The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA Weekend Surprises, Embiid/Kawhi Murkiness, Jokic vs. the All-Timers, and the Presti Letter With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the Thunder surviving the Pelicans in Game 1, their favorite and least favorite Round 1 series so far (1:43), before running through all the weekend's games (20:39). Next, they examine Joel Embiid and Kawhi Leonard's playoff performances and injury history, Nikola Jokic’s legacy potential, and much more (1:14:04). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

coming up, break it down, everything that happened in the first NBA playoff weekend with Ryan Roussel next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day. All the gang's here. You quality, great taste. Picture this. It's game day. All the gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for beer.

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where we have new rewatch of us coming on Monday. It is the last episode of Rock Bottom Month. We are doing Hardcore with George C. Scott, a movie we've been circling for a long, long time. Turn it off! Turn it off! This movie's insane. You can watch it on Tubi.

If you want to watch Hardcore it is just it's rock bottom I'll tell you that much it's going to be me and Chris and Sean doing that one and then we will start doing some bangers because that's what I've promised you bangers

from that point on we also tried something on tonight's podcast we went live for the first hour of it on youtube.com slash Bill Simmons. We're going to be starting more live stuff with some of our Ringer podcasts

on some of the different YouTube channels. And I didn't know how it was going to go, but it actually went pretty well. And it went pretty seamlessly. And you can watch it on the YouTube channel if you missed it, because we started it late at night, right after the last game.

But let's just get to the podcast. Me, Russillo. How about Pearl Jam? We're taping this right after Oklahoma City, New Orleans, which was the Ryan Rosillo classic. We're going to hit round one. We are doing this live on YouTube. We're trying something out here. We'll see if it works.

We'll see if either of us get fired. OKC New Orleans just saved an awful round one. I didn't know what we were going to do. I had a whole bunch of dumb games for us. And then what happens? We get a great game. We get a really athletic game. We get a game with some strategy

and some bad strategy in the last couple of minutes and some really good shots by SGA. And I texted you over the weekend, you're at the gym, which, which I think I tied my record for most times I've texted you over the weekend and you texted back I'm at the gym. Um, and I said, what do you think the Pelicans thunder line is is because it had just come out. And you were like, hmm, OKC minus 150 was your guess. And it was minus 650. And both of us were like, what the hell is going on? This is going to be a great

series. Which it is. So now people know Pelicans are plus 450 for the series. I think this goes seven. This has a 70 feel. What do you think? I think it's still okay seeing six and when you would set me up that way then i go okay well if he's reaching out to me on a saturday morning this has to be an absurd number so i went the other way thinking all right well maybe you

know they're still they have faith because new orleans had some weird numbers where if you look at each team in the west or any team in the playoffs they're two best best players. There's some plus minus numbers that haven't been good. There's some starting five numbers there for the Pelicans that haven't been good. But if there's one thing that I've loved about this Pelicans team the last couple of years is the depth and all the options and that so many of their players on the wing play defense. So then I was like, okay. And then when it went the other way, I'm like, okay, well, that's the analytics part of it where OKC is basically flawless except for some of the rebounding issues. Right, which we saw today. I was thinking, I didn't think about this until the game was going on. This is kind of the draft pick palooza battle.

Like these two young teams that also have a lot of draft picks coming down the road and we're not even sure what their teams are going to look like over the next few years. But one of the interesting things was we talked about OKC at the trade deadline. I'm like, are they going to have more size? What happens in a playoff series when they play some center who's just having his way? That was Valanchunas today. And it didn't matter. Like Valanchunas, what do you have? How many rebounds did he end up with? He was over 20, right? 20, right at 20. Yeah. And was just overpowering Chet a couple couple times. And you're watching it going, this is why we wanted them to get a center.

And yet what happens? At the end of the game, they pull Valanchunas because they need a little more mobility. They put Nance in that spot. But there was this moment with like a minute left when they got those three offensive rebounds, and then they got a stop. And it just seems like, just call timeout.

Put Valanchunas back in the game so you can run the same stuff that was working and they just didn't do it. Brandon Ingram is getting locked up by your guy, Dort. That was a Dort referendum game. And I left him off all defense and I was kicking myself the whole game. I did not. Uh,

it always, it always goes back to Jeff Van Gundy whenever he and I would talk about like, what do you do with Luka and it's like well you don't really do anything with Luka but then there's just a thought that if there's someone that has at least a chance to to just match him physically I mean it still seems ridiculous because Luka would still end up with 30 points but yeah Dort had Ingram all messed up I mean because Ingram usually can get to a spot. If he's not going to go right up,

he can kind of work it a little bit and figure out a better angle and he's going to shoot over most defenders. And when he got stuck against Dort, it was over. And when he hit that layup late off the steal, you could still see it's like,

oh, wait, like Dort's there. And there was still a little hesitation. And then when he got called for the offensive foul, which, you know, look, he initiated enough contact for that to be called if Dort's going to sell it. So I didn't have really an issue with the call. You could have a, but like with Ingram, the frustrating thing about him,

and I think this has been the case for a long time, when he is awesome, it's like scary. He had a little stretch with the Lakers in the second game you're like oh he's feeling it's a little Durant right and when he's bad it's bad well today it looked like FIBA Ingram too soon I love your international basketball recall oh Oh my God. Today I was watching, I've decided Trey Murphy is my favorite, like non-superstar in either conference. I just love him.

And I was thinking like Kawhi's on Team USA. I don't think that's going to end up maybe transpiring. Just give Trey Murphy the 12 spot. Just put him in. Young guy. He's not going to care if he plays. He can throw him out there. He'll hit threes, play defense. Like he is one of the most additive guys in the league. It's exactly the kind of guy they should want. I mean, that's the same reason Drew Holiday is on the team, right? Just additive guys that don't take anything off the table. Trey Murphy, if we're doing additive guys who don't take stuff off the table, all-star team, he has to be on it right i love him and you know what i love is where i think his game eventually

will get to because i forget i think it was one of the playing games and the broadcast was talking about how he had added this stuff to his game the perimeter stuff the ball handling getting to a spot i wouldn't say it's like perfect and smooth yet but that was the great thing about before the draft with him is you see the three point numbers you see the size and the shot and you're like okay this guy's gonna play in the league a long time and then the more you him is you see the three-point numbers, you see the size and the shot, and you're like, okay, this guy's going to play in the league a long time. And then the more you watched him, you went, whoa, whoa, wait, wait. There's like another element to his game entirely where he's not going to be one of these guys

that's just stuck in the corner offensively spacing the floor. Like he can put it on the floor a little bit. I don't know that it's something where you're going to be clearing out for him the whole time, but like that part of his game is there. If it ever develops, like that's just another part of this pelicans roster that i've always liked so much so we you'd like me you watch basketball for two straight days this okc new orleans game was played with a speed and an intensity that i was pretty inconsistent over the course of the weekend right but there was some youth and and just was sloppy really sloppy, really sloppy early, man.

I mean, and they couldn't shoot it. So, yeah. Yeah. But it was fun. But there was a franticness that I really liked because especially after going to that Dallas-Quipper game, which we'll talk about later, where it took Dallas like basically an entire hour

to wake up and realize they were in the playoffs. There's been some other ones where we just couldn't get the matchups right. And this one was just like two young teams that knew each other really well, great crowd. And it was just going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

I do wonder though, now New Orleans has to basically, they have to win four of the next six, but they probably felt like that they let this one slip away, right? This felt like, man, we had this. This was sitting there. So now it's almost like you got to win five out of seven to win this series.

It's one of those optical illusion game ones. Look, we both like this series, but there was never, like you've never had moments where you're like, hey, the Pelicans might win this whole thing. Like, was it before it was their moment? The series are all four rounds? No, no, no. I meant just the series.

I thought they had a chance to win the series. I did. I really thought I would have picked, I bet on OKC and seven, which was, I think, plus 400, plus 450, something like that. But I really thought this was going to be a long series. Especially, like,

Zion's going to come back at some point, right? You would think maybe the second half of the series. Who knows? A couple other things I just wanted to point out from this game and then we'll go to one of our gimmicks. Cody Zeller, who didn't play tonight, but was rocking the big Norma Tech back brace,

just in case. I'm not sure if you saw that. Stay ready. You don't know. You got to stay ready, right? He had the electric race going. Gordon Hayward, I thought a couple really good handshakes heading in the timeouts

and a couple good high fives and back slaps. I noticed that from him. We're going to play a gimmick. What's the one thing you saw oh you know what actually i got a different gimmick let's do this really quick redraft favorite ones no no just favorite round one series go your number one favorite right now going forward rest of the rest of the next two weeks series you're most excited for. Number one. If I can only watch one series, it's New York-Philly. I had that as well.

That was my number one. What's your number two? Phoenix, Minnesota. Oh, interesting. I had that fourth. So my number two. Clippers-Dallas. Lakers-Denver. I thought that

I thought game one I thoroughly enjoyed it LeBron ran out of gas D-low was terrible we'll talk about it when we get to it but I thought there

those teams know each other pretty well at this point I thought Jokic and Davis were just outrageous in game one and I just want to see those teams play

what's your number three okay number three it's probably not any of the other three East series. Well, I had OKC New Orleans as my number three. Yeah. I would say number three is OKC New Orleans. Okay. So I have Phoenix, Minnesota fourth. So do you have Dallas Clippers or LA Denver fourth? Dallas Clippers. that would have been higher if Kawhi was healthy because I was picking the Clippers. I was going to zag on all the public momentum for Dallas. I think you knew that because we had talked about it before, but then when you get the Leonard update and you just go, I mean, I can't pick them now. And then who knows? I mean,

today was so ugly. I don't even know that i worry about it for game two for dallas like it was just that bad there was more than public momentum it was a landslide slash betting tsunami the line moved i think dallas was underdogs to start with the series and by the time the game came today after the quad even though it was in the like the 150 area uh last three series would have mentioned orlando, Cleveland, Indiana, Milwaukee, and Boston, Miami? What's your least favorite out of those three? Maybe Milwaukee, Indiana, just because I don't know what it's going to mean. I don't know other than, like, I think Giannis will probably come back.

You were joking about Zion. Giannis has a really good history of coming back. Did you see the way the schedule plays out? They play game two on Tuesday, and then game three isn't until Friday. Right. Well, by the way, the same for the Clippers with Kawhi. I think the Clippers have an interesting decision of

do they basically roll the dice, try to get to a little more game with Adam, and get him for game three a few days later? You're up on nothing. But I never know what to believe with Kawhi. With Giannis, I'm more willing to be like, okay,

fine. But with Kawhi, even though Ty Lue's pretty blunt about it, like you remember one time when everybody was sure, he's like, I don't know what's going on. And he just said it. And he said,

we're definitely getting them back. We're definitely getting them back. Maybe he's just being completely honest and blunt again, but I think I would do that if I were a head coach anyway, even if i didn't know just to mess with the other team especially after getting the first one so you're saying you don't know what to expect with a guy who's missed who hasn't finished three of the last four post seasons he's don draper man like where are you i'll tell you i think this live youtube i there's a little hop in your step tonight. I like it.

It's a danger. We got game two. Hey, I'm sorry. I'm in Palm Springs. All right. We're going to play. I texted you to write down the one thing you saw that made you tweak or change an opinion you had about each series. So we'll start with OKC New Orleans since it just happened.

Did you see anything over the last two and a half hours that changed your mind at all about anything with that series? I feel like the Pelicans have been building more minutes for Nance in this smaller lineup. And as I was watching this game play out, I mean, Valanciunas is the reason they kept him in this first half. The Pelicans couldn't hit a shot, but they were plus 12 second-chance points. And then that swung.

And I thought they ran a lot of good stuff with Valanciunas. They'd post him. Chet is just asking a lot, even though Chet's really positioned well. That Chet fought even harder in the second half against them defensively. I mean, the Chet block that he had on Nance. But they closed with Nance. So, I mean, look, it's Willie Green's team. And I'm not saying the game plays out differently if they go the other way. But I'm really fascinated by that decision.

Because I can understand wanting to play small with Nance. But it's also kind of playing into OKC's hands a little bit. Yeah, they were super happy with, hey, CJ, Nance is going to set you the pick and roll the basket and you're going to pass to Nance. And we're totally happy with Nance deciding your offense and the biggest possessions of the game. And he was doing the Nerkich kind of going downhill and then kicking out to somebody. I think Nance has been kind of a semi-revelation over the last few weeks. Agreed. Where it's like, I don't even,

who else in the league reminds you of him right now? The type of player he is, where it's like he's not totally a center. He's not really a powerful. Yeah, it's like a good Dwight Powell. My revelation from this, just what we saw tonight, is I just think New Orleans matches up really well with OKC.

And OKC's probably going to win this series, but New Orleans has good matchups. I thought Herb gave SGA as much problem as I've seen anybody give SGA. There's going to be games where Valanchunas just puts fouls on Chet and Chet's going to have to come out. I thought Chet was good today. I actually liked how he played.

There's going to be games where he just puts three fouls on him in the first half and we don't see Chet again. Dort on Ingram on the reverse, I thought, was another interesting one where it's like, ah, this is a bad matchup for New Orleans. But it just seemed like all over the place there were bad matchups. It's not really an Alvarado series because when OKC had all their dudes, they could just kind of find Alvarado and go at him.

But this was the only series that we had out of the eight where I was like, oh man, if they do this, then they're going to have to do this. And then if they do this, then they're going to have to do this. It's one of those, which I think that's why it just feels 70 to me. If you had to pick one seven game series out of the eight, if I told you one of these eight are going seven, who would you pick? Cause I would pick this one. I would have picked Clippers mavericks and maybe i'm letting history play with it a little bit there i just felt like

there was going to be a very like quick clippers correction if all those guys were playing together and look we got it today without leonard or it's going to be a bit of a reminder of like hey you know like we actually even though harden's the newer part of this, I think they'd think of themselves as like completely comfortable no matter who the opponent was. And you're just not going to see that in certain spots. Like SGA, they went five plus minutes without a field goal. You know, the Pelicans defense, how hard they work to have a second defender towards SGA. Like they were trying. And he still ends up with, what, 30? Yeah.

Or 28. And there was a three that he took on like a catch and shoot three, which you just don't see a lot from him. And it was during that stretch where they hadn't hit a field goal. And you could just see him being like, hey, this might be like the best shot we get. So I'm going to take it right now. And then he gets the end one on CJ. And then they get the really easy switch at the top and it's just kind of at that point like sga is just another level of any offensive creator for

the pelicans and then you have the jalen williams third quarter where you don't know who the second guy like ingram and cj and then maybe it's trey okay but at least with the thunder you know you know it's sga and Jalen Williams. There's no like, one of those guys is going to have an eight-point game. It's just not really going to happen. So maybe I wasn't as bullish as you were saying that this would be seven. I respect the Pelicans defensively. I'm sure they're frustrated with how well they did to close this one.

But I like closers. I like efficient closers. And the Thunder have one of the best ones in the league. I like that they're playing Wildest Late. A couple things for the YouTube stream. JYD. Old school WWE. You can get these on eBay.

These are really nice. Oh, cool. I'll check it out. They're thick, old school glasses where if they break, just like five pieces shatter, and you hope you don't get like a vein cut. Um, I also wanted to mention,

I am a little sunburned. I don't know if you noticed. I thought you got makeup for this. Yeah, no makeup. I should have had some, some bronzer, uh,

played tennis yesterday, hour and a half, uh, like around lunchtime. I, I, I can't tell, like around lunchtime. I can't tell you how well I played. It was really like, it's the rest of the weekend was just the cherry on the sundae.

Me and my friend Howard, we played these two British guys. I think they were feeling like they were going to beat us. And we kind of took it to them, 7-5, 6-1, hit some big shots, was moving around great. Felt awesome. But I didn't put it on enough sunscreen. So I'm pretty bright red right now. So there you go. You are feeling yourself, but I think it works good. It's a good hue. I'll tell you, when I can see the ball, I can still hit it, Rosillo. I can still sling it. I can still sling it that way. I can sling

it that way at the forehand, I still got it. We're going to take a break for the podcast and stay on YouTube. Watch this. The road to the NBA Finals starts now. New customers on Fando can go on their own playoff run with $150. Just place any $5 bet.

You'll get $150 of bonus bets, win or lose, to use during the NBA playoffs. You can bet on three-pointers made in Sixers-Knicks, over-under point totals for Lakers-Nuggets, whatever you want. I hope you bet on the boost we did for the series with the Knicks and the Nuggets. We boosted that combo to plus 170 over the weekend,

and we're trying to keep my boost streak alive, which is officially a streak. By the way, FanDuel now live in our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., home of Joe House. Just go to fanduel.com slash BS to get started. FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. You must be 21 plus or 18 plus in D.C.

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See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey, and it's on prime all season long. Watch prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays.

The biggest goals can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on prime prime Monday night hockey. It's on Monday. It's on Prime. Okay. Things that made you tweak or change an opinion you had about a series. You can only pick one thing. Let's do Clippers-Dallas because I went to that game. This shocked me. Look. Luka didn't play well.

The Mavs were asleep for an hour. You throw the game away. It was a bad performance. Clippers were really good. They made a bunch of threes. They played with a lot of energy. I thought the crowd actually really helped them. I think Harden said, hey, I'm up for this. Okay. Here's the thing

I took away. They had a lot of trouble with Zubats. And he really took it to Gafford and Lively in a big boy way. And I don't know if he's going to do that every game, but big picture, it made me think like this, this team doesn't really have an Irna Gardiokic, not that anyone does, but he, he, but the way he bullied them and back those guys down,

I like Gafford, but it almost made me wonder like, oh, is this why Preston didn't want to trade for Gafford? Because he was just backpedaling and giving up like three-foot jump hooks and layups, and he wasn't strong enough to keep Zubats off. If you can't keep Zubats off, good luck with Jokic. But they had a lot of trouble. Eventually, they had to play Kluba in the second half, and they had to dump both of those guys.

Why are you laughing? Just that we are on a Gafford-OKC just content stretch's just like it's yeah I don't know how many weeks in a row we've been able to get it in there but we have thank god OKC won that game here's here's what I think you're it's the biggest overall point that I took from the game so I think you're right on and you were there so I'm going to defer to you on kind of what you saw here but real quick like they bring in Gafford and then we see all these numbers that improve because Dallas was incredible second half of the season. And there's some real like wins there. When you look at the schedule, the paint defense numbers went up. Okay. Uh, there

was a stretch. I think at one point, you know, it depends on how you want to box it in and be like, Hey, Dallas is the best as far as opponents points in the paint, but overall second half of the season, it wasn't the best, but it was much improved the rebounding improved okay um the there was just a bunch of stuff that you felt like was really good and then immediately zubat is just beasting everybody and you're like okay whoa like the one thing we may have been worried about your roster construction seemed to have been solved and then within minutes and some of it's how, you know, teams do a really good job of like getting a bad defender matched up with another

guy, but then he ends up in the baseline. And now all of a sudden it's like, okay, like there was one play where they sent two defenders at Paul George and then Zubats is like fronting inside the restricted area and Kyrie's behind him. Yeah. You're just like, this is over. But I think the energy thing was really weird. It was almost like Dallas was playing as if, hey, normally everybody lets us kind of set up here first and then we dismantle everybody. And that's, at least on TV, I don't know what you saw,

how it felt like just Dallas. I mean, to have an eight-point second quarter is not what you'd expect from this team. Yeah, I took my son who didn't understand why dallas wasn't trying and asked me i thought this was a playoff game the their energy in the first half with how hard the clippers were playing and luca was like pissed off about it goes to your point luca was like it was like he was playing at uh the equinox and a couple guys in the other team in the pickup game were trying too hard. He was getting pissed off about it.

Like, hey, Bob, settle down. It's a fucking pickup game. He had that, and it's like, no, actually, it's the playoffs. They're trying to defend you and bang bodies with you. And I don't think Dallas was able to match the energy until the second half. First half, they were like, Kyrie was really the only one that I felt like was moving at the same speed of the Clippers. But yeah,

I'll tell you, man, look, Luca, I voted for him. Third for MVP. You had him second. He's,

he's really doughy in person. I was like kind of shocked. Are you changing your Dallas outlook? I talked about it for five minutes. Cause, cause we, we because we both thought, first of all, Ty Lue, who I thought coached a great first half, and he just kept putting Luka on pick and rolls.

They were just clearly trying to tire him out. And it was a strategy based on the fact like, we don't think this guy's in shape. And they were just kind of running him. They were just trying to put miles on him and make him tired. And by the second quarter, you know, there were little breaks and he had his hands on his knees. He was getting really pissy. I don't know if they showed on TV, but in the second half, in the fourth quarter, he, it was one of the times when the Mavs looked like they were kind of crawling back and they're

trying to get it into the mid teens and they had the ball and Luca drove down and it looked like he was going to shoot and he dumped it to Kleba and Kleba missed it and went out of bounds and Luca was so fucking mad at him he started screaming at him he walked back down the court and there was like a foul or something and he started yelling at the Dallas bench about Kleba I don't know and he's like he's like recreating how Kleba screwed it up and it was just weird like he he was just pissed off the whole. So I don't know what that's going to mean for the Clippers in the second game because I feel like he's going to... I predict a vengeful game two for him. But I was surprised. He didn't

seem totally in shape to me. Maybe this is who he's been all year. I just haven't seen him in person in a few months. Well, it hasn't seemed to be much of a factor. It doesn't. Even if it's true. He moves at this slow speed that he just gets to wherever he wants all the time. I would have been pissed if I were him. And look, Kyrie, they had a cutaway to him on the bench with the team.

And he was kind of like, I don't know if it's because he knew the camera was right on him or not or whatever. I mean, he's a pretty vocal guy with his teammates. But if I were those two guys, I'd be pissed too. I mean, look at the box score of this one. I mean, those two combined for 64, uh, look at and shoot it.

Well, Kyrie did PJ Washington's the only other guy in double figures with 11 points. Josh Green's the only guy that I thought was out there going like, Hey, I'm going to play my ass off. So, you know,

I don't know if we're going to see more Josh Green or if Josh Green solves all their problems. Josh Green. He only played seven guys in the first half, which I thought was weird too because they're playing Tuesday night. Usually game one, you're throwing dudes out there and trying to see who looks ready, who looks fine. This time, they just played seven and they weren't even playing that well. Then Josh Green came in. I thought they needed his athleticism. I actually liked how he played. It was 29 points. They got it to 15,

and I'm watching going like, wait, is this actually going to happen? And then you keep thinking back to that second quarter, but I always feel like the game is played to the score. The Clippers are just not going to play as hard as they need to play up 29 as they would have had been if it were 15 earlier on. Harden was incredible.

Set the tone early. Zu was also just beasting everybody, as we'd already mentioned. And then Paul George, if you look at the final stat line, you might be like, okay, that's not that big of a deal. Eight for 20. I thought he had two threes and then the after timeout layup. He had like four huge shots, yeah. Easily four. It might even be six.

So when you add up those shots where any time it felt like Dallas was tasting momentum, Paul George just completely shut it down. And if they get Kawhi back, this is not an upset despite the momentum that Dallas had. Harden was terrific. I just thought that was the best I've seen him in person in a while. And he had struggled. You look at his shooting splits after the All-Star break, he was under 40%

from the floor. He was, I think, right at 30 from 3. The scoring was down to 14. And that's, you know, as we always talk about on the Sunday Pod, I'm like, I just want to avoid being tricked by somebody. Well, that's why I don't want to be tricked by this game. So I'm just trying not to overreact.

Especially these two teams. We could say it a million times. Let's see what game two looks like. We all lose our minds every year after only one game to go on. And I actually think it was so bad for Dallas. I wouldn't be shocked if they came back in one game two, even with Kawhi. We were looking at the threes. I was telling Ben, sometimes when you're at games,

you just have to look at who's the made threes, and that's usually what the score is. Dallas was like three for 19 at one point. They just couldn't make anything. Some of the threes were good shots. They just weren't going in. I wanted to mention, I mentioned this before on the pod. Westbrook as a bench guy,

he was awesome in the first half, but the Clippers crowd, it's a crowd that really likes the team, he was awesome in the first half. But the Clippers crowd, it's a crowd that really likes the team and they really like Westbrook. And he really plays to the crowd and he turns and he makes little gestures. And when he makes a play, he looks out.

And he's kind of the spirit animal of the crowd. And every time he comes in, it shifts the energy of the game. I think, you know, we talked about when he was hurt for a while that they missed it. There's something about, uh, whatever he brings. I did not think I was trying to think of other players. Alvarado. I think it's like this. It comes into the game and it's just, his energy kind of changes the whole vibe of it. Yeah. But here's the, here's the difference. Westbrook used to be one of the best players

in the league. I was trying to think of other players who used to be at the heights that Westbrook was at, who kind of reinvented themselves. Like Bill Walton did in the mid-80s out of necessity because he could only play like 20 minutes a game. Westbrook used to play 40 minutes a game. Even on Washington a couple of years ago, he was playing 40, 41, 42 minutes a game. And to reinvent yourself as like, I'm just going to come in, guns blazing for the nine minutes I'm in. I'm going to try to get every rebound. I'm going to try to get out leaves. I think he deserves a lot of credit. I also wrote down in my notes, I wrote Josh Green first night in prison face. And again, I thought Josh Green played good.

But sometimes the guys come in and it's like in the prison movies when the guys come in with the blankets and there's the one guy who's like, oh man, it's not going to go well for that guy. Like in Shot Caller, that one guy comes in and it's like, oh man, you look too nervous. And he came in with like the first night in prison face,

but then was awesome. So now I'm like my radar for first night in prison phase is off. Indianapolis. On it. Just mark that one down. Yeah, no, I wrote it down. It's good. Indiana-Milwaukee.

What was your one takeaway from this game that changed your opinion of the series slightly? Was it Dame Lillard hitting 35 points in the first half or was it something else? I couldn't believe it. He hit 35 in the half. Do you know what he had for the game? 35!

So the Pacers were favored. When they go with the live line, they were minus a point and a half in this one and then they threw it up there. I bought this for the pod. You bought a Dame Lillard. Is there a watch on that? What's going on? Yeah, it's going on it's a dame it's a dame time bobblehead i bought it figuring if he sucked in the playoffs it'd be funny and if

he was great in the playoffs it'd be funny dame time 35 in the quarter dame time it's a good thing you have a family because i remember there was this old guy in a neighboring town that had an antique place but it wasn't really an antique place it was just all of his stuff and if i could just see an 80 year old version of you being like hey this is my joe prunty bobblehead it's not for sale it's doc rivers yeah it's the doc rivers celtics bobblehead i have him and dame together uh dame was unbelievable and made a bunch of crazy threes and even made his old school step back 29 footer to end the quarter playoff three. And it was like, playoff

Dame. And it's like, all right, let's see. I'm not going to get too excited because a week ago he could not get a shot off against Orlando, but he looked awesome in that game. Here's what jumped out to me. Halliburton, who ended up not voting for OMBA. And there was a question of,

is he roping open this a little bit down the stretch, saving himself for the playoffs? And when the playoffs start, boom, there's another gear. I didn't see it today. There was no other gear, and he's still not jumping off the TV to me. He was bad. I mean, it TV to me. He was bad. I mean,

it wasn't even that he was bad. It was just that he was so inactive. I mean, when I was tracking his shot attempts, I mean, basically when the game was over, he had, I think four total shot attempts.

He had taken a fifth. He had two late ones there. So he ended up with seven, but over the bulk of the game, I think it was like four shot attempts. So it's really concerning because it felt like Siakam was the only one keeping him in this, but it's one of the better offenses post-All-Star break.

There's a lot of stuff to like about the Pacers here. The uncertainty about Giannis, the history through the regular season, taking the five games, but apparently all of those games were before Doc even became head coach, so I think that's something that you have to think about. The Pacers play with great pace.

We know they stink on defense, but they shoot it well. They started 0-14 from three. I mean, this thing was a disaster. My favorite possession in the entire game is 58-29. Dame's gone nuts again, and they come out of a timeout. Pacers miss a three. Lillard has the ball. Nembhard's like, all right, I got this.

Yeah. He gets right up into him. Dame brings it over half court, and it just goes right past him. It wasn't even nasty. He just got around him, and then Neesmith is a low man, and he doesn't even watch.

You're like, how can you guys have this guy lighting you up like this and then not? The Pacers defense man it is so bad so even with all these offensive numbers and the fact they finished 20 and 12 in their last 32 games and Siakam piece and Halliburton being back uh this this was just I think it's the worst performance by far I mean even with Dallas because at least it was yeah the Clippers I just thought the Pacers today were gross

and considering people were wondering, hey, do they have a chance at this? I'm not going to cross them off, but that was not what I wanted for them in game one. I thought they were going to win the series, but yikes. Moving on. Dame,

did we give Dame enough credit? Because that was awesome. 35? It felt good. It was like the old Portland stuff where you throw in a Portland playoff game. And I know there's times I can sound like I'm critical of him, and that's really just only because, okay, but we've talked about this guy being one of the 10 best players in the league for multiple years. And we know he's a little bit older, but it needs to be a little bit better. And then sometimes I wonder, is he frustrated because he just can't do everything and have it all be on his own terms for a Portland team that generally wasn't all that good? So I'd ask myself those questions.

But you want to talk about just being ready for a playoff moment, like how short the list is of guys that are more ready for that moment than he is. And it was just a nice reminder to see him kind of look like the Portland guy where you're just like, what are you supposed to do? It was like me in doubles yesterday. Did he say that? I think it's only in the NBA.com postgame presser they said it.

It wasn't in-game. I don't know if he compared himself to me in the doubles, but it was the same thing. We'd be shocked. Howard said to me, we got to beat these guys. And I'm like, you're right.

We have to. I got to dip back in the time machine. I got to get my first serve in. Just let me take everything. I got to be aggressive at the net. And I got to just hit my forehands with the band. So I knew what Dane was feeling today. Real quick, though, too.

Let's just add this in. I think Middleton looks really good. You don't. No, I do. He's, I do. I'm going to say a third of a step slower than he used to be, but he still gets to all his spots, and he still gets the shots that he wants.

84%? 81. It's an 81, 82 range. Boston, Miami. I have a great one for this, but you go first. Joe Mazzola, 1-0 after controversial part of my take appearances? What was controversial about it? I don't know.

The more everybody gets to know him, they're like, what? I kind of love it. He is a first-class goofball, man. He's growing on me, too. I like today when they asked him about the Tatum-Caleb Martin play,

and he was like, I was excited. I couldn't wait to see how Tatum was going to respond. And he was genuinely excited. I think he would have enjoyed it if there was a Chevy match. I think he's the only coach in the NBA where if he were in Season 5 of Succession with a main plot line, it would just make sense.

Like, what do we do with this guy? Who would his succession character be? He would just have to be his own, but he'd just be in the mix. Oh, he would just be Joe Mazzulla? Yeah. Like, hey, Joe Mazzulla. Like, he became friends with Kendall and he went to Kendall's bachelor party? That sounds great.

You guys got a lot of doors in here. All right. So my, what are you asking me? What are, is there anything that made me change my mind? Something that I want to see more of? You can say there wasn't.

Here's, here's what I, my biggest take from it was. Okay. If this series is like this, I think Boston loses game two of the next round because this was essentially being outside and having an hour as a kid. Just three-pointer after three-pointer.

It could have made even more. And I almost think it could lead to a bad habit hangover because I don't know that you're ever going to play another team in the playoffs. And I know they shoot a ton of threes, but today was just... I think guys were screwing around. Drew caught a ball where he didn't even catch it

and he shot it from three. And they're going to win the series. It was a classic Miami first quarter where you're like, wait, it was 17-2 and now it's close? Yeah. How the hell did that happen? So I don't know if you have something more significant from this one because I just don't know what you would see that would make you change your mind about anything.

But I just think it's going to play out a very specific way. And Boston may be like, okay, we can't do that now. We can't do what we just did against them in their zone. Any regrets from the Miami fans chanting, we want Boston at the end of the playing game Friday night, you think? Think regrets set in at any point? No. I think people chant.

They just chant stuff? I mean, Knicks fans were chanting, fuck Trey Young after they beat Philly. Right. Which I gotta be honest, like just one guy outside of MSG starting it. And then a hundred other people being like, great,

great chance. Good chance. I bet. Um, I thought there was a chance Miami could steal a game in this series and I'm still not ruling it out but they're going to have to mug it

they really it's weird and we're going to talk about Lowry later but they it was a game where they really missed like the Lowry muck it up guy who did like three kind of on the line things

and just changed it made it more of a hockey game wasn't enough of a hockey game today. Did you think it was a code red by Caleb Martin on Tatum? No, I thought he got shoved from behind by Drew Holiday, which everyone missed that part. I watched the replay. I think he was a little off balance and crashed into him.

The first time I saw it, I thought he like ran at him knowing what he's doing. But the more I saw it it tatum gets up in the air i think martin expected to meet him in the ground guys don't try to guys don't try to hurt each other like that in basketball games unless and if they do it's a repeated thing where they're known for it here's the thing i took away from the game caleb barton today, 29 minutes, four points, 0 for 4 from 3, which of course sent me in a rabbit hole for his stats last year. 2003 ECF, 19.3 points a game. He shot 60%, 49% from 3, 22 for 45 from 3s in the series. I looked up in the basketball reference where they have the game scores, where you can see whatever their weird system is to rate the game. Four of his best five playoff

games ever happened in the Eastern Conference Finals in 23. Seven of his best 10 playoff games ever happened in that Eastern Finals. In 2024, he played 64 games. He only played three games that had a score better than his four best games in the Eastern Conference Finals. And it just made me think, what an unbelievable fucking black swan. I keep saying black swan event on the podcast, but Caleb Martin leaving his body for two weeks.

I don't know what that was, but there's not a lot of examples of that in Celtics history of a guy who's been whoever he is 99% of the time and then for whatever reason in that series left his body. Well, we brought it up a million times because you're trying to figure out, how is this going to happen? Because if there's the thing we didn't like about Miami last year

was the offense, the one thing you're definitely not going to like about it now is their offense with no butler no rogier and why lowry isn't there because they figured that's the those are the rogier minutes so i don't even know what's worth breaking down on it but yes to remember the caleb martin stretch to go back through that there was a number that said it was like the biggest jump in win shares per 48 of like whatever a baseline guy's number was and then to do it for a series history of the league yeah like no one had ever done that the only thing that made me feel good about it last year was it was like maybe this is a belated

breakout for him like this is now he's not going to shoot 60 field goal but maybe he made a leap and this is the player he is yeah and. And then he shot in the 30s. And then this season he came back. Right. And against Denver, he scored seven points a game. It's basically Joe Flacco. Yeah. Going backwards.

Let's do an easy one and then we'll take a break. Cleveland, Orlando. Both of us really had our fingers crossed for Orlando. First game of the day, Rocky. Harris, Ingles, Fultz, Cole Anthony, a combined 0 for 19.

And my big takeaway was, I was really worried about Orlando's offense. But wow. Now I'm at another level because all they were doing was building a wall for Palo and telling Palo, like, yeah,

you're going to have to go through a couple guys if you want to get to the rim. And then it was just guys jacking up shots. It was really rough. They were so good defensively, Orlando,

and yet still down 15, 17, 19, 15, 20, 18. They just couldn't get baskets successively. And I don't know how that's changing, Rosillo. I thought because of who Cleveland had been that,

okay, this is good. Cleveland wants Orlando. They're going to tank that game against Charlotte, try to avoid all good. Like, oh, Cleveland wants Orlando. They're going to tank that game against Charlotte, try to avoid all the traffic elsewhere. But it also means- The JT Thor, the greatest moment of JT Thor's career. But it also puts you on the Boston line. So I really didn't, when it was happening, I was like, is this really actually the right move?

But, you know, Paolo's probably watching the Dallas game going, man, these guys have a lot of help because it was awful. And Paolo's their best scorer. He's their best creator. And he's actually, I think, their best playmaker. So it's not that Mobley

shuts him down. It's that, like, how much can you ask him to do? And I know he had the nine turnovers, but watching the game, I didn't feel like, oh, this guy's just screwing up all over the place. Nobody else was doing anything. And even Franz, who just hasn't had a great year after last year,

he ended up with 18 points, but that wasn't like a real 18. I think he had eight of those after the game was over. And I just think it's great that Cleveland on the other side, you just didn't know what to think of with Mitchell. The Mitchell Denver series from four years ago is always in the back of my mind

of like what he's capable of doing in a playoff series where he went nuts against them and lost in game seven after scoring 36 a game. But it's really alarming, I think, if you're Orlando. I also think the Isaac part of it,

which is so much fun, it's almost alarming, I think, if you're Orlando. I also think the Isaac part of it, which is so much fun, it's almost useless against Jared Allen. Here's what I'll say in defense of Orlando. So they gave up 33 in the first quarter, and Cleveland hit some threes. But as the game went on, I thought their defense kind of figured out Cleveland. Like they scored, their next quarters were 20, 20, and 24.

But in general, I thought the pace kind of moved toward Orlando's way, and it just felt like, I didn't feel like they were far away from them in the second half. So I'm not giving up on the magic in this series. I know that's stupid, but I just think this is going to be a muck muck. You know, the line, the over-under on this series. I know that's stupid, but I just think this is going to be a muck muck. You know, the line,

the over-under on this series in game one was, I think it started at like 209.5 and then it dropped to 207. Was the over-under for that game. And it ended up, they scored 190 combined. 180. 180 combined.

Now it's 203. So Vegas has dropped it six points from where they launched it in the first game. And I think 203 is too high. And that's what 51 free throws combined. I don't think these two teams can score 200 plus points.

I don't. I mean, you'd have to have like Jonathan Isaac going four for four from three and, you know, Strews goes six for... There'd have to have like Jonathan Isaac going four for four from three and, you know, Struis goes six for, there'd have to be some weirdo three stuff. I just think this is going to be a rock fight. And I don't know if that's a bad thing for Orlando yet. We saw the same thing with Paolo.

It's going to be really hard. He's got no help. Maybe a little more faults as the series goes along. He was kind of the closest to looking like a point guard that they had. But it's hard not to watch them and just think, what is this team going to do this summer with all the cap space?

Because this is a great situation for Paul George. Somebody awesome to be like, you know what? It'd be fun to play for those guys. You just put Paul George on the Magic team. It'd be great. We're going to take one more break and keep going. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a

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Chances to win double play prizes based on time of code entry and draw prizes based on number of entries in each draw. See rules in app. Okay, very excited to talk about this game. Denver and the Lakers. LeBron was awesome. LeBron threw a great six innings, Russillo. That might be who he is at this point in time as a playoff guy because he's 39 years old. He's been in the league 21 years. I don't know if he can do that for two and a half hours against a team as good as Denver.

That's not my takeaway. What was your takeaway? That they had an epic Anthony Davis game. He played 45 minutes. I don't know if that's past the line of like, are you getting the best minutes of him? I know it's easy to point to after they lose, but they've lost nine straight against this team. Okay. So I don't know if,

I think the branding of the Lakers makes people think that they're in this series way more than evidence would tell us that they are. Yeah, like the line dropped. It ended up at like plus 330 by the time the series started. It was like, Jesus, who's betting the Lakers? They're going to beat Denver? Somebody's going to get injured? Nobody's beating Denver.

I thought Davis, I thought that was one of the best games I've ever seen him play. And I thought Jokic was also awesome. And that was probably my second favorite game of the weekend. I thought those guys absolutely went at it at the highest possible level of basketball. And I was really impressed by Davis because Jokic, you know, he's one of the best offensive players in the history of the league.

And Davis went toe to toe with them. I didn't think other than LeBron, I didn't think anyone on his team played well, so it was impressive. My takeaway. D'Angelo Russell sucked in this game and did not resemble regular season D'Angelo Russell, and it got me thinking.

I was like, have I ever seen D'Angelo Russell play a good playoff game? And I went back. He's played 28 playoff games. He's averaging 14 and five, 39% shooting, 32% from three, 10.8 PER. That's low. Win shares minus 0.2. So I looked up, I'm like, hmm, those numbers are pretty bad. I'm going to look this up. How many guys post-merger in the playoffs? 13 plus points per game, 39% or worse field goal. 30 plus minutes a game, and they played 27 plus games.

How many guys have had that profile? There's only five. D'Angelo Russell, Ron Artest, Jamal Mashburn, Mookie Blaylock, and Vernon Maxwell. And that's it in the last almost 50 years of the league. So my point is, D'Angelo Russell, maybe this is why you're in trade rumors for December and January. He played really well this season, but he's just says for

whatever reason has not been able to play well in the playoffs. And they're not going to be Denver once if he can't play well. I can't believe he sustained it as well as he did throughout the regular season. You brought up the trade deadline theory. It may be a hundred percent true. And, you know, at one point I was like, okay, cool. He had a good month. I was like, wow, he had a really good second month. I was like, all right, I guess he's just not going to miss any shots anymore. But there's something about his pace that when it's working, it's like, oh, he's so in control of crazy plays with this great pace. But sometimes that pace is so slow. It's a little bit like Dallas to start today, but there are plays, you know, they, they put the two guys at the elbows and it's up to him to kind of figure

out which side he wants to go to. It may be predetermined anyway, but I think a lot of times a player like him would have the freedom to kind of figure out what he wants. And he doesn't even really pick like what he wants to attack. And, you know, it's one thing to miss a bunch of shots, but on the other end, it gets, it's Denver. It's the playoffs. You have to stay glued to your guy defensively. And he comes off screens like it's the first quarter of a game in October. So obviously everybody knows that I'm not the biggest fan, but I was shocked that he was able to sustain it this long.

But this is somebody against Denver last year that averaged six a game. His shooting splits were 32% and 13%. He got benched in game four. So look, it's game one. I think the alarming part of this, and it's something that you've brought up before, is you're getting these full seasons from Davis and LeBron, okay? Like uninterrupted full seasons

from Davis who's had his stuff and LeBron who usually misses time. And when you put those numbers together, the other thing that I brought up with New Orleans is like the top two guys. And when you put those numbers together, the other thing that I brought up with New Orleans is like the top two guys. If you look at the point differential with your top two guys on the team, it usually is a pretty sturdy number. And for the Lakers, even with that, it just hasn't really been strong enough with those two guys on the plus minus side of things in comparison to the other two best players for other teams. And they start with

Rui on Jokic. People seem to think that that solves like Jokic, first of all, is unsolvable, which we all know, but he was eight and nine against him. So then what are you going to do? You're going to ask LeBron to defend him because it looked pretty good a couple of times because he's just smarter about, like, you can't do that to LeBron. And now you're asking Davis to carry you with 30 and 15, but then also play Jokic for the full 38, 40 minutes and he's going to be out there. It was a very Denver game. Like, you're going to think you're 30 and 15, but then also play Jokic for the full 38, 40 minutes, and he's going to be out there. It was a very Denver game. You're going to think you're in

this at some point. And even though Murray didn't shoot it well, he had a stretch of kind of like we were talking about with Paul George. It was like a three-shot barrage from Murray that was huge. And then they start running away from him. And then Jokic is just playing with you, knowing that he's in total control. I mean, it's got to be the most horrifying scenario to be in for an opponent especially to be at their place in a close game thinking you have a chance to pull it off and aaron gordon was really good in that game too um lebron in the fourth quarter we've seen him do this before and i don't know if he was exhausted or if he was just mentally like we can't beat these guys but it was like the you could see the little terminator light started flickering for him where it was just like you could see the hope kind of drain from his body it was interesting

so he came in at 908 but it was 96 81 right comes back into the fourth quarter immediately attacks gets the free throws he didn't take another shot and i'm not even talking about like the field goal attempt log passing i i didn't know what he was doing i didn't really fully understand it didn't take another shot until 120 left because i remember watching it then i went back to go like wait he wasn't like he just was out and i don't know if that's because it was the first game or if he was tired or at that point the score was pretty lopsided so maybe he just thought i don't really have it. Saving it for the second game.

Yeah. You said something earlier. It clicked a light bulb for me. You said, everyone knows I'm not the biggest fan. I think that's the title for your book. Each chapter is about somebody. Everyone knows you're not the biggest fan and it's like chapter 3, D'Angelo Russell

who else is in that book? there's been some classics over the years yeah look Gary Bettman, does he get a chapter? I don't think he's on the radar enough for me to do all that maybe if there's a paperback edition,

but like including Gary Bettman chapter, but I don't really have any history with Gary Bettman. So that one. Derek Carr. Is Derek Carr going to chapter? No, I like Derek Carr. Oh, you do?

Well, I just thought it was, I thought it was funny. Oh, Boogie Cousins. Yeah, that's a good one. Boogie Cousins is a good one. Boogie Cousins. What quarterback? There's no quarterback

you're not the biggest fan of? Kirk Cousins? I actually liked him a little bit more this year, but I'd say over the long haul, I feel pretty good about my Cousins position. I always think it's kind of funny when somebody will be like, oh, that's where your head's at if I'm critical of somebody. And it's like, well, if I was what you thought I was,

wouldn't Kirk Cousins be my favorite athlete of all time? Yeah. It's a good zag. Kirk Cousins to be my favorite athlete of all time. Yeah. It's a good zag. Kirk Cousins, great zag. When Westbrook got into it with Washington today, I'll admit I had a little Westbrook moment at home where he grabs Washington's arm. That was

100% on Westbrook. And then Westbrook grabs his arms down like, what are you doing to me? But to your point, he's playing to the crowd he's finding a way to like if westbrook's not in charge of anything like say the ball or possessions or the paperwork on your lease if you were roommates in college i just think westbrook would be a roommate where he'd break furniture right in front of you and you'd be like dude

that's my dad's table like you'd be like no i didn't and when you're running an offense for 40 minutes i think that can be challenging but in this role and you were in the building i think it i think it's serving everybody well with this so yeah i gotta think of some more chapters i don't think i want to write that book yeah it'd be a fun one maybe a quickie quickie book like feels a little negative feels a little negative. Feels a little negative. You think too negative? Well, maybe you could zag. I don't know.

Mike and Mike can write a book. I feel like you can pump one out. Or when Kornheiser had one that just said, I'm back for the cash. Yeah, I'm back for more cash. I have that book. Next, we've got two series left. Let's do Minnesota Phoenix because

I got to series left. Let's do Minnesota-Phoenix because I've got to be honest. I didn't learn that much from that game. So Phoenix loses. It's the first time Minnesota beat them this year. And it was 92-72 at the end of the third quarter. So the instinct is to say, whoa, Minnesota really laid one on Phoenix. But I didn't feel that way watching the game. That game halfway through the third quarter,

it was 71-67 Minnesota, and then they just traded misses for like two minutes, and then all of a sudden Ant got hot. And Ant got hot. When Ant gets hot in Minnesota, the crowd loses its fucking mind and the energy completely shifts. He had 14, I think,

in the last five or six minutes of the quarter. He's talking shit to KD and he puts on the cape. We've seen him do it. And when he does it in Minnesota, the game's over. And all of a sudden it was 92-72. And it was just this thing that happened.

I mean, I don't know if I want to take away too much from Booker not being that good. He's 5 for 16. I didn't think he looked good, but he also had McDaniels on him, and he's going to have to deal with that. But for the most part, I didn't take away that much. Home team's supposed to win game one. Minnesota won game one.

I love that you brought up the McDaniels point because you're watching it happen. And I'd have to go back and look at Synergy or something to be like, are they getting Booker enough screens to just get McDaniels off him? The problem with McDaniels, you're the primary ball handler, and that's what Phoenix is going to do here, is he's just on you. He takes such pride. And I thought they were so physical with Booker. And it's like, okay, well, you guys, we're going to get away with this.

All right, I'm reaching, I'm grabbing and good for McDaniels. He can get into foul trouble because he can be so aggressive, but I'd rather you be aggressive and flirt with foul trouble especially when I'm not worried about relying on any of your scoring. Of all the different things that happened in the game that you could point to, the rebounding edge was

absurd. They were plus 24. The bench was 48 to 18 in favor of Minnesota. The second chance point, 26 of the rebound stuff that we're talking about. But I think McDaniel's defense, and I have an ant thought here in a second, but if you were looking for some kind of

does this mean you roll out the small lineup to see what happens if Gobert has to chase somebody? Because you'd think KD attacking Cat is something that you'd feel good about. There was a couple times i think rudy ended up on him and you're like all right he should be able to get him because there's some part of this where you're sticking a three-point shooter in the corner that rudy has to honor or does rudy just play off of him so much because then you're thinking right nurkic played what 25 i think nurkic was 27 minutes

like okay we got killed on the boards playing Nurkic 27 minutes. So if we go small, like, are we ever going to get a rebound? That's a good, Nurkic is a good, good tweak of this one because it did feel like, oh, is this the series for Nurkic?

Sometimes that happens. Like, like Alvarado and OKC, sometimes it's not really the series for you. But you, it might be worse though, is my point. Like, I'd imagine if you're down 2-0, I think the coaches

do this kind of stuff. They sit around and they think about a million different theories. You know, remember talking about, like, having Golden State defend Tony Allen

with a big, you know, so you could just leave him alone. Like, that kind of stuff. It's like, hey, let's get creative with some matchups here if we think we could just...

And I don't really know what the harm would be in being like, hey, do you want to just try something for six minutes? You'd enjoy that part the most from coaching, I feel like. I think they'd be like, all right. Like the 1230, 1230, finally, everybody's eating dinner. You're at the back of the steakhouse.

You're like, hey, what if we put Nurkenshaw and Mike Connolly? They're like, shut up, Priscilla. Yeah, I probably. We'll eat some stuffed mushroom caps. But I think, you know know what i always try to prevent myself from doing though is just because the team lost all right abandon everything and let's try something different like yeah i'll never forget there was that atlanta buck series and bud is

probably one of the most stubborn coaches in the n. And that's why people get mad at him. But then it's like, okay, but. What was his name? What was the goofy center? Which Atlanta Bucks series are you talking about? It was Brooke Lopez. They had Brooke in a certain coverage. And for one game, it just looked like, oh, my God.

You might not be able to do this. And it was just one of those, at least for me, a little reminder of how bad something can look in one game. 48 hours later, it's the same thing, and there's a completely different result. So I think that's why coaches probably aren't in a hurry to get super creative, especially. But I would imagine, like, say Phoenix loses game two, but I'm not even providing it.

I'm not watching the game going, oh, they've got to go small, try to expose Gobert, have him stuck in the corner, drag him away. If it's Grayson Allen or if it's Eric Gordon or if it's Royce O'Neal, does Gobert get stuck

with one of those guys or then they change it up and now all of a sudden Durant's on somebody else? I don't know what they do and they lost Kyle Anderson in that game with the hip part of it.

So Phoenix is too good. The fact that this team still won as many games as they did and closed as strong as they did against that schedule. But the ant part of it is really, I think, the best part because it's the national breaking out for him in a way because there was expectations of like, hey, if this guy's really that good, can he just do this on his own offensively? And this is what you have to do to be who we think he can be and i know i'm going here but there's a possession with him he had scored 11 of 15 of minnesota's points okay

and he's bringing the ball up he crosses half court phoenix is like let's send two to him and he had every right to take an absolute heat check of a three that's what kind of like he just was on fire like trey murphy shooting that 30 footer today trey had a couple today i was like uh and ant just did the right thing he's like all right you know i i could force this here and all he did is swing it and it's such a simple thing in basketball it's like okay they showed you what they want to do defensively just move it to one of the sides and then just get it back because they never do the same thing that they started the possession with defensively it's not like hey double i mean it's just one of those things that seems to happen in basketball and then he hits a three and he could have taken the three and forced it he didn't he passed he got it right

back the phoenix uh the phoenix defense was different and then he took another three and i'm like man that maturity from him in that moment where he's feeling himself most, I think like alpha one, a score type guys are like, ah, screw it. I'm taking this three. Cause I've earned it with what I've just done in this quarter.

Edwards. Do you see that stat about, uh, his first 12 playoff games? I did 28.5 points a game. The class he's in, it's in this Luka, MJ, Donovan Mitchell, John Morant, LeBron, Tracy McGrady, basically. It's the seven.

It was awesome. I still feel like Phoenix will spend game two trying to, or heading into game two. How do we get Booker going here? Because McDaniels is tough, but we're not winning this series if Booker's shooting 40%. So that'll be like the big thing they try to fix. Then will they get wacky with the centers?

I don't know. But Booker will be the problem for game two. Yeah. Right. Kyle Anderson, not a small injury if he's really hurt it's also a counter to going small if you wanted

to like match them if you felt like for a quarter like oh wait what we're doing defensively but he wasn't there Allen missed

I don't know he sprained his ankle later well Allen was another one because we talked about Russell before I was like oh you're good regular season guy you suck in the playoffs

Grayson Allen good example of that when you mentioned the Budenholzer the Atlanta Milwaukee series I got excited because I thought I was like, oh, you're a good regular season guy. You suck in the playoffs. Grayson Allen, good example of that. When you mentioned the Budenholzer, the Atlanta-Milwaukee series, I got excited because I thought you were going backwards and I got confused for a second, but made me think of the Piero Antic series for some reason.

One of the great series. That'll be like if there's ever another lockout or another COVID shutdown, we're just doing an hour on that series. Piero Antic, when he ruined Roy Herbert's career in the Atlanta, Indiana series and created small ball. Everyone thinks Steph Curry created it. It was Pierre Antic and that weird Hawks team. Remember? They pulled the center out 25 feet from the basket and people were like, what are they doing? And he made like two threes.

We're like, oh my God, what is this? And now we have basketball. That's how everyone plays. That could be a chapter in your book. It could be a chapter in your book. You've got the D'Angelo Russell chapter on who he is historically against. I didn't like hearing my guy, Jamal Mashburn's name brought up in that list.

But I listen to the stats or the stats. It's like Hibbert went to bed one night and he woke up the next day and they're like, hey, you're no longer needed immediately. He's like, I'm not in this loan conference this year. They're like, no, we've refunded your plane ticket. All right. Last series, New York and Philly, our favorite series. I'll do my, my, uh, my takeaway for this one and I said this two years ago after Boston Brooklyn game one and I think you thought I was a little crazy

I think sometimes a series can be decided in game one and I think this was one of those games I think the Knicks won the series in game one I think they're going to win the series I've been saying forever,

I don't think Embiid is going to get through two weeks. And, you know, we didn't, we, he almost seemed like he wasn't going to get through game one. We're going to talk about Embiid later after we finish this. But,

um, I just think they had to have that game. And I talked to a couple of people that went and there's like two types of Knicks fans, right? There's these Knicks fans that go and they're just, oh my God, the Knicks are good. This is so much fun.

And then there's like the diehard fucking Knicks fans who remember the Charles Smith game and they remember Bernard going head to head against Larry in 84 and they remember the Ewing finger roll and it's like, this is like deep embedded. Oh my God, the Knicks are good again. How far can we go?

And they really care. And I think that game at some point became a, if we lose this game, we're, we're kind of fucked. We might lose the series. And Josh Hart had a couple of threes and bead went over five in the fourth quarter and kind of died.

And, uh, and they just kind of pulled it out. They got a crazy deuce game. Deuce was plus 37. Deuce hit all these threes. And then Josh Hart hit the two classic no, no, no, no, yes threes. But I thought Philly played. I thought Maxie was, that was the best two-way game I think I've seen him play in a big spot. They got a really good hour and a half from Embiid. And I just think the Knicks needed it.

I think it would have been really bad to lose that. Brunson wasn't that good. They were throwing some weird shit at him. And they pulled it out. And they kind of fought. They're 55 to 33 rebounds. And I think that's going to be the game. You hate when I do this.

No, I don't. Because Embiid, looking the way he looks right now, you're right. I mean, I'm not going to say, hey, it's over. You feel stronger about it than I do. If Embiid were healthy, okay? If Embiid, through the whole game, looks like healthy. Okay, but say he were healthy Embiid, you wouldn't be saying the Knicks won the series in game one, right?

I would not. Right. So it has way more to do with how Embiid looks to close this game. From the moment he went down. Yeah. But just in general, you know, it's one thing to do well in the regular season, but sometimes you gotta, you just gotta pull one out and they pulled it out and the crowd was great. They've lost a lot of those, too, over the last few years where it's like, the crowd's so hyped, and then they do a goose egg. Some weird stuff in this game, though.

For instance, Kyle Lowry was unbelievable. Yeah, 18. You got 18 from Kyle Lowry and you lost. And was Kyle Lowry, like it was like Kyle Lowry out of a time machine from like three, four years ago and doing all the Kyle Lowry? Like it was like Kyle Lowry out of a time machine from like three, four years ago and doing all the Kyle Lowry shit.

Including. That layup foul they gave him. What about the three when he figured out how to get Hartenstein to step on his foot on a three somehow. The Knicks did without Grimes playing. I caught what you did there. I thought he was really good. without Grimes playing. I caught what you did there. I thought he was really good.

You know who wasn't good? Who might be irrelevant, Buddy Heald. What happened to that guy? He played 11 minutes. That was a big deadline move. Like, hey man, you've got the one,

the one thing that all these teams have wanted to trade for is your shooting. Yeah. So do it. What happened? He's like, yeah, I can't get used to Embiid. What's his excuse? This is it. Just make some open shots. This is why you're in the league. Just shoot. No, I don't even care if you make them. Take them. And so he doesn't

seem to want to shoot. So Lowry's like, all right, you're not going to shoot. You've got the Tobias Harris minutes. He played 31 minutes. Did you remember? he had nine rebounds I looked it up I here's the I don't I don't remember eight of them I liked what Philly did with Brunson me too I thought they it was this extended one three one thing where they were basically whichever side he goes to we're sending two over there we're not going to let this guy just get in the middle of the paint and eat us alive and so when you look at his line you go okay that actually worked out the problem is his heart hits those three threes in the fourth quarter mcbride has his night and then og who like my biggest thing with him when

his contract gets settled here and i know what the record is with him it's ridiculous but he's not really somebody you're throwing the ball to being like okay now go figure something out and then he hits a three I bet money that the Sixers coaches watch the film and go hey what we did worked it's just that all the other guys made all of their shots. So I don't know that I would deviate from that too much, but all of this is a huge question mark because I'm with you. This is how it's going to start the playoffs with Embiid. This is how it looks from the beginning. And we didn't even think he was going to come back in the second half.

I didn't think he was going to come back in the second half of the Orlando game. So credit to him for even getting back out there. But if this is what it looks like now, and if I'm the Knicks, and it reminded me of the Butler game, remember Butler turned his ankle big time and it was like, how come the Knicks aren't attacking him at all? Like I can barely walk, I'm still out there. I would be putting Embiid in so many, I didn't even care how many points I scored in the first quarter. I would try to make him move and show against Brunson because he doesn't really have any interest in it, so he might not even do it. But I would try to like, it's like running the football.

I would try to get him moving early to just wear him out. I was talking to a Philly fan friend of mine, and we had a serious conversation about whether Philly should only play Embiid in the second half of game two and just try to get a good hour out of him and whether that was a good idea or not. And this was an unironic conversation

because he's dead at the end of these games. Like that fourth quarter, and he had gotten hurt before that, but 0 for 5, no lift on a shot, and just looked like he was dragging his ass around. So it's like, can we just get, can we get two quarters out of this dude? Can we survive in the first half? I don't know.

It was an interesting topic. We decided he should just play the whole game. That was the controversial outcome of the conversation. The problem is, is that he still is going to get you buckets. So even if it doesn't look great or physically, that's the beauty of his talent that it's still brutal to deal with. By the way, we hadn't even mentioned it yet

because the Hartenstein minutes, they declined. Mitchell Robinson played his ass off in this game. I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, I mean, that was a big reason they had such a rebound advantage because it was an old school Mitchell Robinson game. Do you know how hard it must be to be like, hey, you're not going to win most of the transactions

against the guy you're going up against. You're going to look bad. You're going to get fouls called on you. It's going to be really frustrating. He's going to put up big numbers, and he's huge. You're going to be dealing with it the whole time. But I still need you to have that kind of effort all the way. And by the way, you're never going to be allowed to shoot.

We're never going to pass you the ball, which he's posted on Instagram isn't exactly his favorite thing he's like a few more touches so his effort i mean that's kind of what you expect from tibbs what you expect from his team when you watch them all year long and it's i just hope mb can play enough that we have a series because there's no point in even breaking down what it's like without him but i've heard some people talking about like hey if it looks this bad then just shut him down for next. I don't even know how many more chances you get. I know he turned 30 in March, but if you look at video of him.

This is our next segment. Okay. Let's hold it. Hold it. We're going to wrap up the YouTube stream. Okay. And we're going to do Embiid and Kawhi and a couple other things. Podcast only. So we're going to do Embiid and Kauai and a couple other things. Podcast only.

So we're wrapping up the YouTube stream. Uh, I liked it. I thought it was energizing. I, I thought there was a hop in your step that I hadn't seen a while. It reminded me of Tina Fey and date night. We're just like,

Oh, we're going to this crazy restaurant. Oh, the mafia is after us. I don't know if you've seen that movie. It's not very good. Um, I'm going to check it out, though.

I'm sold. Yeah, check it out. They call me Mr. Red Light in Bristol. Mr. Red Light? That was the nickname? Yeah. You may not like him in the pre-show meeting, but when it's real, no one I'd want more less than him. Come on. He's right there. You can listen to the rest of this podcast

on the Bill Simmons Podcast. We might do this again. This is fun. Thanks for joining us on YouTube. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons. Two scientists.

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nothing will. Get your ghost pepper sandwich today at Popeye's before it ghosts you for another year. Chicken from Popeye's. All right, we're going to talk Embiid because this is really one of the most unusual careers of any great player. And he looks like he's in peril again

with this knee injury that he has. And I'm he looks like he's in peril again with this knee injury that he has. And I'm not sure if he's going to make it through the round. You don't know if he's going to make it through each game. He's in the playoffs. He's played 56 of 64 games. They're 29 and 27 when he plays in the playoffs. He averages 24 and 11. He shoots 46%, 28% from three. 21.8 PR, 9.3 free throws attempts a game, 34.7 minutes a game, 1.7 blocks a game. The stats don't look like

what his regular season stats look like for the most part. He has five round one wins in his career. 2018 Miami round one. Can you name The best player on that team In 2018 2018 Miami

Uh That was the one Justice Winslow year where they're like We think we figured him out Justice Winslow had the highest Approval rating for the lowest PER, maybe. Yeah, I was in on him. They beat 2019

Brooklyn. That was the Levert, D'Lo, Jared Allen, Dinwiddie team. They beat 2021 Washington, Westbrook, Beal. They beat 2022 Toronto that won 48 games, Siakam, VanVleet, rookie Scotty Barnes, OG.

So that was probably the best of the wins. And then last year beat the Brooklyn team post-KD trade that didn't have anybody. So five round one wins and then six playoff series losses that we can go through. And I think we're headed for a seventh one here. I don't know how much of this is just horrible luck, and it might be all of it,

but I do know that I haven't quite seen a career like this, Rosillo, and I don't even really know how to put it in perspective. And this was one of our big assignments for the podcast. Where did you land? What did you come up with?

Who is he like? No, just where we are with him. He's 30 years old. I don't know if this gets better from a health standpoint because we've seen with great players that injuries start adding up. What is the light at the end of the tunnel here if you're like, hey, this guy's still going to win a title someday? I just, I don't know how you can bet on it. And it's not really even about him, the player. The playoff drop off for the efficiency stuff is significant.

And I know you've run through it here, but when I was looking at it this morning, I'm like, man, it's even worse than I thought it was. You start digging through the game logs, you're like, there's just a lot of bad games in there. We don't treat him like some of the other players that are in the MVP

conversation for having bad games because I think he's had the Ben Simmons Atlanta series. He's been hurt. It's one thing if he's healthy and he's playing like this, but he's been hurt. Every single year, there's something. I have that list, by the way, after you're done. and he's playing like this, but he's been hurting so many, like every single year there's something. And so. I have that list, by the way,

for after you're done. Okay. I don't know why this all of a sudden gets better post 30. And that's why we're doing this segment because when you start putting a bunch of injuries on somebody, the trend in the league with the history of it

with the good players is that arrow usually starts pointing down after a while. And we saw this happen with Blake Griffin, right? Where Blake Griffin had a bunch of different injuries and then all of a sudden, Detroit was probably his last day in that one Detroit year. And then his body just started breaking down. Now he's had some bad luck injuries. Like 2018, they lost to Boston in five and round two, orbital fracture, concussion, right? Not his fault. Can't blame him on that, obviously. 2019 round two, lost to

Toronto in seven, knee tendinitis. And he was bad in that series. Like for him, he had that, he had a left knee issue that year where he missed 14 games after the all-star break. Right. 2020 round one, they got swept by Boston. No injury.

2021 round two lost to Atlanta and seven had a torn meniscus. 2022 round two lost to Miami at six. He had a torn thumb ligament from earlier in the playoffs, then had another orbital fracture concussion. This guy's had that twice, which is horrible. 2023, last year, lost to Boston in seven,

had a knee sprain that he played with. And then this year has the meniscus. It's a lot of injuries, including knee tendonitis, torn meniscus, torn meniscus again,

and a knee sprain. And not to mention all the stuff that he had early. But the reason it's so fascinating is, you know, I did my pyramid and I have all the best centers ever, right? And just in descending order, the top level, Russell, Kareem, Wilt, Shaq, Hakeem, Moses, all of those guys, by the time they were in Embiid's age, they'd either been in the finals or won a title. The next level, Jokic, he won a title. The next level, Walton won a title early. David Robinson, conference finals a bunch of times.

At least twice, right? With San Antonio, maybe once. Maybe, I think twice. Willis Reed won a title. Dave Cowens won a title. Patrick Ewing got to the finals, was always in the mix there. George Mikan was a million years ago. And then even you go down to the level two guys,

Wes Unseld made the finals in his third year. Nate Thurman, he was in the finals. Dwight Howard, he made the finals 2009. And Bob McAdoo did not make the finals until he was a roll guy with the Lakers. But I just listed six, seven, 10, 13, 17 centers that are probably the 17 best centers in the history of the league, right? And Embiid's had less success than everybody except McAdoo at this point. So it's not like nothing's happening here. And yet it's weird because I don't know how much you can stick them with. You know, like it's like it really seems like most of this is just bad luck. I definitely think it's on the bad luck side more than it is anything else.

But I've said this for a long time now watching how some of these tighter playoff games have closed out. This is why this position that we've evolved from this traditional center position, even though he's not a traditional center with his touch and his shooting ability and the way you gotta get him shot but like the most valuable guys are the guys that can have the ball in their hands and figure out how to set up their own offense or offense for everybody else like jokic and those are the most valuable guys and but you could say mb was like that in the first part of the regular season right i mean he was scoring 35 a game you could say well thisid was like that in the first part of the regular season, right? I mean, he was scoring 35 a game. You could say, well, this should maybe translate. but I think there's a slight limitation for him offensively in comparison to the other. And I'm not just talking about scoring numbers and his averages and his shooting and all that stuff. I'm just talking about like, he needs to be set up just a little bit more than the other

four or five best players that we think about in the league. I feel that way. Other people would disagree, but this is someone that I've been making mistakes on for a while. When I go back to the draft, I liked him better than everybody else. You're like, okay, so wait, he's getting foot surgery? Like, alright. Well, now what do you do with him? And then he sits out the first

two years, which you could say was complications of the foot surgery, but let's face it, I think he didn't want him playing out there. Then he plays 31 games his third year, and then he's coming up for a contract and i made a huge mistake with with my opinion on it was just i don't know that i'd want to give this guy nine figures all of a sudden and then it turns into you know he's got the mvp some would argue he should have a second one i wouldn't but he gets the one last year and that's the whole point like so he's actually surpassed what I thought he could be.

Cause I go, who has a start of his career that way? And then it all just kind of works out. Right. You're supposed to be a bust with the way his career started. Not a potential MVP down the road who actually wins the MVP. Right. So like, where are you with him as being the face of your franchise? I just wouldn't trust it.

I don't, I've, we've seen enough at this point to be 31 next season. Um, he's a big dude, right? You, you've stood on a court that he's been on the court with,

like he's a big dude that carries a lot of weight and structurally has just had a bunch of things happen to him now. If I'm a Philly fan, I'm like, oh yeah, we got him beat for the next five, six years. Would you feel like you had him for the next five, six years? It's almost like you're taking it year by year because you don't know how his body's going to respond because each year it's something else.

Watching him, there's another debate about whether he should even be playing in this series. Yeah, that's why as we're talking this all out, you can feel incredibly unfair because you're like, hey, you guys, he's not healthy. Why are you guys doing this now? Because this is the point. He's 100% not healthy.

He threw an alley-oop off the backboard to himself, came down like he was shot, and came back later. It's the same way I feel about Kawhi, where it's like, yeah, he's awesome. But, you know, okay, is he going to be there? It's just different. It just means there's other guys I'd rather have than him that aren't as good as him,

which I think is totally reasonable. All right, so let's say Josh Harris called us. Let's say Philly loses to the Knicks in round one and Embiid goes trying to recover, get in shape for next season. And Josh Harris is like, what do you think I should do? Because I could move on from this and get a player back and a bunch of picks. Or when you have somebody who, when he's healthy, is one of the five best players in the league, hands down, how can you give that up for an unknown blank? You can't. So you kind of have to ride it out. I just don't know what you do. It's unsolvable. And I don't know if there's been a lot of situations like this. I thought the Clippers made a mistake when they extended Kawhi

because to me that just felt like, hey, let's just see a healthy year before the money will be there. We'll take care of you at the end of this season. Let's see how this looks. Kawhi, which I think is an important piece of the Embiid conversation, Kawhi goes to the Clippers. He plays 13 of 13 playoff games in 2020. He plays 11 and 19 and 21, gets hurt, misses the last eight,

misses the whole next season, no playoffs. Last year, plays the first two, gets hurt again, misses the last three. This year, missed the one today. He's played 26 of 38 playoff games. I'm surprised it's that high. But he also missed 2022 and then missed the playoffs. So'm surprised it's that high. And he's missed, but he also missed 2022 and they missed the playoffs. So really it's even more than that.

And was not available to finish three of the last four postseasons, basically. And they just extended him. And it's like the MB thing. I don't know how that gets better. It's like, oh man, remember those four rough Kawhi years, but now he's totally healthy. I just don't see it. And I don't see it because I've been following basketball long enough

that when guys just keep getting hurt, it usually doesn't get better. When they hit their 30s, it gets worse. And I know medicine's better and I know training's better and we know our body's better. He's got to get smaller. He's got to get smaller. I don't understand. You're talking about me. Right. Now he's got the knee injury injury so i can't imagine there were many cardio options for a guy that big that's trying to rush back to even get back to even play in the playoff like a credit to him that he's even going like no no i'm not shutting this down like i want to be out there i want to try to figure this whole thing out but the second he came back you're like uh-oh and he's still put up 30 so i i would think the biggest thing for him to try to,

because I don't think any sane person would disagree with us on this one. Like if you're asking the simple question, hey, here's the timeline of the last five years, and this is how it's gone. This is what it looked like yesterday, and project the next five years. Like if you're sitting there going, oh, no, it'll all work out. Like, well, okay. Telling the team that they would have to do something with him, that's not going to happen.

Because if Embiid was available tomorrow, say in a free agent world, everybody would just pay him. Because I think a lot of these transactions are, all right, but what if we have a chance that this guy is this good? I think that's what the Kawhi thing is. And granted, the Clippers don't have their picks.

They're moving to the new place. But that was the Harden trade too. It was the combo of the Kawhi extension and the Harden trade. At least we have a chance. We can sell some hope to our fans. Yeah, right. This doesn't make a ton of sense. Yep, there's tons of downside, a lot of risk.

But what else are we going to do with our money? So they've got Embiid under control for two more years as a player option back there. So it's not like you even have to worry about that part of it. You would probably just say, okay, we need to do whatever we can to get him as healthy as possible and take another shot at it because we know he's right. He's one of the five best players in the world, and that's all we're going to do. Now, it would be really interesting to see what happens with their

cap space, and if they don't get Paul George and if it's a bunch of one-year deals to take another shot at cap space again, is Embiid going to be patient? That could be the thing where it would be different because I'm always on the lookout for the next guy that would say,

okay, this isn't working for me. It's going to be somebody from round one who loses. Absolutely. We're due. Yeah. Let me ask you this. The Lakers get knocked out in round one and Philly gets knocked out in round one and Josh Harris runs into Jeannie Buss and they're having wine

and one thing leads to another and they start talking about Embiid and Davis. Should we just flip them for each other? Is Jay Moore there? Jay Moore's there. He's intrigued. He's always liked Embiid. Thinks he's funny.

Who pauses longer on that conversation? Philly or Los Angeles? LA do it. LA would do it in a second. So I think the pause is from Harris. Because then the problem is, is like, okay, this hypothetical, which we shouldn't be doing after game one. All we shouldn't we both know that listen this is what we do in podcasting we have dumb conversations and talk about this is the whole point of a podcast i love it all

right so now that we've said that uh don't try this at home right like a little warning line you couldn't be like you couldn't be daryl and, and the entire group and go, okay, cool. We have this transaction. Now what? Now what do we do? Cause nobody's trading.

Maxing in cap space. Kind of like it. I kind of like it. I kind of like it for both teams. It reminds me of when Penny Hardaway got, when he signed with Phoenix. Remember the Orlando thing? Just too much stuff had happened, and then he

went to Phoenix. And Orlando was like, we're devastated, but deep down was like, I don't know, not sure how much how many more good years that guy has. Remember when Phoenix was apparently the only place you could go if you had injuries? Like if this were 0-4, guys, the podcast would

have started like you're gonna get mb to phoenix something in the water i think the mb we're watching right now is carrying too much weight and it's dangerous considering the stuff that uh has happened to his lower body next year who knows um it's a tough one. When he went down, I thought his season was over and next year was done. He looked that bad when they showed he was lying on the ground. It seemed like his eyes were rolling in the back of his head. He looked like Gaethje. It was like, oh my God, this guy just blew out every,

and then 20 minutes he was back. It's a rollercoaster ride, man. The draft was 10 years ago. This is now a full decade of Embiid, and I don't think Philly fans, they're in the same position they were in when they drafted the guy and he had a broken foot, where they're like,

we don't know what we're getting from this dude. But when he's out there and he's feeling it, this is the guy who was averaging more points than minutes played in season, which I don't know if anyone had done that since Wilt. So you're probably right. Philly's got to be like, all right, we got to talk ourselves back into this one.

The Kawhi thing, I just think, is nuts that they extended him. I didn't understand it when it happened. Agreed. And I just don't understand it. I mean, that's the kind of thing that just absolutely murders you for three, four years if you're wrong on that one.

Flipping around to a more positive note. I was thinking about this Jokic four-year run. This would be year four. Of just what an unbelievable playoff performer he's been. He's one of the greatest playoff performers in the history of the league, which I don't think

gets mentioned that much, if not ever. 2021, 22, 23, and then first game this year, he's averaging 30 points a game, 13 rebounds and eight assists. He's a 54, 41, 80 percentage guy. 31.6 PER, which is like levitating above just about anybody.

He's.301 win shares per 48. It's just like, it's obscene. And I was like, I wonder if anyone's even close to this in the last like 50 years and went through. And the closest I could get, um, LeBron from 15 to 18, average 31,

10 and eight. But some of the advanced stuff wasn't as good. Jordan from 90 to 93 was 34 points a game, seven and seven. And then the legendary bird and 84 to 87, 27, 10 and seven. And it was to 87, 27, 10, and 7, and was almost 50, 40, 90. And then Giannis was the only other one I could find

where 19 to 22 is 29, 13, and 6. Does Jokic get credit for being an unbelievable playoff performer? Because I don't think he does. Not to the level. Like, Lakers fans talking themselves into it. an unbelievable playoff performer because I don't think he does. Not to the level. Lakers fans talking themselves into it. I'm like, wait, didn't you guys just see what happened last year? Yeah.

It just happened. It was a year ago. People talk about him being the worst MVP. You're like, what? What is going on with you guys? Here's what I ask you. We have had... I mean, it's hard when you start going top 10 all the time, right?

Like, who are the unassailable top 10s in NBA history for you? I'm sure you have these off the top of your head. Well, I remember Curry, it took forever for him to get to the 10th spot for me. And it's like basically Curry versus Kobe for that spot. And I had, heading into this season, I had Jokic

19th. I had him as the third highest guy on the level below the Pantheon. If he goes back-to-back, he goes in the Pantheon. All right, so it's... I think he's against...

At that point, it's him versus Moses and Shaq and Akeem, and we start arguing about that. That's the territory he's in if he wins again. Okay.

Because this is good. All right, so right now, it's Jordan, it's Magic, it's it's jordan it's magic it's lebron it's bill russell it's kareem kareem duncan will yeah so that's at eight yeah um there's jerry west is in there curry jerry west is top 10 for you and then then you have Curry, say, 10th. Just to kind of do this off the top. All right. So if you look at the guys that have been rolling through this generation, you're like, okay, Curry gets in there.

I would have no issue with it. Obviously, I'm a fan of West. I have Curry 10th, and I have Durant 16th out of the new guys. I think most people would say – I think Kobe's more popular than Steph, so I think there'd be more people saying you guys should have Kobe over Steph, whatever. It's fine.

Um, it's a really good argument. You could, right. Cause Kobe had more on BAs. He has more points. Like you could argue this Steph run is coming to kind of a close, at least from a postseason standpoint,

Kobe's postseason resume is better. It's a good argument. There's also the holes that Kobe has in comparison to LeBron where you're like, hey, what happened there? Steph has those too. Steph has three of the last five years doesn't win

a playoff game. Right. One year he played five games. I'm just saying, three of the last five. Hey, add in context. Hakeem, I get really defensive about. Probably more defensive of any player in history of like, I really don't want to have this guy outside of the top 10. I think he's, I'll always say it.

I think he's the most underrated superstar that I can think of in NBA history. So if those are the 10, all right, and say Kobe's your 10th, I'm not going to argue about it. We were projecting. Kobe is my 10th right now. So I have Curry 9th, Kobe 10th, Jerry West 10th. I'm not going to argue about it. We were projecting... Kobe is my 10th right now. I have Curry 9th, Kobe 10th, Jerry West 11th. I don't know what Jerry did to drop behind those guys,

but it happened. Was it a recent podcast interview? Just like, you know what, I'm not moving him down to 11th. I don't know what it was. I don't know what he did. Could have been Curry's, I don't know, fourth ring, another All-NBA. The point that I'm trying to make here is that there was

a movement of like, hey, Durant could end up top 10 all time. Steph could end up top 10 all time. Giannis, like, what is the finished product of Giannis? The point that I'm making in reference to Jokic is that if Jokic

gets another one here, he's what year two or three of this five-year window, and I think he's also going to age really well, he's probably going to pass all of these guys. This is the level that he's at. So for anybody to arguing of where he's at in today's game, I don't even know that that's an argument anymore. That's why I had no issue whatsoever voting for him for MVP. I just went like, look, I know what the other numbers are. I know what the arguments can be. If you really want to get into seating, we're separating it by a game here or there.

I mean, go ahead if that's your tiebreaker. I think it's a ridiculous tiebreaker. But the control that he has over the game, and then you look at him historically, he has the highest career PER in playoff history. He's ahead of Jordan. He's ahead of LeBron. Number one, the highest. Again, there's nobody higher than him. Now, granted, later on as he ages, that can dip.

At one point, I remember Zach Lowe arguing Chris Paul and his Death to Rings piece that came out like a decade ago, and I absolutely loved it because he was like, look at Chris Paul's efficiency stuff here all time. He was a top 10 guy. He's still, I think, 14th on this list. Yeah, it gets tough when you get older. It hurt Kobe too. So Jokic may age behind Michael Jordan, but there's a good argument to look at this now and say all these other names that we've talked about, like being in the absolute top 10 list of NBA players, Jokic is positioned to surpass these guys because the Durant argument becomes really complicated, I think, because this is all Jokic.

This is his team. It's just going to ding Durant when you're comparing him to the five other guys that he's supposed to go ahead of. And unless he gets another one in Phoenix, it's going to be hard for guys that he's supposed to go ahead of. And unless he gets another one in Phoenix, it's going to be hard for him once he's done to go, hey, I'm going to put Durant ahead of Hakeem or Steph

or some of these other guys. He's just not going to pass those guys. The spot Jokic can get to is in that kind of Duncan Bird magic territory. That 5, 6, 7, 8 range. I mean, he's got three MVPs in the last four years.

He finished second the other year. He's about to win back-to-back titles. Well, we don't know that yet. But I'm saying he's the favorite.Ps in the last four years. He finished second the other year. He's about to win back-to-back titles. Well, we don't know that yet. But I'm saying he's the favorite to do it. And it goes back to what we were talking about with Embiid. In a way, knock on wood, it's like the opposite of Embiid because there's something so insanely durable about him. And I feel the same way about Luka, actually, too.

The speed they play, I just don't see a lot of potential for terrible injuries with those guys, right? The way, the way they, the way they move, the way they carry themselves and their bodies, it just, some guys are just durable. We haven't seen really any yoke injuries, um, that I can remember. And he played 79 games this year. He's going to play 20 to 25 playoff games again and he's just going to come back the next year. Duncan was pretty durable too. Some guys are just durable. But I think that's where he ends up

and I think he's that good and I think it's justified. And the stats back it up. And that's why I brought up that four-year. I think four years is a nice way to look at players because if you have a four-year, I think four years is a nice way to look at players, because if you have a four-year kind of peak or a four-year snapshot, that's a long time, right? It's a presidential term.

It's somebody going to college and graduating. It's a long-ass time. If you're that good for that long, it's meaningful in a different way. So that would be my argument for Jokic. A couple quick things, and then we'll wrap up. I had some quickies for you. You ruined Amir Coffey for me.

You're welcome. I just kept, first of all, he's good. He's like a legitimately good role player. But I kept thinking about Amir Coffey face, how brilliant that was. If you could save one person for the rest of the playoffs and just immediately make them 100%, almost like in a video game, give them 100% health,

just for the sake of making the playoffs more fascinating, would you give 100% health to Zion, Kawhi, and Beter Giannis going forward? You can only pick one. Zion. You love Zion. Was that, when Zion

started taking it to LeBron, was that the most exciting moment of the decade for you? Right. You had a more exciting moment? I would say right behind him blitzing the point guard against milwaukee in that game i even texted somebody from the pelicans i was like hey man those two blitzes and i think it took like 48 hours so they got to get back to me be like oh

cool man yeah hope you're well have you i talked about this with bahoni briefly but have you ever seen lebron get overpowered on a basketball court before? Because I had never seen it. The only time I could remember was when he lost the jump ball to Paul Pierce in 2008 game seven when he was young. And Paul Pierce just was stronger and got to the ball. That was probably the last time he's been overpowered on a basketball court. And Zion just worked him like a speed bag for an hour. That was unbelievable. And then now he's 39 and this is the law of nature of the NBA, but that was unbelievable. So, all right. I have long struggled with announcers on LeBron games because you have to like go all in on worshiping him, but then it can get in the way of like just normal stuff

like when he dunks and it's like he's fucking 39 he's not 89 and he's 68 like he probably can still dunk all right yeah you know right and then he dunks and somebody would be like looking like 21 year old lebron you're like, no, no, not that. We have that on YouTube. Right. Then when he gets hurt, he's going to take a little extra time and everybody loses their mind. When he took that charge from Zion, that was one where I was like, I can't believe he did that. And it seemed like it's the only time I've seen someone slam into LeBron or I was like, okay, he felt that in a way that I don't think he's felt

a collision on the floor in a long time. Cause most of the time, if there's any kind of collision, like he's initiating, he's so powerful. He's just barreling through guys. Well, and he's also he'll milk it. He'll try to get a call. He'll, he'll, he was not milking anything. He was lying on the ground going, my soul just left my body for two minutes, two seconds. So it just happened to my life. So when the announcers are like, oh my God, you know, 21 seasons in at this age, like at that point, I'm like, okay, this is when you use that stuff. Not when he dunks in the open court, but he's six,

eight. He should still be able to dunk that moment. I'm like, I just had so much fun with it because it's this game and it mattered. They just gotten blown out by him. And, you know, Zion's kind of entering.

I mean, look, he's never even flirted with the MD level, despite some of the frustrations we've had with him beads career. But it's, there's this list of some of these players where you go, well, how long can I hitch my wagon to this if this is who the franchise is? The problem is that Philly got really screwed on the Harden thing because that money should be playing somewhere else with Embiid.

Luckily, New Orleans is drafted so well that, as we saw tonight in game one with OKC, even though you'd love a second option offensively that you could bank on, especially going up against Chet, where you feel like, OK, Chet's going to get him a couple times. Zion's just going to go in strong every single time, and he just finishes against everybody.

So, yeah, I was going to say Embiid, but then when you gave me the Zion option, I had to go with him. You? Zion, during the Lakers game, that one hour was the most fun hour of the season because he was also rebounding and playing defense. He's playing defense to his level,

but he's into it. He was showing us what we've wanted for five years. I think if the question is, who would make the playoffs the most interesting if they were 100% the answer is probably Kawhi I don't know if that's my answer

as a basketball fan I still think the Bucks have some serious issues with their wings I don't know if they have the athleticism and the speed to beat the Celtics. Maybe they do. Maybe I'm jigsing it.

But I think if you put Kawhi on that Clippers team I watched today, that's a really interesting team, especially against the Nuggets. If Kawhi was 100% and you're throwing him out with all the other stuff they have, because they're deep. They have role players that are real role players like Powell, Coffey, Westbrook. What's his face? The Plumlee. They bring in guys and the guys are effective. The Plumlee's

like a good backup center. Terrence Mann had a double-double at halftime today. That team's deep, but Kawhi is the straw that's through the strength. All right, second to last thing. In the row in front of us, this couple brought their young baby, who could not have been more than four or five months. And they put the headphones on him, which I thought was smart. But I just would ban kids under one from sporting events.

If I was sports star, that would be one of my rules. And I would include my own kids when I had small kids. It's not a place for little kids. The cousin of that is I went to a Laker game two weeks ago and two different people sitting courtside had like six year old kids sitting on like somebody's lap. And I just think that's like a borderline child abuse thing. I couldn't be more against that. Because we've seen these games where guys go flying into that court side, right? Into any of the seats.

You just never know. They're trying to get a loose ball. You're actually putting your kid in harm's way, and I'm against it. So sports are banned, those two things. You don't get to bring your kid court side unless the kid's like 10 and no baby's under one. Out.

What if he's eight and a good rebounder? Eight, I need some size. I think it should be like the rides at Disney where it's like, oh, you're not three foot seven yet. You can't go on this ride. That's what courtside should be. If you could get run over by Giannis and have to go to the hospital,

you shouldn't be sitting courtside. I agree on the courtside thing. I went to a Celtics game once where there was a bunch of women and the kids were so young. And they were on their fucking phones. You know? And it was like, you're just doing this. This kid's a Birkenbag for you. This is just an accessory.

This isn't even like a real thing. And I just don't know what happens. I don't know what age it is. Maybe when you're like 38, north of 38, you start looking around for kids' safety. Even as a non-parent, I'm really on top of kids' safety scenarios. It's something I pride myself in. And I'm always looking at that. But you think, what if, okay, what if it's a five-month-old normal seat and the family... No. What if they just need to get out of the house?

No. What if they move to the town? He's working remotely. It's not a place for a five-month-old baby. Maybe they cut off eight months. She's got a new gig with a firm. You didn't want to move there. Get a babysitter.

But there's no friends. You don't know anyone. You don't trust anybody. You're not in the mix right now. Don't go to the game. Not everybody has to go to a basketball game all right here's the last thing i'm going to read you this letter letter are we doing letters i'm in a letter that was written in the boston globe oh this is awesome you know this yeah it's unbelievable man of course i

know this come on it's so good. Share it. Yeah, of course. It's unbelievable. All right, for the listeners, you might not know this. I'm writing this letter to voice my opinion about the rebuilding process of the Boston Celtics.

Where has Celtic pride gone? The rebuilding of this once massive dynasty must begin now. We need to clean house, let players go, and clear up salary room for our draft pick.

Although the draft is not incredibly deep this year, I do see a future star on the horizon. Jason Kidd from the University of California has the skills and pure basketball sense to be a superstar and a savior of a struggling franchise. Kidd may well be the best passer

in all of basketball right now. He's only a sophomore in college. For the record, House and I fucking love Jason Kidd. I did not have a column or a podcast in 1994, but Jason Kidd was my guy. I was all in on him. Back to the letter. He has incredible skills, but what would impress coaches and scouts even more is his knowledge of the game. Very rarely did you see Kidd misuse the clock

at the end of the game, turn the ball over under pressure, or make the wrong choice on the fast break. The only weak part of his game is his outside shooting. Although he struggled with the shooting percentage as a freshman, as a sophomore, there's dramatic improvement in this statistic. The last point I'll make, Jason Kidd is a winner. Kidd won three state championships in high school and took an unknown team to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament, not to mention he knocked off defending national champion Duke during his March showcase. The Celtics must realize that in order to rebuild, they need a solid nucleus,

and that is a strong point guard to run the team. Jason Kidd is the franchise's chance to start to rebuild a team that was once the best in the world. Signed, Sam Presti, Carlisle. Unbelievable. He basically lays out his entire blueprint for running Oklahoma City someday

in this random letter to the Boston Globe in the mid-90s. I thought that was one of the craziest things I've ever read. Sam Presti knew the whole time what to do as a GM, and then he fucking pulled it off. I loved it so much um for two reasons one like I really like Presti and again I think he's awesome at his job but I also like him

but he hates this stuff so I think once a year I'll just be like hey what do you think, man? And it's like, no, I don't want, I don't want to do it. And now I think you have to have them on because you guys are kindred spirits. Like this is you, this is you. He's my spirit animal. I texted him before the season and I sent him the clip how I thought OKC was going to win 50 plus games. And I was like, I just want you to know, I did this on my podcast. I really believe this is going to happen. And congratulations to everything you built. You know, he's a Boston guy. I root for the Boston guys.

Conquer Carla. Yeah. You know, he was appropriately embarrassed and did the whole, I hope you're right. And whatever. Didn't say. Yeah. Right. Never said anything. Oh, yeah. That'd be great. I'd you're right. And whatever. It didn't say, yeah, right. Never says anything.

Oh yeah. That'd be great. I'd be happy to make the playoffs, whatever he said. But, um, yeah, he's, he has an actual strategy that he's stuck with. And if you look at that Jason kid piece and all the things he liked about Jason kid, those are the players he goes after players who won in high school or in college or players who have just the competitiveness and an unselfishness. And you watch the guys out there tonight and they're all like that. And maybe that's why he can't at the trade deadline figure out who to get because he's literally looking for a specific type

of player. And if that player isn't in that vision, he's out. So even washed up Gordon Hayward, he's like, hey, this is the kind of guy I like. He might be washed up, but who knows? Maybe he's not. But Hayward is a little bit like, well, not a little bit like prime Hayward. The best part of him was that it was that he could create. He could get your offense started. He can make decisions with the ball. The ball moves, make decisions fast.

So despite a diminished version of him health wise, like that stuff doesn't go away when you're just not the same athletically. So I think there's an economic part of it that was more of the motivation for clearing off the Meechich contract, but it fits the profile of all the players that he keeps putting on this roster. roster and you know okc gets way too much shit when it comes to like okay well finally like think about it they had the chris paul series with the thunder where they thought he was just gonna like milk it and he was like what are you talking about like i'm here that went to seven and they almost beat houston right which houston had no business going to seven with them in that series and it it came down to last game so we cover that that, right? Then they're not good. Then they're not good. And then last year, you see the signs of it, and that's without their top pick in Chet even playing.

Yeah. So really, it was like a two-year dip. Do you know how many of these franchises would? It may be a compliment. You know, like sometimes, like when I see Caitlin Clark being criticized by so many people, I'm like, to be honest with you, it's way better than the other options. Yeah, you're doing great.

Right. The first option is like absolute praise, which I think is like only Morgan Freeman. Okay. And then it's irrelevance, which is the worst of anything for public consumption. And for Caitlin Clark right now, it's like, you're such a big deal now. Welcome to the club. Now you get to have people telling you what you can't do or why something that you're doing is actually being done wrong and all these different things. The Thunder, maybe because Presti's been so good that when they go through a two-year dip, it's like, what's wrong with them? And you're like, wait, compare their dip to some of these other franchises. And Presti turns it around this quickly and that they're the one seed. And I'll have moments,

like even watching today, and I love that game, but I'm like, what if, you know, what if OKC pulls this off? What if they actually pull this thing off? What if they make the finals? Yeah, what if they make the NBA finals?

There was a two seed two years ago. Crazy. Wallace was out there in crunch time. You know what I'm saying? I did. He had the tip because they switched into him with CJ and then he tipped the ball away and that mucked that up. The funniest thing about the Presti letter is I was doing this at 26. Trying to get jobs with teams.

Yeah, still sending long letters. I was trying to think, can you think of anyone more mortified that that letter came out than Presti? No one. He was probably like, Oh my, they finally found out about the letter. He must've been absolutely apoplectic when he's probably like, Oh, maybe this will never come out that I did this. Right. And it's like, actually you were 16 and you were right. Yeah. Sam Presti. Uh, Hey, this was a really fun podcast I love going live thanks to Corey McConnell for helping us out

with the with the YouTube stuff it went I thought I enjoyed how it went thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creighton for producing as well

thanks to Russillo enjoy the basketball hopefully some of these series will get a little better than they did it was good to see you yeah man

good stuff will get a little better than they did. It 18+, DC, and present in select states. Fandle, offering online sports wager in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino, LLC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit Fandle.com slash RG. In Colorado, DC, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Vermont. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 in Arizona, 888-789-7777, or visitIT in Indiana. 800-522-4700 or visit ksgamblinghelp.com in Kansas. 877-770-STOP

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