum help one is like oh i mean I retweeted because it was so nasty but I mean even off that strip then he turned it over but then he got the and one when it was turned over again so yeah you're right there was some messiness into it but there were stretches where he had to kind of do this on his own and those are the special players and that's why again I think he has a chance to be one of those guys I thought this was actually an awesome win considering everything that happened for Minnesota. Totally agree. It made you feel great today. Yeah, that was a rise

to the occasion game from him and it wasn't perfect, but I think that's why we both like him. He just, I think he sensed the moment. He realized that the season

was going sideways. The whole team, like, it was weird for a team that just had had an altercation on the bench an hour earlier.

The team was like, they're all standing, they're pulling for each other. It seems like they really like Kyle Anderson and, uh, and Prince and, uh, yeah,

absolutely. And the Edwards thing, how can you not like that guy? Um, and when towns came back into, I mean, he lit it up from the outside. He was trying to go five out small.

Herb Jones, I think was playing them at that point. And if you just don't have enough size, like I got to understand, like when towns is hitting a shot, it's a brutal spot for the opposing coach to go, you know, what do I do here? But the funny thing is that when Towns was out,

Gobert's already gone. They brought a night for a stretch there to play center. That wasn't working out defensively. By going kind of five out, it allowed all this room for Anthony Edwards, which kind of gets back to the Gobert point of like, are you actually screwing Edwards up? And again, these are all like long-term things that maybe Timberwolves fans don't want to hear about because today was so awesome getting that win.

But that's the part of just the basketball fit where you go, man, isn't it cool when you have Towns on the outside or just Ant attacking and no one else is there on his team in the middle? That's why we hated the trade to begin with. I mean, we can victory lap this. We've been victory lapping it for six months. I hated the trade, really despised it. I didn't understand it. I didn't think it made them a contender. I thought it was going to change their style of play in a really weird way. I wasn't sold on Townsend Gobert at all. You could see even in that second half today, watching them with Towns as the center, that's the best thing about him.

He's this weird center who can guard fives on one end and then spreads everybody on the other end. I thought Gobert not being out there weirdly opened things up for them. The refs kept Towns in the game. Towns should have fouled out with like two minutes left. He missed that layup around the rim, and then he was trying to get the rebound.

He just crashed into the guy and knocked him two feet backwards. And I think if they had called that, I think Minnesota was going to lose. New Orleans really screwed that game up in a bunch of different ways. And I think they have to win two. They have OKC now in the 9-10. OKC has to be one of the weirdest playoff teams we've ever had. Josh Giddey leading the team in rebounds with 7.9. Nobody else on the team has more than five rebounds a game. They have no rim protection at all. And yet they

have figured out this weirdly scrappy, almost like a college team. And I just wouldn't want to play them. I don't trust not having the best guy in the game. I think SGA is the best guy in the game. So it was a big loss for them. And then on the flip side,

Minnesota gets into the eight, but now they're down Nas Reed. They might be down Gobert. They might be down McDaniels and the Lakers who get the seventh seed. Basically they win the lottery because now they get to play this depleted Minnesota team that they were probably better than anyway. So now, well,

I don't know about the Gobert thing. The Gobert seems to be like, are they going to suspend him if he's available? Knowing that against Anthony Davis actually makes some sense there. I would think you worry about that punishment later. I would go with the red Arvac deal here where you're like, well, I just think you're assuming a soft counter.

Sure. The team might be like, we're good. Not with that contract. No, just for, we're good. We'll handle the playing game. Maybe he can come back for the 9-10. To me, it's 50-50 whether he's suspended for that game or not. I mean, he punched a teammate in the huddle.

We haven't seen that ever. I think you have to suspend him for a game and it might actually galvanize the team. I had the Ewing Theory Committee scouts. They were flying to Minnesota at halftime in that game. They want to check it out. But in that Laker game, I think the Lakers with a full team

are going to beat Minnesota in a one-off just because of the experience and how sloppy and weird some of the decisions Minnesota makes are. But they did have size to throw at them and not having Nas. And then whether Gobert comes back or not, you know, that now it turns into a,

you don't even have the two best guys in the game. And it's a seven, eight matchup for the Lakers worked out great. And then they get to play Memphis who doesn't have Steven Adams. Does that Brandon Clark, who's got triple J who we're going to talk about later in the defensive player thing. I'm still not sold he can play 36 minutes a game

in a playoff series because he gets fouls too easily. And I just think this lined up unbelievable for the Lakers, right? You have Suns Clippers. They get to beat the hell out of each other. Warriors, Kings, and the Lakers. Pretty easy path to get to round two

for a team that I gave up on. What were they, 2-10? It's crazy. If you had to rank your West teams that you think are going to be in the West finals, once you remove Phoenix and Denver, I think the Lakers have as good of a chance as any other team, right?

Would you put another team over them? Yeah, I think they have a really good shot at this. Yeah, I see the Golden State Wiggins thing. I think it's weird that he couldn't have played like a regular season game or something just to kind of get back out there with them. Granted, they put it on Portland today in a way we've almost never seen. Historically, we've never seen that, what they did in the first quarter. So what does that mean? It just means they weren't screwing around. The Clippers are screwing around, it felt like today, against the Phoenix team. It's always funny, the hierarchy of the cool guys on the team or it's like all right Katie's

not playing Booker's not playing Chris Paul's not playing that means Aiton's not playing but also means campaign's not playing uh and the Clippers it took them until very late to get that win I was wondering if they would do something that they had done in the past where they tried to jockey a bit but once Golden state was going to win like the clipper seating could have gotten really weird i mean golden state they were going to lose to portland i wouldn't have thought but yeah i think the lakers deserve wait hold on can you freeze at that point sure because because haralabab was going nuts about this and i was texting them he thought the clippers should have punted and gone for the seventh seed and taken their chances in the 7-8 with home court.

And even if they lose, then they're the eighth seed versus playing the Suns. Because he said, basically, if Minnesota won, they were the sixth seed regardless. If New Orleans won, Golden State won, Lakers won, Clippers had to win. They were either five or seven. And Harabov's point was,

I think they're drawn dead in the Sun series. I don't think they can beat them. I would rather roll the dice with the Minnesota-New Orleans game. That's a 50-50 game, and it was down the stretch. And if Minnesota wins, we're six anyway. Now we get to play Sacramento. And if we lose, now we're if, if Minnesota wins, we fall to seven, Minnesota jumps us. We play the Lakers, but then we're still probably in the playoffs. The ads and them losing both playing games. I don't know. I, I just want to get in the playoffs and I don't like overthinking it, but I did think it was interesting to think like, Oh,

there was a way they could have ducked the suns. I would have been fine with it. I mean, again, they did it before, but then it turns into the talk show thing for two days. It's like, wait, if you thought you were this team that was built with veterans, you're never supposed to show any fear whatsoever. I think the probabilities people where Haralobob is far more looking at the path, the path of what's our probability of getting through this versus other ones. He's right.

The math is right. I mean, I'm picking Phoenix to win the West. I am. I'd like to see more of it, but that's how I feel about them, and that's how I feel about the rest of the teams in the West. And that's why I think, back to your Lakers point, is even if you think, like the 2-10 thing, who cares? None of it matters anymore.

When they were 2-10, it wasn't like we were watching them going, no, don't worry about it. They're going to be awesome. But Anthony Davis, I was looking at it. He came back on January 25th. He's played 31 of the 34 games. The team went 20-11. Since that time, they've

been the fourth best defense in the NBA. The offense isn't that great, but they have real options now with their rotation. And even if LeBron, who lit it up today from outside, a couple things. It doesn't look like Shamanich could guard LeBron in a playoff series.

I'm just going to throw that out there now. Shamanich, who was like... Pack it away. He's like a slightly more arrogant Mr. Perfect as a basketball player. He's un... That guy is fearless. Yeah. And LeBron lit it up from three today. He's on. That guy is fearless. LeBron lit it up from three today.

He was incredible. I wonder what he's going to look like in a playoff series because I still think he gets his numbers, but it's clear. I don't know. I don't know that I'm as afraid of him as I am Anthony Davis now because Davis is going to be an all NBA guy for me and my vote once we all kind of looked at it and how it played out, he's been terrific.

So, yeah, the long answer to all of this is that there's almost a Lakers result. I mean, look, they won the whole thing. That's still be a little weird today sitting here at the beginning of April, but it's not impossible. It's not something you would say where you would laugh at it, even if I'm going to pick other teams before. I want to talk about that Davis LeBron thing coming out of the break. We've got to put a bow in the Gobert thing. I already thought this was one of the worst trades in the history of the league, if not number one.

And now if this actually gets acrimonious as we head into the offseason, they don't have outs, he's got a pretty big contract. This is moving up the ladder. I mean, that Paul George trade, even though I think we all understood the reasons of it Haral Bob was saying just SGA alone

was a horrible price to give up and then you throw in all the picks that's way up there the Tatum the Celtics Nets trade is way up there but this Gobert thing where you're going in the offseason and you don't even know if this is salvageable on top of the picks haven't even really kicked in yet on top of the Kessler thing. It's just brutal. And it goes back to what we were talking about last summer. It was too early to go all in on a trade like this when Edwards, it's going to be this process with them. We're

not going to know who he is for four more years, but we see these flashes and it's like, this guy's incredibly special. I just wonder, could they be in a situation a little like what Dallas is in now where you have this special player and you kind of botched everything around him and now you're on the clock and there's a chance that that's how it plays out. I think their assets are a little better than Luka Dallas, but anything to add to that or should we go to break? No, real quick. Gobert, the next three years,

41 million, 44 million, and then 46.7 million. That's a player option. Probably going to pick that one up in 25, 26. Yeah, lock it down. So, you know, it can be acrimonious.

It can be nasty. No contract is untradeable, but they already moved so many picks. I don't know how they could move that contract without paying some sort of pick tax on it. To Raul Bob's point, SGA, we all really liked him. To say that trade alone, yeah, now it looks terrible. But I mean, did all of us like them? I don't know.

But you cannot talk about the Paul George trade in a vacuum. It got you Kawhi Leonard. And any GM that says, hey, Kawhi's on the phone and he's coming here if we can get Paul George, and we're adding Paul George, despite whatever you think of him, even the most harsh critics of Paul George, I don't know, I feel like that's playing the results a little bit. It looks bad now. The Gobert trade's going to look even worse because right now you take Walker Kessler straight up for him. The difference is, but the difference with Kawhi and Paul George is it did make them a legitimate contender

and put them on the short list of teams that could win the title right away. That's my point. And the Gobert trade did not do that. And that's it. And there's nothing else to talk about. And it's just worse and worse and worse. Protect Anthony Edwards at all costs. We're going to take a break.

The NBA playoffs are here and you can turn crossovers into cash with FanDuel. Just visit fanduel.com slash BS right now and place a $5 bet and you'll get an instant 150 bucks of bonus bets. Win or lose. I'm going to put up some sort of bet on Tuesday or Wednesday with the playing games. I really want to study these.

I want to study the matchups. My quick instinct is leaning toward the Lakers and the experience over this crazy Minnesota situation with McDaniels. Looks like he fractured his hand potentially. Gobert, who knows if he's going to even play in that game. So leaning toward the Lakers, but I'll put something on my Twitter feed either Tuesday or Wednesday, and it'll be related on my Twitter feed either Tuesday or Wednesday, and it'll be related to Fando.

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grab some Miller Lites today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. So I'm glad you brought up the Davis-LeBron thing because I had a spot for one of them on my third team All-NBA. LeBron played, my minimum for All-NBA is 55 games and I've stuck to it and I've been pretty loyal to that no matter what happens season to season.

It's two thirds of the games basically. And I just feel like you have to get there. Davis has been a center most of the time for the Lakers. The spot I would have for one of them is the forward spot. You'd have to use some real chicanery to put Davis in that forward spot. You'd really have to be, you know, teams doing it with Jokic and Beter.

Sabonis is ridiculous. Those guys are centers. Davis has played a little forward, have to be, you know, teams doing it with Jokic and Bieders. Sabonis is ridiculous. Those guys are centers. Davis has played a little forward, but to me, not enough. I feel like he's the center. I feel like it's cheating. So I think LeBron's going to get the spot. But I do think Davis has been the best Laker this year,

which I think you seem to think too, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, from the point of him coming back, I mean, the funniest thing about all of this is that i i just couldn't stand watching him fall down anymore like i just felt like every week yeah there was a fall where i go oh here we go again and yet he's gotten up and i think he has more to do with this than oh see it's making it sound like it's being negative about lebron and that's not really the point i I think it's just praising Davis for being steady now

for two-plus months and being a... Yeah, again, I'm with you. The biggest reason why this Lakers team is going to the playoffs is people feeling good about it. It's funny the LeBron season he had because the points are higher than prime LeBron. Now, it's easier to score, and there's reasons for that. The production has been there, like prime LeBron. Now that's, it's easier to score and there's reasons for that. Um,

the production has been there and I test, he's still, you know, one of the 10 or 12 best offensive players in the league. But when you break down the actual stats, like there are, there is subtle slippage that as I watch, I have noticed, you know,

like that on basketball reference, you can go and you can break down the, they have it by the shooting ranges, like zero to three feet, three to 10 feet, 10 to 16 feet. So, I mean, there's some funny stuff with this. One is the 2014 season, he shot 55% from three to 10 feet, which is astounding. Nobody does that. I almost feel like his Miami years have become now underrated when you look at some of the numbers. It was crazy when it was happening. You remember that third season he was flirting with 60% for the year and shit like that. So you go to this year, he's down to 46% from the 3 to 10 range and 33% from 10 to 16.

During his career in his prime, which basically if you say from 2011 to 2018, he was basically 42 to 46%. He was always reliable that 10 to 16. That's just dropped. And then the three-point shooting has really dropped. Like he's, you know, 31% this year. So I think as far as trusting his scoring, I trust him to get to the basket, get to the rim,

bounce off guys, get that stuff. But I think I trust Davis more as a scorer now. Who do you trust more just to get a basket with three minutes left? The return of LeBron's like close. If you look at some of the free throw rate stuff and, and the shooting trees that we've seen this, like, you know,

I mean, God, we're 20 years into this, so this is still phenomenal. Uh, it's crazy, but some of the decisions, you know,

it seems like, all right, maybe I'll just kind of hang out here and I'll, I'll hit some threes. And again, today, I think you put it, you finish with eight of them.

So yeah, it's not really a criticism. It's just, I don't know. I started noticing it last year a little bit where I was like, geez, this guy still gets insane numbers. And I feel like he can float. Like he can float through a game and control the tempo and the decisions and then attack when he needs to.

And then he still has these prime LeBron numbers. And the fact that we're even wondering if it's still prime LeBron 20 years later, which it isn't, but it's a credit to him. I wonder if there'll be an intensity because he understands the moment as well as anybody in the league.

Will there be this intensity? Because again, if he was still the guy, they would be like a top four seed because that's how special he was. Without anybody, he'd be like a four seed. I mean, what's crazy about this year is if he had shot a little bit better from the fringes, he probably would average like 33, 34 points a game, which would have been by far the highest he's done. I think the reason I still trust him.

He was at 30. He was at 30 before the last stretch that he missed. I mean, so he did the bit, but I think as much as there were games... He's at 29. Yeah, right. I mean, he's right there. I think he was like 29.7, but it wasn't counted because it's kind of like that batting average thing where he wasn't qualifying, depending on

which leaders you would look at, but go ahead. I trust him in playoff games because I think he can get to the line and bounce off people and get calls and finish as good as, as good as he was doing five years ago. I don't think his jump shots the same. I don't think his three point shots the same, but I still think his around the basket stuff is, is in the ballpark. And when you throw that with Davis and their ability to overpower people, that's, that's where Minnesota not having those extra big

bodies is going to be really tough. We've talked about Reeves before, who's really turned into a nice role player. I kind of like their team. My dad and I were talking about it on the phone, and my dad was like, I'm worried about the Lakers. What if we play the Lakers in the finals? I'm too old. I wouldn't be able to handle that. And it was the first time anybody had said that to me. Then House brought it up when we were in Augusta too, that I still feel like it's impossible for them to stay healthy for three straight rounds. I just don't think it's realistic, but it's at least not unrealistic. It's in play. We got to talk about what Dallas did. So it's worse. What Dallas did on Friday night, punting a chance to be a playing team is actually worse when you saw what happened in Minnesota

today. Because let's say Dallas is the 10 seed and they eke out OKC. They get to play that New Orleans team, which I think Luka can win a one-off against anybody. And then going against that Minnesota team with no Jada McDaniels and with who knows what's going on with Gobert. Like it is realistic that they could have gotten the eighth seed, which goes back to my point that I'm going to stay firm on that I haven't really wavered on my entire life.

If you have a chance to make the playoffs, make the fucking playoffs. And that's just how I feel. And I'm never going to, you're never going to talk me into, oh no, no, they had a chance to make the playoffs, make the fucking playoffs. And that's just how I feel. And I'm never going to, you're never going to talk me into, oh, no, no. They had a chance to get the number 10 pick. Great. The number 10 pick. I know it's a nice pick.

It's fine. It's not a guaranteed awesome guy. And I just hate it. I don't think you can do it when you have Luka. I thought, honestly, Russillo, I thought it was one of the darker moments in recent league history. I thought it was disgusting. And I'll be really interested to see if the league cares about the fact that as far as I can tell, and I admittedly did not go through the history of baseball and hockey. I know it's never happened in football. I've never seen a team that actually had a chance to make the playoffs punt on the chance like they had a real chance to make the playoffs and they said fuck it and they tossed it away and i just

thought it was despicable what were your thoughts it bothered me zero percent um you know pork had a chance they didn't give a shit washington maybe had an outside chance they were sitting everybody so the fact that it happens at the very very end of the season where luca plays like what a couple possessions at the start of the second quarter and then they sell them out so like it feels more egregious because they weren't as deliberate about it early enough you know i still think it's the same principle they made a decision as a franchise to not prioritize the play-in tournament. And the other reason we haven't seen this as much as we haven't had the play-in tournament for that long.

So I think this would happen again. And I think Cuban and I think this team would look at the probabilities again and go, all right, so we get to the play-in. What are we actually doing? And that way they get to keep the pick potentially. And most people, it's almost like the American way to go, well, I'd rather just pay you later and we'll have that pick as an asset with all the other decisions they're going to have to make. So I get why it felt grosser, but it fundamentally is the same thing

that other teams have done that were flirting with this stuff. They just decided to do it earlier. I guess I disagree only because Luka is healthy. Damn it, Lee. Yeah, because Luka's healthy and I still feel like I have a chance to make

the playoffs with him. And if I can get no playoffs and I'm going against Denver, who knows? Like, the whole point of this shit is you make the playoffs, anything can happen.

The West has been wide open this whole year. They weren't going to beat anybody. They weren't going to beat anybody. They weren't going to beat anybody. Who knows? They have Luka Doncic. The guy averages 33 a game. Maybe he just goes nuts.

You only need to win four out of seven games. You basically have to go 500 in every playoff series and then win one more. I just don't like it. Like Miami right now. Boston's better than Miami.

There's a world where Miami can beat Boston. They can play well three times, toss away three times, and then it goes to game seven. And who the fuck knows what's going to happen, right? They don't play well three of the six times to get to a game seven. I don't like throwing it away when I have Luca. If you told me if it was like OKC even, that I get. OKC doesn't even have a center. I have no idea how OKC's even in the play-in tournament. I look at their team. I'm just in awe of whether SGA is going to be the number five MVP on my ballot. We'll talk about it in a second. But I look at their team and I'm just stupefied that they weren't like 27 and 55, but they kept fighting and they kept fighting. So I don't

know. After you trade that, what they did for Kyrie to then punt on the season and have no idea if he's coming back. Like I just, to me, it makes it worse. It just feels worse. It feels grosser. Not to mention what if they get leapfrogged by the number 11 team when we get to the lottery and they lose the pick anyway, that'd be the funniest way for me. Right. No doubt. If the Bulls leapfrog them. That's in play. I guess it kind of just gets back to like this, this philosophy that I've had a lot,

is that if you're going to do something, even though we know that everybody's doing it, the person's doing it, the business is doing it, as long as they don't tell us, it's okay. But when they tell us, and what Dallas did is they told us in a very forward way, hey, this is exactly what we're doing. And then we're told the truth.

We get pissed about it, but it's not because it's the truth. We just don't like the packaging of it. It's like tanking. You talk to a team. Oh, we're not tanking. And then it transitioned into, you can't say, rebuilding. Oh, we're in a transitional year. And then that'll become a term that no one can use.

It's all the same shit, just packaged a different way. So I don't have an issue with it, even if it was a lot grosser, which you're right about. It was grosser. You know, there was a chance up into the last couple of days to still go ahead and do this. I don't think they're beating anybody. I think they knew they weren't beating anybody. They've been a mess defensively this year, which is just so weird about how their run was put together last year. They really buttoned up defensively for a long stretch. I still felt like that Western Conference Finals run, to my point, is like we have Western and Eastern Conference Finals teams that make appearances where you're like, I hope you don't go into next year thinking you're a top four team in the NBA just because you technically were in the Final Four. And they fit that profile, like Portland before them, like Atlanta a couple years ago, where

it's like you think you might be growing, but it's more likely you're not going to get to that level again. And they went in the opposite direction in dramatic fashion. I just I don't know, man, maybe the playing thing is different for you. I kind of just look at extending it out where you have these more teams that are supposedly alive, which, yeah, I mean, I shouldn't say supposedly. They are technically still alive. And Dallas just felt like, are we really going to win two

games out of the play-in and then play the one or two seed and win four of those seven games with this team that's been a mess now for a while? I don't think they were, and I think they knew it. I still have Luka. And I don't know if that pick is crucial enough because there's a couple of things with it, right?

All right, so here's KOC's ringer draft guide. Number eight pick, Taylor Hendrick from UCF. Number nine pick, Cam Whitmore from Villanova. Number 10 pick, Kaysan Wallace from Kentucky. Number 11, Grady Dick from Kansas. Are any of those guys changing your franchise? Well, first of all, most of the guys do not change your franchise. No.

I think it's about just having another option for having to retool this thing in the offseason some way. So the value of the pick, the unknown. This is not considered a very good draft. All right. Teams are telling you already this is not a great draft at all. So the simple answer is, of course not. That guy most likely is not changing the course of your franchise. I just think it's an extra piece that they'd rather have than not have to figure out what they're going to look like at the start of next

year. And now they're stuck. They can't trade their first round, any first round picks now, because this pick rolls over, that next pick, and they have the 29 picks. So I think there's only one pick in the, between all of that, that they can trade. I think that Knicks thing is still attached for a couple more years. So if they had just given that pick to the Knicks, maybe it's the 11th pick, 12th pick, whatever, then they have the flexibility to trade some picks. I mean, this is one of the, we've had some bad, I don't want to say, oh my God, that's one of the most catastrophic seasons ever

because we've had a lot of disappointing teams over the year. But to go in the Western Finals and then trade two future first round picks to improve your roster and go backwards and become a lottery team is like almost impossible. They were in the Western Finals last year.

They traded that one pick for Christian Wood. I didn't understand that as it was happening. And then this other pick for Kyrie, which you, me, and House went on right after and we just crushed that trade. We just all thought it was desperate was the best thing you could have said about it. But that team, to me,

has moved into top five worst run teams. I really think that, which is crazy because I think you could argue with the Mavs in that 0-3 to maybe 11 stretch. It's a really well-run organization. I don't think you could say that anymore. What's good about that organization at this point? No, and there was a report this week, too, which is what people have been hearing in the rumblings

and certain teams kind of clearing the decks. Although teams have done that for years. All the teams that were like, oh, we're clearing all the cap space for Giannis. So, you know, whatever. It's like, oh, well, guess what? Good plan. But look, it's better than having no plan whatsoever. But the Luka thing is going to be the next thing.

I mean, if he's a tenth of pissed off at people around him as he is during a game, I don't know what that relationship is like. I mean, is he all into Cuban? Does he love Dallas? This is just the way it works. If a guy is this good who is going in the wrong direction with the franchise, this usually isn't an awesome breakup. It usually isn't, despite the fact that, again,

a lot of the international guys, but Luka might be the first one. But again, this is down the road, but there's always been whispers about this of like like which by the way I mean this isn't that insightful but which organization could go we have this top five player this soon by the way like Luca didn't even have to go through like the development years like Paul George or Kawhi or Giannis or Jokic or Shea even. Think about how immediately, Luka, you're like, holy shit, he's this good. You don't even get those kind of fake development years

from him where year six and seven he's pissed. He might be already pissed. Have fun. If this is kind of the same roster next year, and they're pretty limited in what they can do, and then they, what, keep Kyrie just to protect the asset? That's usually not a great time. He's going to age nicely. A lot of people are saying he's going to age really nicely in his

30s. To take that Jalen Brunson asset, the 2023 first and the 2029 unprotected first, and basically turn that into nothing if Kyrie leaves is unbelievable. Now, I guess you could say, well, but on the other hand, well, they got the 10th pick. And Finney Smith. Yeah, they lose Finney Smith.

They lose Dan Witte. Yikes. Kyle, you might have to turn the TikTok camera on. As you know, I'm a historian of the game, Russillo. I read that. This Luca season

goes on his record now. He's actually spent time in jail. One of those things where he has to put it when he's applying for jobs. You have to disclose things that have happened to you. To go 38 and 44 in a healthy season in your mid-20s in a garbage conference that was all over the place that got racked by injuries and was just really bad. I don't care that weird shit was in Christian Wood and oh my God, maybe Jabail McGee didn't work out and he lost Brunson. I just feel like if you're as good as him, if you're as good as the top assets in the league,

which to me are Giannis and Jokic and Luka and Embiid, those four, and I'm getting a healthy season from those four guys, I should be able to win 48 games, right? That's the Tim Duncan test that we've talked about. The reason I will always have Tim Duncan over Kobe, sorry, Kobe fans. I know we all love them, but you didn't lose less than 50 games if you had Tim Duncan on your team. You just didn't. It didn't matter who else was on the team. You won

50 games. I think Giannis is like that now. Giannis' team is good, but I think if Giannis played with that team that Dallas had, he would have figured out a way to get to like 48 and 34 in the West. And the fact that Luka didn't do that, we were really hard on James Harden, even though I voted for him twice for MVP in 2017 and 18, but we were really hard on him about can you win with this style?

What's going on with this guy in the playoffs? Harden had way more success in Houston than Luka has had, and you didn't miss the playoffs with Harden like this. Way more is an overstatement. Way more is an overstatement. They both have a Western Conference final.

They won 60-plus games. They came within the precipice a couple times. It's bad luck with the Warriors. I'm just saying, like, I thought Luca took a real step back this year. I thought he looked heavy. I thought he didn't play defense. I thought his body language was bad.

And even though his stats look pretty good, and we'll look back 30 years from now and be like, oh, Luke averaged 32 a game. This was a bad season for him. It was a bad season for him as a leader and as a trade asset. I used to think he was unassailable. He wanted the top three trade assets. I don't know if I feel that way anymore.

I think this really goes on his record. It's like a real black mark. What do you think? Everything you said is fair. I agree with almost all of it, except for I've got to see it like another year before I'm all of a sudden ready to downgrade him as a trade asset in his standing in the league. But you're right. If he's that guy, which we've all said that he is, you're at least in the top six or seven. You have to be 46 and 36. You have to. Yeah, that's totally right. And I also think with

the Harden stuff, we didn't start being critical of it right away. It took a few years of like, what the hell's going on here? Like, what is this? It just kind of went sideways. And then I don't think we were conditioned enough with the high usage stuff to go, oh, wait, maybe this isn't the best way

to transition into the playoffs. Like, maybe this is a regular season thing that's great. And then when it's in the playoffs, it isn't that great. But then they have that playoff run last year, which matches Harden's one Western Conference as the primary guy, not including Oklahoma City's finals run a decade ago. But to be fair to

Harden, we weren't from the jump going with it. Actually, Harden's stuff and the Westbrook stuff and a lot of the high usage stuff led me to do the thing that I did last year as I was watching Doncic going you know this this high usage one guy thing has a pretty dismal track record in the playoffs going back to some of the Kobe years and you know Iverson's like the one guy I think out of the top 20 going into this year that had ever

played in an NBA finals where everything was about him. But the funny thing is- Terrible conference. Right, right. But the funny thing is we have some usage numbers this year that are off the charts. So I think all the criticism of Luka is fair, but for you to go into next year saying he's not a top six or seven guy all of a sudden- No, I think he's a top six or seven guy. I'm saying, to me, it was like him versus Giannis versus Jokic

as all-time untradeable assets. No way you even consider it. And now it's like Jokic, look at his last six years, starting with 2018, 46 and 36, 54 and 28, 46 and 27, 47, 25, 48 and 34 last year, 15, 29 this year. Last year's team was awful. That team didn't have Jamal Murray. It didn't have Porter for a lot of the season. I still have no idea how they went 48 and 34. It was unbelievable to watch as it was happening. That's why we voted for him for MVP. He fucking carried them. And I just didn't see that with Luca this year. I saw a guy who seemed really hard to play with, hard for guys to figure out how to coexist with, who was yelling at everybody, yelling at the

refs and didn't really totally seem in shape. So I really hope that this is like a fork in the road year for him where he's, you know, he played a lot of basketball. I thought that was the one interesting quote where he said, I basically been playing basketball for three straight years. That's technically true. If you look it up, like he's played a shitload of basketball, he might be tired, but he's got to regroup and figure this out because this is a potential all-time guy. Like this is why I give a shit. This isn't, you know, a run of the mill dude. This is a guy who had a chance to be the best player of his generation. And this is an embarrassing season for him. Yeah.

No, I'm with you. I just would to reclassify him. I think what you said in the beginning is the right way to look at it. This is a mark and we wonder if it's a blip or a trend. And it's too early and too short of a stretch for me to say this is who he is now. I don't know. Well, I'm looking at my trade value. I had him second to say this is who he is now. I don't know. Well, I'm looking at my trade value.

I had him second. So this is February 3rd. I had Giannis one, Luka two, Jokic three, Curry four, Tatum five, and interestingly, Joss sixth, which that's another guy who I think his ranking's a little different now because I would say I'd need to see a little more. Embiid, seven. Or less. Zion, eight.

Zion's ranking is cratered. Booker, nine. Durant, 10. SGA, 11. Ant, 12. Moby, 13. Halliburton, 14. Palo, 15.

So yeah, Luka's probably at least passed by Jokic but he's probably still three considering Curry's 30 35 right I think he's still the third best asset in the league but I don't feel good about it yeah I mean you could get into like well Golden State

would never do that and you're like that's not the point of the article and I you know just to reiterate it's the grease yeah Shea's probably jumped a few of those dudes. I gotta be honest. Mowgli I would have in the top 10 now from what we've seen the last couple of months. I know I'm too high on them. I know you're going to make fun of me as we get the defensive player of the year. The funny thing is I, I love him. I just,

I don't know if he's going to become what you think he's going to be. It'll be an interesting bet for us down the road. If Garnett's the cop, I will take the max. Whatever the limit on that bet is, you put me down for it. Okay. We'll take a break. Come back and talk about the playoff matchups. This episode is brought to you by Movember.

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. All right, just quickly, the regular season standings are in. Congratulations to the Detroit Pistons, the winner of the trauma for Yama sweepstakes, 17 and 65, did it going away, one by five games. The Spurs were second. Did you see the Spurs? They gave up 50.8% field goal percentage this year. It's almost 51%. It's got to be almost a record, right? You know what?

I caught them a couple times down the stretch just because of how it worked out. And I'm watching them and I'm going, I'm so proud that they still run stuff even though they're terrible. Like they still run more shit. The facade of caring. No, but I actually do mean this is complicated.

What they do on offense, the movement, having guys not just watch and stand around, which plenty of really good teams do. And I'm watching them, and it was like, oh, they'll lose in the second half. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Because Portland had a couple sneaky games where you're like,

remember that Timberwolves-Portland game? You're like, what is going on with Minnesota? Again, distant memory. In the moment, it can feel. But I just, I don't know. Something about San Antonio. Because statistically, every time you sort it, you're like, this team is the

worst, yet they would still run stuff, and Pop was still coaching. So, I don't know. I appreciated it. They were second tied with Houston. Charlotte fourth. Portland fifth. Cerruti's magic in the sixth hole,

which has been a lucky position over the years. There's been some good guys coming out of the sixth hole. I think they get like nine or 10% for the sixth hole. And then the dumbass Wizards, 35 and 47 tied with the Pacers. I still don't know what the Wizards are trying to do this year in Utah and Dallas.

So it played out pretty much the way we thought. Where do you want Wambanyama to go? You first. To answer your question, what I really want is the Eli Manning John Elway scenario. I want to see player empowerment extended to the nth degree

where somebody goes, no, actually, I don't want to go to Charlotte. We're going to have to fix this. Can you give me a different team? Charlotte doesn't deserve them. First of all, Charlotte doesn't deserve them. They don't deserve them. I would put them on the number one on top of my who deserves him the least.

It would be them. I think I'd want to see Detroit of all the top teams, meaning the worst teams. I don't think San Antonio deserves them either after getting Duncan and Robinson at the same time. You had your run. I couldn't agree more. I had Detroit. I think Portland would be fun because I do appreciate that Dame has stuck it out and not done the trade request. That team wasn't good for every reason, but that would be fun.

The jackpot would be Orlando. Orlando would be the funniest, greatest. That would instantly become the most fun league pass team. Is he long enough, though, to fit into Orlando? He might not. He's playing my point card.

They say, when they call Wendell Carter that night, be like, no, no, you're fine. We're gonna play this guy at point card. Seven,

five. Jonathan Isaac demands a trade immediately. And Orlando's like, okay, you got it. Um, Detroit from, uh,

walking in I mean they have a lot of centers that have to make some trades but walking into a guy like Cade I think would be good for him really anywhere he goes the one team I wouldn't want him

to go to is Charlotte I'm with you they don't deserve him I don't think they have a good foundation they're poorly run they're currently trying to be sold

there's nothing I like about that from a stable organization part, San Antonio's probably the right call of all of this. But yeah, I think you and I still have some sensitivity to the Duncan stuff. And on top of everything else, Spurs fans saying that, oh, no, no, no, that wasn't by design.

Like, okay. Sure. Cool. All right. I think the most fun wildcard team is the Wizards. Just putting them in a fairly big market. I mean, they had nothing good happen to them for 40 years. So that'd be pretty fun.

Okay. So the plans. We have the seven, eight games on Tuesday night. We have Miami, Atlanta, which the Celtics will be watching, wearing Atlanta jerseys, hoping that Atlanta can somehow get to the seven. We have Lakers, Minnesota, which we discussed earlier.

And then on Wednesday we have Pelicans OKC, which will lead a lot of people to say during that day that we haven't spent enough time talking about Shea Gilchrist Alexander will be a thing you hear that day. And then we have Toronto-Chicago. And Toronto is a team that looks like a Cancun team, as Jalen used to call those teams, that the bags are packed and they're ready to go on spring break.

Coaches on their way out. The Bulls at least seem like they have a little pride. They found something with Caruso and DeRozan and Levine seem to like each other lately. To me, that's the one that jumped out to me. It's like, oh, I think Chicago is going to kill Toronto. Which one of those four do you like?

What are you excited about? Yeah, I really do think Chicago's kind of figured some stuff out here, but Toronto also finished 15-10. Chicago went from 31- 37 to 40 42 so it's actually kind of a matchup of two teams that I would say are generally disappointing based on where they finished uh Toronto led the regular season series 2-1 but man when you start playing that game like you got to go back and look up everybody who played you can't do it anymore i oh my god i tried to do that for a couple of the matchups and it's like all right this is stupid this game i did it like play that game curry didn't play like you go crazy right like new orleans beat oklahoma city

three out of four and i was like oh they must have had everybody except they didn't zion played one of the games ingram played one of the games so uh and sga played in all four and he like was pretty good and so you know then it could be a company scheduling thing which every home fan base you know no one's ever won the second on a back-to-back so i like what chicago's done but toronto has has figured out a way here to kind of carry themselves defensively the last 25 games um you know one of the things that i do think is actually more than just a weird deal here. Miami's won 10 of the last 13, including the playoffs against the Hawks. And Trey, this year, he was terrible in the playoff series.

You could argue it was because of injuries, and he was the only option. Miami figures out Trey. One game, anything can happen. But against the Hawks, or excuse me, yeah, Miami going up against Trey. One game, anything can happen, but against the Hawks, or excuse me, yeah, Miami going up against Trey, like 36 from the floor, 21% from three. So I think Spoh just already pencils in like, okay, we know exactly

what we're going to do, and it's going to be up to Trey to figure out your ISO dribble the ball the entire possession bullshit. You're going to have to change it up, which I can see Quinn Snyder has been doing proactively, trying to get him off the ball more since he took over. But that's something that feels like more than just a one-season snapshot

because Miami's dominated the series. I'd be shocked if Miami lost that game. I'm looking at the lines on FanDuel. Maybe I'm wrong on Toronto. Toronto's favored by five in that Bulls game. I don't see that at all. I think the Bulls are going to win, but something's going on. There's some sort of intel.

New Orleans is favored by five and a half over OKC. Lakers are favored by seven, and Miami's favored by five against the Hawks. And I'm with you. Miami seems very, very comfortable against the Hawks. And I'm with you. Miami seems very, very comfortable against the Hawks. So let's say if Miami wins, whoever Milwaukee plays, they're going to beat. But if Miami wins, that brings up the Boston-Miami matchup that we've,

all the Celtics fans have been kind of secretly dreading for a while. Philly-Brooklyn 3-6, Cleveland-New York 4-5. I think those are two great series. I'm really excited for both of them. I6. Cleveland, New York, 4-5. I think those are two great series. I'm really excited for both of them. I mean, Cleveland, New York, depending on when Randall comes back, I think has so many fun subplots

and I just like watching both of those teams. I love that series. You know, whether it's the storyline stuff, which has all kind of played out at this point, you know, it's worked out. Brunson's been beyond. I would have loved to see Randall play almost the full season because he kind of revived himself there a little bit. and consistent enough, and they've been really good against Cleveland. So even though I think I like Cleveland better, the Knicks have shown in these games against them, and I have to go back and look at, like, make sure who was playing or who wasn't,

or if they caught him a couple times without Jared Allen. I think it's a good grind-out series despite some of the numbers that tell you Cleveland's a superior team. And there's the Mitchell X factor of you guys didn't trade for me, I'm going to come back to haunt you. And that, to me, that's the matchup that'm going to come back to haunt you. And that to me,

that's the matchup that's going to decide the series one way or the other, because he's, I have him my first team on BA. He's been really good this year, but I could also see him trying to prove it to the point that, you know, he might try to shoot them out of a game or whatever, when, especially when we get to MSG, I'm going to be really interested. His clutch stats were surprisingly not that good this year. His last five minutes stuff, which I thought was interesting. But in general, I like the matchup.

I think there's fun villains on both sides or playoff villains like Josh Hart. Cleveland fans are going to hate that dude by game five. All the stuff he does, which I love. And then the Philly-Brooklyn series, which you would have said was, oh, that'll be Philly

in a walk-off a month ago, but the way Bridges is playing, I'm at least interested to watch a couple games of that. Yeah, the Brooklyn thing is kind of weird because I feel like we overrate them as a team because they finished 45-37,

and we, of course, thought they were going to fall apart. we overrate them as a team because they finished 45 and 37. And we of course thought they were going to fall apart. Right. So the trade, they traded Durant and Kyrie. What? That first week of February. And I think the first 10 days of February. Yeah.

So their best record at that point was 32 and 20. So granted, they had to kind of figure this thing out on the fly. But if you go 32-20, that means they went 13-17 since then. But they don't feel like a 13-17 team, even though it's a completely different team. And I think we expected them to fall off the map. And they were competitive, and they won some nice games.

They beat Denver. At Denver, they beat Boston in Boston, which was probably the worst game for the Celtics all season long to blow a 28-point lead to that team. So I feel like the Nets are actually getting a little bit more credit than they deserve based on the fact that they've been a sub-500 team since they've reinvented themselves, which is still a compliment to the group. But I feel like people are taking them way too seriously as a contender here. The Sixers can't get into a seven-game series with that group. Come on. Doc Rivers shames

hard in history. I'm prepared for anything. You make a good point on the Nets, though. They had a five-game winning streak, or losing streak, in mid-March. They lost to OKC, Sacramento, Denver, and Cleveland twice. And then they finished the season six, they went six and two down the stretch. But, you know, they played Houston,

they played Utah, they played Detroit, they played Orlando. They played teams that had vested interests in not playing. I think what's been fascinating to me, and House and I talked about a little on Thursday night is the fact that Bridges has actually become a guy you can go to at the end of these games. I just didn't see it. I never expected that side of him. So you think when you lose Durant, you lose Kyrie, it's this fun team of role guys, but

ultimately, who's going to be the guy? But there is something with them. They're just frisky enough that I hope Philly doesn't think, oh, we're just going to walk all over these people. But the way Embiid's playing, it would be all-time shocking if Philly didn't dispatch this team. But at least it'll be fun. I guess my point is, there's really no bad East series if Chicago gets in, um, even,

or if Toronto gets in, I guess the only matchup that I just feel like I wouldn't want to watch is Milwaukee, Atlanta. There's something I think Atlanta is drawn dead in that series, right? Against Milwaukee. Yeah.

And I don't think that's a watchable series. No, I'd be shocked if it were just because if you've watched Atlanta, I mean, did you see that Sixers lost the other day? Yeah. Like the Sixers didn't even play anybody and they still lost to them. I think Atlanta is a mess. I think they're a mess. And I would be shocked if all of a sudden, like, it's one thing if you've got a title under your belt or maybe a couple of finals appearances where it's like Golden State.

You know what I mean? With Golden State, I'm ready for anything i'm open to anything with them despite the numbers and the road record and all this stuff like if they have their five guys i'm probably not writing them off you know but with an atlanta team you can't carry yourself like this and then have me go well i'll give you the benefit of the doubt. What do we have? We have the Easter Conference finals after they obviously beat the Sixers. It's really tough. They go all in on that Murray trade. Then they trade Herter. And you could argue they might have been just better off not doing anything.

Keeping Herter, kind of seeing what they have and making their decisions. In the West, Denver is going to play the eight seed. Memphis is probably going to play the Lakers unless the Lakers blow that point game. I think that's a really brutal matchup for Memphis, like really bad. Sacramento Golden State and then

Phoenix and the Clippers. Phoenix, Clippers and also we're going to get we're going to get it looks like, I'm assuming it's Memphis Lakers. Those games three and four, we're going to have the people pouring through the crypto center for basically three, four straight days. We have John Morant, LeBron, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Kawhi

Leonard, maybe Paul George. That's just going to be unbelievable from a basketball fan standpoint. I think my favorite series of all of these is Sacramento Golden State. It's going to be a lot of fun. I don't think I missed a single minute of that series. Yeah. Yeah, it sucks for Sacramento, though. It really does.

I mean, in the regular season season that's another one when i was looking at it golden states i think three and one this year against them and that most recent game granted they were you know sacramento wasn't going for it uh so that also kind of leads some of their stuff but like you have to admit if you're a kings fan you're like are you fucking kidding me right like that's the only like you may lie and tweet about publicly like how confident you are you're gonna let everybody have it but are you picking sacramento in that series i'm not i'm going the other way if i'm a kings fan first of all i haven't made the playoffs since 2005 so i can't believe we made it. Second, the way this bracket shook out,

they could get Gold State first round, Lakers second round now. This is their two nemesises, right? Gold State's their rich older brother, an hour down, that's gotten all the glory and they've basically been the black sheep. And then the Lakers, that's the team from 2002. I would be looking at it like, holy shit,

we can correct all of our franchise warts, ills, everything in the span of four weeks. We could beat the Warriors and the Lakers and make the Western Finals. That is now sitting there for us. I like that team. I think people have cooled off on them. They were kind of stuck in the two or three seed for a while.

And I do think like teams let up a little bit, you know. I still kind of like that team. I think they're hard to play. You have to score a lot of points. Home crowd is going to be there. They're going to have a game seven at home if it happens. And we've seen this Warriors team has not traveled very well, to say the least.

So I don't know. I haven't decided what I'm doing that. I'm not as sold on the Warriors as you are on that series. Yeah, I am. I feel really confident about that one. I just do. I don't know why. I'm going to need your defense to be average for me to pick you against the golden state team that already

knows all the tricks golden state's never taking the floor against anybody and i would think even more so with sacramento thinking they're actually going to lose that game and you know maybe sacramento gets the first one and it changes their entire mentality uh that first game is going to mean a lot to them like you can fake confidence all you want. Golden State's not faking it. That's not bullshit from their side of it because of everything they've been going through here for almost a decade. So getting Wiggins back, having the Looney option, knowing that it's not a size matchup where they're really worried about it, where it's not Draymond having to worry about how he's going to match up with Jokic for the minutes where Looney's not

wasting four or five fouls on him. They don't even have to worry about that issue. And Draymond having to worry about how he's going to match up with Jokic for the minutes where Looney's not wasting four or five fouls on him. They don't even have to worry about that issue. Draymond's going to harass the shit out of Sabonis. They're going to have wings. I still don't understand why the Wiggins part, he couldn't just suit up for something, but maybe he just hadn't done anything active for such a long time. I have no idea what to read on that, so maybe that was part of it uh clay has been really good now too for a long stretch which i think is almost lost in what's been still like not a full-blown resurgence from golden state but i wouldn't say i loved what i've seen from them to close the season i like what i've seen from them they played some fun games in the first couple weeks of the season, including one that was, I think, the third game

that was 130 to 125 Golden State, where everybody played. Fox is a tough matchup for Golden State. They're going to have to play Peyton because I don't think anybody else who they play in their regular rotation is going to be able to stay in front of him. And then Sabonis is just like, those type of centers have always given Jokic is like this too.

Like those weird, those European centers, like good passing, like just thoughtful offensive centers, I think have succeeded against them over the years because it's kind of neutralizes all the stuff Draymond's great at. It's so different. I think it's going to be a really fun series.

I'm looking forward to that. And then the Phoenix Clippers thing, you know, we get Kawhi versus KD on top of all the other storylines. It's, other than LeBron, you could say that it's KD or Kawhi for best player of the last 10 years. And KD's probably in the lead.

No, I'm sorry, for best forward other than LeBron. For that other forward spot if we were doing... Well, I'm saying LeBron won and then probably KD too and Kawhi three, but Kawhi also has the title that he won with

a team where he was by far the best guy that someone think KD does now. I'm looking forward to that one. By the way, any other storylines? I want to say the Phoenix thing, you know, Durant's 8-0 since he got there, right? They won all eight games that he's played. And the funny thing is I was watching that Denver game

and there were a lot of games like this to close the regular season where you could tell the superior team was kind of like, let's see what's going to happen and maybe we'll close this thing out. It even happened today again with the Clippers against Phoenix, but there was the Phoenix Denver game where Denver was sitting everybody and it still was bothering me. You know, I was watching Phoenix going, are they still a hundred percent sure they know what they want to do or who they want to be? Or is Chris Paul forcing the issue? Right. Do you need the reps?

Right. Like there's some kickouts to Chris Paul where I'm like, why are you not shooting that anymore? And then he up fakes and they'll take the shot or it'll be thrown back out to him and he's taking it a little bit later. And I'm like, man, you used to take that earlier. You're wide open. You make that shot, even though shooting has been in decline for a bit. And then, you know, Durant's not actually going to force the issue. And then it felt like other times where it's like, man, his book are getting ignored. And then, you know, like that that Denver game's a perfect example of it because I'm sitting there being super nitpicky of it. And Phoenix scored

I think what, 120? 119 in that game? And I'm like, all right, what am I complaining about here? Maybe it's because I just expect them to smoke them, but it's that old Doc Rivers line about like, I'd rather everybody play so your team doesn't let up. And that's what we saw these last couple of weeks,

the superior team just letting up all the time. So I wish Ait were better. I'm okay with now admitting that I think he's kind of in that, man, you're just kind of not as good as you're supposed to be thing. But as the fourth option, that still makes me like them enough. Like the rant part of it is so weird because they didn't lose a game since they've had him in the lineup.

And I think everybody should be picking them. And it doesn't feel that way. Maybe that's Phoenix's own fault because of what happened last year and how many people think Chris Paul is going to screw it up. I'm glad you brought up Durant. Do you know what his record is this year?

Just for the 2022-23 season? What do you think it is? He's played 47 games. How many games do you think he won? Like 37 of them? Yeah, 34 and 13. He averaged 29, 7, and 5. And that includes the game he got hurt. He shot 56%,

40% from three and 92% free throw. He's not going to make my own NBA team because he didn't even come close to my 55 game limit. But it did make me think like, you know, the Oscars where they have like the honorary Oscars and like two people, it's like the basically career achievement Oscar. I do wonder if they should have that for NBA seasons. And they just like, there's two extra people that they just, it's like the three all NBA teams. And then two other spots where they're like special recognition for these two

seasons. And then, so then just historically it could be measured. So would you give Zion the other spot? I would not. Zion wins it six years in a row. I would do Durant. And I think I would actually do Anthony Davis. Because I think his 55 games or 56, whatever it ended up being, were really impactful. It wasn't good enough for him to get one of those three LNBA spots, but he was a really important player of the season. So it's almost like special recognition, Kevin Durant, and then Anthony Davis. And then I would have a dishonorable mention,

and I would have Ben Simmons and Kyrie Irving. Dishonorable mention. I would also put that on the record. Would Gobert replace Kyrie before the ballots close go bear is on there too go bear dishonorable mention maybe there should be a dishonorable mention all NBA team the five most disappointing players that would be awesome if they league just said yeah and then we have our first team super bummed you out all season guys that would be so much fun to vote on we don't need a second team. Well, Zion's definitely on that one. Yeah, Zion's definitely on that. I was theorizing, I think it was the house,

that instead of the positionless stuff, I would just, because we talked about it a week ago, that I would have a list of the top 12 players, just the best players of the season, regardless of positions or anything, games played, just who are the top 12 players, just the best players of the season, regardless of positions or anything, games played, just who are the best 12 guys. Because then that's the list you'd have to put Durant on, right? Durant's been one of the best seven guys this season. If he had played 10 more games, he's at least second team all NBA. But because he got that second injury, he doesn't

make it, but he was one of the best players of the season. So that's where the all-NBA kind of goes sideways. You're just smiling like a maniac. No, because we've talked about it a little bit. I'd rather they use that than some of the all-NBA stuff, which is, I think, why the motivation to make a position list despite your historic stance on it, which I would agree with a little bit too. But there's a team in Utah now in Minnesota

that was like, just because this guy was eligible as an all-NBA player, we're going to pay Gobert how much again? So if it becomes a true representation of who the top 15 guys were or your make-believe top 12 that would qualify you for the Supermax, I'm for that. Because I don't think there should be

some kind of drought. It's not going to happen with guards. It could happen with forwards. It's happened with centers. But I know you and KOC talked about, i think you called the podcast or centers having a moment and it's true yeah the center position just feels deeper um and you know some of it's a little stupid too like i don't want to be called the center but you're basically playing center so you know anthony davis you know granted when i do my all NBA, I felt like I was breaking the rules a little bit with it,

but, uh, I, I'd be, I'd be open to it. I mean, it's, it's a clear thing,

but I don't know that I want a whole extra thing that I have to vote on here too. Cause after prepping for this vote, I spent so much time on this thing that I'm like spent, spent. Let's take a break and we'll talk awards. When you ride transit, please be safe. Yeah, be safe.

Because what you do, others will do too. Others will do it too. So don't take shortcuts across tracks. Don't do that. In fact, just don't walk on tracks at all. Not at all. Trains move quietly, so you won't hear them coming. You won't hear them coming. See? Safe riding

sets an example. Yeah, an example for me. Because safety is learned. It's learned. Okay, give it up. Give what up? Really? Really, really. Ugh. This message is brought to you by Metrolinks. Alright, so we're at this point, it's late Sunday afternoon.

We don't have to hand in our votes till tomorrow. And I still have a couple that I'm, I'm confused on. We both have Palo for rookie of the year. So we don't need to talk about that. I do want to commend Jalen, Jalen Williams. I thought he was awesome.

What do you have? Especially second half of the year. He was like 18. I have Kessler third. Who'd you have third? Kessler. Yeah. Edwards.

He's not a rookie. Walker. Then defensive player of the year. I think the hardest ever. Impossible. Jaron Jackson is favored and just completely violates, I don't know, a rule that I value. Like, did you play enough? He didn't even get to 1800 minutes. And I get that he was super impactful in those 1800 minutes, but

man, I think we're really cutting it close. And there was two examples in the past. One was like within the last five years of Gobert, one, I think in 2018 and had around the same games and minutes. I remember specifically not voting for Gobert that year, but I can't get there with Triple J. I'm not going to vote for him. So I'll start there. Are you voting for Triple J as your defensive player of the year?

The block rate is so insane that I was like, wait, is this what I'm doing? Defensive player of the year and the defensive first and second teams, other than MVP, were the hardest things. And in a way, it was even harder. And that's the thing with the ballots.

You kind of have to just finally get to a point with it where you go, hey, it's not perfect, man. It's not perfect. There's not going to be a perfect ballot this year. I went with Mobley. Wow.

I can't tell you how excited I am because I also went with Mobley. No, you didn't. I had him and Draymond Green. I swear to God, I had him and Draymond as my I swear to God, I had him and Draymond as my final two. I ruled out Brooke Lopez because I get it. The stats are amazing.

The eye test, he was awesome. But he's the third best defensive player on his team. I can't get past that. He is not a better defensive player than Drew Holiday and Giannis. And part of what made him so great, and I'm admitting that he was great for what he was supposed to do, he got to play with Drew Holiday and Giannis and part of what made him so great. And I'm admitting that he was great for what he was

supposed to do. He got to play with Drew Holiday and Giannis. And that allows you to just worry about certain things and be really good at them. I couldn't get there with him. And the Triple J thing, just for people listening, 63 games, 28.4 minutes a game, Did not get to 1,800 minutes. Mobley played 930 more minutes than him. Eye test? Well, you make the case, and I'll see if you missed anything. I'll chime in. All right, so I kind of went into every award

with my eye test position, and then I would check the numbers, and I would either have the numbers go like, wait a minute, you might be doing this wrong, or the eye test would fight back and be like, what's the fucking point of sitting on your couch the last six months if you're just going to start sorting all this stuff out there were moments with mobley where i felt like he could do anything he wanted to defensively the

only time that it looked bad was against him bead because physically it just wasn't going to happen you could also if you're a bucks fan counter with like well wait a minute you know he's also got jared allen back there but what i love about moy, and this is kind of back to your Garnett thing, is that it looks like when he switches onto smaller players, he's not giving anything up. And as great as Lopez's stats were, there's a rim differential where Giannis,

like the field goal percentage went down by like 17 percentage points. I don't know if I have that exactly right, but I just know where he was. It was beyond everybody else. So I'm like, so you have Giannis as the low man helper on anything that Brooke is doing while he's also in drop coverage, while

Drew is also ruining pick and rolls if he wants to, or shutting down a guy off the ball if it's a wing. And so it may seem unfair to Brooke when you look at the full contest numbers, like the full contested shot numbers for Brooke Lopez are fucking crazy. Like he's 17 and a half contests a game i saw that all right it's it's like five more than everybody else but it's 16 as as two pointers so if you're gonna

argue hey brooke is this and brooke's all these different. I'm not actually going to tell you they're wrong. I think it kind of circled back to the moments where I felt like Mobley blocked the big guy that was driving at him. Mobley switched onto a smaller guard and shut him off. Mobley came over to help at the rim, leaving his guy with these amazing instincts

and blocking the basketball. I know there's some metrics that favor Mobley too. That wasn't it. It was just all the nights of watching this guy going like, holy shit, rewinding it going. Did he just do that? And yeah, I feel like with the defensive stuff, I kind of went back to eye test a little bit more because a lot of the defensive numbers,

although like a good foundation for it, I wouldn't want that making my decision because I know they can be a little fucked up too. Cleveland had the best defense in the league. That matters. The counter argument for Jaron Jackson is when he came back from his injury, they became the best defense in the league, but well,

he missed those games. We wrote a big feature about Mobley. Jared Allen said to, uh, to the ringer quote, his help side defense. It's not said enough how much that helps our, well, it really is our defense. And I think that's the key point because they have Mitchell

and Garland as their guards and Allen as the rim protector, but what they really need in any switch or whatever, they, somebody who could just guard anybody, right. And any sort of switch pick and roll. And that was the thing that over and over again, there's some good stats with Mobley. He was first in contested three-pointers per game, 3.6. He was third in most contested shots, 11.5, trail just Lopez and Nick Claxton. He was first in defensive wood shares. He was fifth in switching when defending screens and pick and rolls. He was ninth in guarding isolations. He was top 20 field goal percentage at the rim. He played big minutes. He played 35 minutes a game.

He played 2,715 minutes for the season. He was in the lineup all year. And I just thought he was the most important defensive player. If Jaron Jackson had played 10 more games, fine. The way to pick apart the mobile case is the per possession on off. There's some on off stuff and you can get,

you can nick them for. But he kind of had to play backup center for them, which I don't think he's big enough to do. And if you look at the lineups where he got to play with Allen, the stats are really good. And yeah, they dropped

when he had to be the center on these smaller lineups, but they probably should have kind of held the fort. I don't know. I thought he was the most important guy that I saw this year. And that was the top five team. My other guy was Draymond.

And I looked at it and I looked at it because Draymond's the other eye test one, especially when you look at who's on that Golden State team. The fact that they finished five, six games over 500, and he's really the only elite defensive guy they had other than Wiggins, who only played 37 games. So that was the other one I was thinking. And I really battled back and forth, but I just feel like the Warriors, they just weren't good enough defensively to be like, oh, they had the defensive player of the year. And I just couldn't get there. He's won before. So Moe, I don't feel great about it, but I think it's the right pick. It seems like you do

too. Yeah. Wouldn't scream about it. No, I could be wrong. But I went with Jackson second, not just because of the block rate, but some of these awards where you got to go head-to-head with the other guy, that could be when the minutes can be a tiebreaker. But I don't know who could ever do this where you're like, hey, this is consistently my standard every single time.

I think when it's MVP, the minutes thing should matter. When it's all NBA, you got to get a little looser with your rules for it. And for defensive player of the year and the times where I'd watch Mobley going, and not like I'm not watching Jaron Jackson do stuff where I'm like, what the fuck did he just do? That's crazy.

And then maybe, I don't know. I mean, maybe it's a throwaway here, but I put Drew third just because I felt like when Drew had to kind of ruin what you were doing at the point of attack, he did it better than anybody else in the NBA this year, even though Caruso deserves to be mentioned. He'll be all NBA defensive, I think maybe first team for me. I know OG and an OB, you know, we started talking about some of the other wings, but I had a really hard time whittling this.

There were so many awesome candidates for it, but I was kind of surprised towards the end. I was like, you know, I was like, I don't know if I'm getting it right with the Brooke pick because of the other two teammates and the system. So that's what I did. Cleveland gave up 106.9 points a game, which was three points better than everybody else in the league. Golden State gave up 117.3 points a game, which was 22nd out of 30. And that was ultimately why I went with Mobley. I had Drew third as well, but I didn't have Draymond second. I didn't have Jaron Jackson in my top three. As good as he was,

I just think the minutes thing matters. It's not just that he missed a bunch of games, but that he doesn't play a ton of minutes when he plays. And I think that when you know you're only going to play 28 minutes, I think you can play a little bit differently. Now that Adams is out, now that you see him with a bigger minute load, I think it's hard to challenge every single shot to be like, oh, it doesn't matter if I get five fouls, we're deep. They're not deep anymore. And I don't think he's going to be able to play the same way.

I thought he was awesome though. I mean, he definitely, he's way up there. I don't think there was a completely right choice. So I'm with you. Um, let's go to, what'd you do for the clutch award? I, first of all, I couldn't believe I thought I came onto it on the ballot and I was like, oh my God, we're actually voting for that. I gave it to Rich Paul. I just gave it to De'Aaron Fox. The differential?

That one is... They're basically telling you to look at the sortable clutch stats. You know, how could you sort those and go, well, actually, all these stats are bad, but he's my guy. Yeah. Although Kobe probably would have won it. Kobe would have won it like one year shooting 21% on last second shot attempts. Be like, oh, that fucking guy.

So those 21% were great. I can't believe you voted for Mobley. I literally, I was on the phone with multiple friends this weekend being like, I think I'm going to be the only one who votes for Mobley. And I didn't want to talk to you about it because I wanted to save it for the pod. But I was just like,

I actually don't understand why he's not more of like a favorite for it. Cause it's usually goes to the, somebody who's on the team's best defense or the best defense in the league, which I think Cleveland's been. Anyway. All right. MVP time.

Who do you have? You don't want to do coach of the year? Oh, let's do coach of the year. Well, it's Mike Brown. We both have Mike Brown, right? Yeah. Well, did you have the OKC guy second? He still can't pronounce his name.

I'm not saying his name. I'll fuck it up. Dagnall. That's pretty good. Yeah. Good stuff. I need to trust yourself a little bit. I have him second.

Daniel. JJ. Any relation to JJ? I have Daniel as my second coach. My third one is going to shock you and I can't wait to see your face. Shock me? Yep.

I don't think it's going to be Missoula. It's not. It's not Missoula? I have Doc Rivers. Yeah, I'm shocked. Nobody's trashed Doc Rivers more than you have. There's no way he actually likes you despite supposedly working it out. There's no way he likes you.

I think he likes me. You do? I thought he did a good job this year. What is the job of that team. A, I have to inspire and protect Joel Embiid and get him in the right frame of mind night after night to be awesome. Doc's at least a little piece of that. I have to get this new version of James Harden out and really facilitate that and hope that that works out. Well, James Harden, this version of him, I really enjoyed watching. I have to make sure Maxie's cool

with all of this, right? Maxie could be the second best guy in a lot of teams or at least the second best scorer. Are you going to be cool? Well, let me try you off the bench. That doesn't work. You know what?

We're actually going to switch that again. How do I keep you happy? He managed to do it. They've been one of the three best teams really since November. And I thought he did a good job. I say that knowing that in the playoffs, he could completely screw up.

But I thought regular season, I thought he really did a good job. I don't think that's an easy team to coach. That's a team that you can run on. Their transition defense stats are alarming and appalling. And I think that's a reason why if you're going to ding Embiid and the MVP stuff when people do the Jokic room protection thing, I think you have to mention how bad Philly's transition defense is

and how certain teams have just run them off the floor. And it's partly because Embiid and Harden don't really run back. But I think Doc did a good job. So he would be my third pick. I like the pick. I really do because I think they also a good job. So he would be my third pick. I like the pick. I really do because I think they also deserve a lot of credit of going like, you know, all those years of wasting Joel despite the stats where it's like,

can't we make this guy's fucking life easier? Can't we figure out a way to get him to basketball in a better spot? And this, and they did throw a thing. This free throw thing for him is, I'm going to talk about free throw attempts. I'm talking about him positionally off that side pick and roll and just catching it. And if you're not ready for it, he's going to eat all fucking night.

So, yeah. Maybe he's going to be better in the playoffs because there aren't a lot of variations here. Like the McDaniels, they're McDaniels. Jalen, I don't know why he would be playing playoff minutes. People can knock the P.J. Tucker stuff. Hey, when the shot isn't going in, everybody shits on it. But his corner three numbers are pretty good. And I'm sure they're going to want to close the P.J. in playoff games

because they're going to want a guy that's been through some wars and is ready to fight everybody. And then you factor in Maxie. I think the only other decision really is D'Anthony Melton's superior to Milton. Some of the stuff that Milton does defensively, his instincts, the way they'll close out on some players. They have a lot of their role players. I'm like, what the fuck

are you guys doing on defense? Why do you guys close out hard on guys that are non-shooting threats? The getting back on defense would be really interesting because it's not really Embiid's fault. As a guard, you're the one that has to figure that out. And you would think Harden during the playoffs would be like, hey, maybe now I have to get back.

Or the other guard that doesn't shoot if it's Harden's shot, the other guard has to get back. Usually when Harden's the other guard, he's not super interested in doing any of that stuff. But when I look at their rotation and the decisions that Doc's faced with, I would feel like they're somewhat minimal. So that would be less of a chance to be second guess. My pick was Willie Green. We had talked, I know you got a little pissed at me

when we talked about most disappointing storylines. We didn't get to it. So then I used it for my Tuesday open because I'd prepped it all. And then I said to you, my prep was going to go bad. And I don't think you love that response. So I'm sorry. I didn't, I didn't really care. Okay. Well, all right. We didn't hear, I didn't i didn't really care okay well all right we didn't hear i didn't hear from you again for days afterwards i never know so i just that just that the pelicans went from the most disappointing team and then figuring it out again and that's ingram obviously cj and murphy hitting shots as well that they well. That they're back in this. Granted, the loss today kind of sucks.

These were massive, massive emotional swings for a franchise that we all loved in the beginning of the year. Zion pulled his hamstring in January, and we haven't seen him since. They went through this massive blaze. When Ingram came back, they still weren't good. You're like, what? You guys can't be this bad. Again, despite what happened today in game 82,

for them to turn this around, I thought was a big credit to him. It looked like this was going in the other direction a few weeks ago, and they turned it around. I like that. I think that was a good case. All right, what do you have for MVP? Okay, I changed my mind a lot this season.

You know, I think everybody kind of liked the Tatum story, although it didn't seem realistic that he was going to win MVP. Then I felt like Jokic held it down for a couple months. Then there was an Embiid flirtation. And then I was pretty convinced it was going to be Giannis for me for a few weeks. The arguments were like, look, he's still the best player. They ended up getting the one seed, which is pretty remarkable considering Middleton,

when he played in 33 games this year, is the worst he's been in six years. And I wanted to not make it complicated, even though I felt like, as you know, if you've prepped this, if you wanted to do a 20 minute presentation on any of the three guys, your presentation would sound like there was no other option. And that's the problem with this year is you have three great options.

So I went through it all again and the Embiid clutch stuff, not just the metrics, Embiid's the choice. And I thought it was going to be Giannis all week. I have them too.

And I think it's the right choice. And the only thing that annoys me about it is how annoying the Philly infrastructure was with some of the shit they pulled the last two months or two years. It should be more fun to, well, it should be more fun to figure this stuff out and it shouldn't be. If you, if people don't like your choice, then that means you hate their team or their player.

And bead was better this year than it was last year. It's just a fact. He've offensively, I thought was one of the best scoring centers I've ever watched in my life. And I was there, not a lot of TV of 1982 Moses, but he put up 31 a game, which was a fucking shitload back then.

Robinson put up 30 games, Shaq put up 30 a game. But for the most part, this was a historic scoring season. The average 33 a game. And it wasn't the old school overpowering people like Shaq. This was real creative stuff. The stuff that he figured out finally around the free throw line, you can see it from the numbers. His 10 through 16 feet, 43% last year is 51% this year. Last year from 16 plus, 43%. This year%. Like he just, there was slightly better. He was

just felt slightly different, slightly more efficient, slightly more dominant. It's just something was different. And, um, you know, I hate the recency bias piece of it because some of his best games were in the last couple of months. Jokic, like for instance, on Christmas, when he fucking eviscerated the Suns, he was like 45, 20, and 15, whatever. I think we tend to remember the recent ones. But I think when you consider the pressure that that team had,

the fact that it felt like a do-or-die year for them in a lot of ways, the fact that he played the most games that he's played, and he was playing 35 minutes a game with a lot of ways. The fact that he played the most games that he's played and he was playing 35 minutes a game with a lot of stuff running through him.

He's a good defensive player. And I think it's the right choice. And I said this to House a few days ago. Like, if I look at these last five years, Giannis having two and Jokic having two

and Embiid having one, kind of feels right for the last five. I hate bringing past years into the MVP, but if Jokic wasn't like, oh my God, he's 100% the MVP again, it's really hard to vote. Three in a row is sacred.

I really have to feel like, oh my God, you were definitely 100% the MVP. I thought Embiid was just a whiff better. I thought defensive player of the year was harder, to be honest. I thought by the time we got to the end of the year, especially because it felt like Jokic and Denver punted on this stuff and didn't seem like they cared, which is

fine, but it made the decision easier. Jokic in Denver, he cost himself this one. He did. I think he did. They could say, well, it doesn't matter as much as him. Okay, no shit. Congrats on not caring about this stuff as much.

At one point, they were 46-19, and they closed their last 17 games 7-10. I know Jokic didn't play in a couple of those. The recency bias thing is impossible to ignore. I try to go month to month. The historic part of it, I ignore it,

but it's impossible for the 100 voters. I'm telling you I ignore it, but I still think last year, Giannis probably would have won last year if he had never won before. And I voted him second. Last year, didn't have the heart of time with this so the only hesitation like you would hear in my voice is that it just was really hard this was really fucking hard and that's why i think anybody that has a vote that catches shit from any of the fan bases you're like you know i don't to hear it. You're just arguing your guy and being completely dismissive. So for me to build the case for Embiid,

I don't really even want to shit on the other two guys because there's not really much to pick from. Denver limped to the finish line. Maybe that's because of their own standings thing, but that's what happened.

If Jokic wanted to, there was a game the other night where he took like three shots. I was like, wait, is he going to try to go for the season triple-d double and even care about that um and yannis like there's some on off stuff you know some of the advanced stuff he doesn't hold up against the other guys that's not everything the clutch stuff was really weird and mb was

incredible in it i mean yannis is the better defender i think the mb stuff at the rim is great i think some of the other stuff on the perimeter, it can actually be a weakness for them depending on his mood that night. And Jokic is asked to cover a lot more ground, but clearly he's not even close to the defensive presence, especially around the rim, despite what some of the numbers

have for him. But I feel good about it, but the only part of it is that it was really... I don't know if you agree i felt it was so hard it was so hard to go hey so anybody's like oh no you guys are idiots like mb it was a slam dunk it wasn't it wasn't for me well none of the guys got to 70 games which we you know this is i cost and i cover this on thursday but this is one of the rare seasons where you know the durability piece you had to almost

throw out was the main reason Jokic won a couple of years ago. Um, you know, it's the Yana season. He missed 19 games, right? I don't feel like it was the best Yana season just in general. I think for whatever reason, like even that, that shooting range thing I mentioned before, outside of three feet, he's shooting 35% just in all categories, four feet and on. And the eye test kind of backs it up. He doesn't seem as automatic in those spots. I always liked him in that 10 to 16 foot range and he hasn't been the same guy in that spot. I don't feel like this was a special Giannis season by any stretch. And it goes back to the MVP, that thing where I had the four rules for the MVP that I've been doing since my ESPN.com

column in like 04. And one of them was, who's the first guy you're going to think of when you think of the regular season, right? Because this is a regular season award. Who's the first guy you're going to think of? And for me, it would be Embiid. Because when you think about his backstory, and I remember watching him work out in 2014 and coming out of the workout and being like, and I wrote about it, like this guy has to be the number one pick. I'm like, this is ridiculous.

Then he gets hurt. And then the process and comes back, the Kawhi shot breaks his face in that other playoff series. The Ben Simmons thing just completely flames out. There were so many ways this could have gone wrong. And for him to hit the point that he hit this year as a basketball player, I thought it was really meaningful.

So I feel good about voting for him for MVP. Yeah, I do too. I think it's the right pick. It was really tough. Other years, it's easier. This one was really tough because I felt like with Giannis, but I would never use like the head to head. But when Milwaukee beat him not that long ago,

and that's why like doc annoyed me a little bit being like, Hey, this thing's over. It's over. It's like, so wait tonight against Boston counts. But two days ago against Milwaukee doesn't fucking count. Like, cause when I watched that game against Philadelphia, I'm like, why the fuck would you vote for anybody else? Vote for that guy.

Vote for Giannis. Like what the fuck's wrong with you? And I'm like, wait, it's just vote for anybody else? Vote for that guy. Vote for Giannis. What the fuck's wrong with you? And I'm like, wait, it's just one game. He skipped the Denver game. I didn't like that he skipped the Denver game either. He kind of rested on the kicking Denver's ass that other game. It's like, all right, I'm going to just bank that one. I'll skip

the other one because I've already won that matchup. But whatever. These guys were razor thin. Yeah, and the same reason I wouldn't look at an Embiid domination against Jokic and go like, oh, okay, the award's over. It's like, man, this is fucking 60-plus games this year. I mean, Giannis only missed three less games than Embiid did, so that wasn't a differentiator.

If Embiid was a six or seven seed here and Milwaukee was the one seed, then that would have changed it. But the standings were close enough, just like the standings or at least overall record was close enough last year. And I think Jokic got a bump because the team around him last season completely fell apart. And if you go supporting cast, like even with the Middleton part of it, you know, you still got Brooke, you still got Drew. And I, you know, look, I just kept going around and around and around on this thing. And I just felt like it's not the best player award it's it's who was the best this season and that's why I feel good about the vote for Embiid despite the struggle of getting there

I have Jokic second Giannis third I have Tatum fourth and um I think I have SGA fifth. Yeah, I do. I have SGA fifth because, and here's the case for SGA. On top of the fact that he did 31 points a game, he played, he was excellent defensively. I think he was, in other years, he was a borderline second team all defense guy. OKC, fifth through eight total minutes. I'm just was, in other years, he was a borderline second team all defense guy. OKC, fifth through eight

total minutes. I'm just going to give you the names. These were the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth total minutes for this season.

Isaiah Joe, Wiggins, Kenrick Williams, Mann. Those were five through eight for-8 Trey Mann their leading rebounders were Giddy at 7.9 and Williams at 4.8

they were 30th in opposing rebounds they were the worst team in the league for stopping the other team from getting rebounds but they were first in turnovers whatever they created he had to be good for it to work. They finished 40-42, which I think is like a miracle. Not having Chet on a team that was kind of built around Chet.

Then they lose Poku too. They lose any size they have at all. They trade Mascala. They have no centers. I just thought the clutch stuff was crazy with him. I thought he had a real swagger to him. And I just thought he was... I ended up putting him over Fox and Sabonis

because I thought he had a harder job. So there you go. I went Embiid, one, Giannis, two, Jokic, three. I went Tatum, four, because it was all said and done. He was the best player on the team that was a game out. Granted, Milwaukee lost and made it handle things differently down the stretch, but that Washington loss, that Nets loss, now you're thinking, how's that going to go?

But I have SGA fifth. So we have the same five. Tatum for Giannis was, I think, way closer for me than it was for you. Yeah, it clearly was. Um, I had Giannis over Tatum, but I do think Tatum,

there's a 10 game stretch of March that if he had played well and his stats were a little better, you could have really made the case just because it's just every stat backs him up. Every advanced stat, um, all the, you name it, the minutes that he played, I mean, he played 37.2

minutes a game. He really had a real load to them in the tone that he set and the fact that he was so good. But he'll get there at some point. He's the first team all-NBA guy for the Celtics since KG and really had a really special season. So to me, 25 years old, you're fourth in MVP. That's pretty good. All right, so first team all-NBA, I had Embiid, Giannis, Tatum, SGA, and Mitchell. Yeah, I have the same thing. Mitchell had an awesome stat season.

It's really good. But 48-38-87 splits for him. And I think he was just so important, too. So important. Swagger-wise. Yeah. It was tough between that and Luka. It really was.

Because then I was like, it's not like I'm voting Luka MVP here. The stats are incredible. I couldn't do it. The way Dallas finished the season, I could not put him on first team and you know my feeling about losing records in all NBA like you really have to have a special season for me to even consider you

SGA did not have a winning season but you know the records were fucked up this year they made the playing game whatever Luka had no way he was going on my first team I put him second team I cheated a little bit though I have him at forward I put Jokic, Jimmy Butler and Luka, no way he was going on my first team. I put him second team. I cheated a little bit though. I have him at forward. I put Jokic, Jimmy Butler, and Luka as my forwards

because I think Luka's a fucking forward. I don't care that he dribbles the ball up and the offense runs through him. He's a big doughy guy who doesn't guard guards in the other team. Jokic brings the ball up for Denver and we consider him a center. To me, Luka's a forward.

It's stupid anyway. Then I had De'Aaron Fox and Drew Holiday as my second team guards. I'm probably shooting a team high on Drew and I don't care. People can fuck off. I have Luka second. I have Fox second team. Butler,

when you look at the Butler stuff, two years ago when he was a third team argument, I ended up going with them, but I went, man, it's like, it feels a little cheating because he played less games. And so a lot of the metrics were awesome,

but I'm, but now he, this year he played a lot and they were even better. I mean, the one thing with Butler, whether it's Atlanta or whoever gets Miami in the playoff series, like you have to tell your defenders to be more disciplined on his up fake shit around the rim because he gets the call all the time.

Look at his free throw rate this year. So that led to a big spike in his efficiency, and he shot it from three, even though he doesn't shoot it very often. He shot it better than he generally has in the past. He had almost nine free throws a game almost this year. 53% shooting. His clutch numbers are great. He was really good, and I didn almost this year. 53% shooting. His clutch numbers were great. He was really good, and I didn't think that team was very good.

No, they weren't. So he was a no-brainer. The only cheating I did here is I put Anthony Davis second team forward. I put Jokic center. Interesting. I mean, to me, that's not nearly as bad. Luka doesn't play forward. He's not a guard.

He sure looks like a guard. What guard does he guard? Would you have him guarding Drew Holiday? I wouldn't have him guarding Doc Holiday, okay, if I could get away with it. But he doesn't guard guards. Here's why I put him at forward because I knew I wanted to have a Nick.

And unless Luca was at forward, I had to pick Julius Randle over Brunson. And I just think Brunson was the most important Nick this year. I actually don't even think it's really an argument. And putting Luca at forward allowed me to put Brunson in at 13 guard, which is really what I cared about and not have Randall. I know Randall stats are great.

I know he's had some good games, but he's not, not totally my type of guy. I respected the season, but if I have a choice with him and Brunson, I'd rather reward Brunson. The clutch stuff with Brunson was nuts. The way that he changed the demeanor of that team

was really special like he that was a really fucked up franchise that especially end of games and he just

he just something about what he did for them I almost don't even think you can put in stats so I had for third team I had Sabonis I had Jalen Brown I have Leonis. I had Jalen Brown.

I have LeBron James. I have Jalen Brunson. I have Steph Curry. All right. Yeah, we got some difference. Yeah, I figured. The third team was hard. So we both have Steph.

We both have Jalen Brown. We both have Sabonis. Sabonis is the layup on this one. Yeah, the Jalen stuff, his metrics are bad. He didn't get to the free throw line enough and turns it over too much. But if you think about how long the list has to be of guys, hey, we need a bucket right now,

the list is not that long before you get to Jalen Brown. That's just how good he was, especially when everybody else sucked. And Tatum had some big counting stretches there for a few weeks. Jalen was kind of the guy. So it's still the second best team in the NBA. I have no problem with putting Jalen down on there. This is where you're probably going to push back a little bit. I felt like a guard at this point. Wait, can we hold on Jalen for one second? Yeah, sure. Because there's some

on-off stuff with him that I think is the way you ding it if you're saying like, no, no, he actually was an Omba. Look at the on-off metrics, all that stuff. First of all, their bench was awesome. And that's always going to skew the on-off metrics the same way. Denver's bench was not good. So Jokic looks even better when he's on-off. I just think Boston was the second-best team in the league. And the biggest reason was because of those two guys. And if Tatum didn't have it one night,

Brown always had a way of stepping up. The two guys together were the Celtics and then the role players. But every team they had to play, it was a huge game for the other team. And you got to carry that for six months. And those two guys were the ones that carried it. They got a pretty crappy Marcus Smart season.

And I think the fact that White was able to step up really helped them. But Rob didn't play really at all. They couldn't count on him the whole year. Horford, they started really being careful with the last two months of the season, but Brown and Tatum were the constants. And I really think it's important with the All-NBA to have the two guys from the two best teams if you can do it. That's why I wanted Holiday and Jalen. All right. So what was your third team guard that we disagreed on? Dame. Yep. Okay.

I didn't love it. I'm not against it. But the team sat him down. And his offensive season is incredible. And since the team's the one that shut him down, I felt like I was dinging something really special by not putting him on third team. That's where the Brunson part of this kind of sucked. then i didn't know what to do with randall and then my last forward spot i went with larry marketing uh because that team wanted them to lose towards the

end and we're sitting him down he was so fucking good this year man he's my most improved player too over shea just because i feel like with larry i wasn't sure what it was going to be hey nice player make some threes you knowrees, good size, whatever. Now it's like, holy shit, this guy's going to be a max dude and was the go-to guy on a team that was exceeding expectations for, what, 80% of the season? Once Utah tried to recalculate what their expectations were here for the rest of it.

So third team, this is, So, you know, third team. Now, this is, again, where you have some standards. You're way more married to the one loss record thing than I am when it comes to the third team stuff. I just think, I personally think it's... I'm surprised you went LeBron. Well, first of all, he was really good when he had the right people around him. He got to my 55 game limit and I just felt like

he's one of the best forwards in the league, right? KD was the one I had the biggest struggle with. I was like, do I actually break all my rules and put it, is it his fault that he got hurt twice? But 47 is just not enough. The Dame thing,

he only played 58 games. I just feel like most of the games that he got hurt twice? But 47 is just not enough. The Dame thing, he only played 58 games. I just feel like most of the games that he played didn't really matter. That wasn't a good team. I think this was reminding me of the Beal Wizard season when Beal got 30 a game. And it was like, that team was never good. And if you are a really good scorer

and you want to score a lot of points on a team that's going nowhere, you can do it. He had 71 against the Rockets. It's 60 against Utah. I just couldn't get there with it. I think if he had played 65, 66, maybe I'd start thinking about it, but I don't know. That team's going to finish 33 and 49. So I couldn't get there. I just felt like there were better choices. The shocker for me was how easily I just knocked Ja off the team. Ja was, I think, first team on NBA

before all his stuff went down. He ended up only playing 60 games. And I didn't really consider him. I thought Dame was the hardest out of all of these. And maybe Randall, but I just couldn't get there with Randall. Yeah, I can't believe,

even when Ja was coming back, I was like, well, what are you going to do here? But the guard thing got really crowded, man. I don't feel good about leaving Brunson off. The Drew part of it. You're giving him a massive bump for the All-NBA

and maybe you're right about that. I didn't really jive at our time with. I know some people probably floated the Kawhi stuff out there as well. That wasn't that hard for me to leave him off personally. I actually thought for me the second team Drew is

surprisingly easy. I know I'm, I'm a huge fan of his, I get it, but I just love watching that dude play defense. I feel like when a, when a guard has a big game against them and Drew's trying to shut the guy down and the guy's putting up points anyway,

I, you almost like have to rank the game higher for the guy who did that. I'm just always so impressed by all this stuff. Drew does. I feel like he so impressed by all the stuff Drew does. I feel like he's the big kahuna right now. Like if you're a guard and you're going against him, you better fucking bring it, you know? And offensively, I really liked the stuff he did this year.

I thought he had an excellent season. All the metrics were great with him. He played enough games. And to me, that was a pretty easy one. The crazy one for me is fox who you know i know we knew this was coming but just what a what a turnaround from a guy 18 months ago i thought like what is this guy is this i think we had him on worst contracts maybe or maybe on the you did i did i don't know for i just never could get there with him, but he flipped it.

Six man? Oh, six man. Yeah, we didn't talk about that one. I think it has to be Brogdon. And people are like, oh, of course you do. You're a Celtics fan. Brogdon's better than quickly. Brogdon came off the bench every game.

And the quickly stats of quickly off the bench versus when quickly started and played 40 minutes are just completely different. Like quickly as a reserve guy was like 12 points a game. Brogdon is the biggest reason if you're going to say, can the Celtics actually win the title this year? You would say Brogdon and Derek White, the two of those guys together are the biggest thing that's different from last year. Brogdon and Derek White, the two of those guys together, are the biggest thing that's different from last year. Brogdon will absolutely win playoff games in each series for them because he's that good. He's really, really, really good at basketball. And Quickly had some great games, and I get it. It's a New York hype machine.

I had him second, but you just can't tell me he's a better player than Brogdon. He's not. I went with Quickly. Okay. I get player than brogdon he's not i went with quickly okay i get it uh brogdon shot it better the metrics are better for him and if you're a stickler about the zero starts versus 20 starts for quickly but quickly i'll also play what 13 more games and maybe there's one game i'm out of here because i did some of the stuff by mapping it out, I could be missing a game. I felt like quickly had to carry that fucking team offensively at times in a way. Like, I don't know if the Celtics was nice when Brogdon had really nice

nights and he is really good. And think about like the hesitation on the Brogdon transaction. You're like, man, this guy's injury history. Like, what's going to happen when you see him every night every night and like, oh, he got to the rim again. He just gets to the rim and he finishes and he shoots it and he moves the basketball and he defends. All of these things are really good. Quickly, because of certain things that were happening with the Knicks,

he had to have those moments and carry that team. And so I felt like, wait, why am I dinging quickly when he was dependent on more and had a start in the spots where Brunson was hurt? I'm just not married to that. You have to you have to come off the bench for a certain number of games. I granted have quickly started 60 of the games is a different conversation. I don't know what that line is that would make me then look at him as somebody who started too many games to be eligible for this. But I just loved the biggest moments from

quickly, and sure, if he started, he started, but I think he was just asked to do a lot more. He had to because the Celtics had so many other good players. It's very fair. I didn't think it was an easy choice. Brogdon's defense is the other thing that I loved with him. I was just so impressed with his flexibility

in that. Alright, so we disagree on that. Who'd you have third in that, by the way? Portis. I had Monk. I actually was surprised he wasn't in more of the conversations. He was like 15 a game off the bench for them and single-handedly swung

I don't know, five games for them? And just when he has it, it was such a huge asset. I liked what he did. Some people had Norm Powell. I liked what he did. Some people had Norm Powell. I didn't really see that one. All right. No, Nas, I had fit for MVP. Then he got hurt. All right. We'll wrap it up. That's it. We made it two hours. Kyle's got to edit this and put it up. When is your next podcast uh Tuesday great uh

I encourage you to watch Succession tonight it's an important episode and that's it for this podcast that sucks we can't we can't

I'm sorry I'm talking over you but we can't talk Succession huh we next week we can how about that next week

alright thanks to Kyle Creighton Steve Cerruti for producing uh I'm on the Prestige TV podcast with Fantasy and Joanna breaking down that Succession episode later tonight. I will see you then. ......... I don't have feelings within on the wayside

I'm a person I never was I don't have feelings