The Bill Simmons Podcast - Kawhi Kills Philly, No KD, No Problem, Houston's Curse, and Throne Game With Ryen Russillo | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to sum up Round 2 of the NBA playoffs. They talk Raptors-76ers, Kawhi's awesome shot, Embiid's minutes, what the 76ers will look like next year, and more. They discuss Nuggets–Trail Blazers, CJ McCollum's big night, and players Denver might attract next season. They recap Rockets-Warriors, another tough break for Harden, the Warriors without KD, and more (2:25). Then they answer some mailbag questions (1:19:30) before revisiting Throne Game [SPOILERS] for 'Game of Thrones' Season 8, Episode 5 (1:37:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's special Mother's Day, Holy Mother edition, the BS Podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network brought to you by DAZN, where you can stream over 105 nights a year without the pain of pay-per-view. I just did this. I watched some Bellator on Saturday night, watched Pitbull avenge his brother's loss. Mr. 305? No, it was another Pitbull. It was a different Pitbull.

Came out to the ring to the sounds of pitbulls barking i knew at that point i had wished i had bet on it but anyway i watched that on the zone everything live on demand getting set up is easy download the zone app available on nearly any of your devices including smart tvs tables phones tablets or tables it's not available on tables phones and gaming consoles go to DAZN.com to sign up. DAZN also brought to you by Bud Light. They're keeping it real by putting an ingredients label on their packaging. Brewed with hops,

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so many people to choose from. What a podcast is going to be. Let's go with Kawhi Leonard. He took 39 shots and I approved of all of them. We're going to be talking about him and two incredible Game 7s in a second. Cheers to Bud Light, reminding you to enjoy responsibly and keep it real. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com, the world's greatest website, as well as The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find Binge Mode,

our Game of Thrones recap pod. You can listen to The Watch here, Indy Greenwald and Chris Ryan, down Thrones. We're going to be doing Throne Game a little bit later, me and Ryan Rosillo. You can listen to Duel Threat with Ryan Rosillo, which is off for a couple of weeks, but he's going to be on my pod later this week. We're going to be doing some lottery stuff as well. Some live lottery stuff. Yeah. Can't wait. You excited? Yep. I feel like I'm way more excited for the lottery than you are, though. Like way more. I just ease in everything.

When it's time to turn it on, I turn it on. You turn it on. That's my life. Like somebody else will be talking today. Yeah. Not basketball. Mr. Red Light over here. Yeah, there you go. I can't wait for this podcast.

This is a good one. Happy birthday, Joe House. Turned 50 today. I think he's been drunk all weekend. Shout out to him. He was on all the pods last week. Coming up, Ryan Rosillo. First, our friends from Pro Jam.

All right, where do we begin? I thought Friday night, I thought to myself, wow, I mean, Rockets, Warriors, no matter what happens Sunday, I'm sure that'll be the lead topic. It still could be, but it isn't. No, it isn't. Hawaii hit the greatest buzzer beater I've ever seen. Not as much of like the stakes.

Wait a minute. You think it's the bestater I've ever seen. Not as much of like the stakes. Wait a minute. You think it's the best unit you've ever seen? In just the actual shot, what happened. I've never seen a shot in the game where the ball took two seconds to go in. Where it hit the front of the rim. It's like, oh, that's not going in. Then it bounced up. It's like, oh, this will be fun.

Then it's like, wait. And then it hit like three more parts of the room and went in. And he's right in front of the bench. Everybody jumps on him. And Bede starts crying. Gasol's cheering. But then he's consoling a Bede. What an incredible two minutes.

Wow. Wow. And it started off. It looked like it was going to be the worst game. I mean, granted, game sevens, that stuff happens. Wasn't it like 6-6 with four minutes to go in the first the first yeah game sevens are usually rock fights so a lot of a lot of nerves with the kawaii part of it when we had heard uh harlan say he's taking 30 shots we both looked at each other and went wait he's taking 30 yeah we watched the whole game and you had the box

score in front of you and neither of us realized he was at 30 shots after three quarters yeah but it made sense because everyone on his team was afraid to shoot basically and that's my favorite thing about today in general just seeing guys who just don't want to do it and there's guys that put up numbers in these games but you can still see that they're uncomfortable siakam was uncomfortable lowry sphincters lowry there was a swing where lowry was opening through it you know and the thing is you can say oh well so-and-so hit this shot or whatever I I would just I just know what I've watched in these games yeah and there are guys that wanted nothing to do with it and then Philly you know Toronto's up at the half and then Toronto has that nice 9-1

carryover run into the second and then Philly goes on this run but Kawhi was they just doubled triple team there was one play where he was trying to get a shot off with four guys in the paint against him because Kawhi kind of knew I think it's I think it is going to be me I think this is why I'm going to take almost 40 shots in this game so he goes 16 for 39 and they needed all 16 he had Siakam who we were laughing in the third quarter look he had a great season it happens game. Game seven. A lot of nerves. Yeah. He was hot potatoing to the level of Chris Weber

in the 2002 playoffs. Like, that ball was going to him. He was getting rid of it within 1.2 seconds. We were arguing during the fourth quarter should take him out for Danny Green.

I guess that needed his defense. So he was scared to shoot. Gasol just couldn't make a shot. They weren't posting him up. Ibaka was feeling it. He kind of kept him in a shot they weren't posting him up abaca was feeling it he kind of kept them in a little bit abaca's kind of the secondary hero to this whole thing because if they don't have this game from abaca they're they're they i mean they'll thank god for abaca if you're a raptors fan because he was incredible he hit that one three where he looked

like durant yeah left to right the durant fall away yeah he it it was a Jeff Green game seven last year type of, you need a guy like that when everybody else on your team. Jeff Green's the first guy I think of. Yeah, that's your guy. Lowry, it's not like he was scared, but he just, he couldn't get it going offensively. But he was doing, you know, a really good Rich Man's Marcus Smart impersonation

that whole game. But the bottom line is Kawhi was the only guy who could create a shot in their team. And this is, you mentioned the game seven. My favorite thing about the game seven is you really find out who you are. You know, you have somebody who have an off night. Like I'm still a Jamal Murray believer.

I just think that's who he is. He's going to have really good games and he's going to be off in some other games. I don't think like the moment overcame him. He's done that all years, but up and down. There's other guys, like you start looking around the bench and you might have five guys, you might have six, hopefully you have seven, but you kind of know who you can't play. In Portland, in the first game, they're looking around, they're like, Stotts is like, Evan Turner, you don't look that scared. Feel like running our offense? You know, and with Philly they basically

had five guys we were going nuts and Bede was at 33 minutes through three quarters and we were like this is not sustainable and then he never benched him never took him out sometimes you know he'll take him out he'll leave him in at the start of the fourth he'll take him out and then he'll put him back in and he didn't do that

and the Sixer fans are like what else are we going to do? Well, here's the thing. Monroe was minus nine in two minutes. It's like, that's fine. But you knew all season you didn't have a backup center for game seven of

this kind of series on the road. Play Ben Simmons at center, like stagger their minutes. He never wants to split up Simmons and Embiid. I don't, I'll never understand that. The problem with the Embiid, I'm the last guy to freak out about the

minutes the guys have never had more rest you have plenty of time off during the playoffs but mbd is somebody who's always tired in regular season games yeah we went through it i mean he's averaging 33 34 minutes he had like 240 minute plus games not that long ago but we're still talking about somebody that had to do some maintenance with a knee injury and then all the other ailments that he had. Yeah, he's had five injuries during the, or ailments. So when Embiid offensively isn't in the post, which he never was late in this game,

there's a diminishing return on the minutes. Yes, I understand you can't put Greg Monroe in there or what else are we supposed to do? There has to be a minute point with Embiid who never seems like he's in shape enough. And maybe that's just being a guy his size that you have to know the minutes he's playing despite not wanting somebody else to play those minutes are no longer good minutes for you yeah then it's like the Pedro he can't box anybody out there was multiple possessions there where Embiid just couldn't

even there was one specific one where Ibaka ended up getting it Embiid didn't even jump for the rebound because he just was spent that was with like a minute left yeah how many how many offensive rebounds did the raptors have in the fourth quarter like seven chance points it was it was a dramatic difference and you're watching him beat who normally like even when he's not shooting it well he's changing everything around the rim i love him beat okay this is not this is not you and i doing anti no this is bad game plan this is no plan or just hoping all of a sudden what he's spry playing 45 minutes because 45 minutes in that game is different than 45 minutes against no it's like the the nets in in february what was the pedro thing though well it reminded me of pedro near post pedro apex in the 03 range when it was like, yeah, you don't want to have 140 pitches from Pedro.

There's going to be diminishing returns at some point. You want him to be around 100, 105. I think Embiid, the sweet spot for him this season, is like 32 to 36 minutes, depending on how he's playing. To go into that, come out of that third quarter and he's at 33, you just know it's going to happen. Yeah, if you want to play him 42 or whatever, but how could you have not been like hey let's figure out a way to

get you this this rest and i don't know that that would have changed anything because the game kind of played out for philly the way i thought it would play out they had three possessions that weren't technically shot clock violations this is in the last three minutes so are you good with going here right now yeah yeah well just the bre's just the Brett Brown thing fell apart. Yeah. What's the knock on Brett? Everybody likes him. Feels like he deserved the extension because of what he put up with, with all those terrible teams. And I get that.

But late game situation, I don't understand this team. And Sixers fans, you know we're telling the truth because you feel the same way. To have three possessions in a row, and they weren't technically shot clock violations, only one was, but the other two basically were. One was out of a timeout i would say the the three they tried to get for reddick was awesome raptors defense i mean they were all good raptors defense yeah but i mean teams play good defense and they don't get three shot clock violations in a row in major possessions when it's game seven of the playoffs so i am a big it used to be you have to have a point guard

in these kind of game sevens when it slows down. Now it's like the way basketball has changed. You need a playmaker at the end of the game who can create a shot for him or somebody else. And it's a good shot. So it doesn't really matter if it's a point guard. It could be Kawhi Leonard. It could be Durant. The Warriors have Durant. They have Curry, even Draymond Green in certain situations. The Rockets have Harden or Chris Paul. What I saw from the Sixers, it was basically like, hey, Jimmy, you're going to have to run this, which is fine when it's March, when it's early April,

when it's like game two of a series. But when you're talking about game seven with all the pressure that's in there, I'm sorry, but it's not going to be Ben Simmons. And you can tell us all the time ben simmons is a point guard is a point guard he's a b he's like but it's like this is why he's not a point guard because in game seven how many shots four five four and i actually liked how he played in this game but in the fourth quarter you can't really play him early on you're going wait a minute

is he he's frisky because he posted up a couple times the game was a mess but he would get switches he got switched onto van vliet one time and then passed it out yeah and you go dude they're not sending a double and lowry another time doing lowry and then he had a nice finish over lower he kind of like turned right shoulder and threw it up off the glass and you're thinking okay it looks like he's pressing it looks like i mean in a good way like he's he's pressing he's got he's playing with some momentum some some aggression and then you go oh here we go all right we're doing this again i brett brown had a comment i texted to you after i don't know if it was game six you know it was probably yeah it was probably like everybody's happy again

yeah and and brett brown no i don't have anything against him i just i don't know if he's going to be there next year i don't think anybody around the league thinks they're going to be there when they get out of the second round but i said you know we took ben simmons and we took a four man in college and turned to an nba point guard and i i listened to that and go did you what are you talking about did you he's literally the same guy yeah he didn't turn him into anything no i uh i with about eight minutes left i think i tweeted i thought toronto was going to win unless Butler just had one of those six, seven runs. You were kind of funny in this game. Your pendulum of what you wanted to have happen.

Yeah, initially, I was just rooting for an awesome game. And then I found myself rooting for Philly because- Yeah, that was a weird stretch for you. Yeah, there was like a quarter and a half I'm rooting for Philly because I was like, Philly, Milwaukee would just be more fun. Just having this weird Philly team in our life for two more weeks that'll be great and then when they took the lead it dawned on me how annoying and insufferable the Philly fans

were going to be if they got out of this series yeah we told you Simmons the point guard yeah and I was just like you know what I'm ready for Toronto and then by the fourth quarter I was like I hope they Phillyilly loses the most devastating. Because then the Philly special Super Bowl stuff started coming back. I'm like, I hope they have a devastating loss. And it turned out it was one of the most devastating basketball losses we've had. I mean, watching that shot roll around, I actually felt bad. I felt bad for the Sixers.

I hate the Sixers. We both love Embiid, though, right? We love Embiid. Despite the critiques and some of the stuff here and there I actually I like right obviously like JJ Redick he has a podcast on the ringer I like watching Tobias Harris are you gonna do a sit down with Redick you need to do that yeah no I like the Sixers players no they're the Sixers Celtics rivalry we've had it for 40 years and then the Eagles passing so anyway, that was a brutal loss.

And there were tears after, apparently from Simmons, from Embiid. JJ was getting choked up. And I get it because I felt like if they'd gotten overtime, what is Kawhi going to take? 47 shots? Like at some point it would have-

Wait, you think Philly was going to win that? Because I didn't love anything they did. So to me, five minutes is just extended crunch time. And Butler, like this, Phies were going to win the game. I could tell what was going to happen. I go, Butler's going to look around and be like, Embiid's exhausted. He sets up too far away from the hoop

and he takes too long to get into his offense. As great as he is. You're talking about overtime? Right. So if it went to overtime, Simmons wasn't going to do anything. Tobias is going to take all the scraps of the ball rolled to him by accident.

JJ's maybe going to get one call for him. And Toronto, again, on that one where they used Butler as the decoy and then got it to JJ curling around the top. Toronto defended that extremely well. Couldn't have done a better job.

But Butler was going to decide that game offensively for Philadelphia. And I don't know if those shots are going in or not. I mean, he's not a great three-point shooter. He wasn't good today.

He was 1-6, 5-14 overall. But I'm just sitting there with you going, and I said it. I go, this game, if Philly wins, it's going to be because Butler hits two ridiculous threes. And they didn't go in. So here's why I think in overtime they have a better chance.

Because Embiid's not playing 50 minutes. Yeah, with Embiid thing, at that point, he's limping around anyway. But the Kawhi thing. He yells out, can we just run half? Can you call another timeout? The Kawhi thing. He yells out, can we just run half? Can you call another timeout? The Kawhi thing was not sustainable. You get over 40 shots, and also he was playing like crazy defense on the other end. I think it was more realistic that he gets tired and takes the Raptors with him than whatever scenario you want to give me for the Sixers.

Like, all right, Embiid's tired. Great. I have two other guys. Like, Tobias Harris can at least create his own shot. Who's doing on toronto like at some point in that time it was gonna be kyle larry it was either abaca taking the possession after kawai couldn't do anything with it but i mean we can say that the shot kawai hit i don't know how many times we've already watched and some of the stills that i've seen from it andid did a fantastic job contesting. He did. Tired Embiid. You got four seconds.

It can only touch, like, don't get cute. Don't do some decoy handoff thing unless it would like you're down three and you're trying to get something from three. But for him to catch it and go all the way to the right, and he had Simmons and Embiid. It was Simmons trailing the play. And Embiid got a great contest on that.

And he's seven foot three. And I mean, Nick nick nurse who is pretty pretty shaky in this game seven but had siakam give me the i'm not sure that i disagree yet but i'm i'm what what was he so shaky about i just having siakam out there with four seconds left what is he gonna do it's the ball's going to kawaii anyway give him some space i'm not guarding pascal siakam in the last four seconds of a game yeah he was done with danny green he remember i don't know what danny green did we go 30 minutes and then it was like no we got to get him out of there i don't know if we go back and watch but danny green has been in more big games than anybody else in that game i absolutely would

have had him out there for that more than even kawaii basing but is he really going to take a shot i don't know. Probably not. I thought Nick Nurse, there's some weirdness going on. They needed a timeout when it looked like they were going to put the game away. And then all of a sudden, Philly had that late run. And they kind of let some stuff happen that I wasn't crazy about. But Kawhi was magnificent. And the two big picture themes coming out.

I think we both agree Brett Brown is out. We've only heard it all year long yeah i think he had to make the finals to save his job and he did not so the two big picture themes are what happens to this philly team reddick butler and harris are all free agents and then on the other side did this change the narrative for kawai can we start with kawaii yeah i'm gonna throw you my theory okay on the outside media talk shows maybe other teams that aren't as connected to the player that we're all talking about we completely overrate all of this emotional up and down shit and the outcomes that somehow kawaii who we've all heard this is not his first choice to stay in toronto that the shot goes down and all of a sudden he's going, you know what? I like it here.

These players, my bet would be these players are pretty much decided on what they want to do. And I don't think there's any outcome that makes Kawhi stay in a place that wasn't his number one option. Can I have a counter? Yes yes because you are the counter that was easily easily the greatest moment in the history of the raptors franchise no doubt their their number one moment probably before that was vince carter almost beating ai in a game seven i think was your number one raptors moment ever that's why this is even nastier like there's a weird there's a nasty tweet out there that I wasn't going to do that's like, this is only going to make it hurt that much more

when he's a Clipper. Could they beat Milwaukee, though? Who do you think Milwaukee wanted to play? If I was Milwaukee, I'd rather play Philly. I've always thought Toronto was the best team. Now, I picked Toronto to come out of the East, but I don't deserve credit for it because I just wanted to do something different

than everybody saying Golden State-Boston. So I'm actually, this is how gracious i am i'm not asking for credit yeah um i picked him to win game seven so i you know i just thought that they were the better team the game five scenario was tough for me to think philly was going on the road i mean i just sort of like the home teams and we'll get to denver a little bit later but i think if toronto had played all their guys they would be the one seed. They almost kept pace with Milwaukee all season long, and one team went full throttle the whole season, and the other one was resting to try to recruit Kawhi.

Be like, hey, you only have to play in 75% of your games if you're here. By the way, this vindicated that whole resting, the load management thing with Kawhi. He had a huge load in this series. What he did tonight, minutes 39 shots eight free throws was all over the place on D load management really you're doing that yeah you're making that connection I don't like it what happened with the load management I don't like it I don't

like it I don't think it I don't I don't know I just I think Kawhi is a cyborg, and I think if they played 78 games, Kawhi would be awesome. The players have never had more rest. He was hurt last year, though. They had to baby him the whole season. He was hurt. To get him to the point where he could play the game he played today, I thought was pretty clever how they handled it.

I didn't like it. I don't know. I'm not going there with you. I don't know that today's... You still want to give Nick Nurse any credit? No, I don't think today's result not going there with you. I don't know that today's... You just don't want to give Nick Nurse any credit. No, I don't think today's result was a product of... It wasn't just today. No, no, it wasn't just today, though.

It's kind of what it sounds like. He played seven-game series, and he was pretty heavy load this whole series. I mean, he was doing everything. And then you go back to the last round, same thing. I feel like he was doing more for his team in these playoffs in the first two rounds than anybody else did and i think we had a lot of good performances but i think he had the big

yo kitch is up there but i think he had the biggest burden because he's also on defensively he's their best defensive player too right you know and he's running the offense my my point would be that i don't think you'd see some different kawaii had he played more regular season games that's fair because i just look fair. Let's keep arguing about it because there's no way to know. There's no back-to-backs. Guys have never had rest. And reviews alone, it's like a three-minute timeout at the end of a game.

It would be funny if Kawhi then goes, rips through Milwaukee, and then we have some sort of Golden State Kawhi showdown. And Kawhi, actually, it's like Iron Throne with Game of Thrones. Like, the Iron Throne is kind of sitting there for Kauai now. There is a chance we leave this season and we're like, you know the best sport in the league is? Kauai Leonard.

It's possible. Oh, it's definitely possible. It's in play. But this is always, the playoffs always remind me how little, not the people that are listening to this podcast, but there's just like this universe out there that is trying to trick all of us that they've been watching all year yeah and you can tell that they haven't and they're like man kawaii is incredible and you go you know he was awesome all year long he really was i mean but you hit that kind of shot so i don't

know and then i so you think but i mean do you really think like i'm sure a ton of raptors fans believe this may hit that kind of shot it's going to be tough to leave. I don't think he gives a shit. I don't think it's tough to leave. I think the connection with him in Toronto has now deepened because you're now a hero in that place. You weren't before. You were this hired gun superstar who's passing through for a year.

Now you've just delivered this tortured fan base that has just gotten their ass kicked by LeBron for this whole decade. And before that, the highlight of their entire run was when Vince Carter was good for like a year and a half. That's it. That's all you've had since the mid nineties. And this guy comes in and now you might have the best player in the league and you got him for, you know, DeMar DeRozan and Jakob Pertl. I like Pertl. I do like Pertl. You love Pertl. You like Jeff Green Rodney Hood you enjoy uh so anyway so that's one storyline to watch like if anything could swing Kawhi staying in Toronto it would be

this amazing playoff run where they actually win the title okay but if they win the title you could also make the same argument that he's like all right nobody's ever done it you can't you can't get pissed at me nobody's ever won the title and left. Yeah, but you know what? I'm not saying that will not happen this year. In 2010, you know what the thing was? Nobody leaves. Nobody leaves for less money. And LeBron did it.

You know that- And then he still got all of his money later on, but- Well, nobody leaves, but he left after a loss though. He didn't leave after a win. No, but I'm talking about the bet back then was, and the way the contracts are structured for the incumbent team, when you talk to GMs in 2010, you're like, hey, what do you think? What do you think?

What do you think? And you go, well, nobody's ever done it. Nobody's been a full, in-his-prime max guy that said, you know what, I'm just going to go ahead and leave. I'm talking modern era here. Yeah, yeah. So that was one big picture, and the other big picture thing is just the Sixers really can't bring back this roster.

So go ahead, go on, because that's as interesting as the Kawhi thing. Well, they just, they can't bring back those five guys together from a salary standpoint because Redick Harris and Butler, you can't afford all three with Embiid, with Simmons in a year.

You can't have five max guys or close to max guys. So they probably have to pick two of three of the Redick Butler Harris. In March, you would have said Harris was the likeliest to stay. I can't say I was that impressed by him in these playoffs. He played like a guy who hadn't been in a lot of playoff games, which is true.

And missed. It felt like every time during the course of this series, the ball swung to him in a big moment where it was like, oh, this is why they got him. And it was like, clang. I also think it's a really tough spot for him. I agree. Because you're getting the scraps.

Well, that's why after watching it for a couple months and trying to figure out what the best version of Philly would be, I just gave up. I go, hey, there's going to be a night where they're going to win games. They're going to win games by a lot. They're going to beat good teams. And one of those guys is going to be a total donut. And it's not really even going to be his fault.

And when I think about every team and how you build them, you always kind of need one crazy guy, one guy that's not afraid of anybody. And if it's Embiid, Simmons, and Harris as your one, two, and three, and say it's Redick as your four, I don your one two and three and say it's reddick as your four i don't think there's an argument to be made that you need jimmy who has the fuck you and him right to to play in some of these who by the way great play with him four seconds left the uh oh yeah the strip and then the strip and then but then it seemed like he might pull up for

the hero ball three but instead he did this really challenging layup. He dribbled into Ibaka and then got him off of him a little bit. Because Kawhi, remember earlier, had that just horrendous turnover. So I look at this Sixers team, and to me, this is a coaching and a front office failure first. Because you have all these assets and all these possible ways that can go with the trades you can make. And you end up with only five guys that can really play in a game seven. Right? Would you say anybody else on that bench?

Ennis wasn't a disaster. Ennis maybe like five and a half. Yeah. Mike Scott kind of falls into my, I don't really trust a ton. Well, he is minus 12 and 11 minutes. Remember when Jonathan Simmons used to be able to score in NBA games? They didn't play TJ at all, which shocked me. But the point is, for all they gave up,

they finally give up on Fultz, and they don't get anything back for him. That's the problem, though. They don't get anybody they can play in a playoff series for him. If you think about the asset, Fultz becomes a zero as the number one pick. You do Harris, and you also give up Shamit and then you

only get... And Zyre Smith's your lottery guy and he doesn't play. You do that trade, that was partly bad luck, although I guess the medical staff could be blamed for that one. But basically all the assets they had, it should have been easier for them to get at least like a six guy.

And it was weird to me that TJ didn't play at all. I didn't understand that either because against certain teams, he can give you a spark. But to just DMP him in a game seven, I thought was weird. I would rather take my chances with Ben Simmons at center and TJ a point guard than Greg Monroe for even two minutes. So anyway, a really, really talented team. I was saying to you during the game, I like an ugly game sevens. I would just rather have the team that has more talent, even if they don't totally make sense as a unit. And I thought the longer that game went on, as it was close, I felt like it was good for

them. And as it turned out, like if that goes into OT, maybe they win. They lose on a borderline miracle shot. Yeah, if they win that, are we saying, hey, this group's really good and bring everybody back? Yeah, Jimmy Butler, oh my God. I mean, there's too many times we can do this with the Warriors, too, and we will. But there's just way too much of the, okay, well, this happened, so that means all of these things happened and these things mattered. No one ever just wins or loses anymore. Sometimes, hey, man, this happened, so that means all of these things happened and these things mattered. No one ever just wins or loses anymore.

Sometimes, hey, man, you just lost. It doesn't mean that you're totally flawed because the team won didn't mean that that team is beautifully constructed. So I always feel like teams, that's an absurd amount of money to lock into five guys that haven't gotten out of the second round. And also, Jimmy's, I think i think gonna be 31 next year maybe 31 already at that number they've paid him 30 million the last two years out at that number yeah because if he's not i think it's been harder and harder for him because he's the only one that offers him

really any consistent well harris should offer more spacing but i don't even blame harris for this stuff but i'm gonna give you a mailbag question early real quick though the gms like will they want... I mean, that's a problem too if you're signing as a player. You might be signing a four or five-year extension knowing you're going to get traded. So do you want to do that or you just want to give up the money and go in free agency somewhere else? You got to worry about that if you're Tobias or Jimmy.

Right. But do they really... He'd be like, yeah, give me a no trade clause. I'm happy to sign. Well, yeah. First two years of my deal, no trade. I don't think you could. You can't

do you want to hear Pierre's suggestion where's he from first of all I just had Pierre he said would you consider trading Simmons to the Suns if they get a non-Zion top four pick

Simmons for Mikael Bridges in their top four pick basically so here here would be the the case for trading Simmons and keeping everybody I wonder if we were gonna do trades I'm just gonna do it really quick okay the case is you're gonna have to pay him the max too yeah so what's weird is you I guess you you're in the a similar situation where OKC was in 2012 where it's like they could have signed hard and it wasn't going to hurt them that year, but the next year it was going to start to get untenable. In Philly's case, they could sign these dudes and they could survive for this year. I don't think they can sign Redick, but as soon as that Simmons extension kicks in, this now becomes impossible. possible. So the question is, if you could flip him to the Suns for a top four first and you get Bridges, and now that stops the timeline of, now we have this other Max guy we have to pay. Now

I've stalled that. I can sign Butler. I can sign Harris. I might even be able to get Redick, take somebody I can build around or flip the pick in December, whatever. Might that make sense? I don't know. Did you see enough from Simmons in this playoffs to make you think that long-term him and Embiid are a viable combo? No, I mean, this is what you've been doing the podcast. I know, but even today. Unless another coach comes in,

I think your idea was one of the best ideas I've heard about this team in solving some of their problems. Say you bring back all those guys. Say you say, screw it, we don't care. We'll go over it. Now, granted, by the time you re-sign Simmons, if you want to keep him around,

forget guys like J.J. Redick. I mean, you're going to be lucky to have Andrew Bogut on your team in two years with the salary crunch that you're going to be under. But that's what made the Shamit trade so bad. Why throw him in? Nobody's ever been able to explain that to me. I didn't understand why they had to throw him in.

Harris was an expiring free agent. If you were giving up the Miami pick, why did you have to? Yeah, that's it. Done. The Clippers are saying yes. The argument's going to be, well, you're going to have to find the salary somewhere else. Well, then we would have gotten Boban.

Right. Well, Boban didn't even play in this game. Boban's kind of like this skilled, everybody has funnies in John Wick and kind of overlooks that he can really not have great games. Boban might be the most overrated player in the NBA. Thoughts? Coming up. Because I think everybody

expects him to fall apart or just like strangle himself by accident on a rebound. And then when he doesn't, he kind of has a little soft touch from 10 feet. Like this guy's amazing. Quick break to tell you

about the lottery show we're doing on Tuesday. We're gonna do a little live show on Twitter, me and Rosillo. Coming on probably 7.30 range. um am that'll be a long one oh you did some you did some am on the east coast this week i did two two full days at rassila car wash my dad was here and we turned the tv on and it was you and steven a and max and you were waiting patiently and then they finally threw it to you started making your point and you're about to get to the money shot

and Molly said, hold on, hold on, we're having issue with our audio. And it was like the all-time record screech. It was great. It was, that was a tough hit on Thursday. It was good. You rallied back on Friday.

On Friday, they had me back. I go, you guys, you guys want me back after that disaster yesterday? Yeah. And it worked out. So I'm the comeback kid. Nothing is worse than the earplug audio hearing people in your head. Five seconds after you're saying it.

Yeah, oh my God. It's tough. Stuff nightmares. So yeah, so we're doing a little lottery show at Ringer. You can watch it on Twitter. And then we'll also, we're going to take that down right after the lottery. And we're going to make that Tuesday night's pod, or at least part of it. Yeah, for here.

Okay. Yeah. Back-to-back me. Wow. I have a lot of lottery thoughts that I'll be saving for Tuesday. Oh, and then the Talk the Thrones, the last one is on Sunday, speaking of Twitter shows. So there you go. Let's talk about... We got to keep moving. The last one is on Sunday speaking to Twitter shows. So there you go. Let's talk about,

we gotta, but we gotta keep moving. Sorry, Denver, Portland. Speaking of rock fights, Dame. Now Dame,

this was a good test for how closely do you follow basketball? Because the knee jerk reaction is what the F is going on with Dame. He's terrible. I actually kind of like the game he played. His shots didn't go in, but I think Denver, after two weeks of playing Portland, had kind of figured out, all right, we got Harris. We got a little, what's his face?

Torrey Craig. We're just going to jump every screen a certain way, and we kind of know how to at least make it difficult for him to shoot. He still affected the game. I think he had like 10 assists, eight rebounds, something like that. And then CJ had the best game of his career, certainly the most important. And Denver just couldn't find that second guy.

And that was the thing we had talked about on this podcast over and over again. What's going to happen in a must-win game if Jokic is the only guy they can go to and Jamal Murray who I think overall had a winning playoffs but just didn't have it tonight they just didn't have the third guy what was your biggest takeaway I thought Denver was in trouble when it was only 48 39 at the half yeah even earlier than that where it felt like Portland should have been down 35 and it was like yeah and it's a 12 point game 17 maybe at one point and i'm like oh this is what i thought it's funny we both picked portland i feel like i still got the series wrong because you know you just think all right denver isn't good on the road we know that i think these teams are both good i

don't think they're great i don't think that's really saying much there but this is a really bad loss for denver yeah really bad loss um home lillard lillard doesn't do anything you're home mccollum's not 17 to 29 for 37 and big credit to portland and everybody with the whole whether it's coach whether it's lillard and those guys saying hey man cj's got it tonight and lillard didn't do the thing at the end where it's like well whatever it's still my team and the westbrook turning his back on the play yeah right deciding that no because and they didn't do the thing at the end where it's like, well, whatever, it's still my team. The Westbrook turning his back on the play. Yeah, right.

Deciding that, no, because, and they didn't even run a screen for CJ on that. Yeah. Very MJ, Byron Russell push off where Harden's at home. I loved it. Where, you know, Harden's probably tweeting like, how come you guys are going to complain about this one? But just for, you know, Murray,

who I felt like it finally kind of righted the ship a bit, you know, after those early San Antonio's. This is the rub with him though. I never 100% trusted it. I started to like kind of righted the ship a bit, you know, after those early San Antonio. This is the rub with him though. I never 100% trusted it. I started to like kind of buy into it a little bit more. And the fact that Portland, you know, Portland won game six because of their bench as much as any,

I mean, no Lillard went off and in the third quarter was 17, but Rodney Hood was six. Seth Curry was really good. Don't forget my man. Collins. Oh yeah. I've been,

I've been in the, I've been on Collins Island island i built one bedroom condo yeah but you guys spent a lot of time wandering around going why don't they play him more i don't get it you're like we're gonna put an outdoor porch here and the garage is going over there so i i like that dude man he plays hard oh i'm not afraid he's just too he's too he still gets his ass kicked too much it's fine he tries yeah i want guys who try in a game seven you and i both liked vangundy and jackson for that game i thought they did a good job and i think jackson at one point just said i just want guys competing in a

game seven i just want to look down down my bench and say which which one of these guys is going to compete for me and that's who i'm playing coll Collins was like that. I thought he rose to the occasion. I loved the call of this game. Loved it. Great job by them. And it was just two guys that have been in it. And that's what you always want out of the broadcast. And look, it's not realistic

you can get out of every single broadcast because most games don't care as much as the games we saw today. But for Van Gundy saying, I can tell, kind of like what you said, everybody turns into who they are. But to hear Van Gundy say it, know, I can tell, kind of like what you said, like everybody turns into who they are. But to hear Van Gundy say it, it's just more impressive than you. So, right, it's true.

Because he actually coached at Game 7. You were like looking at me. I'm like, Ryan, I've been in the stands for some Game 7s. You've been in some big ones. I have been in some big ones. But just a little small thing. I mean, everybody can see. But like, how about Denver going, all right, Torrey,

like you got to guard CJ now. Yeah, they flipped him from Dame. You don't usually see that because you would normally be like, hey, Dame isn't hitting anything. Stay the way you're going, and that's really good. And they're like, actually, let's switch you and Gary up on that one. And then Portland on the other end going, all right, Evan Turner, you're going to run everything for us now.

It's a game seven on the road. You're one of the most maligned contracts from the summer of 2016. Cap went up, though. The series is in your hands. Cap did go up. He had 14 points. He had nine free throw attempts. Yeah, he was good.

He was aggressive. I thought he was pretty good defensively, too. And the other thing, the weird monkey wrench in this game was Hood went down. And their season had gotten to the point where I'm like, oh my God, Rodney Hood's in the tunnel. They're in trouble. I don't know who this Rodney Hood is. It's like the guys in Afterthought three weeks ago.

I mean, it's one thing to have a nice... He's been on a tear. Yeah. I can't believe who this guy's become. You turned his career around with that script. I do wonder how many players hate our gods. Who's your next guy now? Who I like, but hasn't proven it yet rodney hood

vindication yeah rodney hood's gonna be writing stories about do we think he can be back for game one is he max guy is he max guy would you trade jimmy butler for him semi max would you give a butler and a first protected almost the back side i mean i've canter i obviously big victory tour for me. I'm one of the few guys who just never gave up. I was wondering when they were going to bring him back in because he was out for a stretch. Although the Cantor is fasting and talking to Hakeem Olajuwon storyline is approaching Josh Smith and Dwight Howard playing the same AAU team

or the Kershaw and Stafford. And before anybody that takes it is being sensitive. We have a Randy Boston white chocolate. We're on the same football team in high school. There's nothing insensitive about this comment on it. It's just that that takes it is being insensitive. We have a Randy Boston white chocolate we're on the same football team in high school. There's nothing insensitive about this comment on it. It's just that like,

we got it. Yeah. We got it. And then it's like, he's been calling Hakeem Olajuwon for help. We're like, how long is that phone call been?

Let's go to Lisa Salters. Lisa, tell us about Enos's room service order at three in the morning last night. Well, guys. Well, he had a carrot juice. Protein bar. Egg white. Some bar. Egg white.

Some scrambled egg whites. I mean, it would suck. It would suck not to be able to eat during the day. It would suck not being able to drink water. But we got it. We got it. A two-way short. Aaron Judge is not short.

Competitor. I somehow talked myself into the Portland thing for a couple reasons. For them winning. Because I like to imagine, all right, what's the next series? What are the narratives going to be? And in my head in game seven, I was like, Curry versus Curry. We're just going to get this rammed down our throats. And the thing is,

they'll be like, somebody will have the interview with the mom and it'd be like, I mean, who are you going to root for? If I was in this situation, I would be like, oh, I'm going to root for my daughter. I like her more than my son. What are you talking about? That might be true. situation, I would be like, oh, I'm going to root for my daughter. I like her more than my son. What are you talking about? My daughter's way more loyal than my son. I'm totally rooting for her. She would never put me in a nursing home. My son would kick me out off of the curb 10 years. He could care less. I'm rooting for my daughter. I don't think Curry's parents will say that. Do you ever think about the nursing home decision for you? Just as long as there's cable and maybe a playstation 4 i'm good i haven't played video games in a while now because i write yeah but i uh

i think about how i will get back into them in a big way if i'm in a nursing home yeah obviously you can't find the fucking guy you have a senior's overwatch league yeah you roll in you're like where's that fucking shield i've been walking around that cave for a fucking week so anyway the warriors i thought i could see curry versus curry and then the other thing i was thinking about aisha a lot of camera time she's gonna update her avatars kd yeah big for isha big for the facebook whatever watch show show the whole deal look but the other thing remember kd went on that cj mccollum podcast last year and there was this moment where he's like i was so mad when you got boogie cousins

and and kd was like genuinely curious and i listened to it because i got to know him at least a little bit from doing six podcasts he's like a curious guy i'd be like why he wasn't being a dick he was literally like why why were you upset we got boogie cousins and and mccollum's like well you know we're we're trying to beat you to win the title and he's like what as the eight seed and he just like he completely annihilated him and mccollum got. But it was like watching the big brother with the little brother. Like, what are you talking about? You can't beat me in pickup. Are you crazy?

And now they're going to play the Western finals. And they will be playing that soundbite. So I think between Curry versus Curry and the McCollum-Durant podcast feud, we got two good storylines. Not to mention, does KD come back um all that stuff what are you hearing on that not hearing anything not hearing anything you didn't tell me anything off the air so i that was my first time teeing you up on that no i i haven't heard anything on that haven't heard anything on cousins um we i want to talk about that game in a second cousins thing

only would have mattered i think against denver i don't think it matters against portland and i don't think it really matters to be honest with you but so denver big picture i actually like the team they have i thought they were a little short i thought they needed like that one more like six eight six nine type guy but uh i don't think milsap comes back because i think they have a team option for the 30 million 30 million and that's he's now what is he now? $10 million player? 11? I don't really know anymore. Because there were stretches where Millsap looked terrific.

What would you pay him if you're a GM? For one year, he's probably 20. One year? If I'm only giving him one year. I mean, are you nuts? He's not. You can't go average annual salary on him. I think he's like 33 or 34.

I think he's like a two years, 30 guy. I think he's like 33 or 34. I think he's like a two years 30 guy. I think he's in that Serge Ibaka range. Okay, but if it's one year, it's so much higher than what you think you would pay him. So you think he's like a JJ type of guy? Yeah, like Reddit got 17 and then kind of was almost like, look, we gave you 17 in a one year last year. And then JJ got, what, 13 this year? I think he's somewhere between that. So he can either come back for way less or whatever. year and then jj got what 13 yeah this year i think it's somewhere between that so you can

either come back for way less or whatever but i think that's a really sneaky good uh free agent destination for somebody like i'm trying to think uh oh jimmy butler is that absurd i don't know i don't think you want do you want an iso ball guy with with yokich what do you want somebody knows how to play basketball uh jimmy jimmy knows how to play basketball he's just a little iso-y no jj no it's too short doesn't try to think who the other free agents are what about tobias he would make way more sense for them and then he'd be a big forward who can make some shots i think that's then he'd be a big forward who can make some shots. A little pick and roll with him?

I think that's what they need is a big forward who can make some shots. And I don't know if that's... I mean, for everybody freaking out that we haven't said Michael Porter Jr. yet, let's see what it looks like. Can I see four months of Michael Porter Jr.? Not even like a week. I'd like to see four straight months of it. I have a guy for them.

A guy by the name of Kyrie Irving I think would be perfect for them. Closer. Leader. Big games. Hit the game-winning shot in the 2016 finals. Learned from LeBron James. It's not any of the main guys.

You think any of the main guys are going to go there? Why not? That team, I thought they were one of the main guys. You think any of the main guys are going to go there? Why not? That team, I thought they were one of the five best teams. I did. I liked them. That was a tough way for your season, and obviously when Portland misses 19 of their first 23s, Lillard is, for him, really, really off.

CJ has a crazy out-of-body experience and they're just running old school. Did you see the LeBron tweet, by the way? I want to talk about this really quick. I didn't. Because there's this whole thing and it started on Friday night when Houston lost. And then you saw it again today

where it's a lot of like, ah, take that analytics. Yeah, what's going on with that? It's this weird analytics backlash. Eddie Johnson went bananas. Yeah, a lot of like ah take that analytics yeah what's going on with that it's this weird analytics backlash eddie johnson went bananas yeah and a lot of people are in that yeah you know what's great a two-point shot two points are two points i'm kind of in both camps because i hate i i'm actually glad that a team that took 53s in a playoff game went down but on the other hand like you know the fact that cj was the only one making shots in a game seven doesn't say anything to me about the analytics movement no i'm not a

hundred percent on the analytics thing because more often than not like i don't like the condescending nature well it's actually it's both sides are so condescending to each other or it's the ex-player thinks all the analytic guys and like that's gonna be really frustrating for analytic people being like you're acting as if like the entire thing is pointless and it isn't pointless-player who thinks all the analytic guys. And that's going to be really frustrating for analytic people being like, you're acting as if the entire thing is pointless. And it isn't pointless. And Daryl and the Rockets are a great example of like, look, we're doing this in a certain way with lesser talent. And we're really close.

And it hasn't gone our way. But it doesn't mean, you know, like Billions, where they had an episode in the third season where the characters kept saying when they were talking about quants coming into Axe Capital. And they were saying basically like Billy Bean never won a World Series. And then they say it again like Billy Bean never won a World Series. And I'm just going, are they really going to do that?

And then the hook at the end of it was Billy Bean didn't win a World Series, but Theo Epstein did using the exact same principles. So just because the Daryl and Houston thing hasn't happened the way we want it to. It's so clearly, obviously working. But yeah, sure, is there some obsession with three-point shooting that annoys me? I see guys maybe four or five times a game give up wide-open layups to kick it out to a guy at three. The two points were right in front of you to lay it up at the rim, and you still kicked it out.

Offensive rebounds, where guys don't even look back at the rim, where you're guaranteed to get fouled. It's like, no, let me kick it back out to a three-point guy so yeah there's things about analytics that have annoyed me about the game and some of the presentation of it some of the defensive stuff i believe in the extremes the middle pack defensive stuff i have a hard time buying into but this two-point revival that's happened in the last few days is absurd. I also think, first of all, it's about finding inefficiencies and exploiting them. And a lot of these teams were like, look, if we do this, the math swings in our favor and we don't have a good enough team to win otherwise. So that's one way to look at it.

Then you look at a team like the Rockets or even the Celtics and the Bucks that they're like, we have this signature player. And if we surround them with these guys and we play the averages, it gives us a better chance to win. I think the flip side of this is because now we've seen this a couple of years in a row now, and it's starting to feel like it's not a coincidence. These teams that shoot a lot of threes, when you get to nut crunch time in game seven and they're not going in,

you still need a plan B. And that's the teams that didn't have the plan B were the ones that were in trouble. Last year it was the Celtics. They didn't have a plan B. They go to that game seven. Nobody can make a three. It's like, well, now what do we do?

Jason Tatum, you're 20. Can you carry us here? Yeah, every possession. Houston, same thing. It's like, shit, we're 20. Can you carry us here? Houston, same thing. It's like, shit, we're not making shots. They're collapsing off the three-point shooters. Everybody's missing. What do we do now?

It's like, you're not going to do anything. Your season's going to end. So I think, you know, Charks wrote a really good piece for the ringer about what do the Rockets do now. I know we're going to talk about them in a second. How hard it is to win when you're just perimeter, when that's all you are.

When you don't really, it's just there's no history. You can go back over, I don't know, 60 years of basketball reference post-seasons, and you need somebody who can get some rebounds and make a play. That's why I think Denver is so intriguing long-term because they have a guy, Jokic, at the end of this game today, they started posting him up, and he was unstoppable.

It's like if everybody else was hitting shots, they would have won. That's plan A, but it turned into plan B today. My point is you need a balance of both, and I think Houston just swung too far away from that balance and i and i really regret picking them to win the title because i wish i had realized that sooner i've i've done a lot over the last couple years of just kind of going okay what are the things you believe in that you need to start questioning more or what are the things that you've closed your mind off to that you will not accept that maybe you have to re-examine like how many things do you

think you might be wrong about now in basketball and you know in the beginning with the rockets i just i'll never forget last year's series the beginning of it i'm going well this isn't gonna work in a playoff game yeah give me a break it's slowing down and then it kind of started doing it yeah i know we touched on this in the last podcast but it was just funny and it's not like the tnt guys are your go-tos and they hate the analytics so much like barkley who i love i mean everybody knows he's like my favorite dude ever but you know he hated the warriors so much he kept picking against him constantly and then when the title houston comes out with that offense and then he's just dumping all over them because it's like fueling his hatred for analytics so i went through it a

little bit and started thinking like okay what and I know how much you love my lists. I like when you do the lists. Yeah. But so I did some real research here today because I was like, what's the drop off been playoff to regular season to playoff? For three point percentage? No, just offensive and defensive efficiency with some of the teams that we're paying attention to.

Yeah. Okay. So Golden State in the regular season was number one in offensive efficiency at 113 points per possession. Per hundred. Yeah, right. That would be high per possession. You're right. What do you think it did in the playoffs? Well, Golden State was pretty good offensively in the playoffs. I would say they were around 113. It actually went up to 115. Yeah. And now you could say, are you kidding me? I mean, that's 12 games. Give me a break, whatever.

Houston's, and maybe this is just 12 games, and maybe people are freaking that I'm even looking at this. Houston in the regular season was second at 112 per 100. In the playoffs, they went to 107, and they were kind of middle of the pack. So does that mean, oh, everything changes? No. I mean, it's 12 games.

It's one. I didn't even look at last year's. I mean, if I was writing a column, I would do this big thing on it. I'm still a little undecided because I respect what Houston was able to do because on paper, people didn't think that last year was going to be a real challenge, especially after that first game. And even this year, I know you picked them. We started going through their games, their numbers,

their net rating after the All-Star break was just like, wait minute are they like way better than we even think have they done the impossible here and you know you could argue game one or two could have gone probably more game one could have gone their way i just get back to even though i couldn't stand watching them play i got sick of the hardened thing i really dislike the leaking of that audit of 2018 after game one to try to almost i feel like it game one to try to almost, I feel like it was propaganda to try to get things in their favor. I don't know that I would just give up on the Houston approach. So as you're saying,

it's is it, has it swung too far and that they're going too far with it? Or was that necessity? And honestly, if we look at this two year run, they did a lot better than anybody thought they were going to do. I think that's all fair. I think the problem

ultimately for them in this series was two things. One was that they got all out of sorts after that game one and it basically made them throw away game two because they got so obsessed with the refs that it's just, you lose those first two. It's so hard to beat the Warriors four out of five. That was one thing. The other thing is none of their big showed up Looney was way better than any big they had Looney actually a good player now yeah their system I know that sounds nuts the Warriors are like shh don't don't say anything but he just completely outplayed their bigs and even Jordan Bell in game six was really no difference to him and Capella the Rockets needed Capella to be better and they couldn't really keep him on the floor. They really had to do the PJ Tucker small ball

thing. So it's tough. You need your top four in a playoff series, I would say, if you're going against the Warriors to actually come through and they didn't. But I still think we've talked about this before. The Rockets, that style, if you're just playing them on a Thursday night and you're on the third night of some road trip and you see that and you're like, what the fuck's going on? Harden has 50.

But when you're just playing it, you know, seven times over the course of two weeks or six times, I just think it gets easier to figure out. I definitely agree with that. There's no question. They had Harden figured out by game six. But it's easier to figure out when you're still as good as golden state is so you know

we got to look at who they lost to in this whole thing um but i've always felt that way i always feel like there's less of a freak out about hardened thing i also think there's different officiating crews that go into the game and it's not anti-hard and say hey let's not look like assholes and give him a ton of stuff right and this guy might embarrass us i mean he is i've never seen a star i'm talking even more so he is. I've never seen a star. I'm talking even more so than Jordan. I've never seen a star be able to manipulate the entire league of officials as well as hardened it.

And that's why I just couldn't stand it. And I freaked out about Houston after game one on my podcast. I was like, look, I'm admitting my bias. I'm not rooting for this team anymore, even though I like Daryl. I've stuck up for Chris Paul for a decade, and I actually do like Dan Tony. But, you know. Being in New York and doing Get Up and first taking all those shows, Jalen Jacoby, don't want to leave anybody out.

All the media guys, as soon as Durant went down in game five, were like, oh, look at Houston. If you can't get it done now. I'm like, okay. I feel like this is a next game result freak out collectively by everybody. But then you had Jalen go, no, no, no, no. This is the Warriors almost waiting for this opportunity to prove who they can be without Durant. And Legler said the exact same thing.

And I started thinking, man, all the ex-players. And then I was just like, I couldn't wait for game five. Like everything about Friday was going to be game five for me. And I went, who would I take? Game six. Or game six. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Who would you rather have, Curry or Harden? I'd just rather have Curry. Right. Who would you rather have,

Klay or CP? Heading into the playoffs, I would rather have Harden. Heading into the playoffs. Right. Okay. Even three weeks ago on this podcast, I would rather have Harden. To me, it was Harden and Durant were the two signature guys in the playoffs. I think as the playoffs went along, I just think it's harder for him to do what he does.

So anyway, keep going. And he still, by the way, had a – it wasn't like he had this horrible – just a horrible game six statistic game, by the way. But there's some things that I didn't like there at the end. All right, so that's two for two. Draymond or Tucker? Draymond.

Clay Gordon was a good back and forth. Clay, obviously, had the upper hand in game six. Iggy, Gordon. You could argue Gordon. That's fine. I mean, you know, but Iggy was huge for them in game six. And then Capella, Looney, the gap isn't really there. So if you just present it that way.

You didn't mention Swedish Larry. I didn't. Swedish Larry versus Gerald Green. Jarebko got some shots up the swede uh but my point is like when you do it that way you go why was everybody automatically like what we do is we look at durango he's the best player in the world let's take away 30 points now they're gonna lose the rest of the series and you go i don't really think that's the way it works the thing though you know going back to the playing of team over and over again, here's a good example. It's good.

And they did a really nice job in the broadcast today, breaking this down. They showed how game six, when they, when Lillard was using the pick, Jokic was too low. Yeah. And he was picking them up 22 feet,

but Lillard was 27 feet and he would just shoot the three over him. And then they were like, now watch what he's doing in this game. He's four feet out and it's screwing up Lillard. And here's what it's doing and blah, blah, blah. That's the whole adjustment thing. When the announcer is talking about adjustments, like that's the definition of it. And with Houston, I just think the longer the series goes, we've seen it now two straight years. It just becomes tougher for them to adjust off the two weeks of adjustments from the other side, not to mention the defensive part.

And I, you know, Mike D, so he, I had somebody look this up. In game six and game seven for his career, he won his first four, game six or game seven. He's lost his last seven, game six or game seven. I think as the series goes along and other guys are trying to figure out new shit, he's just like, yeah, this is what we do with that look on his face it's kind of who he is so get back to one of the best things you said through this whole thing though thank you is like trying to figure out if we really with the advancement of how teams are playing now using the rockets

as that example because i still think when you get back to like well dude they lost the golden state back-to-back year so what does it really mean and i bought and as an aside i think they're gonna bring back most of the group daryl's bold maybe something happens to chris paul but they're just gonna go especially if durant leaves golden state they're gonna say hey look let's just see what happens with the same they gotta figure out the capella thing yeah but i wouldn't write him off as bad as it looked in this series good trade bait there there's that and you know when you looked at some of the rebounding numbers when houston looked like they were riding the ship here, you're going, oh, wait a minute.

Golden Saints had weird things. Before we do Houston, can I tell you about Hulu? Yeah. Giannis is the only player to ever get a signature slipper deal. Hulu is paying Giannis a lot of money to wear fluffy green. Hulu has live sports slippers. God, I wish I could have a pair of those slippers when I'm watching the playoffs live on Hulu.

They also got Joel to change his nickname from The Process to Joel Hulu Has Live Sports and Beat. And Dame Lillard got a tattoo that says Hulu Has Live Sports, the most blatant form of advertising I've ever seen. Clearly, they really wanted to know that Hulu Has Live Sports. You can watch live sports and news, your favorite teams, the biggest games on 60 plus top channels for just $45 a month. That's right. Follow your teams all season. No cable required, live TV plan required. Restrictions apply. Learn more at hulu.com.

So the difference between Portland and Houston for me, Portland's big guys actually came through in that game seven today. I don't know what the Collins-Canter final numbers are, and I know they gave up a lot of stuff to Jokic, but for the most part, they at least were able to get some putbacks, a couple post-up plays. They were defending the rim.

Zach Collins, I think, had four blocks. I can't believe that Portland's big men with Nurkic out were more effective than Houston's big men, but that's where we were. And this goes back to the piece Charks wrote, where when you're just relying on perimeter guys and that's it for your playoff run, when it gets to four rounds with things slowing down,

you're going against a longer team, the familiarity i think it's really really hard so are we starting to see then and this is what i might be open to now are we starting to see a bigger gap between what regular season basketball is and playoff basketball is absolutely i was thinking about this the other day like because that's what i when we were growing up it's like a few days going wait a minute yeah when we were growing up larry bird was the best player in the 86 season. Then he became the best player in the playoffs. And Magic was the best player in 87 and he became the best player.

And you'd have the occasional Michael Jordan winning the MVP, but then losing to the Pistons in seven. For the most part, the best player was the best player for eight months. And I think now it does feel like there's two seasons and i also think do you regret your harden vote or you voted for yana so you definitely don't regret it you know what i really don't regret is yokich being my number three mvp and

lillard being four yeah yeah that's that's why we make the big bucks here in the bs podcast for those great mvp calls i didn't put him in the top five. Didn't play enough minutes for me. I did, I think, put him first team all NBA though. That was your thing is you had Jokic third, but you had him beat first team. I just think Jokic is- Going back and forth. We should do a quick Jokic thing just for a split second here. Jokic for the playoffs, 14 playoff games, which is a real sample size. And he was 29, 13, and 9 for the entire playoffs. Like, this guy, it's funny. I always thought, like, Bill Walton, Sabonis,

these passing big men who could score. Both of those guys got hurt. We never really see what the potential of those guys were. And Jokic, go back and watch the Walton highlights. Go back and watch the Sabonis highlights. I think Walton was a much better defensive player. Walton was, like, an A-plus-less defensive player. And Sabonis highlights I think Walton was a much better defensive player Walton was like an a plus list defensive player and Sabonis he guys also smelled bad and they didn't like maybe that was part no it's a true story is that true oh yeah yeah go because he was vegan I don't know if it was vegan it just may have been habits okay I've

never asked Bill that when I've interviewed him I. So those guys are better two-way players, but I think when you talk about the legends, the passing, playmaking big men, what he did in that playoff series, even if it was only 14 games, that's a pretty big sample size. He played like 600 minutes. Putting up basically a 30, 14, and 10.

And he was almost a 50, 49 percentages too. Yeah, because it's just a coming out party. Making threes? And think he's the most, well, he's far from a traditional big man, but the way he was trying to close out this game because Murray didn't have it going. Torrey Craig took that horrendous three

after the chase down block. It was like the worst shot of the entire game. It felt like Millsap could have posted out more and done stuff. Millsap didn't have it going. And then Gary Harris is going to... And then Malik Beasley

has like one play a game where I'm like, this guy is awesome. And then I look up his numbers like, okay, he's 0 for 1. Great. But the thing with Jokic, usually young guys

take a couple years to get where they were in the regular season. He actually was better in the playoffs than he was in the regular season. I think that's a substantial takeaway

for like, if I'm a Nuggets fan, I'm going, we have one of the best five offensive players in the playoffs than he was in the regular season. I think that's a substantial takeaway for like, if I'm a Nuggets fan, I'm going, we have one of the best five offensive players in the league. We're here now for the next 10 years if he doesn't get hurt. I was going through some of the free agent stuff, but I just don't know what they're going to do with the cap number. Like if they decline the $30 million option of Millsap. They have to.

Would they be able to? Yeah, but do you do that because you know you have a deal in place? Like Chris Middleton is going to take the five years for Milwaukee? You know what I mean? Chris Middleton on Denver would be nice. But I don't think it's even realistic. I think you go down this stuff.

Is Bogdanovich, he's an unrestricted free agent? Actually, I don't think that means... Can we have the Harden conversation? I thought we did sort of already. No, no, I want to have the... An aside real quick. I'm just happy for Jokic because now it sucks what happened in game seven yeah but it wasn't on him he didn't have this

moment where we're doing this thing with every superstar that's like a top 10 guy we want to reclassify him every single time um but it's just a coming out party for him even though it's disappointing and they had a great regular season it's just now his stature around the league is entirely changed because of what he did even with a losing series. So I'm pumped for him on that. Me too. I absolutely loved every single thing I saw from him in the playoffs. And Duncan's the guy he grew up with.

I went and reached, I'm like, who did he watch? Oh, that's interesting. And he goes, when I was a young kid, and he actually didn't want to go to practice, and his father would bring him to practice, and he'd cry about it. So he was soft originally. And he said Duncan was his guy.

He said that was the guy he wanted to play like. They're very close to being able to, I mean, you think about what the Bucks did with Giannis. If they can do their version of that, just guys who make sense with Jokic, that's the only thing they should be thinking about. Yeah, so it shouldn't be Jimmy Butler types. It shouldn't, it should be like Tobias types.

Guys who can do pick and roll and move the ball. Kyrie. So Harden, do you feel like he choked? No, because I don't, I think there's other games where you go,

he choked, you know, and then people would turn it and he was tired. You seem to think he choked. I don't. Yeah, because I don't,

I didn't leave game six going soft. I thought he had a couple really horrible plays in the last eight minutes. But for the most part, I just think the Warriors are a historically great team. Maybe the best five-year run we've seen in, I don't know,

50 years since Russell Celtics. I mean, seriously. I don't even feel like that's Celtics. Jordan left after three Bulls titles. This is the best five-year run we've had. So, you know, I think that has to factor in. I didn't think Chris Paul, he was good in game seven offensively

for the first three quarters, but was bad, I mean, sorry, in game six, was not good in game five. Gordon was doing more than I think anybody expected. But then other than that, he's like Gerald Green taking shots. Gerald Green took nine shots in 12 minutes in game six, elimination game against the Golden State Warriors.

Yeah. And they kind of needed him to take the shots. The Harden numbers, yeah, 11-25, 6-15. And some really bad turnovers. The turnovers there at the end. You know what else kind of pissed me off about Houston at the end? Is once they seem just brain dead, it seems to happen to them collectively and to let curry

get the ball that many times at the end of the game to just just put up free throw after free throw after free throw like what are you guys doing like and it's just like harden had a couple where he just kind of lost them and let him just seems like just take out curry and clay let everyone else beat you. I don't understand how Curry is doing anything. Cleveland did a great job with that and part of the comeback. As great as LeBron and Kyrie were and they were awesome in five, six, and seven,

they consistently stuck with a game plan of just selling out against those guys. And we haven't even done the Steph thing. So stay on the Harden thing because we've got to do some Steph. I thought he was too careless. And this goes to a bigger thing about certain guys, like the people who dominate the ball.

As you get deeper and deeper in a playoff series, it becomes one of those things. They're doing everything. They're doing everything. And then it's like, okay, now you make one. And I just think it's really hard to play basketball that way. You know, Ryan, I've played basketball. I just have you.

This is drink, drink. If you're listening home, it's just hard to just kind of, yeah, it's like Westbrook. It's like LeBron, those last four. Six months and just waited for you to give me the ball when you've abandoned everything you want to do. Yeah. And the same thing with the Cavs. Like why is George Hill playing much better on the Bucs this year?

Well, because he's a little more empowered with how the Bucs use him. On LeBron's team last year, it's like, all right, you stand there. I'm going to do stuff, and when I pass you, you're going to make a three, or I'm going to be fucking pissed. That's not basketball. I think over and over again. Well, that's not basketball with LeBron. He never, ever should have had a traditional point guard with them like all those years and they were

saying like they should get chris paul there or they they need to do this you go that's that's the dumbest thing you can ever do lebron's only going to play it his way so i don't think it's necessarily bad for no we're arguing the same point yeah right it's i'm just saying like it's bad for george hill to just be like okay now i'm just the guy over here. So last year's team, they had Rodney Hood, they had George Hill, they had Larry Nance, Clarkson. Clarkson was like, I know I'm going to get a couple up here. I think LeBron's hard to play with. I think Westbrook is hard to play with. I think Harden's hard to play with, which made it so crazy that they're having so much success. So do you think that we should look at Harden's regular season then and look at it differently? So instead of saying this is the greatest offensive season we've ever seen, you go,

okay, it's this system. It's this thing. He's great. But it was like, there's almost like a 25% correction that you have to put on this. No, I think it goes to your point about regular season versus playoffs. I think he did everything he had to do in the regular season. They were going to miss the playoffs. He had to put the team on his back i didn't love watching it but i appreciate what he did me too that's that's where i'll always be with harden and look i argued with you about the mvp thing because i think when they had no fresh bodies and he did what he did but i still think steph could do i think there's other players in the league if you just said hey this is what we're gonna do for about a month and a half i I think other guys would put insane numbers up.

So this goes back to the Warriors thing that we just talked about. And you and I had the same instinct. You got talked into it by a couple people raising the point. And then you go, oh, I felt this way as soon as I started hearing, like, we're going to have three game sevens on Sunday. And I'm like, all right, so we're pouring dirt in the Warriors because KD's not going to be here. Got some intel from a couple places.

Yeah, however they feel about KD, they're going to really enjoy the chance to play without him on Friday night when everybody thinks they're going to lose. This is basically their 2015 nucleus. The best four guys from the 2015 team are now in this game. They don't have

KD to be like, hey hey you know what and whether however they feel about kd and him leaving all that stuff there was a little bit of a fuck you edge the whole game where it's like yeah we're still really good we're not like the fucking sidekicks i have two mvps clay thompson's one of the most immortal shooters of all time iggy's going to the hall of fame and draymond who has been awesome for the past three four weeks like those guys are really good you just gave iggy just he's going to the hall of fame he probably probably because it's the basketball hall of fame but man that he's 100 going to the hall of fame that seems really yeah antoine jameson's going to i hate to break it no jameson's going yeah so is it good all dwight howard's going i know so i tweeted Iguodala. Dwight Howard's going. I know he's going. So I tweeted before the game.

I rarely do this. I rarely tweet predictions because we now live in that era where if it goes wrong, people they throw it back in your face. What's your problem with Catholics? So I tweeted on Friday night and I didn't want to give it away. I didn't want to come out and totally say but i said there's an unbelievable nobody believes in this gambling opportunity tonight it's almost a historic anomaly it's so fantastic i'm afraid to say anything else this was the warriors getting seven i just couldn't believe it i thought the

line was going to be like rockets by two it was like seven so that's it the 2015 warriors were just pouring dirt in them and hopefully they can get to a game to keep game seven close like get the fuck out of here okay but the guys were i don't want to argue against myself here but i mean i think it's at least fair to say that whatever 15 version they had they they had others they had a better bigs they had a few more sean livingston was still they had the four best guys from that team. They had the four best guys. And those guys... Iggy was incredible. I mean, him making threes, you can point to all different things

about how you get to the ending that you got to. And same coach. Yeah. I think those guys really take a lot of pride in this five-year run. And whether Durant comes back or not, I think it's really meaningful to them. I wrote a whole book about the secret to basketball

and all that stuff, secret to basketball. I think Curry is one of the best examples historically ever of somebody that really just wants to win and doesn't care. I honestly think he does not care about stats, all that stuff. But a situation like Friday night when people are like, oh yeah, this is going seven. I think him and Clay and Draymond look at when people are like, oh yeah, this is going seven. I think him and Clay and Draymond look at each other and like, really? So did you know the story that Steph booked the court to get shots up before the game? The story that the athletic had to write the retraction on? They said it was the day before.

And then it was like, no, actually it was Sunday. Yeah, they screwed it up. Let's cut that out then. No, no, no, no. I think we should leave it in. Because it was the same story. It was just, it, they screwed it up. Let's cut that out then. No, no, no, no. I think we should leave it in because it was the same story. It was just, it wasn't the night before. It was earlier in the series.

Because they were screaming, you kicked me off the court. Yeah, but that was a real thing. Right. Okay. So I'm a Steph fan watching game five, not six,

but watching game five. He took three shots in the first quarter and here we go again. Like social media is very weird with Steph. Yeah. And I have said, and I think I'm probably the best source for this because when you host a national show and you're in it every day for three hours, every day for years, you see what the temperature is about a player. And Steph, I've always felt is like the

most disrespected superstar in his sport. I've never seen anything like it. I think other players don't take him seriously. I remember once being in the green room at espn and it was two former athletes and a female sideline reporter and they're all i'm trying to remember i don't want to give away too much and i was i was the only white guy was it lisa salters no it wasn't lisa salters and was it teddy bruski i would never say anything about teddy because i'm afraid of him even though he really i ended up being one of the first people teddy bruski liked he's a pro champ yeah go ahead i'm sorry no no not at all but we were talking and then it was like a bunch of steph eye roll shit like two years ago and i'm going what do you mean they're like oh katie's and i'm like yeah but

like you watch what they do and this stuff. And there's actually a lot of numbers that tell you that Steph's the one that kind of makes it go because every defense is freaked out about him. Yeah. He's Tyreek Hill. Watch him on curls. Tyreek Hill. Right.

And they, they were all like dumping on him. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I was like, let's do this right now. I go,

who would you take over Curry? And the, you know, as soon as it got to Westbrook i just went well you guys are nuts i'm like you guys think westbrooks they're like i'd rather go to go to a fight with westbrook than curry what and i just and look that was that was a very small sample of three people but i've seen it for years and so when he has the game five he's a soft rep that's right when he has not deserved at all thing you know growing up with a family that is a former nba player rich kids at the forefront it's like so he must be soft if he's a rich kid and all the years of like oh look at look at some of the stuff that didn't his game seven when they

blew the 3-1 lead he was you know by his standards he wasn't very good but in that first quarter of game five bill he was playing everything perfectly. He wouldn't force it. He wasn't taking those 30-footers because he has Durant. Then he was actually just terrible in the second and third quarter, and then he figured it out again and played the way we remember what he looked like without Durant in the fourth quarter. He's bad again in that first half. Everybody's got all their Steph stuff.

Well, he got the foul trouble thing threw him off, and I think as fans we forget the foul trouble thing throws people off yeah but he's missing layups left and right and so you can talk about the finger being injured which i think it is but at the same time like if you're going to get 30 in the second half your fingers like it's not preventing you from doing anything so what is wrong with you he's also for one of the smartest players i've ever seen he's incredibly careless with the basketball he does make stupid foul decisions he doesn't manage his fouls very well but i would think at this stage of the game with curry like what's the argument anymore like

why are we still doing this thing where we want to drop him from like top five to not even top 10 because he'll have a shitty playoff game well he made first team on or he's gonna make first team on yeah i know but that's i think it's see i'm going the other way you don't think any of that stuff like i'm telling you it all. I think what you're saying is true. I also think sometimes he gets too much credit because if you left that Friday night game, you're like, Steph.

And it's like, you realize Clay saved their fucking ass in the first half of that game because nobody else can make a shot. And Steph's on the bench. And poor Clay was an afterthought. It was Steph up until the last three minutes was having an average game for him and then made a couple of the most ridiculous shots in his career

but clay i thought you know i really thought that was clay first half steph second half was my takeaway in that game well that's there's no there's no argument against i guess but that's but nobody was saying that though as somebody who thinks that steph and this is driving some people crazy listening to what others are like finally but i've said this stuff before i i do i've just seen enough i've as a national talk show host you're sort of the funnel of everything and it all comes to like your show and you hear all of these different voices and then you have to like come up with the best take yeah and then you go wait a minute people really like are still doubting this guy yeah and i don't i don't really get rooting against somebody like that who changed this game and no he's one of the top 22 23 players of all time the other thing

i can also understand because the durant thing everybody just hates these guys and are totally sick of them too so let me not let me not omit that as being part of the hate. But going to Friday night though, and I'm not the first person to make this point, we've been thinking a lot of what does this team look like if KD leaves? And I think just because we haven't seen in a couple years, it's clear how much Klay and Curry sacrificed. That's kind of my point too.

But I had actually kind of forgotten how good Klay was with the ball because all we do is just see Klay kind of stay in there running circles and then they use him like JJ Redick basically. And it's like, oh yeah, this guy is actually like a playmaker and a creator. And we never see it ever because he's the fourth option

all the time on this team. So I don't know. I think there's a world. KD leaves to get the three on this team. So I don't know. I think there's a world. KD leaves. I'm looking forward to KD. And it'll be kind of fun. It'll be fun to have. He has his own team.

The Clay, Curry, Draymond. They add like some weird shooter. Swedish Larry gets more time. Looney's their number one option. Curry's playing off of them. Looney gets a max contract. But I'm just excited to have that team back because i love friday tears it up i really enjoyed friday night i like watching that team

i do and that's what i want it to look like i want to leave me too i'm okay with it all go to the next it'll be great go to the next trade for davis let's get another super team in here um i'm with you i think curry uh is weirdly, for as much fuss, attention, talk radio, fodder he provides, all that stuff. I still think he's weirdly undervalued. I don't think he's underrated. I think he's a little undervalued. I don't think people 100% understand all the stuff he brings to the table. I don't think they do either. I think it's been written about. You can go back and read some of the pieces. Zach's written really good pieces about it. But he can affect a game and have 17 points.

He can dramatically affect the results without having to shoot 39 times. And I think there's something to be said for that. I have nothing else to add to him because I already did my thing. Let's take a break. That's somewhat repetitive anyway. Oh, before we come back from the break.

Yeah. Van Pelt did offer up his version of a Magic Johnson tweet he wanted me to include. Great. All right, let's take a break. SimpliSafe Home Security. You know they're from Boston, right? Yep. Talked with them.

I like SimpliSafe because it's a great security system. Awesome protection. Very easy to use. and they're from Boston. SimpliSafe got started after Harvard engineers' friends got burglarized when they went to get a new security system. It was a hassle, too complicated, too prices, keeps your family and home safe 24-7, only $14.99 a month. Better yet, engineered to keep working during power outages, down Wi-Fi, or even if a burglar smashes your keypad. Thoughtfully designed, never in your way. Go with the only home security I trust, SimpliSafe, by going to simplisafe.com slash BS today. SimpliSafe with two I's. SimplySafe.com slash BS for the home security I trust. Well, I had a couple more things on my slate. Barkley said today, he was talking about how Embiid and Simmons were mad that he criticized them or something, and Embiid said something about it. This is a recurring thing where the players get mad at

Barkley and the guys. And Barkley said, I'm going to criticizeid said something about it. This is a recurring thing where the players get mad at Barkley and the guys. And Barkley said, I'm going to criticize guys if they deserve it and if they don't like it, they can kiss my ass. Actually, that's a fair point because he does praise them too. He actually was right. He gives and he takes away and you can't just focus on the criticism and that's it. Didn't you say that once about –

I call it like I see it. Was it Jack Sikma when you used to be on Countdown? Jack Sikma. This guy's a clown. If he has a problem with me, he knows where I live. 617. Doc Rivers. It was Doc Rivers.

It was Doc Rivers. What did he say about you? No, he said- He tried to make believe he didn't quit on the Celtics. He 100% quit on the Celtics. He had a contract. He tried to do that. He did a thing that was kind of clever.

He was like, well, if he goes, I don't like calling people names, but if I did, I would call him an idiot. Yeah. Couple mailbag questions. You guys are cool now though, right? We're fine. Greg Mulligan from Indianapolis says, I recently realized

that Tobias Harris has a great shortened name, similar to A-Rod or J-Lo. Let's call him Toe Hair. No? Not terrible. Didn't think about it. Toe Hair. Toe Hair?

Toe Hair, kind of quiet tonight. I don't think he's going to like that one. No? Okay. Daniel Evans. Toe Hair, no clutch gene? Adam from Texas, fan of all things of the ringer, says,

am I the only one who thinks people are using the term gentleman sweep way too casually during these nba playoffs in general i've noticed that this year and i think it's a social media thing where just the race to keep being clever i remember this happened with podium game a few years back people try to get something going and now it's like gentleman sweep douchebag sweep all these different sweeps and it's like you know it's a good word for a sweep sweep what's a douchebag i think that's when you let the team win game one and then they win the other four oh i think skeets came up with that our friend skeets um you know yeah i like canter's been talking to akeem what yeah anis canter's been talking to akeem throughout the playoffs did you hear he's not able to eat or drink? I did.

He had to get room service. Today he's getting room service, like 245. Can I get an omelet and some Kortby Fash? Marcus Gray wants to know, is James Harden the basketball equivalent of Clayton Kershaw? I don't hate it. I don't hate it.

Just let it simmer for a second. We'll put it on the grill. Hold on. I'm going to flip it around like some bacon. Hold on. Flip it around a little. Okay. Yeah.

Say it again. Say it again out loud. Is James Harden the basketball equivalent of Clayton Kershaw? So we'll be back in the Will Kane show after this. No, it would be, hey, Clayton Kershaw's not james harden and i'll tell you why next oh yeah that's right i screwed that up uh i don't hate the clayton kershaw thing i gotta be honest so kershaw in the beginning i'll go back like a couple years when everybody's like he's not very good in the play it's not very good in the playoffs like i went through the game logs

again and looked at it and was like wait a minute not very good in the playoffs, not very good in the playoffs. Like I went through the game logs again and looked it up. Small sample size. And was like, wait a minute, this actually is really misleading because the overall numbers are bad, but it's like two bad outings and then it's not. And then it got bad again. And then it got bad again. And I was like, I can't fight these people off anymore. I can't.

There's nothing I can do with it. So I would say that's almost insulting to Harden at this point. Daniel Evans wants to know is james harden the night king game of thrones spent most of their show gassing up the night king only he crumbled when it was the most important kind of like james harden that's harsh that's funny because i again i don't i don't feel this was not i have three or four other terrible harden performances on the way out to look to yeah so this one in game six didn't leave me like i wasn't back at the hotel going this guy sucks again like i wasn't even close like i didn't get a great game but it wasn't i had other that would be like if the night king

had four worse scenarios than getting killed by aria right like he didn't pay his taxes when my grandkids come see me in the nursing home and it's between games for the Overwatch League for the senior citizens thing, and they ask me, Grandpa, who are the most clutch players you've ever seen in basketball? Harden won't come up.

I'm just going to leave that there. What about Kobe? Nah, he won't be really mentioned either. Kobe pulls, Kobe really has pulled some of those amazing tricks on the world it's like that's that's his brilliance it's not just his basketball ability he has fooled everyone multiple and just his approach and demeanor and the sticking the jaw convinced people for 20 years he was the most clutch guy to ever do it since mj and it's it's a control your own narrative thing he just like took the shot more than other guys i'm not saying

he's not awesome he's incredible but sometimes the narrative takes hold chauncey billups's nickname is mr big shot i did a whole thing in my column like 10 years ago just completely debunking this not only is he not mr big shot it actually was kind of veering toward the other way where he wasn't Mr. Big Shot. I remember when I went through this, it may have been 10 years ago. It's shocking. If you really wanted to break down who was the great less than 24 seconds within two points, that kind of stuff, there was a stretch where Mello, I think, had the best. Yeah, Mello was lights out.

Lights out, best of any of the superstars. That was a while ago. So I don't know. I don't know. You're right. Like the Kobe narrative just took over and then everyone is like shouted down. What Kellerman said about Kawhi being more clutch

on first take this week than Kobe. And then everybody just starts acting crazy. Like, I can't believe this idiot. What an idiot. Look, Kellerman said plenty of stuff that I disagree with. The Durant thing for him just became a thing and he's gotten beaten over the head

with it a million times. But the Kobe thing's always, I think always i think amazing whenever whenever you say if kobe had made that shot kawaii made today to win game seven of the finals i probably would have left the country or the second round the second round yeah um left the country yeah for a little while a little while not permanent like a week yeah um andrew from winnipeg wants to know i did the michelin star ratings in the regular season like one star two star three stars for guys you'd want to see in person the playoff versions of that kawaii and kd obviously three stars curry is always three stars for me so is yannis is yokich three stars

yeah three star playoff guy I feel like he is. I know it's not as flashy as those other guys, but there's a relentlessness about him, too, that I love. I know he's ready to go to fight. There's no part with Jokic where I'm going, oh, I wonder. There's some dudes that still aren't always that comfortable.

Dame, probably one or two stars for Dame. Well, you can't give him one. Two, okay. Yeah. Dame, probably one or two stars for Dame. Well, you can't give him one. Two. Okay. Yeah. And Kyrie, zero stars. We took him out of the book. He has one of those failed health inspection things.

He's wearing that as a t-shirt. Like, what happened? Larvae. We talked about on Game of Thrones last week, we talked about the smell of burning bodies. Not a spoiler. And please don't use my name wrote in and said, I may be your only listener with this experience.

So I feel it is my duty to educate you without going into too much detail. I've had the unfortunate experience of smelling dead bodies being burned. smell is horrifying but for reasons you might not expect in fact it doesn't smell bad at all it smells like how shut your ears barbecue it literally smells like a texas barbecue joint i hope you sleep well tonight wow i think there's more let's talk about simply safe yeah wait so this guy knows i mean is he he i guess he must work at a place that does cremations right i would i would assume or he's a murderer texas for years uh texas barbecue i don't know if I'll ever look at Texas barbecue. What about Memphis barbecue? Memphis barbecue.

A little sweeter. Anything else we want to hit with basketball? We didn't talk about the Lakers. I'm good. Frank Vogel? I'm just very nervous about the Jason Kidd dynamic. I don't understand this. I haven't understood it.

I mean, it's the Lakers. We say, I don't understand this at all over and over again with the Buss family. I hope they stay in the league forever. God bless them. This one's really weird. I mean, people are calling him Kittlefinger for Littlefinger online, which I thought was pretty funny. That's pretty good. But it's just somebody who has pulled a lot of shenanigans and has proven not the most trustworthy guy not a great guy definitely has a good relationship with lebron we talked about on this podcast the lebron thing oh wait dream team they're very close no that's real that's real so but for some

reason they didn't just make him the head coach and i don't know if it's because he had the domestic violence thing in his background or whatever how how would it be an issue now when he's already had two head coaching jobs i'm'm not saying it's – I don't know. I've heard some people bring this up again. Is it just the magnitude of like L.A.? And you could say, well, wait a minute. It's not like Brooklyn's a small market. Well, it's still the Nets.

Are you telling me like that's why he couldn't get the job? I don't know. That just seems – I mean, it was really long. If I told you a week ago, hey, guess what's going to happen to the Lakers? Frank Vogel's getting the head job and his number one assistant's going to be Jason Kidd. What would your reaction have been? I wouldn't have believed you. I wouldn't have believed you,

because I think the Kidd thing is to appease LeBron. The Ty Lue part of it, I kind of respect that they were like, we don't want to have to give you five years, and then I think I like Ty Lue even more so going, no, that's what the going rate is, and I have a ring, and I'm not matching this up with... It just makes me feel like Kidd's going to be the head coach starting 2020. The Lakers, the Rockets call up the Lakers,

and they say, Capella and Gordon for LeBron right now. Just straight up. You have five minutes to decide. I don't need five minutes i'll say no you say no if you're the lakers yeah so you think this lebron thing salvageable year 18 with lebron i don't know that 40 million a year you know what i don't think is going to help is paul and capella no not chris not chris paul oh eric gordon eric g Gordon expiring that's the compelling making 14 anything for me I need an asset that I'd like well who's trading for LeBron well the problem we've you're trading for LeBron is you you have to be a team that's already close right you're

not going to get that's why I just wouldn't trade him let me can we see if a second offseason goes poorly for him that's that's what I would do like as much as it's it's fun making fun of the Lakers and all that stuff which I know everybody's trying to do can we get another year all right i'll do it they've got to go oh for this summer too i'm just what is the best possible get out of jail free card that they could get with this well if portland had lost probably cj mcgullum wow i'm just kidding i'm kidding you say i don't know i don't know where he goes they wouldn't well if Portland had lost probably CJ McCollum wow I'm just kidding I'm kidding

I don't know I don't know where he goes they wouldn't have done that we've thought about it because we did it on the show what if the Clippers say we'll do Gallinari and give you that Miami pick

yeah I just don't think the Lakers would do it I think they like the idea of trying to salvage a single LeBron okay don't you

wait a minute would you say yes to Gordon and Capella no I would give lebron one more year but i if i was another team i would call to see if they're wavering on whether they should keep him or not he doesn't have a no trade clause i know what would make sense what would make sense what would be somewhere he'd be okay going well that the reason it was houston was the reason it makes sense because he's playing with his friends but i still think that would be so weird because it'd be like redundant.

My favorite scenario is Kyrie going to the Lakers. You know how I said I would drive Kyrie to the airport? I'd also pick him up from the airport. Would you let him stay here? I would fly to Boston, drive him to the airport, make sure he got on, then hop a flight, meet him in LAX, and then drive him to LeBron's sure he got on, then hop a flight, meet him in LAX, and then drive him to LeBron's house in Brentwood.

Yeah. I think he should stay here. You guys, I think he'd be a good babysitter. LeBron? Kyrie. Oh, Kyrie. Yeah. Because he's just talking about flat earth with my son.

Right. Play video games. You'd come home and he and Ben are meditating in the back by the pool. And then you like what'd you do today ben like kairi made me volunteer with homeless people down at tent city i feel dirty and then kairi just yelled at me that i ate the last piece of pizza and he made me feel bad about myself but then he apologized after so it's okay he said it was on him kairi said that was his pizza and then he realized it really pizza belongs to no man and after that he apologized to me but he wrote in an ancient script

that i can't read and he said it's something he's been working on his degree at duke kairi and i got ice cream but he ate my ice cream and his and then asked what's up then we got a huge fight on the bus because he made us take the bus to just get involved in the community and he apologized to me on the bus and everything's going to be better now. Kyrie came over to watch TV

and decided we were watching for six solid hours. And then when he gave me the remote, I didn't know what to do with it. I dropped it. All right, I'm done. I'm done. Yeah, Kyrie. So lottery on Tuesday.

What's the funniest outcome? We're going to do this again on Tuesday, but I just wanted to get this out. What's the funniest outcome on Tuesday night? It's the Lakers winning, right? The Bulls getting it, and then the Bulls worrying about roster overlap. Right. With Zach Levine and Zion?

Yeah. And then, no, no, but Laurie and Wendell Carter. Be like, is Zion the best fitter, or is it John Moran? The funniest is if the Lakers win, though. Second funniest is if Philly somehow wins with the Celtics pick, and the Celtics get nothing from that Sacramento pick. Do you want a good one that we discussed on? We didn't get into it too deep.

This is really made more for you than Woj. First take? No, I went on Woj's pod on Friday. Yeah. I'm going to credit him with the point, but I think since we already did it on the pod, because I think this is so up your alley, you might be writing a column about this.

You're going to be that excited. If the Knicks win it, would Durant, certainly Kyrie, go, wait, do I want to be the second star to some rookie? Oh, like Durant's getting overshadowed again. Yeah. Interesting. I thought you would like that isn't that a great

radio topic i think if they win it they flip it for anthony davis almost immediately if they if they know durant kairi are coming and they can figure out how to fit all three yeah they could i mean whenever i do we do this hey what do you think about this like when the denver cap situation you look through it like i always feel like nothing's really impossible in this league anymore it's easier now than ever and i think 14 teams are around 16 million or more in cap space but um i do love the zion if you if he ends up with the knicks does that change whatever their other plans are yeah like i mean think of all the stuff that's made durant unhappy and you know it's not like you're playing for the vancouver grizzlies here katie shout out to michael dickerson well

so if i'm a knicks fan and i win zion do i even care about getting anybody else yeah because you still need something else but if you're durant do you want to go you know i'm 10 years into this thing i'm with you on the duran thing i'm saying if i'm a knicks fan we get zion so if you're a knicks fan do you i'm kind of good i'm like oh my god i have zion for the next 15 years i don't even care what else happens i don't know give me a point guard they've thought they were getting kite kairi and katie this whole second half of the season so well i wish them luck good luck seriously i love the zion topic i don't feel like you're appreciating enough we're gonna be doing it on tuesday we have where do you not want to see him go give me where you want him to go where he's not gonna go i think cleveland's the least fun scenario you hate i'll

do no no i'll do respect to uh the good people cleveland i had some good times there but they just don't deserve another once in a decade guy. This isn't you. Let's spread the once in a decade guys around. Let's just do it. Let's give one to Phoenix for a change or whoever. I don't like the basketball fit with Phoenix. The basketball fit. The funniest would be is if they got the pick and then there was rumblings how they wanted to trade down to two

because John Morant was a better fit. That kind of stuff. Is it time? It's throne game time. It it feels like it is i think it is too oh wait a minute scott van pelt sent me a uh magic tweet text yeah he goes you guys doing the magic tweet game i said no he goes well can you do it anyway and we're like all right we'll do it for you. So, you know, magic had a tweet tonight. Did you see it? I did not see the tweet. I stayed off Twitter.

Oh, okay. Are you going to make this up or is it a real? No, this is a real one. Kawhi Leonard played like a superstar scoring 41 points in a game seven victory over the Sixers.

That was the whole tweet. You know what ESPN screwed up with? We should have just you ran him instead of sports center you didn't need any anchors no scripts no segment people think house of highlights is the future it's really magic yeah you just go hey you know i'm zuby mahente thank you for joining me in the next 60 minutes we're going to take you through a journey of all the latest scores and updates in sports through Magic Johnson tweets. I like it. What a Kentucky Derby.

Bummer. And that was horse racing with Magic Johnson. Sorry, so Van Pelt sent me in one. He goes, Kawhi made a shot that won the series for Toronto. That's in Canada! Exclamation point. And there's a Canadian flag. See, I would have known that was fake because there's no way magic could have figured out the canadian flag so yeah so that's van pelt wants to send one in every week all right

so we'll we'll do next week we'll do it i think we need two weeks of magic tweets before we can but scott wants in is what i'm telling you oh we have to call him no well we could i guess yeah i don't think yeah we're good you don't want to call him no i want to call him but i i don't know i don't know if he's uh i don't know what the rules are anymore you know what i'm saying like i don't know like yeah fair enough um yeah i'm sure we could call him i'm sure no one will be too upset about it throne game i've ruined it now now he's not gonna be allowed to throne game throne game episode five the second last episode ever you know what it was what it was steph curry's game six it was oh you think you oh you think oh you're forgetting about this you doubted me doubted me a little bit yeah you know one and two were a little slow sure the cgi was a little tough in third episode some lulls tactical issues we got into that episode five was curry's second

half in game six it was like oh you think you think we lost it nope that was awesome i'm guessing that the uh the game of thrones fanatics were upset about a variety of things about it all i can tell you i'm not i thought it was an awesome 80 minutes of TV. I loved it. I thought it was one of my favorite Game of Thrones episodes ever. I was on the edge of my seat. It was like watching a great action movie.

There was a lot of, how the hell are they doing this moments? It was the best they'd ever used CGI. I could actually see. It was nice and light. And most important, they unleashed a dragon. Stan, Stan the dragon, finally.

I knew he had it in him. I knew just one time, just let Stan loose. Let him go. Didn't it feel a little bit like Jason Kidd's using the dragons and then Budenholzer got the job for this episode? He's like, what if we have some spacing with the dragon? That dragon was Giannis. The dragon usage is

just out of den of cupo he's gonna be pretty good no it was oh my god he's the mvp it was honestly the hard and usage rate thing like the new the new code new advanced metrics specialist came in and said what if the dragon's usage rate is a hundred percent i guess i bet we'd win the war we can't do better what if the dragon sends everybody on fire and everybody dies we're gonna win this is what my math says everyone dies we win we know how they're playing the pick and roll now with the harpoons right so you know you're gonna shade us left every time so be ready to go on the weak side uh you're on gray joy few different storylines with him i would say that you know if you're gonna start shooting darts in the air

flying dragon you get incredibly lucky taking down the second one by the way okay and then all of a sudden we're like wait a minute dragons could just die from these spears you got to do it's a it's a need a wrinkle yeah you can't be just going hey aim there aim there aim there like that's that's like your dad watching you play video games saying you left that coin back there this this needs to be 40 40 shots at a time yeah you get a horn high volume where's the fucking horn all these guys used to have horns that would like in unison let's all shoot at the same time exactly high volume high usage and they were shooting 53s in a playoff game against the team you're not as good at exactly so then that happens I tell you man

looking at that looking at that naval setup before the dragons torch the shit out of it why were the Greyjoys like why are the what is the ironborn why why aren't they taking over more shit than some brackish stone island

like how could they have not that, that Navy was incredible. Yeah. I mean, other than a dragon torching it, it seemed, I, I don't understand.

They're like tomorrow we're going to attack. And then they got there tomorrow. I've, I've just lost all sense of where the map is on the show. We're still in the 1300s. You think? Well, I know we're in the 1300s.

That's not a dispute. What I don't understand is how they're like, tomorrow we're going. And then it's like when I drove my kids to school. It's like, all right, I'm at school. Is it possible they're just closer than we thought? Closer has to be like two blocks away. On a map?

I don't know. Kyle, do you understand it? I'm not a topographer. I have no idea. I don't understand it either. I think we're just supposed to brush past it. i think people have had some issues in the last couple episodes on time movement things but i don't know so the episode starts varus the eunuch yeah tries to pull a power play this is what you have to watch out for jason kidd um tries to go around the back

on daenerys john Snow does the right thing. All of a sudden, he's dead. Can't trust the eunuchs. So the most important thing that happens here in the eunuch power rankings, Varys now, he's out. Grey Worm now, our number one eunuch. I feel like Grey Worm was always the number one eunuch. Well, Varys had a good resume, though.

More juice, but they had a fight. It's been a lot of post-seasons. Yeah, but if you close the door, put him in a room, we know who's coming out gray was more of that yokage kind of younger ascent varus has been around like a little chris paul no finally slips no he's not chris paul that's yeah he's been around forever he's one of the only characters who's shady and it's somehow like robert parish you're like holy shit he's still playing robert. I feel like he's more like Robert Parrish. You're like, holy shit, he's still playing? Robert Parrish. So he's out. Now, he was writing a letter though.

He was writing a letter to tell everyone. So then Tyrion told Daenerys what was up. And Daenerys at this point is full-blown psycho. And so Daenerys isn't like, hey, thanks for the heads up. She's like, you helped spread this rumor because you and varus have your wine parties right and on a boat she's like i told john snow not to tell his sister and he did anyway he i told him not to do that so the denaris foreshadowing in the previous episode at the wine bender after the night king yeah after the white walk mad queen right where lannister jamie just again still had the weirds an episode later he's like man i don't want to run into her at a party go to a lot of the same bars like maybe i'll tell one of the bouncers not to let her in um blocking her uh yeah but daenerys was showing signs of being crazy but some people were like hey she just went

through a lot we're like nope nope nope nope this is the replaying of the Mad King storyline the Mad King the Mad King the Mad King they needed I know it's uh it's in fashion to talk about how they're rushing through this I would have liked the one scene where she talked about how sad she is that two of the dragons are gone she started out these three dragons that she loved. Now she's got one left. I don't know. Maybe like a standing, you're a writer, you could have written this,

standing on a balcony kind of scene talking about, yeah, I always thought I'd have these three dragons. Now I'm down to one. There's nothing more painful than losing a child. Those dragons are my children. Stare off into the distance and scene. It's funny you say that one out oh well i don't know did somebody tell you no i did i risked my spare time i wrote a four and a

half episode so technically would have taken place in between episodes four and five yeah it's called a 4.5 like it it's good exercise no she has fingers moving every day she goes on vacation with the one remaining dragon and reflects really yeah uh tyrian tells varus yeah that was me i was the one that blew the whistle i love your notes and uh i don't know kind of a touchy moment for two people where one of the two people had the other one basically set up to be killed. Yep. It's about as touching as it could get.

The dragon comes in to do the assassination of Varys. I would have thought- How do they breathe the fire concentrated just on the one person, but there's no fire residue on anyone else? You don't know anything about dragons, dude. You don't know anything? You don't.'t know anything you don't oh i don't yeah okay so they could point the fire yeah whatever like what happens he's but he's he's he's setting various on fire but like he he kind of stumbles a little bit and just wipes out three other people whoops yeah well they were doing that didn't some

shepherd lose some stuff? Yeah. Because he was... But here, if they're constantly complaining they can't feed the dragons, why wouldn't they just let... I have 200 pounds of eunuch right here. Medium rare.

High key thick. He's not an appetizer. So Daenerys tells Jon Snow they're trying to work it out even though that's that's his aunt which is i don't know a deal breaker for a lot of people not necessarily in the show in the 1300s though 1300s little little wackier she says i don't have love here i only have fear that's how i felt the last few months at espn okay but who were you john snow or denaris it's just i i could i could see a lot of her points is what i what i say at some point you just want to climb in the dragon and start blowing fire but to fair, to take Jon Snow's side here. Like Mike and Mike said,

what? I'm climbing on Stan. There's, I don't, what else is he supposed to do to prove to her? And so that's just. He could have sex with her. I thought he was going for it.

You know, it was like, hey, I know you're bummed out, but you know. Like bummed out, dead dragon makeup sex? Yeah,

I'd be like, hey. I've got Boston comments season two. at the end at the beginning what no end at the beginning for nudity i thought of joe house it was his 50th birthday i thought maybe they give him the end house that was the greatest recovery ever because i just that's the second time i've met him so we do the podcast and he's complaining that there's no nudity in a tv show yeah and then i'm going like he really that worked up about it like when you saw one of the police academies back in the day would you be like oh rewind the beach scene that was awesome but then when he said i want to be surprised it was the greatest recovery ever because i liked him the whole time but i'm like what a weirdo like you

really got bummed out there's no nudity in a tv show like come on dude he goes i like to be surprised it's great and i went oh my god and the subject was yeah you win i lost yeah so she said to tyrian next time you fail me would be the last time you fail me now to be fair who had a worse season tyrian or brett brown um brett brown i think tyrian did really all of his advice is just bad advice over and over and over again. He's the wrong thing. Even like, let's go see Cersei. We'll go reason with her if she shoves.

I can talk to her. Yeah, I can talk to her. Everything he says, it turns out badly to the point that you almost had to wonder, is he like a mole for Cersei? But obviously not, because everybody on the show got wiped out tonight. She wanted to attack immediately i wrote down this is a little sketchy because her art is a back-to-back game they just

had a battle yeah and we don't even know i've seen the back-to-back stats on her army it's tough yeah and it's not like she went from portland to Francisco or Oakland. No, this is a tough one. We saw Jamie. Tyrion goes to save him. Like Portland or Orlando. Great scene with Tyrion and Jamie, the brothers, last time we see them together. Great scene. We think.

Good scene. Send that one to the Emmy committee. Oh, it was great because it was like good lines when he's sitting there and, you know, we're trying to figure out what Tyrion's deal is here and you're right like his instincts although i get where he was coming from it all ends up turning out wrong he's putting himself in position where daenerys has already said basically the next time you fail me with the last time you fail me yeah you're gonna i'm gonna kill you you know and they're like okay you're totally bat shit crazy now so look out and it's building up to this whole thing, and it feels like it happened kind of quick.

But she did lose the two dragons and the Jon Snow thing. I've been sleeping with my nephew, and now he's actually the real heir to the throne. So that's a tough week. Bad as bad as James Tartt, a bit tough. Tyrion to go in and talk to Jaime, and like, hey, here's a legitimate plan. There's some times in the dialogue where you go, I you're you're building you're building you're building but

there was just so much payoff dialogue in this one i thought where it's like look i'm doing this for you because you're the only one who didn't treat me like a monster i was this half man in these horrible times and you're the only one that treated me like you should have as your brother and whether it was um was it tyron lannister who's the father i'm always checking with kyle double check is that correct yeah tywin tywin all right killed taking a shit i loved him loved him one of my favorite characters in the history of the show shitty way to go yep but that was like a really cool moment and very like, okay, yeah, this is awesome. And it brought some closure to it, I guess. But I don't know.

I'm with you. I thought it was really cool dialogue, the whole thing. So whatever. It redeemed Jamie's hairdo this season, which I just didn't understand. He's wearing Rick Barry's wig from the 1976 playoffs. I don't know why. I recently talked about it. McShay did this look for a summer once.

Really? Yeah. It was the weirdest thing. The shag shaggy bangs look yeah but it wasn't even the bangs he kind of did like a shaggy grow it in the back but it wasn't a mullet and we were just like you know boston guys are really really cool when a new friend yeah he's trying a different style don't say anything at all like what are you doing he goes hey. You know, the hairdresser told me I'm just trying something different. So they go attack Cersei's city. The music, we both noticed the music. Incredible.

Great music. Incredible cello score. Really like kind of moving, tense. Felt like the bank scene in Heat kind of had that feel like shit's going down. Bank scene in Heat, top five scene of all time of my life it's unbelievable top five moment it's unbelievable if that had only if you went to go see heat and it was just that 20 minutes and they're like hey it's over i would go can i can

i pay again i remember getting a dvd player in the mid 90ss. ProScan? And stereo surround sound, which they finally, whatever the 1996 version of it was. I used to love hanging up speakers and running wire. Put it in, and the heat DVD came out whenever. And playing that and the fucking bank scene just echoing around my apartment in Charlestown. It must have sounded like there was a shootout. Like the townies had come in and

attacked us. Subwoofers were the worst thing to happen to neighbors. Because you were like, well, the guy's like, well, you want to add a sub. You want to put it behind your couch. Don't sleep on Kilmer in that scene. Don't sleep on Kilmer in that scene. The way he's cocking and he's got the

two guns at the same time i remember everybody was buying because we were bartending and it's right around the same time so i'm a couple years behind your money yeah so whatever if you had cash you had to buy a surround sound and so all of us were buying them at the same time and trying to outdo the other bartender because we just didn't go on a tweeter right so then i had a friend i remember everybody was day drinking i mean swear to god dude i think i was like 22 or 23 because i was still in the town i was at and one of these older guys that we all ran around with and he bartended too he was like he was wasted he's like hey russo let's go to my house and watch watch ransom on surround sound and drink soco that sounds amazing and i i wish i had been invited being kind of day

drunk was like i that sounds fucking terrible like you and i agree it was still light out like in back then the kid loved the nightlife like there you never knew what was you were gonna run into and so i'm like what and then our other friends are making fun of him like he just invited you to go to his house to drink Southern Comfort just to watch Ransom on Surround Sound? That's a great offer. Why would Ransom be so good on Surround Sound? It's a great movie. Give me back my son.

So they attack the- That's a true line. What's Searcy City? King's Landing. They go attack there. They close the gates, leave half the people out, which is always rough if you don't get inside in time. uh and then stan the dragon just annihilated everybody for about 20 minutes and there was so much death and devastation that they were banging home the point like oh yeah

game of thrones it's all fun and games but you know what's not that fun is like war and death and being set on fire and having shit fall on you and things crumbling and concrete hitting you. And they're using Aria mostly as the proxy who Aria has been like a magician this whole show. And even she's terrified. It seems like she's going to get trampled. Then I thought it was really effective. I'm sure people are going to pick it apart tomorrow,

but I liked it. I thought it was incredible. You know, not that I'm some expert on it, but the way it's shot the way these scenes and everybody's right like there were some shots for how long it would be from start to finish that were incredible with all that commotion and then the use of like the explosions around them where you know sometimes like the ash thing constantly like this snowing but burning bodies and you're wondering if aria i was like are they really gonna let her

kill cersei too i'm like that seems to be that'd be like kawaii hitting another game winner in the nba finals you know between that and the night king um i like the lannister part of it well so cersei's in the castle she's convinced it's gonna be cool yeah she's like the red keep's never been we're good they're just losing people hundreds at a time. And then finally, the guys drop their swords and we're good.

And we think it's going to be over. But Daenerys is like, No. Hell hath no fury. She's got that look in her eye. Yeah. A little like the Kobe underbite face.

A little bit. A little bit. After the Kobe, the three fish pump kind of sticking the chin out. Yeah. A little nipple show, not on Daenerys pump, kind of sticking the chin up. Yeah. A little nipple show. Not on Daenerys, on Kobe, when he was pulled.

Right. He pulled a jersey to the side. Check out my right pec. Dragon goes nuts. Greyworm. Greyworm just loses it. Pulls that spear. Takes out like nine people.

And then they do this. That was like Reggie Miller. Oh, yeah. They do the slow motion where he does the, like the Rambo First Blood Part II, where he does a like the rambo first blood part two where he's just killing so many people he has to cement it with the big yeah kind of scream john snow's consistently like you pull back you've got to stop stop and then he's just murdering guys while he's telling everybody else to stop no and you're like john will you just go with the flow

for a scene like it's still a war and nobody studied the second spectrum data on how to attack john snow everybody just runs right at him he moves to the left and just hits him with the you know because he's a little shorter moves to the left hits him with the sword moves on the next guy same thing no right hand nobody ever ever like fakes running at him and then cuts to the right and goes down goes at his legs you ever wonder how you would do in a sword fight legs you go down go you know how hard it must have been to be like some sort of sword fighting legend you know like oh you see that rossillo guy he's amazing okay he's 19 he hasn't been killed yet you know like who the

hell was 40 how could you be 40 and survive that stuff for that long i always wonder how i would always wonder how i do when i watch braveheart i'm like which which way would you go but there's not really much you could do you know you probably just have your head turned to the wrong time you're gonna get an arrow in the head i think i would have been like how i play fortnight just hide in the bush i'd like to get a sniper gun and just hide in the bushes and take people out from far if it's hand to hand and my reflexes just aren't there anymore maybe in my 20s i could have done it but um a couple more great uh game sevens in this we had two in basketball jamie versus euron i felt like that was a game seven right

he has to drop the whole i fucked your sister thing not cool not realizing was also i also fucked the love of your life and that they were the same person maybe he didn't know that no i think no he didn't know that he didn't know that yeah he knew he knew he he said something a little sassy last season oh he did okay i don't remember that yeah so big fight you know jamie's missing a hand just pointing that out looks like he's gonna die get stabbed a couple times i thought he was done comes you you scored it 10-8 you're on yeah you were done you sent your card in r.i.p harold i just feel like you know what i thought the guys are's like, we're not giving you the happy endings with everybody. We're not.

Like, we're going to start picking these people off, and you're not going to like it all the time, but that's the reality of it. Jamie battles back, gets the win. I'm giving them a W. He lasted, like, another hour. But the way they wrote it, too, is Euron's like, I killed the Kingslayer.

So you're like, okay, well, then Jamie's going to die. He's like, I got him. This guy's going to... Like, that's ballsy. That's actually, like, Dion Waiter's delusional stuff, because he's sitting there, he's dying, okay, well, then Jamie's going to die. She's like, I got him. I mean, this guy's going to... Like, that's ballsy. That's actually like Dion Waiter's delusional stuff because he's sitting there, he's dying stabbed, and he's claiming the W. You're like, wait a minute,

the other guy just got up and walked away. But if I'm claiming a W, isn't my W like I killed one of the dragons? Everybody said the dragons could be taken down. Much bigger W. Euron had a good run there at the end. I took down Bob the dragon. I mean, he's just a stinky guy in these brackish waters. Yeah. And then all of a sudden,

his ships were pristine. Having sex with Cersei. He sleeps with the Queen after she kind of shoots him down. He takes out a dragon. Things look great there for a little while. Good season for him. I have him second team. Despite dying? Yeah.

Yeah, second team. Thought it was great. Yeah, he said, I'm the man who killed Jamie Lannister. And then we had another game seven, Hound vs. Mountain. Been waiting for this. Kyle, I know, this has been on Kyle's radar. Heading into this season, Kyle said, I don't care what happens, I just want Hound vs. Mountain.

And we found out that all of us in the room, including my wife, were all getting mad that Mountain was dying. And then realized that this is a show with dragons that fly around and crazy shit that happens and woman that lives till she's 450 years old. And maybe it's conceivable Mountain can't die.

I don't know. Yeah, I mean, he's Frankenstein. So that's kind of the whole point of them. So I thought, okay, how are they going to do this? How can they do this with a payoff? they absolutely nailed it there's no better way than what they did is we got to see his face darth vader style we got the helmet off of him we saw the gross body we got the hound as he's stabbing him in the shoulders as he's being choked out and he won't die and he's like die you fucking bastard whatever he says he starts laughing and

it's great and the hound is my favorite and then the mountain's going with the eye jam through your skull kill death thing great trick and it's like it's hard to pull off but i've only used it twice but then you you think oh shit like this is gonna happen and then we think the hound's blind and we see that one right eye open up and then he looks at the mountain and the death scene is awesome. Every time the mask comes off, it's always creepy, whether it's Friday the 13th or this or whatever movie you want to name.

Alf. They never want to take, there's never that they take the mask off and the guy looks like Ryan Reynolds. They'd be much bigger surprise, right? Yeah. Wow, the mountain's handsome. Didn't realize he was a blonde.

Yeah. He's got a kid. So they fell to their death. And then we had- I love the way they did that. I just really did. Then we had the Jamie Cersei reunion. I've never been so happy to see an incestuous couple reunited.

It was great. Emotional stuff. And it looks like the uh building fell on them and they died but we don't know we didn't see it for sure good point assuming they're dead i feel like they're dead not positive and then aria uh who really seemed scared for the first time ever was able to get out harrowing running through things falling left and right emerges from it a white horse comes out of nowhere a little corny yeah but the way everything was around it was kind of just cool she had great blood streaks across the face i'm pro horse but i can also see why people like

that's fucking corny white horse come on horse just materializes out of nowhere perfectly i had some issues with other episodes but even then i'm going okay what are you really doing here like you can't get mad about tactical stuff even though we did for an entire throne game recap because it's just it's not like if the dragons just wiped out everything like oh great great use of dragons now this show's boring as hell for 40 minutes like it's just not the way the shows work true so i'm there's nothing there's i'm not gonna we're all not gonna like everything about it episode five was as good as it gets i don't i don't know if it's battle the bastards i don't know if it was when they took out the sparrow crew because that was incredible the music which they actually use some of that

music in this episode too but this is one of my favorite episodes i've ever seen so i don't really have any complaints i don't either i'm gonna really miss this show so recap of people who died a lot of white males a lot of white males good point hound mountain jamie probably you're on you're on varus varus the the the what is it the gold uh what's it army the gold golden army guy golden company guy looked like a jonas brother kind of guy yeah yeah one of the shitty ones though yeah like the third guy the one who married priyanka chopra whatever her name is. Actually, somebody recently was trying to tell me how great two of the three were. So I'll leave it at that.

Zoe claims their new song is fantastic, My Daughter. I trust Zoe. Yeah, she's like, this song's really good. Okay. Is it going to be awkward when you have the jonas brothers on or you have one of them like which one of you sucks did i get the did i get the one that sucks or are you the cool one who's the javel mcgee out of the three of you so yeah last episode what do we think uh i think they were setting let's just guess we didn't see sansa this whole episode we didn't

see sansa at all but i have a hard time believing that daenerys wins the throne with what she just did so nobody hates her and it it felt a little bit like that you know the the writer's love for aria and the storyline, which has never been one of my favorites. And I know everybody disagrees with me on that. It's fine. But it didn't feel like it was setting up a little of Arya being disgusted with Daenerys as she took in everything that was happening to Kinz and

Landing. So she kills Daenerys? I don't know. Kyle, had he killed Daenerys? What is she, the lady of fire? Just not with fire. I think any other thing but fire. That's the only way you can kill her.

Just a fan on like seven. Just AC blasting for two hours. Like what is, just the fan nac on i think uh i think sansa ends up running the show at the end of this that'd be my guess that'd be my bet there has to be a happy stark which would be funny because she is on social media just pounding wine at all times it would be hilarious if that was who won the iron throne that could be the real harbinger there how she's been celebrating because she knows i like what you just did there how scared do you think they are that she's gonna spoil game of thrones um on instagram like 4 30 in the morning hey by the way i won our throne they're like oh my god like one of garoppolo's

buddies yeah do you think uh they probably like took her phone for the last couple weeks yeah i'm actually how could no one have done that how could how could no how could no one have fake done it like be like like with the fake woosh tweets yeah that's interesting i don't know if she's on twitter she's only on instagram. No, she was tweeting about... That's a pretty big secret to keep. She was tweeting about how inefficient the Nuggets backcourt can be sometimes. I feel like it has to be...

The Starks went through everything. Everything that they've gone through. It feels in a way of... I like that they're not trying to wrap up this happy ending. I like that today was a bummer. I really do. I appreciate the creators of the show doing that but it feels like the Starks have had more skin in the game than anybody and that maybe you're right maybe it just ends up being some version of the Stark thing where they all can be happy and together again with all the

sacrifices that they've gone through Daenerys like a little bit of a fatal attraction type of thing right yeah maybe they made her unlikable too so that when they take her out no one cares I mean I don't know if they care enough about that well she violated the number one rule of whatever rules they had back in the day no in 1300s like when you gave up you gave up

no that's a good point when the bell rings I know like in the 1100s maybe it was a little crazier but in the 1300s it was a little more civilized. Ottoman Empire. You got to look it up. Have they decided to do... Maybe they've done this.

Kyle, you can help here. I haven't read anything on this. Have they done a prequel thought season? Like the Mad King? And like before all the stuff happens? I thought that was the spinoff that we've all been hearing about. But I might be wrong. I thought that's what I'm interested in. That's a good spinoff. I heard a spinoff of...'ve all been hearing about but i might be wrong i thought that's what i'm interested in that's a good spinoff i heard a spinoff of it was just

going to be brianna tarth she's going to run a kennel she's going to like sell baked goods it's much more rom-com kind of yeah yeah kind of like hey just life on the farm by the way we forgot to talk about kevin harland's call of the koasha it was so good it was we loved it and then the other guy was screaming too greg anthony yeah it was awesome i really enjoyed that i love basketball i love game of thrones i'm gonna miss both of them we're gonna miss game of thrones and then we get another three weeks of basketball and then basketball goes are we gonna do an august what have you been doing podcast we're just like what's your life like yeah because i'm done once like the last free agent signs once somebody starts getting like restricted matches on the 50th guy the depth

chart we agree to be like okay we don't need to do this anymore but there could be an august one just randomly like what shows you do i may move for a month like danielle house i'd be like what are you doing like oh i'm in morocco what we're gonna be like 35 minutes on whether marcus walden is having one of the best years as a long reliever in red sox history was brazier a flash in the pan bob stanley 78 first marcus walden now uh all right ryan so tuesday we're gonna do the lottery i can't wait yeah uh thanks to thanks to game of thrones thanks to the nba thanks to the zone don't forget to go to DAZN.com.

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You're not allowed to talk about hockey unless you watch every minute of it. How about the deadline pickups for the Bs? Want to go through them? The Carolina goalie. I watched the game today. The Carolina goalie was a little shaky. They were like, when they went into the third period, they're like, oh, they got to bench him.

They're like, just give him another look. And they left him out there. He gave up two bad ones. I watched the whole third period because I thought for sure there were going to be a ton of fights. And then I realized in 2019 they don't do it that way anymore. Go with the only home security I trust, SimpliSafe by going to simplisafe.com slash BS today.

SimpliSafe with two I's. SimpliSafe.com slash BS. Thanks to Rosillo. Thanks to nephew Kyle. Thanks to Osteria Labuca for some delicious chicken parmesan today that we postmated. And we'll be back on Tuesday. On the wayside