The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Buddy Hield Game, Indy’s Dangerous, a Clips Collapse and “Whaddya Do” Teams With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to react to all the NBA playoff games over the weekend and more! (2:03) Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo #ULTRACourtside could get you closer to the game! michelobultra.com/courtside ENJOY RESPONSIBLY ©️ 2025 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, MICHELOB ULTRA®️ LIGHT BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and you can follow the clips and videos on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel where we went live tonight after Golden State and Houston with Ryan Rosillo, and it's coming right now. First, our friends from PearlJib. Bill Simmons here with Ryan Rosillo. It's Buddy Heald Day. Who knew? The nephew of the Klay Thompson game. We now have the Buddy Heald game.

And also an incredible Steph Curry game. Where he's just getting doubled the entire time. But Buddy Heald, 33 points. 9 for 11 from 3. And the Warriors hold off the Houston Rockets. Who are a tenacious band of pit bulls. Just coming and coming and coming. But unfortunately for them, could not make a shot.

Rusella, what are you gonna remember about this game 10 years from now? 10 years from now, probably not much, but it is not exactly on par with my favorite Steph game of all time in 2019, scoreless in the first half and then 23 in the third quarter, so it goes for over 30 in the second, it's probably my favorite Steph game.

But yeah, he wasn't getting it done. Uh, he was making other plays. Certainly his movement alone opens up other things for other people. But when a men Thompson couldn't contest on that three points to the right side, like the first thought is like, he actually got an open look against a men. It actually happened. And then we realized it was a continuation of the calf injury they had on that layup attempt.

And so I think if you're a Houston fan, you're probably not gonna remember this in 10 years, but at least this week you're wondering how the game goes if a men is able to just stay in there. Because it was, that was honestly, I think one of the most defensively challenged series that I've seen from Steph in his career. And granted he's older now too,

but it was just a grind to even get open looks. Can I make the case for the Steph Curry performance? Can I zag? Is it zag time already? Well, you're not comparing it to 19, right? No. All right, thank you. You know what I liked about it?

First of all, I think E-May from the 2022 finals was just like, fuck this. I'm not letting this guy beat us. I'm gonna, not only am I gonna double him when he has the ball and send second guys at him, I'm going to double him when he doesn't have the ball. Have you ever seen a guy get guarded with multiple guys when he wasn't anywhere near the ball?

Because that's what they were doing. They were grabbing him, they were holding him. They were like double teaming them from back and forth. And they were just like, you're just, you're not gonna beat us. So then it came down to Buddy healed and Pizemsky for three quarters. Buddy was great.

Pods was, that was a rough Pods game. He played hard, but when you think, what did he finish with? He was four for 12, one for seven from three. All of those were open. But they basically were just like, we're not letting Steph. So Steph figures this out early and you can either try to go hero ball and just launch some crazy threes with a hand in your face or just continue to try to keep

making the right plays, swinging the ball, trusting your teammates. It was a great trust your teammates performance. And then when, when they finally let up and he saw some daylight, he grabbed it. And then Jimmy took care of the rest. But I really thought like he did everything you had to do in this game. That team, there was one stretch where they had Thompson and Easton out there with Jabari Smith, and there was like this three minutes stretch of defense where it was like, Oh my God, like it seemed like a miracle just to get a shot off in 24 seconds, but they

unfortunately couldn't sustain it and they couldn't make a shot. I thought that was such an impressive win by Golden State though. They were down to five guys plus Looney that you could trust. Five and a half, five and a third. Yeah. Kaminger got out there and he had some, he had some interesting possessions. You know, so if you look at that with Moody, he only played 11 minutes in this game.

Yeah, I mean, Draymond's 40 minutes and he hit a couple of shots early, but you just know offensively it's not necessarily something you can rely on. He had two shot clock threes in the second half. I think they're both in the fourth quarter. They're like, oh my God, because there's all these plays where

the entire defense is designed to, we want it to end up in the wrong guy's hands. And if you're thinking of Houston and Emei's game plan and the players executing it, they actually executed it perfectly. You just don't expect Buddy Heal to go for 23 in the first half. So if you don't have that second guy, even Jimmy is going to go a little bit slower. There's even a few moments with Jimmy before that outburst where you're like Van Vliet got him on a turnover and you're like, man, you've got Van Vliet Isoad. Like you got to go with this guy. They didn't score a point for four plus minutes until you had that Jimmy layup, then the threes,

and then you had the review on the layup after Beal forced the turnover when Van Vliet pushed Butler. And that pretty much was the game, but it's incredibly frustrating for Houston team that probably feels like they did a lot of things, a lot of things right tonight, but you know, they ended up with six made threes. Three of those were garbage times. So over the course of the game being competitive, a team that averaged 11 threes per game, games one through six had three. So technically they had six in this one, but you know, when you

and I were talking this morning, it's almost like Buddy healed, even though less is expected of him, took on the Van Vliet role that we've seen in the last few games, because that was a huge difference. We can talk big lineups, rebounding edge, second chance points, points to paint,

all these things are real things, but Van Vliet was playing out of his mind for three straight games in the series. Yeah, and I think if you're the Warriors, you're just saying yourself, is that gonna happen four times in a row? I'm gonna do, I wrote down with like four minutes left, the Rockets were three for 14 from three,

right as the game had gone south. And the Warriors, how many turnovers did they end up with? Seven, they had five turnovers with like four minutes left in the fourth quarter. And Kerr, that's been his passion point. Like, if we play defense and we don't turn the ball over, we're always either gonna be in the fourth quarter. And Kerr, that's been his passion point. Like if we play defense and we don't turn the ball over, we're, we're always either going to be in the game or we're going to win. And the turnover is driving them crazy.

And this is a team that can get really sloppy with the ball sometimes. Not today. Uh, took care of it. I think that's another thing with the Steph game. Steph had two turnovers. How many times did he have two guys on him where he's like throwing the ball behind his head to Draymond or throwing these cross-court passes or, I don't know, he finished 22-10 and seven. He led the team in rebound and he led the team in assists.

Had two steals, two blocks. He led the team in every category except points. And had Thompson coming at him. Thompson was hitting a point in the third quarter when it just seemed like he thought he could go to the basket every single time. And then he was guarding Steph on the other hand on the other end and shutting them down. And there was this moment where I was like, God damn it. Do I have to raise the ceiling of the Amen Thompson building? Do I, do I,

cause I had it set at 15 floors. Do I have to like blow the roofs out and bring it up to 25? He is, I thought, I just thought he was such a gym. And I think you're right. It's an interesting, what if for them, if he doesn't hurt his calf, could they have like pulled this off defensively? My thing is they just didn't get any offense from anybody other than Thompson. I mean, Shen Goon had some around the basket points, but everyone else,

Jalen Green, uh, three for eight in what could be his last Rockets performance. Dylan Brooks, three for nine, Jabari one for five, Terry Easton two for six. Like they just couldn't get anybody to get hot and then Van Vliet couldn't do it. And the double big thing that's been such a huge part of this series where, no, I think there's a version of how we talk about this and similarities to how we talk about Minnesota and Los Angeles, where it's like running the football over the course of seven games. If we play big and you play small, it's just going to hurt more.

We're going to get extra opportunities. We're going to beat you on the boards. And over the course of a series, like having to do this every other night with us, you're going to pay some sort of tax. And you'd wondered if that's how this series had shifted because when we talked after game one, I remember thinking, like, remember they started hacking Adams and they yanked him. I was like, I wonder if EMA's talking with the staff after the game being like,

we should not have given into them on that. You know, maybe it's worth it for us because of our defense to sacrifice whatever we're not getting from Adams at the free throw line. So guess what happened? They actually defiantly kept him in when they did it later in the series. And it felt like that was like this real turning point

in this series that we're gonna stay big, we're gonna stay in this zone and it doesn't really matter. And then Eme clearly just didn't like what he had. I think the Looney minutes probably changed up some of the calculation on that because Kerb probably felt like he could just trust Looney a little bit more. A loud 11 minutes from Looney.

It felt like he played like 25, only put 11. They were huge because there were two, you know, when you trap Steph, like eventually he's gonna figure it out. And they had two in the first half where Looney was the release on that, and he had a layup, and then he had the free throws. That was back toback possessions for three points

And then they started trapping him in the second half too and that was turning into four on three behind him, which doesn't guarantee open shots or anything, but I It really just comes down to the shot making I think that's what's so great about a man Like I feel I'm with you I feel even better about him now going like that was actually the only dude with the ball in his hands or is like fuck this Like I'm just you. I feel even better about him now going like, that was actually the only dude with the ball in his hands or he's like, fuck this. Like I'm just going. How old is he?

Is he 23? Let's look it up. I don't think he's. 22, 23? 20, he just turned 12, 22 in January. Remember those guys are a bit older coming out of the pre-draft thing. God damn.

Maybe like a year or two. Well you know the other thing, it felt like Golden State, like you were talking about the rebounding. Cause I agreed, like watching, watching the game go along, it's like, ah, they're holding their own today. Houston out rebounded them by 14. And it really came down to

when you only make three three-point shots in the first 48 minutes of an NBA game, and the other team ends up with 18. I don't care how many extra rebounds you get. If you're going to be minus 15 on three-pointers, that's too many points, you know? It's just, it becomes math after a while. If one team is gonna get 54 points from three

and the other team's gonna get 18. Well, this is the impossible number. They have 14 to three in the offensive rebounding edge. They only took two more shots. And normally that's like a massive turn. You're like, okay, where's the rest of the math? Like we're after figure. It's only four worst turnovers on the Houston side of it. So normally when you're doing something like that,

when you look at those Minnesota Lakers box scores at times, you just go, dude, at this point in the game, when it still matters, they've taken six more shot, 16 more shot attempts is the point I'm trying to make. Because you just go, you know, even if you're not even shooting it that well, that many more attempts, it's just, it's just hard to beat a team that has that many more opportunities.

And that wasn't even the case, even though it felt like they were beating them up. I also felt like Golden State really battled around the paint on those balls where it's like, oh man, they're deep again, they've got a seal, they've got all these bodies, they're just taller and bigger than them everywhere, but they were fighting like crazy.

And- It was like the Clippers yesterday, same thing. Like just so much fight. Oh no, bad analogy. No, I. Oh no, it was the opposite of the Clippers. My bad, I got my wire screwed up. It was the complete opposite of the Clippers, my bad.

Not a lot of fight there from the Clippers. Not a lot of fighting over screens, protecting the rim, grabbing rebounds. The worst thing. This is best of nine, right? Yeah. Game eight, guess they've hardened. Let's rest these dudes.

So, Buddy Heald, how many career playoff games do you think he's had? Counting the seven in this series. I don't know, 19? 11. He's played 11 games in his career. This was easily the best one. So wait, so that's just the series last year

where the Sixers didn't want to shoot? Yeah, yeah, that's it. And I was like, wow, he really replicated the Klay Thompson game, and then I was like, I gotta make sure I can't remember the Klay stats from that game. 41 points, 11 for 18 from three. Clay Thompson in 2016.

So yeah, Clay, you're safe. You're way over here, buddy. But I mean, to get that out of him. And I've always kind of liked Buddy Heald. It's always been one of those, you're always, you know, certain guys in the NBA you're glass half full with. We're like, ah, it's the right situation. I can really see him thriving.

And it's just never really happened in a sustained way for a good team. Then it's, you think, is he just a good stats, bad team guy? And then he just became a bad stats, mediocre team guy. And they signed him in the off season, and he has a really good first four weeks with them. It's like, oh man, he might be able to be quiet. And then halfway through the year, he's not playing anymore.

And then they get this out of him and they save him. And now they live to fight another day. The Minnesota matchup seems pretty intimidating after what we just watched. But a lot of pride on this Steve Kerr, Draymond Green, Steph Curry era, I think. Yeah, I'll admit throughout this series, even wanting the Steph thing to keep

going because I just enjoy Steph. You know, granted they weren't going to get OKC unless they were advanced, right? And OKC advances, but it kept coming back to me. And then even so with Minnesota's options and their size, I just was like, this is a nice little golden state store. But I mean, come on, are you there? Are you going to pick them against Minnesota? How healthy do we think Butler can be in a week and how healthy did he look to

you today? It doesn't have a week. No, I know. I assume they're going to lose game one. They just had, I mean, that game they just played counted as like a game and a half. That's, that's the thing with these playoff games. Like if you start doing like, was that just one playoff game? Like that game we just watched was a game and a half of, of miles and energy expended and challenging everything.

Yeah. It's like the pitch counts thing we always talk about. Yeah. That was a 145 pitch game by the Warriors just now. And you're asking them to basically throw three days from now and try to throw seven innings again. So I just assume. Yeah. I mean, they're playing in 48 hours, man. Yeah. They're actually playing in 48 hours. So that might be one of those game one, you know, I don't know what the line is yet here, but I'm sure it just got set.

Yeah. I really. Well, do you want to, I have the series line. Do you want to guess Minnesota Golden State? Minnesota minus 165. By the way. sure it just got set. Yeah. I really want to, I have the series line. Do you want to guess Minnesota Golden State? Minnesota minus one 65. I mean, you're getting really good at this. One of the things I'm proudest at in life is I felt like you were gambling,

gambling, uh, what's the word? Linguil when I met you. But now I feel like, I feel like you could move to Vegas for an NBA season and maybe make a run at it. You're almost there, minus 155. Yeah, I used to be really, really into it when I was younger. Oh, there you go.

It was dormant. It was- Van Pelt beat the out of you. No, luckily I didn't have enough money to ever get into too much trouble, but it was definitely something I looked forward to a lot. And then once I was at ESPN, it was a thing that you weren't actually

supposed to talk about, remember? Oh, I remember. I got a couple phone calls. Yeah. I don't know. So I don't know how Minnesota, you know, I would have thought they were a healthy favorite in this one. Yeah. Minus one 66 on Fandl right now, because, but that's factoring in the almost definitely going to win game one. I would assume they're just going to have.

What's the line in the game? Line on the game is minus five and a half. That'll go up. Um, couple other, couple other storylines from this game. Dramond defensively. I know, I know it's a theme over and over again today in this game. He was like a sweeper in soccer or he was like char on hockey. He was just under the, under the, in front of the net, just protected the

goalie and just come jumping out from under the basket and swiping down and stripping or protecting the rim or going vertical, I thought he was incredible. And they were able to steer the defense around him being able to do that and not really having to guard anybody and just pop out and help and jump in. I thought he was awesome and those threes he hit was awesome. That was among the better. I get it. Three years ago, I didn't think he still had a game like that in him. When we were watching him in 2022, it felt like he was phasing toward the next phase of his career. It's funny when you play really high level defense and just call like a two

way player, and I think there's an argument to be said that he's actually still a one way player, right? There's not a lot of offense there. I'd say the layups it's almost in his head a little bit. We saw some of it in game six where he had probably a better opportunity to just go at it and then see what happens. And then when you start contorting, when you start doing this stuff on the labs, I mean, plenty of guys screwed up trying to play for contact or whatever.

And then he's always good for a few passes. You're like, where, because some of them, some of them are, you know, look, he's a great pastor. He's, he's one of the best passing kind of like hybrid guys of his era. But there's also some passes. I think he's, he's gotten a little bit older where it's like, man, you were really forcing that one in there. Or he's just like swinging it to guys Yeah, it's like did you think you had an angle on any of that stuff?

So look all of that the offensive side whatever you get from him as a plus He wasn't on the ball in this in this game tonight much at all There wasn't a lot of playmaking Draymond stuff if anything Because it always felt like they were playing five against four when Draymond had the ball, there just wasn't a lot of room for him to find some of the stuff that he maybe would normally do in a regular season game. But defensively, to have to go up against and just look, we know he's a tough guy. We know he's strong as hell. I think there's probably a Shungun conversation if he's a little bit more polished and a little bit more aggressive, even though he's incredibly skilled. I felt like tonight's a disappointing Shungun game because there's so many

possessions where you're like, dude, you had just, all you had to do was be big and go to the rim, you had the gemski against you and switch. Yeah. Like just, just go. For Draymond to hold up when he's battling Adams and Shungun as much as he was for those minutes and him not getting a foul trouble tonight was a huge part of it because then Steve didn't, I don't know, I call them Steve, but why Kurt didn't have to, uh, kind of manage his minutes at all.

You know, the ref, uh, one of the last Laker games, the ref did the challenge and he was giving the verdict on the challenge and he said LeBron instead of James. And I thought I just thought that was really funny. I caught it. It was like, yeah, LeBron had position. It's like, oh, first name or is this like a Beyonce thing now? Poor Mark Davis did a Christian Brown one. He called him Christian Braun. Oh, yeah.

You're him. Confidence, right? You gotta be thinking like, man, I've been in the league a few years. Like, come on. A couple other notes from this game. Steph is now five and oh in playoff series against Houston. Now that counts the 2016 one where he got hurt

and they won anyway. But they still have not beaten a team with Steph Curry. In the series. That's what his gravity's like though, even if he's not playing, he's just in the building. We don't want to have a gravity combo? Just even street clothes gravity? Well I think it's at least worth mentioning

because when I think of, like we get to these points the playoffs where if you Don't like somebody and you have a platform There's a really good chance that the guy you don't like gets eliminated and then you just get to say that the guy sucks yeah, it's almost this video game where there's just different tiers of like all you're trying to navigate is a way to get to saying the guy you don't like sucks and the chances like the odds are in your favor that you'll get to say it about certain players.

And my contention has always been like some players are really great and they're great in elimination games and they still lose. And when Steph doesn't have any points up until the very end of the first half, I'm watching it going, well, this is going to turn into one of those moments where when everything that's happening offensively, you know, there's a few possessions where he just doesn't have it on cuts, but they're like the buddy where when everything that's happening offensively, you know, there's a few possessions where he just doesn't have it on cuts, but like the buddy healed left side first half three

and Van Gundy called it out. They ran Steph through, everybody shifted to the right side and then buddy's fine. And then there's a Draymond drive on the left side where they run Steph through everything, everybody. It's like a wave of people just going to his side. So by him just being active, because I think there's a lot of stars in those spots,

especially a little bit older, are just so frustrated. They're not gonna cut. They're probably gonna put up a few more shots just to say at least I took a few. And he really wouldn't even take the bad shots if he felt like it wasn't a good look. So you're coming around. I thought that was, you're on my side now.

I feel like I won you over. Well, I think I- I thought that was, you're on my side now. I feel like I won you over. Well I think I. I thought that was a good Steph game. I was ready to zag the whole time, even in half time when he had three points. I was like, you know what, I'm gonna figure out how to do this. I guess I don't feel like you should have to defend

the guy anymore at 37 years old, and I'm not picking them in the next round, so this has been kinda nice. Oh, you're getting off? Oh yeah, yeah. I don't think they're going to be. Want me to help you with your bags as you get off the bandwagon? It's like 1923. You're just getting off the train. When I asked you, did you pick or did you just give me the odds?

I'll give you a thought in a second. Can I, can we talk about Steve Kerr for a second? Because I thought he coached an awesome game today. What did you like? I rarely do this. Because this is the old Hubie Brown thing about Hubie Brown loved every time out. I thought Kerr called like three or four of the best timeouts of the playoffs. He felt, and I only, we've talked about this in the past,

there's only a couple coaches that really understand how to protect the lead, where it's like, all right, we are up between eight and 15 points for an hour here, I can't let them get a run, I can't let the crowd get into it. I feel something bad happening time out right now. And he did it like, every time I felt like, oh man, I think the wheels are about to come off.

He was just like, I've had enough. He had that one play when they went zone in the fourth quarter and Van Gundy called it out. And he was like, he needs to get Jimmy Butler back in the game to break this zone. And there was like 10 seconds up in the shot clock and Kurt's like, time out. I don't like the possession we're about to have.

Let me preempt this. To not know what you're getting from any of your bench guys. Right. Think about the bench. It was other than Looney, just a complete no show from everybody. He knows he has to play Butler and Curry big minutes. He obviously talked about that, but I think they went 44 and 45 for minutes. And it's like, how can I take Curry out with like a minute before the end of the

quarter, just to kind of buy him that little break. Uh, I just thought he did a really good job. So he called one at nine 42 when he didn't like it immediately. And he wanted to get Butler back in the game. And I love that timeout because I do think, especially in this game where it was low scoring, you know, there have been games in the past where you're watching a coach and he wants to make the substitution and then they don't have a stoppage. He doesn't want to burn the timeout.

And you're like, okay, but what's more valuable this timeout, which again, I'd always want to have one in my back pocket, especially in an inbound and a close game. But there's also some math of, okay, we just went three possessions on offense without this guy. And in game six, where Detroit beat New York, Brunson left the game. And then he went to go to the scores table at about two minutes left. And five, you mean, uh, yeah, excuse me, game five, right.

Cause they eliminated him in six. Yeah. So game five, when Detroit won and granted they were dealing with a Brunson situation that isn't normal, but. Tibbs is thinking clearly he's going to get some kind of stoppage in there. And when I was watching him, like you, you just gave up multiple offensive possessions with him at the scores table because you didn't want to call a timeout to get the guy in there. And really when you think of the game and how close it was and who Brunson is.

The two minutes. Yeah. So it doesn't happen very often, but I'm with you, especially on that one at 9 42. I have one other big storyline from this game. Is it Houston or is it Golden state? But we're going to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Michelob ultra. We all have our routines during the playoffs.

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free entry, entry deadlines and official rules message and data rates may apply. Void we're prohibited. Here's the other big storyline. Houston lost around one. And now I feel like if they won, the Yanis trade becomes a little bit harder as a destination. Cause it's like, yo, we won. Let's follow the motto of OKC and some of these other teams.

Now it's like, Hey, we lost in a game seven. We have a chance to get Yanis. Um, what's it going to, Oh, it's going to be Shen Goon and, and, uh, I don't know, Jabari and Jalen green pick three East and Jalen green. Wait, three of those guys and a bunch of picks for Yannis. Like, let's go. Can we, we'll, we'll resign Bambuid for the extra year. We'll keep Brooks.

We'll have Yannis. We'll have, We'll have Thompson. We'll still have some picks and some maneuverability and let's overpay. And they have the best chance to overpay and put Giannis in a situation, but as we talked about a week ago, they also have the best chance to give Milwaukee guys back

because Milwaukee can't really tank because they don't have their picks. So they could at least give them a bunch of players to be like, yeah, you guys are getting a ton of assets here. Who knows? Like, let's say it's Shengun, Tar-Eason, and Jabari. Like, that's a pretty good haul with all the picks for Janna. So I felt like if they lost this game,

maybe the Janna's thing becomes way more realistic. Do you think I'm right? Well, I think the way it's discussed, I would say you're right. I resist all of that, though. I think that's it's discussed, I would say you're right. I resist all of that though. I think that's the dumbest shit you can do when you start planning based on like, Hey, we won a first round matchup, but we lost in the second round. So if we had lost in the first round, we would approach our team entirely

differently in the off season. You and I agree. I'm just trying to get, I'm trying to base that on the history of how the NBA has gone where people can fool themselves because they want around to be like, Oh, we're closer than we were. And I think they should try to get Janis. And if they can keep Thompson out of the deal, just do it. I would try to figure out a way to, to move some of these younger pieces,

because you have so many, there's younger guys that have value that don't even play. And I think the damning part of this series is the Jaylen Green conversation. I mean, he's just... Is there a conversation anywhere? Well, I think there's a real conversation because the highs, whether it was the end of two years ago, which I always call the Gerald Green season, when Shingoon was out, he was so good. I felt like he turned a corner.

I felt like the light was kind of going off with him and some of his playmaking. And then, you know, he's had his moments. We know what you can do scoring wise. But, you know, the game, when he had 38, it's like, see, you know, everything's fine. Everything's fine. Well, that was the aberration. I mean, he had seven, nine, eight, 11, 12, and eight in the other six games. That's not just like, hey, he's young and I know this is early, and yes, he is young and all this stuff, but like a man clearly needs to be the priority for him around whatever they do with Van Vliet and whatever they do with Brooks. So Green is taking away shot opportunities from a man next season. That's getting in the way of his development because, you know, again, a man isn't even fully formed.

And just some of his reads, his aggression, his confidence. And Jaylen's just kind of this wild card guy who drives and the decisions aren't great. And if they had made it, I would have thought all of these things, by the way, if they had won this series. If they had made it, I would have to your point. You wonder if they go, OK, hey, we took a step forward as an organization

and, you know, a couple of things break our way or whatever. I would be really, really aggressive about adding to whoever you're keeping here and trying to get out there in the market, because we're talking about Giannis, who's, you know, never lower than third best in the world in the conversation. I mean, you know, and you wouldn't do a men for him. You would say, Hey, I'm sorry. No, I meant Thompson's off the table. He's off the table. Not discussing him.

Okay. So if it's a bidding war, cause if we're doing any kind of Yannis conversation, you can't put Thompson in the deal. Like at that point I'm, and if I'm Milwaukee, I'm saying the whole summer, Thompson has to be in the deal. Like, we're gonna do that dance back and forth forever. But ultimately, if I'm Houston, I'm like, look, you're not getting him.

We have a ton of picks. We have all these other guys. So, let's figure this out. I think with the Jalen piece, the part that's disappointing to me, because what I really liked about him when he had that moment that you talked about from two years ago, was it wasn't just the scoring.

I felt like he was starting to create shots for other guys. Guess how many assists he had from game four, game five, game six, game seven. Four games. Yeah, I have it up in front of me right now. All right, well for the audience, he had six assists total in four games. So he's turned into this guy that he's either

looking for his own shot or he's not doing anything for anybody else. And I feel like he's gone back with that. The defense certainly isn't on the par with Thompson and Eason and Jabari, who I think are just way, way better than him. And I don't know what he is. Like, would you trade for him?

Let's say you're like, let's say you're a lottery team right now. And it's like, oh, we can get Jalen green. Pretty good contract. 33 million next year. What's he worth? Is he worth a top five pick in this draft? I would say no.

No, because you would still hope for like the unknown of hitting on somebody that costs control the whole thing. Whereas you as a team, like I wonder if Miami, but what would Miami be able to offer? That would make sense. Now, is there some three team thing where Miami goes, you know, we'll bring them in here and we're in transition anyway. And we still think he's a really talented guy.

Cause I think we have seen that talent, but this is a really, and if you're doing local Houston radio this week, you know, it's a bummer of a Jaylen Green conversation. Cause now he's just in a men's way If you bring it back next year, he's just in his way if you were Houston like if we were running Houston we would keep Thompson and decent and we would try to do Shen goon with Jaylen Green with Jabari, right those three plus picks will take one of your bad contracts back with Giannis and let's try to figure it out. And now I get to keep Eason and I get to keep Thompson.

And I get to put them with Giannis. I bring Van Vlack, I have Brooks back, and now my team's better. And by the way, I like Jabari as an asset. I think he's misused on this team. I just think they decide, they stick him in the corner, they don't run plays for him. I think he plays hard.

I like him defensively. I think he could be a stretch five in the right team. I actually, that's somebody I would target this summer if I was somebody else. Yeah, I still hold on some hope for him, but he also showed that the handle thing's a real problem in this series. You know, and Steph had a defensive play against him on the left side

in the baseline where Jabari is like, all right, I'm ready to start going to work. And like Steph knew he couldn't drill. So he just stayed straight up with him and he, he held up great against him. And he had another play, I think it was in game six where he like went to kind of create on his own. I was like, damn it, you know, cause I, I really like them and I'm with you. I think there's a role for him where he's playing 30 plus minutes a night and he's hitting threes and he's playing really good defense and all that kind of

stuff. You know, Steph got him on a switch. She was so happy to get him on a switch and not have it be a men on that layup in the second half. But the only thing I would say about the amend thing is if it's a bidding war, which I don't know why it would be that right. Giannis has to go to them and say, I'm good, but then also feel free to send me anywhere. That doesn't really seem to be the way any of this stuff works for stars. Or it's not just open for Milwaukee to decide where they want to send them.

So if Houston's not necessarily bidding against anybody and they put together a sexy package, then you're right. They shouldn't have to throw them in there. But if it's somehow turned into there's four or five teams involved in this, then it becomes the kind of conversation of like really, you wouldn't include men in there for somebody who's as good as Giannis, but again. They have the advantage though, because again, Milwaukee needs to get players back so they can compete next year,

unless they just decide their picks at some cost for a year. And Houston's really the only team, other than maybe the Knicks, that could actually give them players that could still make them good. Because they have the Doc situation too. Doc's got two years left in his deal. He's never wanted to be in a rebuilding situation ever.

So he's not going to be psyched to just throw in the towel. Do you think this ultimately was a win for Houston in this playoffs? Would you say it's a W to go to seven against Golden State and then you lose in seven because your offense, which was the thing everybody was pointing at this entire season as the thing that was going to sink you in the end. And then that's exactly what happened in the end. If you label it, just as the two losing to the seven, I think you're losing sight of how ridiculous the Western playoffs were. Yeah.

So, other years you'd be like, what a huge disappointment because they were on the cusp of it, they fall apart a little bit at the end of the season because they were one of these great stories. And for two years now, they've been one of our favorite teams to watch because all these guys and wondering how it's all going to shake out. I still feel like the entire season is a positive. I know it hurts right now, but it's positive. And you lost the step. You lost the step, you lost the Warriors. The history is terrible, as you mentioned now with this group, this Warriors group going against this franchise. So even though it's the two, I would throw the two seven part of this out because all of these teams, two through seven were really close.

Well, also the Warriors lose that stupid Spurs game, which comes back to haunt them because now they know Minnesota is the sixth seed with home court because they lost that ridiculous Harrison Barnes game where they were trying. Yeah. And, and the Spurs were just like, our season's kinda sucked, Wemby's been gone for two months. This will make our season if we can somehow stick it to you guys in this game.

Chris Paul, Barnes, and they stick it to them and now they don't have home court. But I will say I'm not positive how much that matters for this particular Warriors team. Because we've seen them stink at home and we've seen them win on the road. The game seven stuff is crazy too. NBA history, we grew up with that. 80 plus percent chance them stink at home and we've seen them win on the road. So the game seven stuff is crazy too. Like NBA history, we grew up with that 80 plus percent chance of winning a home.

And now is it nine of the last 13 road teams have won? Yeah. It's absurd. You know who didn't win yesterday was the Clippers. Oh wait. So yeah, it might be, it might be a nine of the last 14. The Clippers tried to keep it old school the way you used to remember the game sevens. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Golden State, Minnesota, I think it's a really, really, really tall task for Golden State when you consider that Kaminga now. Do we see Kaminga again if it's not garbage time? I'm gonna say no. He was so bad in that. Not to defend Kaminga, but I think Kerr probably broke his confidence completely, and I don't know what they were expecting was going to happen.

If you're throwing them in Moody's been up and down. Post has been up and down. Peyton who missed the game today, which I forgot to mention might've helped the Warriors because Houston crafts this defense thinking we're just going to double Steph everywhere and they make these other guys beat us. And then all of a sudden Buddy Buddy Hilda's in that Peyton spot playing big minutes who can actually shoot. Maybe Peyton doesn't make a couple of those, but, um, is this just a- Oh, by the way, I think you're right.

I think you're right. Because, you know, I think that's why we didn't see Quinton Post a lot, because even though the idea of him is a stretch five to try to pull one of those bigs away, I think Houston was thrilled that every time Quinton Post ended up being the biggest hitter in the world, it was a stretch five to try to pull one of those bigs away I think Houston was thrilled every time Quinton Post ended up taking a three in a playoff series or had the ball yeah all of these were high leverage moments and when you factored in when he was at the rim for rim protection you know a man's like this is this is unbelievable I think Post still doesn't know what a man did on

him on that drive a couple games ago. So I think Peyton was probably one of those guys with the ball in his hands a little bit too much. Post was one of those guys. So now they weren't really even options tonight. And by the way, I know that the regular season series, Golden State has the three one advantage. The last time they played double checking,

it was January 15th. I feel like Minnesota closed is the healthiest version of themselves and was still just a weird team because three of the games were in December. Can I intervene with you on this? I got a stage of intervention. I don't think you can look at the regular season

matchups anymore. I think it's a 95% chance nobody on both teams played in any of the games. I've just, I feel like I want the five hours of my life back where I've looked at different matchups and like, Oh, Halbert didn't play that game. Uh, no Mitchell that game. It's like, there's, you're just learning nothing. It's not like it used to be even five years ago.

You're like, Oh yeah. That February game when they all played, they won one 38 to one 30. They, there's never a game where everybody played anymore. Uh, listen, we talked before the playoff started about how Minnesota was. A long shot that we didn't totally understand because there was a path for them. Right. The path was beating the Lakers, getting home court in the round two against Golden state, and then just basically being toe to toe and unafraid against the OKC.

I think Minnesota should win this series. And I think Golden state, I continue to think they're a guy and a half short. They're not even a guy short. They're like a guy and a half short. And you're going to need, you need eight guys against this Minnesota team. Cause they're deep. They have different lineups. They have size. They can go small.

You have the Edwards piece where he's just relentless on both ends. And, uh, I think Minnesota should be more of the Edwards piece where he's just relentless on both ends. And I think Minnesota should be more of a favorite. I would have had this at minus 200. I think the Warriors are getting a lot of respect in this. I think Minnesota's a good team. You know what's really funny is everyone from Minnesota has played in this.

Has what? Played in the four regular season games. Is that true? You just looked that up. I knew it was gonna happen, because you're right, your general point is right. There it is, there's the 5%. But see, there's just a lot of times,

whether it's who played, because Draymond missed a couple. So Golden State has a three-one edge, but I don't know that you can look, and this is the thing I always struggle with every single year, is so you're watching Golden State and they have this great closing stretch. Okay. Houston felt like they competed throughout the entire year. So those felt real like closing, like a closing month.

If you'll give me a month. Yeah. The Clippers felt like a real closing month. Okay. Well, does that mean that that was all misleading because Denver went into it as the worst defensive team in the playoffs. Um, the Timberwolves closing the way they closed felt real. That's why I picked them. And also just because I felt like how's no one picking them. Like this isn't that daunting to go up against

Los Angeles. And- Well, did you know LeBron was going to sprain his MCO near the end there? I didn't know that. Who knows? that last seven minutes of that game five. This isn't even a LeBron thing. We're getting updates on injuries. We're like, hey, the normal timeframe for this Michael Porter Jr. shoulder thing would be four to five weeks. He looked great in game seven. This year, right? This is a new language. Normally he'd be out 10 days, but he's going to get through it. They did it with Darius Garland today. They did it with Austin Reeves. They did it with LeBron. So LeBron's not the only one there.

We've got like a first team of he would have been out. I'd like to raise my hand on this one. Please do. Everybody's hurting the playoffs. Everybody has injuries, right? Like the Celtics are starting their series tomorrow. Drew's going to play. He has a hamstring. They probably rest him two more weeks Tatum hurt his wrist if it's December, they're probably sitting him for two weeks. Jalen's got the knee like it's it's May I would expect people to get hurt I'm sure Steph has like two injuries that we probably don't even know about. All these guys are fucking banged up

Steph had that crazy thumb thing. It looks like footage from some sort of pharmaceutical ad during the commercials where you just go, if you're experiencing growth on your right thumb. He got stung by a stingray in Cabo. Although I'm Chris Finch watching the tape of this series being like, are we also not gonna get called for anything off the ball with Steph like this series?

When they called the off ball on Shungoon, Kerr, he may just run that on a loop and they'll have like a celebratory dinner and just be like, let's not get ahead of ourselves. It was only round one, but I think we should all get together as an organization, cake and champagne, that there was actually a foul called on Steph

at some point in the series. Cause it was, it's gotta be one of the most disrespectful star whistles. And I know the off the ball stuff is just never policed the same way. I just thought at some point the rest might be like, let's call one of these early to see if they. I didn't know you were allowed to bear hug

somebody off the ball. There was one. It's happening now regularly with the, or at least in that last series it did. They're just bear hugging him. If you're wrestling with your younger brother and he's just weaker than you, unless it sucks and he's just Kyle Long and you're Chris Long,

but you hold your brother's arms out and you're like, why are you, not necessarily making him hit himself in the face, but you're just holding his arms and there's nothing he can do and the wrist control and all this stuff. There was one play where Van Fleet had both of Steph's wrists

as he was trying to get off of some sort of screen. They were setting off the ball and he was holding both of his arms. If you're defending somebody the same way you would hold back one of your buddies from trying to take a swing at the bouncer at two in the morning, that's probably a foul. Yeah, I'm glad they won so that it doesn't sound

like it's making excuses. They got away with, they were smart. They got away with it was smart. They got away with what they wanted to get away with. If Minnesota can get away with that, but they also have one of the least respected stars whistle wise in ant, but it's for different reasons. Cause ant plays to avoid doesn't play to contact. Like Luca plays the contact. Some of these guys are really smart, like knowing Brunson, Hey, if I just play into

the contact, like it'sunson, hey if I just play into the contact, like it's gonna go my way. Ant is so dynamic that he's avoiding everybody and everybody's just in awe of his athleticism. And I think a lot of the stuff with Steph is he's not gonna get the foul calls because they're not just traditional drives towards the hoop. Granted, if he's fouled on a three point attempt,

that's different, but the off the ball stuff with him in a playoff series, and good for the defense for getting away with it, but it, when you really lock into it and watch it for a few possessions, you just go, dude, I can't believe somebody wouldn't want to retire. Like this is, this is what I have to do. Why he's going to punch somebody. You know, what's crazy. So you get Minnesota to go and state that's a great series for the league.

Right. Curry versus Edwards. I think both of those teams are really fun to watch. You know what's crazy? So you get Minnesota to Golden state. That's a great series for the league, right? Curry versus Edwards. I think both of those teams are really fun to watch. I did not think. Even Jensel Pajemsky. Right. I didn't think Houston was very fun to watch just for the record.

Not, not bummed out to not get them for the next two weeks. I was pretty much done with Houston Rockets, basketball games, no offense to their fans. Wasn't exactly a great hang. It's like, Oh cool. It's 74, 72 with five minutes left. Uh, Minnesota gold state is a great series and yet it's not even one of the two best series that we have left from like a big storyline basketball standpoint, because

that Indiana Cleveland series, and we've been talking about Indiana for weeks now and the people just haven't been on it. No, you've been on it more. I know that I'm labeled as more dismissive, but today was tremendous. So go ahead. So Cleveland was minus 500. In the series? In the series.

I have multiple Pacer bits. I did the Pacers plus two and a half for the games that'll go like six or seven I did pacer's and six was ten to one I bet them today. I Was just like especially when Garland no Garland. It's like this is these teams are even I looked up the last 50 games Rossello Cleveland was 35 and 15 in the last 50 games, Rossello. Cleveland was 35 and 15 in the last 50 games and the Pacers were 34 and 16. And if you look at the net rate and the Cavs were like 7.7 and the Pacers were like 5.1. I think they're pretty even teams. And you saw it today, like when the Pacers, when they can play the pace they want to play

and they suck you into it and teams get sucked into it and they can't help it. And once we're doing this, they're happy, they're in. They were getting the matchups they wanted. I think they can play with that team. I wasn't surprised they won today. I think it's gonna be a long series. And I actually think it's probably the best basketball series of the four.

Just for like, I don't know what's gonna happen. The styles are great. It's a styles make fights. It's a great series. And I thought that first game was awesome. Today was awesome. That was an awesome basketball game. Okay. Now I'm going to, I'm not going to you guys, you here, but there's something with the gambling world that I actually get annoyed with. Did you pick the Pacers to just win the series though?

I mean, I bet them the winning six, you bet them with the payout at 10 to one. I thought that was the best value. If I had gone to my head, I would have probably said calves in seven. Right. If I had to make a pick. But do I think the Pacers come in at seven? Sure. I just feel like it's a 50 50 series is my point. It's not a minus 500 favorite series. Right, but what happens if you pick the upset,

but you put a ticket on a five to one payout or a 10 to one payout, then I've noticed, I don't know if it's you, but guys that I follow that are really into gambling would be like, well, you know, I picked him. And it's like, no, you picked the odds. You picked the value. Fair.

You didn't pick it straight up. Here's where I took a loss. I picked the value. Fair. You didn't pick it straight up. Here's where I took a loss. I picked the Clippers against Denver and I had Clipper stuff multiple places and I know we're gonna talk about that in a second but that was one where I was like I think the Clippers will win this series. This Pacers, Pacers Cavs is more I think either team can win this series and I think it's a 50-50 series. I felt that going in and now that they won game one, it hasn't changed. I don't think it's 60-40 now. I just think either team can win. And the Garland thing is a big deal because they needed this three-point shooting. You can see it

today. I think they were like eight for 39 from three. You know, it was a lot of tie Jerome. Tie Jerome, 20 minutes, fantastic. 30, now we're pushing it a tiny bit. We were talking about what's real, right? As teams close out. After the All-Star break, before, let me just do it this way. Before the All-Star break, the Pacers were 21st in defense in the NBA.

After the All-Star break, they were eighth. So the thing about them that always bothered me against another talented team was you're just gonna be able to score against them whenever you want to. And last year's playoff run that was still true. There were injuries against teams they faced. We've covered all this stuff. But if you want to look at a team where you go, hey something's a little different there. Now I don't know if the Cleveland closing numbers for that team are as relevant because they were at such a ridiculous

pace through so much of the season. They knew they weren't gonna lose the one seed. I felt like a lot of the Cleveland games I watched, I don't know, maybe they're still too new to feel like they're taking the foot off the gas, but it felt like that might have been a misleading closing part of it. But that Pacers defensive thing is real. And I wondered also too, in the series against Milwaukee,

am I Carlisle really gonna play 10 or 11 guys? I think he put Ben Shepard in the game as the 11th guy in the first quarter of a playoff game. Who's my all time pet peeve? Who does that? And yet he played a ton of guys again today. So there's a lot of stuff that I really like from the Pacers today and the Garland part of it's totally true

because as much as we both love Ty Jerome, he can't be taking 20 shots in a playoff game. In 29 minutes. And some of them were rough. It hurts the calibration of the team too, because now you don't have him coming off the bench in the same way to swing a game. Cause he's just out there playing most of the game. I will say this, if Garland's not going to be a hundred percent healthy in this series, I actually think Indiana is going to win, But it seems like that injury, like whatever,

they're being careful with it, and it seems like he's gonna be able to play with it, not be completely compromised. You could argue three point variance in this one too. 19 to 36 for Pacers, nine to 38 for the Cavs. The alarming part about the film, if you were gonna go back and watch this, the Pacers shots were open the majority of this game.

And part of that's Halliburton's brilliance. I know people, he's a funny one too, because it's like, man, when he is really rolling, do you realize how special he is at breaking the paint, getting past the first defender, then the help defender thinks that maybe he's giving up on his drive and then it's too late and he's already by you, but people are collapsing.

He's finding open shooters all over the place. I think he could have attacked even more if he wanted to today. By the way, he had 22 and 13 and I think he leads the league for me and when I watch a Pacers game, I'm always like, just go buy him. Just go buy him.

You find yourself saying that with him constantly. Just go buy him. A lot of open looks, because you could tell when Cleveland cranked up its intensity and Atkinson did the in-game interview, he was almost sitting there like a fan going, this is awesome, isn't it? But he also felt better,

because Mitchell was just driving at will, which I think there's gonna be a lot of that in there. Like, Miles Turner being pulled away is a problem. They don't have any depth behind that against the two bigs for Cleveland. Although Atkinson did separate those guys the way he normally would. But I was really, really impressed with the Pacers. And I don't know if it's just the three point shooting. I don't know if it's that even though the Pacers are better than Milwaukee, this might've been a wake

up call for the Caspian. Like that Heat series was as bad as garbage a series as you're ever going to see in the playoffs. Do you know that was the highest point differential ever in a four game sweep? Really? That was the biggest point differential four game sweep in NBA history. That's how disgusting that first round series was against Miami. So you've got to wonder if Cleveland had a moment where like, holy shit. Yeah.

But you know what though? We both watched the whole game. I thought Cleveland played hard. I,, holy shit. Yeah. But you know what though? We both watched the whole game. I thought Cleveland played hard. I, the Pacers came out. I've seen them do that where they, it, it, they just put you on your heels. They turn to and track me and you get excited. Cause it's the first game of the series. Like, all right, let's run, let's go.

And it's like, that's what exactly what they want you to do. Cavs tried to start slowing it down. Mitchell took over. And if you're the Cavs, I think you would take Salas watching the tape. The Pacers made some dumb shots. Like, what was that one, Nemhart? He made like a 29 footer at one point.

It was like two seconds on the, then he made another one, then Toppett made a couple. And it was just like, every time they needed a dumb shot to go and it did. But I thought Hal Burton was the, I thought he controlled the game offensively, especially some of the transition stuff, which I think if you're Cleveland, when you, you have guys out there like, uh, you know, Wade and, uh, what's it in strews, like I thought athletically, they were kind of trying to make the calves

pay for, are you going to put those shooters out? We're going to go, go, go on you. And the other thing that was interesting to me was Hal Burton attacking Allen, you know, who I think is a really good defensive center, but he was like, come on out here, let me do my yo-yo thing with you. And he got him a few times. Yeah. That one I watched where I think the league's like letting guys change their pivot foot a little bit more than I ever remember. When you go, when you take the five steps backwards

to shoot the three. The backwards travel thing, I've never, and I guess it's legal, but I don't understand how that evolved into something. But look, everybody does it, so I'm not even making it specific to anyone. But Halliburton got Allen on one. Yeah, he got Allen on one of those.

And then the drive where he like delayed it mid drive and then went, that was straight. That was two steps. That wasn't even like an NBA two and a half or whatever. That was like a real drive. And it reminded me a bit of when the Celtics, I can't believe you're not doing this and I'm doing it, but Tatum, I think the Celtics preferred Allen against Tatum in a switch because they liked Tatum. Look, it's just a lot to ask any seven foot guy, even as great defensively as some of Allen against Tatum in a switch because they like Tatum.

Look, it's just a lot to ask any seven foot guy, even as great defensively as some of these dudes are to hold up. That's what made Garnett so special is it's just like, oh, you're gonna switch into me? Like, what are you nuts? But Tatum likes that matchup because it's also pulling Allen away and everything else.

And I'm with you. I thought Halliburton was in complete control every time he had the ball to the point where it was like, I think you guys could actually do this more, but the balance was so incredible from six guys tonight, including all the starters. It was, I thought it was just off the charts impressive because then you blow the lead, Mitchell's going nuts,

although he can't hit any threes, that place is on fire. Like the announcers are basically saying, hey man, Greg Anthony's like, I think this is the loudest building I've ever been in for a playoff game. Yeah. So do that Greg. To be on the road and blow, well not blow the, but you just expect that the Cavs are going to have some kind of fight in them and then still respond and close it out.

As impressive as a win is like, I'm not going to say today, but, I think it's just up there with anything else we've seen. Yeah. That move Mitchell has where he drives right at the guy and he does the high dribble and he carries the ball by his head and then rips it forward and comes in. And I was like, where did I seen that before? And I was thought about it for like an hour. It's Dwayne Wade's moves. That was the old Dwayne Wade.

Is that, are those the only two guys that had that? I'm trying to think. Did Kobe have that? I feel like Kobe had everything. He splits the screen. But did Kobe do that one? That high, bringing the ball up high, and then you're almost like driving the ball down

into the guy and then bouncing off and. Jared Ryder maybe? No, Isaiah Ryder. Changed his name. Yeah. Mitchell was great. You know what I loved about Mitchell in that game? It was the same reason why I felt like he had to be a top five MVP thing like he could feel

What was happening and he's like I got this I got this and he really like Legitimately took over the game and swung it for a couple minutes. It was 68 it was 80 68 and he drove six straight possessions just drove. Yeah, and with him You know, he's probably as good as anybody at splitting the two defenders, which is when Kobe, I think Kobe's probably the best I've ever seen at it. Wade always wanted to reject the screen a little bit more than you'd expect,

but with Mitchell, you don't even necessarily need, like sometimes you just screen to try to get people moving around and figure out where the help's gonna be all this stuff, it's not as much the help is going to be all those stuff. It's, it's not as, as much as it is hunting the big all the time, but Mitchell, he can beat the guy off the dribble and then he can beat the help defender. He can split a double. He can, you know, he can do anything that you really ask of him there.

Um, but if he is not going to hit his threes, you know, I mean, you don't expect him to shoot that poorly. One for 11. Yeah. If I'm Indiana, I'm psyched because I almost feel like you have to win game one on the road. If you're going to win a seven game series where you don't have the home court, like you otherwise now you're looking at, you have to win four out of six and it's just the math becomes too hard.

It always seems like winning that game one is huge. Um, I think they know they can win there. And I continue to think that's as good of a team as anyone on the East. Boston obviously has a higher ceiling. Cleveland has the pedigree from the season and probably have the best player, I would say Mitchell Sled Edge over Halberd.

But I think Indiana can play with both those teams. I was talking to my dad today. My dad's like, who would you want to play in round three if we get by the Knicks out of these two? And I was like, we'd want to play Indiana because we'd have home court. He's like, yeah, good point, but man, they're scary. And both of those teams have played the Celtics really well

and know that they can hang with them and potentially beat them. And for the Celtics, health is going to be the biggest enemy for them these next two rounds, whether they can on a back to back season, try to keep everybody upright and playing big minutes. But I think all those teams are really good. I think Indiana, if Indiana made the finals, I wouldn't be shocked. I'd be a little surprised.

I'd be shocked if Golden State made it with how limited their roster is. If they actually put together two more rounds, that would be like playing Quentin Post and coming good. Hoping Moses Moody's making threes and like that would be shocking. I would not be shocked by Indiana. Carlisle, even though he plays a ton of guys, he knows what he's going to do over the course of a game

and then he kind of figure out how he wants to close. Kerr doesn't know who he's going to close fourth quarters with. Right. He's like, oh, Moses Moody can't make a shot today. Cross him off. Game 89. Yeah. He's turning around going. He's like, do we have anybody else? Is Andre Guindala over there? I don't know. He's not on our team anymore. You know the other thing with Indiana that I think is interesting? Everybody they bring in, I like. Yeah, you like Jairus Walker. I even like him. Yeah. But like Toppin, it's like, all right.

But when Toppin's open in the corner, do you think the shot's going in, in a fourth quarter? Because I think it's going in. After that Minnesota run, yeah. When TJ McConnell's driving to the basket, I'm like, I think he's going to score. I think they're a good team. Continue. I thought they were the best value for all the bets before the playoffs. Cause they were like, you have no hesitation then. I mean, Thomas Bryant's out there, right? They're playing OB top and at the five against the Cleveland

options that they have five minutes for Thomas. But I'm like, I just think Carlisle was showing off at that point. He's like, you don't think I could play 11? Watch this. Doesn't that mean, doesn't, isn't Thomas usually the 12th guy? I'll tell you this. If Garland's not healthy, I think Indiana wins the series. And if Garland ends up being healthy, I still think they could win it.

I think it's goes six or seven. I thought that was a great bet. That was one of my favorite bets. The Indiana plus two and a half. Let's take a one more break for the podcast. And we got to talk Clippers. Uh, Clippers. So big picture.

I think this is the rare series that was decided in game four. You see this sometimes where sometimes the games, I know it's weird to be like game seven, anyone can win. And the line certainly reflected it. The line was even then it was minus one. Then it ended nuggets minus one and a half, which I asked FanDuel, like, have we had a game seven line that low? And we really haven't like, they're usually like three and up for a game seven. So even Vegas was like, we don't know.

But I think game four, which we talked about a week ago, the one I went to at the Intuit, and the way the Nuggets played in that game, the desperation they had, where Jokic, Gordon, Murray, were all of them were like, we have to win this. And they ended up, they went, went in on this crazy alley-oop. But the desperation they showed in that game,

versus the desperation or lack of desperation the Coopers had yesterday, was pretty telling. And I don't know what happened. I don't know whether the Coopers wore out. It's an older team, maybe playing on Thursday, maybe the Denver altitude. Maybe they kind of deep down knew they missed their shot in the series.

But, uh, that third quarter, which I asked her rewatch this morning, the first five minutes of the third quarter for the Clippers, um, was one of them. One of the most putrid, embarrassing displays of basketball on both ends. I can remember, cause it was an eight point game. Kauai had a three and then for the next four minutes, they just took a complete shit on both ends and there's 20 mistakes. It's just awful and that was it.

That was their season over in four minutes basically. It was really bad and I don't know what they do now. I thought the Clippers were going to win the series, you know, back to that closing part of it. It's like, you realize how bad Denver is defensively. I didn't like their defensive options. And I think we're going to see those exploited again on the perimeter against the OKC team that has it shipped together. Certainly more so than the Clippers do. You know, I watched the third quarter again this morning because he asked me to, and you're like, what happened to you guys? Like, I know they were kind of like trying to figure out

how to like the done parts that were good defensively. Clearly he was the guy that was getting exposed as they ignored him offensively. Yeah. I think zoo is a great story this year. I thought Yokochi fought him way better in game seven than maybe you'd expect. There's some really good Jokic numbers as far as defensively what the averages would be for the Clippers at the rim against everybody. That's the thing with him is he's the least positioned better. And it was funny because he was so bad defensively in that first half of the game they ended up winning. But I have a lot on Hardin if you want to do it.

I just don't know that, I have stuff specific to the third quarter, but it's just crazy to see the cycle of the Hardin conversation happen all over again. It's like, who's even, what is the debate anymore? Like at this point I actually have sympathy. Because clearly there's something. But he had assists in the first half, which kind of, which kind of shielded

some of the stuff that he did that fucked them over in that first half. Like just not running back on defense, being lazy, you know, in a bunch of different ways of his specific plays. And then in the third quarter, he's like, I'm taking it up two notches. And he was so bad for five minutes. He played. So I went through it and I was really focusing on him. You knew it was bad. Like you can just tell if you've watched it enough, you can tell you can see it

and go, Oh, this is a problem. His first technical shot, his first actual shot of the game was about 55 seconds left to go in the first quarter. He had gotten free throws on that bullshit arm hook thing that he does at about the two minute mark. He had let Watson get behind him after a make. Like you didn't, there was no one else in the area other than just I'll let a super athletic guy

just kind of get behind me because whatever. He played the entire 12 minutes. I counted the number of times he actually got inside the three point line. And I'm not talking like a foot over the line. I'm talking like got into the, got into the offense of all of their possessions in the third quarter. He stepped inside the three point line three times. One was an atrocious lob attempt.

There was another play where he was on the right side, and there was another one where he played for free throws. He was hoping to get fouled on this layup, going back against Jamal Murray, and he lost it. So all right, he doesn't want to shoot fine. He doesn't want to move fine. I mean, he's standing by the ball. And they're killing him on defense.

Right. He's standing on the ball arena logo, which is like by the coach's box. And he just can't, there's one play where Kawhi gets totally shut off in the paint. He's like at the free throw line, he's at the paint. Denver's scrambling on defense. And he looks to Harden, and all Harden had to do

was take two steps just to get there as a possible option to catch at the three point line. And Harden couldn't even move in from the five feet there. There's something that happens with him where his regular season brain and his approach to dissecting everything, there is a speed difference. There's a process, because obviously he,

look, Austin Rivers was just on with me last week saying he's one of the three smartest players he's ever played with, and I'll give it to him. Because you see the moments where he's diagnosing everything that's gonna happen and how the help and which matchup makes more sense. But there's something that happens to him when he is in these high leverage moments that he's just clearly uncomfortable.

So it's like, okay, you don't wanna shoot, you don't wanna move, can you at least be positioned somewhere? The Aaron Gordon Tippen, he just lets him just step right in front of him. Stop boxing out dudes. It's not just basketball, it's the same fight we just watched from the Warriors.

You watch and you go, where's the fight? This is game seven. You're going home if you lose this game. You realize that, right? And you just don't see it. You saw it in game six. Game six he came out, he was aggressive, he was attacking and it was like,

oh, this guy really cares that they win today. Game seven, it didn't seem like he cared. That Sixers series against the Celtics a few years ago, he saved their ass a couple of those games early on. And as somebody who's been well positioned on this, like I remember being on Sports Center 10 years ago going, yeah, something's wrong here. And, and, you know, people were like, oh, he had a concussion. It was like that Spurs series. Remember? And you're just like, what? You think he has a concussion? So that's, that's what happened. And're just like, what? You think of, he has a concussion? So that's what happened.

And it's like, okay, well, what about this year? What about this year? What about the Warriors series? What about the 18 closeout game? What about the 19 closeout? Like it just goes on and on and on. And I don't know why it keeps happening, but it's like, okay, so you don't want to shoot.

Like whatever it is, you're not comfortable. At least do something else. And I think it's a really good lesson in the first half tonight of where Steph is struggling and nothing is easy and he can't get an open look. And it's like, okay, but there's still a bunch of other ways. I can impact his game. He's playing defense. He's scrapping. He's trying to create stuff. Well, is that, so our friend, Zach Lowe,

when he wrote his hard and playoff piece that was heading into round two of the Laker series in 2020. When they won game one. And he had in that piece, he had in 15 games facing elimination since 2013, you know, hearted 90 assists, 79 turnovers, 40% field goal. Um, the crunch time stuff was really bad, 38%. Nine for 50 on threes in crunch time during that stretch, right? Damn.

Well, since then, 20, that's six more playoff exits. These were his elimination game totals. He had 30 points in the Lakers one that they lost, six turnovers. 22 and 21. He had 11 in the Lakers one that they lost six turnovers, 22 and 21. He had 11 in the closeout, uh, in 22, nine and 23, 16 and 24 and seven, uh, in this game. But the total shots he averaged 16 a game, 9.3 assists, 31 for 81 field goals and nine for 42, three points. So one, one thing that definitely happens is you can't make threes in these big games. But then if you go further, you know, this is just statistically one of the best offensive

players of all time. Like I looked at how many guys have averaged 24 points a game just for their career who have played a thousand, uh, a thousand games or more. And it's 11 it's Jordan, Wilt Durant, LeBron James, Oscar, Carl Malone, Kobe, Dominique, Steph Curry, Kareem and James Harden. That's why we talk about this. Cause that's, that's how good the stats are.

You go to the playoffs and there's only 16 guys who have played at least 140 games and an average 22 a game or more. And they're all guys who won titles. Jordan, Durant, West, LeBron, Curry, Hakim, Kobe, Dirk, Malone's the first one who didn't, Kareem, Shaq, Larry, Wilt, Hardin, Wade, Havlicek. So he statistically resides in this area with all these great guys who have all won titles. And yet his legacy is over and over again. The worst possible things happen at the worst time for him.

And, you know, we could talk about legacy and whether it actually matters. Because I think what we've learned the last 10 years is sometimes the legacy stuff doesn't matter as much and people choose to remember or forget what they want. But you know, Zach was saying four or five years ago that this was the Carl Malone of guards and it's worse now than it was when we were talking about it a few years ago and this is it. What is he 35, 36 has been the league 16 years. It's not going to get better. This is just the legacy and this is it. What is he 35, 36? He's been in the league 16 years. It's not gonna get better.

This is just the legacy. And the Quippers, you combine that with the Quippers and it's unbeatable. I wasn't even, you know, the reason it used to get, be more passionate was because what he was doing in the regular season, people were like, you know, putting these numbers up there going like, look at this. I mean, top five MVP, or top three MVP finishes, like five straight years, maybe

it was top four finishes. And so when you look at those stretches, you start going like, okay, where's this guy going to end up and without the ring, you know, we're pretty resistant to let you hang out at that top tier neighborhood. But make the finals. Yeah. to let you hang out in that top tier neighborhood. But. Make the finals. Yeah, look, I think the other thing that we learned through those years too,

is that that's where the usage part of it comes in. Is it's an entire season is dedicated to you having the ball every single minute to like absurd historic levels. And you're putting up all these points, like that's cool. And you're playing a different team every game versus the same team seven times in a row. Yeah, is that gonna translate? Is that going to be the best thing?

I mean, again, I don't mean to bring up the Westbrook stuff because he was great. He was great in the elimination game. Tons of energy, good for him. But there was this regular season thing that was happening in those OKC games that once they got to the play house, you're like, oh, so now we don't just stand around and wait for him to do something?

Because Westbrook had such an advantage because of how athletic he was. And Harden had this statistical advantage because he was gonna make threes. He's terrific if you send help, he's terrific on the lobs. He lives at the free throw line. So those prime years for him would give him the profile of somebody really, really special.

And I figured at some point, he would probably just have a great elimination game because he was fucking due. Like this is over a decade, man. Like that Spurs series that I'm just thinking of. That was the point of Zach's column in 2020. He's like, why haven't we had our James Harden playoff moment yet? And we've had six playoffs since he wrote that column.

I'm mailing you, um, I'm, I'm texting you check your texts. Even when they beat OKC in 20 before they lost the Lakers in five, he was four of 15, one of nine from three. I just texted you what I'm about to run through. This is the James Harden. This is the levels of, of the bad James Harden close out games. I'm going to rank them. James Harden close out, terrible games ranked 2017 game six spurs. I think was the worst one ever. This was the one with it. They lost by 39 at home two for 11

He was one for two in the first half field goal wise as San Antonio went up by 18 And by the way, Kawhi Leonard did not play Did not play in the game because he was hurt. The next one is the 2023 game six game seven the Boston combo where they lost game seven by 24. He was three for 11 in that game with five turnovers. And you could see from the first drive where he had to make a decision with the ball. You're like, Oh, he, I don't think he kind of know right away. Yeah. And this is a series where he had 45 in game one and won the overtime game.

Right. He was awesome. When Embiid wasn't there. He was there. He was there. He was there. He was there. He was there. He was there. He was there. He was there. He was there. He, I don't think he kind of know right away. Yeah. And this is a series where he had 45 in game one and won the overtime game.

When Embiid wasn't even, I think he had missed one of those games, right? Yeah. Next one, 2015 game five warriors, round three conference finals. They lost by 14. It was two for 11 with 12 turnovers. They were down six at halftime. He was over five in the second half. So you have that. I put, this is a game they won, but 2015 game six Clippers round two, which they ended up winning by 12. He was five for 20 in the game bench for the comeback.

Yeah. The bench for the comebacks. One of the all time. They, they Houston's 40 and 15. They won that 40 to 15. They won the fourth quarter harder, never played. He was one for seven in that game. Uh, the game seven this year, two for eight field goals, seven points. Denver goes plus 16 in the third quarter.

He's over two field goals in that game. Uh, and then there's other ones. There's 22 game six Miami. They lose by nine. He's over two in the second half field goals last year, game six, Dallas one, they lose by 13. He's over six from three, five for 16. It goes on and on. Uh, the point is there's not a lot of good ones, uh, and there's not even a lot of decent ones and there's no great one. And in fact,

probably the most honorable one he has was that year when they played the bucks when he had the hammy and they lost an OT and he was five for 17 but he had 22 points. He got to the line. He had nine assists. Remember he was playing on one leg. That was probably the most admiration I've had from one of these games. But, um, look, people are going to remember what they want to remember. Um, but I'm going to remember that this is a guy that you're just,

like I'm so mad I didn't bet on Denver in game seven when you think of the Clippers piece combined with the fact that the Clippers needed Harden to really come through in a big game and he's just never done it. But see that's what's so crazy is all of these other games for the most part, I mean granted you can argue in beads importance in the 23 series.

The funniest thing too is cause I'm looking to the game log too. When they swept Brooklyn in the game for a closeout, he was four 18 and 40 minutes. He was, pray. You know, and like they didn't need him obviously because they swept that Nets team, but I at least felt with this one,

because I knew when I had said it, I'm like to pick, and it wasn't like I was picking Harden against Jokic because really it's about Kawhi and it's about Zubats and it's about the team. It's about how, how great they had been defensively. And it felt like they had really figured some of this stuff out. I'm not, I don't even know who was left to argue with. I mean, you could find somebody over the years. There was always people from Houston arguing about this stuff all the time.

You're just like, all right, cool man, like whatever. You just see. The argument was what he did in game six. He was really, really good in game six, right? That was three days ago. Game six of what? The Denver series, the one Thursday night. Oh, this one.

He was really good in that game. So the argument would be like, hey, he was really good in game six, couldn't it happen again? And the answer was, it can't. Okay, and I think to be fair, to harden, you've gotta admit that they unloaded the clip in game six and then to turn around and play games.

And he's old. Yeah, he's an older player, he's playing in altitude. I get it. I would not lead my show with this today because if he were 30 and he were the number one option in getting MVP votes, then I would be like I was a few years ago. But I'm pointing to the stuff that's frustrating

because it's like, all right, if you don't have the offensive part of it, it's like, all right, if you don't have the offensive part of it, doesn't mean you don't have to do any of the other stuff. You just decide I'm going to stop moving. But again, like I said, I'm more sympathetic to this time around because he's not the number one option. He's not in the MVP conversation.

I mean, he might make all NBA. But they really needed him though. They needed something. They needed him. A catalyst. If he was spent, he's played this game long enough. He needed to figure out a way to be like, okay, I'm going to, I'm like, dude, it looks like he's saving himself the entire time he's out there, but be

calculated about what your team needs from somebody who's been in this many playoff games and you know, you were going to wonder if Ty Lue was watching this going, do we need them out there for all 12 minutes? Was he going to put in Corey Brewer? Josh Smith. Amir coffee is playing Corey Brewer. Maybe Ben Simmons is Josh Smith. Oh my God.

He just said a three. Um, look, Hardin's been in the league 16, and it's a lot to ask for him to outplay Yoko in a game seven, but it leads to a pretty good, what do you do conversation if you're the Clippers because you couldn't get through, you couldn't get through around one. Go ahead. I have to pretend, but pop pop Simmons,Pop Simmons, you've got your compound, who knows, maybe Montana for you.

Montana. And the grandkids come to visit. And they go, Pop-Pop, tell us about James. Tell us about James Harden. What are you going to say to your grandkids? Good question. Do it a grandfatherly voice, if you could. One of the best left-handed players I've ever seen.

Good start. Recreated offensive basketball in a couple of different ways. Was one of the best two guards in the 21st, first 25 years of the 21st century, put up huge stats and his teams were always good. And something would happen to him in playoff series that none of us could really fully understand. And by the way, the same thing was, could be said about Carl Malone,

but at least Carl Malone made the finals twice as the best guy in a finals team. Did I think he was going to come through in those games? I did not, but at least he was able to get that far and he won some big playoff series, you know, and Harden, you know, Zach wrote that piece six years ago. What's the James Harden playoff moment? We still don't have it. It's, you know, I was thinking about this stuff because I was thinking about in the context of Carmelo, right?

Cause I think Carmelo has had a nice little resurgence post-career and he, I think there's, he's, I think a popular X star, right? And I think people remember his Knicks era really fondly. He won one playoff series with the Knicks. Yeah. If you go through Carmelo in the playoffs, he starts out with five straight first round exits. And you know I'm a Carmelo fan.

I was the one who wrote the Carmelo column about how I felt like he had a chance to be on that level and he was just bad luck with his team. It's my home page. Five straight first round exits. He lost 18 of his first 21 playoff games. In the 2009 playoffs. They won two rounds, lost LA in six.

They lost them first round the next year to Utah. His career record in Denver, playoff record, two for seven in playoff series, 15 and 28 career record. Goes to the Knicks three years, one for three in playoff series, seven and 14 is his record, average 28 a game, then missed the playoffs the next four years. And now Brunson is hot this year and people are like, who's better, who's the greatest Nick ever, him or Carmelo? Because people can't remember anything.

So that, bringing my point back to James Harden, maybe people won't remember 10 years from now. They'll be like, oh yeah, the beard, he was awesome. They're not gonna remember any of this stuff. Because they certainly remember any of it with Carmelo. I'm pushing back on this. I agree with Carmelo. Please. I think he's an incredibly likable guy.

But Carmelo doesn't have the failures at the highest moments. Like this is like not making fun of the Broncos before Elway. But I'm just saying he didn't. It's like continuing to make fun of the Bills. He didn't really have any success like from a playoff standpoint as a player.

But I think now as the years pass, people feel like he was on like that LeBron Wade level in some ways. My point is, if you actually go through it, like it's pretty grim. But I think you're missing my point, is that failing consistently with this many eyes on you later, Los Warriors failure, everybody missing threes.

I mean, even though he had 30 in the closeout game at 18. I don't know that you felt great about him necessarily in that game. I feel a hundred times worse about Harden. I'm just saying, I just wonder with legacy sometimes when people are like, legacy, legacy, legacy, legacy. We don't even do a good job of remembering what legacies were or what happened in somebody's career.

I think Camargo had a lot of bad luck. Teammates, he pushed his way to the Knicks and they traded all these guys back to Denver. But for the most part, for what his talent was to never make a finals, to be in one round three, it's kind of disappointing in retrospect because I thought he was one of the best guys of that generation. And he's the one that nothing really happened. Yeah, if you go through the Carmelo thing, because I used to argue with Knicks fans

that like turned on him big time. Like they ended up really turning on him. Yeah. I think it's that Pacers series, speaking of the Pacers again. But if you go through all of Carmelo's playoff exits, and I promise like it's, I don't know how many people would actually do it.

More often than not, the team they were going up against, you weren't gonna pick that Carmelo's team to beat that team. Right. I think there's a jazz series in there, I promise, I don't know how many people would actually do it. More often than not, the team they were going up against, you weren't gonna pick that Carmelo's team to beat that team. I think there's a jazz series in there maybe, or the records were pretty even. It's a Clippers series, yeah. Yeah, well he won three playoff series in his career, and is 22 for 42 in the playoffs.

But that's the thing, I think as the years pass, people remember what they want to remember and the Twitter videos and the social media stuff becomes as big a part of somebody's legacy as anything else. And I think James will probably be okay, big picture because the stats are going to have them. Look at Karl Malone. You and I were there for the Karl Malone era and now the years pass and people are like,

yeah, Karl Malone stats. Holy shit. Wow. Made the finals twice. It's like, all right, well, you wouldn't want to throw in the ball with 18 seconds left. Just wouldn't have. Game four, maybe with Harden.

Cause that's what I like to remember about Jim. Well, down 115, 113. Sixers need it. Harden, three pointer, wins it over time. I think he ended up with about 42 in that game. Big game, Jimmy. Well, big picture. What do you do if you're the Quippers? What do you do? Well, hard in, it's got a $36 million player option. They have Powell and Bogdanovich and Eubanks and platoon for 46 million expiring next year. So they could put contracts together. They don't really have any picks to move.

Um, they can put together some contracts and take somebody else's high salary problem or somebody who's a little, little expensive that maybe somebody wants to dump cause they're tanking, but you know you know, do we run back this team and be like, hey, we lost to the best offensive player since Jordan basically in round one and seven. Let's not overreact. Or do you overreact? Are they gonna have the option to overreact?

And I would say this is just the headline to all of this off season stuff that I wanna get into with you that I know you're excited about, but just in general. When you look at the free agent list, it's terrible. Well, it's more the player acquisition list. It's the, can you talk yourself into Zion? Can you talk yourself into Trey Young?

There's eight of those guys. Yeah, I think that's what- It's a bonus. What's he up to? You're right, that's the exciting part of it. There's a really exciting version of this summer for the NBA. But more often than not, history tells us it's not just all of a sudden every GM's like, let's just get wild with this and start changing our dudes. And we'll just keep running back. So the fact that you have Kawhi under contract for two more years at 50 million, you know, everything still kind of revolves around him because I don't even know what the market would be for him. And as you pointed out, they're not like, they can't just like tear this whole

thing and necessarily start all over. I don't know if Hardin is going to opt out because of the over 38 rule. If they extend him, like, is he probably thinking in the back of his head, this league still owes him money because of the Philadelphia thing? I just think he's got to opt in at the 36. You have to. But he could opt out and go fine. You can't do that again.

He did that the last time. No, but if he already understands, like, all right, how about I figure out a way to give us, because I think last season was, you know, they were smart about the Paul George thing. How much money can James Harden give away? I'm talking about opting out of the player option at 36 million and then doing a three-year extension

and then having the number be less each year. So it's like, okay, James, why don't we do it this way? And maybe there's more flexibility. But they've done a good job of kind of resetting the financial restrictions here because depending on the options and who they wanna keep around here, but you seem to be completely either not being with me on this Hardin thing at all. Do you not understand like just opting out,

taking a less average annual salary for a couple more years? But now I'm in business with James Hardin for three more years. I just, I don't know. Well, I know we didn't make a compelling case of wanting to be in a long-term relationship with them the last few minutes, but I don't know what their options are. To say the least, we just went through it for eight minutes. So who would they bring back? And now I have to bring back for three years? I would do 36 million if you opt in,

okay, let's see how it goes, and then I have him, I have all these expirings, and I can get a little frisky either before the season or heading into February, because the best thing that happened to them is Kawhi. And how good Kawhi was, I think, the last three months of this season, combined with Zubots, at the foundation of something, and they have some flexibility.

And they have one of the, but it's a front office. You and I both really respect. Like, I feel like they're gonna figure out, they have options. I just- I don't think they have a lot of options though. But that doesn't mean you have to give James Harden a hundred million for three. Like we'll shave five million off your deal. But I wasn't talking about a hundred million.

What would you do if he's going to opt out of his 36? Then you're talking about like those deals, like what like CJ McCollum did some other people where it's like, would you say, would you do, what if he says I'll opt out. Would you do, what if he says, I'll opt out, I'll do three years, 70 million? Oh, now you have my attention. That's what I'm talking about. Why would he do that? Would he do that?

Do you think he would, what do you think he signs for after another year? He'll be 37 that summer. Do you think he's making. Listen, you're asking me to figure out the motivations of somebody who's passed up two giant max deals over the last six years to take less money each time. We know I did it in Philly. Yeah, no, I get it.

Um, well, the bigger question for me is you're in the West. You're in the same division or the same conference as OKC, who's just a fucking nightmare. You're in the same conference as Minnesota is a fucking nightmare. You have Wembe and San Antonio with these draft picks and cap space. You have Luca on the Lakers. Like he going through, it's a nightmare conference and you just, and Jokic who just beat you.

I don't know. You're no man's land, but the owners like the owner just flew 200 fans to and you just, and Yoke Edge who just beat you. I don't know, you're no man's land, but the owner's like, the owner just flew 200 fans to Denver for game seven. Like he's not, he's gonna think they have a chance. On the way back. Why was there more social media from the flight? I want to piece. Just silence. I want to read that in the athletic, the flight home.

I want to, I want to read that on the athletic, the flight home. Like, are we landing? Maybe it's a documentary. We're landing in Barstow by the way. I think it's one of those guys you have to find your own way home. Denver reports over there. So you're just, you're, you're trying to do 370 for Hardin. I mean, maybe that's, maybe that's nuts, but like Hardin next year, 37 coming off the 36 million, who knows?

Does he, does he look at it as like, I'm going to get another 40 million guaranteed on the books right now. Maybe he thinks, hey, that's ridiculous. I can do another three for 75 after that, keeping this high average annual for this one. The chances are, is that he's on the team. Kawhi's on the team.

So that's, whatever this is, it's like 80 plus million with those two dudes. They don't have a young player that you're really excited about that maybe can entice a vet to say, I wanna be traded there because it's LA and it's a great coaching staff and front office, great ownership.

There's a lot of stuff about it that feels really attractive for the next guy that's mad, but it's not a great group on the court to be mad enough to be like, I'm going there. If you had to do a pie chart of this will be better next year, this would be the same or this will be worse. I think the, Ooh, this will be worse is 60% of the pie. Right.

Cause you, you basically have to get another healthy Kauai season. I have no idea how many of those are left. You know, you're never getting a better Zubot season. You got Norm Powell. You might get the same. You might get the same. You're not getting a better season. I mean, unless you wanted to trade zoo, can you get creative with a zoo norm?

I, zoo's like, I thought it's weird. His stats went down as the series went along, but I really respected how he went at Yoke-age. Yeah. I don't know where the rebounding was for him. I thought he was a better rebounder in the regular season than he was in the playoffs, but I just think, I think when you play Yoke-age for two straight weeks, I think it starts to break your brain after a while.

If you're, if you're actually, you're in charge of defending him and stopping him, you imagine that the response, but just like going to sleep and being like, yeah, I got to play yolkage again tomorrow. Like how, like you, that's like three hours sleep. He's lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Fucking a, um, next team for what do you do? That's like three hours sleep. He's lying in bed staring at the ceiling like fucking A. Next team for what do you do? So basically we agree though on the Clippers. You didn't have some magic crazy scenario here.

Because when I was doing it out this morning, I'm like I don't really know how different it's gonna be. The crazy scenario is do you take a big contract from somebody that somebody is like kind of excited to get off of? Whatever this year's version of Brandon Ingram is, and Brandon Ingram didn't get traded. Do you talk yourself into a Brandon Ingram type?

Somebody who's available and expensive? That's the question for me. I don't know who that is yet, because we haven't seen, first of all, the playoffs have to shake out a certain way. Somebody might tail out in the second, you know, the second round. Who knows the pistons get really interesting because they have hard away and shooter and Beasley all as a unrestricted free agents.

They have Tobias on a 26.6 expiring and they have Ivy coming back. Dave Harris. They do. And you could talk me into, Hey, let's just keep the trains moving. The thing I would recommend them not doing is overreacting to how the playoffs went and doing new, longer, big deals with Beasley and, and, uh, Hardaway and Schroeder and being like, we have our nucleus. I, I would go the hired gun route for those.

Um, but you know, this is an interesting KD destination. So let's talk about it. My, um, you know, we were talking about, Hey, how do you feel about the rockets? Right. What's, what's the grade you give them? And it sucks right now, but the season was a success. Detroit, you gotta feel great about this. And I think they battled with New York to even a higher level.

There's a couple things where this breaks maybe to a game seven. So I thought they competed to a level that I didn't know they were gonna get to against the Knicks. And I'm totally with you. I think because of the free agent class being so bad, but then, you know, whether Nets going to sign Malik Beasley do a huge contract. And then after the Nets, you look at who has available cap space. Detroit has cap space, but with Cade's new deal, because he's going to make all NBA, it's going to be 19 million in cap space, as opposed to 24. Chicago's got 20 million in cap space.

Memphis has like 17 and a half. There's like five teams that have between 15 and 12 million. And then you kind of run out of teams. So you start going, okay, if we know something about this year with Detroit, it's that spacing around Cade is really, really important. And as much as we all love Dern, he's not going to provide that spacing ever. So you really have to make sure that rotationally around that you're doing those kinds of things.

But Beasley season this year, I'd be scared to death of what that price tag ends up being because another teammate just say, screw it, let's throw him a crazy contract because he was so good this year from three when I don't even know that necessarily trust him. So, you know, hard away was a bigger number. Uh, I I'd have to keep one of those guys. They can get creative because of their own cap space and how they want to structure those contracts. But Hardaway was an old contract,

so he was like 16, 17 million range. He's not seeing that again. He's now a six to eight million player, I think, in the market. I'd rather pay him six to eight than pay Beasley what I think might be a scary number from the one other team that goes, ah, we've got this cap space,

let's just use it on somebody and look at all the threes that he made. The biggest part of this is that Ivy's gonna come back. And it's easy to forget that Ivy in 30 games shot 41% from three, he was terrific. And I think in the playoffs it shows, as tough as Schroeder was and he was big for them, and he fights like crazy

because clearly he takes the Brunson thing personal. Ivy being a second on ball creator and getting his own at his size and his athleticism, I think that's actually going to solve some of the problems, especially if that three point shooting holds up. So we know Cade needs spacing. I would not be in any kind of hurry to mess with this. Houston, I think is on a different timeline because they have all these different guys that they still probably don't even know who they want to make

decisions on, or maybe they do, but there's not necessarily enough assets for Detroit to have to get as creative as Houston could potentially get. I would really just be steady here if I were Detroit, making sure I don't let all of this shooting leave, but I think I'm probably going to be scared off by the Beasley price tag. So Phoenix calls and says, you know, Tobias and Thompson and Fantecchio actually works in the trade machine with KD and throw us some pics. And let's start talking.

You have the meeting. You have the internal meeting with the rest of the front office trying to figure it out. You definitely have a meeting. KD one year left. You have to have a meeting even if a the front office trying to figure it out. You definitely have a meeting. KD, one year left. I still think you have to have, you have to have a meeting even if a man is asked for on the Houston one. I'm saying, do you have like a, do you have a small meeting with like your inner inner

circle or do you keep it open and invite a bunch of people? What is it again? Do you have a catered lunch for the meeting? Little Caesars. Yeah, probably get a deal. What is it again? Fontechio, how little Caesars. Yeah. Probably get a deal. What, what is it again? Fontechio, which obviously gets just a bias.

Fontechio, but Thompson would be the big piece. And then you throw a bunch of picks. You did three first two swaps, whatever the fuck it is for three years of Katie. Then you, then you bring in Katie for 50 plus million. You'd sign them for the two year extension. So it's 150 million commitment. I personally wouldn't do it. I would just keep the, cause I don't think they're going to win the title or

come close with any sort of trade. The only one that I think you really have to think about is if they could get Yannis and it's a mortgage to farm thing. And basically everybody's available except Cade. Like Duren and Thompson are in it. Tobias' contract is in it. Fanteca is in it. Picks are in it.

You're just like, we're going all in on Yannis and we're gonna have a Yannis-Cade franchise. And we'll be able to fill it around, we'll be able to fill around those two guys and actually try to win the title. You could have the Tigers too. I mean, if you're talking about C and Janice on pick and roll lobs, I'm probably thrown in some tigers, maybe a couple of red wings.

Uh, but yeah, I don't. The Durant thing really hinges more on like, Hey, what's the history here? Is he super happy everywhere he goes? So I think I'd be a little cautious if I were Detroit. You know, granted, we're talking about a team that just won their first playoff game since 2008, which seems just impossible. So we agree. Take your time, Detroit.

Like maybe even target February as let's see where we are in February. And maybe we have some expirings. We have some stuff. I would not overpay Beasley. I'd probably go two years for him. Maybe like a 30 for two, 30 for two, maybe hard away two for 16. Try to, try to do something like that. You bring Ivy back.

I'm not even going to do it. I'm not going to do it. This is stupid. Can you be the player you were thinking about? I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it.

I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it.

I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm not going to do it. This is stupid. Can you give me the player you were thinking about? Is it Jalen?

Jalen Green? Jalen Brown? Yeah. I'm always nervous you're going to suggest a Jalen Brown trade. Lebron has a $52 million player option. Cleba and Vincent, 22.5 million combined expiring. Ruiz on an 18.3 expiring. Phinney Smith's on a 15.4 expiring. This is all next year.

Then Reeves is 14 and then 15. So they have some flexibility. Kept a couple picks. They clearly need a center and a rim runner. My question would be, would you trade Reeves if you could get a real, some sort of rim protector? Somebody like a richer man's Miles Turner in that range. Would you trade Reeves or do you feel like you could build around Luca Reeves and 41 year old LeBron and then there's something there to try to win multiple playoff rounds?

The first thing is going to be LeBron's number. Because depending on, now granted he took just a sliver to keep them away from the most restrictions. And then there's a bunch of people being like, see, it's like, well, all right. And I'm not drafted his son and gave him a four year no cut contract. Right. Uh, if he stays at around 50 million, they're going to be, I would say on the practical things that would happen here, they're going to be six, seven million below the first apron.

Um, so if that puts them as this tax team, I don't know what kind of big you're signing for a five to $6 million tax mid level. You know what season it is though right now, it's ridiculous trades on social media for centers. I'll never get. It's like they should get BAM out of bio. It's like, oh cool. How they doing now? Well, they're a little emboldened right now.

I mean, basically Jokic, once the coach was fired, was in the Lakers jersey and now Janis has been in one. Yeah, they should get Janis. Yeah. Like, I don't even know how they get Miles Turner. I don't know how they get anybody. I mean, how they get somebody is if you have the two expirings, I mean, they could, the thing is with all the expirings,

they can work toward any kind of number, right? So could they get some bonus? Okay. But what, what is going out? That's exciting, because this is where it comes back to the Austin Reese thing, which I don't think they would want to do because he's really good and he's 26 years old. But if they thought, okay, what could we do to shake things up? Like as a BAM, like would you do Austin Reeves for BAM just in a vacuum? No. If you were the Lakers? No, I wouldn't do it if I'm Miami. I'm not doing that in a million years. Why am I trading BAM

for Austin Reeves? I'm just trying to see where your head's at with this. I was thinking it's a bonus I thought was an interesting Reeves? I'm just trying to see where your head's at with this. I was thinking sub bonus. I thought it was an interesting one because if I'm Sacramento, no, all right, God, if I'm Sacramento, I've put together this team that clearly doesn't work. I'm paying sub bonus more money than he's worth for somebody who's basically. If he's your most expensive guy, you're going to be

A slightly better than 500 team You're probably not going to have a huge playoff upside and you're going to get torched offensively unless you put the perfect amount of guys around him And could you give could you give them a jet a get out of jail free card with that's a bonus contract Be like we'll give you all expirings and a couple firsts and you can get out of sub bonus. I don't, I don't know if the Kings are at that point with that contract yet. They might not be. Um, I mean, it is nasty.

It's pretty nasty 47 and then 50. Yeah. It's a 50. Yeah. It's a lot. But I'll tell you this, paying LeBron $52 million when he's 41 years old is fucking crazy. That's a lot of money. But if you get the year you just got from him, he's worth it.

I mean, I know the playoffs didn't close the way everybody expected. I think that's another reason of like, even talking about Houston Golden State, that you can sit here and make fun of, oh, look at this Lakers group, they didn't even get out of the first round. This first round was, all of this stuff was on the table.

And granted it was five games and it was fell over the course of the five games, they weren't even close. I think it's a bad draw for the Lakers now that we saw it actually play out, even though nobody felt that way. Very few people felt that way at the beginning of it. I don't really know.

I mean, you know, we keep writing these teams out, like what would you do? What would you do? I think they need to figure out a way to try to get cheap rim runners, like a baseball team that doesn't love their starters, three, four, and five, and then just all of a sudden, you're like, Al Leiter's still around? Like, you signed this guy?

Like, the Walker Kessler shit doesn't make a ton of sense. I don't think Dalton Connect gets Kessler shit doesn't make a ton of sense. I don't think Dalton Connect gets Kessler done. Well, I was thinking with Utah, who has too many guys plus a bunch of picks, and if they floated Austin Reeves to Utah, what's the reaction? Like that's one where you could get a three for one and a four for one and picks.

I'm like, whoa. That feels weird. They already have Riebs. We could put Austin Reeves, Filipowski and Kessler. Could they Hoosier it out if they get Cooper flag? And Markkinen? And we could have Cooper flag? Just, uh, I think Reeves on that contract, they could 14 and- Just Will Hardy going teams on the floor.

Just will Hardy go on teams on the floor. I think, uh, I think Reeves at 14 and 15, but when you throw expirings with him, you could get some really good players at that point. I don't know if you could get BAM out of bio. You're, you're with me though. It's an automatic no for Miami as much as we love. Yeah, automatic. Okay. Automatic.

Can you think of anything where, if you're the Lakers, you go, now I have to think about this a little bit. Embiid? That's something the Lakers would traditionally do. Talk about get out of jail free cards. I think the sisters do in a second, by the way. We'll give you all of our expirings and a first

and we'll get you out of the Joe Embiid business. Here's your get out of jail free card right now. You don't have to deal with them anymore. I heard a meat was available at the trade deadline. They'd be irresponsible to not even ask. Yeah, oh yeah. Come on. But I mean, like.

Oh, we're getting on HoopSype tomorrow. Yeah, baby. HoopSype. It may have been a would ya? But I think this happens all the time. So it shouldn't be something that's that big of a deal.

We're getting so aggregated. But I don't know that you're doing your job. How are you doing your job? Should we say something about Bobby Barack again? We could get aggregated by them too. Let's try to get aggregated. Think Barack will pick that up? Post? Are you talking about Obama? No, I'm talking about Abeid.

You think it's surprising that Darryl would potentially float the idea of, like, hey, what'd you do. I just hadn't heard that. I was excited about the info. I think Darryl talks to everybody all the time. I think he calls people constantly and they're like, Oh, fuck Darryl. Tommy Shepard's like, I'm not in charge of the wizards anymore. It's not bothering me.

Yeah. So, all right. That's my favorite Lakers move. All their expirings and two first round picks and they get Embiid. Yeah. So, all right. That's my favorite Lakers move. All their expirings and two first round picks and they get Embiid. And Philly just gets it. So not Reeves. Reeves isn't in it.

Oh, Reeves isn't in it. He's not in it. You don't even get Reeves. We don't know if Embiid's ever playing again. I'm like, I'll take Embiid. You can have one of our first round picks and here's some bunch of expirings. I think what they need to do is figure out a way to, and, you know, I don't know what's going to happen with all the decisions here, but if they're below

the tax, can they use, you know, the, the non-taxpayer mid-level is, is a decent, you know, it's a decent, it's like 14 million. So could you go after, like, I know nobody likes Clint Capella anymore. He's 31 years old. You put Clint with Luca. Does it work now? His numbers decline, some of the advanced stuff declined.

He also played less. It also felt like Atlanta was waiting forever to have a Kong Wu be the guy. Um, and clearly he balances them out a little bit better offensively. So maybe Clint isn't worth it at this point. Uh, I don't know. When was the last time you got super excited watching Clint Capella play basketball? It was in the last three years. Jackson Hayes catching lobs from Luke in the beginning was exciting to Lakers

fans. They're like, unlock Jackson. This is awesome. What about Jonathan Isaac? Is there a Jonathan Isaac? But I don't know if Orlando wants to be in the Gabe Vincent business. What about Jonathan Isaac? Is there a Jonathan Isaac? But I don't know if Orlando wants to be in the Gabe Vincent business. What about Mark Williams? Are we kindling? Batase, I'd be calling about Batase. What about Deandre Ayton?

Now we're talking. 35 now is the right answer. Now we're talking. Deandre Ayre, so a couple of expirings. Do you think when they shop Rui around all summer while pretending that they really like them, they're just hoping nobody watches the rebounding in game five? He's been, he was really good for us this year. Uh, can we see the tape of game five? It's been destroyed.

We don't have it. Um, is there a, is there a Rui? If you get the game five, it's been destroyed. We don't have it. Is there a, is there a Rui? Cause there's nothing that screams Lakers more than. I love the Deandrean idea. LeBron can teach him how to win. Right, right. So all this talent, still really young. Yeah.

He's at 35 million. So you load up Rui, you throw in a pick, maybe a little Dalton connect action in there. Ooh, Dalton. Right. So you start going, okay, where? I'm going to maybe a little Dalton Connect action in there. Oh, Dalton. Right, so you start going, okay, where- I'm going on the trade machine right now. What's the point, right? Why does Portland want Rui?

Well, maybe they don't want Rui, but is there some version of this, they're grabbing an asset of getting somebody out, culture-wise, change of scenery. The change of scenery piece is for Deandre Ayton in a Lakers uniform alone. Those are gonna, writers are gonna have beach houses, people clicking on those fucking things.

LeBron has wanted to play with somebody like this for his entire career. Right, Aitin's never played with Luca, and Luca's never played with a stretch five like this. Luca still remembers how good Aitin was in their one playoffs series. Except for Pasingas. Oh yeah, Pasingas he had. Made it to an NBA finals, was too soon, Payton.

So you're saying Rui? I feel like they could, I think they could keep Rui. I think they could get Aitin for Maxi Kleba, Gabe Vincent and another contract and throw a first round pick and Portland's super happy to dump that last Aitin year. So throw a first round pick in Portland. Super happy to dump that last eight in year. So just a first round pick. Yeah.

And I think I'd even say top four protected. Great. We saw the Lakers. Um, Milwaukee bucks. I have no solution for, I really wanted to come out here and, and say something provocative and smart and forward thinking. And I don't know what, what it is, but the thing is, if Yana says, I don't want to be traded, then do you trade them?

What if Yana says I'm happy here? I don't want to leave Milwaukee. I don't trade them. I don't, I don't take any calls. Yeah. I don't either. My goal would be to keep Yana's. The, the forgotten zone of this league is okay.

We're screwed. And you laid it out perfectly last week. Like when you really dug into how bad the future draft stuff is for them. So when you're married to having none of that coming in, then you can't, no one ever wants to hear it, but there's a lot of like honest conversations where teams believe it or not are opening the season going, all right, we have Giannis and we'll probably win like 45 to 48 games. And that's probably who we are, but at least we have Giannis. I mean, hell Atlanta's been doing that

with Trey this whole time. Charlotte's gonna keep doing it. At least Giannis is one of the best players in the world. So if Giannis doesn't wanna go anywhere, that's enough for me. And I just pick, all right, hopefully we can get competitive and then one year is a short amount of time. Who knows what happens.

The problem is for Yanis, and look, this might be a league wide thing, but you know how we always talk about like, oh, this guy likes this guy and that guy wants to go there and Glenn Davis is now in Orlando because of this. And they brought in Jared Jack because Chris Paul likes him. Like all of these things that we used to talk about,

granted it was the big three in Miami, and then everybody trying to figure out how to team up and all that stuff. It feels like that doesn't necessarily happen as much anymore. There's more animosity than we've had in a while. But Jokic isn't gonna be somebody who's gonna be coming up through the AAU ranks

and having those relationships with the other stars. I mean, every star who's like on the fence about sticking around should wanna go play in Denver, but I don't know that he has the relationship with other players. I think the same goes for Giannis and I just don't know a norm of this league. It doesn't feel like it's as normal as guys being like, Hey, let's like Paul George and quiet and all that kind of stuff. I don't, I don't know that we have that as much anymore.

It doesn't mean we can't happen again, but if Giannis is just happy there, then that's enough for me. If I'm running the bucks. I don't care. Yeah. I know we're not going to win the title next year. He'd have to ask out. And even if he asks out on that trading him, unless I can get a trade I'm pumped about and that's it.

Not going to like give you away for 60 cents in the dollar. Cause you don't want to play for us anymore. Like you signed an extension. Let me, let me try to figure out a good trade for us. Can't figure it out. Let's take it in this season and try to figure it out in the December, February range. Once eight teams are unhappy with how their season is going, then we'll do the

trade, but you have our word at some point we're going to do it. Just keep, just keep playing hard and we'll figure it out. And then you kind of keep your fingers crossed that Dame can come back from Achilles surgery in five months. Dame sets the record for coming back. That's, they're, you know, they made two trades where they gave up an inordinate amount of picks

for one player because they wanted to win the title and they won the 2021 title. They couldn't win it with Dame, but they traded a shitload of draft picks. Like this is what happens. If you're mortgaging all this stuff to win now, everyone forgets that part. It's like, ah man, they gotta get Yana some help.

It's like, they did. They made two massive trades and gave away a bunch of assets to try to get him help. And now they're here. This is how it works. This is how the league works. And they have Kuzma on the books. Well, that one, neither of us agreed with

because we watched basketball. I don't know how anybody could watch basketball this season and thought Kuzma was gonna make a difference. That's a huge, I mean, he's like 23 million in these two years. The only other one is that- Excuse me, 43 over the next two, yeah. The Heat got knocked out, and I don't really know what the Heat do either,

where you have a BAM Hero Wiggins Foundation, right? Wiggins? Wiggins, he's still there. All their guys are under contract. You wanna go through a tough book here. It's brutal. The Hero and BAM fine. The fact that you're only gonna be paying them,

I think before the BAM extension kicks in here, or, you know, because it's going to jump up, he's going to be like a $50 million a year player. Hero got barbecued in the Cleveland series. He did, but his shot making is pretty special. It's really good. Maybe he should be a sixth man. He should be a third option, I would say. But, you know, sometimes we look at guys and be like,

okay, cool, it'd be awesome if we had two dudes that were better than him, and he would be our third option. Bam is not enough offensively as much as we all love them. They're on the books next year. They've got Wiggins for 28 and then a player option. Probably going to pick that one up. 30.1 million in 26, 27. Terry Rozier's 26.6.

Duncan Robinson, one of the few remaining early termination options, uh, just at 19, 8 million. Kyle Anderson's on the books for nine. So they have a bunch of contracts of dudes that probably are not in demand. The butlers, they murdered them. Unless somebody said, I am so mad. I have one year left. I'm only going there.

Why are you going there? Because you love bam and Tyler hero. The only reason I wouldn't count them out is just cause they pulled rabbits out of the hat over and over again, over the last 15 years, every time we felt like they had hit rock bottom, then they'd make some, even the Butler thing, which was one of the craziest, uh, transaction sequences in the recent history of the league. And they pulled it off and I still don't know how they got anyone to take Cassandre Whiteside.

I still don't understand it, but this time it seems bleak because, um, I thought, you know, that the, the one guy we didn't mention that I wonder is out, out there in some form who I think, uh, would be considered a real asset is Jaren Jackson, if Memphis is handcuffed at all by being able to spend as much money as it's going to take to keep him. If he makes all NBA this year and is in different triggers come in, I just, just monitoring that one. I'd be happy to be in the Jaren Jackson business, even with his limitations. Well, I really started liking him even more this year.

Uh, even though I know you get mad about his fouls, but you should get mad about his fouls as well. The rebounding makes me madder than the fouls. Get, can you get nine rebounds? You said nine? I would say down 30 to OKC and running Jaren Jackson post-ups. Clear out. Like, I don't really know what's going on there, but I mean, that

series was such a mess. Can I, I forgot to give you one Yanis situation. If OKC's, if OKC's somehow lost this round or next round huge upset loss With a would Presti who by the way has only made the finals once and lost the finals four to one and has not been back since Even though we all agree. He's one of the best GMs of the century But at some point he hasn't won titles or even finals games.

I wonder if he would just be like, fuck it and do like a giant Yanis thing. And if you're Yanis and you could go to OKC and be on this incredible team, like that's a team that's actually built to make a 160 cents on the dollar trade. They want it. Yeah, I do wonder about that. Uh, because I would say that that's kind of the lingering, you know, as much as bucks fans hate all the Yanis trade stuff that's gone on forever. And then he signs an extension.

I mean, this has been going on for a long time with the Yana speculation. And then sometimes when you hear the speculation, you wonder like, have I heard anything specific? Is there anything new that sounds like it's very specific or is it everybody just repeating everybody else and thinks like eventually he's going to ask out and it's been going on for such a long time again in this time he actually signed an extension so bucks pants much like calves fans with the mitchell stuff because they were hearing the same shit from all of us over and over again it's like a nice little victory laugh we were right hey guess um we're right about michael The okay. C one is like,

should it matter? I know it's, it's kind of back to the beginning conversation about Houston. Should it matter on where they're out of the playoffs? Oh, I think if okay. C doesn't win this year, they have to really think, we're really close. How do we not win the title? We were favored. All the math said we're going to win the title. If they don't, if they get bounced in one of these next three rounds, I think that's, I think that's the biggest overreaction team, even though

Preston doesn't overreact. I think you'd have to really think about it. Like, what's the point of having all these assets and all these picks if you're not going gonna cash them in at some point? Like this isn't Blackjack where you just get to stack chips. Like at some point you have to try to win the title. And they have the best chance this year,

but you know, if Giannis is on the table and they can make a run on them, and they're bummed out because they couldn't get it done in the playoffs when it mattered, I don't know. I still think good. My bet would be in Houston. If I had to bet on a team, I think the Houston thing makes so much sense in so many different ways.

Um, I think it's a good spot for him. I think it's good for everybody. That's the trade that makes sense to me. Is there a trade built around Shat or Jaylen Williams and all the draft picks that you'd have to sift through, which ones you thought were the more valuable ones. If you were Horace, where the fuck's to tell? Well, you insist on Chet, right?

If you're Milwaukee, you're like, Chet has to be in it. I'm not even discussing this unless, call me back when Chet's in the trade. Wait, if you're Presti or Stone, what's a quick no? Them asking for Chet or asking Stone in Houston for a men. Presti. Yeah.

I think a men's a quicker now because Chet's been hurt twice already. So two injuries already. Right. Yeah. I think you're right. The injury thing. I can't, I can't throw a counter argument to that. He's also one of those guys when you watch them run around and like, ah,

I don't know. Did you watch that third quarter against Memphis? No. And I, listen, you don't have to sell me on chat. It's just, you know, he said two, two injuries is 23. So that part does scare me a tiny bit. So I think when you asked me quicker, no, I just think Thompson's like, not trading that dude. shut up, hang up. But if I'm okay, see, I'm trying to, now I'm assuming I've had some sort of terrible playoff loss, probably trying to start with,

how about Hartenstein? And then, and how about, have you seen Kaysan Wallace? He's really good, huh? Here, Rasul, talk about Usman Jang. See our lottery pick? We have the seventh pick in the draft. Like anyone in the lottery? Yeah, you're moving that way.

But that's the thing. If Yanis is actually going to be traded, good people are going to be in the trade. You don't just get to not put a good person in the trade. It's a thing. Yeah, but when you were talking Houston, you're getting to meet Shungun, Jalen Green, it's like that. Can I have any of the other guys?

So you would do Jabari, Shungun. Now I don't know what the salaries are. I think Shungun, Jabari, Eason and Jalen Green, at least three, but maybe even all four are all in the trade, right? If I'm not getting Thompson, then I get everybody else. That's where we're starting. Just keep giving me dudes. We gotta wrap it up.

Do you have any, you wanna do a Bill Belichick update quick? Yeah, I have a small, small piece of stuff here. Yeah, let's hear it. small piece of, of stuff here. Oh, you know, why don't you start though? Cause I gotta look up. I gotta get, make sure I got my facts straight here. I was trying to think that maybe with coaches, maybe it just doesn't end well. And that's how this usually goes with guys who are super powerful and, uh, and fly a little too close to the sun and are used to controlling their

circumstances, which becomes harder and harder as you get older and you have to stand on top of the ball that maybe this goes worse more times than we realize. And when we're talking about, I can't believe this is happening in Belichick, maybe we shouldn't be surprised that it's happening to somebody in their mid seventies, that they're making some bad decisions because we see this in every aspect of life. It's like, what's he doing with this girl?

It's like, well, you know, this is how life goes. Yeah, I don't even know that I care about, I don't know that I care about the personal part of it all that much. Cause I really do kind of want to like leave people alone, you know, on that, that part of it, even though we spent our entire careers talking about people. But this has leaked into the actual running this UNC program in a variety of ways, which is how it became a bigger story.

And also that interview was so crazy. And for somebody who has been so intensely private, where you just know nothing about him ever, and then for that to happen the way it happened, it's just really weird. He would have been a top five draft pick of, I would never expect anything like this to happen to this person.

Yeah, that's all true too. And I think when you probably look at him evaluating players and being like, what am I bringing into the locker room? Right. He didn't want free thinkers. He wanted people that were single minded. I mean, when you played for the Patriots, you weren't supposed to live in fucking Boston, like that was thought of as a bad thing if you were on the Patriots who

had lived in Boston, no further than Attleboro. Yeah. Get to stay right here in no offense to that part of the state, but. Providence too far. So this is, if he were evaluating bill, the person is bill. He'd be like, what, what's going on here? I remember Stoops telling me the story about Gronkowski where Belichick called about Gronk before the draft. Yeah. And he was like, uh, what's this guy?

An asshole. That was it. And he was like, no, man, he's, he's the best. He's the best. And, you know, look, you picked him hall of fame, super bowls later. Like it all worked out, but bill always was very big on prioritizing. Like I don't want any extra shit. So it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, Super Bowls later, like it all worked out. But Bill always was very big on prioritizing.

Like I don't want any extra shit. So if he were a booster with those values that he would take from his time running an NFL team, if he were a booster running a college football program and the money guy behind it, and then was evaluating the situation of the head coach being involved in something like this. Bill would be the first guy to be like, this is all stupid shit. We are giving people all the, the reason his brilliance was so- Intentional distractions. Right. To think how simple his brilliance was, and even in the times I didn't like it, where he just couldn't answer a question because he knew if he answered a question, it just opened up another question. And then he's like looking around at the world going,

why do you answer any of this stuff? So I may not have always loved it. And again, it wasn't like I was a reporter who had to deal with any of this stuff, but there'd be times I didn't love it. I didn't love some of the press conferences where there were really serious issues. And it was like, you're gonna play this card again?

Like you wouldn't even, but I admired the tactic because it was actually really smart. It was like, I remember when the Feeding the Monster book came out, Felger and I, Felger had his radio show at the ESPN affiliate, right? And so I come in and it was one of the funniest. So it's Seth Minookin, I think was his name, the author. He did Feeding the Monster. It was like this all access thing that John Henry wanted because everybody was jealous of Moneyball. So Felger has Theo Epstein ready to go. It's the big Feeding the Monster interview. I've powered

through the book. I've written down all my questions because I filled them with Felger for a month. And I promise there's a point to this story here. I know you love these long-winded ones. So I show up to that radio station because I didn't really work there. It was just this month that I was there. And you know me, all prepped up, all excited. I think the world of Theo, so I'm excited to even talk to him. And Felger looks at me and he goes, we've been mapping out the interview. I don't think we're going to have time for you to say anything.

And I was like, great. Like, but it was Felger show. It wasn't mine. Sounds like Schrager during the NFL draft. We're going to throw to you and Schefter again. Just smile for a minute. Sorry, Schrager. By the way, get up, just absolutely dissing the combat odds for Schrager. Schrager's a big dude.

They had like Schefter as the favorite in some Royal Rumble and Schrager had the lowest odds and I felt like- What? Schrager's like 6'2". Yeah, he's a big guy. So anyway, so Felger looks at me, he says, we're not gonna have any time for you. And I'm like, oh, okay, fucking awesome.

Of course, you know, back then insecure and pissed. But it was the right thing, it was Felger's fucking show. And he wanted to map out the interview, he wanted to control all the timeline of things. So we cracked the mics, we bring in Theo, we're back from commercial, and Felger's like, all right, Theo, I've seen GM, or whatever.

He was okay, so on page 14, it really jumped out, Theo's like, I haven't read the book. He fucking, he ruined Felger's entire plan because he thought he would at least know when the book was about him, and Theo just stopped him and was like, yeah. And then Felger's looking at me like, you got anything? Do you have anything in there for somebody that's not going to acknowledge

that the book even exists? And that's Belichick's playbook. All right. So that part is really interesting because it completely contradicts everything that he's valued. The last thing that I would say about this, and this is the part that always pisses me off, is whenever Bud Seelig used to do this constantly, people would be like, hey, baseball, it's kind of losing momentum. And by the way, all of those people were right. What's going on with baseball? What's going on with baseball? And Bud would point to the TV deals. Like, look what we renewed for. Look at the growth on this TV deal versus the last rights deal we did.

Conference commissioners all over the country do it every single time they re- look how great of a job I'm doing. Look at what our new deal was compared to what our last deal was. Bella check in this email actually says, I will say again, quote, that I want this book to be presented as a look at my professional life and how I did my job on the way up to and as the leader of an organization that grew from a $500 million franchise to an $8 billion organization that played in 10 Super Bowls. Super Bowls, awesome. If you're suggesting that your run in New England increased the value of the team from 500 million to 8 billion,

then what the fuck is Brady worth? And by the way, you were awesome. Maybe you've done it better than anybody else. No one would ever deny that. But that way of thinking is if you have as much to do with the value of a franchise in the NFL as the TV rights growth does. Like that's insane. That's delusional to think that like, like you write that and be like, Oh, wow. Or any of the other NFL franchises worth a lot more than they were

in the nineties? Well, of course the answer is yes. That's a really, even the Bengals are worth more. Yeah. Like Eve, that's a very, most people may not understand that. We understand it. People listen to this podcast understand that. But to get to that kind of closing statement of like this team was worth 500 million before me and now it's worth 8 million. Dude, you were awesome.

You did it again at a level that is unsustainable in the NFL. But the value has way more to do with TV rights than it does you. There's one other level to that point. It explains a lot about what happened from the mid 2010s on with Brady and Belichick. Because everyone was like, Patriot way, Patriot way, we're just about Super Bowls.

But there was clearly some sort of ego thing. And it's two guys that really understood their place in history in a whole bunch of different ways, right? And it was always like, we're in this together, there's no credit, but the credit thing was a big part of it and Garoppolo's in there and he's really thinking about, I never wanted to believe it, I never won Rick or Sham and people like that were reporting about it

and I was like, fuck that, I wanna hear this. Stop trying to cause trouble. But there clearly was a ton of trouble and I think when you win, you win titles like that. We've seen this over, we saw it with the last dance documentary. You know, and you saw the Kraus Jordan, you saw Jordan Pippen who no longer talk, they hated Kraus. Um, the only one that really,

the Kraus stuff at the end is crazy. Yeah. They seem to get like Phil Jackson, but then you look at the Kobe Shack stuff with Phil Jackson and Phil Jackson's writing books. The credit grabbing that happens when you've had real success is surprising because the rings should be the best example of how much success you've had, but for whatever reason. So anyway, I think that really explained to me why Brady didn't end up with the

Patriots because what everybody was writing about and doing the sports radio topic of who's more responsible for all the Super Bowls, Belichick or Brady, and the right answer was always both. They needed each other and that's the answer. But clearly they both kind of thought each of them was more responsible than the other. So when I read that paragraph, I thought,

man, Belichick must have been so pissed when Brady had that Tampa season where he won the title. Because clearly he does give a shit about all this stuff. And all the media he did last year, the fact that he's writing this book, some of the documentaries, we always thought, no, he doesn't care. He doesn't care. He clearly really cares. And so I read that same Emo and I'm like, oh, he really did. He really does have a massive ego about all this stuff

that he would say that. It made me wonder too, if he was thinking he's owed more. When you start throwing around dollar figures. I mean, when Kraft bought the Patriots, they were ready to move to St. Louis and they didn't. He kind of saved the team. They were the black sheep of the, of the, uh, local sports scene. And then Brady and Belichick, I think both of them probably built it up, but like,

you know, we saw this happen when the Brahm is in Cleveland, right? Cleveland was like a top four franchise and all the Forbes lists. And then he left and went to Miami and they were like 28th. And then he came back in 2014. It's like top five franchises in Cleveland's in there. So, you know, you get the right asset and it does make the franchise. But the funny thing is-

I'm not diminishing his value, but I'm talking- No, I know what your point is though. The value of all these franchises it has way more to do with television rights than even the accomplishments. But you don't think he put that in there partly because of what Kraft did with that dynasty apple thing. Yeah, that's a hundred percent. When Kraft's just rewriting history is the three of us that last 10 years,

I was just holding on. I was holding us together with all the dumb, shitty set of that. And now it's just these guys are like, and they're in credit grab, Bukaki just just go that says battle each other. And now it's just these guys are like, they're in credit grab bukkake. Just go at it. Just battling each other. It took us two hours to get a porn reference out of you. Yeah, sorry.

It's over the two hour mark. I got, maybe I'll get aggregated again. It'd be great. Gotta get those aggregated or something. Anyway, we, Belichick's a classic example of if you had just left four years ago and just moved to Wyoming, done the Johnny Carson. Yeah, I don't know. We would talk about you so highly.

When you've been competing your entire life, I don't blame guys for wanting to hang on to the whole thing. I'll, the Brady Tampa Bay Super Bowl is my second. That's my second favorite Brady Super Bowl. I'm talking about the, the UNC 24 year old PR person controlling his life. People wondering if it's elder abuse, like really like dark shit. People like this has gotten to the point that like my wife's friends are asking

me about, Hey, what's going on with Bill Belichick and this girl? I read like on Apple news, they had a story about how crazy, like that's what this has reached. That CBS Sunday morning thing was like his version of Tom Cruise on the Oprah couch. Like it's, it's part of his legacy now. I just don't understand somebody that understands how the media works as well as they do, which clearly he does what he thought that was going to be like, Hey, this is the deal. You come in, you promote the book and we ask you questions about it. No, but maybe, but this is what people are worried about. Maybe he's not not batting a thousand right now.

I'm not ready to go there. We'll see what kind of defense they're running that Sunday morning thing was insane. That was insane. That was insane. I never in a million kajillion years would have guessed that he would be in that position. Joe Pronte maybe. Out of all people that was a. That would be a good pod.

Five guys most likely that you would expect that to happen too. Before we go picks for around two Celtics, you still go in Cleveland. Yeah. I think Brunson having to go through the gauntlet of options as opposed to being able to switch into Beasley hard away and Dennis Schroeder, even though Schroeder I think competed like crazy against him, I think it's a little different challenge and I think Kat is going to have to cover a lot more ground that he did against. Duran.

Um, I'm still holding out hope Garland's going to come back game two, but today was super impressive. I'm totally with you and you've been higher on the patients than I've been. And you might be right about it. Okay. See no issues. And I have Minnesota. Is there any case for Denver?

Uh, I mean, you know, I could sit here and say, oh, you know, the craziest thing about even the elimination game is Jokic and Murray weren't even going crazy. I think by Jokic is our standards for Jokic. This wasn't some like Jokic fest for seven games. Yeah. Well, I think they were the first team with six players with 15 or more points in the game seven in NBA history. It's so fun.

Those game sevens, so like Christian Brown became, right? That was the Grant Williams game for Christian Brown where he was just huge. Like the game sevens, there's always the random. It's the buddy healed. Yeah. You always see those. That would have been a fun one to predict for a fan to a bit. Rosillo, you got two pods this week,

and then I will see you live on Sunday night, which will not be as fun as this one. Our guy Steph Curry came through. Good to see you, my friend. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo, thanks to Rosillo. Thanks to basketball for giving us two game sevens over the weekend. We thought we might get zero. I will be back on Tuesday. Don't forget, huge rewatchable is coming

on Monday. Get ready. You can follow all the clips and videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel and I will see you on Tuesday. in DC. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here, visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8