The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Undertaker Nuggets, the Knicks on Fumes, OKC’s Playoff Education and an NBA Lottery Snoozer With Ryen Russillo

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the Nuggets evening up their series with the Timberwolves (1:47), the Pacers' Game 4 win over the Knicks bringing the series to 2-2 (35:14), Mavericks-Thunder (51:54), and Celtics-Cavaliers (1:06:00). Then they discuss the shocking outcome of the NBA Draft Lottery, fake trades, and more (1:19:49). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, the Nuggets are alive. They had the lottery today. What the hell? A lot coming next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day, all the gangs here, you're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for beer. Or how about when you're standing at the grill and the smell of sizzling burgers is in the air? Moments like that. Or when you want a light beer that tastes like beer, that's delicious. You don't want to load up

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Come see us. Coming up on this podcast, Brian Russo and I are going to talk about Denver really nice in the summer. Come see us. Coming up on this podcast, Brian Roussel and I are going to talk about Denver's return from the dead. Four very interesting playoff series for different reasons. And then one of the weirdest lotteries I think we've ever had, if not the weirdest. It's all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this a little after 7.30 Pacific time. Ryan Rosillo is here.

Rosillo, there are certain nights when it's just great to do what we do. When it's like, let's watch that game. We'll see what happens. We'll do a podcast after. I didn't know what was going to happen tonight. The line was Minnesota by three. It moved to Minnesota by four. You could have told me they were going to win by 20 and put a defensive performance of the ages.

You could have told me they weren't going to be ready yet. What I wasn't expecting is Denver playing as great of an offensive game against good defense as I've seen in a while. I mean, they shot 19 for 29 from three, 32 for 50 from two. And these were high degree of difficulty shots, Rossello. This is Jamal Murray at the top of the third quarter, just making four straight long jumpers on good defense with a hand in his face and Jokic maneuvering down the stretch. Gordon's 11 for 12. They were just awesome.

So I'll start here. Feels a little Mahomes Chiefs, December 2023-ish, right? They're down 0-2. And we're like, ah, it's over. Including me. It's done. You thought it was over. I did. I thought Minnesota was going to sweep them. Mainly

because I didn't think Murray had what he did the last two games in him. He looked like he was physically compromised to me. And then all the other stuff. It was like, hey man, they had a great run. Hard to go back to back. It's Minnesota's time. And in a weekend, it shifts.

I picked Minnesota. I felt like it was a coin toss. And after game two's defensive display, which was like I think it's the best 24 minutes I've seen from a team defensively in a long time. We both played our pods with them. Right. After

you're at Denver defending champs, those first 24 minutes, I just think we're horrifying for Denver. But I think once it turned into the sweep talk, I don't ever think there's going to be sweeps when the teams are bad because it's human nature to let down a little bit. And then in this case, you have Denver where you think, okay, look, it's hard to win a title. We can talk about an easier path for them with the heat and the finals and the Lakers and the Western conference finals. Like, yeah, traditionally, if you look back at it, like it's not the toughest course, but they'd gone through the years of disappointment. They'd gotten their playoff scars.

And I just, the one like tenant of the playoffs for me every single year is you can never be as desperate as the team that is down 0-2. You just can't be. And if they're any good, which we've learned again that Denver is really good, that they're going to come out and fight. I thought they went a lot quicker in Game 3 because the biggest problem I saw in Game 2

is when you wait, and Denver likes to be methodical. They'll run their offense, they'll wait, they'll kind of see what's going on. It's like, look, if you wait, they are on you. And I thought they were more aggressive. And then tonight's just an absurd display, as you pointed it out. It's 76-60. Denver shooting splits were 67 and 53%.

It's nuts. Well, you think like game three, it was tight for the first quarter, right? And they called that game differently and they didn't let a lot of the physical stuff go. Minnesota missed some layups. They missed some easy shots. Denver all of a sudden is up 12. And then they just started to separate. And it was like, oh, they got their mojo back, but I'll be interested to see if they call this differently and Minnesota can do what they did in game two. Can Denver handle it? What I don't understand, and I was really watching carefully tonight trying to figure it out,

how did Jokic and Murray figure out the pace on offense? Part of it was I think they put their shooters, if you look like Gordon's basically under the basket and two guys in the corner or there were two guys on one side, but they were trying to give those guys as much space as possible. But something slowed down for them that in the first two games, it was just too frantic and too frenetic. And they figured out a way to just, just comment to the pace that they wanted to get to. And I didn't really fully understand how they did it. And they made some great shots.

I mean, Gordon, Gordon made five shots. He makes once a month. Right, and that Murray shot that he hit at McDaniel, where McDaniel was just all over him, it reminded me of Game 2 defense. I was like, uh-oh, here we go. Like, is this going to be, they're going to get a stop here in some sort of momentum and then Murray just finds a way to finish it off to his right side.

I like talking about Game 3 and 4 here, if you're cool with it, just because I think the officiating part of it, I went back and watched the first seven fouls once it got to 36 23 you talk about game you talk about game three game three i i thought those first seven fouls that were called the only one that was suspect was the first one where yokich initiates the contact into cat's chin and he knew kind of what he was doing and the officials are like all right it's on the floor which it always makes me feel like the officials are like we don't even love

that we're calling this but we have to call something on display the rest of the time they're just hacking him I thought yeah I agree but they were hacking him in game two and I think they were getting away with it I think that was part of the problem because there was prison ball in game two and I think they thought it was going to carry over and it just didn't it felt like game two Denver was like wait are you guys seriously going to play like this? We're not ready. Okay, we're not ready. And the combination of really good players getting incredibly frustrated.

And that's what happens to like great competitors is they're usually going to just start losing their minds because they're going, I can't believe we feel this helpless. Yeah, Minnesota was doing the Hagler-Hearns pace in Game 2, and Denver was like, wait, what? So then when I looked at Game 3, so you're right. I'm sampling in some Game 2 stuff here as well. But when I think about Game 3, first of all, Denver didn't turn the ball over until deep into the second quarter.

I thought Minnesota's offense stunk. They missed so many bunnies and laps. I think there's some real truth in that this Timberwolves team is young and was really feeling themselves on a couple days off. Hearing about, you know, because I had moments in game two where I was like, is this the finals? Like, I feel like this series is the finals. You know, I agree with you.

I said that to my family because my whole family, my wife, my son and daughter, Mother's Day, nothing better on Mother's Day than watching an NBA playoff game. I know my wife was fired up. And at some point, my daughter said, who are you rooting for? And I was like, I think I'm rooting for Minnesota because Denver's probably slightly, but I think both of these teams are probably favored against the Celtics. They're just playing at a level of efficiency. Minnesota defensively and Denver offensively that I'm not positive the Celtics can match over the course of two weeks without Porzingis. If you gave me Porzingis, I'd be okay.

It is funny, though, because when you think about who you root for, and a lot of it's just you and I, like with our investment in our takes, it's, it's, I want, want to be able to retire on this take, or I don't want to be dreadfully wrong, even though it's going to happen after game two, where it turned into like, I was like, wait, we can't, we can't, Jokic lose in the series first before everybody's ready to pile on about how undeserving he is of all these things? I couldn't believe the text I was getting from people who are smart. I'm not going to name them, but they were like, oh, you're Guy Jokic. I'm like, what?

Did you see what Minnesota did? Who was stopping them in that game? In a weird way, I felt like after game two and then they won game three, I was happy for Denver. I was just happy for Jokic because I went, well, he can't possibly go out this way. And then again, tonight's an even more dominant reminder

because he just wanted to shoot. I mean, he took 26 shots tonight, and there's only been one game in two months going back into the regular season where he's taken more than 26 shots in a game. And I think he has a plan. I think Cat does a good job of holding up with him physically than a strength thing.

And then with the Gobert part of it floating, Jokic may be more likely to want to playmake a little bit. That pass that he had to Gordon, and that was actually Ant's fault. He just lost Gordon behind him as Cat and Rudy were just on him. The one where he leaned to his left? That little sneaky pass around three guys? That was nuts. Right.

Jamal is on the call going to Reggie Miller. He's like, did you even see that pass? The perfect answer would have been like, yeah, after he made the basket, I saw it. But you can see with Jokic, there's a tier of what he'll do depending on who's in now. And I think that's what he's figured out going back into three and four. If he has just Rudy, he's going right at him every time. He can't wait. If he goes at Nas very least holds up somewhat physically knowing that there's help there. But you can see depending on what

Minnesota is doing and matching him with personnel, he seems to change. And I think at this point, the scary part for Minnesota is I think he's figured out all of their options already. Let's stay on this because I like where you're going with it. Because it's not to bring Mahomes back into this, but Mahomes will have those playoff games when it's like, I need to use my legs today. I'm going to have,

I'm probably gonna have to run nine times and Yoko in game three, I thought he realized, you know, everybody's got to play. We, we need collectively to be awesome. This is not a game for me to take 35 shots or whatever. Today was the game where, especially the way Edwards came out, Edwards came out like he was 2001 Kobe and Jokic played differently. I mean, he had, I think 16 in the fourth quarter, but he just, he'll put the weight on himself when he knows that they need it. But they also, I mean, when you think like Gordon's 11 for 12, Murray makes a 55 footer and like five other crazy shots. And then Yoko just shooting the way he shot. And then they get the random couple of holiday threes. You're not going to beat them.

Like if I'm Minnesota, if I'm the coach in the locker room after, and I probably ask like, Carl, can you, can you stay after everybody leaves for just two minutes? Just want to talk to you. Just,

we'll stay between us. We'll go into the equipment room. If I'm Minnesota, I don't feel terrible about that game so like just look at the look at some of the stuff we're doing

McDaniels was picking up dudes 90 feet and putting the miles on Murray and doing all the stuff you have to do but Murray was just different physically than he was five days ago

the guy in game one and game two was not remotely resembling the guy from game three and game four, I thought. And when he plays like that, they're at a different level. But I mean, there's other stuff here. Like nobody showed up with Ant tonight offensively. Nas, I think was five for six off the bench.

But Towns was just so abhorrent in this game and just was playing that. It was another Towns greatest hits bad game. I think at one point he had 17 shots for 13 points. He did his requisite terrible foul 55 feet from the basket. And then Gobert,

here's another thing I got for you, Rosillo. Like they played their best game in game two. Gobert didn't play. Here we go. We got to talk about it. I mean, it has to be discussed.

Let's do the cat part first yeah let's do it I wouldn't call him one of our favorites I can't stand him he started one of ten he heated up got to four of sixteen at one point he had the half court foul that is completely pointless

for a guy that's always a foul trouble. Trying to take the charge at midcourt? How many times have they called the charge at midcourt this season? Like four? He did try to take the other charge there, which is fine, but he complained. And look, this is turning into a complaint-first league, but if you're really, really good,

even if I'll be annoyed over two hours, that's okay. Cat's not good enough to complain as much as he does. And so then he had, later in the second half, he had that offensive foul where he chucked Michael Porter Jr. And he celebrated the make. Have to shove them backwards into the basket support. He's got his hand up in the air as everybody's walking to the other end of the court. He was the last person in the entire arena to know that the foul was on him.

He also had another play where it looked like Minnesota wanted to try to defend their pressure as much as they could. And the problem is, you might win a possession with that, catching them off guard. But against a team like Denver, you're just opening up all this space behind it. And they've been torched on that. And he had a play where it was like, you couldn't foul there. Like you can't foul. And he actually like hit Jokic in the back. I think the rest are just like, we don't even want to do it. And it's crazy to think he's the best three-point shooting play. I don't know what the number is after, because I didn't look it up after the game sorted tonight, but coming in, he's the best three-point shooter in the playoffs and i don't care i don't care i you know in theory he's what you need for ant somebody who can play

who can match another big body which i think he's actually done okay with but when he has to think about defensive decisions then it becomes a mess he had plays in game three bill where there'd be like a baseline drive and he'd be in the paint and he would like run to close out on Christian Barr on the opposite side of the Christian Brown, excuse me, on the opposite side of the ball. Yeah. You're like of all the places you should prioritize, that's not where it should happen. I know he's going to have a big night where he's going to hit a bunch of threes or whatever. I just don't care. I don't care. I don't trust him. And you would think some of the- Well, he was so good in game one and game two that it made me, he turned the corner.

I mean, he is hitting his mid-20s. Here's a good example, and this doesn't show up in the box score, but Edwards starts out and there's flame shooting out of his ass. And it's just clear he's going to have at least 40 points. Right. And then all of a sudden, Towns is like,

now it's my turn. He did that thing. For you, for when somebody who was going to have the game, Edwards was going to have tonight where he was, I thought he was absolutely spectacular. And I actually saw him tired in the fourth quarter, which I don't think we've seen him tired ever. He got tired in the third quarter after he went on that barrage.

Yeah. And then there was a moment where he was like, he had to take a couple of possessions off. Like you could see it from him. It was like a Drago. Oh my God, the Russian is caught. Oh my God, Edwards gets tired. But I think with Edwards,

especially the way he's playing tonight, you just want supporting actors with him when he's going to have a game like that. You want like this is Heat, and he's De Niro and Pacino combined. You want Towns to be Sizemore, where he's going to have like three scenes and he's, then he's going to do his, for me, the action is the juice. And it's like, Oh cool. Tom Sizemore had a moment. Now get out of the way.

We're going to get back to De Niro and Pacino. But towns is just, I feel like he thinks it's the two of them together. And tonight was a night when it was not. This was a, the other guy that I just felt like wasn't involved enough was Conley. Cause I like the matchups Conley has in this series, right? We've seen point guards over and over again, be able to get into the paint,

do slash and kick stuff and just create offense. And a lot of times he's just standing over on the side because everything has to run through Edwards and towns. Do you think Chris Finch being injured actually might have cost them a game here in the series out of the first four? I mean, I voted for him second in coach of the year. No, because he's right there. It's different though.

He's not, you're walking around, you're like when you're actually coaching and you're able to move and move up and down the sidelines and talk to your guys versus I'm just sitting on the side. Like I'm like Denzel and the bone collector. Like I just don't think it's the same. Cause I thought they lost their composure and did some weird shit tonight. It was a really sloppy, uh,

offensive. Like I just thought their identity was all over the place if bant didn't have the game that he had they would have lost by 25 yeah i couldn't believe like there's a bunch of moments where i go okay six minutes they're down 11 like they're are they going to grind this thing out are they going to find a way to grind the whole thing out but there's just too many moments where i didn't i didn't trust anybody else around and whether it's the cat stuff that we've already talked about and you know rudy ended up with some points because he got fouled a bunch of times there at the end but he just had those moments with him where you know with the ball in his hands

you're like oh man what's got his post up against yokich that's gonna end up on t that's gonna end up on tnt at some point like yokich just chest moving him to be like oh wait you think you're gonna like mckale me right now i'm just to matador off to the side. You're not even going to feel me because you're so uncomfortable already. And then Rudy like gets called for the travel. That'll be in, that'll be in some like one shining moment version of the NBA broadcast. So wait, wait, can you hold on for on that for one second? Yeah. Cause I think for guys like us, we've never had a chase down block against the backboard. No. But we have pulled the chair.

I'm retired now. But when you pull the chair in a really good way where the guy almost falls over and hits his face, it's about as satisfying of a defensive moment as you can have. Right? What's better? I don't like when people do it outside on the asphalt. I think it's bullshit. What about better? I don't like when people do it outside on the asphalt. I think it's bullshit. What about inside?

I didn't realize you were anti-pulling the chair. Yeah, I just think it means you can't play defense. I guess I've just had too many people pull the chair when I was younger. You know, some older guy, lunch hoops. Do you want to do a PSA? Should we do a PSA for the Ringer NBA channel? I'm Ryan Rosillo. I'm going to get killed for even

bringing it up. I want to talk about pulling the chair. Yeah, no, he's going to. No, the way to, when you pull the chair, when it's okay, is when you're going against the tall guy who thinks he can just swing into you with his elbows out and just basically bulldoze over you.

And that's when it's okay. No? I don't think you're wrong. We'll agree to disagree. Yeah, we can disagree sometimes. I think more people will agree with you, and I understand the position. Hey, at least it's not a charge.

At least it's not a charge. Because you start trying to slide over outside in a pickup game and then you just decide it's the charge. Like if you put the effort in and then get hit and then fall down, no one has ever in the history of pickup. First of all, you shouldn't do it in the first place, but nobody would ever be like I think I was still moving.

The guy's always like charge be like someone else has to see it for you to be able to get the call. Like what are you kidding? Anyway, everybody's favorite part of the pod i i have more more in this game but let's take a quick break this episode is brought to you by prime video you know me i can't go a day without sports i really can't and now monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey. And it's on prime all season long. Watch

prime Monday night hockey, deliver unreal plays. The biggest goals can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL is best. They're all on Prime. Prime Monday Night Hockey. It's on Monday. It's on Prime. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. Just quickly on Denver,

we talked about what a great moment this was for them. I think the three days off helped everybody, including myself, just pouring dirt on them, being like, it's fine, man. It's really hard to go back to back, especially with how deep the league is now. The amount of pride that they showed in game three, where they just came out throwing haymakers and got their identity identity back just rebuilt it over the course of 72 hours and then winning that game today the crowd seemed like it was good both nights too but winning that that game today on the road with the way edwards was playing i thought the crowd was better tonight i think they were i think they were so ready to just

erupt in game three you know this is a min Minnesota franchise that hasn't felt anything like this. This is the Steve Kerr theory. Right. Steve Kerr always said the young playoff team that hasn't had a lot of great playoff moments that first game home, the crowd's almost so fired up.

It was like game three, Nets Celtics, when the Celts had the big comeback in the second half, but that first half, they suck because the crowd's like, ah, let's go. Everyone's in the seats 45 minutes for the game. And then somebody makes two threes and the other team and you're like, what? Oh no, what's going on? And it's just like, it doesn't

go by the plans. But I just love when champs defend the title, which we've talked about. I don't know how we've been doing this probably for seven years on Sundays. My favorite, I think it's one thing to win the championship. I think it's another thing to defend it. It's something I wrote about in my book. I really feel like the title defense should count when you talk about the great teams. And I love that they fought back

because I didn't think they were going to. I really thought this was going to be a passing of the torch. They had no chance in Minnesota type of series. As blown away as I was in game two, I guess then once I started seeing everything that was happening in the TV shows and everything, the question I'd ask like any of us is,

haven't you watched series before though? Like haven't, we've been doing this 40 years. I know, but this one's unusual. Do you see this stat? This only five times somebody has lost the first two at home and then won the series? Five times ever. I'm not even talking about game four

because I didn't know what was going to happen in game four. But for Denver, who we both think is really good, before we saw the Minnesota Phoenix series, before we saw the Denver and LA series, I think both of us were leaning towards, I know we both weren't going to pick Boston against against denver unless you saw a version of boston yeah yeah running right so i just think there's so many moments in a series where the teams look completely different 48 hours later and i guess i i feel like sometimes I'll be just listening to stuff going, wait, this is your first year doing this?

Not you, necessarily, but this. Denver's too good to have had everybody being like, this is a wrap. And there was just so many people talking sweep. I was surprised. I think the Murray thing was a big piece of that, though. That's your out, then. That's your out. No, it's not even an out.

He just looked like he was legitimately hurt, and it wasn't gonna get better you know and I don't know if they if they did the Mexico my Miami Germany trip between game two and game three but he looked way better and was moving way

better and looked like Jamal Murray again and that was a guy I did not expect to uh to see in the in the playoffs he was 11 for 21 in game three today was eight for 17 um Ant three. Today he was eight for 17. Ant finished with 44 and was 16 for 25.

But we didn't mention this yet. Sometimes this happens in a basketball game where you just know the other team's going to lose. And that eight-point barrage at the end of the second quarter was just so stupid.

It's like nobody's ever won when they did something this stupid at the end of a half. And that so stupid. It's like, nobody's, nobody's ever won when this, when they did something this stupid at the end of a half. And that turned out to be the eight point and that eight point cushion. They had the whole second half basically with these 20 seconds that they just fucked up. They give up the Pope three, then you get the turnover. Okay,

fine. But in a game, McDaniels doesn't run back. Right. Gordon just goes down. But to inbound it that way, knowing there's as rare as the chance is, but to even open yourself up,

and I think that's one thing that you've always talked about with the playoffs that we see it play out all the time is just certain people aren't comfortable as the series goes on. And I don't even know if that's what happened there. It's like, oh, this young team, they just weren't smart enough.

They weren't comfortable. Although I thought there's just a lot of dumb stuff that's been happening with them on top of everything else. But that eight-point swing, because you're like, hey, this has been a grind. Denver can't miss. Jokic has been incredible. And all of a sudden, it goes from what? It would have been, it ended up being a 50. So it was going to be a seven-point halftime lead

to a 15-point halftime lead. They get a stop at seven points, it goes to 15 instead. I have to talk about this, even though it's the most sports radio topic possible. I couldn't believe they didn't suspend Murray

for game three because any other time we've had that kind of situation in the NBA playoffs, they've always defaulted to, look, we can't say there's special circumstances here because it's a huge game for the other team or whatever. It's just the rules, the rule, the rule got broken and it's a suspension. And yet in this case, they didn't suspend them and they fined him a hundred thousand dollars,

but didn't suspend them. And what he did was clearly a one game suspension i guess there's less precedent because i was thinking about like the 07 phoenix is the all-time worst for me when horry throws nash against the scores table and the guys on his bench who see their leader get thrown against scores table take like five feet of steps toward it for stopping. And they're like, oh, you guys got to sit out now. The 97 Knicks heat, which I'd kind of, it's so long ago, I forgot, but they stern staggered the suspensions, spent their best five guys over two days because they left the bench. And then Draymond was the other one where they could have rescinded the 16th, whatever

technical, and they decided not to and then Cleveland comes back in 2016 but over and over again they've told us like hey we don't play favorites with this shit the rules are the rules and in this case they I felt like they totally played favorites with this and like ah we can't suspend Murray then they're not then they have no chance in the series I thought it it was crazy, Rosillo. You're probably right. I didn't care. It didn't bother me. Well, I would rather they handled it this way,

but now I want to go back retroactively and be like, could we have done that with some of the other ones now? Could we get Stoudemire and De'Ato playing game five now? Can we get Draymond to actually play in game five and try to finish off the title? It just feels like it had no correlation

to the rest of NBA history. Do you remember when David Stern went on with Dan Patrick for that sons thing? Yeah. I don't know if you're arrogant about it. No, he was arrogant about it the whole time. Right. So Stern came on and I don't know if it was booked ahead of time, but I think Stern may have reached out because at that point, you know know dan's doing the number one afternoon show in the country and dan's whole point was hey like and this is what i've always said about a lot of this stuff i don't punishment is not consistent when people are like oh i just want the officiating to be consistent i want this to be consistent it's like well then you're hoping for something that's never going to happen because there's nothing

in life with punishment and what happens to people hey it happened to this guy but yeah but this guy he's like yeah okay welcome welcome to this game that we all sign up for so when it comes to punishment and like okay well it should have been this and like when jerry my green chimes in it's like well hey dude you think there might be a little bit of a difference based on your back back yeah you know um your background and everything else your track record is really what i should have been looking for there but i i remember stern coming on because dan patrick was just like hey this is one of those things in the gray area where you shouldn't be this punitive you should be able to say like hey the intent was this but then it was kind of stopped and if you're going letter by the law like this is way too harsh and it could very well decide the outcome of his series here because that son's team was everybody loved it we didn't want to see it go down that way

and stern came on and was like you're wrong you're wrong and he's like you are an opinion maker you shape opinion and dan patrick must have said mr commissioner 50 times in the back and forth he's like yes but mr commissioner yes it was scary when he got like that. I've faced the wrath a couple of times. You're on your heels. He becomes like a prosecutor and you're on trial and he's just going at you. I can't describe how scary it is. It was scary listening to it because it was just awesome audio. And Patrick was just really good with the way he did it because he was still like, he wasn't packing down but stern was just going to steamroll him the reason i even bring up any of that stuff though i don't think silver goes that way i think silver is somebody that his his approach to this if murray for the most part's been a really good guy

is i don't want to take a player right i don't want to take a player out of this spot because that might have been the series and i know some people could have a huge problem i'd rather have played out the way that it did but i would have rather had the same thing happen in 07 with the suns that i rather would have had dream on play i i just not like i remember parish when he beat the shit out of lambir in game 5 1987 one of the greatest moments of my life. And then just stayed in the game. Behind Zoe ahead of Ben. It's somewhere in there. I'd group it with having two kids. And they won the game and they went up three, two, and then the league suspended Parrish for game six. It was the fucking best. Even after he had just basically committed assault on Lambert

at game five, they just left him in, let him play the rest of the game. So they've been all over the map with this stuff, but for the most part, they've always

defaulted to the rules of the rules. And, you know, I thought what Murray did, I, that's about as an easy of a one game suspension. And I'm a, I'm a

Yoko fan. I wanted the series to keep going. I didn't want him to get suspended. I just assumed he was going to get suspended. So just assumed he was going to get suspended. So predictions going forward.

I mean, the series is now impossible to predict, but Denver is going to try to do something that would put them in a pretty special category to come back from O2 down, losing the first two at home. Only five teams have done it. They had that on the broadcast at the end of it tonight. For me to say, hey, I still like Minnesota because I picked them.

Who's going to sit here today after those two games? It would make sense. A young team, a little too soon, feeling themselves after the game two success. Denver figured them out. When this game is 10 points down the stretch, you're like, Denver's not going to get bad looks here. Is Minnesota going to get good looks? Like, is it going to have to be ant the entire time?

I'm not ready to just write off Minnesota, despite what we've just seen through the first four games. Maybe this is Minnesota. You know, do they figure it out this year? Do they figure it out, you know, do they figure out between games four and five or do they figure it out this summer? Right. It's one of those.

And we've seen this a lot of times in NBA history where just an awesome seven game series. They give them everyone's hugging afterwards like wow, you really brought the best out of us. Might be their destiny, but I still like the way I like the way they played defensively today. I don't know

if Denver can do that again. I have no idea what's going to happen the rest of the way. Like to me, this is now an official, I'm not betting on this series anymore. No, it feels, it just feels seven and it feels like it's going to come down to something. At this point, you know, if you said, Hey, I just trust, I trust Jokic to get two of these down the stretch more than anybody else out there, as much as we all love Ant, you're right. Here's something I thought was really important though, because if you looked at the regular season to the playoff numbers of the on-off with Jokic thing, and we know over the course of the regular season, it becomes this absurd number. And part of it is

Denver's bench isn't all that great, but it's like those first few minutes of the second quarter, it's those first few minutes when he comes in, depending on the regular season, the game, the matchup comes in nine, eight minutes left in the game. If they're way ahead, it's later. But those numbers like shape this thing with Jokic but then Jokic plays more minutes in the playoffs and the bench thing wasn't getting destroyed against LA as much but tonight I was looking for it Jokic sits after the first quarter and Denver goes up nine points with him sitting at the beginning of the second that doesn't happen okay that't happen. And then Jokic picks up the fourth foul in the third quarter. They sit him with six minutes to go.

So that's not even close to his normal rotation. He'll play the full third and then sit at the beginning of the fourth, depending on how the game's going. He's not afraid to put him back in earlier. So you're thinking, wait, we're going to get six minutes without Jokic out there? And then Denver doesn't miss a shot. Now, granted, they lost four points in those six minutes, you know, up, I think it was either 13 to nine or 15 to 11. That's a huge win to only lose four points when Jokic isn't playing for six minutes. But then you're also going to get him fresh at the start of the fourth as opposed to having to wait for him for a little while. And he has 16 in the fourth this that was look there's a million things you can point to

say hey the game was this the game was that game when i saw those numbers i went that's that's incredible well that entire time there's one other number along what you just said edwards had to play 45 because they couldn't take him out of the game. He couldn't come out today. That was it. And he was not just playing offense, but he was playing real defense on the other side too. And I think Minnesota has to figure out how either Towns or Nas Reed can carry them for four minutes and a half

because probably not sustainable. Well, not in any shots again too. And Conley's going gonna have some moments here there the cat one for 10 start was brutal rudy's not providing anything offensively until the very end and you hit on it but we we spent more time on the cat stuff hey when game two happened i brought it up as kind of a joke of like hey this is how good they looked without rudy like huh and i'm like hey look even me with my Rudy position, that's completely unfair to Rudy Gobert that there's this one game. They were this dominant defensively and didn't

happen. But now, you know, he didn't have a great game three. He's always going to have some moments defensively. They're incredible. He had a closeout contest on Murray where he stayed in front of him late when it was still a huge possession. And you're like, man, look at him working his ass off, staying in front of him. Then he came out at like 333 and I was like, oh my God, are they going to do it? Are they going to do it to just try to get more offense on the floor? And then they brought him back in the game. It's just something, let me put it this way. I'm monitoring that situation. Me as well. I don't know who's going to win and I'm not making a prediction. I really thought Minnesota was going to sweep them.

I thought Murray was hurt and I thought that was it for Denver. And it was, you know, they won last year and shit happens. Now I don't know what to think. Nick's Pacers was the other one that happened today. We don't have to spend a ton of time on this other than to say,

Tibbs really went for it on Friday night. He's up 2-0. Tibbs? Tibbs night he's up 2-0 Tibbs? Tibbs? he's up 2-0 Ananobi's out and I thought maybe they'd throw away game 3 or get cautious with it and just be like

we gotta play Sunday in the afternoon so if we're gonna shoot some bullets tonight, game four is a throwaway. But no, they went for it on Friday night. I think part of it was because DiVincenzo was just feeling it. He had 35. That's probably going to happen once the playoffs.

But they lose that game, and then it just felt like today was, there's, to me, no question that Indiana was going to win today. I didn't see, the line was like five, five and a half. That was the one where I was like, this is nuts.

The adjusted line, I think was minus eight and a half or minus nine. It was like the next, there's no way they have five guys. So now they're in a position where they basically have to pick two of these next three games to throw all their eggs into, which I think will be game five and game seven. And there's some strategy with this. There's

some load management kind of stuff where I don't think they can fuck around anymore. He can't do the minutes thing like he was doing. And I do believe in the cause and effect in it, at least a little bit. You know, it's just, he's playing dudes at levels

that are pretty crazy historically, including Josh Hart, who has not been hurt yet. But I thought this was a pretty brutal stretch. They went Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, you know, early afternoon. They lose OG. Bogey's gone. Randall's gone.

Mitch is gone. Whoever wins this series, this is the fucking gift of all gifts for the Celtics. I can't remember a better slew of events happening for one team in a conference like this before. Giannis, Embiid, the Knicks, this Indiana team that isn't even at full strength because they lost Mathurin, and the Celts are just going to get to potentially cruise to the finals

without even really getting tested unless Cleveland can somehow throw something at them. Anyway, do you agree with my theory that they're going to have to pick two of the next three or would you just go balls to the wall the rest of the week here? I don't think there's any chance Tibbs is going to do that, even if you're probably right. I think the best thing that happened in the Knicks today is they didn't cut it to like 18 or 20.

And Tibbs was like, all right, let's ride. Ice, ice. Seriously, I'm watching it going, hey, this is good. Because then he waved the white flag. He got Brunson out at the end of the third. He got him out of it. But if there was 18 going to the fourth quarter, these guys all would have played 40 plus minutes again. Hey, this is good. Because then he waved the white flag. He got Brunson out at the end of the third. He got him out of it. But if it was 18 going into the fourth quarter,

these guys all would have played 40-plus minutes again. Because I was thinking the exact same thing that you were thinking on the three days off post-Philly. So he plays everybody a million minutes now in game one, and then he only has a day off in between game one and game two. But he's like, all right, well, they're home. I was like, maybe he's doing that, and then maybe he has to kind of figure this out now and it's like you know what it's who am i kidding he's not going to figure it out he's not going to dial it down with these guys heart played 48

minutes back-to-back playoff games i said on thursday it's the first time somebody played 48 minutes in back-to-back playoff games since 2013 with jimmy butler and tibbs in chicago butler played 48 minutes in five out of seven playoff games during that stretch but butler, that was only his second year in the league, so he wasn't exactly like somebody you're running a ton of plays for. The Brunson stuff, as much fun as this has been, as great as I feel for this guy owning this city, owning this team, and those MSG games where all the old guys are there, I've never cared about the Knicks. I've fallen in love with this team through the Philly thing in the beginning of this Pacers series, but I kept getting back to the point going, so this is just going to work? This is just going to work? He's going to take this many shots? Here's a number for you. Brunson going into the day is at 27 field goal attempts per game. 27. Okay? You go back the last 40 years, here are the top field goal attempts per game players. And then what happened to them in the playoffs.

Jordan took just under 32 shots a game in 86. Sweat by yourselves. Jason McGrady took just about 31 shots per game in 2001. Lost in the first round. Westbrook took 30 shots a game in 2017, the year he won the MVP. Lost in the first round. Ibrook took 30 shots a game in 2017, the year he won the MVP. Lost in the first round. Iverson. Iverson took 30 shots a game in 2001. Two things there. They got to the finals.

No one else on that team wanted to shoot or was allowed to. Yeah, the whole team was built around him shooting 30 times a game. Right. And that East was so putrid that year. There were seven teams in the entire conference that were actually over 500. And then you have Brunson, who's now, depending on the numbers, it's called, when I did this number, it might drop a tiny bit. So then I'd have Luka. I think Luka will jump Brunson. And Luka took 28 shots a game in 21, and he lost in the first round.

So other than Iverson, this shit doesn't work and yet it was working it was working against philly because they have their own limitations obviously in that first round and as i was watching the pacers go down 2-0 in this one bill i'm like you know what though with the way the schedule is playing out they lose og i think the pacers are still in this them smoking them today was not remotely surprising. I thought they'd win today, and they get up 34-14. The biggest, like, I struggle with the minute thing because sometimes I think, I bet you guys could play more minutes,

but everybody's freaked out about it. They don't want to do it. Like, what's the difference between 42? Because some games you're playing 36. Those minutes are harder than the 41. But when it's every other day like this, if you watch the drives by the Pacers offensive players, they're just right past these guys now in a way that we didn't see at the beginning of

the series. Yeah, and Carlisle's telling them to just go, go, go. He's trying to put the miles on them. Listen, OG Ananobi missed 120 games in the last four years. This is not somebody who's meant to play 40 minutes a game every other night. This is not a Cal Ripken, you know? So I'm not saying he shouldn't do it. I'm just saying, if you're going to roll the dice and be like, this is our only chance to win. Brunson's got to play 43, 45 minutes a game. Hart's got to never come out. And I need 40 plus minutes for Mananobi. The odds of those three guys staying healthy for a month and a half are slim. And we've already seen two of the three get hurt and Hart hasn't gotten hurt yet,

but I know they have another choice and it's super fun. Everybody loves it, but this is not sustainable. I'm guilty of loving it too, but like I watch Alec Burks play today. Let's just focus on today. And I know he had 20 minutes in game three.

You just go, is he so terrible? Is he so bad with his defensive rotations that you couldn't spot each of these guys five minutes? And I don't even know if this is true. I have a hard time with once you're past this minute, now this means all of these things are on the table about potential injury. I mean, OG gets hurt all the time. So your point on pushing it with

OG is the right one. But when I watch Burks, like, okay, he's not perfect, but you're screwed. Like, how could he have not been sprinkled in to take five minutes away from all these other guys? And the great thing with Burks is that he's actually pretty aggressive offensively. Like, he's not out there getting the ball going, what the hell am I supposed to do with this thing right now? Like some of these other guys that I've seen out West that we'll get to. So I don't know if that's really the series, but the Pacers are positioned.

Because when I look at their bench, like Isaiah Jackson would be in the rotation for the Knicks. TJ McConnell would be in the rotation. Ben Shepard's a really nice player, would be in the rotation. Obi Toppin would be in the rotation. The Pacers have like four or five guys the Knicks wish they had one of just to be their seventh player right now.

Or eighth. You made me think of game six, game seven of the 2010 finals. Perk gets hurt. And Sheldon Williams had to play. And it's like, well, how bad can Sheldon Williams be? And it was awful. So then in game

seven he didn't play and Doc was basically down to six guys he trusted one of whom was Rashid Wallace who was in the same kind of shape your buddy is in after like a five-day bender in Vegas so he ended up playing 35 minutes in game seven but they had to play Tony Allen in that game and they didn't want to but it was like well let's can we can we sneak had to play Tony Allen in that game and they didn't want to, but it was like, well, let's, can we, can we sneak five minutes of Tony Allen in this? And it was like minus nine. I think coaches are so coaches know better than us. They're watching these guys. They know their team the best. And they're just like, if they don't want to put somebody in, just think about the fear factor. Cause everything you laid out was correct.

And you end up in that Doc Sheldon Williams situation where you're like, I remember Sheldon Williams came in one of those games and put together like three of the worst minutes I think I've ever seen in a playoff game. And I was like, oh my God, I guess this is why he wasn't playing. But it is weird that I guess they lost five guys. So maybe it's not weird. You think it's the NBA. Every team's so deep. Like Detroit has 20 guys who feel like they could play 10 minutes.

They don't have like an eighth guy, but they've lost five guys. So that's where they are. I feel bad for the Knicks fans. But at the same time, they haven't been in a lot of playoff series over the years, as we've talked about. And sometimes this happens in the playoffs. You just get bad injury luck right and they had bad injury luck unfortunately in the first fun playoff experience i've had in you know 20 plus years but this is a crazy stretch when when i'm having moments like oh i wonder what's going on here like i usually just go like

well he probably knows better than i do like he's the one out there he's with these guys all the time however we were always strengthened in our positions when you're like how could you watch nemhart against brunson and think that was a good idea and he switched it to knee smith because once he once he had nemhart and there's a lot of parts of it now with all the minutes and the shots and all adding up here so i don't think it's just the defensive assignments but but getting away from Kelly Ubrae size, getting away from Batum size, you know, some of the moments where it felt like he was slowing them down against Philadelphia, but you know, he got off to like a shooting start that wasn't great in that series. And then it was just on. But you could see early in this series where he's like, you guys are going to keep me single cover with Nembhardt? Like, oh my God, it's amazing. I didn't understand it at all. And Neesmith, who's actually a pretty good shooter when you look at the numbers, I feel like he hasn't made a shot from three in the playoffs. The numbers are way below what you would think on a shooting percentage stuff. I mean, he's a career 37 guy, but it's's not maybe it's because hey the single focus

that you have on him is just trying to challenge Brunson better than what we're doing and I think it's different we should have mentioned this sooner and it's my fault because I'm allegedly the host despite everything we just laid out Nembhard hit a shot

that I think had a 1 in 20 chance to beat them in game three. He hit a panicked end of the shot clock. Halbert kind of hung him out to dry and just threw it to him with like four seconds left. He took a step back 31 footer with a hand in his face. He had made a shot all night and it went in. And it's like when a shot like that goes in, you're just like, what the fuck are you going to do?

What were the odds at? Were it 5%, 10%? What are the odds that shot goes in? It has to be single digits. The way he's been playing, 3%? So they lose on that. And now all of a sudden the series is tied 2-2. And I think Indiana's going to win

because the biggest thing that's happened for them, A, what you mentioned earlier about how now they're going downhill, that the Knicks mentioned earlier about how now they're going downhill, that the Knicks just look tired now and they're going downhill. But then Halliburton is starting to look like Halliburton again. Yeah. Did you notice that? Yeah.

He's looking like November, December, and he's got confidence. He's got a little swagger. He's talking shit. And, uh, you know, I, whatever mental hurdle he had with his injury and just not playing that well, I think he seems back to me. So this is all lined up for them. And I'll ask you this. What's more improbable to you?

The Knicks making the Eastern Finals with all the shit that's happened to them this year and even like in the last four weeks? Or this Pacers team making the Eastern Finals, being one of the four teams left in the 2024 playoffs. This is a thing now that I think has a real chance to happen. And to me, it's like, I can't remember a less likely conference finalist, even like the 2019 Portland team that made it with Dame and McCollum.

I was like, all right, at least those guys have been in some playoff games and won some stuff. This feels, this is like, we were happy to see these guys in the in-season tournaments. Like, oh, that's great for those guys. They're going to be in the Eastern Finals? Look at shirts. It's fucking nuts. Well, look at the East, though.

Like, there was going to be something weird that was going to happen. Hey, look, after game two, Cleveland-Boston, and this is an extreme thing and not where i'm going but i was thinking of like what if the pacers come back because of these injuries against the knicks because they're better positioned because they've had better depth and the next however many games are just easier for them even though there's going to be a break there what between five and six there's going to be an extra day uh for obviously both teams in seven, I think there's only one day off if it even gets that far.

But I was like, what if the Pacers just offensively become really hard to guard? Celts don't make many threes. Would this Pacers team be more... Would the Pacers be a more unlikely finals team than Miami last year? It has to be,

right? Based on pedigree alone. It's not really even a question. I'm trying to think like you'd have to go back. I think you'd have to go to like the 1981 Rockets kind of level of unlikely final teams. I don't even think, I don't even, they must have been like 151 to win the title, even like when the playoffs started or 100-1 or whatever. But their style is like, you know, they have a really good home crowd. They play without fear.

They can hit threes twice a series. So you know there's two games where they're probably going to win just with the way they shoot. And they have a guy who can kind of get to where he wants on offense. It still feels to me that Boston, with or without Porzingis, should be heavily favored in that series, right? Totally. I think it'd be a massive disappointment for Boston

if they get through Cleveland, which I expect they will, to lose to either one of these two teams. But, you know, like three different things here. In game two, the Knicks scored 130 points on 91 possessions. And I'm like, okay, there's your Pacers defense. This is the defense and why I can't take this team seriously, even if I actually look at their roster and think about Matherin coming back,

if they re-sign Siakam, which I imagine they already know they have a good chance of doing, to go ahead and make that kind of trade. And I look at all that stuff and I go, okay, well, I can't take you this seriously. Like, look at this defense I thought the defense was a lot better I don't know if it means because the Knicks are just that worn out but I thought there was like a real I think that's what it means real push for them and then there's

also a bit of the shooting variance here where at one point when it was 60 excuse me 94 57 the Pacers are 13 to 28 from three the Knicks were 2-20 they were 2-20 the best 3 point shooting team in the playoffs was 2-20 in game 4 and I think Breen was doing a really good job as he always does on the call where he was pointing out how many shots were coming up short he was like short again short

short again yeah yeah Indiana Boston which has happened yeah yeah um Indiana Boston which has happened well it

happened 91 that was one of the legends last great playoff moments Chuck Person and the gang that left

Reggie Miller took him to five they had the 2005 series that the Indiana won in Boston

in game seven there was the one Pierce when he torched Al Harrington, not a ton of great playoff moments, but it does feel like we're headed that way. I'll tell you this though. Brunson can, Brunson just needs to have two awesome games and he can single-handedly drag the Knicks to the conference finals.

And that'd be unbelievable. So it's sitting there. I mean, he could just have two 45 point games and we'll be like, Oh my God, I can't believe the Knicks made it. Let's take a break. Cause we got to talk about the other two series quick. And then we got to do the lottery. so it's sitting there I mean he could just have two 45 point games and we'll be like oh my god I can't believe the Knicks made it let's take a break because we got to talk about

the other two series quick and then we got to do the latter Metrolinx and Crosslinx are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress please be alert

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To discover how, visit bhp.com slash better future. Mavs Thunder. The Mavs come back, win the last two, and Kyrie has been the MVP of the series so far. I will start there. Kyrie, watching the third quarter

yesterday, I noticed something. I was like, what's he doing? Because he didn't have a great game too. It didn't matter. Because P.J. Washington, you could argue, is the MVP of the Mavs. But he isn't because Kyrie's making more things happen. P.J.'s being set up. So I started counting him.

I was like, okay, there's a passive play by Kyrie. There's a spot where he could have pulled up. Didn't. Okay, he didn't even look to drive on this one. He just swung it. It was like five passive plays in a row to start the third quarter. And we know that he turns it on in the second half. He has throughout the playoffs.

And then he just went nuts. And then he carried that into the fourth quarter. And he's turning into this weapon where we're at. Like Lucas had two good three-point shooting games out of the entire playoffs he's not shooting it the way you'd expect luca to shoot it and even though the point totals aren't matching luca or even pj washington i think he's fifth in total points of all the players in this series he won him game three and in game game two, he made a couple, I thought a couple of the biggest plays we talked about on the pod on Thursday night.

He's in the end of these games when OKC hasn't been in these, the situations at this kind of level of pressure and competitiveness. And Kyrie just seems really comfortable. And just somebody, I can't believe I'm saying it, somebody you'd want on your side.

So this is one of the most remarkable, let's say they make the conference finals. This is one of the most, to me, remarkable, unexpected rejuvenations of a great player. I don't know if he's a great player, a very, very, very good player, however you want to classify him. Yeah, it's complicated with him.

I just kind of given up on him. Yeah, because I even looked at my pyramid. I didn't even... He's like on the bubble for the top 100 because just because of the way... After 2016 and 17 when he was really great in the playoffs, it just got really spotty after that.

But he has a chance to rehabilitate this in a real way. The PJ Washington piece is the crazy piece because he was a 10 and a 5 in the last series. And now he's 22 and 7 playing 40 minutes a game and looks awesome and super comfortable. And they're starting to feel a little big three-ish. And I don't know if it's just a three-game hot streak or if there's been some sort of breakthrough, but he's in person and on TV has just looked really comfortable with these guys. So it still feels, I don't love the Mavs

and I don't love the, the big guys seem a little raw to me. I don't really love their bench, but to me that the story to them for, or the last two games was they seem comfortable and OKC just seemed kind of like the new guy. There was new guy energy from OKC and I thought both those losses because I thought both of them were winnable, right?

Yeah. I mean, the final score in game two tells a different story, but I thought it was. Look, game two in the start of the third quarter, I thought this series was a wrap for OKC because Luka looked like shit the first six minutes of the second half of game two. And I'm watching it going, it was just one of those things where you'll notice, like, I don't even want to watch anything else.

I'm only going to watch him. He was standing 35 feet away from the hoop. He was waving it to the other side. It's like Ben Simmons out there. You just came out of halftime. Like, this isn't because you're worn out from running up and down there hasn't been a stoppage yet and the only thing he did defensively he wasn't even close to like closing the corner then he had this one block where it actually shocked me that he moved that much and that

was like in this six minute stretch and as i watched that i go i i think dallas is done because i'm like is this is this what he's to look like? Because it's not going to get better. But the other tricky thing with Luka, as much as I like him, when he's hurt, and he's clearly hurt at times, he's going to let you know he's hurt. It's very dramatic how hurt, like he had that play where he and Dort got tangled and he turned his ankle and it looked like, oh oh no is he going to come out of the game but the ball was still live and the ball got back to him and he just kind of was like i guess i'll shoot it and he made it and then it

felt like he was like well i can't really limp too much now yeah now i gotta scale it back right because i just i'm not gonna go for the oscar now so i can't fall for that anymore with him is my point because in those six minutes i'm like how are what are they going to do like this guy looks like he's he's toast and i know he's battling real injuries but the pj washington thing like this is the whole point like every time you watch matchups bill you'll go okay what are you willing to give up and they've been willing to give up the pj washington stuff and he has sGA has 93 points in the series. Luka has 70. P.J. Washington has the third most points,

three games into this series. That's not supposed to happen. It feels like both of us, as much respect and admiration we have for how talented Luka is, I think both of us are starting to get annoyed by parts of the Luca package. Like the amount of times he spends bitching at the refs in person, it's unbelievable. It's just,

it's a running, he's like doing a Mike Birbiglio one man show just for two and a half hours yapping every time. Oh, there's a dead spot. Now I can walk over to the closest ref and just yell at him about a play five minutes ago. And it's like watching those coaches that just work the refs for the entire game, but it's a player that's doing it. I don't know if I've ever seen somebody bitch at the refs more than him. I'm trying to think like he's, whatever the short list is, he's on it. But I don't know if I've ever watched somebody who it seems like it fuels him and gets him going to do it but it's really weird the refs are just like oh man this fucking guy

like they've had it with him I'm not making excuses for it because watching it live is even worse than TV if you can imagine but I don't think he can help himself I think it's just as soon as he gets out there he's just a motherfucker and it's like to anyone else it's just you're the opposition and it was funny because there was one play i think he yelled at

ben taylor and then he realized like i'm just spazzing out on you right now because i'm mad because the shot didn't go in and i actually wasn't fouled and he apologized by the time he complained after the shot and then by the time he hit half court he was kind of like you know what that one's on me the good thing for luca and maz fans is that when you complain this much then people be they build up a tolerance to it it's like the draymond thing so nobody's going to get on your case like you actually get to get you get away with murder i think it's to me it's more like john mackinrow where it's just like you just know he's going to do it during the during the game or the match and it becomes part of the package and it keeps people on his toes but he's also really hard it during the game or the match and it becomes part of the package and it

keeps people on his toes. But he's also really hard to officiate. And so I think he uses some of the bitching to his advantage. But I talked about this on Thursday. I like watching guys when they're hurt because I think you find out different things about how deep the basketball goes and how many tricks they have and how smart they are. And, you know, when there's a little bit of a, of a physical disadvantage, how they overcome it. And he's been great at that because he's clearly hurt. But the fact that he's hurt, I think is making him mad. So now he's, now he's even angrier at the refs and going more nuts at the refs. Also the way, okay. Okay. So he's been pretty physical with them. They've tried different people on them. Uh, well, the door part of it has to be annoying.

And I also think part of it is like people will listen to this and say, well, Draymond complains the entire time. Yeah, but Draymond doesn't have the ball. He's not initiating the offense every single possession. So there's more opportunity. There's more opportunity for it. But look, we need to get back to like giving the Mavs a ton of love here, even though I'm not even close to writing off OKC.

Not a chance. Are you to the point where you think the Mavs just take the series? No. I think OKC has a better team. I don't know if they're ready to win the series, which is a cop-out answer. But I think they have more talent. I think their bench is better. And I just don't think they totally know how to win some of these games. And then on the other side, you have Luca and you have Kyrie who've been in a bunch of big games already. And then PJ Washington is just playing great. And then everybody else is either like, if I'm open, I'm supposed to shoot a three. Or if I'm a big guy, I just need to be around the

room with my hands up. That's what I do. Dallas knows who they are and their best two guys just have a shitload of experience. The Shea part is the most interesting subplot to me in this series because I actually liked a lot of the shots that he was getting. I thought he was rushing stuff,

but I feel like he can go to the spots that he wants to get to. I think if he's ready to take a little bit of a jump, like what we saw from Edwards tonight, we're just like, I'm winning tonight. I feel like he could have the game,

but you know, he doesn't have a lot of reps with this stuff. And sometimes, sometimes you need the reps. Sometimes you need to grow into it. The problem for them is they might run out of the series before they have a chance to grow into it. I wanted more from Jalen Williams too. And I just, I just didn't think he was at the level he was during the regular season with some of the crunch

time stuff. Didn't he lead the, led them in fourth quarter points, I think, but during the season, but Chet didn't show up in game two, was really good in game three, was super impactful. It seems like their best lineup has Isaiah Joe in it late. It's like Isaiah Joe, J-Dub, uh, Shea, Chet, and, uh, Dort. And that's their five because Joe gives them the, uh, and it was interesting. They ran a big out of bounds play for Joe when they were down six. So they really trust him. And I guess the question is, is that a team that can beat Luka and Kyrie and what Dallas is doing if that's your five? If Jalen Williams isn't going to go up a level like he did in the regular season? Yeah, going into it, I like the OKC. I like the talent better. And I think Kyrie has answered any of our concerns,

at least for this year. So it wasn't a Kyrie thing. I didn't expect PJ Washington. I saw a headline. I clicked on a story today just reading different game stories from this. It's like Dallas' trio of stars. I went trio. Meaning PJ?

Yeah. Like we're trying to sneak a big three in there right now. It's a shoehorn but if you're if you're diagonal and you're thinking about your approach this you're going okay well let's see here the points in the paint thing hasn't been a bludgeoning except for game three where dallas was plus 14 but okc won the paints in the point game one and game two. The rebounding differentials haven't been a disaster for them. They were minus seven in game three. The giddy part that I liked when SGA was out in the regular season

where giddy was basically playing the best offensive ball of his career, and I thought, hey, this is probably going to be good for him off the ball, kind of build him back up a little bit. Those minutes have been disastrous and they may pull the plug on this entirely with Giddy. It's so funny. They're in the same spot. They were in with perk once upon a time and Derek Fisher.

Okay. See Roberson. Yeah. Roberson's another one. They always have the one guy. It's like, Oh man, look at those plus minus minutes.

I looked up the 2011 Dallas OKC finals, and I wonder if this is going to play out like that one did. OKC, they were like a year before they made the finals. They had more talent. Dirk was awesome. Dallas won in five. All the games were pretty close, and OKC just wasn't ready to win the series yet. They came back a year later and blow-torched everybody and made the finals. Part of me wonders if that's OKC, but I still think they have more talent. I think OKC is going to...

If I had to bet, I would bet on OKC to win game four. I think it's going seven. Then if it goes seven, I think it's bad for them because that's so hard for a young team. Even if they're home, like just so many guys who have not been in a game or a situation like that.

We saw it with Orlando and Cleveland. The young guys in a game seven, man, I just don't trust it. So Dallas in a nice spot. That's a good comp because it's like, all right, well, whatever you think of Donovan Mitchell, you're just going to trust him more than anybody in Orlando.

Even though there's not some extensive playoff resume there, it's better than anything you have on the Magic. And maybe that's it. Because I think if you're the Thunder, you're going, okay, well, this P.J. Washington thing can't continue. He's 54% from the floor and from three. So both of those numbers are 54%. You got away. You probably felt like, hey, if Kyrie's going to have the low output that he had in game two, you should have been more in that game.

They weren't. And with Luka having that stretch in that third quarter that we've already talked about, it's like, okay, we'll find a way. But they got up big in game three, and then Dallas goes on their own 16-0 run. You probably expect Chet to shoot a little bit better. And I really like who Chet is. I like how he fills in all these different gaps offensively for him,

but you're still not going to be ever using him probably in these playoff moments to be like, hey, Chet, go get us a bucket. And that was the whole point of having SGA and having Jalen Williams and having a team that was number one from three in the regular season and has not matched it here.

So as we keep talking about the talent and the things we like about the Thunder, I'm willing to say maybe Dallas is just tougher than these guys. Maybe Lucas had it. To that point, the thing that worries me, the rebounding differential isn't that terrible for OKC, but it feels

like over and over again in these big sequences they don't get the rebound. I thought it was going to be worse. Right. So when I went back and looked at the numbers, I was like, I feel like the eyes told me it was more of a problem. I don't went back and looked at the numbers, I was like, God, I feel like the eyes told me it was more of a problem. I don't feel like they're getting the rebound when it's like, oh, three-pointer bounces in the air.

I'm like, they're probably not getting it. Dallas is probably getting it back. Well, we'll see. Last series is Boston-Cleveland. You know. How are we feeling? Let's go back to game two, Bill. I didn't get to talk to game two bill

no game two bill was like this is when they don't come out of the game and play defense this is what happens they came out of game three they played defense the defense leads to the offense it was so funny watching you know in the pregame show i know you know they're gonna do it it's like jason tatum needs to step up and they have to do that whole thing. And it's like, no. They just need to play defense because when they play defense, everything else good happens off the defense. They start running the ball more. They start moving. Guys

get more invested. They get fast break. It's a really good fast break team. Game three, people were coming out of it. I like the way Tatum, there was a control that he had over the game and I like the decisions he made. I didn't think he shot that well. I thought the way Tatum, he had, there was a control that he had over the game. And I liked the decisions he made. I didn't think he shot that well. I thought Jalen was awesome. And it was so funny. Like if I'm Jalen, I'm like, fuck, Tatum's the story. Jalen was awesome in that game.

And it was the two of them together. And it was a classic Jays game where they just, you know, the two of them together. But the alarming thing to me was, this is what I was texting with my dad the last 24 hours and FaceTime in this morning, like the Joe Missoula, just 39 minutes for Horford. Like just take the yellow pages and just fucking hit me over the head with it like that. I, it's, I, I just can't take it. Cause he was, he was dead. Like he, he wasn't just short ar. When he was taking those threes, he looked like a guy who was putting on his right arm and trying to lock some safety harness in and then chucking it.

I just don't understand what world they should play Al Hor for 39 minutes in a round two playoff game against a team they're going to beat. If there's ever a situation to try to work some more dudes in there. So I see stuff like that and I'm like, man, this guy, is he ever going to get it? Then I didn't like the Tatum quotes after game two either.

I just didn't understand it. Yeah, that was weird. I love Tatum. Hey, we're not that good. Yeah, I love Tatum, but he's like, you guys are telling us we don't have an MVP. We don't have a coach of the year. How are we some super team if we don't win awards? It's like we don't have an MVP. We don't have a coach of the year. So how are we some super team? If we don't win awards,

it's like not, not the time, dude, you guys sucked in game two, play defense. That's it. Play defense. I have a lot here.

It's, it's not so much, um, just in game three. So you can cut me off whenever you want to cut me off. But the Tatum part of this is always going to be a challenge for him because he's not a top five player he just isn't there's been seasons maybe going into it where you're like hey there's going to be five guys and for me it's still the four

it's yokich luca yannis i think sga is there ant to me has surpassed tatum i don't really have much debate about it i know statistically mb but when we do this next year, when we do our kind of top five, I don't care what Embiid stats are. I'm just not putting them in it anymore. That's what this playoff series has meant to me as far as my future Embiid ranking system. But when you start looking, look, Tatum overall could be better. He could shoot it better. But specific to how the Celtics have been defended in these two series, when you... I don't know how many people are going to agree with me on this one,

but when I look at the overall approach to Tatum, I think more teams would be better off having, if you don't have a top five guy, having a guy with Tatum's mindset. The fact that Tatum's been willing to defer because of the way the defensive matchups have lined up in these two series,

I think is a massive credit to Tatum's maturity and who he is as a player. And the rebounding, don't forget the rebounding. Cause that's the other, like he really gives a shit. He protects the boards and he gets them. Yeah. Cause his,

his rebounding and then the free throw attempts too, which is way up here in the playoffs. So two things we've always wanted from him. If you look at the last four playoff games, his average shots per game, excuse me, the last four playoff seasons, so I should say previous to this year, go through the previous four playoff seasons.

Could have set that up better. 20, 22, 20, and 20. Going into last night, he was taking 16 shots a game. So it's really easy. They lose the game too against Miami. And they blew out Miami in so many of these games. He didn't even,

there's another reason why the shot totals aren't as much. But the most important thing that I've noticed is Miami was so screwed because of their own limitations with their roster. They're like, we have to put Caleb Martin on Tatum. He's the most important player. He's the best player. That ended up with Hero and Brown.

And instead of Tatum being like, hey, I'm the superstar and I'm the one and Brown's the two, I got to take all my shots. I got to get my 30 so nobody's questioning me on TV shows all the time. I'm just going to let Brown destroy Tyler Hero's trade value this summer. I'm just going to go let him do that.

The first thing I look for in game one of Cleveland is like, okay, what are they going to do? Well, guess what? They put a Coro on Tatum because really this series I don't think should be close against Cleveland. If you look at the perimeter matchups, every one of them is bad for Cleveland. So then you can't put Mitchell on anybody real, so he's hoping Drew Holiday is an aggressive that night. And then you've got Garland on white.

And I know a lot of this stuff gets crossed up over the course of a game, but that means that Struess is on Brown. So Tatum's going, all right going all right well look let's let jalen brown eat a little bit more and i think that's the bigger picture thing that's happening despite frustrations about some of the overall shooting numbers that i i think these first two series are like a real positive for who this guy is as a player well Well said. You agree. Yeah, my only nitpick is I don't think he's nearly as good of a three-point shooter as he seems to think he is, which I

talked about on Thursday's pod. We just have a two-year plus sample size now that he's just not an elite three-point shooter. He's streaky, but, you know, he's a 33 to 35 percent three-point shooter here for two years now. And the step back, I think if you're the other team, you love nothing more than when four

guys are standing around watching him and he's dribbling between his legs and taking 27 footers. What you don't want is the Tatum that we saw the other night where he was inclusive, he was rebounding, he was getting in the basket, even if the shot wasn't falling. I just thought he was impactful the whole game. And what's weird, I've watched him so many times now, you know, in the first quarter, you can tell by his demeanor, the look on his face, how he approaches the first six minutes. You're like, oh, got it tonight. Looking good. But I still felt like that game, Cleveland didn't play well in the second half. And I thought the Celts let them hang around. And there was a couple of moments where I was like,

oh my God, like, you know, it reminded me of that game when the Dean Wade game from the regular season, they tried to Dean Wade you last night. They really did. And I had Dean, I was like, I I'm just, I'm monitoring every set. They're up like 17. I'm like, we were here in January, February, whatever that was. And it's like three-pointer miss, three-pointer miss. Oh, we're up eight. What happened? And it never really happened yesterday.

But the team's just not the same kind of special without Porzingis. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't matter with these three playoff matchups they're going to have. But it's going to matter against Minnesota or Denver. Yeah, the Mobley thing was really nice to see from him game two because I think most of his offense is supported by something else.

They were trying a lot of the stuff where, you know, they bring Horford up to screen. There was a ton of Horford hunting in game three. Like, it was getting bad for our guy. And what they'll do is they'll just bring the ball wide, and then Mobley has that roll behind it, and it's, like, wide open. Like, instead of going parallel on the drive with it, they'll go away the ball wide and then Mobley has that role behind it and it's like wide open. Like instead of going parallel on the drive with it, they'll go away from it and then Mobley's just eating free. But then Cleveland even try to do this small lineup and I'm sitting there going, okay, well, if you guys don't start attacking this,

like if you can start pulling up for threes against this and that's where Jalen Brown was incredible. But I think everybody that's listening to this that's a Celtics fan, like game two, this was the possession that I just went, are you guys seriously going to do this stuff? They're down 99-83 to Cleveland. This is in game two. There's a timeout. They get the ball in.

Little whatever misdirection. They get it to Tatum on the left side, and he holds it for seven seconds, and no one moves. No one moves. And of course, guess what he does? Step back, elbow, jumper, misses against Strews. It's like, this is one of the biggest possessions in the game. You're down 15.

You just had a timeout, and this is that I'm going to stop. It's this habit. I don't know. I think that might be, you know, maybe if they find a way to win with this group, but I swear to God, like if you ever had to like do a video intro on this team 20 years later and be like, Hey, how come that team never won? It's like, they used to love this one play. They called it everybody watch and as good as they are. And there's no, I mean, man, if they didn't get out of the East this year,

I saw that play and I just went like, how do you, everybody has bad shots. Every great player has some shots. You're like, what are you guys doing? I Pritchard's three, although I wouldn't consider him a great player. I thought 31 footer. That was an awful, awful decision. Yeah. At that moment.

But I liked it. I thought it was going in. When he steps into it like that, I think it's going in. I'll tell you this. When Cleveland went small, I was like, just do it for me, Joe Mez. Just two minutes.

Go small and put Tatum at the center. Just do it. Just do it for me. Just put Tatum and Brown in the three guards. I just want to see what it looks like. And he just won't do it. He just won't. He'll just,

he'll play a center against a small lineup until, until he dies. But, I think the, my fear with the Celtics team is that

Miami wasn't afraid of them to the bitter end, even though they were completely outmanned and losing by 20 a game. I still don't feel like they were that, like,

oh man, we're running into a buzzsaw. Like I felt like they felt like they could come back at all those games, which was ludicrous. I think Mitchell thinks that Cleveland can win the series. Like I think he genuinely thinks it. And you watch him like the way he carries himself during the games, how he's talking in the timeouts. And I could totally see them winning game four. I could. Without Porzingis, I don't trust this Celtics team in the same way. And they look great when they're up 15.

They look great when they're up 17. But it'll be a nice little interesting tester for them if tomorrow's close. I want to see them play a close game on the road and have to pull it out. Because we haven't seen them in a close playoff game yet that they've won because it's either been a blowout or they've lost.

One of my favorite things about the playoffs that happens every single year, whether it's on TV shows or social media or just your friends, friends and family, this is what we do for our job. So yeah, like we watch all this stuff year round. It's a great job. It's a great job. And I've had jobs that aren't great. And even my worst day on this job isn't even close to being

as bad as the worst day at jobs that I've had in the past. But the part that's so revealing is how many people actually don't watch, but have been totally okay sharing their opinions all season long. And then they watched Donovan Mitchell for like the first time and they see him get 50 against the magic. They see him, you just know, like he's pencil him in for 30 for game four. It's a matter of, is he getting 30? Is he getting 45? And he doesn't miss from three, like he did in the first half of game three. But then all of a sudden it's like at least in my friend group it's like dude you'd rather have tatum than mitchell and i'll go 30 teams would take tatum over mitchell

and i like mitchell i voted them all nba two years ago i would have voted them all nba this year i think i defend mitchell um a little bit more than others do considering you do you're pro mitchell i'm pro everybody's favorite cliche for me i've always been pro mitchell but last year you go back one year he was one of the most unpopular scorers in the league because of how that next series went and you know he's an unafraid dude he's he's the best you can do if you can't get one of those other guys that's why i still think a ton of teams would be interested in him if Cleveland has to face some tough decisions here. But if you go end-to-end of a season or tomorrow,

you can have one of these two guys to start your franchise. I think 30 out of 30 teams would take Tatum, yet the people closest to me, because they haven't watched anything, are going, wait, wait, like Mitchell, what's this guy? Like he's sixth best player in the league? Like he's awesome, but he's not that. I also think

we'll go to break, but I think it's weird that I feel more comfortable with the Celtics on the road than at home. Yeah, what's the record now? They've been 500 at home for a couple years now. And I think I was trying to, I was talking to somebody about this,

trying to figure out a reason for it, because I think the Celtics have great home crowds. Like we've all been in the building. The energy is great. And I think part of the problem is we've been watching these guys for so long that we know the signs when something bad might happen or they don't have it or it's feeling choppy and it's like the crowd, the sphincters get tight

because they recognize this pattern from the past. You kind of know with this Tatum-Brown era when it's off in a game. Like, oh no. Ooh. Oh, that white guy on the other team just made another three. Up.

Tatum, 27 foot step back. Miss. Up. Fast break layup. Joe won't call timeout. Like, it just becomes Groundhog Day. And I wonder if that's part of it. Anyway, we got to talk about the lottery,

so let's take a break. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons, two scientists, one movement disorders coordinator, 58 answered questions, two focused ultrasound procedures, one specially developed helmet, thousands of high intensity focused ultrasound waves, zero incisions. And that very same day, two steady hands. From innovation to action, Sunnybrook is special.

Learn more at sunnybrook.ca slash special. All right, the lottery was today. I don't know why I was on a Sunday. I thought that was weird. I thought the telecast was just all-time bizarre. We didn't even know that the number 13 team jumped. I don't know if they said it. Then it was just more chaos in the top four

than I think we've had in a while. And if there was ever a time to spend 10 minutes with people who know what they're talking about, about the draft and what teams landed where, that would have been the time to hear it. But we had to interview all the draft picks for the first 15 minutes of the show, which I don't know who wants that. I can't name one person.

I just want to know who won the lottery. Give me immediate expert thoughts from people what it means. I thought Scoot looked great. Scoot, our guy, I was happy for him. Atlanta jumps into the top four and then the top one. They had the second worst odds, 3%. They got the first pick for the first time since 1975. David Thompson, who ended up never playing there.

One of the weirder drafts because the ABA was involved. So we'll go into the ramifications of that. But then the Rockets jumped to three and then the Spurs locked down four. So we go Hawks, Wizards, Rockets, Spurs. Everybody knows this is listening. This is by all accounts one of the worst three drafts the last 25 years.

It's a draft. Somebody who knows the draft said it would be a draft if you took a normal draft and you just chopped the top three guys out of it. So the normal top three you would have were like, oh, that guy might be a superstar. Whoa, this guy, look out for him. He's got all the tools. And you just took those three guys out and started the draft at four where like DeAndre Hunter gets picked or Alex Len, like those kind of picks.

That's what this draft is. It just kind of starts there at four. What have you heard about the lottery and i mean we could go into all the ramifications of like the hawks getting the first picture they blow it up for but what does it even mean to get the first pick so i texted after the lottery was settled i text like i heard from eight teams that i i texted a few more but hey it's mother's day and you saying this is like starting at four that's the nicest thing that i've heard because my responses from front office people today was far worse than that like starting at six starting at eight one team said our analytics staff does like a projected value on like what this player is coming in for the people that are in the conversation

number one um this team said that their team suggested it's like the seventh or eighth pick owning the first pick this year in a normal draft um i asked another team, I said, what kind of player could you get in a trade for the number one pick? And he said, maybe the fourth or fifth starter on a decent team. And I think that was a little high. Yeah.

Yeah. No one said Lou Dort in particular, but yes, that's a good, like Derek White's a no. Right. So Atlanta says, hey Boston, we'll give you the number one pick for Derek White's a no right so Atlanta says hey Boston we'll give you the number one pick for Derek White and Boston hangs up right hangs wow okay

I had another guy say the Clippers are like Terrence man no way hang up seriously Bill like that's kind of the vibe that I got from all of these people like i was asking i was like give me a good name like give me somebody give me a good name i had another guy say it's like starting the draft at 10th and i was like all right that's the worst thing that i had heard from today um here was a name it's like would the knicks do so but see here's there's the atlanta problem okay so just in a, what is this pick worth on the open market? But then there's the Atlanta problem about what they're going to try to do. But say the Knicks.

Would you do Julius Randle? But then it's like, okay, so what are we going to do? Trade some foreign guy who's the number one overall pick to Tibbs so he can rot in the bench for a year behind Jericho Sims because Tibbs hates him. So I don't think I've ever heard. So the number one pick with DeAndre Hunter for Mikael Bridges is an immediate no from Brooklyn.

Like, no way. Immediate no. Yeah. Cam Johnson? Now maybe we can talk. Because then I asked somebody else I was like give me comps on the top because I haven't done any work

I've debated sitting this draft out I think you should sit it out maybe just get into Revolutionary War maybe make another run I have a lot so he was saying this is essentially like a Derek Lively or Tobias Harris being the number one pick in the draft but that would make sense if you said cut the top 10 off. Derek Lively was

like the 11th pick. Yeah, and Harris was just outside of that. Was Harris 18, actually? He might've gone later. Because I remember being like, hey, he's too good to go that late. Was I right or wrong? I don't know. Well, Atlanta getting it, it's too bad the draft's not good because it would have made them an intriguing blow-it-up team. 19. Harris was 19.

Did you know the number one pick has only been traded three times? I do now. 1990, 1993, 2017. I am leaning toward Atlanta being not a blowed up team, but a pick between Murray and Young and just take whoever they think is the best guy and try to be decent

because San Antonio has their pick next year. So blowing it up, I don't know what that does for them because next year's draft is awesome by all accounts. And I don't know why you'd want to blow it up when you don't have your pick unless one of those two guys was going to San Antonio and you can get your pick back. Then blow it up would make sense. So I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Trey's making 43, 45, and 47 next three years. Murray's making 25, 27, 29, and 31. They got Capella at 22.

They have a conglomerate, a first of four years starting at 14. Hunter's at 21, 23, 24 next three years. Bogdanovich, 17, and 16. They also have Jalen Johnson, a couple young guards. also have Jalen Johnson, a couple young guards. I love Jalen Johnson. He's one of my favorite

stories of this past year. I'm going through some more of my text here. Another team front office guy was like, could you do a first to the heat for Jimmy Butler, but you have to give Butler

the extension? And granted, that means money going out too, so I'm not going to get the trade machine. So they have to do Hunter and extension. And granted, that means money going out too, so I'm not going to get the trade machine dialed up. So they have to do Hunter and Bogdanovich for Jimmy Butler. You throw in the first pick. But then you go, well, that's not the way Riley operates.

What if Brandon Ingram now is available? So what do the Pelicans do? Do you add another pick from the draft that nobody likes? Would Chicago do something? And it's like, none of these guys are worth blowing it up. So I think what ends up happening, this would just be my guess. It's still probably cooler to go. What if we're all wrong?

And one of these guys is being really good and we guess, right. So why don't we just keep that first overall pick? But the Hawks, I think the Hawks ended up making it so much different. If it was Washington and they go, Hey dude, these pieces that are being offered back to us doesn't even make any sense for us we're not any good we want to be bad next year anyway for Cooper Flagg so what's the point we'll just take the guy we're going to keep it because it's just cooler to say hey we took the number one guy in the draft this year and and maybe we're all wrong and we get surprised because we're surprised all the time in this process but for atlanta it's you're right i think they have to figure out the trey

murray thing well he trained he changed agents last week kim and murray were both clutch now trey is caa and it that's a real thing it's really starting to come out in public that those guys didn't like playing with each other so they got to pick one well Well, no. People don't like playing with Trey. I don't know how many times, how many years I'm going to keep saying this. When they trade him, maybe finally... I was being nice. Yeah. Maybe finally people that have argued with me about this for years, who have apparently zero

information, will... Basically, let me just put it this way. I'm not going to be a dick when the day comes, but understand I'll be smiling in solidarity. There's no miami possibility for him is there oh i think that's that's a good guess that miami just goes hey you know we know how to do things we're better we're you know the whole miami spiel to him you know what's crazy is i'll never forget um you know certain blind spots that you can have sometimes as a man.

We were like, wait, is that something that happens? Like, I don't know that that happens because I've only been a man. And there was a headline. Okay. There was a headline with Zach Ertz, tight end. Yeah. The NFL. His wife, her name, is it? Julie is it julie really really good soccer player right

great soccer player and there was a headline that was like zach ertz wife describes whatever whatever whatever and it was once that headline came out it was it was fucking on it was like she has a name she has and the thing is she's accomplished enough that you would go yeah she'd earn julie earth status she earns julie earth status but the way it was being brought up i was like wait is there is there something here that i've never noticed before is this a misogynistic thing that happens with headlines and so i started paying attention to it was keeping logs and what i learned is it doesn't have anything like a google doc like a microsoft word yeah just well actually long form i got this

new tablet okay so i promise there's a connection here once i started tracking it i was like it actually has everything to do with fame and what level of fame you're at or not. And whoever made that shitty headline decided at that point that the NFL player was the more recognizable name. I remember when Meek Mill got into a fight with Nicki Minaj's fiance. It was Meek Mill gets into altercation with Nicki Minaj's fiance. And it was just that guy wasn't famous enough. So he got left out and the other two people were mentioned. If you were to say, get arrested, it may say ESPN host arrested if you're not famous enough. The point that I'm making here is I saw a link today that said $250 million all-star not likely to go to Lakers based on news from today and i'm like trey young

couldn't even get his name in a lakers media piece that was the headline yeah yeah so i'm just telling you it happens to everybody it's just a level of fame and trey young is famous enough to have been in that headline and julie urts is certainly famous enough others not as famous i like how you brought that around. And it's something I've been passionate about for a while as well. I've noticed on the AOL home screen 20 years ago, it'd be like NFL running back found dead. And it'd be like, oh my God, who was it? And then it would be somebody you'd never heard of. Apple News does it too. Apple News loves Lakers. Laker star snaps at press and then the Laker star will be like Jackson Hayes. Yeah, right. Exactly. Laker star. It'll be like former Clippers. They'll always be

like a real estate thing. Former Clippers star buys Palos Verdes estate and you're like it's like Bobby Simmons and you just go so there is I'm glad you're as passionate about this no I love it took me a while to get there but yeah I just landed the plane okay thanks I was trying to figure out a Nets Knicks Hawks trade

lay them on me because I'm too dismissive when we have this just a little heads up and I want to apologize to you when we do this exercise I got to have a more open mind well because we have so many trades well I guess that

where I was landed was I had eight possible Trey Young teams Miami the Clippers New Orleans the Spurs who I think I've already said

they're not interested the Magic the Nets Washington and the Washington, and the Lakers. And the Lakers would be stupid. But if there's a Nets-Knicks-Hawks trade, where I'm really going with this mentally is how do we get Mikael Bridges to the Knicks? Because I don't think the Nets will just trade him to the Knicks for picks.

They have all their picks going to Houston and they're going to want people back who are actually going to be confident. So not just like, here's Mikael Bridges, give us picks back. It needs to be some sort of three-way trade and is there a way Trey Young could go to Brooklyn and Bridges

could go to the Knicks and then maybe Randall and picks goes to the Hawks or there's some sort of arrangement where everybody's happy, which leads to the second question is, are we even sure the Knicks want to trade Randall? Do they look at what's happened in the playoffs and say to themselves, man, if we'd had Randall, we could have made the finals. And I think they do like Randall more than most, but I just like the idea of bridges with the Villanova thing. I was talking to a Knicks fan about it, about how special those

three guys are together. And they've talked about it, about how when you win a title like that, and it could be in high school, it could be fucking college, wherever it is, like the connection and the chemistry you have is just completely different. And there's a trust and a confidence those three guys have and reps with each other that's really special. And I think that's one of the reasons you and I who care less about the Knicks, it's fun to watch Brunson, but it's also really fun to watch those three guys. And Brunson's kicking, DiVincenzo's just moving to this spot in the corner. And Brunson doesn't even have to look over. He just knows exactly where he's going to be.

And it'd be like, how cool would it be to also put Bridges in there? Who's like the fourth guy who thinks like those guys. So if I was the Knicks, that's who I'd go after. It's like, how do we add Bridges to this? Because remember we were talking the other day about who would it make sense to add to this? Would you add Donovan Mitchell to this? Would it be too weird?

Would you trade everything you had? As much as I like him, it doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make sense for what this is, how they're built. But Bridges does make sense. So that got me thinking there's some sort of three-way thing. That would be my main preference. I also am really interested with the magic with Trey. I think for selfish reasons, because of our guy Cerruti,

having him go through the day-to-day Trey Young experience would be really fun. But I also think that's the kind of guy they need. And maybe as he gets older, they could hide him defensively in some ways. I think Trey needs to go somewhere where he respects someone else on the team. And if he goes to Orlando,

it's just going to be the Florida version of the Hawks. Of the Mariners. Everybody else will get worse. Well, the most fun for you and I would be Clippers for Paul George, a sign and trade. And then we got to watch Trae Young and Harden together. That would be the most fun just personally for me from a comedic standpoint. No, I would love to hear Lakers fans that never watch them play talk about how they're the favorites and then people on TV talk about how they might be the favorite and then have it not work out and then

hear behind the scenes LeBron never liked to trade in the first place. LeBron never wanted to. But now that the clutch part the clutch part hasn't happened though like the clutch part of it before it felt like a real possibility. They couldn't make it happen

when he was on clutch. Yeah, so. Well, the other guy that's out there is Ingram. And New Orleans has a million picks. And that's one where you could talk yourself into, they keep Murray. They add Ingram. They add a bunch of picks.

Trae Young goes to New Orleans. That gets a little weird with Zion. And, you know, do you want Trey to have the ball that much? Okay, but here's the thing. You might be onto something there. Thank you. And it's not just Trey being the best lob guy in the league to Zion, which would be a lot

of fun. And to Trey Murphy. But if you go Trey, Murphy, Herb Jones, Zion around Trey, and I think Zion became passable defensively with an all defensive player like Herb,, Zion around Trey. And I think Zion became passable defensively with an all defensive player like Herb. And I think Murphy will get better. They still got to figure out what they want to do

with this Valanciunas, Larry Nance thing. There might be enough defense around Trey now to maybe get away with it. And maybe a Kongu's in that trade. I like a Kongu. So, and because they, the funny thing about- They probably wouldn't do that. They probably, yeah, I don't know.

Well, the funny thing about them getting the number one pick is people think the center, Saar, is going to be the first pick. And that's like the one position Atlanta, they don't need point guards or centers, right? They need everybody else in between. But the center seems like the logical pick. Yeah, there's like an Ingram and Hawk. Well, that's why the Spurs, like if the Spurs had won the lottery today,

I'm like, what are they going to do? Now, granted, they could trade it. Right. Well, we should talk about them though because that was one of the important things that happened. The Raptors had the top six protected pick. They go into the lottery six. They fall back to eight. And the Y Yaka Purtle trade just becomes a mass

murder at that point. Now, number eight in this draft might be number 17 in normal drafts. Maybe it doesn't matter that much, but it just sucks to lose a first round pick when you had a shitty season. So San Antonio has four and eight. And when they take like Toronto's tanking, they tanked hard.

Yeah. They won the tanking championship, but no one likes, I should say, Derrishay love Jakob Pertl as much as Toronto. So they're probably like, hey, we love the guy.

Yeah, we're so happy we had him. We wouldn't have been able to go 29 and 53 without him. So Santana's got four and eight. There's a French wing guy. I'm not going to try to pronounce his name. And there's three point guards that will go. Nikola Topic.

We know how to say his name. He's like a draggage type of point guard, lefty. Dillingham and Shepard. And it feels like all three of those point guards are going to be top eight picks. So the Spurs can get one of those guys. And maybe the French guy. I don't know. I just want the Spurs to get creators, people who are fun to play with,

people who are inclusive, people who know how to throw a fucking entry pass, people who can just like, I want two guys who can play with Wemby. Yeah. Can you throw an entry pass? Can you throw a lob pass? Can you cut without the ball? Does the ball move when you get it? That's what they should be looking for. But those, those are nice picks. But if also, if they wanted to make a trade and package those two with some of the other stuff they have, they could get pretty aggressive. Somebody wanted to blow it up.

It seems like Detroit wants to trade number five because they're tired of taking young guys. And then the, the other big one was, was Houston jumped to three. Houston from an asset standpoint, Shangoon, VanVleet, Brooks, Jabari, who I really thought I liked the season he had,

Jalen Green, Thompson, Whitmore, third pick. They have Brooklyn's first in 26. They can swap with them in 27. They can swap them in 27. Pretty good spot for a mega trade if they're thinking about it. How about that story about how Stone asked the Nets, like, do you want your picks back for your Phoenix picks? Is that true?

I saw it. I don't know. I mean, you're right. If I brought brought it up I probably should have checked it out no that would be which picks would you rather have because the Phoenix picks there's four of them right there's three three firsts and a swap and then

Brooklyn's got next year 26 first and then a swap in 27. So I guess there's more Phoenix picks. I wrote down possible trade targets this summer, and tell me if I left out anybody. That was Sports Illustrated reported it.

Yeah. Possible guys. Guards. Just possible. I'm not saying these guys are available. It got aggregated. I'm sorry. It came from the Houston Chronicle first. I just want to make sure I try to do my best to do that

considering I can't hate. I just hate how much everybody just bites everybody's shit now. Keep going. Possible guys available this summer. Not saying they're going to become available. I just think it's conceivable. Conceivable. Donovan Mitchell, Booker.

I'm still putting him on there. I know they're not going to trade him. He has to make it ugly, and I don't think he would do that yet. I'm just putting him on there because he'll be on Coach 7, the owners, new owner syndrome personified, and maybe he'll just be like, get me out.

Hero, Levine, Lamello, I'm putting on there. Simons. Forwards, Ingram, Randall, Bridges, Jimmy Butler, Paul George, KD, I'm putting him on there. Jeremy Grant. And I'm throwing on Jalen just if the Boston thing gets so fucking awful over the next four weeks, they have to blow up some way. And then Towns, Draymond, and Aiton. The reason I bring all this up is not as many people as I was expecting because I don't even think

80% of those are even plausible. So I don't know how many guys are going to be available. Maybe you put Jared Allen on there if the Cavs decide Mobley's the center. We'll go that way. Maybe Garland's on there, but I think they'd be nuts

to give up on Garland, especially, you know, he broke his jaw this year. Yeah, they can't with the Mitchell thing. And I still think, even though Garland's had some disappointing stretches through this series,

I'm still a fan of Garland. The Mobley-Allen thing actually might be the more long-term concern than even the Mitchell-Garland part of it. Because I was thinking about it. It sucks that Allen isn't playing. Allen is the type of player where 30 teams would love Jared Allen.

I like to have this kind of list in my head. Even Evan Mobley, who clearly is not getting to that place offensively, and we've talked about this too many times already, and I don't care about the 21 in game two. I need to see more to think I'm going to have faith in him just all of a sudden now becoming this offensive threat and create his own. The problem is how many teams, when you look around the league, how many teams are playing two non-stretch bigs at the same time?

It just doesn't happen. Yeah. Well, especially if they think Mobley can play center, then you have to think about Jared Allen. And I think a lot of teams would like him. You know, he's a good contract. Would you rather have Allen than Mobley can play center, then you have to think about Jared Allen. And I think a lot of teams would like him. You know, he's a good contract. Would you rather have Allen than Mobley? I'd rather have Mobley because of the upside.

He's still only 22. And I think defensively, he's pretty special. Yeah, I think Mobley's switching defensively. Like, if this is all he is, it's still a nice player. It's just super frustrating because when he came out man his feet his hands his passing the stretches where you go oh there's another great play another great read perfect instincts there and then it's like he he can't even like he had a right shoulder turn finish at the hoop the other night and i was like oh my god it's like he actually did it like he turned the other way like i i couldn't believe

it when i saw it because there's just so many other times where i feel like he had a dunk in game two where he had he like was so awkward on his takeoff that he wasn't quite sure like oh my god i guess i'm gonna be able to do this and he finished but the the journey was alarming yeah the footwork is really clumsy in almost like when you watch a high you go to a high school game and you're watching their big man he's got a lot of potential and he tries to do like a drop step or something but mobile's 22 i just feel like it should be a little more fluid at this point but then he'll do three things defensively during a game that i think like four guys in the league can do so he wants the rookie, you're giving it to him?

I think you have to. Oh, man. I don't feel good about it, but I think you have to. Especially with the cap going up. I mean, shit. By the way, one of the funniest things ever is that we're all pretending that the TV deal wasn't done like a week and a half ago. I listen to you and Ethan. I'm just not as on it

as you guys are. No, I mean, me and Bellany were on it. Like, I just, I think it's done. I think Warner already lost it. And I don't know why

we're waiting until after the playoffs. Maybe that's how they have to do it. But it's a wrap. NBC's getting it. Just telling. Brooklyn. This is the third top three pick they've given another team since 2016.

They've won two playoff series in 10 years. They do not have their pick next year. Because they get the worst of a swap with Houston and OKC. So basically they're getting OKC's pick next year because they get the worst of a swap with Houston and OKC. So basically they're getting OKC's pick next year, which would be like 27. They don't have their pick in 26 and they have the swap in 27. Ouch. Just a long ouch with multiple H's. Really tough. And I don't think they've ever been less relevant in New York. You think like that whatever was available for them,

especially in the late 2010s when it really felt like the Knicks had hit rock bottom, now it's swung back where this is the most popular Knicks team in 25 years and the least interesting Brooklyn team since the mid-2010s when they had no first-round picks. This is why I think they're a Trae Young possibility.

You have to be. You don't have your pick anyway. You have to have somebody that can be like, hey, oh, they have Trae Young. Oh, he always kills the Knicks. Oh, now we have a rivalry. Like, they have to get Trae Young. But the Atlanta thing still is,

because all the rumblings are like, okay, they may really have to find a way to be different here. And since they've already spent the picks on DeJounte and whatever that is, DeJounte's not perfect. I think you ended up being really down on him this year. And you might be right. But there was enough games there where Trey wasn't there.

And if you looked at all the different numbers, it was like they ended up being 14 and 14 without or 14 and 14 without them which is actually an improvement for who they were this year and like they're going in the wrong direction and then you throw the number one pick for the whole thing I don't think I of all the teams that could have gotten it for all the to-do list stuff that we felt like they were a part of, if you had to pick three teams, like, hey, give me three teams you think will be different this year, not just because of expiring contracts,

but might actually get aggressive and shake things up a bit. I think New Orleans is in that group. Atlanta would be one of the other teams you would pick in the three. And Philly. Philly is a good one, too. Philly, maybe that means there's a Clippers thing, but they have a couple big decisions to make. Atlanta's going to be sitting there going,

imagine if we get this pick in the end of the year. Like we have this incredible asset so we can maybe do two things at once. Is move one of the guards out, bring back this other piece. We don't want to rebuild. You know, that ownership thing was weird forever. It seems solid now, but I, I can't believe they ended up with it. I mean, I don't care that they ended up

with it, but it's, it's such a weird fit for whatever it is they want to be moving forward. Where if the Wizards, especially when they don't know what they want to be. Yeah. If the Wizards took it, they would just take the center. I wonder if they called the Spurs and said, we'll give you back Murray, just give us our 25 pickback and dump the swap, and we're good. You can keep that 27, and we're good to go. Well, if San Antonio traded Murray, even though they got a haul for it, that might tell you that they were still okay moving on from him. But then when you think about what they got a haul for it, that might tell you that they didn't they were still okay

moving on from him. But then when you think about what they got for Derek White in comparison to DeJounte in the way of like the branding of a player can change their value around the league, there wouldn't be one team that would want DeJounte over Derek White. I wouldn't think. I'm still reeling from him making that one shot against

the Celtics and celebrating for like a minute and a half well the Atlanta games at the end of the year in the regular season are still those haunting Celtics games or when you see what happens in game two against Cleveland yeah the Miami game was such a shooting aberration I don't even think that wasn't shot variation in game two but now we're back on the Celtics so let's keep it moving. Other losers, Detroit dropped to fifth,

and Memphis, who I think, deep down, was thinking, man, this could have been a pretty cool outcome if we end up with a top three pick. It's a year from now,

we'd have helped Gigi Jackson, Vince Williams, you know, Jaws coming back next year. A confident LaRavia. Yeah, Marcus Smart's healthyaws coming back next year. A confident LaRavia. Yeah, Marcus Smart's healthy. Got some good pieces.

We'll add a top three pick, get a shot blocker. And they fell all the way to eighth, which was tough because I think they would have taken one of those centers. But it might be too high for him. And I'm not going to pretend I know anything about this draft. But Jared McCain, who you knew I love from the LA high school scene is like the most Memphis grizzly pick of all time. And I just,

I just feel like he's going to end up there somehow. I don't know why he's just so Memphis-y. I remember thinking that when he was at Centennial, I was like, this guy's like a grizzly type. So there's guys in this draft, like connect, I think is another one that

could clearly come in. The UConn wing is clearly an elite defender. He's one of the most impressive defensive players in college. I think he's going to go a little higher than people have him now. I think Connect will go a little higher than people have now because

he's the best shooter in the draft. Because I watch more of him than the other guys as I figure out what I'm going to do here because it's kind of turned into an expensive time hobby. But Castle, I think our guy KOC was doing a bit of rounding up on his offense. He was great against Alabama, but he hit a few shots in that. The problem is you're drafting a wing now, like fifth or sixth, where you go, am I going to get any offense from him?

And granted, UConn didn't need him. Their point guard was terrific. Caravan was terrific. Klingin took over some of these games. Their bench guards would come in and hit shots. So it's not like Castle was getting a ton of, like there'd be certain halves where you're like, they didn't run one play for him

and he never even had like the ball on his own. But his athleticism and his toughness in the defense, but when I see some of the offensive stuff in the scouting report, I feel like it's rounding up the best possible scenario, which look, we're all guilty of doing. Could he be a Jaden McDaniels type of defender?

He's not as long as Jaden. I mean, Jaden's so damn long. But yeah, I think he could have... I mean, Jaden's just so big. But Castle, off the ball, the stuff he was doing and just destroying the game for the other top scorer was really high-level stuff. I liked him.

They were up 40 in that first game that I went to, and he still was playing as if it was a tie game. Yeah. And I couldn't believe it for a freshman. He's clearly a playoff guy. And I've studied even less of the draft than you. But that's at least like, oh, this guy has this elite skill that I know will work in the playoffs.

But Klingon was incredible. But he still can't shoot. Yeah. And he doesn't make free throws. you're like all right like what are we just drafting a younger zach edie yeah and he's not he's not zach edie he's more active clearly uh so i shouldn't even say that i just we don't edit it out but my point being that like Klingon, you may be drafting this incredible defensive presence in certain matchups and that kind of stuff, but

it's going to be just a lot of... Look, maybe Derek Lively's more athletic and covers way more ground than Klingon does, but maybe that's good enough. Maybe that's good enough. Hey, we got a really nice role player here. Your guy Sam at the Athletic, we got a really nice role player here.

Your guy, Sam at The Athletic, who does the tiers. Vassini, yeah. Yeah. He had nine tier one or tier two guys from the last two drafts total. And he's got zero in this draft. His highest guy is tier three. So I would vote,

you know, as somebody invested in your welfare, who I have to talk a lot of hoops with, my friend, I would vote you skip the draft this year. I'm fine with it. I don't know if you're as boned up on the 1750s. I don't know. There's some holes. No, I do have some holes. I do have some holes. Later 1800s,

California. I don't feel like you could really talk a lot on. I'll tell you right now though, this captain cookbook, wide, wide sea. Yeah. Can't put it down. Hampton Sides.

Just incredible. I mean, can you imagine being some, just, just an absolute shit stain of a citizen in greater London, but you get on board a ship and you're hoping not to die a scurvy. And, you know, they took this Southern route around Cape Horn, excuse me, not, not Cape Horn. They went around South Africa. Yeah. And they work it into these islands and it's cold because they're kind of above Antarctica. And they work it up to Tahiti. And these guys are getting off the boat. And for a couple red feathers, they have a girlfriend for a month. And then it's like, all right, guys, we have to leave now and go to Alaska.

Jesus. I can't believe there wasn't one ship that just said, hey, you know what we're not doing the rest of this quest? We're staying here in Tahiti and we're not going anywhere. But I guess the problem would be

that once England didn't hear from you the whole time and they were like, oh, they lost at sea, another ship would be there in like six months and then you'd all be hung. So maybe it wouldn't be worth it.

I watched a Brooke Shields movie on Netflix today with my wife and her mom and my daughter between basketball games. Things are going well. Yeah. We set in,

fuck it, what's Phuket? What's that part of Thailand? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I've never been there, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I don't know. I've never been there, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

I don't think that's how it's pronounced. Yeah, I like calling it Phuket. Benjamin Bratt was an old college flame of Brooke Shields' and turned out he was the dad of her new son-in-law because they were all there for the wedding. And then Chad Michael Murray worked at the hotel. and Rachel Harris was at the wedding as well. And you're not going to believe this,

but Brooke Shields ended up with Benjamin Bratt. Didn't seem like it was going to happen halfway through, but they worked it out. Spoiler alert. It all worked out at the end. My wife will never get tired of these movies. She loves them. She loves knowing where they're going to go, making fun of them as she watches them. And Netflix's algorithm obviously agrees. Cape Town is what we were looking for just west of Still Bay. Don't know why Cape Town escaped me.

I kind of knew and it's late. Can I ask you, do you think if it's Celtics versus the depleted knicks in round three will it count is that worth me going back to the east coast for the entire time and abandoning my family yes and that see i feel that way too but it's a hard sell for my wife i'm just gonna have to make i'm gonna have to make believe og's coming back i know because i had some buddies that were fighting with their wives today on mother's day. And I was like, can't you just say like, Hey, if it weren't for me, it'd be homeless.

Have you tried that? Cause no one emailed me back. I was going to test, test drive it with you. I am. I'm not going to pass that one along. That was a great Mother's Day. I had a good time. Doesn't she realize who she's married to?

MSG Celtics? What's the last time you had this? What about Indiana, though? It's a super easy place to get around. Catch out a fever practice. Fever started. When's that started? In a couple days?

I ordered my WNBA pass. I actually did. I added it toNBA pass. I actually did. I added it to my package there. I just want to be supportive. And I'm not being sarcastic. I'm serious. Go out there, add it. Make it happen.

Yeah, I actually have genuine WNBA team opinions this year. I don't have opinions. I just want them to make more money. We're going to wrap up. When are you doing the next podcast? Taking a month off. see you after the finals okay

Tuesday I'm back Tuesday Tuesday I don't know go check the go check the Drake May rookie men in camp

footage when you get a chance I already did started developing a lot of chemistry with Polk they went to the Bruins game today

put on jerseys feeling great this is really I'm really enjoying the Drake May era it's already developing a lot of, a lot of, uh, chemistry with poke. They went to the Bruins game today, put on jerseys, feeling great. This is really, I'm really enjoying the Drake Mayer. Uh, we're still a great to see you. This was produced by Steve's reading.

Kyle Creighton is always, don't forget. We have a library watchables coming on Monday at 12 on the ringer movies, YouTube channel. Check it out. We're still looking to see. See you later. See you later. On the wayside On the first sun Never lost it I don't have

To ever forget