The Bill Simmons Podcast - Philly Implodes, Apex Giannis vs. Apex LeBron, and the Worst Celtics Losses Ever | With Chris Ryan and Rob Mahoney

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Rob Mahoney and Chris Ryan to discuss the Heat eliminating the 76ers from the playoffs, James Harden’s future in Philadelphia, the Suns' big Game 6 loss to the Mavericks, the East vs. the West, Grizzlies-Warriors, predictions for Bucks-Celtics Game 6, and more (2:36). Then, Bill recounts the Celtics' Game 5 loss at home, and the best NBA players he’s seen in person (43:35) before wallowing a little more and discussing his list of the worst Celtics losses he’s experienced (1:06:58). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Chris Ryan and Rob Mahoney Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Okay, coming up on this podcast. Rob Mahoney and I are going to talk about what happened tonight. Sixers heat. The fall of James Harden, yet again. The possible ending of Doc Rivers, yet again. And then we talked about Phoenix, Dallas as well. That's at the very top.

And then I went a little rogue. Last night's Celtics-Bucks game and the fact that the Celtics, in about three minutes, I think lost the title last night. And I'm still sorting out my feelings on that. But you get to hear me sort out all my feelings. I have a couple of really fun segments for you that I planned out.

So that's coming up after Mahoney. Stay tuned for that. You'll like it. And even if you hate Boston fans, you'll still enjoy the pain and horror and misery in my voice. So that is all coming up next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this just after midnight East Coast time. Rob Mahoney from TheRinger.com. The Ringer NBA show is here. Also here, special guest for The Watch, it's Chris Ryan!

I didn't put you in the intro. I was trying to do your intro. Is that your version of, oh, Johnny! For me? I guess it should be, considering your Sixers had an ignominious ending tonight. You weren't surprised. Nobody was surprised. Nobody

knew how to even put the gambling line. It was either it was going to be a close game or the Sixers are going to lose by 20. Harden was the big takeaway. It was both, but it wasn't really. Your big takeaway. How are you feeling? Walk us through it.

Rob and I are going to life coach with you. Yeah. This is great because I got to do a pregame show with Kyle and Tyler. I get to do an immediate postgame show with you guys, and then I'm doing the answer tomorrow. So I think I'll work through all my stages of grief and have an okay weekend. That's great. That was probably the worst possible version of what

I could have expected, which was Embiid hitting the deck a dozen times and looking like his body was going to come apart. Harden completely quitting in the second quarter. Theibel basically getting booed out of Philadelphia permanently. Forget Danny Green gets his leg caved in. So that was a nice little first half treat.

And Tobias Harris. Kindly finally coming alive in the second half in the fourth quarter with like the five straight points run and then immediately go into the press afterwards and talking about how the Sixers need to be more mentally tough. And the cherry on top of the shit Sunday. Doc Rivers saying like at the end of this game, it occurred to me that Miami was the better team. So I don't know. Where do you want to start? Well, how about Doc Rivers? What was he saying about it was basically nobody

expected us to be here. Cinderella Sixers. Nobody picked us. Whatever he was. I don't understand why. Doc probably shouldn't do the press conferences after the game. I'm a little groggy because it's so ladies' coast time, but

this Sixers thing, Rob, I still don't know if that was one of Harden's five worst playoff games. That's tough. I actually went through it and I don't know. There's a case like I still feel like the all-time standard is the 2-4-11 against San Antonio

when we wondered if he was like concussed or having a stroke. But then there was also the Clippers' comeback when he was benched the whole time because he was that bad and there's been a whole bunch of other ones. Was this top five for you or was this just the Harden we know

and expect at this point? I mean, this was exceptionally bad. Just the not taking shots in the second half is a really tough look given the position they were in this point. I mean, this was exceptionally bad. Just the not taking shots in the second half is a really tough look given the position they were in this series. And it really hurts that you look across the aisle and Jimmy Butler, who is 19 days younger

than James Harden, is just completely outplaying any of your wildest expectations of what Harden could have done in this game. It's really tough to fathom. Honestly, though, I do think it's broader than that because as crazy as this sounds,

if you didn't watch this game, if you're just looking at the box score, you see 99 to 90. I think this game was much worse for the Sixers. Way worse. Than losing by 35 or whatever they lost by in game five. This was a disaster to the point that Hubie Brown is on the broadcast

calling your team embarrassing. You seem to go to your room and think about what you've done at that point. Nobody on this team really showed up to play. Joel is fighting. He's playing hard. But no one was connected. The game planning was all over the place.

No one seemed to have any idea of how they wanted to attack one of the most sophisticated defenses in the NBA. And that's just a non-starter. You're going to lose every game you approach that way. There was moments of this game where it seemed like the plan was basically like, let's let Shaq Milton cook.

That was honestly the game plan. It seemed like everything just spun out of control again when Danny Green went out, which was sort of the same situation that happened with the Atlanta series last year, which is going into that series and Danny Green gets hurt. And they just don't really have like,

I don't know what guiding influence he serves on the floor that like just can't be replaced, but it apparently is. But yeah, I mean, Struess and Vincent, who I think were in a 70s cop show set in Cincinnati,

were like magical tonight compared to what the Sixers were throwing from the backcourt. Maxie did his best, but Maxie seemed incredibly raw. He was trying to win the game by himself with fast breaks, self-initiated fast breaks. After the game, you had Harden talking about how we can get into his extension, but he was basically like, I played the system that I'm in and the ball didn't come back to me as but he was basically like, I played the system that I'm in, and the ball didn't come back to me as if he was like Larry Hughes standing in the corner waiting

for Iverson to kick it out to him or something. He's the point guard. What about what Embiid said? Embiid was just like, if we're waiting for Houston Harden to come, that's not who this guy is anymore. Yeah, he's now a playmaker, which was the all-time backhanded compliment.

He's not Houston Harden anymore. He's not MVP Harden. He's now a playmaker. What? Well, pretty sure that's not what you traded for. I was struck. I'm going to talk later after you guys go about the Celtics-Bucks game I went to last night in detail. I'm currently wearing a 2012 Drew Holiday uniform, by the way. Yeah, you were in early. It was like when Pearl Jam was Mookie Blaylock. You were in super early. Those two teams fought so hard last night. And maybe there were a couple moments where it was sloppy or whatever, but it was just the intensity and the competitiveness, especially on the Bucs side. When there was multiple times, they could have either packed it in or, you know, you can kind of tell when a team either wants it,

sort of wants it, might not want it, or in Philly's case tonight, just doesn't want it. And the Bucs were like, we want this. We want to protect our title. Philly, dating back to game five, just looked like a team that was ready to go home. The series was 2-2. I don't know what you do if you're running the Sixers. How do you not look at the coach? You can't bring back the coach and the best two players, right, Rob? Let me just tell you from my perspective, this is the worst of all worlds. Because earlier I was talking with Tyler and Kyle about how there is a world in which Embi MB gets you the two home wins.

And then you're like, dude, stay in Philly. We're going to go get our asses kicked in Miami. We win game six. And then it's all on Miami to win game seven. Let's put all the pressure on their non-existent home fans. And let's like,

let's basically create a cauldron there where it's their game to throw away. Instead, he plays in Miami and gets even more hurt. He's lower back. He's dejected. He gets nailed in the face. He gets nailed in the face again. He's crying on the floor. And he comes back and there's zero energy in game six. And I was

thinking to myself, is there a part of me that wants this to just kind of be over and get it over with? But then I watched Memphis last night or on Wednesday night. Oh, they sucked you in. This is awesome. I actually think this would be pretty cool to smoke Miami by 30 and have one night of joy. And that didn't happen.

It was like every possible worst outcome played out at the same time. I mean, you should have known better than to expect one night of joy, I think is really the lesson here. But I will say of that plan, I think the critical link is like the third or fourth link in there, which was, oh, then you just go home and win game six. Sure. This shows the fallacy of that. Like the Heat do not give you anything.

And I think, like, I don't want to go 20 minutes into this pod before we really start praising the Heat because the Sixers did not just come up short here. The Heat defense basically made them implode. And I'm at the point with Eric Spolstra and the way he schemes where it's like no one sows discord in another team like him, like his defenses. Because you could see the Sixers, they were constantly frustrated with one another, but they never seemed to know whose fault it was. They never seemed to be able to pinpoint, this is the leak.

This is the problem. And some of that is offensively when you have so many guys who can't shoot or so many guys who are kind of shooters. The Heat manipulate and exploit those guys so easily. They will take Tobias Harris, who is a perfectly capable three-point shooter and cover ground so quickly that it

doesn't matter. They're going to recover to a guy like that. The 3-2 zone looked like seven guys were defending the Sixers. Yeah. There would be a triple team on Harden every single time he thought about initiating offense. And then, somehow, there would be four guys under the glass to grab the defensive board. Or on the other side, it was the offensive boards,

especially at the end of the game. The Sixers were just getting destroyed in the glass. But like that 3-2 zone, I was just like, throw the towel in. Well, they also got helped out by one-legged Lowry taking a seat for the next, for games five and six, because you know, obviously they need Lowry if he's healthy,

but if he's not, if he's going to be compromised, it kind of unleashed this slightly more athletic thing. It also helped that Max Drews plays well, which I don't know if you know this, but the Celtics waived Max Drews. Were you guys aware of this? I did not know that.

A big, big topic on the Celtics. On the message board? A bunch of Celtics text threads. Yeah. Ever since he killed us in a game during the season, it was like, wait, didn't we waive that guy?

And it's like, yeah. Yeah, waive that guy. But that's the thing with Miami. They have depth. They have great coach. I thought Spolstra got outcoached in game three and four, and then he flipped it, and then some in the last two games. And I still don't think either team is close to Milwaukee and Boston.

I just think that, you know, especially what we're watching from this Phoenix thing, it really did feel to me like last night was kind of the title in some ways. Like we were walking out of there like, wow, we just lost the title. Because I think those are the two best teams. Middleton coming back to the Milwaukee team we watched yesterday, I just don't see how Miami can stay with that. Not to mention the Giannis piece of it.

Not to put you on the spot, but can you remember in recent history when you felt that way about a second round series and it actually wound up... Is it always the case when you're like, man, whoever wins this series is going to win the title and it winds up being the case? It didn't happen with Warriors Rockets in 2018. They randomly, I think... Weren't one of those years? They were conference finals that year, I think, weren't one of those years? They were conference finals that year, I think, in 2018.

So in 2019, they were round two, and then the Warriors killed the Blazers, but then they ended up losing in Toronto because everybody got hurt. Everybody got hurt. There was a Sun-Spurs series, I want to say, one year that was round two.

Was that the Horry Shove year? It's happened. There's been instances over. But in this case, we kind of knew. And I think one of the lessons from this playoffs is I just think the East was just better than the West. You could argue if Miami had been in the West instead of Phoenix, if you just flip those teams, maybe the records are a little different. I also, Rob, I mean, we could talk about that Phoenix-Dallas game in a second, but I do wonder with this Phoenix team, sometimes the team that's just awesome

in the regular season, but they don't have that extra little playoff gear. And I'm not seeing the playoff gear with them. To lose that three straight in Dallas on the road, it really makes me nervous. Plus, you know, they were talking about in the telecast, Chris has sucked for him four days in a row, four games in a row,

which people, you would have had him seventh, eighth, ninth best player in the league. He just doesn't look like himself. I don't know. What do you think about the East versus the West? We were circling in on this after the deadline that the top five and six teams in the East were just so good

versus in the West. It was like, okay, if the east were just so good versus in the west it was like okay if the warriors get healthy obviously i think the suns were the best regular season team by far definitively even though maybe the bottom of the west gave them some softer opponents to beat up on but overall it's just it's just a it's a deeper conference in the ways that matter right like in that upper echelon in the top two and three tiers they're just stouter in the eastern conference right now but phoenix i mean phoenix is really its own worrisome thing because that's a team that they were so good in the regular season because they took their execution so seriously and then you see them roll out in the first half of the game tonight as casual as i

think we ever saw them play over the course of this entire year just the turnovers in that first half that's that's not a team that wins the championship is it if they're going to play like that we have a huge body of evidence and work to say that they're better than that but now they only have one game to prove it i mean that's well they're changing their identity on the fly which makes me nervous too like campaign just doesn't play anymore yeah that was somebody who was a pretty interesting off the bench feastbench Feaster Famine guy. They had Shamit playing point guard in the second half. That's a pretty strange time to have Landry Shamit

as your backup point guard when you're in game six. What do you think of the East-West thing, Chris? Well, I definitely think that every one of those great West teams had so many, like an asterisk. It was like Memphis is a year early. Utah is going to eat itself. Golden State, can they stay healthy? Phoenix, sure.

Phoenix definitely seemed like a juggernaut to me, but all of those East teams look like they just came out of Thunderdome. With the exception of the Sixers, Miami, Boston, and Milwaukee just seem like they're just a different brand of basketball than almost

anybody else. We might have Milwaukee just seem like they're just a different brand of basketball than almost anybody else. And you might even, we might have underrated Brooklyn a little bit because Boston made them look bad, but all those games were close, even though it was a sweep. It wasn't like, I don't remember them losing by 30 in any of those games, you know, and

they had a really good player. They were a little weird. They were too small, but it wasn't like, you know, if you put them in the West, who the hell knows what would happen? I got to say, I'm going to, I'm going to, uh, criticize myself. Oh, wow. That's good. Thank you.

I try to do that every month. So I'll keep the podcast honest. I think I just missed on this Phoenix team. I really, really valued what they did in the regular season. What if this is the worst possible matchup for them? I wouldn't have said that. But how do we make it the New Orleans series? That was a six-gamer.

That was like a battle. I know, but there's injuries on every team at some point. I thought they were a little better than this. What's weird to me is that Milwaukee and Boston, I think, have gone up a level, at least from what they're doing and the totality of the offense, defense, and just physicality, all that stuff.

And Phoenix, to me, I don't know. Maybe it won't matter. All they have to do is protect home court, right? They could just lose every road game and they could still win the title. And maybe that's all that matters. Maybe they're just a better home team

and they're going to be shaking the road and Chris is going to get a little gamey as the playoffs go along. But I feel a lot less confident in them than I did. It started last weekend. I said that to Rosillo. He looked at me like I was cross-eyed, but I was like, I don't know, man.

Those two Dallas ones were alarming to me. It really made me question what's going on. And then Chris, we had the Luca thing too, which we'll talk about after the break. Let's take a quick break because we have two big picture topics I really want to hit. Make every game feel like game seven on FanDuel Sportsbook, an official partner of the NBA. Throughout the playoffs, all customers can place a no sweat, same game parlay each week. You'll get up to $20 of free bets if you don't win. Man, we came close with FanDuel, which has so many ways to play and you'll get paid faster than a fast break. Like you could have on Wednesday night, Jason Tatum, 25 plus

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800-889-9789. And in West Virginia, 1800gamber.net. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right. Big picture topic number one.

I just want to walk through this Philly timeline with you, Chris. Great. They hired Daryl. Great. Woohoo. We got him. He decides we need to get James Harden, the pouting superstar of the Houston Rockets who's put on weight and is trying to play his way out of Houston. Dangles Simmons, gets in a bidding war with the Nets, loses. Simmons, it starts to send him into a little tailspin,

that crest in the Atlanta series. Doc Rivers doesn't stick up for him. We can debate about how much he didn't stick up for him, whatever. Yeah. That goes sideways. We can debate about how much he didn't stick up for him, whatever. That goes sideways.

We go into the summer. We go into the season. They have chances to trade him. Darrell's like, no, no, we're going to hold out for a superstar. Passes up, could have McCollum, Sabonis, probably Halliburton. Maybe there could have been some Bradley Beal at some point waiting for this James Harden thing. Finally gets him and he just gets the wrong version of James Harden. Instead of the, is this guy playing possum? It's not happy. Nope. This is just who he is at this point. I can't remember a weirder sequence in recent NBA history than this, where you go from and you go back to the Jimmy Butler piece where Jimmy Butler wanted to stay. They didn't want to pay him. And then it all circles back around with Jimmy Butler killing them in a playoff series. Bizarre. Oh, can I add onto that? Jimmy Butler after the game saying,

I'll always love this place and I wish I could have stayed. And Joel Embiid being like, I have no idea why we got rid of him. Yeah. About Jimmy Butler. That's tough. Yeah. About Jimmy Butler. That's tough. Yeah. And now you're stuck in this situation where it's going to be hard in extension, hard in sign and trade.

We have now entered that vortex of the offseason for Chris Ryan and the Sixers fans. What's more likely to erupt? Sign and trade or extension? Or halfway extension? Extension. Yeah, I think he's going to, he's got to stay. I think at this point. And he, for what it's worth, after the game he's gonna he's gotta stay i think at this

point and he for what for it's worth after the game he said he wanted to stay and then he would take he he did not say no and they said would you take less that's something i guess but yeah i i think ultimately imbeed is so good i would not want to mess around at this point with anything that could take me back even a half step even delay me another season i know we don not want to mess around at this point with anything that could take me back even a half step, even delay me another season. I know we don't want to fall into sunk cost stuff after everything you've stretched out with the Ben Simmons saga

and having to go into another year if you choose not to bring back Harden and what that would mean, but that's the reality of these guys' primes. You have to put as much talent on the floor as you possibly can, and Harden is inarguably limited. If you had never seen him play before

and you watch these playoffs, you would never believe he was a star player. You would never believe that he was once the MVP of the league. That's just something we have to come to terms with in terms of understanding his game. But he's still good enough between him and Embiid and what Maxie could become. And whether it's Harris or whoever fills that spot next season.

And hopefully a better crew of role players because... Yeah, to me, it's not even whoever fills that spot next season and hopefully a better crew of role players because yeah to me it's not even the stars it's not even like really I mean I would love to get to the point

where we find out the stars aren't good enough but to me it was just like a huge disparity in depth physicality athleticism speed

and everything like kind of like from basketball cue no but it was like player four and below quality, athleticism, speed, and everything from... Basketball IQ. No, but it was like player four and below is where Miami was certainly better than the Sixers. And honestly, in a way, Toronto scared me because of how much better...

There's just no Boucher on the Sixers. There is no Gabe Vincent on the Sixers. There is no anything on the Sixers where it's just like, ooh, this is interesting coming off the bench. He's throwing darts at the wall blindfolded with Korkmaz and Milton. And these guys that I feel like

maybe it's a little bit of Philadelphia self-flagellation, but it's never good when you're watching the team you're cheering for and you're wondering whether or not the guys on your team could even make other teams. Much less stuff for them. You know what I mean? I've been there, Chris. Would this guy be in the NBA if it wasn't

for the Sixers? You can't really tell. And I have that feeling. It's still about some of the Sixers. It'll be probably the most consequential poured over, picked over GM postseason statement whenever Daryl does his State of the Union.

Because I think that he's probably politically savvy enough to know that he's probably not going to tip his hand and be like, this James deal really blew up in my face and I'm going to look to see if I can get out from under it or we won't be offering him an extension or whatever. But at the same time, he really did stake his reputation with Philly fans to some extent on this deal. I mean, you've got these incredibly wired online people

who are like, I wanted Halliburton all along. I don't know that most Sixers fans probably would have chosen Tyrese Halliburton over James Harden if you offered them. I wanted Sabonis. I thought Sabonis would have been... I remember we had the same pressure when

we signed Rob. When Rob came to the ringer. I thought you were talking about the bidding war. When we got Rob, but that one worked out. Sometimes you got to roll the dice and you hope it works out. We haven't seen the playmaker Rob phase yet. That's true. Rob's

still running the steps. He's like, the pod didn't come back to me I'm sorry I'm still waiting on that 40 million a year extension though But I'm sure we'll get that ironed out Can we nip the Halliburton stuff in the bud though Because I love Tyrese Halliburton He was not helping them navigate

This defense You get to keep Curry too though That's the thing You get player X plus Curry It's at least better than playmaker James going 0 for 2 in the second half of a game. Sure. Yeah, if it's like,

and let's say it's Buddy and Halliburton. It's basically the deal that the Pacers and the Kings made. If it's basically like Buddy and Halliburton and you keep Curry, all of a sudden, they're shooting all over the floor around Embiid and it's defensively...

How about CJ? Look, man. I was asking for that for a long time. Darryl was holding his nose. It was like a dog poop any time CJ was being brought up. I have an important question for Chris. Let's do De Niro and then Pacino.

Is this going to require me to do... What year of IMDb is Harden in right now on De Niro's IMDb? Are we in the 2000s yet with De Niro? Oh, is he in the... Is he in the Meet the Parents that's still frisky and you can still open a movie with him phase?

Or are we now in the Righteous Kill phase of the De Niro IMDB I still would like to think that he is in the meet the parents zone because if you surround that team with talent that he can help I think there's a world in which playmaker James Harden is actually

like a pretty useful player but it's very worrisome that we are in the righteous kill zone you know Rob I'm gonna give you a slew of movies Rob secret movie guy oh yeah But it's very worrisome that we are in the righteous kill zone. Rob, I'm going to give you a slew of movies. Rob's a secret movie guy. Oh, yeah. He even appeared on the big picture and rewatchables.

Sure. All right. So analyze this 1999. Harden's better than that. I don't even understand what we're comparing anymore. We're moving into 2001. 15 minutes. The score. Showtime. City by the Sea. And analyze that. Feels like Harden's around there. we're comparing anymore. We're moving into 2001. 15 minutes, the score, Showtime, City by the Sea, and analyze that. Feels like Harden's around there.

Can I ask a question? It's only fair, though, if we do this, that I get to be like, was the second Drew Holiday steal once in the box in seven? I do feel like we glossed over the part where we asked Chris, are you okay? Can we bring you a casserole?

Do you need space in this difficult time? No, you know what? I am okay. He knew it was coming. I am okay. Yeah. Pacino? Are we...

Oh, is this insomnia? Are we in the 2002 insomnia phase of the Pacino IMDb for Harden? Still can work with a good director. Right. Maybe the movie's not awesome. Right. Kind of a forgotten film for Christopher Nolan. You can work with a good director. Right. Maybe the movie's not awesome. Right. Kind of a forgotten film for Christopher Nolan. You can put him on the poster. Who's Nolan in this case?

I think Daryl would like to think he's Christopher Nolan. Yeah. I would bet money on, if I had to bet, if he gave me, if FanDuel did all the odds of how this plays out, if there was like an 8-1, 7-1 on sign and trade, Beal Harden, I would bet on that because that's who Embiid wanted in February.

I reported it. Nobody believed me. I think that's what they wanted all along. Beal got hurt and they begrudgingly, Embiid, I think, accepted the Harden thing. I think it's more likely Harden leaves than stays. I don't have inside info. I just think that's how this plays out. Where's the soft landing for Jimmy? Where's James going? What's better than Washington? Perfect.

Perfect? Perfect for him. And he's the perfect wizard bullet. Who makes more sense than him? Think of all the other overpaid guys they've had over the years. It fits right in. James Harden redemption season in D.C. House will talk himself into it in two

seconds. The Wizards fans don't like Bradley Beal, but they're not doing backflips over him. How much can you guys see right now? The like eight and two Wizards start? Houston Harden is back. And everybody's walking around D.C. with big beards. God. Let Harden is back. And everybody's walking around DC with big beards.

Oh, God. Let me ask you this. Rob, who has to throw in something in a Harden-Beal sign-in trade at this point? The Sixers. You think so? Oh, yeah. Wow. What do you think, Rob?

That's a sobering thought. They'd have to throw in Paul Reed in a pick swap in 2026? I think it depends on what kind of deal Harden signs. If it's the full boat max, as much money as you could throw at him, then I think you start getting into the territory where you have to compensate a team with something to ease the back half of that deal.

Well, we don't need to... Listen, the whole point of having a multiple NBA podcast is that we have 10 weeks to come up with fake James Harden trades and scenarios. We don't need to do it right now. What did you think Stephen A. meant right after the game

when he was talking about it? And then he was like, Doc Rivers, I smell something and it ain't right. What did he smell? Was that a Doc Rivers is going to the Lakers inference? Or what was going on there? Doc knows he's done because Daryl's going to get rid of him

at the end of this. Because Joel and James don't want to play for him kind of thing. So it's one or the other. Right. But it's like either Doc has already

booked his travel to Riviera Country Club or Doc is coaching on a secretly lame duck team here. He knows he's done. What do you think, Rep? I mean,

every indicator about how the Sixers played said they were not totally bought into what was happening. I have to admit, I really felt for Doc during the mic'd up timeout where he was begging the team to fight for their playoff lives. When he was like, guys, it's not that bad.

It's not that bad. It's always that. If you have to say it, it is always that bad. Look into my eyes. You just got to believe it's not that bad. It's like, it is this bad.

Chris, are you excited for Harden to get to the Pacino IMDb phase of 88 minutes in Righteous Kill in 2007 and 2008 or is the

two for the money 2005 phase more exciting for you do you know how much I would kill for the Al Pacino 15 minutes in Once Upon a Time

in Hollywood phase for James Harden right now oh there you go just like the cameo appearance of like oh my god this guy's good. Oh, did he take off six months?

That's cool. Who knows? Listen, the first time we see some workout video of him when he's got no shirt on and an eight pack and he looks great, everyone's going to go nuts.

Is this Pacino or Harden? Either. Dallas Phoenix, just quickly, Dinwiddie got going tonight. Yep. It was a home game, but that was,

I don't really think there's anything to discuss with Mavs' sons. Luka's awesome. The sons didn't really fully show up, but the Dinwiddie piece I thought was interesting

because he was persona non grata basically for the whole playoffs and he got going a little bit. And I do think if they're going to win a game seven in Phoenix, they're going to need a wildcard guy. It can't be Luka and Brunson and that's it.

I'm factoring in like three threes from Kleber and some good stuff there, but they need like one of those guys, right? Dinwiddie, like four Bullock threes, something, some rando, right, Rob? Yeah. I mean, this was kind of a secretly dope zero point Frank Nolikina game

where he played really good defense on Chris Paul, but no, they need the points. Like that's what they need in their wildcard element. Whether it's one of those guys hitting five threes, but Dinwiddie is a good candidate if he can play like this. It's just the shot has not been there. The drives have been inconsistent. He's had a

really rough series, but they need that juice to go along with what Luka is doing and to go along with... Honestly, between these two games, it's like a two-part defensive masterclass. The Mavs team defense, what Dorian Finney-Smith and Reggie Bullock were doing on that end of the floor, unreal. Just incredible

coordination. So they don't need a lot in terms of scoring. They just need a little on that end of the floor. Unreal. Just incredible, incredible coordination. So they don't need a lot in terms of scoring. They just need a little bit from one of those guys. It's just wild to watch that Mavericks team at home because it has that same feeling that the ascending Splash Brothers had where the threes feel like dunks and the crowd is just going tipsy

for these barrages of threes that just sort of carry them into heaven. But I have a feeling that home court sons are just going to be like, all right, enough of this shit. It just seems like the rim gets really small for the Mavericks when they're in Phoenix. And how many bad games can Chris Paul play in a row, right? Well, not to twist the knife about the home court thing,

but that was what was, I think, particularly cruel about the Heat's game plan against the Sixers in Philly is forcing their questionable shooters to shoot knowing that their own crowd will start booing them when they miss. Yes.

It just leads to a complete shame spiral. I feel like they almost were crashing the boards purposely to show off the lack of effort on the Philly. Yeah. Do you think Matisse Tybalt is on a text chain right now with Carson Wentz and some of the other disgraced ex-Philly athletes asking for advice? How do I sneak out of town? Should I hire a moving company from New Jersey?

You got any tips on good vitamins I can take? Yeah. Something like that. Quickly, Memphis Golden State. I don't know. That's the appropriate response. It's bad karma for Golden State

to have let that happen. It's not good karma. I don't know what the positive spin is here on them just not showing up to that. It really was kind of similar to the Suns' effort. Really sloppy. Seemed like they didn't take the game seriously. I don't know.

These are not teams you mess around with. Teams that have Luka Doncic. Even a team like the Grizzlies, clearly, that can beat you by 50 if you don't take them seriously. I don't understand the concept of mailing in a Game 5 of a seven- game playoff series. I completely agree with you. Strange to me.

Now, Steve Kerr's not there. That may throw you off. Isn't Mike Brown like 13 and one as Warriors coach though? It's just, you know, sometimes when a guy's coached the same team for a long time, he has a feel if it's slipping away early and he might throw the chainsaw in the hot tub and try to do something weird to get them going. The fact that Memphis has just been really good all season without Ja, not a small sample size either. We're talking over 20 games now, Rob, where they've just been really confident when they don't have him. That would worry me if I'm the Warriors.

Defensively, they've done a good job now. Two straight games against Golden State. That game four was a rock fight. And you know, Brooks took a ton of shit. I thought Haral Bob made a good point on Twitter about this, about, um, even though Brooks was a catastrophe in offense in game four, like the defense, you know, his defense, their wing defense was excellent. The Dylan Brooks zag. I love it. It's a semi-zag. I know. I don't know if they can rock fight it. The thing is, it's a lot easier to come back from 3-1 when you have the 5-7 at home, which I think we've seen that happen over the course of history a few times. I doubt that Golden State would let it go,

but they're also, this is not like the 2015 Warriors. They have a lot of young dudes on this team that I don't really trust, even though I think they're talented. And I trust Poole, but I don't trust Wiggins. I don't trust Kaminga. You know, they have some other guys who haven't really been in games like that.

I don't know what to make of this. I have no expertise to offer. The last time they were in Golden State, they essentially mailed it in until the last possible minute where they, I mean, more or less, free-throwed Memphis out of the game. Yeah.

Like, that was not like a... Yeah, it was 45 minutes of foreplay, and then they just kind of said, all right, fine, we'll win. Yeah. So I'm not exactly like... I don't know. I just think it was...

If you think you've got Memphis on the ropes, Jaws out for the playoffs, you know, this is a team that everybody decided was a year away from being a year away or whatever. And you guys, this is your chance to end this and rest up for the next round. And you go in and you get blown up

and have to listen to the entire crowd yelling, whoop that trick at you. And I know that they had fun with it and it seems like they were just like, fuck it. We'll get him next round, next game. I just think that's like, you just leave a little too much to chance. I don't trust any of these

teams somehow. I know we compared the East and West earlier and the East teams are better overall, but I don't trust anyone on a game-to-game basis. There are teams you can trust their effort. There are teams you can trust their stars, obviously,

but Milwaukee can lose any game by 20 points if their offense doesn't show up. Miami can get... We are two games removed from Miami's half-court offense being completely unsustainably bad. Absolutely, yeah. And you can see the same thing happen. Phoenix was the safest bet on the board, and we saw what just happened to them

because of the state Chris Paul is in right now, and they just can't get anything going in a consistent way like they're used to. I don't know who to trust anymore. I mean, do you guys have any team you feel really confident in right now? I trust the Bucs to purposely tank game six so that Giannis can go back to the garden

in game seven and score 60 and then punch a hole through the leprechaun in the middle of the floor. By the way, if he did that, I wouldn't be surprised after seeing him in person. If he just thunder-fisted through center court like eight feet down.

I trust the Bucs and the Celtics in this respect. I think defensively they're good enough that it would be hard with how hard they're playingics in this respect. I think defensively they're good enough that it would be hard with the way, with how hard they're playing game to game now. I think it would be hard for them to just lose by 20, 25 in a playoff game. I mean, you could say the same about Miami, though.

Like, Jimmy Butler's been one of the top three players in the postseason. Miami's defense is as good as anybody's right now. I feel like they're kind of at similar footing with those two teams. But did they get blown out? What was the game? Game four was close. What was the game three? The Sixers did the

not today Satan game. Miami was just like, we're not really going to try that hard during this one. Who is Satan in this? I don't know. I have a question. Can we have a great Steph Curry playoff game, please?

He's been good. He's been good. Can we have a great one, though? Can we have like a hardwood classics? This would be the moment. He's, the most threes

he's hit in a game is five. He's done that three times. By game, 16, this is points, 16, 34, 27, 33, 30, 24, 27, 30, 32, 14. Totally fine.

Totally fine. That's better than fine. Yeah. But what about like the ass-kicking, awesome Steph Curry? Oh my God, is he going to get 15 threes in this game, Steph Curry? Where's that guy?

Just once? No? He might be in 2016 Rob are you like a Steph apologist what's going on here we can't hate on all the best players

in the world I'm not hating I'm not hating I'm just like can I get an awesome Steph Curry game once I too would love an amazing Steph Curry game

but at the point where you put up over 30 in half of your playoff games so far that's pretty good I mean Giannis has had, he's had 42 games in a row.

Yeah. Jimmy Butler's had, what, 45? He's had a bunch of absolute kick-ass, there's no doubt. I don't know. I think tonight it was Butler being like, we're going, we are not going back to Miami to play basketball.

We're going back to Miami. I would like to see, I would like to see a Steph Curry get the fuck out of here, Grizzlies. And how dare you do that whoop that trick thing with the dancers coming five feet from me. I'm going to rain 12 threes on you. And that's it.

Send them packing. It would just be fun. I would enjoy that. All right. 30 seconds each. What do you think happens in Bucs-Celtics? Bucs win. Game 6?

Game 6. What happens? I mean, we already covered the Giannis punching through center court. RIP Lucky. I think I just trust Milwaukee's role players more at this point. I have been conditioned to not doubt

that Pat Connaughton is going to hit two or three huge shots in these games. And as much as I wobble on Drew Holiday and like, is this going to be

a good offensive game for Drew or not? I just feel like they've got something right now that I think they closed this out. I think Marcus Smart

is like, guys, I know I let you down at the end of last game. I got this. Oh my God. That would be not my ideal situation. I was done yesterday.

We'll talk about it in the next segment. But now it's like, you know, both teams can just not make threes for a quarter or make threes for a quarter. And it's just so hard to predict. Teams can be down 10. All of a sudden, it's tied. And if Rob plays tomorrow night, which I think would really help because I thought the Celtics were too slow. I could see a world in which the Celtics win. The thing that would be scary for me is if they, not scary, but if they somehow win game six.

And they're so tired and then they have to play Sunday. 36 hours later, Sunday. And guess what? Which team out of the two teams has an alien? Not the Celtics. It's the other team. Because he doesn't get tired.

This second round has felt like more of a bloodbath than any round of playoffs I can remember in a long time. Where I'm just like, you're just watching, with a few exceptions of guys like Luka who don't have to move that much. Yeah. But like, the Chris Pauls, just watching Embiid fall to pieces, watching all these guys kind of pick up Knicks. And it's really right now, it's like Giannis, Butler, Luka, I guess Tatum.

There's a couple of guys you seem unbothered by, but everybody else seems to be really a little bit punch drunk from this round of the playoffs. All right. Rob and Chris. Hey, Bill, good luck, man.

I'm really pulling for you, though. You're definitely not. I can feel your Philly bitterness. It's seeping out of you. Thanks for coming out. When we come back i'm gonna talk about um what it was like to see in person in game five and count down my top 10 worst celtics losses i've been rob and i just sit here on mute for that i already did it it's recorded thanks guys what does possible sound like for your business?

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from Boston, Massachusetts, a place that I love, a place that I've had a lot of great times in over the years a place that I've had my heart broken a few times over the years including last night it took me this long to come up with an adequate response from one of the better basketball games I've been to

at least this century I flew back because I had a feeling something special was going to happen and more importantly I want to see Giannis in person when he's at the level he's at right now. Game fives in general are usually a fantastic playoff game if it's the right matchup and the right series. Game sevens, I've been to a bunch of them. There's a level of electricity and tension and pressure

that even though it's always the most dramatic game of the series, sometimes it's not the best played. Sometimes it can become a rock fight. Like you think a game seven, 2016, incredible game. If you actually watch the last six minutes of that game, it's just people,

LeBron makes two threes, the Warriors miss a ton of shots, they turn the ball over and then Kyrie makes one shot and all of a sudden the game's over. Unbelievably dramatic. I wouldn't say it was like the greatest basketball game I've ever watched, but it was dramatic. It was physical. It was everything we love about the playoffs. Game five, we'll have some of that stuff, but we'll also have sometimes some really good shot making, some memorable plays, some memorable moments. So I had high hopes for this one.

I want to talk about the game, but I want to talk about Giannis first because I haven't seen him in person, partly because of the pandemic, but partly because I didn't go to the two series last year where he gets over the hump with the Nets, but then the Hawks, he's hurt, comes back. But then those last four Suns games

when he vaults to a whole other level, he jumps into the Pantheon, he becomes one of the top 20 players ever. And then this year, which is one of my favorite years, is a defending champs year, where sometimes people win the title and they can go sideways. The 84 Sixers are a good example.

They had one of the best seasons start to finish of any team ever in 1984. Next season, they lose in round one. I always love the teams that defend the title. And I think just talking about the Bucs instead of the Celtics for a second, what was cool about the game as a basketball fan, I'm trying to divorce myself from the pain, the heartbreak, all the different things I'm going to remember about that game, the long walk with my dad after where we barely talked. It was so cool to see a team that knew they were in trouble, in this case, the Bucs, that fell behind double digits a bunch of times. But they'd been there. They'd been in the wars. They got it. They understood the stakes.

They understood what needed to happen. They got it. They understood the stakes. They understood what needed to happen. They had a coach that understood the moment perfectly. They came out in that fourth quarter. They fall behind by 14. They had taken a bunch of shots at the Celtics and the Celtics just have a slightly better team. They were over and over able to patch together these little runs and always get back

to like seven point lead, eight point lead, whatever. They came out of a timeout. Pritchard made like a ridiculous shot right before the shot clock. Timeout Bucks, 14 point game, crowd going nuts, 10 minutes left. The Bucks came out and it was like they had gone through the, we are not fucking losing this pressure chamber carwash and just came out of it like five cyborgs. Hit two threes right away. Just elevated to another level defensively. Holiday played one of the best quarters I've seen a guard play both ways my whole life.

He was all over the place. He was a complete menace. He was disrupting everything and over and over again made these big shots. And then it goes to the Giannis piece of this, where even though they keep throwing these haymakers, the Celtics are still able to keep resisting, to keep their lead, to keep fighting them off. Horford gets that alley-oop dunk. I'm sorry, the rebound dunk. You think the Celtics have this. They're up six. This is a wrap. They're going to win this.

They're home. Less than two minutes left. Bucks miss. They get a rebound, which is one of the stories of the game. They just kept getting rebounds. They kept getting rebounds. They kept getting rebounds. They had 14 rebounds in the fourth quarter.

Celtics had seven. I think the Bucks had more offensive rebounds than the Celtics had rebounds in the fourth quarter. They get the rebound, throw it to Giannis. Your first instinct when Giannis is about to shoot a three when you're in the building, oh yeah, please shoot that. Because if you're shooting that, that means you're not doing the 12 other things

that you can do that would hurt us. Do that instead, please. You're probably not going to make that. In this case, he gets the pass and he's shooting it and you could feel it in the building. Nobody was excited that he was shooting it. We're all terrified of Giannis. He of course made it. They get a stop. The fact that he still has the confidence and the fearlessness in moments like that is I think one of the 19 things that makes him special. I actually thought the shot was going to go in.

And you look at his statistical resume, there's no way. You look at how he shot in the playoffs, perfect candidate to shoot that three if you're a Celtic fan. But there's something special about the guy. And I left that game last night thinking, this is one of the best players I've ever seen in person. LeBron and Giannis are the two best players I've seen in person this century, which made me want to make my list of who are the best players I've seen this century. So basically, everyone after MJ retires, what's my actual list?

And the caveat had to be, I'm using like the wine bottle approach of I have to pick the specific year for the player. And then I had to see them in person for that year. So one casually is 2001 Kobe, because I was still living in Boston that year. They only played here once and he skipped the game. So I never got to see him that year during that when they were just awesome. Got to see him in 02. I never really saw the right awesome Kobe game until 2006,

which is why 2006 Kobe makes this list. But the caveat is this, was there something memorable about the experience? Was there an overpoweringness to them? I don't know if that's a word. Was I catching them at the peak of their powers? Was there some sort of confidence that not only they had, but it actually was able to transfer to their teammates? I think MJ is the best example of this ever. If you're on MJ's team, you just felt like you had a chance to win, period. MJ's on my team.

This three's going in. I got MJ on my team. That's what Giannis had last night with these guys on his team, Connaughton, Portis. He's bringing out the best versions of those guys, not because he's like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird. He's actually throwing them great passes and knowing where to get them the ball, stuff like that,

although there's a small piece of that with Giannis. But he's so good, it gives the other dudes confidence that they're good. I'm on Giannis' team. Of course this three's going in. That's the level he's gotten to. So, all right, I have three levels for the best players I've seen in person. I'm going to pick 12 overall. The two that stand out,

and we're talking really since MJ retired, 2018 LeBron and 2022 Giannis. 2018 LeBron played the single best game I've ever seen in person. Game one of the 2018 finals, which became immortalized as the J.R. Smith game because J.R. called the timeout. I'm not positive, by the way, that the Cavs still would have won that game, but LeBron, I think he finished with 51. Completely overpowered the Warriors, which was a great

Warriors team. A Warriors team that had Durant in his peak, Curry in his prime, Draymond, Clay. And it was the only other elite guy in the Cavs was LeBron. And he went toe to toe with them and probably should have beaten them. But at that point in 2018, he had figured out, he was just bigger. He had put on muscle. He had figured out this power point guard game, basically, that nobody knew what to do with. He ran through the Celtics in the previous series and then did the same thing at game one with the Warriors. But that, I can't put anybody above him. I can put Giannis right thing to say, because LeBron is either the second

or the third best player of all time. If you want to have him first, you want to say like his career was the best basketball career ever, fine. I still have MJ first. Giannis is side by side with him from a peak performance standpoint, because what you're getting with Giannis,

first of all, evolutionary Shaq. The difference between him and Shaq, same overpowering, you can't stop them. He can bulldoze over you. There's no way to defend him. The refs don't know how to call him. He has all that stuff around the basket. He also has a really nice 15-footer now that he makes.

I think I saw some stat that his mid-range jumper this year was at the same level as like LaMarcus Aldridge for his career. And then he has the thing where he can go 30 feet from the basket, they spread the floor for him, and he could just beat you left or right, bounce off you, get fouled, do whatever he has to do, and it somehow works. And you watch over and over again in this series, Al Horford, who was being shuttled in and out, almost like a hockey defenseman, trying to match up against the number one scoring line. He's going in and out against Giannis,

but they would have these moments where Al's basically between the foul and the top of the key. He's crouched, almost like a catcher in baseball. And there's Giannis who's dribbling and he's like, I'm going to kind of go straight. Ibbling and he's like, I'm going to kind of go straight. I'm going to bounce off you. I'm going to kind of commit a charge, but not quite enough that they're going to be able to call it. I'm so strong. You're going to go backwards. And it's going to eventually end up with my Freddy Krueger arms. I'm going to duck under you and do a scoop layup, or I'm going to go the other way. I'm going to dunk over you.

I'm going to pull up. There's no way to know how to stop it. And you just kind of have to hope he misses. And that's why LeBron and Giannis to me since MJ are the two guys where you, you just completely help us. Shaq had some of that too. And we're going to get to that in a second. But with LeBron and Giannis, 2018 LeBron, 2022 Giannis,

your best chance is I hope that misses. Or I hope we foul him and he misses some of the free throws. I don't really know what else to do. He's going to, the Celtics and Bucks could play 100 games. And if there were real stakes for any of those games, he's getting between 35 and 45 points. That's just what's going to happen. And you're going to have to tilt your whole defense toward him.

Hope you're not going to get in foul trouble. You're going to have to either give up threes or just let Giannis score 50. There's no way to know what to do. So you have that. Defensively, he's dominant. And this is the thing where he's a way better defensive player than LeBron was. I thought LeBron was a good, in big moments, very good to even borderline great defensive player in the 2018 range. 2012-13, LeBron was up there with Pippen and Kawhi

and all those guys. That was an incredible guy. We'll get to him in a second. Giannis can play center and protect the rim in a way that guys are, he's just in your head the whole time. And I will regret for the rest of my life, not voting for him first team all defense. I feel so stupid, especially after last night, I did a good job with my ballot for the most part,

but that was Giannis should just be first team all defense until he starts fading, which will be about eight years from now. But he allows you, he can play with Lopez. Now you got twin towers in the paint. Or you can go smaller like they did yesterday with Portis and he can still protect the paint. And he can still, you just see over and over again, the Celtics hesitant to even test him. How about him guarding the inbounds pass?

Seems like a seemingly small thing, right? Think about the last possession in the game for the Celtics before they, Smart gave it up near the end, but they're down one, they're inbounding. Giannis is guarding the inbound and he just shuts out half of the half court. You end up having to settle for this, throw it to Marcus Smart in the corner and hope he does something thing. Physically, I think the four most imposing guys I've seen last 35 years I'm going to say

is Shaq obviously David Robinson underrated 7'1 chiseled just like a complete specimen ridiculous you just saw him you're like oh my god we have to play that guy 2018 LeBron and Embiid because Embiid is a legitimate, he's a legitimate seven too.

And you feel it when you're in person. When you see Giannis in person, he's way taller than you expect. I don't know why you wouldn't expect him to seem gigantic, but in person, he's the tallest guy in the game. He's seven feet.

He's got these big shoulders. He's got muscular arms, but then he's got like extra muscles and what are those called? Like not tricep muscles, whatever. Whatever those muscles are in the side, outside of your shoulder, those are sticking out. He's got perfect posture and he's just walking around like the Terminator and you're thinking, my God, we got to play this guy? We got to go through this guy? So he's got that.

Carries himself like the Terminator. Got the blank face. He'll stick out his lower jaw sometimes, but for the most part, really hard to know what he's thinking. He's just very locked in. He had the blood dripping from the side of his eye yesterday. It didn't matter.

I mentioned that he's the all-time how do we stop this guy, which there have been other all-time how do we stop this guys, but he's got to be, whatever your short list is, he's got to be on it. Unbelievably strong, unbelievably coordinated. I don't know how you ref him. There was a play yesterday

that is one of the greatest shots I've ever seen in person that I went and looked at on TV and it didn't look as good, but I think I had an awesome angle on it. He's going right. Horford bumps him, really bumps him off his feet and he's falling out of bounds and still manages to twist around and do the Doc 1980s finger roll underneath the basket. It was insane. And with Giannis, he just does shit like that three to four times a game. Ludicrous. Just ludicrous. Like absolutely ludicrous.

And then I watched it on TV and it just looks like another Giannis move. In person, jaw fell to the ground. He's sneaky dirty. And I mean that as a compliment. There's been sneaky dirty guys over the years. Like John Stockton was a great sneaky dirty guy. Like would always set these picks and send little elbows in people's groins or stick his leg out.

Jordan was a good sneaky, dirty guy. There's good sneaky dirt. Wade was not even a sneaky, dirty guy. He was whatever the level is above that. But Giannis, there was a play yesterday. Celtics in the fourth quarter. It was right before, if you remember, he sets that hard pick on Marcus Smart

like four minutes left and it's an offensive foul. And then the Bucs were complaining about, you remember, he sets that hard pick on Marcus Smart like four minutes left and it's an offensive foul. And then the Bucs were complaining about it. The reason he got that foul was right before that play, the Celtics scored and Marcus was flying in for the rebound and Giannis just shoved him,

sneaky shoved him from behind and Marcus went flying. Marcus is going back up the court and he's pointing at Giannis angrily. I thought they were going to get a fight. And then he went and set the pick and Giannis was mad that Smart was pointing at him and that's why he gave him the elbow. But he does that stuff every year. The funny thing was Giannis says he'll go over to the people after the timeout

and like put their arm around him and be the good guy. But people, the Celtics know like, yeah, we know, we know you're a sneaky dirty guy. You're not, no, get your, get your arm away from me. Because he tried to put his arm around Smart after. And Smart was basically like, fuck you, dude. So I love that about Giannis. I think he's such a nice guy. His interviews are so nice.

He's nice. Everything about him is nice. And he knows how to play that in a basketball game. He's just as cutthroat as anybody else who's been really good at basketball. I'm just telling you. I mentioned DeAndre the Giant Factor on the last podcast, but just quickly to make that case again.

When you beat a Giannis team when he's playing like this, you really feel like you accomplished something. You feel like you have climbed Giannis Mountain. I think that's what was at stake for the Celtics last night. Giannis is so great. Just to get by this guy feels like you won the title. And LeBron was the last guy like that. Anytime you could send LeBron home for the year,

either that was in the finals or you felt like you had the finals wrapped up. Giannis is like that too. And he's clutch and fearless, which we learned last year, especially in the finals. And the thing is, if he could shoot threes, if he actually could shoot them well,

it's a wrap. Thank God he can't. I repeat, thank God he can't. So anyway, I have 2018 LeBron and 2022 Giannis. Teeny drop off. 2000 Shaq, no question. Same kind of, how do we stop this? How do you referee this?

All that stuff. There was some stuff with him in the last four minutes of a game though, where you did feel like if it was a close game, you could foul him or you could put him on the line, or maybe he was afraid to get fouled around the basket. Cause he didn't want to go to the free throw line. So there was always that little asterisk with him,

which Giannis, even though he's not the greatest free throw either, he's never afraid to go there. 2000 Duncan. Now I, I even looked at his game log to see if I ever saw Duncan in 2003 I don't think I did because I moved to LA that year

I don't think I went to a Spurs-Laker game I was working for Jimmy Kimmel's show and I just don't think I saw him in 2003 but I did see him in 2000 I remembered this and I looked it up and it confirmed he came in his 2000 season which was his second season

and he demolished the Celtics by himself he didn't have Robinson. Robinson was out. I forget what he had. He was like 37 and 17, something like that. But it was just an absolute clinic. It was like evolutionary McHale. And I still remember being there for that 22 years later. So just to get Duncan on there, I'm giving 2000 Duncan, but 2003 Duncan would have been the one to see. 2006 Kobe was the year to see Kobe. Now I know some people would say 2001 because he had more of a spring to him, but 2006, he just, he'd put everything together.

I voted for him for MVP that year, even though I didn't have a vote. That would be my Kobe season. I did get to see him in person multiple times that year, including the Phoenix game when he had the buzzer beater. Amazing. 2012 LeBron. I'm putting LeBron on twice because I feel like there's two LeBrons.

There's like pre-second Cleveland trip LeBron, and then there's 2014 on LeBron. All right. So I have 2018 LeBron, 2022 Giannis. Slight drop. 2000 Shaq, 2000 Duncan, 2006 Kobe, 2012 LeBron. And I got to go to a bunch of those LeBron games, including the game six Boston. So I vividly remember that. 2012 LeBron. And I got to go to a bunch of those LeBron games, including the game six Boston. So I vividly remember that. Then my last six, 2017 Durant, 2016 Curry, 2009 Wade, 2011 Dirk,

2007 Nash, and 2002 Kidd. Jason Kidd was the lost, holy shit, that guy is good guy from the last 20 plus years. And it was that Celtics net series that played him twice in a row, but the 2002 series was close. And Kidd not only was the best point guard in the league and just smartest guy and always had the rhythm of the game down

and always knew when to attack, when his team really needed him to just go barreling in the paint, create a shot. But defensively, he was doing stuff that year that I actually think they had to change the block charge rules. He was so good at just running to a spot and just stopping on a dime like he'd been frozen. So once he figured that out, he could demolish you on both ends. He was really tough. He always had a knack of going like 0 for 8 from 3, but then he would make the biggest 3 of the game. So I have to have him on there. Nash 07 is the best I've seen anyone play point guard from an

offensive standpoint, at least in person. That was the year after his MVP year. And I did get to see him in person that year. 2011 Dirk. That was awesome. I went to the finals that year against Miami. 2009 Wade. That was the great Wade year where he did the closest Michael Jordan impression anyone's ever done. And then, you know, 16 Curry and 17 Durant. So my big news flash here.

I actually think we're underestimating how good Giannis is. That we were arguing about, ah, is it Giannis 1A, KD 1B? That was a month ago. Good Lord, which is my last takeaway before I get to the second segment I want to do. Walking home last night with my dad. And this Celtics team is, I think, really, really good. I think there's certain years where they easily would beat in the 2018 Cavaliers. That would have, the Cavs would have, this team is so much better than the 2018 Celtics team. I think there's teams over the years that they easily get to the finals with the team they have this year.

Unfortunately, this year also has 2022 Giannis. And walking home from the game, really started to set in. You have this Celtics franchise that was able to win the title in 08, couldn't get the second one. And then all of a sudden, LeBron ends up on this Miami super team and LeBron's in the way.

And then LeBron goes to Cleveland. LeBron's still in the way. LeBron in the way all the way through 2018. And it was LeBron Mountain. Got to climb that one. We're never going to have the best player in the series. What happens? He moves to LA.

Great. LeBron's gone. Here comes Giannis. And now the last two years, now Giannis is 27. We have this guy in our lives for the next six, seven years. So for the Celtics, either Tatum has to go up a level or they have to keep building on just having the team

that can take down the one awesome star. But the thing is, the Bucs don't have one awesome star. Holiday is one of the best 20 players in the league. That was a great trade. Middleton, when he comes back, they're set for the next couple of years. And I think Giannis is still, I think he has room to get maybe 5% better. I think as his offensive game gets a little more sophisticated,

you think what happened with LeBron from like 2012 to 2015, I think the same thing happens with Giannis, but just an incredible player. It was an honor to have my heart completely shattered by him and the Bucks last night. We're going to talk about the worst Celtics losses in person that I've ever seen in one second, but we're going to take a break. All right. You're still trapped with me talking about the Celtics Bucs game. I wanted to give you my list of the worst Celtics losses I've ever seen in person because I thought I was interesting. And I think it illustrates how painful last night was

and how important last night was if you're a Celtics fan. They still, by the way, might get out of this. They could win game six. Who the hell knows? I'm not writing it off. These teams are dead even.

All those threes, the Bucks were six for six in the fourth quarter last night. They could have gone 0 for six in game six in the same situation, and all of a sudden, we're coming back home. It just feels like the title was at stake last night, and it feels like the Celtics blew it. That was the feeling we had when we left the arena. I hope I'm wrong. But right now, having digested this for the last 18 plus hours,

by the time you hear this, it'll be a day after. That's one of the five worst Celtics losses of my life. So I'm going to give you the top 10 and I'm going to do it in reverse order to build up suspense because that's what we do on the Bill Simmons podcast. All right.

My number 10 worst loss ever. I'm going to give you the levels of losing too for this. This is 2010 Nets Celtics game four Eastern finals. The levels of losing for this was the Princeton principle. Now I took this from, you can go find it. There's a levels of losing 2.0 column I wrote that has all the levels of losing ascending into just complete, utter despair and pain. Princeton principal is like

when you have this young, scrappy underdog team like Princeton Georgetown that one year in March Madness a million years ago, when you just start talking yourself into the kind of miracle team thing happening. And in 2002, ragtag Celtics team, they fired Patino. It's built around young peers, Antoine Walker, a bunch of role players playing the Nets and probably in the Eastern Conference Finals. It was not a strong talent year in the East. They had a huge game three comeback. They're down 25 with 13 minutes left in game three. And they actually come back. They pull off one of the great comebacks in NBA history. I was at that game. I wrote a column about it after.

It was the first joyous Celtics moment in eight years. And when I say eight years, like that's a long fucking time. I was talking to a Knicks fan about this last night. I was like, I know the Knicks have been bad really since the Camby Latrell year in 1999. Since like probably 2001, the Knicks have just been bad. But at least you've never had an eight-year stretch

of just being bad eight years in a row. At least you had 2011 to 13 Carmelo, and he was like, no, no, no. After 2014 to 2021, that was seven years of just complete misery. I'm like, all right, fair. Well, we had eight. And all of a sudden, in this new arena we had,

because the Boston Garden was gone, we had a happy experience again. And it wasn't just happy. It was this unbelievable euphoric comeback. Couldn't believe it. Pierce was becoming a legend before our eyes. And everybody danced out of there and got super duper drunk in the city of Boston,

including myself. Game four happens. We believe. We broke the nets. They're done. Nope. Van Horn hits two big shots down the stretch. There was an absolute awful Rodney Rogers charge call

on Kid that I didn't need to watch on YouTube to remind myself when it happened. It was under a minute left. Kidd did the thing where he runs to his spot and freezes for one one-hundredth of a second and somehow gets the charge. Somehow, we get the game-tying free throws from Pierce with under 20 seconds left.

Nets have the ball. We trap Kidd. Kidd just whips it across the court to Lucius Harris. Yeah, Lucius Harris, who drives to the rim, gets a touch foul, terrible call, makes both free throws.

We get the ball back. We're down two. Pierce barrels to the basket, draws a foul, 1.7 seconds left. Misses the first free throw. Misses the first free throw. Misses the second free throw intentionally. The Batman, Tony Battee, gets the rebound. This never works.

Gets the rebound. Puts it back up. Back rim misses. We lose. It was one of those things where you kind of Jedi mind trick yourself into thinking it's going to happen. And it's the same thing. You just limp out. So that's number 10 for me.

Number nine, 1991 Pistons, game five. And the levels of losing for this one, I'm just making this up on the fly. I'm calling it, oh no, fuck, not this guy. I'll explain in a second. So this 91 Celtics team, they start out like 35-5, something like that. They have the young guns, Reggie Lewis, Dee Brown,

Brian Shaw, and they also have Mikael Parrish and Bird, the Mikael Parrish and Bird, the big three. So it's like this old and new, and it's working. And they're the best team in the East. We don't know that the Bulls are about to rip off six and eight years yet. We think we're about to go toe to toe with the Bulls team, which we do. They played really well against those Bulls teams. Bird's back goes out. Fuck. So now it's like, he's he's not back he's 100%

he's 60% he's 40% he's 80% it's all over the map you just don't know where you're getting from him you go to this Piston series this is our big rival

we have you know played them in 87 and 88 and 85 they swept us in 89 we win game 4 it goes to game 5 it's in Boston

Bill Lambert who I think I hate more than any other Boston Celtics opponent ever that we've ever had. I think I hate him the most. I hate his guts. He hits four shots in the fourth quarter. He scores 24 points, a bunch of big crunch time shots, including the call timeout because we get a stop with 41 seconds left, tie game. There's like six seconds left. They're inbounding under the basket. You can go look at this on YouTube. And they run this quick play where Lambert just starts

backpedaling. And I remember I'm sitting there and I'm watching it because we have our seats. My dad's had Celtics tickets for 49 years. Lambert starts backpedaling. Like, why is he backpedaling? They throw it to him, and he just quick shoots as he's backpedaling from like 22 feet over Bird. It goes in. Goes back down. Bird has a wide open three.

Misses. Pinckney gets the rebound. Gives it to Reggie Lewis. Reggie drives to the basket. He never got calls ever. Charge. Game over. That was the Dee Brown,

we think we have the next Isaiah Thomas on our team series. He had a 19 and 10 net and then he got hurt. And that just, I would love to do Dee Brown's career over again. Bird and McHale were 13 for 35 in the game. But the big takeaway was like,

you just knew. You knew it was going to Detroit. You knew we weren't going to win. As it turned out, they had this nail-biter game that we got boned over on a McHale goaltending call in game six. And all of a sudden, that was over.

Then the Pistons got swept. You could argue that game five was the last great Pistons win. And what really hurt was Bill fucking Lambeer. Four huge shots. I hope he chokes on his own bile. Number eight.

2018 Cavaliers game seven. Eastern Conference Finals. Levels of losing for this one is the broken axle. Where you're driving along, it's looking good, and all of a sudden you hear a noise and your car is shimmering

and you just know. So, Cel are up 3-2 in this series. LeBron has a 46-11-9 in game six. Yeah, he's pretty good. That's why he made the list before in the previous segment. Go to game seven. I come back for this one. The Celtics, they end up shooting seven for 39 from three. Rozier and Smart were three for 24 combined. Jalen was five for 17. The only one who really played well offensively was Tatum, was nine for 17. He has this sequence in the middle there

where he has to dunk on LeBron and he hits a three. We're up 72-71 with six minutes left Jeff fucking Green comes down and hits a three and then we go in the tank we score two points over the next 5-30 we lose 35-15 to 9 for LeBron

we're trying to make the finals without Kyrie and without Gordon Hayward there was no scenario in the history of basketball like this, where you took the two most expensive guys off a team and the payroll of the rest of the guys, I think it was like 50 million or 45 million, something like that, going toe-to-toe against LeBron. And what we all knew was going to be his last Cleveland season. And LeBron, not a great supporting cast. And we had a chance. This was our last chance to beat LeBron in a series.

And this goes back to playing him in 2008 on all the years, beat him in 2008, beat him in 2010. He gets us in 11 and 12. He gets us in, uh, I think 16 and 17 and then 18. And this was it. It sailed. It was a bummer. We could not make a shot.

I am not a hundred percent sure I went to this game. I'm like 99% sure because I've tried never to think about this game again. I wanted it. Number seven. I wrote a big column about this in 2012. Heat, Celtics, game six, Eastern Conference Finals. Celtics lose the first two of the series. They win the next three. Game five, they beat the Miami by four and they

talk all kinds of shit. And it looks like they've broken LeBron because remember, beat LeBron in 2010. He folds in the last two games. That was the first time everybody's like, what's going on with this guy? I thought he was the next Jordan. 2011, they beat us because, I'm going to say us like I'm on the team, sorry. They beat us partly because Wade breaks Rondo's elbow in the third game, which mysteriously has disappeared

from the Wade rhetoric over the years. And then 2012, it looked like this was the last run for the KG, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce. You just knew, and Rondo, you just knew that Ray Allen was probably leaving after the year they tried to trade him. The team was kind of a mess that year, but it came together in the playoffs, partly because Derrick Rose hurt his knee and the Sixers ended up beating the Bulls. All of a sudden, the Celtics are in the Eastern Finals, unexpected. And then you think like, wow, we might have LeBron's number. Well, we didn't. LeBron had 30 points in the first half. He was 12 for 14. For the game, he had a 45-15-5, 19 for 26 field goals. And he ended the KG Pierce era. Here's

I'm going to read you what I wrote that night. It's just a piece. This is what I wrote. LeBron strolled out with a creepy look on his face, a relaxed detached expression that said what we didn't know. Was he pissed off? Had he checked out? Had he finally turned on his teammates? He was barely interacting

with them. Lost in his own little world like he was wearing headphones we couldn't see. He was definitely playing hard, but he couldn't interpret what the overall vibe meant. Was this like a Dwight Howard thing? Like, I'm here to do my job. I'm going to try hard. Just know that I'm here because I have to be. Had the pressure finally broken? Was he feuding with Wade? What was his agenda? And then the shots started going in. Swish, swish, swish. It's like Miami realized, oh yeah, the Celtics don't have anyone who can guard LeBron James. And more important, LeBron realized it. Stopped worrying about sharing the ball, getting teammates involved, swinging it to the open man, being liked. Maybe LeBron said to

himself, fuck it. I'm playing all 48 minutes. I'm scoring at least 50 points. If we still blow this game, nobody can blame me. Maybe he said, Wade already has a wing. It's time for me to get mine. Maybe someone like Wade said to him, enough with this he said, Wade already has a wing. It's time for me to get mine. Maybe someone like Wade said to him, enough with this me, then you, then me crap. It's your team.

Hog the ball. Do your thing. Take us home. Maybe game five's embarrassing defeat as well as the humiliating. Good job. Good effort, kid. Remember that? In 36 hours of,

should they break up the heat stories? That happened. Maybe that pissed him off. Maybe World Wide West gave him an awesome pregame speech along the lines of the chef from Vision Quest. I don't know what happened. I just know the shots wouldn't stop going in. And after about the fifth dagger in a row, mid-tenth straight, the crowd started groaning on every make. Shades of Philly's Andrew Toney ripping our hearts out 30 years ago. If you've ever been in the building for

one of those games, you know there isn't a deadlier sound. He single-handedly murdered one of the giddiest Celtics crowds I can remember. 30 points in the first half, 30, all with that blank look on his face. It was like watching surveillance video of a serial killer coldly dismembering a body and sticking the parts in the fridge, only we were right there. You can't imagine what this was like to witness in person. I know Michael Jordan had similarly astonishing games and others too, but not with stakes like that. This wasn't just an elimination game. This was LeBron James's entire career being put on trial. And it only took him an hour to tell the jury, go home. I'm one of the best players ever. Stop picking me apart. Stop talking about the things I can't do. Stop holding me to standards that have never been applied to any other NBA player. Stop blaming me for an admittedly dumb decision I never should have made. Stop saying I'm weak. Stop a basketball fan, I appreciated the performance for what it was. One of the greatest basketball players because we didn't want to be there anymore. We wanted to

get away from LeBron. He ruined what should have been a magical night. We never really had a chance to cheer, swing the game, rally our guys, anything. He pointed a remote control at us and pressed mute. It was like being in a car accident. LeBron James ran over 18,000 people. So that's what I wrote. And what's amazing is that was only number seven on my list. Wow. Number six. Oh man, this really hurts.

1988 Pistons game five Eastern Conference Finals. We lose an OT, 102 to 96. The levels of losing for this one, I would call this, these guys passed us because we beat the Pistons in 87. Had the bird steals the ball. We outwitted them. We out-toughed them. And then the 88 series, a little older,

bird's a little banged up. McHale's playing a year for, he's searchingically repaired foot. Don't really have a bench. Somehow we win game four in Detroit. We win by one and McHale does the armpits thing after. And we're like, oh yeah, we're going to beat these guys again.

This is amazing. Goes to game five. Rodman is starting to hit his stride at this point. And Bird again is starting to physically break down a little bit. And Bird just can't score on Rodman is starting to hit his stride at this point. And Bird, again, is starting to physically break down a little bit. And Bird just can't score on Rodman. Bird's 9 for 25 in this game. We couldn't stop Isaiah. Isaiah had 35 points.

This is one of the reasons why I revere Isaiah, because being at games like this where nobody can guard the guy, he hits a huge shot in OT. But in regulation McHale fouls out McHale was like the kind of our one advantage they didn't really have anybody

who could guard him and we had this guy Fred Roberts you can go and watch this on the YouTube clip of the game Fred Roberts comes in the crowd groans when he gets off the bench

because it's just he had already been bad in the series and it was like, Oh my God, not this guy. You can actually hear the groan. Uh, meanwhile, Reggie Lewis was riding on the bench for reasons that are unclear. But, uh, we ended up getting to the end of regulation and we have the ball and we set up the same play that Casey Jones only had one bird play, put bird on the right side and Bird would have Rodman on him and then he would try to figure out.

Rodman was just so much more athletic than him at this point. And Bird does the turnaround air ball. Such a bummer. Still believe, you know, you thought Larry could do anything at that point. Missed it. Goes to OT.

Pistons win. That sucked. Number five, 2022 Bucks. Game five, round two. I would say levels losing for this was the stomach punch PTSD. I'm going to explain it this way. I mentioned all the ways this game sucked, including Drew Holiday ramming the defensive player of the year right up Smart's ass. The Celtics having four possessions in the final minute, so I only get one shot off. Blowing leads of 93 to 79, blowing a 105 to 99 lead with under two minutes left, getting out rebounded, all that. We talked about that already. The PTSD was the free throw rebound. Giannis gets, I put this on my Instagram, by the way, if you want to see my view of it. Giannis gets fouled.

He has to make both free throws to tie the game with 14 seconds left. He makes the first one. We have Grant Williams in for reasons that remain unclear. He's six foot five. I would have had Tyson. Call me nuts. I like having tall guys near the rim on rebounds.

Giannis misses it. Ball ricochets to the right. Grant Williams is boxing at his dude. Somehow ends up on the other side of the basket. Smart and Jalen come flying in to get it. And somehow they knock it to Bobby Portis, who throws up an absolute brick that hits the backboard, hits the rim,

hits both sides of the rim and goes in. And I still don't understand how that went in. And all of a sudden we're down one and you know the rest. Marcus has the turnover in the corner, two more free throws. We somehow don't even get a three point off. The PTSD piece was 35 years ago in game four of the 1987 finals, which is, we haven't even gotten to yet on this list. We're up two. Bird just hit the miracle three of all time from the corner. That was the second loudest I've ever been in a basketball building for. We fouled Kareem.

The refs bail him out for the one millionth time because that's what happened with Kareem. And Kareem makes the first free throw, misses the second. McHale and Parrish go to get it. And I don't know if McHale or Parrish knocked it out of bounds, but Michael Thompson jumps over somebody's back

and the ball's out of bounds and somehow it's the Laker ball, leading to the junior skyhook, which we'll cover in a second. 35 years later, same situation. We get the rebound. They have to foul us. We're probably going to win the game. Nope. And then we have to walk out knowing that Giannis Mountain is looming for the next eight to 10 years. So that's number five on my list. That is the fifth worst Celtics loss I've ever seen in my life. Number four,

I don't even want to talk about this. 1982 Sixers game seven, Eastern Conference Finals. The greatest single playoff series of my entire life was the 1981 Eastern Finals, which this series reminds me of a little bit, this Buck Celtics series because how physical it is.

We beat them. We come back from 3-1 in 81. Every game is close. Every game's amazing. After the game ends, everybody runs on the court. Everybody just spills out on the Cosby Street, the whole thing.

In game five, 1982, we're down 3-1, we win. Game six, go to Philly, we win. We are reenacting the 1981 comeback. It's happening. We're going to knock these guys out. Nope. Andrew Toney gets the nickname, the Boston's drangler in this game.

34 points, 14 for 23, just murdering us. Just 18 footers and 20 footers over and over again. Doc outplays Bird. This is the game that ends with the beat LA chance. But trust me, this was, I think, my all-time, I really thought we were going to win this game. Maybe that's the level of losing for this one. Wait, I really thought we were going to win this game. We just own the Sixers. We always beat them. They beat us in 77. They beat us in 67. Other than that, we beat them every year.

And then they finally flipped it on us and it was awful because that 82 team that was here. My, if you bring this up to my dad, he's going to talk about tiny Archibald who I think broke his shoulder, his elbow or something, but he got knocked out halfway through the series. My dad thought this 82 team was better than the 81 team and probably the second best Celtics team of the 80s. And that's how it goes sometimes, but they ended up beating us. Number three, 1985 game six finals.

Levels of losing for this one is the this can't be happening game. Comes back, it's the first year of the 2-3-2. Lakers have a 3-2 lead. Comes back to Boston and they're year of the 2-3-2. Lakers have a 3-2 lead. Comes back to Boston. And they're just always like four to six points better than us in this game. And we can't get momentum. But the one thing we have is Mikael is just torching them. Mikael finishes with 32 and 16 in this game, but fouls out with 530 left, down six

on a fucking bailout call on Kurt Rambis. Go look it up on YouTube. Ridiculous way to foul out the best guy we had in the game because he was better than Bird that series. Bird had some sort of a hand injury and it turned out it was from a bar fight. And then he got really mad at Dan Shaughnessy for reporting that, but he was at the peak of his powers in 85. And then all of a sudden you could tell something was a little different with his shooting. The other thing was Kareem demolished Parrish and our guard sucked, six for 31. But here's why this sucked. Other than that, we lost the finals and the Lakers got to celebrate on the court, which you'll see in season three of winning time. We'd never lost the Lakers before. They were like our version of, we were were the Yankees they were the Red Sox

we beat them every year and this was it it flips from this point on they beat us in 85 they ducked the 86 finals let's be honest they didn't show up beat us in 87 and then we beat them in 08 they beat us in 2010 and

we have not seen them in a final since but that one that flipped it. That's Jerry West sobbing in the locker room or maybe not sobbing at all. Maybe just staring straight ahead. Who knows? We'll find out in season three at winning time because he finally beat Boston. Speaking of the Lakers, 2010 finals game seven. This is number two for me. I was, this is the only one out of these 10 that I was on the road for in LA. Levels of losing for this one is the guillotine because you knew once we blew the lead that something bad was going to happen because Kobe was so bad in this game. He was so bad. First three quarters just has to be one of the worst games any superstar has ever

played. He finished six for 24 famously, which I got a lot of mileage out of jokes in my column. But from a rebounding standpoint, at least was able to figure out how to impact the game with his defense and his rebounding. And they take the lead. We're within three with a minute 30 left. Ball gets swung to our test.

The entire crowd goes, no, they don't want him to shoot. He shoots. He makes it. I still don't understand how it went in. This game I think was the last game before basketball became modern, before the threes came in. This is a rock

fight. Lakers shot 32.5% and won. 53 rebounds, 23 offensive. Of course, we didn't have our guy Perkins. Rasheed Wallace had to play 35 minutes, which I'm surprised he didn't keel over. Gasol was the best player in the game and in the series. 19-18, four for him.

And I had to be there watching the Lakers and their fans celebrate and watching the confetti drop. And it was absolutely horrible. But not as horrible as number one on our list. 1987 Finals, Game 4. So weird that a Game 4 is this, but not as horrible as number one on our list, 1987 finals, game four. So weird that a game four is this, but this was the Celtics team.

This was what I wrote in the prologue for my basketball book. It was the year after we won the title. Everybody gets hurt. This team, they were the all-time Warriors team. They beat the Bulls. Then they have seven game series against the Bucks. Never should have won. Gutted it out. Seven game series against the Pistucks. Never should have won. Gutted it out.

Seven game series against the Pistons. Never should have won. Gutted it out. Bird is like, even though he'd won three MVPs in a row and did not win the MVP this year,

he's never been better than he was this year. So the whole team's on his back. McHale's playing a broken foot. Parrish, McHale, Parrish, Angel, DJ are all hurt. Bird's like the only

healthy guy in the team. We're going toe-to-toe with these dudes. We're up six with the ball. Two minutes left. Parrish gets stripped. Cooper hits a transition three with 135 left. And here's why this is notable. I actually immediately thought of this last night,

being in the building, watching Giannis hit the three in the Bucks-Celtics game, which cut it from, it was 105-99, it made it 105-102. In this case, it made it 103-100. But it was the same kind of thing. We're up six, we had the ball. Wait, now we're only up three? What happened? Next play, Bird throws it away. Worthy hits. Worthy was just demolishing McHale on one leg. Bird misses. Lakers call timeout, run an awesome play for Kareem, alley-oop, they take the lead.

Celtics timeout, come out. Bird hits a three in the corner. The roof comes off. Just complete, just, I can't even describe it. Lakers come back down. Kareem gets fouled. We blow the free throw rebound.

Timeout. Magic sky hook. Timeout. Bird takes the three in the corner. It misses by an inch. And we lose. And this is what I wrote in my prologue. Of my basketball book.

Here's what I remember most. Not the sound in the garden, a gasp of anticipation giving way to a prolonged groan, followed by the most deafening silence imaginable. Or the jubilant Lakers skipping off the court like they were splitting a winning Powerball ticket 12 ways. They knew how fortunate they were. Or even the shocked faces of the people around me, everyone standing in place, mouths agape,

staring at the basket in disbelief. Nope, it was Larry. As the shot bounced away, he froze for a split second and stared at the basket in disbelief, even as the Lakers celebrated behind him. Just like us, he couldn't believe it. The ball was supposed to go in. The split second passed,

and Bird joined the cluttered group of players and coaches leaving the floor. When he walked through the tunnel by me and my father, he seemed just as confused as anyone. The rest of us remained in our seats, shell-shocked, trying to regroup for the walk outside, unable to come to grips with the fact that the Celtics had lost. If you saw Saving Private Ryan in the theater, do you remember how every paying customer was paralyzed and couldn't budge as the final credits started to roll? That's what the garden was like.

People couldn't move. People were stuck to their seats like flypaper. We went through the seven stages of grief in two minutes, including my father, who was slumped in his seat like he had just been assassinated. He wasn't showing any inkling of getting up. Even when I said to him, hey, pops, let's get out of here, he didn't budge. A few more seconds passed. Finally, my father looked at me. That was supposed to go in, he groaned. How did that not go in? More than 22 years have passed since that night, and I still don't have an answer for him. Well, kind of felt that way last night. Got to be honest. It was like 75, 80% there. How do we not get that rebound? How do we make

somebody turnovers down the stretch? How did that Giannis three going? It was all little pieces of that. But when a game like that happens at home that you blow and you have a great team on the other side and they're all running on the court like they just won the title because they knew how hard it was to win a game in the opposing building like that. And you have to sit there and watch it. And the only sound in the entire arena is the noise from the other team. First of all, I guarantee that'll be the best Bucks win other than probably that Game 5 Suns game. But even that one, you're almost a little more nervous. That was like a, you know, that was a, we are the champs. We are defending this. This is why we're the champs. Like they defended their title in a real way. I guarantee that was the most satisfying win that group has had. Because it's one thing to win the title. It's another thing to defend it and care about it and take care of it,

which is what they did last night. And then you hear that sound and it's just you guys. And that's it. You're in a room with 18,000 people and the only sound is you. Those are the best wins. Also the worst wins to see in person. I'll tell you that.

So that's my list. That's my top 10. Who knows how the Celtics series will play out? I personally think that was probably for the title last night. I don't want to rule out a Celtics comeback, but it's hard to think that they can beat this Bucks team on a Friday night and then 36 hours later, come back to Boston, play 3.30 on a Sunday and expect Al Horford to play another 40 minutes and all these guys who all look tired last night when Milwaukee has an alien on their team.

He is the freak. So I'm not feeling optimistic. My dream would be that somehow they won these next two. And I could move this game down on my list from number five to like number nine or 10. We'll see what happens. All right, thanks for listening to what happens. All right. Thanks for listening to me, Ben. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rob Mahoney and Chris

Ryan. Thanks to Kyle Crane for producing. Thanks to Dylan Berkey and Steve Cerruti. As always, I will see you on Sunday night with Rosillo. We'll see if it's a one-parter or a two-parter. We'll see if there's a game seven Celtics Bucks to talk about. Oh my God, I'm starting to get hope again. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Go Celts! See you Sunday. I don't have a few years with him on the wayside on the first of November I don't have

a few years