The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Nuggets Predictions: Will LeBron James & LA upset Nikola Jokic & Denver?
Episode Date: May 15, 2023Jason Timpf shares his predictions for LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and the Los Angeles Lakers' Western Conference Finals matchup with Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Playoffs. What are... the key matchups that will determine this series? Will Anthony Davis be able to slow down Nikola Jokic? And who does Jason have winning the series and clinching a spot in the NBA Finals? #volume #herdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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All right, today we're going to be doing our series preview for the Western Conference
Finals between the Lakers and the Nuggets.
Also keep an eye on the feeds, either later tonight or early tomorrow morning.
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I'm just not sure when they're going to release it.
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All right, let's talk some basketball.
So just like we usually do, we're going to do our series notes where I just talk about a couple of the background pieces of information.
Then we're going to do our Chase three points segment where we go over the three biggest matchups that I'm looking at in this particular series.
At the end of that, I'll go over a couple quick hitters, I'll pick who I think's going to win and make the case for the other team.
So the Nuggets right now are minus 165 favorite.
That's not insubstantial.
So Vegas clearly views them as the slightly better team.
The season series was two to two.
The home team won every single game.
And all four games were January 9th or earlier.
So none of the trade deadline pieces involved.
The games that the Lakers beat the Nuggets, one in particular, Anthony Davis was out.
They went small.
They were running up and down the four crazy in transition.
The other one they won with Anthony Davis was also a great transition effort
because they had lost a game early in the season.
with bad transition defense.
Hard to sift through that too much because that sort of thing
plays a much bigger role in the regular season than it does in the postseason.
But I'm going to try to zoom in on some specific matchups
to try to get a better feel for where I see this series going.
The Nuggets do have home court advantage, which is significant.
The Denver home court advantage is statistically more impactful
than any other home court advantage in the NBA.
That's been proven over many, many years.
And they're playing every other day now,
which is, I think, an advantage to Denver.
in particular just with the wear and tear on LeBron James and Anthony Davis,
especially since their size won't be an issue.
I thought the Lakers actually wore down the Warriors despite their age.
But I think a big part of that was down the roster,
the Warriors were giving up physical advantages.
And you have to make up for a lack of size by playing harder.
And it's just really difficult to do that every other night.
All right.
So these are our chase three points.
Number one, can Nicolich?
force the Lakers to consistently send multiple defenders towards him in the Anthony Davis matchup.
So the two most common play types logged by Nicola Yokic so far in this postseason are, as you could probably guess,
pick and roll, roll man possessions and post-ups. Post-ups are actually number one,
and pick-and-roll, roll man possessions are number two.
Anthony Davis is the best defensive player in the world.
And we all saw just the latest example of that against the Golden State Warriors in the last round,
as after Steph Curry ripped through the entire league last year in the postseason and then ripped through the Sacramento Kings in round one,
he had his least efficient playoff series since the 2019 second round series against the Houston Rockets.
So for all the Nuggets fans out there talking about how great Yokic is and how great the Nuggets offenses,
I agree with you guys about those things.
But guess what?
If there's one guy that you could say is probably a better offensive engine than Nikol Yokic,
If there's one guy, it's Steph Curry.
And if you think Yokic is number one,
the guy you're saying number two is Steph Curry,
and there certainly isn't much of a gap there.
Everything that you're thinking about Yokic
and the way he can warp a defense
and the problems he can cause for teams,
the same could be said for Steph Curry,
and the Lakers held him to his least efficient series since 2019,
and held the Warriors significantly below their regular season offensive rating,
had six halves, I believe,
where they held them under 50 points and a half.
it was a dominant defensive effort.
So we have to at least consider the possibility
that Anthony Davis could have a similar impact on this Denver Nuggets team.
Now, this Denver Nuggets team does have, I believe,
more aggregate offensive talent than the Warriors.
That goes without saying.
So I would absolutely say that this is a better offense overall than the Warriors.
So it'll definitely be a challenge.
But this will also be the weakest defense that the Lakers have faced so far in this
postseason after facing the defensive player of the year
and the third ranked defense during the regular season in the Memphis Grizzlies,
and a Warriors defense that wasn't as good as they were last year statistically,
but had the same core players that they had when they were the number two ranked defense
and won the championship last year with Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins and Gary Payton
the second.
And despite all of that, they still finished ahead of the Denver Nuggets and regular season
defensive rating.
So there's no doubt that strictly from the standpoint of defensive personnel, the Lakers
are facing an easier matchup.
than they face in a long time, which makes it difficult to predict, but we're going to do the best that we can.
So as we zoom in on the post-up possessions and the pick-and-roll possessions, to me it comes down to can the Lakers consistently play those actions two-on-two or one-on-one?
So in the post, can Anthony Davis guard Yokch without too much help?
It's one thing to kind of gap down and kind of stunk at the basketball.
It's another thing to hard double, right?
If Anthony Davis can get away with never having to hard double on the Yokich post-ups, that means they can guard it one-on-one.
in pick and roll.
You can have your shell drill and guys can be ready to help when they need to,
but if you can guard the Denver Nuggets two-on-two in pick and roll,
that goes a long way towards your ability to stop them.
Why?
Because as you go down the roster, Contavius Caldwell Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon,
Christian Brown, Bruce Brown, those guys, Jeff Green,
those are all guys that's pretty much that plus Jamal Murray is basically the rotation
that they shrunk down to their over the course of the Sun series.
All of those guys are guys that are capable of making plays against,
closeout situations, right? So when the defense has already warped, you know, Michael Porter Jr.'s
best spot-up player in the league this year. Contavius Caldwell Pope, I've said before, is one of my
favorite role player two guards in the entire NBA. Loved rooting for that dude when he was a Laker.
Christian Brown and his athleticism in transition, and he can make plays cutting out of the
weakside corner occasionally knock down a corner three. Bruce Brown can run pick and roll,
run dribble handoffs. He can get out in transition. Jeff Green, obviously, has been a solid
role player in the NBA playoffs for a half decade now. All those guys are great, but in a set defense
situation, they're not guys that are going to consistently beat you attacking, like, set
defenders with help behind. Like, they need advantage situations. So everything comes down to
Nicola Yokic and Jamal Murray in their ability to bring in multiple defenders. Jamarie's
player. And he's going to do some mismatch hunting against Lakers' guards. He was doing that a lot
against Landrys-Shammett in the last round. You're going to see him try to pick on Austin
Reeves and try to pick on DeAngelo Russell and try to pick on Dennis Schroeder. They'll clear the
side and just let him post up on the block by himself. He's going to do some of that.
And he's going to knock down some pull-up jump shots in the dribble handoff and pick-and-roll situations with Nicolioch.
There's no doubt that there's going to be a good percentage of that in this series.
The difference is, though, is that that's not the type of player that's going to monumentally dominate and change the geometry of the series in terms of the tactics the way that a Steph Curry does.
He's just not that level of player.
And I would imagine that Darwin Ham and his scouting reports are like, hey, obviously the Sun's guards aren't as good as us defensive.
he lit them up.
If we can hold him to a 25 point per game average in the series on 20 shots per game,
22 shots per game, where his efficiency isn't quite where it needs to be.
I think that the Lakers would be happy with that,
especially if they can guard those actions two on two and not have to overhelp on the weak side.
I think their biggest concern is giving up the wide open shit.
The guys like Michael Porter Jr. and things along those lines.
So again, down the roster, there is talent there, and it's a really good fit.
But fundamentally, it depends on Nikola Yokic and is a big.
to warp the defense. So if Anthony Davis, as a
pick and roll, an inverted pick and roll defender can protect the rim
and not concede too much pull-up jump shooting, and in
isolation or post-up situations, if he can contain Yokic on an island,
that goes a long way to giving the Lakers an advantage down the roster.
Especially as we go down the roster for the Lakers roster,
and you're getting LeBron James and Austin Reeves, right?
Like, you're actually getting higher-level players from the Lakers down the
roster again. This will be a theme as we get to our predictions, but if Denver wants to win,
Nicoliochich needs to soundly outplay Anthony Davis, which is certainly on the table, but
Steph Freaking Curry, the defending finals MVP, just got outplayed by Anthony Davis based on what he
could do on the defensive end of the floor. So don't sleep on Anthony Davis's ability to win that
matchup. He is capable. Let's start at the post, for starters. So Nicolioch does have the ability to
dislodge Anthony Davis. He's got a high center of
gravity when I went back and watched all the post-up possessions, and there aren't a ton of them,
but when I went back and watched all the post-up possessions with Yokic on AD this year,
he did do a decent job of bumping him to his, getting to his spots and bumping him off
of his base and making those little hook shots and floaters and things in the lane.
But Anthony Davis did, on a handful of possessions, bother him with his length.
Fowl trouble in particular is going to be a big factor in this series.
Dwight Howard in 2020 spent a good portion of the series guarding Nicolioch, so they got to
split foul.
Yokech could be super aggressive.
He could pick up three, four fouls a game,
and it was all just kind of part of the game plan
to try to frustrate Yokic.
That's not a factor anymore.
There's not a soul on the Lakers roster
that has a hope in hell of guarding Nicoliochich
except for Anthony Davis.
So it's important.
But that same factor plays the other way.
The Lakers are one of the very best teams in the league
at drawing fouls.
Now, I will say Denver is much better at defending
without fouling than Golden State was,
so I don't expect to see the same type
of free throw disparity that we did in the Golden State series.
But the Lakers are good at drawing
foul. So foul trouble for Nicola Yokic, foul trouble for Anthony Davis, those are going to be big
factors in this series. That said, with AD post-up defense against Yokic, I think that favors Denver
early in the series, but it'll favor L.A. later in the series. I think that AD is too smart
and too physically gifted not to eventually figure out a way to slow down Yokch in the post,
but don't be surprised if early in the series when AD doesn't quite have a feel for him yet,
if Yokch has a lot of success in the post.
Looking at pick and roll, it's a similar concept to what they were doing to the Warriors, right?
Like you're going to try to chase over the top of the screens with AD in some kind of drop coverage.
He probably won't be as high up as they were against the Warriors because they were more willing to give up role man possessions to the Warriors than they will be to Yokic
because Yokic is, in my opinion, the best role man in the league and shoot 70% on all those stupid push shots and floaters on the short roll, right?
So my guess is it's going to be a deeper drop, which means it's going to be a higher, a higher,
responsibility on the guards for the Lakers to chase over the top of those screens,
which they did a decent job of in the last round. And most importantly, trying to contain
Clay Thompson and Steph Curry coming over the top of those screens is a different
type of challenge than Jamal Murray and KCP. Jamal Murray's a great pull-up jump shooter,
but just not in the same stratosphere as Steph Curry and KCP is a different type of player
than Clay Thompson. So it's definitely going to be a different type of coverage, but it's going to
be the same concept. Anthony Davis trying to dissuade those pull-up jump shots as best as he can
while staying back to protect the rim, namely because of Yokic on the roll and the guards chasing over the top of the screen.
The other thing you saw in 2020 is at one point late in the series in game four, they ended up putting LeBron on Jamal Murray and Anthony Davis on Nicol Eokch so they could switch the Murray-yokch pick and roll.
And Denver ended up countering that by just trying to ISO LeBron with Jamal Murray.
And some of you guys might remember LeBron blocking Jamal Murray a couple times and forcing a couple misses at the rim.
in that game four win. So LeBron, again, he's going to be older now and not as mobile,
but he's had a really good defensive postseason, especially when he's been engaged.
So that might be another wrinkle the Lakers could go to is just put LeBron and Jamal Murray,
switch the Yokitz-Murie, pick and roll. Now, who's going to win that matchup?
That's going to be the dynamic of the series, in my opinion.
If the Nuggets are playing two on three in pick and roll and one-on-two in post-up situations,
too many high-quality shots from too good of a passer in Yokic on the back end,
they're going to get picked apart.
If Yokic and Murray can be contained two-on-two by the Lakers in one-on-one in the post
in the Yokic-A-D match-up, I think they're going to be able to slow down the Nuggets
offense enough for them to succeed on the other end.
That, to me, is the dynamic of the series,
and whoever wins that specific matchup has by far the best chance to win the series.
Number two, can LeBron James pick apart the Nuggets in Pick and Roll?
So I talked about this a little bit with Colin Coward yesterday.
But the big difference in this series for the Lakers compared to the previous two rounds
are the defensive matchups, right?
I actually think Aaron Gordon is a better matchup for LeBron than either of the last two guys
that LeBron faced consistently.
So he was seen a lot of Dylan Brooks and Xavier Tillman in the first round.
And Xavier Tillman was big enough, but he wasn't fast enough.
And LeBron ended up beating him off the dribble when he needed to, namely at the end of game four, right?
And then Dylan Brooks, he could just post him up or bully him whenever he absolutely needed to
in that series.
But Dylan Brooks was a very good switchable wing defender.
And Jaron Jackson on Anthony Davis,
they could just switch that action.
So the LeBron Anthony Davis pick and roll was kind of useless in that round.
And as a result, they had to attack switches,
which really bates LeBron and Anthony Davis into their worst tendencies,
which is to settle for jump shots and to not apply enough rim pressure, right?
Same dynamic against the Warriors.
With Ramon Green on Anthony Davis and Andrew Wiggins on LeBron James,
they're switching the LeBron AD pick and roll most of the time.
and as a result you lose that advantage.
Now it's the same thing.
Stagnation got to try to generate offense against their switches
or hell, just give the ball to the guards
and see if they can do it since the Warriors were running drop coverage
against the Laker guards.
But that dynamic is going to be completely different in this series.
Even though Aaron Gordon is a much better matchup for LeBron James,
just because he's bigger and stronger than Wiggins and Dylan Brooks are
so he can hold up a little bit better in the post,
that's all good.
And I think that bodes well for Denver in the series in isolation situations
in a post-up situations, but in pick and roll in particular,
I think that the nuggets are going to be in some trouble on a couple of different fronts.
So, and this is why I'm considering this, the LeBron James series on the offensive end of the floor.
So on film, what I noticed in the footage at the beginning of the year.
Now, it's important to note that they were, this was before the deadline.
So it's a lot of Patrick Beverly on the weak side.
It's a lot of Troy Brown Jr. on the weak side.
It's a lot of Kendrick Nunn back when he couldn't make a damn shot.
And so the nuggets were really loading up.
but it was very similar to the Phoenix Sun's coverage.
It was kind of Yokic in a high drop up near the level of the screen,
Aaron Gordon chasing over the top,
and almost all three other defenders have a foot in the paint,
except for maybe in the strong side corner, right?
So those skip passes are open.
It's very similar to what they did to Phoenix.
And I thought, I was talking with Matt Moore this morning, actually,
I go to his Twitter feed, and I'm sure he'll have the link
because we got pretty deep into this series.
He's a big guy who covers the Nuggets, Big Nuggets Optimist.
And I was asking him,
I was like, do you think that Phoenix left some meat on?
the bone as it pertains to the Nuggets pick and roll coverage with how hard they were loading up.
And he said, yes, he was like Devin Booker and Kevin Durant too frequently missed the skip pass to
the weak side corner. Guess what? That's the best thing that LeBron does in pick and roll is make
those skip passes on the dime because he's one of the better jump passers in the league,
throws everything on a rope on time on target, in the shooting pocket. And those are going to be,
that's going to be a lot of Austin Reeves on the weak side. He's shooting 44% on catch and shoot
threes in this postseason run. DeAngela Russell on the weak side.
He's shooting 39% on catch and shoot threes in this postseason run.
Rui Hachamura on the weak side, 53% on catch and shoot threes in this postseason run.
Lonnie Walker on the weak side, 38% on catch and shoot threes in this postseason run.
So there's going to be much more dependable weakside shooters than what they had during the regular season,
and that coverage is going to leave some openings for LeBron.
What I like about it the most for LeBron's sake is it implicates his brain more than it does his body.
So when they're switching pick and roll, LeBron has to bully smaller defenders.
Whereas if in a drop coverage, he's getting downhill by virtue of the coverage.
All he has to do is set Aaron Gordon up for the screen.
Then Aaron Gordon's behind him.
So now he's going downhill naturally as part of the coverage,
which puts the onus on his brain to make the necessary reads,
as opposed to in a switching coverage, the onus is on his body.
And so a lot of times LeBron would get really passive for long stretches offensively
over the last two series, in large part because he's just trying to conserve his energy.
He can actually conserve his energy as a playmaker in high pick and roll
against the Nuggets. I think that's a significant advantage. Another thing I think you'll see a lot of
is what LeBron did towards the end of the Warriors series, which is picking on the smaller Nuggets players in pick and roll.
So instead of the LeBron Anthony Davis pick and roll, what if it's trying to target Jamal Murray, Contavius Cawwell, Pope, and Michael Porter Jr., Bruce Brown, and Christian Brown,
in switches, just like he did down the stretch to Clay Thompson, Jordan, Poole, Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, even, and straight post-ups.
but LeBron would sit at the top of the key, call the defender that he wants into the action.
Say it's Steph Curry and Lonnie Walker's on it, right?
So Lonnie Walker's going to set like a ghost screen basically and funnel off to the left side on the wing.
And Steph is going to try to hedge and recover or he might end up having to switch onto LeBron.
And LeBron, what he would do is just hard kind of take a banana driving route along the right side of the floor around the hedge.
and either he would get downhill because the hedger would allow LeBron to kind of turn the corner
or he would get the switch that he wanted.
And if he got the switch that he wanted, once he kind of took that banana route,
he would turn and then he would start posting up, right?
And then he would start trying to bully that smaller defender to whatever spot he needed to do.
And like, again, that one's really energy consuming for LeBron,
so it's more of a late series thing or a late game thing.
But LeBron, LeBron attacked Moses Moody.
LeBron attacked Dante DiVincenzo.
He attacked Steph Curry.
Clay Thompson, Jordan Poole, like he was relentless attacking the warrior's smaller defenders
towards the end of that series.
Don't be surprised if you see a lot of that against the Denver Nuggets to try to take
advantage of his size there over the course of the series.
Number three, who will win the battle of the bench?
So both teams lack a backup center.
And this in particular is very interesting to me because over the course of the
postseason, LeBron's plus minus numbers have not been very good. And a big part of that, or is
on-off numbers, I should say. And a big part of that is because the Lakers don't have a backup center.
And one of the things that Taylor Jenkins did with the Memphis Grizzlies is he staggered, he
flipped Jaron Jackson's rotation. Jaron Jackson during the regular season was on Anthony
Davis's rotation. He switched it up because Darden Ham wasn't switching his rotation to make sure
Jaron Jackson was on the floor for all of the Laker bench group minutes. And they really
struggled with that Laker bench group really struggled with Jaron Jackson at center, keeping him
off the glass and keeping them away from the rim in like four of the six games.
There were a couple games where the Lakers held up okay, but for the most part, they struggled
in that group.
Same thing for the Warriors, Kavan Looney's out there and just destroying Rui Hachamur on the glass.
They couldn't get a damn defensive rebound to save their lives.
Excuse me.
So that bench group has been an issue for the Lakers throughout the postseason.
Well, Denver also has a similar issue with their bench group.
They don't have a backup center.
They don't have enough shot creation or defense in that lineup.
That is a big advantage to LeBron, in my opinion.
in large part just because LeBron James could not impact winning enough
with the size disadvantage in those groups,
he's going to be by far the best player on the floor in these bench groups
without having to worry about the physical mismatches.
Rui Hachamura is going to be able to hang just fine in that group
as a kind of a small ball five defensive rebounder type
compared to the way he did against Kavanaugh and Jaron Jackson.
So I actually really like the bench matchup for the Lakers in this series
after it was a problem in the previous two rounds.
A couple of quick hitters.
Guard play. Can Bruce Brown, Contavius Caldwell Pope, and Jamal Murray outplay Dennis Schroeder, Austin Reeves, and DeAngelo Russell?
Who's going to provide better shot making in defense, right? Now, I give this a slight advantage to Denver because Jamal Murray is the best player in that group,
but it's a little bit more tricky than that because LeBron James is kind of more of a comp to Murray as that secondary star.
But it's strictly looking at guard play. Big sign for the Lakers would be if Schroeder, Reves, and DeAngel Russell can play to a stalemate with Murray, KCP, and Brown.
Can the Lakers play their forwards?
This is a big one.
So Rue Hachamur and Jared Vanderbilt both kind of exited the rotation, not entirely,
but their roles got shrunk in the Warriors series.
Why?
Too much helping off Jared Vanderbilt was screwing up their offense.
And on the offensive end of the floor, Rui Hachamuro was struggling with screen navigation.
And Denver in particular, and this is a – I talk about this a lot on the show,
but lock and trailing is a lot about low center of gravity and avoiding screens, right?
And Rui's just got a high center of gravity.
he's easy to set screens on.
So it can be an issue for him.
This series is going to have some similar stuff.
Michael Porter Jr. runs a lot of off-screen action.
Contavius Cobbopo-Pope runs a lot of off-screen action.
If Rui ends up in one of those matchups,
he could be in a situation where he could struggle.
I think Rui is going to have to play when LeBron's off the floor
so he can guard Aaron Gordon as much as possible or Jeff Green,
someone like that so he can kind of be more in a help situation
and be around the rim as a defender, rim protector,
and defensive rebounder.
but the Lakers need their forwards to be an effective defensive rebounding team.
You saw that a lot against the Warriors where they ended up going small,
and then they gave up 12 offensive rebounds in the first half
because you've got three guards on the floor,
and LeBron James and Anthony Davis have to do so much physically to overcome that.
So can the Lakers forwards play big minutes?
That's going to be another one.
Last but at least, transition.
I mentioned this at the start of the show,
but Yokic knows how to punish AD when he's lazy.
He sees when he's on the floor,
he sees when he's bitching at the refs,
and he sprints and tries to get a cross-match and a quick post seal.
He also can beat the Lakers in transition with outlet passes.
So Biggs running the floor, particularly AD.
That's going to be a big one in this series as well.
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So my prediction, I'm picking the Lakers in six games.
I think Anthony Davis will significantly hamper Denver's defense, just like he did every other offense he's faced in this postseason. Golden State was a top 10 offense in the regular season. They had a 115.1 offensive rating in the regular season. The Lakers held them to 110.2.2.8. So utterly stifled their offense. Again, this is the better offense than either of the two they faced. But just like I said with Steph Curry, you'd be foolish to think that Anthony Davis,
can't have a similar impact on Yokage, at least to some extent.
I also think this will be by far the easiest defensive match
at the Lakers have faced so far in the postseason.
Memphis was the number three regular season defense.
We talked about all defense defender on LeBron and Dylan Brooks,
and then the defensive player of the year guarding Anthony Davis.
Golden State, you've got the best defensive player of this era
in Draymond Green guarding Anthony Davis,
and you've got Andrew Wiggins, who I said after last year's postseason
might be the best perimeter defender in basketball guarding LeBron James,
and they just have better personnel, right?
both of those teams just have better defensive personnel than what Denver brings to the table.
That puts a lot of onus on LeBron James to be the offensive maestro that he's capable of being,
and I think he's got to dominate that end of the floor.
To me, it's LeBron's series offensively.
It's Anthony Davis's series defensively.
If Nicolioch can defend well enough to slow down LeBron on offense,
and if he can punish Anthony Davis enough on the other end of the floor,
I think the Nuggets can win, but I believe the Lakers will win those matchups at least to some extent.
so I am picking the Lakers in six.
Denver's path to victory.
It's pretty simple.
Yokic has to dominate AD.
If he does, enforces consistent help or gets Anthony Davis in foul trouble.
I think this could be over quick.
As a matter of fact, if Denver wins this series, I think it'd be in five games.
I think they would win games one and two, be two-o, steal one in L.A.,
to make it 3-1, and then close out the series in five.
So picking the Lakers in six, wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Denver won,
have a ton of respect for those guys, but I'm riding with the Lakers right now.
I think they're a much better defensive team, and I think they're capable of picking
apart this Nuggets team enough to advance.
All right, guys, that's all I have for today.
We will be back shortly with our Eastern Conference final.
The Volume.
Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.
Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.
Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.
week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with
their between songs banter.
Where does your group perform?
We do some retirement homes.
Those people are starving for banter.
Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged.
It's the enhanced games.
Some call it grotesque.
Others say it's unleashing human potential.
Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.
Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.
I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.
Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, what's good, y'all?
You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host care games.
This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations.
that it's really not safe to have anywhere,
but you're having them with a licensed professional
who knows what he's doing.
How many men carry a suit or armor?
It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.
And just because you have the capability
that does not mean that you need to,
listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app,
Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
This is an IHart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
