The Deep 3 Podcast - Reacting To Every NBA Team's First Playoff Game | Ep. 206

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

NBA playoffs weekend 1 reactions! #nba   Check out the TD3 merch: https://the-deep-3-shop.fourthwall.com/   Listen on Spotify!: https://open.spotify.com/show/3elbbqVumwqz8wlIdknsLW   Listen on Apple Podcasts!: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-deep-3-podcast/id1657940794   Follow us on TikTok!: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedeepthree   Follow us on Instagram!: https://www.instagram.com/thedeep3podcast/   Isaac's twitter: https://twitter.com/byisaacg   Mo's twitter: https://twitter.com/Mojo99_   Donnavan's twitter: https://twitter.com/Dsmoot3D   0:00- Intro 2:09- Magic Vs Pistons 24:15- Lakers vs Rockets 39:20- Celtics vs 76ers 42:50- Spurs vs Trailblazers 46:30- Thunder vs Suns 49:52- Nuggets vs Timberwolves 57:35- Raptors vs Cavs 1:02:28- Knicks vs Hawks 1:17:12- NBA news roundup Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mo, what is one overreaction you have to the first weekend of NBA playoffs? Ah, man, one overreaction. Jalen Duren looks like he should be, he played himself out of his map, maxed contract, honestly. That's the biggest overreaction. Be so, what is one overreaction you have? Oh, um, Jason Tatum's a top five player. Again, he's back.

Again, he's back. He's so back. Oh, my God. I was also thinking like, damn, he looks exactly at the same. Like, there's no difference. Not no difference. As you guys see by the title, we are here to give you guys all of our, overreactions, all of our instant reactions, maybe they're not overreactions, maybe they're just

realistic to the first weekend of the NBA playoffs. Every single series has gone one game so far. A few of them have game two today. So we won't have a reaction to that obviously by the time you hear this. But for game one, one thing we learned about every single series. Hell yeah. You guys ready. Yep. We're back. You know what you saw. I was a prisoner table this weekend, Brad. It did absolutely nothing. You were duck and smoke. That's what you were doing. What smoke? What is he talking about? I don't know. You tell me. I try calling you. I have no service on my phone.

I'm not even sure he has a phone. I couldn't pay my phone. I couldn't pay my phone. Ah, it's deactivated. You have no Wi-Fi in the crew? No, I just have, yeah, no Wi-Fi is down and I'll top of that too. Real talk, my gas is out, so I have no hot water on my crib, too. Where's that that has nothing to do with?

I'm just telling you, just a blunderer things happen. Yeah, one bad thing happens. It starts to change reaction. It's a bad day. Now your phone's not getting paid because you're upset. You're too cold. It's a whole or deal. He had cable though.

I know he did. I know he did. Well, with the old box remote. Had it hit an internet browser. Let's get it in their browser. M-E-T-H-S-T-R-E-A-M-S dot com. Mm-hmm. Oh, it's too early for that.

I don't know what you just spelled. Type shit. Type shit. Would that be you say, keep the interesting music. Let's talk about every single playoff series. We're throwing it back. Whoa.

That's crazy. He was bragging. I don't. The cranium is crazy. Oh my God. Crown eaters rejoice. I think it is only right that we start off with what to me is now, by far the most interesting of the first round of the playoffs.

Magic versus Pistons. We did our predictions last week, and we had every series going chalk. With very little disagreement, it kind of seemed like the top seed that we expected to be the victor in every single series would be that, except for Rockets versus Lakers, which is its own unique thing, you know? Now, I don't know if it was a little bit of a lot of it. an overreaction. Feels like the line of magic might be the actual favorites to upset the Detroit

Pistons, which is an insane sentence to say from where we were like three days ago after they laid the biggest of goose eggs I've ever seen against the 76ers, felt like their coach was going to get fired in 48 hours, felt like some roster of people was going to happen this summer. Everything was on the table for what felt like a disappointing season destroyed by injuries. Somehow they found the best version themselves immediately after that. This locking factor that they have crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. Depending on what happens in this series, some can say unprecedented. I would say unprecedented for all the things that you said, based on where we were and then to come out, even forget this game one.

You got to go back. They destroyed the Hornets. And now this fun team that was like since this day, the Hornets have low-key been a top five team of the league. Yeah, not really. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like the magic are looking at them being like, yeah, you guys are still the same guys from the beginning of the season. Khan lights are way too bright. to just go sit on the side, right?

All of this other stuff. And they completely destroyed them. They came out with some of the most energy that they have in a long time. Their defense looked as good as it did two years ago. It looked like the best version of themselves. Then that happens. And while it was a great game,

you can still kind of see it. It's like, okay, Hornets just weren't ready for the moment, right? But you're going up against the number one seed Detroit Pistons. You're going up against this team that is big and bad, physical, bullies, all this other stuff. And they went in and they bullied the bully. And they... That's exactly what happened, honestly.

That's the best way describe it. They were so physical. Jalen Suggs, we make all these jokes about Ludoat linebacker. Jalen Suggs was the safety yesterday. He would be all over the floor. Yeah. Everywhere. So much hustle.

Palo, the shot making, the decisiveness, the best case scenario out of everybody. If they play like that for the next, I don't know, Whatever. They play like that. They are winning this series. It's a real series. Yeah. Mo, I want you to get into

specifically what you saw in this game. But first, like, big picture before you get into exactly what happened in this game, this team is in a fascinating point right now. The fact that they've been so disappointing,

the fact they lost their defensive intensity to define them in recent years, the fact that they traded four first-on-picks to get Desmond Bain, and we never got to see that idealized version of why we all thought they could be a top-three seed because they were injured non-stop.

Most of the time when a team goes through that type of thing and only has 210 minutes the starting five all season that in those minutes are good, but it's 210 minutes. Most time it's just not your year. It's a lost season. You almost never see a team go through that level of injuries, get Franz back before the playoff start, and immediately somehow on the fly when it matters most, find the perfect

version of themselves. Unpressing as word used earlier, that's the perfect version. This is exactly what we thought we'd see from them in a time in which most people should and did assume they would never see that. And now what's happening just like on the fly, figuring it out. Outrageous. Yeah, I agree. it's for the first time ever this year.

Well, it happened in bits and pieces scrimatically through spurts through Frans injuries, Jalen Suggs, and Paula and Carroll being in and out the lineup earlier in the year or two. We finally seeing it all together. It feels like there's so many moving pieces. Paulo's still like coming into his own

and finding himself. Franz, he had his own little moment multiple times in these last two games but the specific in this game versus the Pissons. He wanted on his own little like 10-0 run down the stretch in the fourth quarter. Jailen Suggs, like you said, right? he's just like chaotic and he's one of the most probably like the most disruptive guard in the

entire league when it comes as defensive presence and how we just so flex and versatile all ends very much like a safety to what you said bra and all this being said if you look at this game they didn't out shoot the pistons they both only hit like 10 threes the pistons also like got to the line way more than the then the Orlando magic they just flat out like annihilated them defensively and what i what i saw was jemal mosley do what he is specifically great at, which is annihilating the opposing teams big all the fucking time. That's exactly what he did with Jailendorne. And he took him out of the game and exposed literally like all of his weaknesses.

Dude, in the second half of this game, he had, he finished the game with eight points. In the second half of this game, he only took, I believe, like one shot. Yeah. That's ridiculous. And is that Jaron's weaknesses? So you're right. They masterclass in game planning for this Pistons offense. My takeaway wasn't they exposed Jail and Duren's weaknesses.

My takeaway is they exposed exactly what everybody predicted would have. happen all year to this Pistons offense that they would run these pick and rolls with Cade and Dern that worked all season. Teams were collapsing on that, send lots of galapult towards Cade, make it very difficult, collapse on the roll every single time so Duren can't catch the ball and say, these corner shooters will have to beat me. Tobias Harris missed six straight threes. Assar Thompson obviously isn't a shooter. All these defenders I have out there couldn't stay on the floor. You mentioned they had Franz Wagner getting a 10-0 run in that game. That's one the main things I wrote down. At the end of the third query going to the fourth, J.B. Bickerstaff rolled

out of lineup of Janice Jenkins, Kate Cunning. him, Duncan Robinson, Tobias Harris, and Jalen Dern. Because the shooting was so bad. They were collapsing on Dern, like I said. He said, okay, we're going to put our shooters out there and pray we can get something offensively going because otherwise we're getting bogged down that's not working. It was okay. But that's their worst defensive lineup possible on their roster, and they got paint-mashed.

Ronn's Wagner every single time running down there, two bear for Jonas Jenkins. Same thing with Paolo. They were paint-mashed them every time. You saw the real vision of having these two big wings that there's no team in the NBA that has two big bodies that can take up that type of space besides like the Celtics or the thunder that's such a mismatch and the pistons had to choose between that are they going to have the offensive lineup that can't keep up sizewise or put the defenders out there that the shooting is an issue and now Jalen Dern can't keep going this game was really interesting because I feel like

the the way that the way that the pistons came out for them one being in the playoffs last year and then being the number one seed and being the more physical team you know through a majority of the games they felt very very frazzled like they like they like Like they just weren't expecting this level of intensity. Like they didn't know what what they were going to get to after their first action didn't go their way. And that they didn't have, they didn't have a lot of counters. And so like I'm looking at,

I'm looking at the Pistons and very much on, you know, must win game two vibes. Of course. Yeah. Type of vibes. Because I, if Danish Jenkins is not going to go crazy,

I don't know where this office. is going to is going to happen. Yeah. We've been saying for literally two years that they need somebody else to, to create for them. And if that, if that doesn't happen, if Cade is scoring 39 and you're still minus 10 in the,

in the minutes that he's off the floor, then, yo, everybody else is going to have to have the games of their lives. And for the magic, yo, I'm pissed off. Because why can you play like this on this?

You know, like I'm so mad because we came out after the first playing game and we're like, yo, they suck, Paolo doing this and this. And just everybody was just all over the magic saying how bad that they were. And then they had these two games

where they lock in. And this is exactly what everybody thought nine months ago when we were picking you to be the three seed in the East of Conference, went for the game, do all this stuff. If you guys could just play like this all the time, we wouldn't have to go through this back and forth. I'm sure the whiplash of being a magic fan right now

on the internet must be so hilarious. Because I'm sure if you go on any reply section of any tweet, it's straight rage from magic fans being like all that shit you was talking shut the fuck up I don't want to hear anything about your praising palin out which of course they should react the way they're magic fans and they're up now after hearing all the slander

but there's a reason that the downs of the magic gets so much vitriol because a special breed in which they shit their pants sometimes is so unbelievably frustrating when you see things like this you've never seen feces like this you're never talking like this the strain the color all of it is just unprecedented it's just blue

oh god damn we've got some liberty to use Orlando Blue because It's so freshing and the down games when the offense is so stagnant because of the way they operate with Palo and Franz that when you see games like this, that was a perfect basketball game from Palo Ben Carroll. Defensively, he was good. The energy was good. He was making his jumpers like he always does in the playoffs now. He might be the one true playoff riser. I think there's something to do with his struggles that are clearly mental that it's so real clearly that he responds to adversity so well.

Like even that last playing game. Dude, you can see a look at his fucking eyes. The difference, whatever he has, the game's like it's the Sixers where he's slow, hesitant, is clear. clearly in his mind about his own weaknesses and fucking up the flow of the offense versus when he's just going beast mode, like his last two games. Like, I don't know what it is. He has some type of mental battle that when the pressure comes on, he blacks out and just makes every jump shot because he's not thinking about his technique or something.

His spider flight is just off the, off the track. It's crazy. It's like the blind side. Like, he should be an offensive tackle. It's crazy. And like, I think most of the time playoff risers is an overblown thing that like we just call someone that when they have like a good shooting week. This is real as fuck with Palo because we've seen it in the regular season when he

has rough stretches. He says the right thing. comes out, isn't a good mental framework and is dominant is assertive driving to the rim. The jumpers are more fluid. They go in more. There's something about him that he gets in his own head. And when he finds a way to overcome that and just plays smoothly without overthinking, he's a different guy.

If he could do this every single, not even every game, that'd be crazy. But if he can do this for consistent stretches of the season without 30 games of being horrible, we would never have a single complaint about him. This would be a clear superstar player. For the record, for the record, are we back on the Palo train? So what does that mean? Define being on the Palo train? I think we were kind of off of it,

specifically going to the playoffs. Do you believe, like, it's fine to build around him? I can't live like this right now. So I will make that decision in the off season. I'm off. I'm off for this season, and I'm just watching whatever happens happens.

I'm not going to make any big declarations about if Palo is that guy or is not that guy at this point. if he finishes this series and he keeps doing everything that he's doing, you know what? Yeah. You continue to have... You'll be wrong.

Yeah. You continue to have the label of Playoff riser that everybody has already given you for the last two years. I will say also you can't build around a guy who's only a playoff riser where we need to see some regular season's success. Like we can't only be the eight seed and go crazy.

Yeah. But he did it for like four years. And how many rings do they get out of it? It's a tough existence. They had two finals appearance. Exactly. I think the magic will be happy with two finals. Well, yeah.

Well, that's like the best case version possible. And it's tough life. Yeah. But last episode, I said I'm no longer going to be going into next year being optimistic about a top 10 leap coming. I've always, I said that every year I say next year is the year. I said I'm done with that. You're going to have to prove it to me. I'll stand on that.

I'm no longer going to be like, I said that last week. I have to stand on it. But if he's playing like this, like I have no problem saying they might win the series. If he goes band for band with Cade, I don't know. I don't know. Exactly. We said you got to prove it to us. Yeah, he's going to prove it.

He's going to prove it. He's going to prove it. He's going to prove it. He's going to be happy to say I'm wrong. It's so funny because the way we're talking right now to the blind listener who didn't see any game who didn't see the game and for someone who didn't see any stats at all

so you would think he put up like 35 hitting 8 no he just had 23 points and 9 rebounds of course he played very good basketball he played very decisive basketball he didn't settle for too many threes I think he took like four threes maybe one of them was like a bad four shot or whatever outside of that everything was

within the flow of the offense he played very like normal standard All-Star Paula Bancarro basketball. We're not asking him to be like Hercules at all. And for the construction of this team right now, I think it's very clear that they're not, they know that he's not that necessarily. And so the entire offense feels like it's evolved

in front of our fucking eyes as a whole, you know? Yeah, and that's a fantastic point because I don't want him to drop 40 every night. I don't care about that. Like, if he has a spike game, this is his spike games. He has his low games. I want to see the process to be good.

I want to see the decisiveness. The way to continue to loop in the Hornets game where they completely just up and down the roster bitch the hornets physically in that game he knew nobody on this team has a size to match up with me same thing on the pistons as great as sars is as great as ron holland is these guys are much smaller than him and when he's dominating assertively driving with force and finishing over guys drawing fouls

getting these guys into foul trouble different type of player like that's i need to see process not scoring explosions yeah yeah when you're six nine two fifty that's a lot to handle he might be more than that he might be 610 280 he might be 611 3504 when he's going he's He looks like a thousand pounds. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.

Oh, my goodness. Also, we said last week that under no circumstances would Jamal Mosul be brought back. If they win this series, it's he brought back. That's the funniest part I talk about now. Let's say they win it versus winning this series or going further. What's the line? When do we, what's the funny outcome where they have to keep them? I think, I think they have, if you upset the Detroit Pistons.

Goes a long way. Who damn near won 60 games this year. And if you make it a competitive second round season. I think you got to bring him back. I feel like you got to bring it back. Because if they win this, if they win this series, they're getting to the conference finals. Because the, the caps.

I don't know. That's guarantee. The cabs are, that stuff. I don't know. I don't know. Fair. But I think that's a worthy point because we didn't like. The run now is this is going to be the hardest part to get to the conference finals

and have this like long playoff run and have a body of work that can save your job. This is the hardest part of it is beating the Pistons. You've gone in in game one. You've gotten home court advantage. Now you have to handle business the rest of the way. And again, it's an overreacting episode. The Pistons can very much still come back, play Detroit Pistons basketball. Jane and Duren can be much, much better.

And they can win this series. As of right now, though, it does feel different. But if the magic go through, they win this, then James Hardin had the James Hardin series, Donovan Mitchell, just slightly more inefficient, 18 and 8, all those combinations come together and you beat the, you beat the Cavs. I will say, I don't know,

that's the part of that. I don't know that we can, I don't know what the takeaway is that the Orlando Magic are just, so I said earlier, this feels like the best case version of themselves. But also, if they do, if they do this for four straight games,

then, or not four straight, but if they, yeah, if they do this for the series, then it is like, oh, you guys have genuinely flipped the switch. Sure. And now it's a different conversation going into the Cavs series as opposed to, oh, like,

compared to where we were a week ago. Yeah. And that will be part of it, right, that this team did. Flip the switch is the phrase people are using. I think figured it out is a better phrase that like we said, they were injured all year.

Somehow they figured out in the moment they had to look themselves in the mirror and say it's do or die or living and go home if you lose his hornets team. They figured out on the fly and that's unusual, but understandable, right?

Great to see for them. I also think part of it is that they are just the perfect worst case scenario matchup for the Pistons specifically. 100%. I don't know if that applies to them being so amazing

as the calves because the calves have crazy size, they have Evan Mowgli and they have Jared Allen can do a little bit more against Franz and Jared Allen drives. Well, they do a lot of small guards too, so maybe not. Maybe that's another problem that we'll figure out. But the Pistons, you know, they're the bully ball team, they're the team that doesn't have the greatest offensive talent, but they make do because they're a dominant transition,

forced turnovers, get out running, obviously highly tough in the half court defensively. And this is the one team that's bigger, faster, stronger than them. And now that they're healthy, the talent is like, there's no real difference in offensive talent. In fact, that Magic might have more offensive talent. So they kind of are like, it's a fake eight seed because they were so injured all year that if they're going to play like what we knew they could be one healthy, this is just kind of a nightmare for the Pissons. Yeah, you're right. Again, like if I was to blindfold someone who ran them off the street, kidnap them, tell him we'll sit down and watch this basketball game.

Who looks like the better team who looks like the number one seed? Both these teams don't look like number one seed necessarily at all. You're right. Like talent wise, they look each other. Yeah, exactly. It feels like a four or five matchup. And that's more so like a blight on the Pissons because, you know, everyone did clamor for them over the last. seven or so months to make a move and they look like a team who's offensively look like a

team whose biggest move was Kevin Herder. That's exactly what it was. He was like a, I don't know, fourth or fifth best player on the team. Not even. Not even. He was the worst shooters in the league this year actually. He was utterly useless all year. Yeah, but specifically for this game, like he was like the fourth or fifth best player or something like that. So with that being said, for the Orlando Magic, bro, something that always goes like, this skates pass by and no one really cares because he's just like he's Wendell Carter Jr. But him specifically in this game when he's engaged, okay, one of this is, yeah, he won the match.

Hold on. Look, looking for it. One of my most annoying like archetype big is in the league is guys like him and Inecoa Cone at times. Those are like no purpose bigs. What do you do bigs? Like I see you, you're there, but like what do you do? What is your purpose?

Wendell Carter last night played with so much purpose. was so engaged he was boxing the fuck out of jalen durin and he was in every right position why are you shaking your head no he's nodding oh okay okay okay okay okay no he's co-signing he's okay yeah but he was but he was like literally in every right position possible contesting every shot offensively he hit he hit a lot of time he shots i think it was like some crazy like eight for nine or whatever and you don't necessarily expect that from every single night but what he did defensively and also just like taking advantage he had to He's Daniel Dealinger when it comes to his ball watching abilities and him just like not

necessarily paying attention to what's going around all over the court. Just more so looking at the ball for like 15 straight seconds and letting whatever happened by him blow. That's amazing. And he's someone who will not get as much credit for this win. And I'm not going to say he's the main reason for this one. But he's easily like a top three factor for him. Yeah, no, for sure.

And we talked about offensively. I think it was mostly the lack of shooting allowed the magic to easily take Jern out of the game by just helping on him on the drive. saying you're not going to touch the ball, shooters beat us. They couldn't. Defensively, they were picking on Dern like crazy with his off ball defense.

They were putting Pallow on a like, like a deep dunker spot side post position and having him just simply read Duren. If Duren helps on the drive because he knows the post defender can't defend him, he's lobbing it up to Window Carter, hitting the dump off, or he's scoring one-on-one

because Dern doesn't help fast enough. That specific action from the side post-ups nuked Dern all night. He was horrible defending that. Back after, back-up to back-to-back-to-back cut. There's one lobby through to one- Carter over him and I was like, dude, what are you doing?

He's just standing there in no man's land. And that's why people look at it and say, damn, if we got to pay you a supermax money, that's tough. Also, I do feel like they need to do better job allowing him to make up for that value offensively, do some higher pick and rolls, get him the ball in space, let him ball handle a little more, have him catched up higher and able to make a play other short role, he's pretty good at that. But if you're going to be able to be a non-shooting big that gets marginalized as

a role man because your shooters aren't good enough around you, you are not giving that value back defensively, so that's tough. They are in trouble. They're in trouble. And that's a takeaway before we move on next series. They're in trouble. Both sides. The pistons are showing the weaknesses.

We'll see if they bounce back. It's only one game. Magic are seeming like don't get, don't overreact. It feels like it might be that team that figured out the right time and has that run in them this year. You're in trouble.

Very much so. I'm very excited, honestly. Like, even as somebody who's been so pessimistic by the magic, that those games are exciting. Dude, we were talking about we wanted to see them get their backs rupture to get some like that.

We did not want to see them at all. Like, they were not fun at all. They weren't fun at all. That's crazy. Yeah. And now they're so fun. Like this is a different team that we was out two weeks ago. This is what we talked about in September,

hoping we'd see what Desmond Bay being added. That's hilarious. Man. Bro, Kobe White was going crazy and you're like, Kobe White saved the playoffs. And now we're actually going to have an interesting like 1-8 matchup. And I don't even feel bad about us. Like, oh, we were wrong.

We shouldn't have been hard. We should have been hard. That Sixers game was so bad. And the fact that they completely 1-80, like I feel like jubilation about the surprise and how wrong we were. Yeah. I feel like when it comes to Apollo, I haven't seen someone so.

down or collective as us as like a base so down on a player since like Ben Simmons brother those are the low levels or those are the conversations or left hand jane brown in 22 that's how badly paulo was going to slain that was the fun time that's no it wasn't really off really slowly turned it around and the most funniest part was whatever we had the whole like i'm over this palo thing last week i remember there's a point where i was like i'm doing a lot about one game i was like maybe it's one game no it's not one back and you were like no it's not was not overreacting. Keep hating.

And I was like, all right, fuck him. Because at that time, it wasn't just, no, I agree. That was the energy in the air. It was like, don't give him a break. Don't try to be measured. Say you hate this guy. And I was like, bet.

Everyone had the spirit of Stephen Smith and them about Palo three days ago. And now he looks incredible. He's on watch, man. He's on watch. I hope they keep this up. I hope we don't come back on Thursday. And they got their backspling out in game two.

He does this all the time. I'm about to say. I wouldn't be shocked. We come back, Palos shoots like 5 for 22. There's a like day. Yeah. But again,

again, like I said, I do buy that when the going and gets stuff, he gets mental clarity and plays well. Yeah. I'm kind of in there.

Like, okay, maybe this is what he's going to be. Playoff Riser. He might be the one true playoff rous in your league. I don't think there's any more. That's crazy.

Besides, like, maybe Alex Caruso, he locks him. That's like a veteran effort thing. Jamal Murray? I guess, but like we saw this year, he can do that regular season.

he just had the times where he's playing himself into shape and that was kind of a thing that he might just be like a demon regardless now. Who else like is a true

playoff riser? True playoff riser. Because a lot of times it's exaggerated. It's like this guy had one hot shooting series. Jimmy typically but he's out right now.

Yes Jimmy. Jimmy is like that. Yeah and that's what it is. It's like processors that they can get I think you have to be you have like some physical virtues that can't be schemed against

which Pablo being gigantic. Jimmy also being assertive like that being a good processor in those moments where you need to like just have one-on-one advantages Like, stuff like that more than someone just makes a lot of threes. But also, Palo just choose 40% from three in the playoffs.

So that's also part of it. If you do that in the regular season. Demon. Yeah. Super Palo, man. Super Palo. Let's go to the next series. Lakers versus Rockets.

This game happened. Series came into it. None of us had any excitement about the series outside of like, oh, it's going to be fun to see LeBron for Saution to Hoops and some like novel way. Yeah, fan fiction. Like, it'll be cute and fun to see this version of his story. It's unfortunate he has to do it. But maybe it'll surprise.

us in a swift five-game victory for the line of men for the Houston Rockets. And then Kevin Durant bumps knees with the teammates on Wednesday before the first game. Oh, that. Misses game one. As soon as he's had multiple,

he's had a couple moments like this where he had one in Phoenix where he, he was shooting around and landed on his ankle, twisted his ankle in warm-ups coming down from a jump shot, and then he missed the game. And then he has this where he, he bumped the knee and then missed game one.

And this one more so than in Phoenix, which is like three years ago. But even then, both of them, you're 34 and up. You're just old and I. You just can't do this anymore. That was really, really tough seeing him go out. So he misses game one with a knee contusion. And I made okay says Kevin Durant's injury is deeper than just pain. Pain tolerance is one thing, but limited movement is a bigger issue.

So it seems like it's not even a like he could have played through it, which was a game seven. He was out there, tried to go through the warms, couldn't move the same and miss this game. TBD on what that becomes. They hope it's day to day, but if he misses game two, nobody would be surprised by the language they used. And without him,

this Houston Rockets team we just saw was basically last year's team without three of their best shooters in the starting lineup. It was just a bunch of guys that could not play offense at all without Kevin Durant. It was a truly disgusting showing

from a team that's in the playoffs. Even with injuries being understood that you're going to be worse, it was absolutely abysmal offense that they lost. The fact that they had a chance to lose this Lakers team and did this Lakers team

with this less talent. absolutely embarrassing from the non-C Kevin Durant Houston Rockets. I'm thinking about a tweet that I've seen. It's a man Thompson being open gym doing capphrases. Capricks. Just hello catfraps on that too. And that's what it felt like. Even one of my favorite tweets all weekend long because it's true.

They can't shoot for anything. And when you don't have Kevin Durant and it's legitimately, Alper and Shang-goon, please save us hoops, you are not going to do anything offensively. And for this team, for the Rockets to be in the situation that they are, where your, your number one strength of offensive rebounding,

that's taken off the board, your second best hope of creating good offense. Let's have a very solid veteran point guard. I haven't had that for a year. Let's have our young draft pick, our young player, you know, who could do some stuff with the ball. Let's try to make him a point guard.

guard doesn't work. Let's put the other guy that we had at point guard. He's a little small. He can shoot. He could do some things at offense. Not going to work to the extent. They have run out of options. Oh, I forgot. Emey Dukkah, can we coach some good offense? Not going to do that for you. We go down the list, down the list. I have no idea if we're like, so for the Rockets, the two things that are working in their favor is one, there's a lot of days in between games for this first round, specifically for this series. So Katie is going to have a lot more time before game two.

So there's that. Also, you can shoot him up with whatever horse tranquilizer, moose tranquilizer that you need to get him ready to play. Those two things are working in your favor to get him back for game two. If he is not there, game two is tomorrow. They better shoot that shit up today. What the fuck? Listen, they played on Saturday.

Yeah, they're lucky game to do this today. Wow. We got an extra day. Yeah. Look at this chart of the score leads. Look how much purple is there. The Rockets led for a fucking half a minute in the middle of the game. They led by a bucket each time.

They led by a bucket. This was wire-to-wire domination. And when we talked about the series, none of us had any hope for Lakers to be able to win the series. Pre-Kevindran injury, right? But I was like maybe to go five or six, surprisingly, because I think J.J. Reddick is a much better tactician than I'm Udoka. Like, it's levels in terms of their tactician abilities there.

Figured they would see some good mucking-up defensive strategies with some exotic zones and gimmick defenses with the right double teams off of shooters and all this stuff that JJ Redick typically does well, they did it. But now there's no Kevin Durant. So it just resulted in JJ Redick making them look absolutely stupid. It looked like they've never played basketball in their lives

because JJ Reddick successfully employed all the strategies. Also one thing I said that Rocket fans weren't happy with is that I feel perfectly okay with DeAndre Adon and LeBron James guarding Alper and Shangoon down there. That DeAndre Adon has his flaws defensively, one-on-one post-overage against, like, I don't know, how do you describe Alper and Shing Gros? in offense, like throwing elbows and throwing up contested layups that don't go in a lot. Sure.

Yeah, that's not exactly. That isn't a strike fear in my heart in terms of exposing Dionne's worst traits. Now, Alpern Schengen will still have the good games, of course, but I felt okay-ish about Aiton and LeBron having the strength to bang with him down low and make the shooters beat you. That went well. We talked about Luke Knard, having the ability to play some point guard lately and then putting the ball in his hands more to create. My God, did he create? The game was life. Everything went right for the Lakers in the macro sense.

but overall they didn't even play a great game. They still turn the ball over way too much. They still got out-athleted. They still had lost possession battle. Like, it wasn't best case in everybody means, but it was proof of concept and all the important ways we saw. Yeah, you're right.

Like with the way we're talking, you would think that the Rockets hit like five, threes all game, turned the ball over with their sloppy offense. No, the Lakers actually had like 18 turnovers to the Houston Rockets 13. They also hit one more three than the Lakers as well. Like, that just goes to show how nasty

of an offense that the Houston Rockets have and how bad the process is and how monkey, monkey every single play is, bro. Like, there's the only thing, monkey has offense. No, you say that too. You say that too. I don't know what that means. I've never been more tired of a coach

than I mean, you dope, bro. The only things that he has for you as a coach is literally looking at you and calling the three a bitch. They're called players. How monkey thinks guys. that's a that's a that's a Freudian slip i've ever heard one that wasn't an accident by your brain no lucky what are you think that brief shepherd was out there that was a

this little booby all over again Freudian slipped the word that you really were thinking pops out oh labooby yeah i forget about that but yeah all my i'm i dooka has like where you is to sit down and call the referee a bitch and he was like hey i got 10 minutes of the worst shooter on the goddamn court for you whether it be like j sean tate playing Josha Koki a little bit more. That's all he got. This is bad. I mean, he took his only half time.

The adjustments are you a bitch? Yeah. That's all he does. That's all he does. Bro. The jokes after this were hilarious because they were also saying that after he does this, he thinks that he's Phil Jackson. He's like, ooh, I cooked.

Yeah. It's, they are in such a bad place because, bro, Tart East and, didn't miss a shot. Cooked. They didn't score 100 points. Yeah. So the question is, obviously,

offense got bogged down. They still showed up defensively and you still saw those advantages, like you said, with the turnover battles and the fact that the Lakers turned the ball over too many times, right? Offence was so bad, it didn't matter.

Is Kevin Durant coming off of a knee contusion that he'll play again, but I don't know if it would affect them or not? Yes, it's better. It's better. Is it enough? Like, do you feel like the Lakers now? Do you have you seen enough

the Lakers have a chance in your mind, even with Kevin Randback? Man, I've been filled that way. You did. Name back music. It didn't even fit at all. I just wanted to hit that button. You just press a button?

I love the game. 100% I saw it coming from a mile away. To your credit, though. LeBron James was as focused and I'm locked in as I have seen in years. He was staring. Rudy Hutchmore down. It was crazy. The intensity that you saw from LeBron from the moment the game started was something that in a, in his,

In a series against a team that struggles offensively, his ability to still set everybody up is still top tier. And you can do it enough. And that's also another benefit, just like the Rockets have a couple, like have an extra day to get KD ready. You have another day for LeBron to get to get right, to get rested. If he's playing like that, and obviously, Luke and Ard almost scoring 30 points is wild. But that combination of those two things, it does give the Lakers an opportunity to go up to, in this series, especially if KD doesn't play in game two. And if they go to 2-0, that means it's going to be

a long series regardless. Room for Luca to come back? Hold on. I don't know, man. I still don't know if I want him to, but... Yeah, would you want him to? I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I don't know what's going on. I don't... If it's not like, he's clearly going to be okay, I've never an athlete to rush back from injury and have a Tyre's Halliburne's situation, so I'm not rooting for it.

I'd rather than lose than Luca re-injure his hamstring and have a carry over next year. Yeah. But if they're up too O... This is exactly how I felt about Tatum, by the way. If you get to go, man, you good to go. Who am I to say? I'm not in the locker. If you're not, though. 2.0.

Listen, you go up 2.0, you defend home court. Then let's say Houston comes back home. They do what they do. It's 2-2. Now you're in a game 5 situation. It's been two weeks. And Luca walks in and he's ready to drop 30. And LeBron's like, yo, thank you.

Good. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. The other thing is, I don't know, like, what's Luca going to look like after missing all that time? He's a rhythm-based player. He might come back and shoot tour dates a little bit. So better than I having him

But like it would worry Me that people would expect him to come in And just like oh, series a save, we got it I can imagine him being extremely rusty And extremely not 100% with the hamstring still So maybe I would rather him just Chill Maybe if they make the second round come back

But don't force it Maybe I'd rather have that happen. Nah, you're not making a second round without him I agree. That's why I'm not too worried about honestly Yeah Maybe Maybe Well it depends what happens to Kevin Drew?

The shooting for the Rockets is a legitimate problem And they have been able to, they've been able to get out of these situations throughout the year because they've had Kevin Durant. And if Shangoon is not going to play at this otherworldly level, at this, he legitimately has to be Yokic. There's no more baby Yokin. If they want to win this series without Kevin Durant,

he's going to have to play like that. Because Jabari Smith shot three for nine, I think he'll be, I think he'll shoot better. But you go up and down that rock. and the lineups that they can put together around Shangoon, what are we getting out of here? We're getting a men Thompson. We're getting Tarii.

If Tarii, also he went seven for seven, two for two from three. It's not like he's not like he's killing you from beyond the art. So you still have Tari, you still have a man. If Jabari just plays regular, we'll see how Ritchie holds up, Josh Akogi. Like, they don't have a lot of good options for shooters around them. Yeah. It can get even spookier. They might score 85 points in game two.

can get bad. Yeah. So I am worried about them. That's been my concern with the Rockets all along because I understand they added pieces to put them in more

win now situations. But at the end of the day, a lot of their success depends on that young core. And the reality is compared to all the other teams with younger cores, they have been the most

disappointing to me. Definitely. And also like the win now players, they added to the three most important ones are out for the year. So it's like,

now you really got to depend on that young core and they just, the pieces aren't ready. Yeah, they're just not ready. That's a lot. That's a lot already. But then also, too, when it comes to the young core, like, everyone just realizing for, like, everyone knew the flaws of guys like Shangoon.

We've talked about it for years. Of course, everyone and men will tell you about his flaws itself as a player, you know. But all this stuff together, we would think and I would hope would like intertwine. But then when you start to lose certain guys, like, of course, Katie makes every single conversation hard. Steve News and Steve Adams is tough shit. Of course, everybody's stuff, tough shit too. but you would have hoped that like some of these young guys would be able to like

claw some things together but they just don't have the necessary and sensory skills to work together at all. Yeah, I don't even so good criticizing it shouldn't get anymore. She's beating a dead horse. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just, it's tough. We just got to accept it. This one, this one is dies as fault. Also, it's very funny. I just, I looked at the boxboard. The Rockies took 33-3s as a team. Reed Sheper had 14. Shit.

I didn't know he had 14. I knew we took a lot. So, in this in this situation your three-point shooting is literally going to live and die with reed shepherd and how well he can and how well he can elevate also he may doka did a fucking horrible job attacking the weak defenders of the lakers what the fuck was he doing the fact that amen thompson did not abuse luke canard the fact that amen thomas amen thompson didn't like attack the small guys left and right the fact that they could survive and luke canard and rea hoshamore out there

at the same time neither of them getting attacked like absolute dog sure optimization of your talent I mean he made okay the game to adjustment hey bro go do him up this is the biggest like coaching gap that we're gonna see the first and I believe I don't think there's any I think he's the worst coach in the playoffs right now to speak okay the worst at least the worst schematic coach like obviously he has his benefits to him like there's a reason he wins a lot of games but you need schematics in the playoffs you can't just culture your way to deep runs unless you have this step curry and kevin around your team they're not in the playoffs exactly yeah I'm like unless you have

superstar, all-time, great team. If you're not going to culture your way to being these teams in the modern NBA, where everybody's good, everybody's smart, you've got to find a way to get a leg up, especially when you have some deficiencies. He hasn't shown any reason to be optimistic about that. Like, what do they do when they're offence, like in their meetings when they talk about offense?

Like, he'd just be like, Shangoo, you got to get that. Shangu, you got to hit that. Amen, jump higher, man. Like, what do you? What's like the conductives? Like, what's happening? He's like.

Lebrons over there. He thinks you're a bitch. Are you a bitch? Let me know. So he's saying This is the pathway for him To become like the next-gen Doc Rivers

That's so tough He's even worse He's gonna be living off Of a finals appearance Not even a ring At least Doc got a ring I really hate culture coaches Like we just talked about

J.Bickerstaff And this piss and this Pistons too We didn't even talk about it Also was not on shit In that game Got out coach Bud Jerome Osley These culture coaches man

It's tough in the playoffs Sometimes Tough tough And all these culture coaches Have no shooters Because they say I need culture guys I need defenders

You can't get both because our teams were money laundering before them and it's much easier to get the culture guys but then eventually then the front office has to step in and be like okay actually we're going to get you some shooters at least in the Rockets case they went out and got KD

yeah and of course Piston said no we're okay they sound their hands I got a Danis Jenkins to your contract take it 2015 Hawks little key's on the table yeah let's go on to

let's do a lightning round of some of the easy series are now. Seventyxers versus Celtics. This was complete belt to ask for a full 48 minutes. What do you expect? They have no droll and bead. They have Tyrese maxi overmatch by one of the most disciplined guard defensive teams in the NBA. They couldn't hit a jump shot to save their lives. And what do you know? Celtics are going to hit some goddamn jump shots. Pure decimation. Yeah, this might be sweet, man. Oh, it should 100% be it. Yeah, they shouldn't get a game. Listen, Paul George looks solid. Sure. Look decent.

There's not much to say without Joel and Bede there. Like they just literally have no chance talent-wise. I will also say Nick Nurse was also sitting on his fucking hands in his game.

Yeah. The amount of vanilla-ass defenses they ran against the most genius schematic team in the NBA was baffling to me. The way that they were, they just allowed the Celtics

to have the best spacing I've ever seen and just run Jalen Brown off of screens for wide open drives every single time. And they did no type of gap help, no type of zone defense

to mix in, no type of anything, no shutting off driving lanes and making you shoot and like doing anything at all, it was just nonstop open drives to the rim because Nick Nurse just allowed the Celtics to do whatever they wanted.

What's that, what's that Shaq meme where they're like, it's a new, it's a new movie where it's like, fuck it, we're getting fired anyways. He just, I don't know what he does anyone these days at all. Him in. The spacing was crazy. That was the best space I've ever seen. I mean, but it is the Celtics.

It was tough. They don't have anybody. Sure, sure. But it's like, they didn't do anything that give themselves a leg up defensively. Like offensively, like I said, they have nobody defensively. They truly just played into the Celtics hand.

and did the most, like I said, vanilla defense I've ever seen. You got slutted out. Where you want me? They said, where you want me? The entire time. It's just so bad. Where you want me? Right, your bet.

That is how it felt like, she was so easy. There was no help at the room at all. Jaylon Brown was just going. Would you say that you are kinky? It's not about me this time. Kinky Moe. Did you feel some type of way?

I said, did you feel some type of way that the Sixers fans were, Channing, we want Boston? Did you feel personally disrespected? Oh, no, I was laughing the whole time. That's a joke. That's a joke. And Bede said it himself. This is not a rivalry.

If your best player is saying that, what are you doing as a fan? Come on, man. Yep, yep. Yeah, it should be a swift war games. Again, I said this several times in the show. Just get this nasty feeling in my stomach. that the Southwark City won the finals. Yeah, man.

I'm just more interested. An amazing feeling in my. Every time I watch it, I'm like, they're just so ahead of everybody. Yeah, I think it's going to happen. I think it's going to happen. And with the way Tatum's been looking, man, talked about it, like, how we close up the season, this first game of the playoffs.

Top five is up for discussion. If his jump shot is falling, that's always been his, like, the thing. The thing that people knock him in the playoffs is his jump shot does not fall in the playoffs. And that is falling? And everything else doesn't seem like is lacking for O'Fro, even pre-Aquillies.

Dangerous talks. I think we're in the midst of watching one of the greatest regular, not regular season, but like calendar year runs from a team I've ever seen. And the rebuild, to the coaching, to the GMing, to the recovery of their star player, to the stepping up of Jalen Brown, taking on a 1A, 1B role.

It's a legendary year right now. I want to see them in the play in the finals so bad. I'm almost certain you will. Yeah. I feel, well, unless the match you have something for us. I don't know, but I'm almost certain you will. next lightning round game that's very very easy to talk about San Antonio Spurs versus Portland Trailblazers

A lot of opinions about predictions pre the series were Cute oh maybe it'll go six games the trailblazers are really figuring it out Denny had a crazy playing game playing really well Maybe the Spurs will get some wrenches on at them And a little win a couple Man, Wembe just fucking Why the shit he pulled out for them biblical He decimated him

He was just trying stuff Honestly he was There was one thing three-pointer. I think it was a, I don't know if it was an out-of-bounds pass or what, but he just came flying through the left corner and just took it no trouble just fading. I'm like, what the fuck? He was shooting his ass off. He's eight two, taking, taking fate, taking fading corner threes. He's going behind the back spinning Duncan from the free throw line. The, the funniest, the funniest move that he had was one that he didn't even finish where he, he very clearly

was just doing way too much and they ended up falling down. I felt hard as shit. Yeah. But he was at a point where he was like, oh, no, I'm out here to embarrass everybody. I'm trying everything in my dribble package. I'm trying every shot that's possible. And he went on a run to start this, to start his playoff career, start this run, it was as good as possible. Bro, I turned that TV on. I saw the fiesta colors.

I saw the shirt. Beautiful, man. I saw how Locked in Wembe was. They did the drum afterwards. It brought me the tears, man. I was hyped up. It was beautiful. There was one play where he got fouled and fell.

Oh, you got hit in the face on. he like did some like spinning finish got like whacked twice and he went back to the frito line do shoot his M1 and he was like grimacing and then I forgot who's on the call was it Reggie Miller? Yeah. He was like you can see that's from his training with the Shalind Monks show no emotion don't let

your enemy see that you are down. All right. All right building up the moment. I was like yeah we're glazing today. We're glazing today. We're glazing the nose that's because the monks. Look at this man. That's beautiful. I really can't wait for a conference finals with Spurs, Thunder, we go back and forth.

T-shirt for T-shirt contest. Dave Robinson and Tim Duncan were at the game. Everybody just felt the moment. It felt big. There was maybe like a two-second moment where it was like, okay, Blazers are here. Start the third quarter when they came back. Yeah, they had a 9-0 run.

They're here. They're going to make this respectable. And then the Spurs are like, all right, like, relax. Yeah, they hit 3-3s and 9-0 run. And it was like, oh, two-point lead. And immediately two more won't be dunks. Two more might be 30s. It was over.

Bro, I'm telling you, there's something. think 2016-ish about this year man 2016ish a lot of parallels I said the thunder are the warriors the spurs are the thunder back then okay calves are the Celtics I don't know get the fuck out of here

I don't know that's where you're losing I think there's nothing similar about the calves in the Celtics come on now they got nothing I like outside of them being on the other side of the bracket and they could win but there's nothing like the story is completely different okay man roll the ball out roll the fallout logic no the Celtics can win the finals

I just don't know if it would be in a very similar way to the 2016 cab Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Let me have this one. Okay, fuck it. You're right. Click. But yeah, on our last episode, I saw a couple of Trouble Rogers' comments where they were like,

you can tell they don't watch the games by their talk about the Trilblazer series because we gave it like no mind. There's no mind to give it. How are they going to score consistently on a Wemblee defense with the shooting they have and the ball handling they have? They just can't. So I'd scoot Henderson, man, 18 points. So, that's all I got for you. That's all I'm looking for. Salute.

Yeah, salute. Like, they're just, it's a weird little in between. year where they're here in the final in the playoffs with this band of misfits they still have jeremy grant they have old drew holiday they have all these guys that are around but when you you face a real demon like the spurs there's not much a cute story can do yeah but so the showbizs for getting here next series uh thunder versus sons another absolute bloodbath where it was such a bloodbath the only thing people had to talk about on twitter was the fact that shea shot a tour date and i think it's quite hilarious now that we're three years into the playoffs every single year

at the Thunder, come into this playoff run with the one seed, and they sweep a terrible eight seed, right? But every single time, Shea shoots like shit and refuses to have good percentages, tanks his playoff efficiency every year in the first round because he just cannot perform well against shitters. And it's hilarious. He just misses jumpers every time against the bad teams.

I was watching now, like, listen, man, these narratives, yeah. At a certain point, they're just starting to become a fact. And it's like, it's only the first round every year. He did against, remember last year two of the Grizzlies, they beat the hell out of them. There's one game they'll be like 40. She didn't shoot well, the whole series.

Something about it. I don't know if it's a time off. I don't know if it's like a mental thing. His switch isn't flipped. He's being too passive to playmaking, not focused on his jump shot. He misses every jumper in the first round. I mean, he took 18 shots. I think he's focused on his jump shot.

He's missing him. Yeah, I don't think it's the two passive. It really is interesting because I have no idea what it is. Yeah. But this series was not interesting at all. I knew that we all knew that Phoenix was going to get demolished. Dylan Brooks, hit the hell out of Chet, Hungan, in the face

on one fight. I was like, damn. Outside of that, let's wrap this up. Yeah, pretty much, man. The only interesting thing in this series, I guess, similar to the Boston Celtics is I'm just trying to see how healthy J.W. will get and he's ramping up. And he looks good, not good as ever,

but he looks really good, man, so far. And it also looks really interesting. The sons are a fucking tiny team, and Chet looked like Willet in the first quarter. The amount of rebounds he can get over these guys and just all these second chance points they had, like the Sun's done of a chance. Suns fans are clamoring for them to play Rashirmore

and they're pissed to Jordan not for not giving them a chance because they need the size. I don't think he's your savior. I think they're just way too small of a team to hang with the double bigs of the Thunder. I mean, you lose about 35. Everybody's getting to play now. Yeah, you know what?

We're trying everything. If Mark Williams is here, they might not lose about 35, maybe 32. Man, she's still getting dealt regardless, man. That of a field day with Mark Williams' defense. But, yeah, I mean, the one thing to watch is is the shape pattern going to continue? where he's a horrible score in the first round from the field

for no fucking reason and then they play the good teams in the second and third round and he's back to being Shea. We'll see. If anything, it's good. Again, we're just going to frame this through the thunder because it's all what matters.

Jordan is a very good defensive coach and they're doing a really good job and getting the ball out of Shea's hands. Part of the reason he shot poorly outside of just missing jumpers was same thing as always. They throw a lot of gap help with him, make him pass the ball.

He lives in the mid-range, lives with these tough shots. That's a hard life in the playoffs when you have smart defensive coaches trying to hard to take that away from you and make you pass the ball. then you got to force it because you understand I had to get shots up on the superstar

leads to difficult shots that's why he can't he's never going to have a 67% shooting in the playoffs this is some good reps before you get to the second round where I promise you Adam will do the exact same thing he did it last year that's why he went to seven if I was the sons fans I'd be so mad why he just said good reps

we just out here at practice he's legit good reps against a tough defensive coach good Sunday morning runs you know I feel good let's see if Jado can have a good three point shooting season of a series Let's let Chad continue to crash the boards do well

And let's get Shay get some reps against playoff defenses before the second round All right What's the next series? Next series Alluding to that we just alluded to with Adelman Denver Nuggets versus Minnesota Timberwolves This is one that many people thought would be the most interesting of the first round Since it's the third time these teams have played each other

Split it 1-1 Last time we saw it, the wolves famously upset the Nuggets in the 2024 season And now we're back with the vengeance Two teams that had the weaknesses coming into the playoffs the Denver Nuggets can't defend anybody. The Timberwolves are coming in with the worst vibes in the playoffs. Anthony Edwards with a knee injury.

Julius Randall can't shoot the past two months. Should have been a back and forth, very exciting series. And the first game, I felt pretty confident. The Nuggets are going to win the series. Pretty handily. Okay, so I agree. Well. I'm going to say handily.

I mean like a confident six games. Okay. I had Nuggets in seven. It might be in four. Ooh. Okay, so you really agree. You were super agree with what I just said. Only for the reason of...

Go pod, man. If I have to watch Julius Randall, who's like what we saw on Saturday continuously, we will have a problem. This will be... If he plays like that, that was some of the most disgusting basketball that we've seen in a long time. And I think a big part of, oh, the wolves can make this interesting is the fact that you have a dude. You have a combination. There were times Rudy Gaubert was actually out here hooping offensively, was legitimately doing.

It was a great Rudy game all around. He was doing really, really good things. He had a little bit too much dip on his chip sometimes with some of the passes that he was trying to make. But in terms of still being a connected player, finishing layups, all of that was very, very good for Rudy Gaubert. He played as well as you can ask for. Julius Randall is the one where his three,

and I know that he finished seven for 16, it looks good. it felt like eight for 32 it felt so much worse the three-point shots that he was taking the assertiveness the the inability to to score on actual tough matchups if aaron gordon is on him yeah that's clint we're just i'm going down the other side if they don't have him playing at a high level i then i don't have any faith in the in the timel wolves making this an actual series yeah like seeing the offensive movement and just how the ball just felt really like it had like just glue all over it. Lack of movement just really is dumb

fouls and just a whole lot of like lack of dazical shit specifically happening in the second half in the second half of the game. Another name too and some of those who like I said before time and time again he's a fan favorite for all the right reasons. He's super flashy. He's so big. He moves different. He's Twitchy has handled all that. Nazreid when he has a

bad game it's fucking horrible. It's a terrible experience because when the shot is not following what else is he doing? He's not rebounding necessarily he's being big, but big for what reason? You know? It's like, what is what is he doing on the court that's adding to your team? It's not much. Yep. Yeah, I just think that there's

very little advantages the Timberwolves have over the Nuggets. And I think we're in the pre series conversation. I think it was a lot of hosting off 2024, like this is the same team. Very different. Yeah. I think one, Anthony Edwards also wasn't healthy. And that was clear that he doesn't have the same effort there. Jokic's backline help defense wasn't particularly good. And it couldn't fully take advantage

of it like he can when he's 100%. So that hurt you. Denver did a lot to expose the guard play of them outside of the Advantage. They did a lot of double teaming and trapping of their guards on picking rolls, pre-helping off the corner to slip down to the roll man and leave a corner shooter open because they know Iyo de Sumu is not doing a corner to skip past like Luke Dodgajage. We knew we can go and close off the role man, double team the ball handler and then scrammed back to the corner on time because you're not going to have the passing talent to expose us there. They went under on like every single screen and forced I.O. into off the triple threes. They know you're not going to beat us with that from Iowa and Julie's Randall and everyone else or my calling at this stage.

That's super hard to get over when Julius Randall was in his shots and can't take over with the ball in his hands. If those guys on the other side aren't going to have the juice and are easy to expose in that way, tough sledding. On the other side, 2024, Jay McDaniels locked him all right up. Yeah. He didn't lock him up this game. Nope. Nope. Yeah.

Again, this is one of those things where I believe right before the playoffs started along with the Orlando Magic, I did say, I want to see the Denver Nuggets to send the Minnesota Timberwell spiraling. Like, I don't have hate for them as a team. But when it comes to, like, the very frustrating thing that's been holding them back for the next, for the last, like, two, two and a half years just the lack of point guard play. I don't want to see them walk into the same offseason with Julius Randall again. I don't want to seem a part of this team because it's like, okay, like, we know this is going nowhere. We know Julius Randall was more so in my mind, like how we talk about a football bar.

He's the bridge fucking power forward right now. We know you're not the end-all bill. There has to be a next move like after you. I need to see that move happen like a lot sooner, specifically in the next month and a half, two months than later. Yeah, I don't see it. And again, they can bounce back. Maybe it finds a way to produce even with the knee stuff.

And Julie Randall's better shooting. Because he had some moments too. It had some moments, especially going downhill. Some moments is a key phrase though. No what you said before. No, you said our predictions. He needs average 32. Yeah.

He didn't have 32 moments. 32, 8 and 8. Yeah. The bar is a lot higher than they have some moments. He needs to be dominance. Which is insanely tough. And that's why for him, he's looking around. It's like, can anybody help me?

And Julie Turner's like, I know. I don't really have anything for you. Yeah. Yeah. I think they can still. So it's not going to be a sweep. I think that Minnesota still can get a game or two. Yeah, at home.

But because even in this game, the nature in which this game played out of like, Minnesota jumps out pretty early. You can see moments, and that also was early in the game whenever an ant was healthy, and you really saw him be able to attack double teams, drive towards the basket, really used his athleticism when he was actually fresh. They got out pretty early,

and you could see the pieces of why you thought that Minnesota could compete with them, and then you saw the swings from Denver. And that's kind of what I thought in terms of, you know, when it's going to be good for one team, is going to be very, very good and when it's going to be bad for another, it's going to be very, very bad. I just think, like, the consistency, which is basically what we've been saying for the two wolves

for three years is that they are not a consistent team. And whether or not they perform to a level really just kind of depends on the day and depends on the series. Yeah, I agree. I think this is going to still be like a healthy six games. If we went five, I would be shocked. So I think it would be healthy six games. Jamal Murray, like, arguably the best three-point shooter outside of Steph Curry and I guess

Colin in the Mello ball this past year. Like he went 0 for 8, you know. No one really shot well from three outside of maybe like Christian Brown. Well, who else were like? No. I'm sorry. Because you said the best shooter and then you named like five of the people.

I was laughing at the fact that Conno Lamello went out like fucking whims. It's sad, man. But they didn't even like this wasn't like a necessarily. This didn't feel like a dominant win. I can see this going to six still. Yeah, it didn't feel like a dominant win because I think in their first quarter. they're super rusty. The Nuggets,

like you saw the rest play out. That's why I didn't like focus on that too much because I think they just need to get their feet under them. But also the Denver defense will never be good for this whole playoff run. So if you can figure out your offense, you can enter shootouts with this team. Now, do I think you can beat the Nuggets and shootouts?

Probably not. They're the Nuggets. But you can do better job tightening up your offense, you can keep these games close because that Wolves, that Denver Nuggets defense will never get consistent stops if you're clicking on your end.

What's the next series? Next series. Raptors versus Cavs. man was this a snooze fest what's the next series man was this a snoo fest Amanda quick he didn't play and they just had no hope

of having enough shooting on that end damn it Emmanuel quickly didn't play oh man rats doesn't matter a lot though they didn't have the shooting

but defensively they just weren't good enough the raptors weren't good of defensive makeup for it they the Cleveland just did whatever they wanted It was a Cleveland Cavaliers master class offensively.

They did whatever they wanted. Yeah. They have so much to do back on the board. Jakapurl, man. Oh my God. He's horrible. He's the oldest 30 year old I've ever seen in my life. Brutal, bro.

He moves like he's 40. When they made the move to like trade for him, it was like puzzling because they gave up something like pretty substantial. I believe it was like a pick or something. It was a first time pick. Yeah, which is like, what the fuck? Like, we understand he's like, he was a solid player. But it's like, what the fuck at the end of the day?

They gave up Carter Bryant for him. And then immediately. extending him to all that money. He's like, hey, yo, like, who the fuck do they think he is? You was on board with it. On board with it? No, the fuck I was not. You signed off on the extension.

I did not do that. You know like I was there. No, you called it in Toronto Radio and you co-signed it. What though? I am never. But you actually, like, you were hating on it the same way that you are right. No, I hated it. No, he didn't like the contract.

It was terrible. He loves Yaakov and he was like, he's a good player, but. Yeah. I was in my little battle with him, like, just a strictly hate. He was fed sitting because he liked Yaakov and knew it was a bad deal. Now we don't got to pretend

Jacob was worth it. So it's just a bad deal. It's been a bad deal. Yeah. Understood for sure. You were in the room when they signed it. You act like I went ahead and negotiated his dollars.

You did. I wish he did. He was on OVO radio. Exactly. Yeah. Brandon Ingram only didn't have enough shots. They talked about it in the second half. He said the ball moved.

They took out of my hands. But I got to have more than one shot. It's a little interesting commentary for the game. But he's right. They didn't get the ball in his hands enough. It's just tough. Like, they just don't match up well with this team at all.

It's a hard to envision a path towards the Raptors having enough juice on either side of the court. To me feel good about them. RJ Barrett, leading score 24 points. I told you, you'd be important. I know. He's the one guy that can abuse physically those small guards. That's what I said. All right, let's see.

Maybe he looked good. Also, Scotty Barnes came out, was knocking down threes pretty early. That is, that is something where if quickly comes back, they can't, again, I don't think the Raptors are going to win the series. But if quickly does come back, they can. They can't hang with them. The caps have 52 points in the paint. It's a lot. Jesus.

They can't. They can hang. Dude, y'allel pro doesn't do shit in the paint at all. Jesus. What the fuck? It was his purpose, man. I have him always look really good. He looked fantastic.

It's a score that, like, I know we're always going to hate on him forever. But, like, he is a tough existence playing next to two high usage guards and next to a true non-shooting big. He did a very good job with that role of being this guy that has to move in space, do this weird back-down angles, throwing your hips around to find these. low driving angles. Like, he did a very good job in that role of this game. Let me, let me ask out,

do y'all feel any better about the Cavs as a whole? No. I've always felt decent about them. I'm not like out on the Cavs. Better? No. I feel like,

especially after how that Detroit game went to, I got them going to the conference finals. That's not crazy. That's not crazy to me. I think the conference finals is when the lights are going to get too bright. But up until then,

I do think they have a certain level of urgency that the other team just, they're not going to play with. Yeah. I don't think it's crazy. I think they, the Pistons magic and Cabs could all get there.

I think they all have very real arguments for matchups. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I don't even hate some because it's James Hardin. But like, I haven't been like out on the Cavs necessarily. It's also not hate. But it can be understandable hate. It doesn't make it not hate.

No, it's just. Justification doesn't make it not hate. It's just real. If I say I want you to die because you did something bad, I still want you to die and it still hate. Nah. No. It's just real.

But also, I don't. Some hates real. It's a different conversation. Go pot. What do you hope? You can get some hate it. It still hates. I hate some motherfuckers in this NBA league that it's justifiable.

I still hate Miles Bridges. It still exists. Fair. They, uh, yeah, I just, I'm, the Cavs, like, the Raptors are not a serious opponent at this point in time. So them beating up on them is not going to make me feel like, oh, yeah. the Cavs are actually a title contender. RJ Barrett led you in scoring yesterday. You're not like that's not a.

Yeah. In 2026, like that's kind of wild. And no Emmanuel quickly. Man. It doesn't matter a lot, which is funny. They need Emmanuel quickly badly to get that shooting. Bad. Yeah, whatever.

Last series, let's get to do the T3 Bowl, saving the best for last. Knicks versus Hawks. You guys take it away. What did you see? see in your rivalry bowl? I felt we lost, of course. Really? Yeah, dummy.

It was a good game. It wasn't like he beat us by 30 or 20 or nothing like that. Just a decisive 10. Yeah, it was cool, you know? Like, Jeline Brunson had a good game. It was cool. He had like 19 points in the first quarter. I think he proceeded to score like eight for the rest of the game.

Boring three towns. Good player, you know. Everyone else played really well. Lock. Lock everybody up. Who? Cat. Okay, he blocked a couple

Nickyla Alexander Walker shots. I like it. He blocked a couple. Good defensive game. I like it from him. I feel good about where the Hawks are at right now. And of course, like the bench is a real issue. You know, like everyone's... You feel good about what with that right now? In terms of winning the series?

In terms of like, being, putting the best product out there. Okay. In the process of it. Like, this wasn't a disgusting... He's talking about looking respectable. Y'all are cooked. Y'all are cooked. Nah. Nah. Nah. Those bench linups were crazy. What the fuck was crazy. Yeah, the bench lineups are fucking atrocious.

Like, that is. a real blight on her team but listen man a couple things swing our way and I think it's gonna be we're just a hair behind behind them right now we should lose the series he put our Ries chaise jay Gabe Vincent yeah he's gonna go all at once all did Mo Gay these four bench lines right here there's four bench players in the screen Rishishishay played those two minutes all four those two minutes all four the guys were on the court yeah what the fuck was dude I don't know what's wrong with Quinn he beat too this is what I'd be saying about Quinn he's he's had a little running like he's had things I've been trending up for him but

come on man like I'll just like this stuff like this be talking about. Rishishish, he's like, worse than bad. It was crazy. I texted you in the GM. I was like, don't think I didn't see those two Rishishay missed layups. He just smoked two in a row for no reason.

I didn't realize he was to play two minutes. It's like, dude, you felt those two minutes hard. He was trying really hard, man. He was like, fuck that. I'm going up on Mr. Robinson again. He said, I'm not missing. He missed terribly the second time.

Oh, man, that was bad. And then he airballed, like, he forced some two points. He airballed. It was bad, man. Bad two minutes. I don't even know why he, like, just got thrown into the wolves, man, when clearly, like,

Cory Kisper was favored throughout the entirety of the second season, the second half of the Euro room. So it's like, I don't even know why he played. Corey Kisper is not your savior. Man, Klaminga,

it was rough minutes. He played with good sides and shit. He played good defensively, but yeah, man. No threes off that bench in those four players. It's rough. Jail Johnson played well.

I hated what I seen defensively from. It could have been bad. It could have been worse. I think overall, I feel decent. It could have been way bad. It's not like a terrible, like, first showing for, like, a new franchise guy at all. Yeah, but the playmaking, dealing with the aggressive schemes of the Knicks also wasn't great. Like, as you expect, you know, we talked about the fact that Jaylon Johnson's first time seeing these type of coverages and having Dyson down was next to him and the deficiencies that come with the spacing of those two.

Like, you felt the effects of that, that the Knicks did a really good job exposing the spacing of them. Yeah, fine defensive game for the Knicks, in my opinion. Like this is great. This is great from them. I feel good. One, he probably shouldn't feel good. Two, I do have to apologize.

You act like we lost by 25. What do you mean? Relax. Two, I do have to apologize to Julius Randall. He just said, Richard said, did have the worst stretch. He played two minutes. And it was the worst stretch of basketball that we've seen.

He played 120 seconds. What do you mean? The entire weekend. In terms of, listen in terms of bad play per second efficiency off the charts off the charts for Rueisha Shay

that was that was crazy two or not two three talk about a lot of playoff rises McKell Bridges defensive playoff rising it's here defensive that makes sense

because the way the coasts he goes hard in the regular season he really he really does but what he was able to do against Nikiel Alexander Walker and that combination of Nikkeel Alexander Walker

and Jalen Jal and Jal and Jal Johnson and both of them stepping up and both of them being very good offensively was one of the reasons why I was like, okay, maybe the Hawks can't get this and make it very, very interesting. If you neutralize Nikolaio Alexander Walker and you put even more pressure on Jalen Johnson to be this offensive creator and one-on-one, you know, roll the ball out, go create for absolutely everybody every single time, you are going to get the result that you want more often than not as a Knicks player, as a Knicks fan. And that happened. Kat, it took Kat, it took Kat, a while to get going offensively.

Once he got going, the floodgates were open. You mentioned Taylor Brothers didn't even have a great last three quarters. Whatever. Again, efficiency did all his work in the first quarter. It's light. You know what it is. And so that combination of everything, I feel very, very good about what the Knicks showed in game one,

where they can go from here. And I mean, it should be, again, this should be five games. From the jump, this should be a five game series. If the Knicks do not play with their food, which they play with their food very, very often, this will be six games. But it should be a five game series.

Yeah. I liked a lot seeing how they really utilize the Jalen Brown and Carlin Towns Actions on and off ball. Off ball, they did such a good job running those two off of each other, all the screens. The Hawkshutter really aggressively defend it and try to not allow any jump shots off of it because they know Jalen Brunson coming off of a screen

is walking a jump shot every time. So they went aggressive, led to nonstop backdoor cuts. Jalen Johnson specifically was giving up slips nonstop all the time. Anytime a guard set a screened or did anything. There was one action that they ran on the right wing, I remember, where they did that. And they tried to aggressively defend it to not get let Jalen Brunson catch the ball. Kat slips out to the right corner, open three. So tough to guard that.

And that's what we talked about last year was that they didn't do enough with those two together, really maximizing Kat's offensive value. Much better job than this game. If the Knicks are doing what they should be doing, then I think this should be like a five game series. I don't believe in that necessarily though. So listen, like we're going, when is game two? Is it tonight?

Tonight. Yeah, tonight. And I think the Hawks could come away with this, but we need to kill Alexander Walker to actually like be more, not sometimes bro, like it's brutal. He forces shit a lot of the time just like drives into the paint with not necessarily the best, the best plan. In hindsight.

In hindsight. Yeah. Probably should have been kind of predicted. that Nicola was under Walker with Truggle on ball with this new role first time of here the deficiency. It's the first time for a lot of players here. Yeah, probably should have been predictable that he dropped a little bit. Also,

the fact that I know whenever you start going to Hackamich, you're desperate as hell. You're desperate as hell. I see it. You did it last year. You're doing it now. I understand. Also, too, your man, CJ, tell him to keep talking.

Tell him to keep doing it. Dude, Jill Brunson is like, come on. He kicked. Come on now, man. He very clearly kicked Jalen Brunson in the nuts. And then afterwards he was like, yeah, Jalen Brunson thought that we were at a Broadway show. That was funny.

You kicked him in the nuts and you're mad could you lost? Keep talking to Jay McCullough. You're getting attacked every single time, every time in the blender. Listen, man. All the day. All day. This is what Jalen Brunson does. You're getting posted up by a guy who's two inches shorter than you.

This is what Brunson does though. And he's getting buckets every time. This is what Brunson does. He's known for him for him. this. So I get it. You're right. It goes it goes both ways. He is known for this. He also did sell. He was, he was on like rent on Broadway. He did, he did sell

it. He'd be, he'd be doing too much. He's known for you. It's good. I like it. Right now. Let me kick you in the nuts. And let me see how you are. This is what Brunson has done to your mind. Right now. He influenced you to walk around society and keep people. Okay, let's say he says yes. What are you going to get up and kick him?

Do you say yes? What is wrong with you? I'm just, I'm just saying. That's a very hard hit to take. But let me throw you a kidney shot real quick. It's a hard hit to take. What is wrong with him? C.J. McCullough was talking like, like Benham Brunson.

He was talking as if he didn't do the thing. He did the thing. He sold it a little bit harder, though, than it should have been sold. He got kicked in the nuts. That's a hard hit. What do you mean? Let me switch in music. It's a man.

Let me see how you like it. It wasn't that bad. If I jump on the chair right now, RKO you. Just let it be known that Donovan is currently going to war for Jailen Brunson's sack and saying he needs to be respected and not getting it. No, I'm going against. He hit it plenty hard.

He should have reacted that way. C.J. McCollum did more acting in the insane. Oh, yeah, Jailen Brunson was acting. They're doing, you're doing more in this sense than what Jalen Brunson did. And then he was like, oh, I can't wait to get my $2,500 back. Yeah, go ahead. You're not getting that back. He probably shouldn't have said that.

I agree with you. But when it comes to act. Because now, finally, I'm not giving you that money back. Come on now. Do you know who's he's getting that money back? What the fuck?

He's plugged in. What the hell? He's getting that money back. Come on now. So yeah, probably should be the comfortable Nicky's calling,

man. That's crazy. I told you guys would stream if there's a game seven. We're not streaming. We're not streaming. Balls will be kicked. I will remember this.

Testicles will be in danger. I teach y'all to know that. The president has been said. No stream, just nutshots. It was, yeah, it was crazy, though. Lancy Shamet didn't even shoot well. Josh Hart only took one three. That's what I'm saying.

It was a good loss by the Hawks. Like, it's not like you guys. Good loss. We're talking about respectability, politics. We're talking about just showing face. Listen, man. You think it was a good loss for the Hawks?

Yeah. It wasn't like a disastrous loss, but I don't know if I'd say it was good. What did CJ shoot? No loss is good at the eyes out, obviously. But for a team that's like, clearly made a late season surge and in my estimation

when you trade your franchise player and you completely like you can when you do that you completely recalibate the entire expectation of your team what doing what dope I don't know yeah like bro he's been gone for months now

I shouldn't be here right now I'm in the playoffs as the fucking what fifth sixth seed right now I shouldn't be here I feel good we got like this home this cashed me bro like as a hawk fan talk to me in june when i have a top four pick i don't care tell them to guard you how about that i don't give a damn bro i just want bro listen i just want my top four pick

i'm going to roll the ball out man roll the ball out right now tell him to push you up like jaylon brunson i'll step on you see how that i'm gonna let you know what this right now relax foot on your chest You got one more time. Relax. Fucking CJ, let's do it. Relax. Because I've been Kikiin. Yeah, how ha-ha.

For you right now. Let's throw it down. Let's tone it down. We can do that. You kick y'all. You can get involved with that. We can get involved with that. We don't want to get involved.

That's the thing. I'm letting know. We don't want to get involved. CJ, please. Go off a war and violent actions for your players. I'll do anything for CJ. We'll call him at this very moment. What?

Anything. You do anything? Okay, first of all, first of all, you can lightly support C. C.J. McCall and be happy he's playing well. To say I'll do anything for C.J. Like, he's a franchise legend. You got to slow down. You're a hawk.

I'd do anything for you. That's just how it goes through me. Do you anything from O'Kee? Yeah. What do you mean? Especially him. You do anything for Corey Kisper? He just got here.

So does he. Yeah, but he just got here and he doesn't really do much for my team. Okay. Yeah. Not yet. I do respect that. I do. I do respect that.

I do somebody, listen, my captain. Whatever we got to do, Can't I'm man I wouldn't do a damn thing for Jerry Vanderbilt I wouldn't do shit Yeah we're talking about good players we're talking about the leaders of our team Cedricone McColl is the leaders oh yes he he legitimately is fair yeah yeah yeah He said that about Mo Gaye though Exactly so it's not just the leader Mokey's different like like he a locker room guy

locker room guy a hometown you know what I'm saying like oh he's from Senegal oh oh like close to my country yeah You told him. I thought he was like No, he's definitely not from Atlanta, bro what? I don't know But you are

Yeah So I thought maybe you said It's a same situation God God No So you are I don't know man

Yeah I'm just Spawned at Atlanta man All right So right now This is going Five games

Six Six. I'm saying six too All right Yeah I'm saying six Okay If it's five Is it's one

After tonight You guys are tonight? I think we should get tonight. Yeah. Tonight. I think I have $40 in my fan door right now. I'm putting everything on the next. Everything? Putting everything.

I'm unloading the clips. I think I have like $80 my fan door. I put it on next. All right. I'm loading the clips. The $40 clip, by the way. Clips weak as hell. He said that like it was a bad.

She had a nerve gun. I respect water gun. That's it. There's everything I have. Yeah. We took some losses. So does I play in moderation here?

100%. I don't have a bad habit. Yesterday you said you said to slip that you were like, let's go. Man me $20. Yeah. Yeah. And for love of the games where you should like that could. What did you win 20 off of?

Just Spurs cover, one B scored 20, quick little. Easy prolet. Okay. Something's like. I won 100. Did? Yeah. Doing what?

What was it? Tatum over on his rebounds and assists, under on Vucevic points. You know, and under on Andre Drummond points. Actually, I can't respect that. It's a,

one is a respect, one is it not respect. Respect to you for taking an under because not a lot of people do that. No respect for betting an under against somebody on your own team. Yeah, it was a tough watch.

Because I was like, yo, Vooch, we up by 20. Come on. Keep missing. Keep missing. That's so, yeah. That's very nasty.

You saw Andre Drummond points. What was the point line for Andre Drummond? It's like six and a half. Yeah. That's not, that's not respect to. That's funny. Hey, man,

I know what my guys are going to have stangers. And let me make some money off your stinkers. How about that? There you go. Now, with that being said, that is our reaction to every team's first game. Let's get over to our news of the week, fly through this doc.

First off, the NBA award finalists have been announced for DPI. Asar Thompson, Chet Holmgren and Victor Wemianyama. Yeah. Hope this one

will be announced today, I think. So by the time you hear this, it might already be announced. I wonder who's going to win this one. Any hope for Asar? Absolutely not. Most approved player,

Denny, Nikil, and Jalim Dern. I'm so sick of lottery. Thanks, man. And consider for this, but I guess it's the new world we live in today.

This awards a kill, though. Shout to him. Sixth man of the year. Hamay Hockas, Tim Hardaway and Kelden Johnson. I feel like no one's ever cared about six million of the year this year than any other year. I know. Yeah, there was no talk about it. Like, very little.

It's only if the player is like actively cool. I think we need like, it's true. I need some powerful media member that has a voice out there. I don't know if it's Bill Simmons. I don't know if it's anything but ESPN, Wynn horse, whoever. We need to start a movement to make this award much more interesting. Let's have to win this award. Why does it have to be the sparkles?

Okay. That's the least interesting angle. But like right now, it's always just like the spark plug score. on a decent team that plays a lot of minutes. It's so vanilla in the way we do it. Like, why can't Alice Caruso be in this running for six-man? Why can we expand it and make it more interesting? It literally always is the guy averaging 15 on a decent team that plays 28 minutes a game.

It's so bland. They got to have aura. I think you're right. But like these, where the fuck it's the aura? It's Kelton Johnson and Tim Ardoin. This isn't Jamal Crawford. No, that's what I'm saying. We don't care about it unless it is like a Jamal Crawford.

That's what I'm saying. Let's expand our horizon. That doesn't got to be a score every year. Like, why can't Mitchell Robinson be a six man of the year? one of the more valuable bench players. Okay. We need to nerdify this award a little more. Because at this point,

like, this is a boring-ass race. If we had some defensive players, some discourse, like, it could be a lot more interesting. I don't know how the hell that. I don't think that'll ever happen. It won't,

but we need somebody to make it happen. Because I also, like, I don't know why the hell won't ever happen. Like, why is this award the only one that hasn't progressed since 1995? Every other award is so much smarter besides this one.

I got us. You got us? I'll change the discourse next year. Thanks, man. I'm glad you got it somebody has to do it if Bill Simmons won't do it it's on you

I'll do it Thank God God save the day Stand up yes Be the hero we need And clutch player At the year Is Jamal Murray

Anthony Edwards And Shay And that's that's shit He's down He's seeking him We need to find a Should we did Get rid of clutch player

I don't I don't know Why they made it The first place No one cares Yeah everything Like, no one's ever, when you list off, like, accolades, it's always, like, dead last or probably not even mentioned at all.

Who won it last year? I don't know. I know Deer & Fox won it the first year, right? Mm-hmm. That was 2023. Oh, Brentson won it. I would take me three hours, remember Brentson? Yeah.

I completely, I haven't even thought about that award. And coached the year, we have J.B. Bickerstaff, Mitch Johnson, and Joe Mazzula. Shout to Mitch Johnson. I think obviously we knew Bickerstaff and Joe Mizzle would be the top two. Mitch Johnson getting in there in third place. Yeah, shout to him. This picture is also whack, man. Why are we all in just in black quarters, man?

Are you pro wearing the suits? I am because I think it would be... What the fuck? Listen, I 100%. What the fuck? He's just ambiguous looking all the time. He just looks ambiguous. He just squits all the time.

Like, he doesn't even know what he's thinking. Just... Yeah, he's stupid. Yeah, back to the quarter zips But yes, I am I am pro suit Because I think it would just It would It would have some level of like personality

On the sideline And even if we're not going suits Like I need We need some Every coach that should have a stylist or something So that we can have coaches out here Looking like at least like Don Staley or something That would be very cool

If they were looking like that Or had just a nice suit Instead of just a plain like quarter of it. Work of the year, obviously Cooper Flagg and Connipple. Third place, Vijay Edgecombe. Makes sense to me.

Makes sense to me. And last one, we have MVP. Notably, this is one that caused a little bit of ire. Nicole Okic, Sheigilded of Salisandar, and Victor Wenbanyama. No, Luca Donchish. He was deemed eligible, but

is clearly going to be fourth place in voting. Makes sense. No, Jalen Brown. We did it. We got them. Is Jailen Brown going to make first team? Are people going to vote him orcade? No, I think he was going to make second time.

I really don't know. Bro, I forgot who the announcer was last night. One of them was, like, so set on Jalen Brown making first team. He said it like four times during the broadcast. A lot of the former players on TVR for some reason. Yeah. Like, I think it was T-Mack early in the season, was like, that's the MVP. Yeah, yeah.

There was, like, someone four times during the game. Yeah, Jalen Brown's going to make all NBA first team. I need y'all to know that. It was probably J. Billisnell. Yeah, I think it was. He was on the call. Yeah. Yeah.

It was definitely. So, yeah, are you guys upset that Luca didn't get onto the final. over, I guess it would be Yokic's duplication. I can't be upset. The only person that I can, if Shay or Wembe weren't in the top three, then I would be like, okay, what are we doing here? But Luca and Yokic were my three and four. So any combination of those two, I'm fine with.

It all makes sense. Yeah, I think Luca was on the way to get in third, but then it got hurt. If you would have played the rest of the season and closed it out and had a little games played advantage over Yokic, I think you probably would have got it. But since it was neck and neck and they both played, I think it was 64 and 65. it's not really surprising that somebody would vote Yokic over Luka. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, Yokic averaged a triple double for the year, bro.

That's ridiculous. He led the league in assists. I think he leads the league in rebounding to some crazy. Dammer averages 30. Like, can't be mad at it at all. Yeah, I can't. I mean, some people are, you know, the people that are mad about it are saying that he's the league leading score on good efficiency and his team's the third seed.

Why wouldn't he be a top three finalist? But it's just the reality. There's four dominant players. Somebody has to be left off. It's a tough time to be alive at Luka. time to be a lie. Yeah. You're not going to win no MVs, man.

Not even with top three. Next story. I don't know if you guys remember this. Before the season started, it's kind of in the air that Steve Kurt is on the last year of his contract. Players in this team are old. Nobody want to talk about it. We up here we talked about a little bit.

Kind of felt like a last dance for the Warriors in some ways. It is unclear if Steve Curry is going to be the coach next year. Now the season is over for them. He says, I don't know what's going to happen. I still love coaching, but I get it. These jobs all have an expiration date. Sometimes it's time for new blood. He went on to say that he's in take a couple weeks to chill, recoup, separate from basketball,

then talk to Mike Dunleavy, talk to the owner, and see what the vision is for the next year. Do you want him back next year? I do. I think as long as, because they've clearly made the choice of, like, we went all in for Jimmy. But outside of that, it seems like they're kind of content. just writing this out with Steph. Once you make that decision, Steph and Steve Kerr should be the last two standing.

I think I would like to see Draymond in that mix. There was a lot of talk with Draymond moving on and him getting traded. And if we start next season and Draymond gets ejected in like two of the first 25 games or something like that, then I'll probably be like, all right, you might have to go. But two people from this like overall thing should be there whenever Seth retires. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with that, right?

A new Ramona Shelburne report came out this morning that they say if Kerr reports, the front office is expected to open a wider search that would include several external candidates, maybe even college coaches. She acknowledges that it would be an awkward situation, giving an inexperienced coach to the final years of Curry, Green, and Butler. But that implies that maybe there'll be more swooping changes and maybe, you know, some uncomfortable decisions will be made about this future and really present. Yeah. I would only want to see Kurt Kerr back if they're going to go ahead.

and make a massive trade this all season. If not, if he's not going to come back, then yeah, why not going to not necessarily change the whole entire team or whatever. But yeah, like, Dremont's up for grabs 100%. Because they're not going to, because would y'all be shot? I mean, if he moves on, then I would be shocked. But like, you get rid of Steve Kerr and, and like, Steph moves on. I would definitely be shocked.

At this point, yes. The Steph Lifer thing is clearly in the air. I mean, we really can't know, right? it would only be if he just decides that he wants to, but he's given us no indication that he wants to. So I guess the question would be if Kerr retires and they say we're going on an organizational reset, like this quote says,

that probably means trading Draymond, which I don't even know what you can get for Draymond at this point of his career. Like, is there even anything to be had? Yeah, I don't know. Is he on a bad contract? No, he's like making like 25 a year. He's just a very specific player that is getting older and fits with Curry.

I don't know. I mean, the Grizzlies won him a couple years ago, and he was still the same player. So maybe team will want him. Maybe he's getting something for him. I don't know if they mean something for Butler and like just rebuilding around Curry and he's just cool with that because he wants to retire there.

I just feel like if you're going to reset, like fully reset. And if not, ride it out with Curry and Kurt. Yeah. And if you write it out, you have to make sure that you're not going out like super, super sad or even just boring.

So I like I would bring Steve Kerr back and I'm signing Braun. Okay. Wow. And we're going to have Stefan Braun playing, depending on what happens with the Rocketeer, Katie, come on. Listen, he makes it if everything sounds so easy. I like the way you think, man.

Right? Me too. Yeah. He doesn't even know the salary cap exists. I'm not. No, man. And then after being that way, too. After that, we'll go trade for Yannis.

It'll be. I love the NBA 2K. Yeah, man. The NBA just completed. The best three-year attendance stretch ever. 22.18 million fans, 18,000 per game, 97% arena capacity, 11 teams with sellout seasons, third straight year hitting those marks.

Is the NBA dying? Man, that reading capacity is fake. Is it? Yes. Yes, it is fake. Explain. What do you mean? Watch any game.

Like, these arenas are not at 97% capacity very, very consistently. Well, they just mean the tickets are sold, right? Maybe some people don't come because they have season tickets and don't want to come that day or whatever. Or, like, you know, they buy to resell and don't sell. But as far as this report goes, I don't think that makes a difference for them, right? Tickets are sold regardless. Yeah, money made regardless. Yeah.

As far as audience interest goes, the tickets are sold. That's what the stats say, I guess. Do you sound a little dubious? I'm doubting these numbers, too. I ain't going to lie. 97% is. Listen, everybody, you know, everybody. every company caps a little bit about, you know, what it is.

They just signed this. They got to say shit like this. They just signed this deal too. Not that it necessarily like matters for these companies, but like Amazon and shit. But hey, sweeten things up a little bit. Yeah, I don't know about, I don't know anything about attendance numbers. Not going to lie to you. I have no idea.

I don't even know what's impressive. Like is 18,000 per game crazy? I don't even know. But I do think there is a lot of sky is falling at the NBA. Like, we've talked a lot about realistic complaints that we have around the state of the league. All these non-MBA fans are getting real comfortable with it now where they're act like every fucking thing is the sky is falling, the league's fucked, and it's so dramatic.

Like, there's, like I said, realistic problems that are real issues that need to be solved for the long-term health of the game. But you get some, like, Barstool fan that doesn't even watch the NBA, and you go look at their Twitter responses, it's all they think this shit is fucking going to fold next year. They just turn it into bots.

It's crazy. The bot-ass conversations around the state of the NBA is crazy. You would think all the players are going broke. I know. You would think that every game in the fucking NBA looks like a Pelicans game. There's no fan. It's the casual conversation is so dramatic.

I'm like, bro, it's fine. They just, they just hate the league so much. They just wait for it. I wonder why they hate this league compared to the rest of them. I wonder why. They're falling. It's over, yes. Just in.

Doc Rivers announces retirement. He went on the Bill Simmons podcast. And he said, yeah, I'm done. It's over. It's over. We did it. We did it. We did it.

If he's going to get hired again next year, what would be the most likely team? If this is it's, if this is, if this. turned out to be cap and he has a job next year who would you predict as a team the hires him? Some teams that's spiraling. Oh, hell.

They're too good for that. Dramal would never let that happen. Oh, oh, oh, oh. His daughter is a courage. The Knicks. Hey, man. You might be cooking with that one. Yeah.

Championship experience. You know, experience coach. Docs, Ron, KD. Come on. No, I'm talking about the Knicks. Oh, hell not.

he's in his own You know, he didn't hear that at all No Hell no You stay far away You stay far away You know what's kind of likely Actually funny enough

This is not me forcing this The amount of Hawksfire Quinn Snyder No we're too innovative for that You're innovative Yes Did you see every Do we have a whole new roster Within like fucking four months of the year

We would never do that We value flexibility No my bad My bad You do you right now I know Orlando Magic Bring him home Oh fuck

Bring him home Oh fuck We just say they end the blues in the series Dramos is he still gotta go Doesn't like Palo vice versa We need a veteran coach I get the most out of Palo Pancair Who's better than the doc

He's in Orlando You know old people like to go to Florida You're right they're retired there He can play all the golf he wants to In the offseason Might not be bad For the love of God Could be the move

Could be the move Could be the move. Could be the move. Sacramento kept their coach. So I can't say them. But man, it'd be a Sacramento-ass move to hire doggeries. In three years when the expansion team comes to- Seattle gets them.

Please. Would y'all want to see him on TV? Yeah. I'm sure he has, like, cool stories and insight. This voice is kind of shot, though. I don't know. That's why I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't a super huge fan when he was on the, on the call.

You thought you thought it was grading? Huh? You just thought it was grading to the year? Yeah, his voice is just very hoarse. Yeah, it sounds like it hurts for him, like, for real for real. Yeah, it's not as smooth, so I wasn't, I wasn't the biggest fan. Okay. Anthony Davis's doctor has never seen anything like the ligament damage he'd suffered

on his left hand per an interview with ABC News. The injury suffered in January, sideline Davis the remainder of the season. Davis now says, I'm progressing each and every day and can't wait to get back on the floor. Hey, man, you got to keep it. that to you. Yo, man, there's got to be some hippa violation

or something like that. I'll be so mad at my fucking doctor if you went out and told the world my business about how bad my injury is.

Bro, him and Christophe's doctors, man. Y'all need a... Man. I've never seen a hand this unbelievably fucked.

Next new story. Not really a new story but a funny tidbit. From crazy stats, NBA crazy stats, here are all the bad stat leaders in the NBA the categories

you don't want to belong to. or any of these shocking to you. Turnovers, league leaders, Jalen Brown. Makes sense. Makes total sense to me. Missed field goals,

Jalen Brown. He doesn't average a lot of turnovers at game though, right? Am I tripping? It's probably some correlation. But also high minutes, so I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Missed field goals is Tyre's Maxie and Jalen Brown. Damn, Jailin. Block shots so the office of players to get blocked, Jail Brown.

That's actually embarrassing. That's actually embarrassing. I don't know that on ball of slashing? Isn't the same as the off of all the off of Off ball, he's a demon at the room. On ball, it gets a little if he's sometimes. That's embarrassing. That should belong to the smaller players.

He always gets up at that. That's sad. Lost balls, which, is that different from turnovers? I don't know. Whatever that means, Palo Ben Carroll. Whatever they quantify that. Okay. Travels Jalen Johnson.

That's funny. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a little sense. Considering how high he dribbles the ball sometimes and how he can just like be uncreative here. Still going to use the dribbling more. Yeah. Back core violations of Anthony Edwards.

This is a very neat thing for him. It's them bad. the bad passes when people get trapped under the room and throw all the way back so Julius Randall This is a duly a step It's the only one we'll defend right now That's a dubious handle step

Three second violations Yokic Okay he's down there a lot Stepping out of bounds norm pal That got to be the most annoying one out of all these Things seem like running to the corners a lot All the movement they do He runs the corner and steps out

Goaltending is Kalilware Makes total sense Oh yes Makes total sense So many key plays in that horn game. Offensive fouls committed cat. Charges committed cat. Disqualifications

cat. Personal fouls, window Carter. Technical fouls Dylan Brooks and flagrance Rudy Gober. All that makes sense. Told you he was dirty. I'm actually surprised. I guess. By Rudy? Yeah. Same. That kind of just surprising surprising.

I don't really. Oh, no. Rudy'd be throwing his arms around willy-nilly. Like, it's a lot of like hits in the face. He's so long and like, strong that he accidentally swaps people in the face all the time okay yeah true trunk limbs the the other guys their their fouls are just or just louder probably because like anything can get upgraded to a flagrant one yeah so mostly hits the face yeah okay this is funny after the clippers lost in the playing tournament chris paul posted this to his IG story do he like this move i or listen

to zach lowe was like i think chris paul's not as funny as he thinks she is i don't like it Shut up. Do you like this for Chris Paul? No, this is hilarious. I didn't know he had this in his bag. I'm not going to lie. He's tapped him with meme culture. Okay, Chris.

Shout to Christmas. Keep in mind, this is a meme for like six years ago, though, so. Hey, still, it's. And he is still four years old. But it is one of the greater memes all the time. Longevity to it. For sure. He didn't even save the photo.

That's like a screenshot. Okay. No, you don't need the caption. He really wanted to get this off immediately. Pretty funny. And what an indictment? on the culture of the Los Angeles Clippers. Is your team goat, by the way?

Yeah, that's tough. That's tough, that's tough. What you have to do? They disrespect to you. Would you do this if you were Chris Paul? Yes. Bro, nobody showed up to my Halloween party. I hate y'all.

Wait, Ruth, I forget that was a thing, damn. That had me looking stupid out here. He was dressed up as a telotopy. Damn, by himself. The sole telotovie. Chris Dunn can't even pull up. Chris. Come on, man.

Yeah, that was rude. Tough. And that is the end of our new story for the day. Last thing we're going to do, we're going to play 20 questions. But we do it again like we did recently where you get no basketball questions, so it's harder, right? And you guys get 10 questions. 10? So you better deliberate and use those questions as well.

10 questions. Okay. I'll go first. You have 10 questions, no basketball questions to get the player I'm thinking of. No basketball questions. Okay. Woo. Beesles, you want to join in this too?

Yeah. 10 questions. You guys better be careful. We need as many brains in here as possible. We cannot sell any question. Every movement matters. Yeah. My brain's on.

All right. I would ask about maybe commercials because we got to know how just like the level of popularity that they're at. Okay. Are they in commercials? Is that the question? How can we phrase it to where it's like kind of specific? Are they regularly in commercials? Yeah.

Are you cool with that? Does you have motion? That's too vague. Yeah, because he could have emotion on Instagram. It doesn't have to be on commercials like that. It could be some, I don't know.

How influential is he? Because, you know, that kind of type of thing. But that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't need to know about his business ventures right now. Could we snipe the type of commercial this player's in? Like what? That's a lot. That's hard.

Insurance commercial. Specifically? No, I would just say commercial. Okay. Because the insurance commercials and the food commercials begin, everybody. Do. Okay. Do.

How about this? Can we act if he's been to act? Can we ask if he's been acting? Because movies are also thinking too. We're doing a lot for one question. You gotta have to though. Yeah, go ahead. Has this player acted before?

Acted before? Mm-hmm. Like in any movies? Like in a movie or show? Like acting? Movie show commercial. Yeah, so it's all acting. He's been to commercial.

Okay. That near it out a lot. See? There we go. I don't know. I honestly can't remember if he's been in a movie or show. Let me check real quick. You could, you could double it.

I don't think so. But you're 100% sure he's been in a commercial. Yeah, I'm 100% sure he's been in a commercial. All right. All right, so it's not Braun. Not Jordan. Wait, wait, Braun's never been in a commercial? Yeah, no, but I would know because he would know.

Because bronze's been in the movie and stuff. So, not Brown. Yeah, this player hasn't been any movies or shows that you would like know about. Taylor's been in the commercial. Seen him time and time again with the self-tatum. Oh, but so far. You guys are really indexing on these commercials or really? Would it be cheating if we ask if this person's actively working?

Or is that NBA related? we can say like I don't think it's in being really I don't think so it's like okay okay but I will say you don't got to focus on the commercials too much you can ask different questions I'm gonna I'm gonna so

statistically speaking I'm a I'm a discount that he's white and then I'm a disagree and then we have to figure out the skin tone oh I thought you came to that conclusion because of the commercial no

that I'm put white people in commercials I was about to say, God damn. Okay. So who's, which one of us three is going to be the bar? Listen, is he dark skin? Is he dark skin? Which one of us? No, give me a bar like you were going to say.

Is he, is he lighter than me? Yes, he's lying than you. Okay. Tatum's on the board. Okay. He's here. Now we ask if he's lighter than me. How much would that narrow it down?

That just forgets. Dirty water. I don't know. I can't see too good. Listen. Dirty water. He just called me dirty water. No, I mean, like, I can't see through that too quickly because it's like you, Tatum,

you John Brumson. It's like, I don't know, y'all the same complexion. Dirty water. It's like I can't see straight, you know? I know what you meant. It's not hilarious. He said dirty water. He said it's dirty water.

First and present. Him or Steph, who's lighter? Steph. Steff's lighter than B-Soles? sure now we're getting into like I know that's like I don't want to go that way we're getting no complexion difference here I don't know exactly dirty waters I can't I can't see that I can't okay there's players line there's two questions okay lighter than me they've been in commercials um eight questions left seven than a guess should we ask about maybe uh some some family history

here like whether their families also like are they a long line of their families work do they have a family? Like, I think, I think we should narrow this down by geography. Like, what region of the United States? Well, that could be it too. Are they international or not? That would narrow it down to DC. We can ask if their primary work is on, is east or,

is east or west of the Mississippi? Their primary work? Okay, that's a question. Yeah. Is their primary work east or west of the Mississippi? I don't know. What is primary work? Like, no, there.

Is their work office? East to west of the Mississippi. Well, they're in their heyday. Today or all. Right now. No, no, actually. Peak of their powers. Okay, we're getting a little.

I was just, I was just thinking of asking where did this person grow up, essentially. I think that would not. I don't know. Hometown's like that. I feel like we can get just slightly more specific. Do we want to cut that? Cut that question? Yeah, I don't know how to answer that without like getting to basketball.

So don't even use that one. All right. Is this player funny? Yes, he is actively funny. You will know him for being funny. Okay. Cool. Three questions.

Commercials, funny, and lighter than Donovan. I think I'm like him. Like Griffin here. Funny, lighter than Donovan. Blake Griffin. You still got, that's, you have six more questions before you got to guess. So you can keep narrowing down. Okay.

Blake Griffin's, I like the Blake Griffin. Yeah, six more questions to narrow down. I'm still pro the geography. question. We got a question. I want to know if this is, we need to figure out if it's a, if it's a current player or not. You got to ask you something like, did he grow up with a cell phone or something like that? Honestly. Did he watch you for it when it came out?

What? Did you watch you for it when it came out? It's crazy. Like, did this player grow up listening to music on cassette tapes? That's a good question. That's that. That'll tell us a lot. Did this player grow up listening to music on cassette tapes? Cassette tapes, that's old as fuck. I don't think so. Okay, he's not...

How old do you guys to be able to think cassette tapes? You gotta be like 45 by now. If that, like, maybe 50. Okay, so... 45, you said. I think he's clearly like 40 and below. So he's old, but he's not like... Yeah, cassette tape, you guys.

You got to have like... He doesn't have like... Active joint pains or anything like that. Still move a little bit. Again, I'm really thinking... When did CD's drop? Drop. Like 85?

I don't know. No, you still... Well, I don't know, actually. Drop this is a funny word. People were buying Illamatic on CD. It's already out by that. Because late 80s, I think you still had, you still had, like, cassette tapes. But they had widespread?

I think so. Did NWA drop on cassette tapes? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. I'm sure they had both at that time. Yeah, probably both. Was he in college when Moe Bamba dropped?

No. Nah, I don't think that. I think he wasted a question B. That's five questions. You know this guy's a little old. Okay. All you know down is he wasn't in college in 2018. Come on.

I was a bad question. Fuck. Shit. Mind you, players are in college for one year. Shit. Horrible question. So it's not Luca. I think we...

Well, he wasn't even in college. So he's lighter than you. He's lighter than me. so I'm assuming he's like That's real you listen you narrowed off Trey Young he could have been Trey Young or he's light skin Or yeah he's some type of mixture

We gotta figure out the Someone I hate overindexing on the rista But figuring out that hair texture Would be so great right now I don't know I don't know Do you over indexing on hair texture

I love you guys This guy Do you think this guy Hold on man I have to know, like, is he 14th or not? Mind you, I don't even fucking know what any of that means.

Is he one of the more attractive players or attractive people in general? He's attractive in a vision. Could he like model? He said, what do you like? He asked me if he's fine. Yeah, is he?

He's not one percentile NBA aura type of guy that's known for that, but he is attractive. He's not ugly. So like upper half of the league, but not like top tier. You've never seen a list of. Where do we go from here?

Yeah. So he's so funny. So for you, words that narrowed down. But he's funny though. So he's a funny, not ugly guy. I don't know if that's a huge group. Most of this is about that. Said no words, mind you.

Just stuffing words in my mouth. I won't take debate. Oh, man. Okay. I think this is, I do think this is Blake Griffin. I think you're coming with that. Is this Blake Griffin? This is Blake Griffin?

Exactly. I think in general. We got to speak from the second one. We just had to. Yeah. I think in general, like, when people think of Blake, he is underrated when it comes to attractiveness. Like, I grew up actively in high school, women would be like, oh, my God.

And middle school girls, like, oh, my God. So it's like, you're saying he's medium-mugly? No, I don't think he is. I think he's underrated. People think he's medium-movie, but he's not. Fine shit. Yeah. He's not saying that.

You said that word yesterday. God. Now, did I say you were wrong? That term is so funny. It's so funny. Be a baddie. That's funny. I got out there.

Is that the end of this episode? batty we'll see y'all Thursday for the recap's the name five and eight baddies right now be souls whoa you're about to spend this on the end of the episode is grab on your top five who grab on

who's that grab on these nuts dumb ass dumb ass okay they would you're on your job all right

okay okay these the games Okay. Okay.