The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - LIVE: WOLVES-WARRIORS REACTION: Anthony Edwards & Julius Randle even series vs. Jimmy Butler without Steph

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Jason reacts live after the Minnesota Timberwolves even the series against the Golden State Warriors. He discusses Anthony Edwards with another off shooting night, Julius Randle's impressive game, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green playing without Steph Curry, and more. #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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see dkng.c.c.o slash audio. I'm here at the volume. Happy Thursday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great. great week. Just a quick show tonight. We were blessed with just one game and it was a game that was somewhat predictably a blowout as the Minnesota Timberwolves got a game back on the Golden State Warriors. We are now one one heading into the bay. So we're going to spend just a few minutes on that game. Then we're going to have our Player of the Week section with Microsoft.

Then at the tail end of the show, Jackson and I were, uh, we're texting earlier today and I got this crazy hairbrained idea for a trade. So we're just going to purely for fun, purely in fantasy land of the NBA. We're going to discuss an idea of a trade involving the Boston Celtics for this summer as a little teaser. You guys know the drill 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 Jason LT so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast under Hoops tonight, it's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Don't forget about our new social media feeds

on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where Jackson's doing some great work. And then keep dropping mailbag questions in those YouTube comments. Also, no playback tonight. We're going to take advantage of the year. This is our 20th consecutive live show at night. So I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity

to spend a little bit of extra time with my wife tonight. But we do usually go on playback after these live shows. Make sure you guys head over to playback.tv slash hoops tonight for our playback after show tomorrow night. But again, no after show tonight. We'll get back into that tomorrow. So let's talk some basketball. Nice bounce back win for the Minnesota Tim Wolves.

I just thought from the start, they were much sharper, staying attentive to Golden State's ball and player movement. The dead give away is they played him into so many of these late clock ISOs where, you know, Jackson and I were joking earlier because Jimmy Butler just seemed to, he took a few of them early in the game, but there were several examples where he was kind of just passing out of those situations. And it was, you could tell Jimmy kind of was sensing the moment that it was a game that might be out of reach.

And so it was almost like he was kind of holding something in reserve. Stan Van Gundy was obviously a little bit critical of him about that. But at the same time, you could feel it. You could feel this game as being somewhat of a landslide for Minnesota from the opening tip as they go up 13-0. But the dead give away so many of these late ISOs, whether it's Moses Moody or it's Brandon Pajemski or it's Buddy Healed or whoever it might be with three seconds on the shot clock with an elite defender

in their face having to just throw. throw something up. We had shot clock violations. We had shots that didn't even come close to the rim. The Timberwolves forced a bunch of turnovers and kept getting out and transition off of them for easy ones. It was just a much better defensive performance from Minnesota. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute because that's going to be an interesting trend going through the rest of the series. And then on offense, Ant is still struggling a bit with just figuring out how to attack this defense. First of all, glad to see him come back in the second half. The way he was limping, I was seriously concerned that that might have been some kind of like severe high ankle sprain

with the way that Trace Jackson Davis landed on top of him. But to have him come back in the second app, obviously a good sign you don't want to see anybody get hurt, especially in a way that could have an impact in their ability to even be available to their team. But he's been sped up a little bit by Golden State's ball pressure. And he's definitely going to have to get that a little more under control as the series progresses into Golden State. It's a very different kind of series than the Lakers series where he was given more space. There wasn't pressure and he could kind of like be comfortable as he was processing the defense. The idea, the whole game playing with Golden State is if they can pressure

aunt, he'll rush into drives. And if he rushes into drives, he won't process the floor quick enough to be able to make the right reads when he gets downhill. And so it's going to be key for Ant to solve that problem over the course of the series. But everyone else on Minnesota took a good step forward tonight. A bunch of their shooters. started to get into rhythm. Nasreid, Nasreid, Dante Devencenzhenzo, Nikiel Alexander Walker, Mike Conley, and Anthony Edwards all hit multiple threes in this game,

which is obviously a good sign after the horrendous shooting that they put forth in game five against the Lakers in game one of this series. We saw a little bit of Jady McDaniels, getting back to some of that weakside scoring that he did in the first round. It took a little bit of an audacious stepback three over Draymond Green in the left corner

that I thought was kind of funny. But other than that, A bunch of these like good, you know, close out attacks where he's Eurowing through a help defender, spinning off of a guy who's closing out on him and just hitting those little short floaters and jump shots that are shots that we know that he can hit. And then I thought Julius just had a really nice bounce back game. I thought he was really bad in game one and really started to get his feel out of the post. Just taking simple kickout reads that are there as Golden State was pinching down on him, doing some scoring in the middle of the floor. just a nice step forward for the wolf's offense, which is going to be the problem.

Like as we move forward in this series, the job is all mental for Minnesota. We're heading to Golden State. And Minnesota fans, if you haven't had a chance to watch much of Golden State this year, they just have this level they can get to at home, even without step on the defensive end of the floor and getting out in transition and feeding off of the energy of that crowd.

they're going to be a tough out in the same way that I kind of like felt like tonight was going to be a blowout. I think both game three and game four are going to be dog fights. And those, the job for Minnesota on both ends of the floor is going to be simple. On the offensive end of the floor, like we talked about, Anthony Edwards not getting rushed, but him and Julius together having to process that defense when it's more engaged, when it's flying around, feeding off the energy of that crowd,

not turning the ball over, not settling for, bad threes. Ants had an issue knifing through the defense and taking high degree of difficulty layups in traffic that he's missing at a high clip. The mental processing piece is going to be key for them on offense as they go on the road. And then on the defense event, again, like we talked about, it was a good step forward for them tonight, but that same attentiveness to all the ball and player movement, this is a team that if you can play them into those late clock ISOs, because again, it's not like Golden State's planning to take a late clock ISO. They're running their motion offense to try to get you to make a mistake.

And if you make a mistake leaving a cutter open or a shooter open, they're going to take that opportunity, right? But if you can take away those opportunities in the motion, all of a sudden it's like Jimmy Butler is really the only guy, other than maybe Jonathan Camingo when he's in rhythm, which we'll talk about, he did seem to build a little bit of rhythm tonight. But Jimmy Butler is really the only player that can create his own shot against an elite defender in that sort of situation.

And at this phase in his career, he's not as good at it as he used to be, right? So like, if you can be attentive and shut down the motion, you can play them into late clock ISOs, you got a great chance to win game three and game four on the road. But if you lose side of that and you let Golden State feed on the energy of their crowd and a couple role players get confident, they will hit open shots, as you guys know. I mean, that's what happened in game one after Steph went down. Every time Minnesota made a mistake, they knocked the shot down.

And it just wasn't anything that they were able to regain control of. You got to play these guys into those misses. And so they have the physical tools necessary to do the job. But they've got to have the mental focus and discipline, attention to detail, get it done on the road. And I do think they need to win in both of those games. I think if they end up in a scenario where Golden State takes this thing to two, back to Minnesota in game five, even if you win,

I think Steph Curry is going to come back in that game on the 18th. And as we saw in game one, I think this is a tough matchup for Minnesota when Steph is healthy. Now, whether or not he'll be healthy enough to even be a factor remains to be seen. But I think Minnesota needs to be going to the bay with the goal of trying to win both of those games. Now, on the Golden State front, we talked about this last night in playback. We talked about it two nights ago after game one. But we viewed this game two as basically a game that Minnesota was going. to win and was going to win by a lot. It's just the combination of a bunch of factors.

We talked about this last night with Oklahoma City versus Denver. On the one hand, your road team is a veteran team that already stole home court advantage. So there's such a natural pullback in terms of effort, focus, and energy because you know you're going home with home court advantage. We just saw that with Denver last night with OKC. Also, just like OKC, Minnesota is a damn good basketball team. A damn good basketball team led by really good players. So like, they got the talent to have a bounce back at the game. It's also an absolute must win. Unlike the Boston series, Boston is arguably more comfortable on the road than they are at home. Unlike the Boston series, Minnesota could not afford to go down 02. It was like an absolute must win type of game for a great

team against a veteran team that had already taken home court, there was a natural pullback that was going to happen. And so one of the things we talked a lot about over the course of the last two days was how can the Warriors get some sort of positive progress out of this type of game that's going to be so difficult to win? And the key was a couple things. We talked about giving Jonathan Caminga a long leash. Now, we discussed it more within the context of him being in the starting lineup. Wasn't in the starting lineup tonight, but he did get 26 minutes. minutes and got plenty of opportunity to create his own offense, and he scored 18 points on 11 shots. We'll zoom in on that in just a minute. But the second piece of it was digging way

deep in the rotation and giving a ton of guys opportunity, right? Steve Kerr ends up playing, let me count. This is 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 different players tonight. So Steve Kirk gave everyone a chance just to see, like, Steve's got to rebuild a basketball team on the fly here, right? Like, What works with Steph is different than what's going to work without Steph. And so Steve Kerr, in a lot of ways, has to come up with a completely different way to win basketball games from scratch here on the fly. And so he used game two as an opportunity to test a lot of things out. A simple thing. After the 13-0 run, Quentin Post gets the hook, goes to Trace Jackson Davis.

Trace Jackson Davis was impactful in this game. His athleticism pop. 15 points and six rebounds was really providing some of that rim pressure at a ball screen action, just roll. pulling hard to the rim and getting vertical as as much as quit and post is a very good player. We've joked on the show. He can't jump over a phone book. He's not exactly the most athletic dude in the world. Trace Jackson Davis brings some of that vertical pop.

I thought that that was a kind of like a useful little bit of information that came out of this game. And then the second piece of it was Jonathan Kaminga. Had a little bit of success in face-up situations and ISOs, got comfortable as a catch-and- shoot player hitting another corner three. The one he missed in the fourth quarter two, I thought was pretty close. he looked like he was in good rhythm there.

Diggy hit his first eight shots in this game. He just started to build some of that rhythm. Why that matters is because in those games in Golden State, I think in order to win one of them, or let's put it this way, you give yourself a good chance to win one of them if in one of those two games, Jonathan Kaminga has a 20, 22 point night.

And I think that he was in such a funk coming into this, that tonight was the perfect opportunity to just give him a long leash and just see what he can put together in terms of rhythm building towards game three and game four. Again, like I said with Minnesota, on the Golden State front, the goal needs to be, and like obviously the goal is to win both games. But if you can get one game in Golden State and you can send it back to Minnesota 2-2, you guarantee that you're playing on the 18th. And if you're playing on the 18th, I think there's a decent chance that Steph Curry comes back and plays

and gives you a chance to win the series. If you win both, obviously you're in fantastic position. But if you can win one of those games, you give Steph Curry the chance to return in 12 days. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? Huge news.

We created our own podcast called, Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. 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. Well, 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, 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 I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending. Opinions are flying. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in.

I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversy. and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs,

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Listen to Sports Slice. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slico Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of us. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across.

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All right, 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. Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, simplified cloud and data management and trustworthy, responsible AI. And when you're in the NBA, you have to, you have your own hurdles to face. In this segment, we will highlight the player every week that has risen to the occasion when his team needed him.

challenge you facing Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say bring it on this week's player of the week is nikola yokic of the denver nuggets on monday night we saw the best playoff performance that i've seen since step kerry scored 43 points on the boston celtics in the 2022 finals in game one against the thunder just two nights after he led his team to a victory in game seven against the clippers on the road against one of the best statistical performing defenses in the history of the NBA against a team that had already won 72 games in this season 68 in the regular season and a 40 sweep in the first round he goes for 42 points 22 rebounds six assists a steel in two blocks in the fourth quarter he walked the thunder down just dominating in the middle of the four he

get 18 points just in that fourth quarter, keeping the nuggets and striking distance so that they could have a chance to win the game late, hit several big shots late, a hook shot over Alex Crusoe, a driving foul that got to the line, a huge three that cut the lead to one over Isaiah Hartnstein using like kind of a jab step sequence, ultimately ending the game with an Aaron Gordon game winning three in transition off the left wing to steal game one and get home court advantage for the Denver Nuggets. One of my favorite things about basketball is the ability of a star player

to transcend surrounding circumstances. Yes, it's a team sport. Basketball is beautiful when it's flowing. But in the most intense moments, defenses, especially defenses as good as OKC, can reach a level where that flow is basically impossible. And you need a singular force of nature who can transcend that environment

because he has a superpower. These are the moments when you see a superstar dig deep and reach that special level that lead to some of my favorite moments in NBA history. So shout out to Nicola Yokic for giving us another one of those. They're rare, and I always really appreciate them when they come around. That's it for this week's course correction. Remember, Microsoft's AI solutions empower you to take bold steps and make informed decisions, sparking new ideas to help drive your business forward.

With Microsoft as your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft.com slash challengers to learn more. All right, so here's the deal. I'm going to bring Jackson on stage because he's our resident Celtics fan as well, in addition to being very important to the process of this show. But Jackson and I were texting earlier today. And I want to, this is a disclaimer up front, okay?

This trade's not going to happen. It's unlikely for a variety of reasons. but I want to talk about it because it's fun. We have some time. And after a boring game like that, it's nice to have a little, just to get into fantasy land a little bit. So here's the deal.

I pitched the idea to Jackson today. If you were GM of the Celtics, or excuse me, if you were GM of the Bucks, actually, no, we'll call it the Celtics. You're GM of the Celtics. Bucks call you, and they offer Janus for Jason Tatum. Do you say yes or no? Now before, I want to make the case.

I'm going to make the case. Again, disclaimer, this is just for fun and primarily meant as a thought exercise. Okay, here's the case. It's being widely reported that the Celtics are going to start finding ways to cut payroll as soon as this summer. In this theoretical scenario,

the Celtics have just, again, this is important context here. I'm only pitching this in the event that the Celtics lose to the Knicks. So they lose to the Knicks. Tatum is the reason why in this hypothetical scenario, okay? So the Celtics have just lost the series

as a minus 800 favorite, literally because their stars shit the bet. So the premise would be that the Celtics roster would lose a decent amount of talent as part of the cost cutting, and they would suddenly drop to a second-tier contender

because their stars aren't good enough to lift that roster, so they wouldn't be really good enough to compete anymore. Another way to reframe the situation is this is a very short window of contention for the Celtics. Maybe next year, maybe the following year.

Yannis is a much better basketball player than Jason Tatum and has developed into an excellent passer this phase in his career. You'd be surrounding him with a roster that fits his skill set super well. He's the kind of player who could capitalize on that short window to get you a second championship. Presumably, he could still win even if they lost two of their core five. So let's say they lose Drew Holiday and Khrasop's Porzengis.

those are the two guys that they look to shed salary. You still have Janice, Derek White, Jalen Brown. Horford probably comes back on a minimum. You have Hauser, Pritchard, Luke Cornett. You still have like a solid rotation around him. Then in two years when Janus is 32 years old, if he loses the juice and the roster isn't good enough, you can still flip Janus to another team to restock your asset trope.

Case for Milwaukee, really simple. Tatum has literally four years and an option after this season. And he just turned 27. going to rebuild around him. And you probably could get a couple draft picks out of Boston in the deal that you can flip to help improve your role player talent. So essentially for Milwaukee, it's a bet on Tatum's future. And for Boston, it's a bet on this current roster, just needing better play from the star. So Jackson, in this hypothetical scenario, you're the GM of the Celtics. They offer, they offer Janus for Tatum. What are you saying? It's a really galaxy brain idea. And I, and I,

I'm trying to not forget about the connection to the city element after we just saw what Nico Harrison did shipping off Luca Donchitz. However, I do think in this hypothetical, it would be a little bit different because of how sour it would feel to lose to the Knicks in this fashion. Coming off for the Mavericks, yeah, you lost in the finals, but you got to the finals with Luca Dantridge and felt specifically kind of bizarre. And they weren't underdog. And they were an underdog. If you're losing in four or five games to the Knicks in a series that you were heavy, heavy, heavy favorites, people are, I saw someone say on Twitter today, this is the, this would be the kind of thing that results in people getting fired or people getting traded, right? And that's, and I think that's totally a valid take. What are people expecting Jason Tam to be traded?

I don't think so. But if someone was like, we need to fire Joe Missoula after this, I would not agree, but I would be, I would understand the thought behind it, right? So I do, I do think if you lose this series, especially if it's in four or five. games. I don't think it's before. But if it's in five games, it makes sense to make a little bit of a shake-up. It's hard to run that back after this way the series has looked at least through two games. Trading Tatum for Janus, though, that is a crazy idea. And I don't, I don't hate it. Of all the, if you're going to offload one of your two stars, I don't want to, in the, if they're going to shake things up this summer, which they're probably going to payroll. If they lose to the Knicks in a weird way, you're probably making some sort of significant. I if in if you're saying you're going to trade one of a major shakeup,

if you're expecting a major, major shakeup for the Celtics, like getting Janus is the best case scenario for a major shakeup. So in that sense, I don't hate it. And I think you're absolutely right that it's even with the departure of whoever, Drew Holiday, Chris Depp's one or both of those guys for salary purposes. It's still a close to perfectly designed roster for around Yonis, much better than I would even argue the championship level,

the championship bucks roster. Like, he's never played with the player as good as Janet Brown. He's never played with the player even as close to as good as Jim Brown, frankly. Or defenders that could shoot as well as the defenders can shoot for Boston. And you're really surrounding him with a lot of shooting talent, a lot of versatility

if you plug him into this roster. So it's not the, I don't hate it. It would be the kind of It would be one of the few trades that could top the shock waves created by the Luca DDoC's trade. You know what I mean? Like it's one, it would be one of the craziest trades. It would be up there with the, the KD summer and the Kauai summer is maybe even bigger than both of those.

Maybe not bigger than Kauai to the Kliper's summer. If you're ranking, you know, early July moves as there have been many, there have been some, some bombs over the course of the last, you know, 10 years. it's it's kind of breaking my brain a little bit but of all the the ultimate ultimately my answer is if of all the major shakeups that would you know be pitched and be potentially required in a in a summer after you lose

an ugly ugly ugly ugly series where Jason Tatum is not good it would be probably the best case scenario I'm glad that you mentioned the just the mood that would be surrounding the team because that's the important part of this like Tatum would in this hypothetical scenario at age 26 and age 27, which is typically the age where stars figured out, would have a playoff run where he was very important in them winning the title, but two playoff runs where he operated well below that of a top tier superstar. And essentially, like, when you have a payroll like what they had, it's almost like championship or bust in a lot of ways. And I almost look at it like the, there's like a certain amount of urgency to capitalize on this window.

Because like, let's take a look at like what the scenario would look like Tatum did not get traded. So Tatum doesn't get traded. You, you drop a couple of bodies. Let's call it Porzingis and, like, let's call it Porzingis and Holiday. Just as an example. Even if they just get rid of Porzingis, okay? They just get rid of Porzengis. Horford's a year older.

Drew Holiday's a year older. Derek White's a year old, although Derek White, Tatum and Brown are still firmly in their prime. So in this scenario, like, you are a less talented version of this year's team that just got eliminated

in the second round in embarrassing fashion. So in that scenario, like, you look forward and it's like, actually they're completely hamstrung other than draft picks. They have draft picks, but they don't have any, like, free agent flexibility at all.

You're in this situation where you have to ask yourself, like Cleveland is going to get better as Evan Mobley gets better and as Darius Garland gets better and as Jared Allen gets better. You look at the east and it's like all of a sudden the pistons are looking a little bit. Frisky is a team that could be a problem in the east. The Pacers right now are playing at extremely high level. You have the thunder who are going to keep getting better. You have Wembe and Deere and Fox and who knows what else they're going to do this summer. Houston could make a trade for Kevin Durant.

The teams around you would be getting better while your team would be getting better. while your team would be getting worse and we would have just seen them not be good enough. And so then you ask yourself like, okay, now Tatum's 28, 29 years old. Are you even close to good enough to win the title with your roster that you had? And that's where I think it gets fascinating.

Essentially what you're saying is like, this roster is destined to some form of blow up anyway. Like Tatum, like in this hypothetical where he's, you know, had these two kind of somewhat disappointing playoff runs, he would literally be a player that you would look at as not, like, you would need to surround him with an enormous amount of talent for him to win, right? And so with that being the case, Janus is the type of superstar talent that can lift up a roster that's just another great roster and make it into a championship worthy roster. And so I think it just kind of like

makes some sense on that level. But again, I think, I think the part, the part you mentioned about the human element is real. Like, I just don't. think Boston would do that to Tatum. But if he throws a couple of stinkers down there. Yeah, I mean, it could get, the discourse is going to get real ugly. If he has, even if they lose in, if they lose in five and he starts playing better, it's like, okay, get in the lab, you know, come back, come back better next summer. That's, but if he has, if he doesn't have it, a great game the rest of the series, or even if he just has three mediocre games and they, and they lose in five, the discourse is going to get quite ugly. because this course is getting it quite ugly.

I was briefly checking out the, I was like, okay, maybe there's a way to include Chris Staps in a deal so you're shedding some salary in the same trade. What can we, you obviously want to give up more salary than you're getting it back, but is there anyone useful on the bucks you can get back? And guess what?

The answer is no. Their roster sucks. Their roster sucks. Most of their roster's on one year deals. It's like, I was like, oh, AJ Green's okay. Okay, he's $2 million. Like, maybe that's,

AJ Green would make a great selfie to be making great sell. Like, I don't really want Kyle Kuzma. Brooks on the last year of his deal. Bobby Portis, uh, I think he actually, know, he could be traded, but like, so Bobby Portis is okay. I suppose you can take back Bobby Portis, but it's pretty bleak in terms of the buck situation, which we knew that, obviously. That's why they're going to blow it up this summer, but

it's, I don't know. Well, in a poor Zingis trade, too, in a theoretical cost-cutting move, they would look to move him to a team with cap space so they didn't have to take salary back. and so like but that's that's my point though is like if boston's going to be in a substantial cost cutting like position you have to have a serious conversation with yourself about whether or not tatem's going to be good enough yeah i think that's fair i think the counter for and the rationalization for me is a suffix fan and the counter for most healthics fans is the point you're making about the age of the two superstars they are entering tatems are going to be 27 next year jaylon brown's to be 28 next year. They are entering the theoretical, theoretically the best part of their

basketball career and like not, and they're not 30 or 31. Like they got theoretically you're entering a four to five year prime window as well as these stars seem to be keeping up that highly elite level at like 32, 33 these days. So you're entering a four to five year elite elite window where you got where the hope would be those guys continue to get better. Even if it's you know marginally better. you're not expecting a giant leap at this point in either of their careers. But if they're going to get a little bit better, each of them, over the summer, you're hoping that can make up for any of the talent drop you're getting that you're going to have to make reportedly in a cost-cutting move this summer.

The thing that would scare me with that is, yes, players do get better in that 27 to 32 range, but they tend to get better at the expense of some athleticism. It's usually in that like 25, 26 range that you're moving really well. I mean, I already saw, I saw a video today of like young Tatum. Like he was, he's a lot less explosive than he used to be even back then. And is Tatum a good enough shot maker to do this at a lower level of athleticism? And that arguably has been the thing that he's never been able to figure out. And so, like there's, it happens a lot.

And like, I, I keep thinking about the comment that Matthew had on playback. a couple, like three, four nights ago where he just was like, he basically was just saying Tatum's streaky. And like, he's like, he's, yeah, yeah, he can be hot from three, but he can just as easily be cold. And so that's where it gets tricky. But I, I, uh, and the point you're making is fair in the sense that like, if you just bet on Tatum and Brown progressing year over year, but is it enough to make up for a substantial loss in roster talent? The, the last thing I'll say about it is Janus is 30. Like, you can easily get

three great years out of him and then pivot, you know. But, but yeah, it's a fascinating concept. And I, for the record, I'm still in the, like, gun to my head, if you ask me who was going to win the Celtics Knicks series, I think I'd still I think I would too.

I think I would too. It's this, we've seen a lot of ups and downs from this, you know, era of the Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown playoff era. And, more often than not, someone said this on playback, maybe it was Mike, uh, more often than not,

and it's true of the regular season as well. They are, they play well when they're backs against the wall. They respond to adversity well. They do not respond to success well. They, when they're, when it seems like there might be a little bit overconfident,

it, it crumbles quickly. But they have yet to lose three times in a row this season. They're going to try to keep that streak alive, uh, tomorrow. Tomorrow, right? No, Saturday, actually. Saturday, actually.

Um, yeah, Yeah, they got to sit with that loss. Yeah, they have a loss. So I do think that the series, like I was saying, if they lose in four or five, I think it's going to go at least six. If I had, if I was betting, I would, I would expect to do at least six. So in that sense, anything can happen.

Yeah, I, uh, I would be shocked if they didn't win one in New York. And then I would be shocked if they didn't win game five. But like, yeah, if New York wins, it feels like they're going to win in six. But yeah, I, uh, I, it still feels very open-ended for me. It's just the hardest thing is like they're right there. They're right there. Even with the 20-point leads,

it's like you get a stop on Jalen Brunson, you win game one. You're game two. Game one literally goes to overtime. So like, yeah, it's still, it's still right there. I just have been, I've been just fascinated with the concept.

I've been fascinated with the concept because we haven't really seen anything like this in NBA history, not in the very long time. And so it's like I was trying to think, like I think this would probably be, the worst playoff loss like factoring in superstar play

like since LeBron in 2011 probably but it's a different it's a little bit of a different vibe because LeBron LeBron no one was going to bail on LeBron because that that one series kind of stands out as like a blip

among like mostly playoff greatness you know but with Tatum there are just so many of these like kinds of examples and then to have two in a row right in the heart of his prime. I think it would be, it would be weird. But we're going to see what happens. And it is, it was just kind of a little fun thought exercise with a, uh, with a relatively boring night around the NBA. That's all we have for tonight, guys. No playback again tonight, but we'll be back on playback tomorrow night. No film session tomorrow morning either. So we're going to take a little

break, but we will be live tomorrow night after the final buzzer of game three thunder nuggets. Very excited for that game. We will see you guys then. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting hoops tonight. It would actually be really Really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys. I appreciate you. If you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it. The volume.

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