The Ringer NBA Show - Jimmy Buckets Steals Another Game 1, Plus Draft Lottery Ripple Effects | Group Chat

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Justin and Wos start the pod by reacting to Miami taking homecourt advantage away from Boston in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals (01:59). They discuss another masterclass performance by Jimmy Butler, how much blame should be placed on Joe Mazzulla, and more. Then, they talk about the ripple effect resulting from the draft lottery, including whether San Antonio should accelerate their rebuild, the Blazers’ potentially trading the no. 3 pick, and the Rockets-James Harden rumors (27:15). They end with a quick preview of Game 2 between the Lakers and Nuggets (57:06). Hosts: Justin Verrier and Wosny Lambre Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Support: Ben Cruz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, Humanoids. This is David Chewaker here with a very exciting announcement. Your favorite wrestling podcast feed, The Ring of Wrestling Show, is now going daily. And you can hang out with me and Kaz on Mondays and Thursdays for the Masked Man Show. And you can join me, Peter Rosenberg, alongside Stack Guy Greg and Dip every Tuesday with cheap heat. And on Fridays, I'll welcome a friend or special guest from the world of wrestling. Now, on Wednesdays, we have a very special new show called Wednesday Worldwide that you're going to want to check out. Paperview reaction, one-of-a-kind interviews, fantasy booking, talking about bagels. That's what we do here on the Ring of Wrestling show.

Follow the show now on Spotify. And do us a favor. Give us five stars. And do us another favor and stay major. Hello and welcome to group chat. I am Justin Barrier. And joining me, a guy who will not get my obscure ass references, so I'm not even going to try. Big Was.

What's up, man? I'm good, man. I'm good. Missing our compadre, Rob Mahoney. He's out with an illness, but we're going to soldier on and carry the load. Next man up. Yep. Rob's out.

Food poisoning-like symptoms is I think how we're going to list him on the injury report. But we soldier on here, man. We've got Jimmy Butler ready to go, meaning you, me, maybe who? Kevin Love, Max Drews. Gabe Vincent, because he's about to get paid this summer. You about to be rich like Gabe Vincent. So Gabe Vincent, brother. I hope so. I hope so.

So later in the pod, we're going to get to some West Finals preview of game two. We're going to do some draft lottery ripple effects. But first, we have to talk about yet another Jimmy Butler masterpiece. Kevin Harlan, I think, said this best wise. Jimmy freaking buckets. 35.7 assists, six steals, six steals, five rebounds, three of which were offensive rebounds to come back and just absolutely rip the heart out of the Boston Celtics. How did this happen, man?

Just a team and a guy playing with superior focus, force, and energy. These guys absolutely came out and wanted this more than the Celtics did. And it's not just, oh, you kind of feel like it watching on TV. Six steals. These are effort plays. And a lot of these steals is Jimmy jumping. from out of nowhere, like jumping in the air and making himself into a freaking spider web down here and getting steals like the effort from Jimmy is crazy.

He's getting verticality, meeting guys at the rim, helping bam out of bio with rim protection. You know, like, they're getting to every single loose ball. Like, this is this guy is playing with his hair on fire every single game. And another way that you know that he's doing that, he's getting into the teeth of the Celtics defense and when he's not getting buckets, he's spraying it out to shooters like the aforementioned Gabe Vincent, Max Struz, and Caleb Martin. And like, look, man, I don't know how you watch this and think that anybody outside of the Janus and, you know, joke itch and I hesitate to even say and beat at this point. But you know, the MVP caliber guys are better than Jimmy Butler on a given

night. So what made this worse for the Celtics is that at half time, this seemed like the type of sterling performance that they probably haven't had since what, maybe like early in the Hawks series when that seemed like they were just going to run with it. I was going to say December. Okay. So first half, the Celtics not only were winning by a decisive margin, they were winning the points in the pay 40 to 16. They were taking care of the ball. Marcus Smart had 10 assists. the entire heat team had nine assists. And so it looked like the Celtics, things were finally clicking in.

Maybe the heat just finally ran out of gas. They couldn't keep doing this to opponents that were at the very least better in the regular season. I don't even know if we could say that they're overall better than the heat at this point. But then the heat come back 46 to 25 in that third quarter. And I think to your point, a lot of it just seemed to be the heat like locking in an effort place. like Jimmy getting down in the paint and boxing guys out and pulling down

two, three offensive rebounds. And so, man, if I'm a Boston fan right now, I really have to be like hanging my head in shame. Yeah, because so this is the thing. Even before halftime, I texted a couple of people and I was like, I don't understand how Boston is playing defenses as if they've never played this team before.

This isn't like an NBA finals where you play the team two times a year, regular season, sometimes the superstars out, blah, blah, blah. This is the third time in four years you're meeting in the conference finals against a team like yours that's pretty much had this core intact the entire time. So the idea that they don't know how to guard these guys makes no sense. So at halftime, I felt like there was no resistance to Miami running their stuff. They were getting wide open jump shots.

And then when they weren't getting that, they were getting nice bam, floater range kind of shots, which, you know, those are his favorite shots to take. Jimmy was getting to all of his spots, how he wanted to. And I was just like, man, like they're getting good stuff against Boston, who to me right now is the most defensively talented team left in the playoffs. Or they have that reputation when you think about Rob Williams, Al, Horford, Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown, Marcus Smart, right? Even a guy like Marcus, like Brogden,

or even a guy like Grant Williams, who we'll get into, who they refuse to freaking play, even as they're giving up, you know, terrible looks, possession by possession. So I'm not into their defense going into the half, and then they give up 46 points to the Miami freaking heap in one court. Like, that cannot happen the rest of the series, Justin. Like, you, if you read anything, read any previews,

paid attention to what the quote-unquote experts were saying out there, everybody was like, look, we think Jimmy, is better than Tatum. We think Spow clearly as the sort of X&O strategy advantage over Missoula by Amal. However, just talent-wise and defensively,

nobody thought Miami would be able to put together enough quality offensive possessions to win this series. They come out in the first game and have a 46-point quarter. That's just unacceptable, dude. So in the game, the heat shot 54

percent from the field. From three point land, they shot 51.6 percent on 31 attempts. And I think you're right. I think the sneaky thing about going into halftime was you look at the heats offensive output, it's pretty good. So at half time, they were shooting, they were shooting 53.7 percent from the floor. It's not good enough. Forty-six point seven percent from three. They were getting a lot of it from mid-range. So I guess you could say, like, maybe that was one victory for the Celtics, but clearly something wasn't going right. And then Jimmy just goes for the juggler in that third quarter, 12 points. He's getting to the line. He just randomly takes threes and makes them as if he's Steph Curry now, apparently.

And then in the fourth quarter, I know, and then in the fourth quarter, you see them draw attention or Jimmy draw attention from the Celtics, and he's just hitting not wide open three-point shooters, but the right guys in the corner ready there. And this is just, we see this over and over, over now. And to your point earlier, so the Celtics had the number two defense in the NBA this season. The Cleveland Cavaliers, number one. The Bucks number four, all right? So, like, they're slowly, like, just completely running over some of the best defensive teams in the NBA. The Knicks, another really good defensive team this year. And, you know, we played really good defense against Cleveland in the first round. And they steamrolled those guys.

Yeah, another thing that we got to point out is Bam out of bio. He played with such assertiveness and aggression. Like he was looking for his shot and no hesitation. He was catching a ball. And when he had space within 12 feet, he was firing. You know, and he was doing the BAM stuff that I think we first saw with, you know, some level of quality anyway in the bubble. His fast break game, his drive, his grabbing going. game where he gets the ball and he is dribbling right to the freaking cup,

taking it 90 feet and he's taking it up strong to a point where you got to foul this guy or he's getting a dunk or a layup. I thought, bam, just how assertive he was on office, that makes all the difference for Miami because they have trouble creating advantages anywhere else outside of Jim. They don't have a guy who breaks you down off the dribble. They don't really have a guy who's going to draw two in the post against the right mismatch. They have Jimmy, they have Bam. And tonight,

those two guys were freaking dominant. Yeah. Bam is someone I have a mixed relationship with in part because it seems like he always wants to settle for that little flip shot. I say that like his range is pretty much between the foul line in the restrictive circle.

He never manages to like power his way in and finish over the top of anyone. It's so crazy because he's such a incredible athlete and yet he doesn't have the same sort of hops he would expect for someone of his profile. So he's not much of like a vertical spacer. So he does a lot of his work in that mid-range.

But to your point, like you see how much better he is when he's just in killer in attack mode. And we keep going back to the same thing. It seems like in the third quarter and then just overall, the heat just like really were on top. There's just like a visceral, almost violent quality to all of these heat games, especially when they need to turn it on that I don't know. like how it keeps happening. Like I don't want to like be super reductive and basically say they wanted it more. But oftentimes that's how it bears out on the court.

Again, just just please people who are listening to this go up and down this roster and show me the killers that are on the Miami Heat team. Cody Zeller got another 10 minutes tonight. Okay. Max Trues 34. Caleb Martin, 30. I mean, like, dude, Kevin Love. 17 minutes.

Like, what are we talking about? Gabe Vincent, dude. Like, teams are going to be, like, super reluctant to give Gabe Vincent the mid-level exception this offseason. Like, if he gets that for two to three years this off season, it will be a minor miracle. And he's out here hooping against the Boston Celtics who went to the finals last year.

And most people had them going back and winning it this year. I don't know how you describe that when you look at the collection of talent. Besides that, Cal Lowry, just incredible minutes for this team. He made some pretty huge buckets, okay, jump shots, just getting, creating space. Always doing great with the table setting. I just tip my hat to this group, you know, this is all effort. Like, if you're a Boston fan, you're in there. And again, you're looking at the names on the back of those damn jerseys.

and your guys, you know, the kinds of people that people have thrown parades for throughout the courses of their careers, the Tatum's and the Browns and Marcus Smart erroneously getting defensive players of the year and all of this kind of stuff. And to watch them do this was sickening. So the heat were the fourth worst three-point shooting team by percentage in the NBA this season. They made over half of 31 three-pointers in this game. it's just like I can't help but Marvel just like what a completely different team this is at this point. And so to a certain extent, I guess we should have the Joe Missoula conversation because the Celtics did kind of fumble this away. On the other hand, I kind of feel sorry for a lot of the coaches that have to go up against the heat because one, not only is Spowe, one of the best tacticians. And we've seen that time and time again in playoffs.

But this is a completely different heat team to the point where like they're just like, being. behaving as if they've been the front runner this entire season. They were one of the worst teams in this playoff record-wise. And yet they come out and they play like an offensive juggernaut. They look like the Warriors at time, just the way that they're shooting the three-ball. And so I don't know. Should we have the Missoula conversation? Yeah, I'm ready to talk Missoula because,

and it's been mentioned, I think, here and in other spaces, that he seems to be a very offensive-minded guy. I think the reluctance to start Rob Williams is evidence of that, right? Like he wants to have maximize the amount of shooting and that's on the Florida philosophy being we surround, you know, the Jays with spacing. They're going to be able to go nuts and be the most optimal versions of themselves. However, when the Miami Heat are just kicking your ass up and down the court,

and I will repeat, is this people that's going to be like, oh, Tatum wasn't assertive enough. in the second half and blah blah, blah. They lost this game on defense. And when a guy like Grant Williams a proven playoff defender, quality spot-up shooter, can't get off of your bench

and Peyton Pritchard is in there. I was going to ask. I mean, what are we doing, Justin? At a certain point, and this is how you know it's terrible. This is how you know it's freaking terrible. If you listen to NBA broadcast, you know that Stan Van Gundy and Jeff Van Gundy,

They cannot bring themselves to say something bad about a coach. They just will never freaking do it. They're like a coach could literally be crapping itself like a nine-month-year-old on the court and rubbing it on his face. And Stan and Jeff Van Gundy will not say a negative thing about a coach. It's just part of their philosophy. At one point in the third quarter, Stan Van Gundy says, hmm, I'm surprised. Missoula has Peyton Pritchard

in the game and Boston is doing a soft switch onto Jimmy Butler that seems odd Justin I wonder why he's doing that this is Stan Van Gundy's speech for

that is horrible fucking strategy Joe Mazula what the fuck are you doing get good defenders out there and employ sound strategy i.e. meet the dude at the level against a guy like Jimmy Butler

or again if you're going to switch everything, make sure you have switchable players. Players who won't be caught up in a terrible mismatch when they switch. This is like rudimentary shit. I'm not, again, I'm not going to claim to be John Wooden here, Justin, but like

this stuff seems obvious. And it's the kind of thing, again, that I said at the top of the show, Dave, this is the third time they've played these guys in the conference finals. This isn't new. They know Jimmy Butler wants to hunt mismatches. Holy moly. I don't

get the Pritchard minutes, even when it was going well, because you're right, they have so much size, and they opened up yet again with the two big front court. So clearly, Missoula is like, maybe we have the size advantage. Let's play into it. And yet Pritchard was one of the go-to guys off the bench. I mean, to Missoules' credit, I guess he didn't play a lot down the stretch, but like, was the thinking there that they just wanted more, like, reliable shooting? They wanted more ball handling to limit the turnovers because turnovers have been such a thing. That was, I don't know. What was going on there?

Bro. Peyton Pritchett last year was getting finals minutes and there was a decent justification for it. Not great, but it's this idea that, you know, Steph Curry being a jitterbug type of guard, you want a guy that's going to get skinny, navigating screens, you know, locking trail type of thing. Peyton Pritchard seemed to be one of their better options in that regard. it made sense. Here it makes absolutely no freaking sense. These guys are getting offensive rebounds on you in a way that you don't,

that just shouldn't be. And then, like again, Grant Williams, he stout against Jimmy. Jimmy's not going to just blow by this dude, and he's not going to muscle him in the pain. Can easily guard them out of bio. And again, he gives you spot-up shooting on the other end. You have plenty of shot creation and ball him. handlers around it.

Peyton Pritcher on a team that is going to play people like Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown. And let's just say it wasn't just them. And then you add in the Derek White's and the Malcolm Brogden's. Like, what is the point? He's not going to candle the ball. He's a suboptimal defender. And he's, again, it's not like he's some dead-eye shooter. It's baffling to me what they're doing.

out there with the rotations. So the other part of this is the timeouts, which honestly before tonight, I've kind of been iffy on as a criticism just because to me, there's at least a thinking behind it where it's like you want the guys to figure it out on the court, they provide some agency.

I don't know. It's clearly Missoula's M.O., and it's clearly a contrast to a Doka, which worked for them at the very least in the first half of the season. Didn't go so well in the second half. this season, but that's another story. But then you see, to start the fourth quarter, Celtics go on, I believe it was

like a 7-0 run. Spoke calls a timeout and adjusts what wasn't working and they figured that out. And so I think there comes a point where even if you want to be liberal with not calling timeouts and just let them play through it, you probably have to jump in there

and stop the actions and show stuff. And he just doesn't do it. I think Joe Mazula is around our age, Justin. He's younger. So he might have been old enough to watch Phil Jackson. This was a Phil Jackson staple. He would refuse to call timeouts when the teams were on runs.

Because he was just like, no, I have confidence that my team is going to play through it and figure it out. It's sort of the ultimate projection of confidence. And I think because Missoula is, he was just thrust upon this position, coaching a championship caliber team, his age also. I think he needs to try to project confidence. And this is kind of a way to do it, honestly, because there's no other explanation for it. Everybody else just calls timeout. And then, you know, out of the timeout,

draw one of their favorite plays based upon how the defense is playing them, get a nice little layup, alley-U, back door, open threes. Teams do it all the time. It's like we call a timeout, stop the bleeding. The first possession, we get a score, and it's like, all right, the tenor of the game has now changed, right? Missoula, for whatever reason, just doesn't believe in this. I don't know.

There was a clip going around today that apparently in the middle of the season, he did an interview with Scal. And Missoula apparently watches the town, the movie with Ben Affleck, multiple times a week. And he almost uses that as like inspiration for coaching the team. So is it because I remember the town, them plotting out their robberies with, minute detail, in fact. So even that doesn't conform to this approach here. I really hope that was a Boston pandering thing that he did and not actual something that this guy does to psych himself up.

I like that movie a lot, but Jesus Christ, the time. What does Boston need to do here? You say him play Grant Williams and good things. I think Grant Williams needs to play. I think Jason Tatum, the guy who I watched, absolutely put Kevin Durant in a straight jacket last year in the playoffs. Their best perimeter defender needs to spend more time on Jimmy. Because I honestly don't think they actually need him on offense to shoulder a major burden. Again, guys, I will repeat the people who are getting rotational minutes.

Gabe Vincent, Kevin Love. Caleb Martin, these Scotty Pippin, they are not, y'all. Like, they're going to be able to get favorable matchups, to get to get foul going to the cup. They're going to be able to create advantages against these guys. However, I think on defense, they need to lock in. And some of that starts with Tatum taking the Jimmy assignment seriously. And I don't have a problem with them helping on Jimmy,

but I don't think they need to overhelp too. Because I think that exacerbates all the things that, the problems that Jimmy is creating. But when you overreact and you're just letting these role players get into wide open shots and gain all of this confidence, that's crazy.

So there's like minor adjustments, but this is a classic, you know, shout to my man, Seth Part now, adjustment being play better. That's the adjustment. Be better. Just be better at everything. Play harder.

You know, play with more focus and attention to detail and don't travel on two or three straight possessions, Jason Tatum. Like, it's simple. And, you know, before the series, we were talking about our picks and I was just like, yeah,

I mean, I don't see how Boston loses this. It's just top the bottom much better than this team. But because it's Boston, they have a propensity to literally throw up all over themselves. I can see this going six or seven, even though this should be a five-game series. Yeah, we didn't talk about Tatum,

especially in that fourth quarter. So in the eight minutes he played six points, all off of free throws, no field goal attempts, three turnovers, one foul, one rebound. Is that a Missoula issue not finding him opportunities? Or is this a Tatum not calling for the ball enough? And then when he did get those opportunities, he kind of flubbed them. As you mentioned, the travel and whatnot. I don't think that's Missoula.

I think there was just a disjointed nature to the first. flow of Boston's entire game. I think Miami had them on the heels. They were surprised to be down 10 points to this team in the fourth quarter. And I think that's what you saw out there, a team that had kind of got punched in the grill and was woozy. That's what I think you were seeing out there. I think Tatum is going to find ways to get the ball in favorable areas. He's going to get to his spots and get to shots that he can make. Like as bad, as quote unquote bad, he's played the man dropped 30 points on what is. that it's about 23 shooting possessions.

Yeah, that's pretty freaking good for a conference finals game against the Miami Heat. So I'm not worried about what they're doing on offense. This team needs to get stops. The Miami Heat, as presently constructed, should not be dropping 123 points on you in your home building. They should not be shooting 52% or, excuse me, 54% for the game against you.

Like, it's just unacceptable. Yeah, and I guess that's the flip side to the adjustment being played better, is that maybe Miami just kind of comes down to earth on a lot of this. Because, once again, 52% three-point shooting on 31 attempts. This is not a team that, at least through the regular season, was going to beat you with the three ball. And you have to wonder if a lot of this was just like a hot shooting, particularly just explosive night

with how many days of rest going into this. Jimmy Butler looking particularly spry. They haven't played since Friday. So what is that? Like five days of rest? It's probably the most they've gotten since the playoffs began. They're playing seven guys at this point. Cody Zeller is pretty much out there just to spell bam

sporadically. Even Kevin Love seemed a little bit overmatched at time to the point where I thought that like Caleb Martin probably should start in the next game. So I don't know. I think the question is the one that we keep asking ourselves every single round. It's like, how can the heat just replicate what they just did? So far it's been yes. But like I do wonder to this extent, it seems like a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, it feels like a lot to ask these guys to do this. But it's going to be make or miss league kind of stuff. I think they're going to continue to generate three-point looks for Struis and Martin, like, between them. They got up 12-3s, right? Like, I think Kevin Love stepped into a three-way. It was just rhythm, and he just fired it immediately and just switched it. Like, they're going to get these shots because Jimmy and Ban put a lot of pressure on the rim, right? And so I think they're going to continue to get these looks.

I don't know that they continue to knock them down at this pace. Yeah. So this is the third game one that the Heat have won on the road. They're the 15 to do that. 20203 Heat, 2021 Hawks, your 2021 Hawks, the 99 Knicks, the 89 Bulls, the 81 Rockets. It's insane. I just, I don't know what else to say here. They were about to lose that damn playing game, y'all. Like, they were done. It was going to be the Chicago Bulls. Like, they were done. They were done.

And now they're up one zip in the conference finals. Yeah. All right. Why don't we take a break? Remember we'll come back. Let's talk about some draft lottery ripple effects. All right. So your guy, Wembe, he is destined for San Antonio.

How are you feeling? Do you like the fit sending this generational prospect whom certain people at ESP? is projecting as one of the best prospects in sports history across all sports, going to San Antonio following in the footsteps of one Tim Duncan and one David Robinson. I can't say that I was rooting for this. Who were you rooting for? I think I wanted to see Detroit get him. Honestly.

I wanted to see him play with Cade Cunningham. I still have a Cade Cunningham sports boner. So I still wanted to see that. But I think San Antonio, honestly, when it comes to talent development, you can't argue with their track record, especially what you see them do with second round guys and turn them into legitimate NBA rotation players. They do this shit every single season. Right. You can't argue with their program. They're not going to sort of put a ton of minutes on the guy early on.

They're going to be very focused on his health and developing him in a standpoint. step-by-step process. I think for his own career, this is a nice move. I can't say I'm excited that this guy is going to be at the riverwalk for the foreseeable, you know, future. You know, but that being said, I think fans of the NBA should be excited that he's not going to a bad situation, you know, like... You could say it, Charlotte.

Charlotte. I mean, Charlotte with Mike or, shoot, man, I would say even Minnesota. with Anthony Edwards. Is, like, do you trust the sort of brain trust in Minnesota to shepherd that guy's career in a way that you think is going to be, like, super duper helpful? I don't know, you know, just look at the stuff

in New Orleans, right? Where the fit with Zion, I'm not saying Griff don't know what he's doing. I don't think they've gotten through to this guy as to what he should be doing that would be best for his career. his playing career going forward, right? Like you wonder if a god lands in a situation

where temperament and personality fits the culture of the org and so therefore they can, you know, take off and be the best versions of themselves possible. I think Wenbinyama, that's factually happening in San Antonio. So that's something to be excited about legitimately. Now, when will they be good or relevant? I know there are people who think they're relevant right now. I don't think this guy's going to be an impactful rookie.

He's not going to be like a LeBron James type. He's not going to be the type of rookie that elevates this team, the playoff level stuff. He's going to struggle on defense. Even at the four, he's going to get pushed around. But he's going to develop and he's going to be hopefully a great player for a long time to come. I don't think this is something I'm personally going to be playing a mega amount of attention to out the gate, Justin. but this is exciting stuff for the people down in San Antonio

and all three of the fans that I've ever known in my life. So you're not buying any condo space on the Riverwalk anytime soon. No, no. Y'all, no, I'm like, I'm a bit skeptical of a lot,

like, look, Wohge clearly, listen, I'm not saying he's not a great prospect. I'm not saying that. Walsh clearly has a great relationship with the San Antonio people, you know, the idea that he would go out there

and say this is one of the best prospects in professional sports history. That seems kind of strange to me, but whatever, you know, this is just opinions. I could be just as wrong and they could be right. Like, whatever. I don't feel that way about this guy. I don't think this is the best prospect since LeBron James.

I don't think this is a better prospect that say, Kevin freaking Durant. And this is not hindsight. Like, Kevin Durand dropped 30 a game as a freshman in the freaking Big 12. Like, this was, like, I don't think he's of that caliber. That's just my opinion, right? Obviously, LeBron, A.D., Kevin Durant, these guys are all generational type talents. And this guy is one of those.

But I just, you know, as far as dominating the ball offensively, there's only but so many big men who do it. Yokic being one of them that, like, he got. can take the ball out. He can literally bring the ball up himself, generate offense, try to create for himself and others. Big men like him tend to be finishers and on the high end, they're AD types. And when he's at his best, he's a top three defender. And so therefore, all the stuff that he brings to the table on offense makes him a top 10, sometimes top eight, top seven NBA player. If he could get to that, shit, man. This is an incredible pick. This is a franchise changing pick, but, you know, the LeBron's, come on now, we got to chill out, man.

It's LeBron James we're talking about, y'all. If I'm hearing you correctly, you're zagging on Wembe being the clear cut number one. No, he's the clear cut number one in this draft, but like, I saw Brandon Miller hoop and I was like, this kid is nice. I was impressed by what I saw from that guy, but between his size, his feel for the game, he's already got a great touch. I'm like, shit, man, this is Jabari Jibari Smith with actual field.

You know? So, like, I'm a fan of a lot of the guys in his draft. And I think Wembe is deserving of his, you know, number one with a bullet statute. He got seven foot four and has skill, right? And has a feeling, understanding for the game. I don't think he's undeserving of the number one pick. I just think the fact that we're dedicating a segment on our show

during the conference finals of the NBA tells you how big the hype and excitement around this guy as a prospect is. I just don't think I would be very surprised if he ever becomes as good as Anthony Davis. I think that's a take. It's like a scalding take, I think, at least in comparison to how he's being received elsewhere. I'm not a big draft guy, so I can't say one way or the other. But it does feel like the NBA has reached a consensus that this guy is potentially generational in terms of being a prospect.

So, okay. I feel like I need to reset myself. I was not expecting this. Look, again, I'm talking about the AD that we saw that first round against Portland, the AD from the bubble, the AD from this year's playoffs. I will be very surprised if Victor Wemingiamma ever becomes a player of the level of impact that Anthony Davis shows you

at his peak level of performance. I would take that bad. But again, I don't know for sure. But we're talking about not just Wembe. I do want to get into some Wembe related questions here. You kind of answered the first question, but I do want to go through the process of it, which is if you're San Antonio,

would you try to accelerate the process around him and maybe try to sign a free agent in order to see what you could do this first season with him? you've already outlined that you don't think year one of Wembe will be that all impressive. I think it's probably a little bit closer. I think you're right that most rookies don't tend to be net positives,

even some of the best ones in recent years. But he's probably one of the first ones to do so if only because the shooting and the rim protection is probably going to translate pretty quickly just because he's a giant human who could stuff people at the rim and also just shoot over probably almost anyone in the least.

And so I think it's a fair question, but can I lay out the case four? I don't know if I necessarily believe this, but I think the case for it is San Antonio Antonio has 35 million projected in cap space, right? They already have a lot of the role players that you're going to probably fit around Wembe going forward. Sohan, Devin Vassell, Kelden Johnson. It's a pretty good core of second or third or fourth guys, not necessarily a clear cut like number two star to pair with them. But you have stuff to go here. What you don't have is

maybe the guy, the veteran who can maybe like shepherd these guys, one, but also shore up the point guard spot. I'm very hot for this idea that I'll call the JJ Reddick. And I think I floated this in the past. But there are a lot of really bad teams with Cap Space this summer. And I wonder if what they could do is overpay a player. In this case, I think Fred Ben Vleet would make a lot of sense. But overpay him for a short amount of time, like a one plus one or a two plus two or two plus one. In part because one, you you want to just balloon payment just to get him in the door and allow him to hit free agency again, basically. And two, a lot of these guys that were decent draft picks were middle tier, high tier draft picks, will come up for extensions and you're going to have to pay them

eventually. Basically, this is just a way to use the cap as opposed to what teams typically do in this position, which is to rent it out in order to acquire more draft capital, right? And also part of this, the spurs have gathered a lot of future draft picks from other teams. Quietly, they're probably among the best position with future draft capital beyond Utah and OKC, some of the teams that just have gobs and gobs of picks. Like they do have a Charlotte first that's top 14 protected. They have the two picks from the Hawks from the Jevanté-Murie trade, a pick from Chicago, top 10 protected from the Demard de Rosen sign-in trade.

So they have a lot of stuff. So basically, you could be good now, in short, while supplementing your future with someone else's draft picks. Does this interest you at all for next season? Yeah, always. It always interests me to surround you. to surround your franchise jewel with competence. One, obviously the Spurs have their culture,

but it's one thing for Pop to be yelling and screaming and hollering and doing his drill sergeant, CIA instructor routine. It's another thing to have Fred Van Vleet in there, who is a world-class professional. Okay, like this guy is as professional and veteran as it gets And to put that around the guy who you're hoping is going to be the anchor of your franchise for the next 15 years, I believe in that as an idea, honestly. And then on the court, I love the idea that Wembe is learning how to play around competence,

meaning the habits that he is developing are actually going to be transferable to when the team is actually in a winning proposition because he's around people who are competent. What does that mean? He's around spacing. He's around a guy who can make a freaking post-entry pass to him. He's around a guy who will actually pass him the ball. Hello, Houston. Okay?

Like, I love the idea of putting him around competent professionals from the gate because this is the context that he will have to thrive in if the spurs ever get back to being contenders. Right? He's going to have to understand spacing, when to attack, timing on pick and rolls, all of that stuff. You know, and to be able to play with a magnificent, if not incredible, you know, he's not like, I'm not going to say he's Chris Paul in the picking role, but somebody like in Van Vleet, he's a good operator in the pick and roll, right?

So to be able to be able to do that right out the gate with that level of NBA talent, I think would be incredible. That's just my own opinion of that. I don't think you should just put a bunch of knuckleheads out there, throw the ball out and be like, hey guys, go be young, dumb and knuckleheaded together. And if we lose a bunch of games, who cares? Because ping pong balls and blah, blah, blah.

Like, I don't think that's a thing that you should be doing. Yeah, I've been around a team. If you can help it, by the way. If you can help it. Sure. I've been around a team that had nothing to play for down the stretch. And it's pretty ugly. You know, like things just like,

get loose. People are just doing that what they're supposed to do. And so when everyone says, oh, you should blow it up, you should tank for multiple years, I'm always reminded of that, like the actual real world repercussions

of what it means to tank. And I do think prolonged tanking probably has more of an effect than I think people realize. Just on the day-to-day, it's just like it becomes like more of a sludge to get up and go to work, to do the right things.

Everything becomes increasingly harder. and if you believe more like how I think when he's going to go in his first year and I think a lot of other people I do wonder if even if you don't add a veteran free agent they'll be probably too good to get a prime plumb first round draft pick next season so if you're already talking about like the 10th pick like why not be a little bit better make a run for the plane and just instill good habits and we should mention like

the thunder made the ninth seed going forward 40 and 42. Like the Pelicans were 42 and 40. The wolves are 42 and 40. Like it doesn't take much to get into the mix and it doesn't take much to get out of the top 10 in the lottery. So, man, so I'm glad you brought up the Thunder. Think about somebody like Jalen Williams, right?

Because the Thunder played in so many consequential games down the stretch, played in a playoff playing game. His workouts this summer are going to be informed by, that experience. He's going to be working on stuff based on what he saw against that level of NBA intensity and defense. And so, like, that, to me, that makes a difference rather than God, and again, I'm still a Jalen Green guy, but God only knows what he's going to be working on this summer. And why? Right? Like, the context is aware, exactly. Like, the context is so much different of what he sees as the end goal of his game

and what he needs to work out and what real game situations are going to present themselves to him in games of consequence. And like Jalen Williams has a head start on that. He knows what he's going to see in big games already. And so to me, the sooner you can put when Benyama in that situation,

you should be striving to do so. Again, most teams don't have that luxury. Most teams are the Rockets when they're in rebuilding. They're playing a bunch of young, all be it talented guys and it just looks horrific at times it looks like you ever seen a freaking two-year-old try to color inside the lines that's what it looks like sometimes with those dudes right um okay see if because they could help it they didn't have to do that and guess what I think their players are going to be way better for it you know and I think San Antonio

should strive to be closer to O KC than um Houston or Charlotte I want to get to the Rockets too but first I want to talk about the Blazers because they're probably the most interesting team to come out of this draft. They vault up to number three in prime territory to get either Brandon Miller or Scoot Henderson and what is being described as a three-player draft. Obviously, this is the Wemby draft, but two and three seem to be, you'll be getting a guy that is widely regarded as a potential All-Star, at least has that ceiling. Chris Haynes, day after reporting Portland is going to try to shop that pick. I believe Zach Lowe had similar reporting suggesting the same. The Blazers marketing team, I hope this is real, but someone

check me if it's not, put out an email saying that the basketball ops team is already working behind the scenes, and this is a quote, to improve our roster and build a team ready to compete alongside Damien Lillard. So it seems like the Blazers are looking at this more as fodder to finally get the right team around Dame, as opposed to rebooting around a skewer. and shipping Dame elsewhere. How do you feel about this? I mean, they said this already from the GM to Dame to the coach to everybody said this is direction they were going towards.

And nobody, including me or you, thinks that the number three pick will improve upon that with actual play next year. So this is just in the same direction that they were already swimming, right? Like, so yeah, of course, I think they should be, if their goal is to be better next year, they should be trying to get veterans in there. You got to figure like this, if Rudy Gobert could fetch four number one picks,

granted, a lot of those picks are going to be in the 20s and 18s. And so you got to figure this number three pick got to be worth at least a Rudy Gobert, you know, in a vacuum. To me, like, you know, like, in a vacuum, like, those picks are useless. Like, they're not, Minnesota is, as long as they keep their good players there, they're not going to be picking in this top three, right? Like, it's going to be a bunch of picks in the teams and if Minnesota gets it right in the 20s, this is a number three pick. To me, you should be getting a high level theoretically. in the case of Rudy Gobert's theoretical,

high-impact player with that pig. And guess what? If they can't, then they go back to Dame and they say we couldn't and get rid of them. And again, this is not based on any intel. I don't know anybody in Portland. I don't talk to, I ain't talked to nobody with Dan Lillard

and none of that. I'm just saying like, I've been saying this for months. I'm like, it's going to just get to the point where everybody understands that the right. Rubber has met the road and Portland needs to rebuild. And then they're going to find a home for Dame. They're going to try. Yeah.

I just think that getting three changes the calculus a little bit more than it did going into the draft. Because I was one who was like, let's play it out, see if you can make some moves on the fringes that ultimately lead to something where you don't have to do this. Now you have the potential of drafting a guy who could be a franchise cornerstone. You're no longer looking for a dame type. You could, in theory, reboot around a Scoot and Shaden Sharp. And now you're the fun young team that's like rebuilding. And yay, our fans are so great. And like, let's just be that team.

And like it's different than, let's say, in Houston where there's like, you know, scoot seems to be on a higher caliber than even Jalen Green was. Maybe even Jabari Smith. Again, not a draft guy. But seems like a guy you could even sell to your fans as just being this like six. foot linebacker who just runs at the speed of light. Like, I want to go see that if I live in Portland. So if I'm Portland, I'm actually leaning more toward trading dame. But I think you raise a good point. Like, if you are shopping this, like, what can you even reasonably expect? Because I do

think there's only a handful of teams that want to take the type of step back that Portland itself is now saying it might not be willing to do. Right? Like, and also, if you're going to do that, you're taking on a lot of money, presumably, in deals, when Damien Lillard's making like 40, 50, 60 million, I think by the end of his deal. So this is going to get pretty complicated pretty quickly. I do have a couple of guys written down, though, who could make sense. I'm just going to give you the list, and let me know which one of these jump out to you. Carl Anthony Towns, Pascal Seacum, Zach Levine, your boy, Bradley Beal,

and Miles Turner plus the seventh pick for number three. Miles Turner is the only one that I like. Carl Anthony Towns is... Yeah, like Carl... I like those other guys, but Zach Levine, again, I like Zach Levine, but the idea of pairing him and Dame,

I understand it's great offense, but Portland's got to stop people at a certain point. And it's been the bugaboo of this team, you know, for however long. Now, if there by some other mechanisms able to get, say, I don't know, Draymond Green in there, you know, this is before the draft. And, you know, then they could package the pig to worry about an offensive-minded, another offensive-minded player, then cool.

But unless you're going to get, you know, some. All NBA level type of defense in the front court out of this and some more athletic wing depth. I just don't see how you do this, man. I just don't. Yeah. And so for those reasons, I like Turner, but that's probably on the lower end. If you're giving up this like plum pick, you probably want to someone better just at least to sell to your fans. I think Towns is a home run.

If only-Towns is a home run? Well, the other part of this is it seems like Jeremy Grant's going to be back. And so if you have enough defense, like Towns-Lillard. What about the part where Carl Times is kind of a loser? What about that part? Like, does that part not factor in? And I don't mean like to like Dendigar. I mean like he seems to not make winning plays in big spots consistently.

He seems to play below his caliber in big spots consistently. Does that never factor into this? It should. It's a good point. It's something we probably lose sight of amidst all the data that suggests that he's like this unique shooting big man. But like, I like him more as a number two guy with someone who's a clear-cut pit bull leader, like, ding. You know, he's more fit to be the Anthony Davis on the Lakers where Anthony Davis is the best player, but he's not, or he's the most important player, but LeBron basically sets the tone for everything, you know? Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe you would. say the theory of that team is another Denver. It's like we become a supernova, supernova on

offense that is impossible to stop by any team in the NBA, but also, you know, we've cobbled together enough defensive talent around our two megastars that we can play competent defense. And so therefore, outscoring people is not an impossibility even at the highest level. I guess. I don't know that I think their GM. I don't, I'm not saying he's a bad GM. I'm just saying like that's a that's, that's, you're literally threading a needle there. You know, I think

these, these, these pickups that Denver made on the margins, right, uh, when they bring in KCP and they bring in Bruce Brown. Like, it's not just that these guys were gettable is that they were perfect specific to the guy, your

superstar that you have in house. You know, these aren't perfect Swiss Army knife sort of answers to every superstar. They're specific to Yolkich in their movement, like off the ball around all of the passing that he does and their ability to guard cats on the other end, run around, you know what I mean? Switch even every now and again.

I wonder, but it's a need to be threat. I get the talent in how tantalizing it is with a guy like Towns. I just think that, man, this guy's not demonstrated himself to be a winner. And Dame Liller wants to win. Isn't that the whole point of all it is, is that winning is optimal? And so you bring in Carl Towns? I know. I think of these Siakum probably makes the most basketball sense.

But I don't know. Can you sell to your fans? We got Pascal Seacom for the number three pick. Man, stuff. I mean, Dame is 33, we should mention. It turns 33 in July. And so, like, the clock is ticking here. And it just seems more and more evidence to the case that, like, I don't know why

they're forcing this so much. I mean, I guess I know why they're forcing it, but I don't think they should anymore. Just quickly, before we move on, the Rockets, the team that you mentioned before, they ended up number four in this draft. And as soon as that happened, there was also rumors about how they have all this cap space. I think more than anyone, $60 million, is our friend James Hardin going to come home? If not, are they going to go after all these veterans? And so I asked, what the hell are the Rockets doing? I don't know. I actually found myself talking myself into Hardin, making at least some sense over there.

Really? Wow. Yeah, in the sense that he is, like, he's not going to play at an all-star level in game seven in the second round. But I don't think that's what's required to improve the floor of what's happening in Houston right now. There's just so, there was just so much incompetence on the ball this year. as far as organization and getting into professional NBA offense that just was lacking. You know, like Kevin Porter's a talent, he is nobody's point guard.

You know, same for Jalen Green. I think James Hardin actually would, as crazy as that is, like he would be a calming presence on that team's offense. He would be reliable. He'd be an actual playmaker, a guy who found people when they were open. Like, the more I thought about, I was like, this actually makes sense.

And like, there's no actual. expectation that he has to come through in big games. It's all going to be regular season circumstances. And so he can get paid, be the man, but also be needed for what they got over there. And that is some presence and organization on the ball. As much as we don't like James Harden, he's still a savant as at reading defenses, hitting the open man. You know, he's still a maestro in pick and roll when teams try to play him in a conventional

style. And so I think it actually makes sense over there. That sounds like the most interesting 45 win team that I can never put together. Exactly. Because like, what do you do with like a Jalen Green? Like what happens to his development? What happens to Japarry Smith? I guess he becomes just a spot up shooter while James Harden just like jab, jab, jab for 22 seconds and then shoots a step back. You know, like there's just like it seems like they're kind of spiked. in their face here by trying to accelerate the process when they still have a lot of young guys who haven't really developed fully. Yeah, but at the same time, maybe Jalen Green could be learning to get, again, like I said,

about Wimbayama, maybe he should be attacking closeouts and not trying to initiate offense, right? Maybe he should get good at that, something that I think, obviously he has the skills to do, be attacking the basket that way, off of a swing, you know, off of a scrambling defense. rather than, oh, here's the ball and try to break down the Boston Celtics defense right now. Like, maybe that's not the best thing for him. You know what I mean? And so to sort of, I don't want to say, downgrade his role.

It's not like he was killing it in his role last year. I think try to give him stuff that he's good at doing and go from there. Never thought of James Harden as a culture setter, you know? Look, man, have you, what, did you watch the Rockets last year, bro? Like, Jamon Green even had to talk about it postgame the one time. But he was just like, yo, at a certain point, man, like, there's got to be accountability and professionalism. And he was talking about the other freaking team, you know, like.

It's kind of like didn't clutch hire the guy who was like, was sought after because of the Adidas, like shenanigans that went on. It's kind of like bringing in someone who's already bad. at what you need, but not as bad as the people that are already on staff, you know? I don't know if this is a solution. I wonder if it's just like a half measure toward whatever we were already doing. Look, I don't think James Hardin's going to be a model of professionalism in the sense of taking care of your body, maybe not going out every single night on the road, maybe not

flying to the Bahamas during the season and stuff like that. But on the court, like, obviously Shangoon, we know the nerds on NBA Twitter, love him for his IQ. But like outside of him, there was no basketball IQ to be found on this team. And especially not the people that got to handle the ball. And so James Hardin raises their collective basketball IQ exponentially. As much as we, you know, are disgusted by what he did in Game 7. All right.

Before we go, I do want to touch on Game 2 of the Western. conference finals. It's unfortunate that Rob isn't here to defend himself because my one question and the big question I think everybody's asking for the series is why does Rob Mahoney hate Rui Hachamura so much? So I don't know if you read his piece on the ringer.com today, but Rob's conclusion based on the stretch run of last night's game on Tuesday was that the Rui guarding Yokic matchup probably isn't long for this world. the Lakers got a little bit of luck there and probably flustered the nuggets and probably missed their one opportunity to make that work. And I got to say, I don't necessarily agree. And I don't

think Rui's a Yokic stopper. I don't think that exists. But if Rui is giving you solid minutes on Yokic and more specifically allowing A.D. to roam more than he had been, as opposed to guarding Yokch straight up. I do wonder if that's enough to swing things more back into the direction of the Lakers. Yeah, I think the Rui question is less about him versus Yokic and more about what Denver decides to do with Gordon. And I think that's going to be the fascinating part of this series because if you take Gordon out, well, folks don't understand about like the Jamal Murray sort of.

of, you know, what LeBron, the mean shit that LeBron did to him in the second half of that game is that if you put Michael Porter on LeBron just straight up, he's just going to start his possession on the low block against that guy and achieve the same end. He's going to do that to Bruce Brown.

He's going to do that to KCB. He's going to do that to Jeff Green, most likely. So the reason he's going to that pick and roll is because the matchup with Gordon is such that he can't do that on the low block. I'm saying like he's going to do that that same outcome will be achieved via different ends if Gordon's not on the floor.

However, what Rui is able to do is making so that there's some resistance to Yokic's one-on-one. And like AD did like when he comes to contest, he didn't just get clobbered in the chest by a Yokic forearm, right? Like he's completely unencumbered on the, like, it's way different trying to contest Yokic on help side when you've got the wingspan

of a freaking, what is the flying dinosaur called? Teradactyl. The taradactyl, it's different contesting on the weak side doing that because you're staying in the paint because your man is in the dunking spot and you can completely ignore him than it is when you're doing it one-on-one. So I think Rui can do a good enough job of resistance. Now, on an island, no, he can't guard Yokic, but that's not what's going to happen.

Denver has to make it so that AD has to pay for keeping his foot in the paint. And Gordon is just not the guy that's going to make him pay for that. And so that's the beauty of the playoffs and the chess match. It's like, are you willing to sacrifice your defense of LeBron on one end? You know, in order to free up your offensive pieces on the other. I think it's the central question of game two. Yeah, and AD also has over 10,000 hours at this point roaming while someone with a bit more heft at the four soaks up a lot of the pounding. Like people forget, like before Rihachamura, there was Ryan Anderson, there was Omar Ashik, there was Nicola Muratich.

Like, this is largely how we played. There was Dwight Howard. There was Javelle McGee. Right. So this is largely how he played. And so on the one hand, you could say like, well, they got a couple deflections that cut off some of the passes to Gordon at the dunker spot or maybe LeBron made the right read, et cetera, et cetera. I kind of think that's, if not repeatable, definitely possible again, just because AD is so good playing off the ball there. And so I don't know.

Like, I came away from that feeling pretty optimistic about the Lakers, especially because, yeah, I don't want to take anything away from the nuggets. but like clearly they just like hit the Lakers in the face and it was just like it was on from there it was kind of an outlier I don't want to say outlier but definitely uh an extreme situation to start the game and also like if we're being honest the the nuggets hit a lot of miracle three-pointers late in the game that probably like some tough shots made the difference in there and so I kind of think that this one's going to be up in the air yet again in game two They had some tough shots, but I think the Nuggets offense remains. Like I said, I've been saying it all season.

I've been saying this since October, September. This is the best unit in the NBA. The Nuggets offense, they played against the Lakers who have been grinding teams into dust, all playoffs long. Granted, Memphis, you know, whatever. It's not like there's some offensive juggernaut, but they got shut down. And what they did against Golden State and all that ball movement and this all-time great player was beyond impressive. And so, like, to do that

against this Laker group and, you know, what they've been accomplishing in the playoffs is incredible. I think the Lakers can play better defense than that. However, they're not going to stop the nuggets. That's not going to be a thing that happens. They just need to play better than that and up to that same second half level on offense

if they're going to do this. And I think another thing that people need to understand is that at some point, they're going to find a way, to attack Yokic in the paint. I promise you guys, when this game goes to L.A., that man is going to be in foul trouble. They're going to draw contact.

They're going to take him out of the game. So that's what I'm worried about for Denver. It's not adjustments, Laker adjustments. They're not stopping Denver. It's defensively they need to stay competent. They were competent until LeBron just started picking on people and being debaed a bully,

but as long as they can remain afloat on defense, I think they're fine, man. I still think the Nuggets are going to do this. Yeah, I definitely think the Nuggets have the upper end, in part because my big worry for the Lakers, this series,

and even the series against the Warriors, is that the last place they want to be is in a scoring contest where they need to outscore the other opponent. Because, I mean, as much as we could poke holes in the Nuggets, like kind of crazy shot making down the stretch, Reeves and Shruder were we're hitting some absolute like big ball sort of shots.

Right. And like that comes and goes with every Laker game. And if you're getting into a track meet with the Nuggets, it's probably the last team. It's not what you want to do. You want to do. And so that was my concern overall with the Lakers. And you have to wonder like where is that supplemental offense coming from, especially with the Nuggets attacking D'Angelo Russell so relentlessly to the point where Bruce

Brown, I think after the game was like, yeah, we kind of. We oriented everything when as soon as he was on the floor, we were going to just attack, attack. That was brutal. But as we've seen in the playoffs, like Russell getting hot is often a recipe for winning at least a game in this series. They do need him when he is on and his shot making is falling in the one every five game sort of situation. He finds himself in to come through.

And if they can't play him because of the defensive issues, like obviously that is mitigating. So that's going to be difficult. Yeah. Absolutely. But I will say this, Justin, the first half of last night's game, I was literally on my couch like, just wheel out to Larry O'Brien right now. Like, just bring the goddamn trophy out right now.

This is the most ridiculous level of basketball. When you consider the opponent and how they just bludgeon the Lakers, you know, it wasn't just what they were doing in the half court, destroying them on the boards. The way they were attacking on misses, They were like a freaking shot out of a freaking cannon on misses. And what I compared it to, it's like you ever be watching football like an edge rusher just has the left tackle, just time. Like no matter what this guy does, he is just beating this dude to the spot every time.

That's what it felt like Denver was doing to the Lakers in the first half. I was like, I'm a freaking genius. I call this shit in September. What the, and then the second half happened, I was like, okay, relax. Fas. These are real quality, quality level teams. This is going to be a great series. I'm so

excited to watch the rest of this, man. I think you and everyone on the internet had the same experience where as soon as that first half happened, it was like, get it and be a trophy, ship it to Denver, get this guy out of here. I swear, like,

somehow I'm in the position often as being the Yokic hater. I consider myself more of like a Yokic casual. Like I've been thinking of, I've been thinking about this. I'm not far from casual at this point. It's over for that. I've been thinking about it a lot lately because like just the onslaught of Yokic's appreciation becomes a little bit tough to tolerate.

It's kind of like I can see. I was a Game of Thrones watcher. Like I was a regular Sunday viewer. I would listen to a podcast. You know, I read Concepcion's like as the Mesa piece. Like I like that's, you a good game of Thrones guy. Yeah. Right. But in comparison to everyone at the ringer, like it seems. It seemed like nothing in comparison when like we have other people doing nine hour podcasts about it or like writing blog posts about how the catapult placement in the battle of the bastards wasn't right and that led to their loss as if it was like the Jets like a FC championship game. So like it's tough out there and I have to say it does tend to great on me because of that. But you know, I still I still respect and appreciate what Yokic is doing.

It's been absolutely incredible. I'll just say this. This is all I'll say about that, Justin. Like, you can have that opinion. But in the playoffs, just let's run down the top five MVP candidates in the playoffs this year. It hasn't been fucking close, dude. Every single game, he's killing people. You know, like, he is, he's killing people.

Every game. Just look out how Embedd went out just now. Look at what Janice did in his elimination game. You know what I mean? Look at Tatum and goddamn game six, the freaking one for 14. Like, y'okets don't do that shit, bro. Like, that's what I'm saying. Like, people could be like, oh, it's this.

But, like, just watch the freaking games. He's killing people every single night in every way that you want. He's doing it. When they try to single cover him in Phoenix, he's like, I'll give you 60. when they double them up he's fucking double a digits assist in the first half it's like he's doing it though

like the people on the internet are annoying but he's actually doing it every night and you gotta respect that JV it was a regular season award but we'll cut it because I want to get into that thank you to

Eduardo Campo and Benjamin Cruz on production. We'll be back on Saturday night. Until then, we'll see you.