The Ringer NBA Show - A Simmons-House Emergency Pod for Rockets-GSW Game 4 | The Ringer NBA Show

Episode Date: May 7, 2019

Bill Simmons is joined by Joe House to give immediate reactions to a gritty, frantic win for the Houston Rockets over the two-time reigning champion Golden State Warriors to even the series at 2-2 (1:10). Then, Simmons and House discuss the Milwaukee Bucks’ sound win over the Boston Celtics to take a commanding 3-1 lead in the series, which featured a dominant, MVP-like performance from Giannis Antetokounmpo (21:10). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Joe House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's very special, emergency edition of the Ringer NBA show here on The Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you by Callaway, home of what is the name of the driver house? The Epic Flash with Flash Face technology. That's the one I'm going to be hitting nice, straight and long tomorrow. Yeah, me too, hopefully. For the first time ever for your 50th birthday, your big gala week, we're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where you can find the rewatchables, as well as rewatchables, 1999,

our new podcast on Luminary, little spinoff series, House and I tape Big Daddy Day, that's going up later this week. And you can also check out the Ringer NBA show all week. We are cramming it with episodes. Producer Bobby, how many are we doing?

It's our first time working together. How many episodes of Rigger NBA show? Like seven, eight? We're up to like five or six a week at this point. That's great. You know what? We love basketball. Basketball is very good.

Seth Curry is the best Curry. The Sixers should trade for Landry Shannon. The playoffs are better without LeBron. Basketball is very good. All right, House. We just watched doubleheader. We watched the Celtics season effectively end.

Not a huge surprise. Then we watched the Rockets fight back, clawback. We kept looking at the live betting line, really from the midway second quarter point on, wondering when the Warriors were going to come back. They never came back. Sorry, I'm burping up pizza. They almost came back. They almost came back, but it never quite happened.

What do you want to talk about first? Celtics are worse. Let's talk about warriors. Yeah, let's talk about warriors. I'd like to also say tonight's show brought to you by sobriety. I am not drunk tonight. You weren't drunk last night. You just had a couple glasses of wine in you.

I just had my, I unbuckled my belt a little bit. That's all. Yeah. All right. So series tied 2-2. I am so impressed by the Rockets and the amount of fight that they showed where, you know, one play here or there in game three, and they're looking at a sweep.

Now it's 2-2. They got a little momentum. The stat nerds don't like the word momentum, but I think the rockets have a little momentum right now. We saw another poor Steph Curry shooting performance. We saw a Clay Thompson performance that was so bad that you were joking that he was shaving points and that he was going to get arrested after the game.

He was really bad. KD was magnificent again. Draymond was pretty good. I thought Draymond was good. Yeah. For the most part, though, the the small ball physical T-H-I-C-Rockets lineup really seemed like it gave the Warriors some problems.

Have they stumbled on something else? Well, this is the matchup. I think that we were anticipating all along. And kudos to Houston for holding serve at home. They have not lost at home in these playoffs this year. And they're, you know, taking care of business the way they're supposed to. The last two games, a sizable. rebounding advantage. And that goes to your point about the physicality that they're bringing to

the table. Obviously, PJ Tucker was a big, big difference maker tonight. And they got their hands on every 50-50 ball. They really did. My disappointment with Clay Thompson, what doesn't run so much to him missing shots, but he was nowhere near those 50-50 balls all night tonight. Yeah, and he was sloppy, sloppy with the balls a couple of times there. So this wasn't quite the We thought we'd say. Here's why. Clint Capelle, 21 points tonight. They really went, for the most part, with Tucker, Chris Paul, Hardin, Gordon, and then Austin

Rivers, a tiny bit of Shumper. But for the most part, their crunch time lineup had rivers in it. And really small. That's smaller than I ever imagined anybody being able to go against the Warriors for long stretches of time. And you would have thought they had that Durant would be a huge advantage because he was six inches taller than anyone the Rockets had out there. And I thought they were going to go to him over and over again down the stretch.

And they really didn't. And it was frustrated to watch. I thought they did. No, I didn't feel like they did. We have to look at the possession. How many points did he score in the fourth quarter? Remember over and over again? It was like Draymond charged the basket on these layups and they set up Clayford three.

Iggy had a three in the corner. Curry had a couple shots. Well, the Warriors... I felt like the rant was unstoppable advantage in this game. The Warriors were super committed to scoring in the paint. And, you know, Steph had a really good game going to the hole tonight. It took him a long time to, I think, did he end up with even four threes tonight? Yeah, so he was 12 for 25 in this game, four for 14 from three.

So he's eight for 11 on nine threes. Yes. Back to your point. And got to, he only got the line twice. But Durant got to the line 10 times. Durant had 34. Duran, really fun moment down the stretch in the four. fourth quarter when he was basically like, I'm going to guard harder now. That was. I really, really thoroughly enjoyed that. I can't wait to hear Kerr's description of what happened. I want to know what the sequence was that led to that lineup, that assignment.

I think that was all KD. I agree with you. I want to hear the story. I relish that. He does a couple of nice things he gets harder. One of the things I like is he leans forward and tries to put his hand in his face so that no matter what's happening, there's this giant Kevin. Durant Hayden in Hart's face.

Well, he can be four and five feet away from Hardin. His arm is so far out there. So then the rockets were countering. They were sending Rivers and Chris Paul and Tucker to set these picks on Durant where they were trying to sneak up behind him and they couldn't see him. They're going really low and basically like ramming into his hip and throwing him off and he was getting pissed and he got mad a couple times. They were doing that on boxouts too.

Chris Paul was shoving him from behind, giving him little elbows. In the second quarter, he whistled a little elbow right at Chris Paul's head. But it's almost like, it was like a boxing match where the Houston's trainer was like, go to the body. They were going to. Hit him in the belly. Hit him in the hips. They were going to the hips on Durant.

And they were really trying to take them out, which leads me to my first big picture point for this series. And this is something I brought up with Rosillo, I think two Sundays ago, or maybe it was last Sunday, the Sunday previous yesterday's Sunday. This is a huge minute load series and really taxing and really physical. And if this is going to go seven with the bets that both coaches have now made with the amount of minutes

they're playing these guys, these teams are going to be in trouble for the next two rounds. Like win or lose? Like Durant played 43 again tonight, so did Curry, Hardin played 40, Eric Gordon played 40,

Chris Paul played 36 and he's perennially been you never want to go over 32 with him. This is how he ended up, I think, getting hurt last year when they started really ratching up his minutes. But I don't really feel like these coaches have a choice either. Like you almost have to do anything it takes to win this series and then kind of worry about the other ones later. It was playing out as lots and lots of folks observed. This is ostensibly for the NBA title. Now Milwaukee. With two rounds left.

Yeah, Milwaukee is showing us something. I mean, you know, this Janus performance is helping us to believe, oh, you know, there's something here. And who knows with Toronto and the Sixers, if Toronto can put it together at home. But the interesting thing on the minutes point, Denver and Portland are in the same boat. Like, it ain't like Yokic. Oh, that's true. It ain't like Yokich is on a light load. Yeah, that's true.

So Windhorst had a good piece about this a couple of days ago. about how Steve Kerr, basically from the first game in this series, is like, I'm emptying the shotgun in this series. I will have no bullets left by the end of it. I will not be saving anything for game four, game five, game six. And this feels like a seven game or now. Oh, it sure does. I'm so happy.

I'll tell you this. If the Warriors are up three, two, I'm trying to think what ref they wouldn't want to see in game six, but we'll be seeing him. And we'll be saying, it's funny how these games are officiated in Houston versus in Golden State, right? Because in Houston, Chris Paul's doing all his flopping stuff and his acting. And there's a couple of high comedy moments tonight with him when he was really trying to sell elbows and stuff like that. You can't do that on the road.

Because if you do that on the road and they show the replay on the video screen and the crowd goes ballistic and the refs feel like, oh, that guy just showed me up, he faked the call. You're not getting another call the whole game. In Houston, they're not going to show the call. So he can kind of bring it up seven matches. You don't agree with this? No, I do agree with it. And I think Chris Paul knows that. Yeah, he will customize his approach accordingly.

We owe him an apology. I mean, just. One of us does. I wasn't talking to any of that blasphemy last night. I wasn't doing any Chris Paul slander. I was really impressed by his game tonight. Now, box score, 13 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 for 11. Nothing special.

Two turnovers. But what you were saying last night when we were talking about, he's not one of the two best players in this team anymore. Should there be situations where maybe Austin Rivers plays over him and they have more size, stuff like that? And you made the point, you want him out there because he's a junkyard dog. He's going to be scrapping, quang, fighting, flopping. elbows, pissing people off, agitator. And we saw of it tonight. It was like a basically a

really high level Patrick Beverly impersonation. Did you feel that way? Absolutely. It was like the rich man's Patrick Beverly. They're getting their money's worth this season. They ain't going to get their money's worth in the next couple of seasons on the contract they signed him to. But they're getting their money's worth this season. He really made KD mad a couple times. The question is, is it a good thing to make KD mad? Sure. Is it good to get in his head or is it actually a bad thing to make him mad because he's playing so well right now he can... It's not, we don't know the answer, but you have to try everything. You have to try and build every advantage you can muster. You have to try it.

But here's the thing. The guy to go after is Dremont. Because that's somebody who you could actually get thrown out of the game. Like KD will get mad, but he won't like get thrown out of the game mad. K. Jemont will get like throw. thrown out of the game, Matt. I don't know. You don't think so? He's been pretty poised. The same guy who punched LeBron and the balls in game five of the 2016 finals?

Yeah, but it's 20 tactical this year? It's 2019. And it's physical. Like, he's given and getting a lot of physical play. And so far he's kept it under control. I like the game plan. Heroes Among Us Tonight. Another classic Austin Rivers supporting cast game.

He's in the right place. He's fucking feisty. On the right. Exactly. He's just being feisty. He's in there. He's fighting through screens. He's setting hard picks.

He's getting his hand on loose balls. He's not afraid to take big shots. And it's hard for me to believe they picked him up on the waiverware. Like him and he and his canter playing huge minutes in the playoffs, both just plucked off the waiverware available. But that's the league. I mean, everything is situational. Everything, you know, the value of a guy.

I mean, Kenneth, Reed, has he seen the court? No, he has not seen the court. But that, but you know, guess what? He was, he was vitally important to Houston down that, down the stretch. Yeah, and I think they realize in this series that, um, if they can get away with putting these miles on Tucker, 42 minutes tonight, this is a hard 42 minutes. They needed every one of them, too.

And, uh, if they can get away with him carrying that kind of load, I mean, that's 40, when you go over 40 minutes, that's a lot of minutes for a basketball game because you think about it, it's two 24 minute halves. You're basically resting somebody for three minutes a half when they're playing 42 minutes, which in my opinion is not enough rest. It just isn't. You could take somebody out at like the two and a half minute mark of the first quarter, get them all the way through the timeout, and get them through the 10 minute time out and get to about 39 minutes with them. if you can't even do that, that means you don't trust more than like seven guys in your team. And they don't.

And they don't. That's right. I mean, what's the point now isn't to rest. The point is to win. You have to win these games. He's the games. But the problem is they're going every other night now. So what?

And with flying back and forth. So this is a game of chicken now. From the warrior's standpoint, so they played Looney 22, Livingston 14. McKinney played 11 minutes. I don't really remember. I don't know where Swedish Larry Bird was. I was calling for it on Twitter.

I really thought he'd have a moment. That Swedish Larry would at least come in for, I don't know, one quarter. But yeah, both teams loading up on the carbs. Iggy played 29. It looked like he hurt his knee a little bit at the end. I hope not. So now we're going to Golden State game five. All of these games have been close or have ended with a close score.

Yes. I would say Game one was close Like legit close I think tonight Ended up being legit close But I felt like the Rockets had it In hand most of the game

The Rockets were going to have to snatch Defeat from the jaws of victory If it felt like tonight And they almost did They started missing free throws at the end Game three Was the Seesaw game And game two

It felt like the Warriors had at the whole game Well tonight if KD or Steph They had very good looks They did Inside of eight seconds, they both got good looks that should have tied the basketball game, and then it would have been interesting. You know, it turns out it's a good idea to keep trying when you're down four or five in the last 30 seconds of a game.

That's what we learned. That's one of the things we've learned the playoffs. Maybe you keep trying when you're down four or five points. New playoff lesson. This was, there's a Durant versus Hardin shadow over this whole game and over this whole series. The way it should be. What do you think? if this is a boxing fight,

two rounds to two right now? Yes, two to two. Two to two. Two to two. Two to two. Even scorecard? Even scorecard. What are the compi box punch box?

What are those called? Compu box punch stats? Sure. Sure, Jim Lampley. What do you think? Who landed more power punches? It feels like Durant more power punches, but harden more punches. Dead even.

I just see. They're dead even. It's two, two for a reason. I mean, the interesting thing is, the increase in physicality in Houston being comfortable at home and out rebounding and winning those 50-50 balls. The rebounding totals are, I feel like are being driven by the energy they have on the 50-50 balls. So it ended up 50 to 43 in the rebounds for the Rockets. At one point, that was like 45 to 31.

It was in double digits. It was an 11, 12, 13 range. And then it flipped back at the end. Rockets took 53s tonight house. 53s, 39-2s. Unrepent. That's what they do. And we talked about this really since last year that this Warriors team, which is so good,

that the recipe to beat them is basically math. That's true. And threes and just playing really hard and you kind of throw everything you thought you do about basketball out of the window. And 17-15-50-thirn-3, the Warriors- were only eight for 33. Free throws were even. Pretty even game except for the rebounds. I thought Hardin was the best part in the court tonight. But I thought the rant was really good.

All right. I just thought Hardin did a tiny bit more. Well, the point that you made earlier where it felt like Houston had control the entire game. That's because of the game that James Harden had. I thought, so here's the thing. I thought he had control of the pace of play. It was very distinctly his game. It felt like for the four quarters. And Durant has had games like that too where it just feels like, oh, this is Durant's game.

He's controlling all the decisions tonight. I didn't think Harden necessarily played his greatest game, but I felt like the pace was the pace he wanted. Now, they go to Golden State for game five, and we're going to talk about this with Briscilla tomorrow night and break down what we think's going to happen. I'm not as scared about going into Golden State as it would have been in years past. Well, they didn't win either one of those games.

No, I know. But the Warriors have lost many games this year. They have seen more vulnerable than usual there. I don't think they have the same home crowd that they've normally gotten in Golden State. And I think it's winnable. And it was winnable last year, too. They almost won the game six. They almost won the game six.

So what do you think happens? I bet this series for me, House. So he, I'm going to give you the odds right now. Well, actually, think about my question first. Each of these two games in Houston, the defining factor to me has been one of Golden State's most important players has had a pretty bad game by their standards. So Steph sucked in game three. Clay sucked tonight. And tell me right now what kind of game I'm going to get.

I know what I'm going to get from KD. He's the super duper alpha dog, baddest mofo in the playoffs, him and Kauai. And I loved Janus tonight showing up and say, hey, hey, hey, hey. Yeah, Janice came out with his resume tonight. Janice was like, all this Kauai, Keith Neath stuff. Yeah. Here's my resume. My name is Janice.

I'm from Greece. I'd like to be involved in this conversation. That's right. I loved it. But if I expect both Clay and Steph to have better games in Oracle, Well, I will say I'm stunned by this. When they felt behind 2-0, nothing, I thought they squandered the series at that point.

They, Houston. Yeah, because at that point, you've got to win four or five. And I think this Warriors, this five-year run is a historically great run. Their team is healthy. And that's completely unrealistic to me that they're going to take four or five. They go back to Houston. They take care of business. The series flips a little bit.

they get it done tonight and now they just have to win two the next three and I can't believe I'm saying this but it's way more realistic to me than it was even before the series because I think they've figured out what they need to do to win the series now they know what the recipe is now

it's like we're going small we're going to be physical we're going to outfight you for every lose ball we're going to increase the pace of this game of each game by about the pace is going to be able about 10% more frantic than you're used to. And normally you love this because you're golden state.

It's like, oh, this is chaotic. This is great. But actually, you don't really like it this time around as much. We're throwing you out of sorts. You're doing weird things. You get Dream on, charge you down the middle on these weird fast break layups and passes getting thrown out of bounds. And we're just basically taking the snow globe and shaking it.

Let me ask you this. I don't have an answer. I'm interested in your opinion. is this the series that James, that catapults the James Harden conversation, that changes the James Harden conversation? Is this going to be the postseason James Harden performance? It's lined up for him now.

Because he's had game one. It was his worst game, right? I mean, the stats have been even with Duran. I think Duran has been more efficient. but, you know, he's definitely not only rose to the occasion, but seemed to kind of relish it. Had that kind of swagger to him those last two games. Like, not afraid of you guys.

I think I'm the best player in this series, and I'm going to show it. So I got to hand it to him. It was impressive. I don't even think he played that way last year. He's got to do it on the road, doesn't he? I mean, he literally has to do it on the road because they don't have home court to advantage. Eric Gordon, not great tonight.

Two for 12 from three, but I still like the way he's playing. Sure. He's crucial. What were his minutes? I mean, he had to been over 40. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's the thing. When you look at the stats from this with the guys, you know, people see the 40 minutes

and it's like, all right, I've seen people play 40 minutes for it, but these are like really hard 40 minutes. It's great. This is like, it's like playoff football versus exhibition football. You made the point. And I think it was in the third quarter, it would have been great to have seen Boston play this hard for any time at all. Yeah, good segue. Let's segue to that really quick and then we'll go.

Yeah, the intensity of Houston Golden State versus the intensity that the Celtics were playing with, it was jarring. We noticed that immediately we're watching the first quarter of the game, which the Warriors Rockets was immediately intense. And guys, there's this one point I saw it online where it was. somebody was showing how the warriors rotated on D for this one play. And Curry trapped somebody on top of the key, like 28 feet from the basket, trapped it with somebody, but then they were able to rotate out. And he went and ran all the way to the opposite corner to contest this Austin River saying. He was just full speed the whole time.

Nobody on the Celtics played that hard this entire series. But I think that's a very, very good way to frame the problem with this Celtics team. They don't give two shits? Well, but it's a trust component. It's an understanding the system component. Like, Curry didn't have to think about where he was going to go, and he didn't have to worry about any of his other teammates. He goes right from the trap to the opposite corner

because he knows that's where the ball's going to go, and that's his defensive assignment. That's what the rotation produces. That's not anything like what we saw out of the Celtics. It is jarring at this point of the season to see the lack of communication, the lack of trust, and the constant confused looks out of Boston. Yes, as somebody's getting an uncontested layout. Yes, yes.

They're looking at each other like, what are we doing? Who you got? I tried to tell you this. We did our podcast last night. And I was saying to you that I just didn't think it was going to happen. I thought they were going to lose. And you had this look in here. You weren't sure if I was reverse jinxing it,

and then you realized I was being serious. And I was just like, look, when times get tough, a team can go one or two ways, and this Celtics team over and over again this season has gone the wrong way. Even the Rockets, they're down to nothing. They embarrass themselves with all the officiating bullshit. They go back to Houston.

They could have rolled over, and they didn't. They decided to fight to get back in the series. And this Boston team, the moment they can take the easy way out they do, And they'll have these moments and it happens over and over again. What did I say to you? We were watching that in the second quarter. Seltz were like up 39, 31, something like that.

Yeah. And I was saying it was going to be $42.40 in like three minutes. And it was $42.41 like three minutes later because that's what the Seltz do over and over again. They don't play hard the whole game. You have to play hard in a playoff game. Newsflash. I don't think it's an effort thing. I just think that there is a basic lack of, there's an institutional dysfunction.

There's a lack of cohesion. There's a lack of communication that so often resulted in so curious iso ball things out of the Celtics. The wrong guy taking the wrong shot in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seven straight months of it. Yeah. It's not like they're not trying. It's more like there's a calmness to them. Like they think it's going to be all right.

There's not a, oh my God, if we lose this game, they're going to set the Boston Garden on fire afterwards. We have to save it. Like there's a frantic energy that they just don't have. That's true. The rockets tonight were like, if you're taking us out, we're going to leave you with at least some bruises and we're going to knock you down a few times and we're going to go down fighting. But that frantic energy, and I think that's a great way of putting it. Thank you. Is a direct, there's a direct correlation between like the liberating effect of knowing exactly where you're supposed to be, what your job is, what the other guys around you are going to do that allows you to turn your brain.

off and just do max effort. The Celtics never were able to turn their brains off. Kyrie was seven for 22 tonight. That included a garbage layup at the end. It was six for 21. And then he did the classic Kyrie move where they're down like 10. And he goes flying in to pad the stats with 20 seconds left. He did a lot of talk all season about judges in the playoffs.

I'm a playoff guy. I've won a title. I'm the only guy in this team who understands what it's like to be in the finals. This is my time of year. The postseason is when you find out who's who and all that stuff. And he's just flat out sucked. 19 of 62 in these three series deciding games.

And somebody asked him that after the game and he said, who cares? Well, he will be able to. I'll tell you who cares, me. And so do the good people of Boston who booed his ass off the court tonight. Well, I'll read you my text for my dad after the game. My dad went to the game. He went to game three, he went to game four. My dad said, I said, did you enjoy the Celtic season?

And my dad texted back, no. Sitting there, a real lack of effort on defense, crowd booed. Karee was awful. Hero shots, no involvement of rest of team. Sad to watch Hayward. Rozier and Smart were terrible. Friday and tonight were embarrassing second half performances. Go B's.

He's out. So is the whole city. He doesn't have to spend playoff money anymore. He's like, great. Send me my refund for rounds three and four. Yeah, this crowd. Grandi was telling me this all year and so was my dad. Sean Grandi, the radio guy.

And my dad was saying the same thing because Grandi is obviously at every game. My dad went to a bunch of games. And he was just like, the crowd doesn't like this team. They don't like the hero ball. They don't like the threes with a hand in the face with 18 seconds left. They don't like teams that it's kind of your turn, your turn, your turn, my turn. That was the T. That was what we watched tonight.

They don't like it. They don't like dumb defensive things. And I don't think the Indiana series for some reason made people go, oh, here they come. And it's like, Indiana stinks. Yeah. They didn't have Olo Depot. They're playing Darren Collison and Corey Joseph and West Matthews, big giant minutes.

Bobby, you're young man. But you follow basketball. I do. Do you think Darren Collison, Cory Joseph, and West Matthews are a good litmus test for whether your team's going to be a good playoff team? Not ready for the finals, for sure. Yeah. Maybe in 2010. Yeah, 2010.

Shots fired by Bobby. Kyrie's record for the Celtics in the postseason is going to be five and four. And he'll look great in a Nets or Knicks uniform next year. We'll be fine. There's a lot of balls in the air now. I mean... I will tell you this. A friend of mine who works in basketball for a team has a theory.

called the Bahamas theory. Oh. That when it's over, it's over. And when it's like your last game, and if you lose this game, your season's over, some guys are either like, we're not going out this way,

and other guys are like, we're going to lose on Thursday night. I can be in Cabo by Friday at 5 p.m. And there's certain teams that could be one way, and there's certain teams that could be the other way. and the bucks are favored by nine and a half in game five, this Celtics team seems like the type of team where at least a couple guys in this team

already have the reservations for what they're doing this weekend. The Atlantis has gotten a few phone calls. The Atlanta is like, hey, I'm just checking on the suites for Saturday night. Or Vegas? The Milwaukee money line right now is minus 500. Yeah. That's 5,000 to win a thousand. Let's put all of our.

life savings on it. I need some Ws. I had a lot of... You've had a lot of L's last week. At least we avoided the Warriors live bed today. Yeah. But yeah, I just think, here's the thing.

In basketball, you can take a bunch of guys that are pretty good and you put them together and sometimes it just doesn't work. And the mix just isn't there. And it hasn't been there all year for the Celtics team.

I'm still struggling to make sense of it and I can't totally, but I just know what I've seen for seven months. And at some point, the guys know it, And I think we're there. Like Marcus Morris, I think for the 10th time this season, had a whole press conference thing after the game of,

we didn't show a lot of fight tonight. It's really disappointing. We need to have a better effort. It's like, just run the video of the last time you gave this press conference. I don't want to talk about them anymore. This is embarrassing Celtics season. RIP. They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Let's talk about the bucks really quick. Let's talk about the bucks. I thought Janus had a little. Sunt and sunt in the night. A little edge to him. He did the Kobe giant underbite move after the one when he blocked it, I went in and then had the dunk in the other end. And then he did that Kobe underbite thing, that angry Kobe look.

Yeah, I love it. This is all over the place. He's, he needed a serve notice. We talked about it earlier. He's like, what? Kauai and KD. Yeah, where am I? Yeah, that's right.

Somebody forgot about the freak. The thing with them, Jamal Murray is this guy for the Nuggets, but the Nuggets need Jamal Murray way more than the Bucks need Bledsoe. But when Bledsoe plays really well, this Bucs team is the best team in the league. If he's at the peak of his powers in a game combined with the shooting and Janus, they're kind of unstoppable. Well, they have so many different mature weapons. And this is the thing that distinguishes them in the East to me.

They just play with a discipline when they play with a discipline. Like they get themselves in trouble, like the way they lost game one to Boston. But when they play with the discipline that they have, there's, you know, you have a lot of guys with a lot of playoff chops. Not necessarily, you know, guys that have been to the finals, but a lot of guys with a, at least been in some games. Yeah, been into some games. Know what playoff pressure is all about. Well, they survived. Middleton was terrible.

It was four for 19. Merrittich wasn't much better. Three for 10. Here's what the big takeaway for me with this Bucks thing was. Other than that, I like Janice. If you're really the MVP and you're hitting this different stage of your career, you need to just annihilate Boston in one of these games, which is what he did.

That's a nice little checkmark for the past. The big thing for me is I wasn't sure about Connaton and George Hill and Ilyossova as road guys that they actually had to depend on in playoff games. with a good crowd, and Janice having a kick to them if he's being double-teamed, like, are the bench guys on that team going to play well? We saw George Hill last year, had a couple good games in the Boston series, a couple of bad games, and the finals, he was atrocious. Well, I mean, he had the opportunity to win game one.

Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah, he missed the free throw. Yeah, and he missed the free throw. Conantin, unproven, obviously, as, you know, as somebody on the big, big stage from Arlington Mass, by the. And I thought those guys, George Hill in particular, content was good too, but George Hill, that was the best he's looked in a couple years. He made me reconsider what went wrong for him in Cleveland.

Well, he definitely likes this matchup against Boston's guards. There's no two ways about it. Because they don't play defense. Yeah, he felt like he could get to the hole with impunity. And I believe that he did. Yeah, it was pretty good. So they answered some questions, I think. Sure.

They needed to play well in the two at Boston games. We know they can play well at home. They have home court advantage, but I wanted to see them do it in a road game, and they did. And now, no matter what happens with that Toronto Philly series, I think they'll definitely be favored. Oh, they're going to be favored for sure. I think the Philly matchup would be more fun. The Toronto matchup would be more of a, I don't know who's going to win. One thing I noticed tonight, I wanted to mention to you about Janus, they were putting them on the left side a couple of times, the top, like where Dr. Jay used to go.

Sure. And he was doing that thing where he'd go into the lane and he would do like the swoop shot. But instead of Dr. Jay would do like that swoop. Across the lane with his arm. Across the lane, finger roll. Yeah. And Kareem would do the go and magic then stole it from Kareem to going into the lane little skyhook. And Janus had his version of that that he did a couple times, which I've seen him do at other points during the year.

But when he goes in and it seems like it's going to start out like the magic skyhook, but he does that big Janus alien arm. Yep. And it goes way higher. And then it's like almost like a Kareem Skyhook. Where he's shooting down at the basket. Guess who's blacking that shot? No human beings that were aware of. Nobody who's alive.

Boban. If you put Boban and made him stand right at the rim. Bobin on a trampoline? No, he's standing at the rim with his arm straight up and he jumps at the same time as the ball comes down. I feel like the bucks are saving that play for like the finals. That's like their big secret weapon is Janus. on that side where they could just, I just don't know how you stop it.

I want to see. Because the other thing is he can pass out of it too. Sure. He goes into the wind like he's going to do it. And then he just fires a freak alien pass to like somebody in the corner or something. But how many assists did he end up with tonight? Do you have that handy? He had four.

Four. Milwaukee Golden State. Really? Just because of home court. Through the four games right now, Houston is leading the series by one point. It's that close. Yeah. And the difference to me is Golden State gets to play game seven at home.

That's it. That's all. Tell you this, they better win game five. They have to win game five. You're right. You're right. You're right. Two going back to Houston.

No, that's going to be a flop-a-thon. Can not have that. They have to win game five. I think they win game five. Speaking of flapathons, are you excited for a golf tomorrow? I have my 60-degree PM grind. That's a Phil Mickelson grind. Yeah, I can't hit those. Perfect flopidopopolis. I'm terrible excited by Calloway Golf. Thanks, Callow. I'm excited for the Epic Flash driver, though. Yeah, man, we're going to bang it away. Thanks, Callow. Looking

forward to playing golf tomorrow. You can hear the Ringer NBA show, Verno and KOC are coming tomorrow anyway, right? Yes, sir. Yeah, so that's happening too. This is a little, little appetizer for you before that one comes on. And then Ringer MBA show, Me House Rosillo, tomorrow night after the doubleheader. We're going to be back in the house. Rissillo's finally recovered from the Willie Nelson concert. I'm excited. Best of luck to him in his two-day recovery. But we'll be going hard after the double-headed tomorrow.

And I have a lot on the agenda for that as well. Joe House, pleasure as always. Producer Bobby. Thank you. And we'll see you on the Ring or Mbe Show in about 12 to 15 hours. And then we'll see you in the BS podcast late tomorrow night. Thanks. Basketball is very good.

Basketball is very good.