The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - LIVE: Timberwolves Eliminate Warriors + Celtics Extend Series vs. Knicks

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Jason reacts live after the Minnesota Timberwolves eliminate the Golden State Warriors after Anthony Edwards outplays Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green, and Jonathan Kuminga. Then he breaks down how Jaylen Brown and the Boston Celtics extended the series against Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks.    Follow the show on Playback for future “Aftershow” content: https://www.playback.tv/hoopstonight  #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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responsible gaming resources, see dkng.c.c.com slash audio. It's not here at the Volume Heavy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. We got a jam-pack show for you guys tonight. The Minnesota Timberwolves ended the Golden St. Warrior's season. We're going to talk mostly about the future for both teams. We're going to talk about what it looks like for Minnesota looking forward

in a couple of their matchups. And then we'll talk a little bit about Golden State. I want to talk about Jimmy Butler, who struggled to score the ball when his team needed to in this series and talk a little bit about what they're looking for down the line in terms of free agency and in the trade market this summer. After that, we have our course correction segment with Microsoft. We're going to be talking a little bit about.

Jason Tatum. And then at the tail end of the show, the Boston Celtics in a must-win game at home deliver a championship-level punch against the New York Knicks to extend that series to a Game 6. We're going to talk about some of the specific things they did really well.

And then we're also going to talk about the reality of what Game 6 is, which is going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight, and should be a very entertaining basketball game to end our second round. You guys know that Joe before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube

channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCP. So you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast on our hoops tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's making great content for our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Make sure you guys follow us there. And then last minute on these, keep dropping mailback questions and those YouTube comments. We can keep hitting them throughout the remainder of the postseason. No playback tonight. We usually go for an after show where we take callers and do that sort of thing. But we're taking tonight off on that front.

we will be back on playback for an after show tomorrow night after the final buzzer of game six between the thunder and the nugget. So make sure you go to playback.tv slash hoops tonight to get set up there so you can come hang out in the playback. I've been having a ton of fun with those. Jackson's been hanging out too and we've been taking questions and having collars and watching film and it's informal and we talk shit. We have fun. We have fans come up and vent. and it just, I've really enjoyed it as kind of a change of pace in this postseason. So make sure you guys get set up on playback so we can return to the after show tomorrow night after Thunder Nuggets.

All right, let's talk some basketball. So not going to focus too much on tonight's game. We've talked that specific matchup to death over the last week. And I'd rather just focus moving forward. I mean, the Warriors just didn't have the horses to compete in this series without Step Curry. I do think this series worked wonders for Minnesota's ball movement. on offense tonight. They logged 36 assists on 49 made baskets and the ball was just moving

around and it's happening everywhere. Anthony Edwards as well making really impressive reads in the middle of the floor. He's the gap in his penetration speed in the early part of the series and how rushed he was going downhill compared to how he was just slowing down right in that middle portion of the paint towards the tail end of this series and just letting the defense react to him and taking the easy reads that were available to him there. I thought the drop-off pass he had to Jada McDaniels and the dunk out of the dunker spot was a classic example of that, just waiting for the defense to react

rather than just flying like a bull in a china shop towards the basket. And those ball movement sequences are going to be specifically relevant, for a relevant, excuse me, for a potential series against Oklahoma City or Denver. So looking forward for Minnesota, they obviously match up really well against Denver. They have won eight of their last 11 matchups with them, dating back to the beginning of the Western Conference semifinals last year.

They have the size and physicality to match up with Denver at every position. Denver is a group that is big at a lot of positions. Like they're, Jamal Murray's a big strong guard. So is Christian Brown. Michael Porter Jr. is having a rough playoff run, but he's big and tall. You know, Aaron Gordon, Russell Westbrook brings athleticism. Peyton Watson brings athleticism. Minnesota can match.

that and and they've shown the ability to bother both yokech and murray and we also saw them just like absolutely dominate michael porter junior and that dude is already running on fumes and he had a rough series against minnesota last year so that's something to keep an eye on but Denver's success in that series came on the defensive side of the ball uh when they made their runs when denver one game three four and five in those three games they held minnesota to a 106 offensive rating. They really worked on bringing Yokic further out to the level and just making it so that Ant couldn't turn the corner and ball screens get momentum.

Ironically, Christian Brown was the best defender that Denver had for Ant in that series. And obviously, you know, KCP was just too small for Ant. KCP's not in the picture anymore. So you'll see a lot of Christian Brown on Ant. They tested Minnesota's ability to pass through their defense. And so that growth that we've seen in this postseason run, I think will be imperative in that matchup. That said, I believe Oklahoma City is going to win.

I just wanted to talk through the Denver piece because I think that's a legitimate possible outcome. I'm leaning like 75, 25 towards Oklahoma City at this point in the series. And Oklahoma City will present some similar issues to Minnesota that we saw Golden State present. A steady diet of quality defenders at every position group. A lot of loading up on the strong side and rotating with speed to account for that, you know, kind of over-emphasis on the strong side of the floor. and they have real rim protection, and that's the difference. Draymond Green is a good rim protector,

but mostly just with his IQ and his physicality, this is a team that's going to present real size and length at the rim in a way that if we look back last year, the one bad playoff series that ain't had was against Dallas, a team that could match his athleticism on the perimeter and a team that could provide real length at the basket. Now, one of the things that we saw specifically with Dallas, if you guys remember correctly, it was Derek Jones Jr.

And Derek Jones has a great deal of length on the ball. And he was able to actually bother Ant's like pull up jump shooting in a way that I think, you know, shorter defenders like Dord or Payson Wallace might struggle a little bit. And that's why I think it'll be interesting to see if we get to a point in the series where they go with more of like a J-dub on Ant just to try to match his length a little bit more. But it's going to be a real challenge. And the challenge will be for Ant to not repeatedly test heart. and Chet at the rim, but rather to make the good reads when he's there. And so those slowdown

drives that we saw are going to be key. I think the midrange could play a key role in this series for both Anthony Edwards and Julius Randall to get short range, high percentage shots before getting all the way to the rim because whenever Rudy Gober is on the floor, you're going to see Chad Homer and sitting his ass right underneath the basket protecting the rim there with his length. And I do think that both Randall and Edwards can get some quality mid-range looks over Oklahoma City's smaller guards. But I'm just super excited for that potential series. I mean, two elite defenses that are very different. Obviously, Minnesota's bigger.

Oklahoma City is faster. Two elite on-ball guards and Shea and Ant, what an incredible duel that could end up being. And I would argue in that matchup, like if Aunt or Shea badly outplayed the other, in terms of just over-the-top shot making and probing in against these defenses, I think that could swing the winner. I think that's a series where the gap between Ant and Shea could be the difference. If both guys played at more or less the same level, I think it probably tilts towards Oklahoma City.

But if Aunt can outplay Shea, that's a series that they can absolutely win. There's interesting co-stars, J-dub and Chet, obviously, Chet, you know, a skinny, defensive-minded rim protector that's got some ability offensively. J-dub is, you know, another on-ball guard. But then for Minnesota, it's these big forwards, right? It's Julius Randall, it's Nas Reed, guys that have we've seen show the ability to score against size mismatches, and they're going to have plenty of size mismatches that they could attack. And I just think this could be an all-timer series. A great showcase

for the next generation of NBA talent to see all of these guys on the same floor. You know, if you had to tell me coming into this postseason run, like, okay, LeBron and Steph and KD and Kauai and Jimmy Butler and all of like the establishment stars that we've seen over the last several years, even like Tatum, for instance, and all of these guys, if you were to tell me, Janus as well, like, if you were to tell me those guys weren't going to be in the postseason when we get to the final two rounds, if I at least got to see something like this, to see Shay versus, to see Shea versus Ant, I think that's a really fun matchup. And even extending to the potential Nix Pacers matchup, which we'll talk about to Minix that's not set in stone,

I think it's a good showcase for the league in what the next era could look like. But we will get further into that matchup once we have more concrete information about who's going to play, which we could have an answer tomorrow night. We could be in a situation where we don't know until game seven,

but when we know we will do a full series preview that breaks that series down from the perspective of both teams on both ends of the floor. On the Golden State front, I was generally impressed with the way they battled in this series without Steph. like they routinely kept things close until it was, you know, in that mid-second half stretch

where Minnesota consistently pulled away. But like if you guys think of it, they just, if you look at Minnesota's defensive firepower, I mean, this was a team that strangled the life out of Luca Donchich late in games. This is a team that strangled the life out of LeBron James Leighton games. This was a team that completely and utterly shut down Austin Reeves. And yeah, obviously they didn't have the ball and player movement that Golden State had. but the Warriors just didn't have the offensive firepower to keep up. And I do want to take a minute to talk about Jimmy Butler's scoring.

I don't want to hyper focus on it because I think there's some realities in terms of the fit alongside Steph Curry that accentuates more of his versatility. But Jimmy Butler in his career has 38 games in the postseason where he scored at least 25 points. And under the circumstances with the way that this series was going, they specifically needed scoring from him. That was like the thing he could do to lift the floor of this team and keep them in these games. And he had one game in the entire series where he scored more than 20 points one time. And that just wasn't enough.

And I thought he failed to really emphasize that part of his game, to push that part of his game when his team needed him to. And, you know, it could have been the difference between this series ending in five or Steph potentially getting an opportunity to return in game six. You needed to win one game. And like I just, the shot, the shot totals, I mean, what do you take 20 shots total in the last two games? Like, there's a certain amount of he needed to just empty the clip, so to speak, because that's what the matchup called for.

It's like, otherwise you're asking Brandon Pajemski and Buddy Heald and Jonathan Kaminga to carry the load offensively. And there's obviously going to be a great deal of up and down that, comes with those types of role players. All of that said, I do think the Jimmy Butler trade was a success overall. I think they would have won this series, or at least given themselves a very good chance to win this series, if Steph Curry had played. In that case, they would have made it to the Western Conference Finals. Now, I think the Thunder would have crushed the Warriors. They were Houston, but because they had the speed guards to match up with Steph,

but they also had real rim protection and they had the offensive firepower that Houston didn't have. But I think they would have won this series, and I think they would have been a conference finalist, which I think in the first season with Jimmy Butler would have been a resounding success. But even getting to the second round, I think we saw the obvious way that the fit works. We saw how Jimmy Butler just kind of like connectively as a playmaker in the middle of the floor just accentuated and grease the wheels for this offense. They reached a level defensively with him as a defensive playmaker, not the on ball talent that Aaron, Andrew Wiggins was. but the work he did as just a defensive playmaker for this team roaming around the floor. You know, the fit just makes a ton of sense.

And I do think this team is worth investing in next year. The obvious need is guys who can score the ball in the flow of their offense, which means the ability to hit a jump shot running off of a screen, the ability to attack downhill when someone's chasing you over that screen and apply real ball pressure, the ability to quickly process and make decisions when when you're in those screening situations, while also being a player that can defend at a high level. The obvious ceiling for that type of player is like a Cam Johnson.

We've talked about him a lot over the course of the last couple weeks. I think he's the perfect fit as like basically Jackson referred to him as basically like a version of Clay Thompson. And in that sense, it's a kind of like a proof of concept in that, you know, we know what that looks like because we've seen that dynamic counter spacing presence. with Steph and how that works, right? Another discounted guy I'd look at for this type of role would be Malik Beasley. He's a guy that would be a free agent this summer and you could potentially get him on like a

mid-level exception or something like that. But if the Warriors make the slight tweaks that they need to make this summer and if they can get some year-to-year improvement from younger players, guys like Brandon Pajamski, you couldn't make shots in this post-season run. But you couldn't make shots in this postseason run. Like your team needs you to make shots. so this summer he needs to work on specifically conditioning so that he can hit shots when the physicality and intensity picks up.

We talked about it last night on playback, but there was an extended stretch to end the season, basically the last fourth of the season, where he was a high 40s percentage three-point shooter on like seven attempts per day. Like we know he can make shots. It's about getting it to translate to the postseason environment when the physicality and the intensity raises.

There's just another level he can get to with his conditioning. Moses Moody's game completely decomposed in this postseason run, hit some threes tonight, but he's going to have to be better next year. So if those guys can make their marginal improvements, if Steph just identifying that he has a real chance next year and approaching the offseason in a way where he can capitalize on that, you know, Jimmy Butler coming into next season with a game that is, you know,

tweaked, so to speak, in terms of his offseason regimen to fit this particular system and getting that type of role player upgrade at a couple of position groups, they absolutely have a real chance to make a run at the title next year. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, new? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey, Jonas.

We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to a first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name? Hey Jonas, guys. I honestly don't remember.

I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Oh, we were thinking. I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast,

where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so. wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing and we're still chasing it and we don't know when we've done enough because people scoreboard watch life

becomes about wins and losses Steve Burns Dustin Ross because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth or are you a good person because you're afraid because that's two different intentions bro absolutely and that that's two different levels of trust I want you to just really be a good person join me Keer games is we have real conversation about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness.

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Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, let's move on and talk some Celtics. First of all, let's talk Tatum in our course correction segment. Welcome to Course Correction, brought to you by Microsoft. Just like star players and teams navigating performance hurdles, business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise to the occasion, turning challenges into opportunities.

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I want to use this week's course correction segment as an opportunity to shout out Jason Tatum of the Boston Celtics. I thought this was the best season of Jason Tatum's career. It wasn't anything that showed up in some sort of dramatic way statistically. I mean, he's averaged in the previous four seasons before this year, 28, 8, 8, and 5 on 59% true shooting and played in, on average, over 70 games every year. So this guy has been as reliable a statistical performer as we've had in the league in recent history. But he just showed insane growth as a half-court processor.

He's never averaged over five assists in a season in his career, and he averaged over six assists this year. A simple stat to demonstrate this is he had seven games this year with at least 10 assists. He had seven games in the entirety of his career in the regular season before this year, where he logged at least 10 assists. But he also just showed an understanding of advantage creation, which is obviously very important for the Celtics team, but it extends beyond assist totals, constantly trusting basic reads like kick, ahead passes, swing passes when guys were sinking off the strong side corner or sinking into nail

help, simple over-the-top passes to guys slipping out of screening action when he was the ball handler. These are the kinds of things I've talked about with the Pacers. Like, before we just discount these as simple fundamental basketball things, they are literally driving success in the modern NBA because these guys are all so much better scoring with an advantage than they are without an advantage. And the guy who's on the ball has that job. We're going to talk about it in a more detailed context here with Jalen Brown here in a minute. But he was the kickstarter of everything the Celtics did on offense. The Celtics offense scored 122 points per 100 possessions when he was on the floor this year.

Then he starts this playoff run with an incredibly dominant performance against the Orlando Magic who had an elite defense. There was second best defense in the league this year. In the final three games of that series, he averaged 36, 10, and 6. but then suddenly out of nowhere, his game completely fails him in the first two games of the Knicks series. Can't make a jump shot to save his life. Goes just 12 for 42 from the field, brutally cold down the stretch, and a couple of bad losses to the Knicks. But then it all came together in one of the best playoff games of Tatum's career in game four in Madison Square Garden.

He had 42 points on 16 for 28 shooting. The Knicks were switching everything and forcing the Celtics to attack matchups. no other Celtic had any sort of legitimate rhythm in the second half of that game. He had no choice but to grab the reins. And he just hit incredible shot after incredible shot from every spot on the floor, from every type of footwork on the ball, attacking off the catch, getting all the way to the rim for and ones. Just truly remarkable shot making in a game where his team absolutely needed him to be that guy.

42 points on 16 for 28 shooting, 7 for 16 from 3. he was the only reason they had any chance to win that game. And then his Achilles goes out. And I just feel terrible for him because I can only imagine what that must have been like. The relief of seeing all those shots go in after the frustration of what happened in game one in game two. And they must have just felt like all of that hard work paying off in such a real way. And then something that's completely and entirely out of his control comes in and ruins everything. I just feel terrible for Tatum.

and I wanted to use tonight's segment, it's just an opportunity to talk about how much I respect Jason Tatum as a competitor and as one of the game's greats. I fully expect him to return from this injury at an all-MBA level, and I'm very excited to watch him play basketball again when he returns.

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Visit Microsoft.com slash challengers to learn more. All right, let's talk a little bit about Celtics Knicks tonight. I want to start with Jalen Brown's floor game. We talked about this a little bit in the Tatum segment, but if you're going to be the primary shot creator for a basketball team, for an entire game, it's important to understand that you're in charge of managing the flow of the game. We talked about this a lot in the Donovan Mitchell game.

I think it was game one, if I remember correctly, but where, you know, like he puts up a monster scoring night, but the Cavs just don't have any flow in their offense. The ball's not popping around. They're not generating a ton of catch-and-shoot-threes. Their shooters are all uncomfortable. You need to understand that in that job, like you need to take advantage of easy reads

because your job is to create half of your team's shots. Like, you might have to create 40 to 50 shots in that game. Jalen Brown took advantage of the easy opportunities tonight. His transition reads, good God, the Knicks were awful in their transition defense. They lost Derek White probably a half dozen times for wide open threes in transition. But Jalen was the guy who was probing up the floor in those transition situations and making those reads, identifying where the Knicks were making mistakes. In screening action, they ran a ton of ghost screens tonight where he's on ball and Derek White's screening and slipping out

or Peyton Pritcher screening and slipping out or Samhouser screen. and slipping out, and he just made those simple reads there. Interior passing to Cornette out of the post. I just thought Jalen played a great floor game and managed his shot selection really well. Combined with some legit three-level scoring, hitting mid-range shots, hitting threes, getting into the basket. There was a concerted team effort. This extends beyond Jalen Brown, but they were really trying to bully Jalen Brunson tonight.

So the first time in this series, I thought Jalen Brunson really struggled. he was the guy losing shooters in transition often. He was not holding his ground on switches the way he did earlier in the series. And the Celtics were just going right through his chest all the way to the front of the rim. But Jalen Brown set the tone with that early and often in this game. 26 points, eight rebounds and 12 assists. Tip of the cap to Jalen Brown. Kind of a teaser for what his role will be next season,

which is to be that guy for this team. The Celtics did play extremely well across the board offensively. in a way that they have struggled to reach consistently in this series. And I thought this was an interesting example of the reality of rhythm in basketball. So Boston is 127 points tonight. It's the first time all series they'd scored over 125 points. Now, to be clear, Jason Tatum is the best player on this team, and they have no championship ceiling without him.

So I am not trying to in any way denigrate Jason Tatum. However, this team does have a lot of high-level basketball. Squel players. And one of the things that happens in those situations is there's a tendency for guys to feel like they don't want to tug on the rope, right? Like if you're Drew Holiday, if you're Derek White, even Jalen Brown to a certain extent, like Tatum's the guy, you got to flow through him, you don't want to assert yourself too much, and sometimes it can be tough to establish rhythm. And so for a game like this, again, if you went for a whole postseason run and teams could really scout Jalen Brown and scout the way you like to attack, you'd be begging for Jason Tatum back.

I promise you. But in a one-game sample like this, it just kind of simplified the pecking order. Jalen Brown, Derek White, Peyton Pritchard. Those were the three guys that were controlling the majority of the action. They played through them consistently. And as a result, there was just kind of like a rhythm and a flow that they missed in other points of the series.

And I thought specifically in this one-game sample, it benefited Boston. Luke Cornett. I was talking with a, with Jackson and Shane before we got started, I just thought he did a much better job of Porzingis's job. Porzingis's job in this series has been to roam off of Josh Hart, protect the rim, while at the same time accounting for Josh Hart when he's driving off of those kickouts from the top of the key or crashing the offensive glass or, or, you know, even just shooting threes in those

catch and shoot situations. And Cornette just brought a level of activity that they haven't had really in this series from that spot. He was, you know, he had six blocks just in the second half. Some of them were roaming off of Josh Hart on other guys looking to shoot. Some of it was Josh Hart catching at the top of the key and pumping and then trying to drive on Cornette and then trying to finish through Cornette getting blocked there. Oh, he's going to take a three out of the left corner. Cornette runs out there and blocks him there. I, he, he, kept him off the offensive glass. Josh Hart had just one offensive rebound in the whole game.

And it was because Cornett swatted his shit right back into his hands. And it got logged as an offensive rebound. So he just like completely shut down the, in the second half in particular, everything has that roamer off of Josh Hart. You know, Josh hit some threes tonight and still had some success. But Cornett did a ton of damage in his minutes roaming off of Josh Hart and just kind of anchoring things defensively for the Celtics. six blocks in the second half is incredible stuff.

Like I didn't do any, you know, digging into NBA history, but I would imagine it's been a very long time since an NBA basketball player locked six blocks in a single half in the NBA postseason. Shout out to the Celtics, man. These guys have their flaws, but they're a bunch of winners, and they beat the shit out of the Knicks tonight, and they show that they're not going to go down without a fight.

And on that, no, this series is not over. I believe the Knicks will win on Friday, but that will not be an easy game. And if they lose that game, they're staring down the barrel of a game seven in Boston where Boston will be favored. I know the Knicks played a horrible half in that second half, just straight up not good enough in so many facets of the game,

they better be ready for a war on Friday because it's going to be a war. And if they don't survive that one, they could be sent out of here. And I mean, already they need to be polished up in a way to prepare for what's a very dangerous Indiana Pacers team that's going to be coming their way should they get out of this series. All right, guys, that's all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. Again,

no playback tonight, but we will be back on playback tomorrow night after the live show that we have. Again, keep an eye on the feed. I think I am going to do a film session tomorrow, Jackson. I think I want to do something on Cornette's defense in the second half because I thought it was just so impressive and I just want to show some video examples of the stuff that we were talking about. So keep an eye on the feed tomorrow morning for a, for a film session on the Celtics, and then live tomorrow night after the final buzzer of Denver versus Minnesota. One kind of bit of fun news, tonight was the last night that we're covering two games in the single night.

So just one game every night from this point forward will be really zeroing in on those games and getting deeper into the weeds on them. But about halfway through this playoff run, guys, I appreciate you guys for all. rocking with us and rocking with the show. I will see you guys. As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting hoops tonight.

It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it. The volume. Hey, guys, it's us.

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