The Ringer NBA Show - KD Goes Down (Again), but the Warriors Survive | Heat Check

Episode Date: June 11, 2019

Kevin Durant suffers an Achilles injury in his first game back, but the Golden State Warriors manage to pull out a win against the Toronto Raptors in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Host: John Gonzalez Guest: Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're in a delicious cocktail today. Belvedere is a quality choice, drinking responsibly as to, and now heat check. Welcome to another special playoff NBA finals edition of Heech. I'm your host John Gonzalez, Isaac Lear, producer and is in L.A. and coming off the bench for some much-needed minutes. We haven't had them here in a while. Chris Ryan is here. I'm the Quinn Cook of Heat Check.

Much better return for you than, you're much bigger than that. Much better return for you, sadly, than Kevin Durant, who returns for game five. He looked really good, Chris. It looked like they were going to get a ton of minutes out of him. He was scoring efficiently. I didn't think that the Raptors had much of an answer for him. And then all of a sudden, he went down and he was clutching his leg. And according to Ramona Shelburne and other reporters, he left the Iraq.

arena on crutches and also in a walking boot. And this is, I think, like, Warriors fans or Raptors fans are just basketball fans everywhere, pretty devastating blow. Yeah, Anne Killian, a beat right over at the San Francisco Chronicle, said Kerr, after the game, described it as an incredible win and a horrible loss. You know, we don't really want to speculate. It's Monday night. KD. is supposed to get an MRI tomorrow. He had a walking boot. Unlike the last injury, they described it as a lower leg injury, whereas last time during the Rocket series when he first hurt himself, they described

it as a calf injury. They were specific. It was a calf injury. A lot, a lot, a lot of Twitter diagnosis going on out there. So I don't want to be reckless about it, but tonally, this felt different than the last time in terms of the way that

it was sort of being treated back in the locker room. Doris Burke said that basically, like, they were trying to give KD. his space. A lot of indications that This was pretty significant injury. And obviously, you're not only concerned for Kevin Durant as a person, as an athlete, but also it's just like you start to just really like wonder about what's going to happen to the NBA for the next couple of years because so much of it was sort of, he was the fulcrum.

Yeah, I mean, here we have like the Golden State Warriors who were in an elimination game, a close out game for the Raptors and the Warriors, you know, win by one. And like Kerr said, this should like it's a great win for them. there should be a feel-good moment for them. And yet, like, the main storyline coming out of this game wasn't, you know, the Splash Brothers pulling it out when it looked like Kauai was going to deal them yet another blow. It's, oh, man, what's going on with KD when it looked like they finally got him back? He had been, you know, there was a lot of heat and a lot of pressure for him to come back.

And there was a lot of narratives about, you know, if he didn't come back, what would that mean for the Warriors and what would that mean for him and his legacy? And is he going to just leave without playing in the finals? And then he does come back and he looks so good. And now all of a sudden, we're talking about them not having. him and you're right to the ripple effects. I mean, not just for this series, but also for him and the team and the NBA writ large for who knows how long. And again, you're right, we don't want to, we don't want to speculate on what this injury could be, but this could have like long lasting

lead-wide ramifications. Yeah, I mean, dude, this is just such a complicated one because obviously Durant was the subject of several pieces over the last couple of days that they didn't quite speculate that he was fit to play and choosing not to, but there, it was basically an example of the, of the vacuum that gets filled when you have this many days in between games. So pieces get written, especially about a situation like this where,

you know, it could go either way. You could say like, hey, maybe he doesn't want to jeopardize his future, or maybe this or maybe that. And a lot of maybes turn into possiblys or allegedlys or reportedlys. And it just gets a little bit out of control. I tend, I'm going to do this in this situation, which is really naive and stupid,

especially given the planet we're living on. But I'm just going to choose to give the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that the Warriors didn't put Kevin Durant in a bad situation, that the coaching staff teammates in front office didn't pressure him, and that Kevin Durant's an adult who made a decision that he was ready to play. And he looked ready to play.

He looked great. He scored 11 points, perfect from behind the arc, perfect from the stripe, blocking shots, dancing before the game, hyped up, clearly a different Warriors team with him out there. Just such a shame. And you know what?

When Abaka dove for that ball, I think it was early in the second quarter. There was a loose ball that Abaka dove for and he cut KD's legs out from under him. And I was kind of like, man, this is tough because people are going to be sitting on the edge of their seats watching this every single time KD hits the deck. But he looks good out there.

He popped right back up. And it's just such a heartbreaker to see him go out like that. you know, the finals and the playoffs have been dictated by injuries for as long as I can remember watching basketball. I was talking earlier today with a couple of people on text just being like, you know, you think about like Kyrie and Kevin Love going out of the finals and 15, like other things, but none of them really had, I don't think like the kind of almost tragic overtones of what happened with Durant. So it's just really, really, really sad to see. It was. And, you know, as you mentioned, he looked so good in the 12 minutes that he played.

He scored 11 points. He was perfect from beyond the arc. It looked like, all of a sudden, you know, they were going to have a hard time with him. I mean, I think that the Raptors obviously and rightly were worried about him so much so that they started Kauai on him defensively, which is a big assignment when you need Kauai at both ends of the floor and you're going to ask him to drain himself immediately by being on KD. And then, you know, as Charks wrote on the ringer.com, you know, not having him on. that Warriors team for the first four games of the series made his value apparent, right? Like they, they clearly, and I've made this point multiple times on He-check, it's crazy to say,

but it's so true. They clearly needed his offense. Like the Golden State Warriors of all teams were short on offense, and he provided that for them, even if he couldn't like, even if he had returned and not looked like himself, if he had just been like a spot-up three-point shooter who's, you know, draining like 38% or something, you're like, I'll take that because we need offense. And then beyond that, like, you know, for him just as a human being to come back amid all this speculation, amid all this pressure, and I'm with you, I think it's the right thing to do to just, like, give everybody the benefit of the doubt here. It just sucks, though, because, you know, Kirst said with the whole Clay thing, and I think obviously not all injuries are created equal. These are very different situations. Clay, I think. So, John, we got Shams and Howard Beck.

This is kind of happening as we're recording the podcast. We're getting reports. Bob Myers has said that it's an Achilles injury, they don't know the extent of it. I can't imagine there's like a silver lining here. Durant posted to Instagram. Dub Nation got to be loud as fuck for Game 6. I'm hurting deep in the soul right now. I can't lie.

But seeing my brothers get this win was like taking a shot of tequila. I got New Life LOL hashtag dubs. Oh man. So we're learning about this in real time. You guys will already obviously know about all this when you're listening to it. But my reaction is, this sucks. It sucks for the series.

It sucks for the Warriors. I don't have a dog in this fight. I just like basketball. And for all the reason that we were talking about before, we found out the news that it is an Achilles injury, the ripple effects here are so significant. Like, the Warriors are climbing back into the series. And then all of a sudden, now they have to deal with,

we're not going to have KD for the rest of this series, which has a blow on the court. But then just emotionally, too, Chris, like, when you were talking about, like, they had to give him his space. and Steph was really broken up. And Iguodala before the game had said, hey, man, like, don't push it.

Don't listen to all this news because it's not worth, like, potentially hurting yourself. And I don't want to connect dots and say that, like, the injury that he had the calf injury is the same as this. I don't think that it is. But just the idea that, like, he did get back out there. And then for this to happen is such a huge blow because, like, Kerr was saying with Clay, when Clay got hurt and they held him out for game three,

like, I don't want to put him out there. He says he's fine, but I don't want to put him out there and have him get hurt because I would never forgive myself. And like, I just wonder what is going through all of their heads, like, emotionally and spiritually. And like, here's a guy who, you know, sometimes hasn't always gotten along with all of those guys and vice versa. But clearly, you know, they were in his camp and would be in his camp for something like this. And it just sucks, man. Yeah, dude. I mean, according to Mark Stein, Tim Bontems, all the people who are there at the game, it sounds like Myers is basically holding back tears.

So, yeah, it's just really, really a bum. It's really, really sad. I can't confirm this because I haven't rewatched the beginning of the broadcast. But if I might remember correctly, I thought in countdown or at the beginning of the game, they reported that Steve Curd said, like, he's ready to go. He's not in danger of doing an Achilles or, you know, whatever. Like, we think he's ready to go. He might not be at 100%, but it's not going to risk this major injury.

And it's just so screwed up. Everybody thought during that first injury in Houston, it was all that speculations. about it seemed like he felt like he got kicked in the back of the leg and that he had toward his Achilles then. And it was almost like this weird like rush of endorphins that he had just strained his calf or just gotten a calf injury. And it's been kind of mysterious as to like what's going on because he hasn't been able to practice with the team today.

It was the first time he had been able to do so. God, man. I just feel so bad for that guy. And this is something, Chris, like we're like we've had, you know, seconds to digest this. other people as they're listening to this will have had longer. But I just like, this is something that we're going to end up talking about in perpetuity for the foreseeable future. I mean, like, just the idea of like, man, just imagine what would have happened if he hadn't

played and, you know, would he have taken heat if they had lost this game, but he was healthy? But now he's not healthy. And did the Warriors medical staff screw up? Or, you know, did they actually rush him back? Did he rush himself back? But we thought he looked good because he was, you know, he was, as you said, dancing. and dunking before the game. And you and I know that it could be all those things at the same time.

It's incredible. It's like we try so hard to put these things into like easy to define categories of like this was a mistake. It's this person's fault. And maybe that is the case. Maybe we'll find out that that is the case in this. But, you know, it's just like you see Beck just tweeted that Bob Myers is fighting back tears.

Quote, I don't believe there's anybody to blame, but I understand this world. And if you have to, you can blame me. I run our basketball operations department. I feel terrible for him and KD, everybody. Yeah, it's just like injuries happen in sports. And I think that as we watch them more and more communally in this way on Twitter together in this way where we're constantly kind of ramping up the rhetoric around it, look, like, it's really interesting, too, to think about it in relation to Kauai, too.

Because Kauai was someone who very much, for as little as he says publicly, the wrap on why Kauai didn't go forward with the spurs that a season ago was that he didn't feel comfortable with the medical treatment. They didn't feel comfortable with his relationship with San Antonio's medical treatment. And I hate talking about load management and injuries and rest in a game like this. But maybe, John, that kind of speaks to what a weird game it was after Durant left. Super weird. I mean, the whole, but the whole series has been weird, really. I mean, like, it's had a weird vibe to this entire thing where it was, like, kind of hard to get a hold of what we were watching.

You know, save game one where it was kind of like the Raptors in a feel good situation where they were holding off the warriors as the warriors were trying to make runs but couldn't pull it off. That was like probably the most classic basketball game, just like straight basketball game we've gotten yet. And everything else has just felt off by a factor. And up to an especially in including tonight with KD where like, yeah, I mean, this is the massive story. not just of this game, but of this series, and we'll be moving forward. Like, it's such a strange thing because, like, there's other basketball on-court things here that we need to discuss and we will discuss. But, like, and I almost feel dirty, like, even hinting at the ripple effects, but it's true.

Like, this is something now the Warriors have to just go back to, okay, now how do we game plan for the Raptors? Forget free agency. Let's talk about it like this. Like, let's try to, let's try to even tease out emotionally what the Warriors must be going through right now, because this is supposed to be. be this should be a celebration of what they're all about. Like, they were able to somehow gut this out and shoot their way out of, I mean,

have you ever had a game like this where so many times a team that was down six or eight seemed to have had a dagger? Like, the Raptors were losing, and they would hit a shot, and I was like, that's dagger, that's game. Like, they're going to come back and get into, and just eclipse them. And that's what I thought when Leonard went on his Jordan run in the fourth quarter. and even in the face of Boogie and Draymond making a couple of mistakes down the stretch, the Splash Brothers were able to shoot their way into this W.

And now they're going to go back and all we are going to talk about until Thursday is Duran and whether or not they made a mistake of their management of Duran. The shooting was incredible by the Warriors. I mean, they shot almost 50% from three. And the Splash Brothers, this is the first time that they splashed in the finals. And they needed every bit of that. And I felt exactly the same way as you did in the fourth quarter when I was watching that going, oh, right, this is the same as game four where, you know, the Warriors are throwing everything at them that they could. And the Raptors, like, all of a sudden are going to go on a run and Kauai's going to do Kauai things.

And there was a stretch there. I think Kauai scored 12 of their final 16 points and he scored 10 straight at one point. And he grabbed crazy offensive rebands and put those back and hit running 26 footers and like little floaters in the lane. I'm like, oh, right, yeah, you know, this is it. The Warriors are cooked. and they won it. They pulled it out somehow. And yes, and like that not just us. Like, it's not just us that, like, where we're going to sit here for the next however many days and talk about, like, how do they move forward on the court without KD. But them too, like, this is going to consume them completely because that's their guy. I mean, that's their teammate, their coworker. They need him on the court. And then just emotionally and spiritually, that's got to be super draining to win this game. Exactly what Kerr said. Like, it's a great win and just a devastating loss. Yeah, I mean, it's wild because it felt like a national championship game or a Champions League final or it was like a game seven. It felt like something where even Chaunty Billups said before the game, I feel like this is a must win for the Raptors.

I feel like that the Raptors like they've built up that people were camping out for Game 5 in Canada all over Canada. People were like at parks watching the game. It was as if they were building up to this is where we end it. This is where we make a stand. And now I don't even like, I think it's just. just like millions of people are kind of like, what am I supposed to do with my hands? It's like all of basketball media is getting on a plane tomorrow to fly to Oakland

with one question in their mind, what the hell just happened? Toronto's got to get their minds right and be like, yes, we may have blown our best chance to win this series, but we certainly didn't blow our total chance to win the series. And just because you blew a 3-1 lead as a meme doesn't mean that they're out of it. And the warriors need to be like,

we bought ourselves another day of life. with or without Durant. So the amount of stuff that's going on just in the foreground, to say nothing of the background and what this means for free agency and what this means for the ongoing debate about how many games players play and how many minutes players play and what we do around those injuries, or what NBA teams do around those injuries,

it's just like a kaleidoscopic conversation. All right, before we continue, let's take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Today's episode of the Ringer NBA show is brought to you by City on a Hill, the action-pack new drama series from Showtime, the same network that brought you billions, Homeland, and Ray Donovan set in a volatile early 90s era Boston when police corruption ran rampant through a system plagued by racism. City on a Hill stars award-winning actors Kevin Bacon and Aldous Hodge. The new series follows an upstanding district attorney played by Hodge,

who teams up with a corrupt FBI agent played by Bacon. The two form an unlikely alliance to take down a local crime family and clean up the city. executive produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Tom Fontana. To stream the first episode for free, go to show, sho.com slash city. City on a Hill airs Sundays at 9 p.m. only on showtime. And now, back to heat check. For the Warriors where, you know, like you think, okay, Katie goes down and you're screwed, like the odds, the in-game odds, because now, you know, with betting, like,

everything changes instantly on the fly and you can bet things in game. Like before the game, the Raptors were. plus 115 to win that game. And then after, as soon as KD went down, they posted a new one and the Raptors went up to minus 125. But then for the rest of the series, the Warriors were supposed to be four to one to win in game six and game seven. And that's going to change now too because of KD.

And like this whole thing, like this entire series has felt like it's never been one thing. Like I kept expecting at the beginning the Warriors to, you know, because they kept saying over and over again, We're the Warriors and we have this muscle memory and it doesn't matter and we're going to figure it out. And as long as we play the way we play, we're going to get back in the series. And it didn't feel that way. It certainly didn't feel that way when it went to Toronto with the Raptors up 3-1. And then they get KD back and it feels like the momentum started and shift.

And then they win this game. And now I don't know where the momentum is. Like if you're the Raptors, you don't want to go back to Oakland for all the reasons you just outlined. Like you have to get back on a plane and go back across the country to play against a team that just lost a guy that they really wanted to get back. that will be motivated to win one for the Gippert type of thing. But also, like, you've been the better team and you've got now still the best player in the series. So I have no idea where this goes, just like I have no idea where the rest of the series

even started. Yeah. And then you've got an Oracle that will probably be completely bonkers because they get a second life because they get to... Now the real last game ever in Oracle history. This is officially the last game ever, Oracle. They have the Splash Brothers Warriors. They have the, like, they're going to be playing for.

or KD. I mean, what happens if KD shows up on the bench? You know what I mean? Like, what happens if he gets like a Nurk-ich moment

where he walks out there and waves to the crowd? Like, are you telling me that the roof doesn't completely blow off that place? And to say nothing, the fact that, like, the Raptors have been,

like, pretty much better than the Warriors in almost every quarter of this game. Like, I don't even know how to judge this last game yet. I haven't looked at, like, the math yet on that. But the Raptors

can't be feeling that much worse about how they're playing against Golden State. So they play 20 quarters of basketball, the Raptors have won 14 of those and then two other quarters they've tied. So yeah, I'm with you. Like they, I think the Raptors have pretty

plainly been the better team in the series, but like I don't know how you quantify or grade on a curve whatever emotional boost or even potential like debit that the Warriors would have from this whole injury. This is uncharted territory. I mean, like I said in the beginning, we've had

injuries in the finals, Kyrie, Kevin Love, we've had significant injuries in the playoffs over the last 10 years. Tony Parker, the thunder withstood like multiple injuries to Durant, Westbrook, and Abaca in various years. Gosh, I mean, like every clipper season was done in by a Paul or a Griffin injury, it seemed like. Shout out to you, Isaac. I mean, we've seen postseason injuries derail things before. We're kind of an uncharted territory because I've never seen a postseason injury that could then go on to maybe inspire a team to win the finals. I mean, like, I don't want to be like too

hyperbolic in the moment or too overreactionary, but like, this could be one of the biggest injuries in NBA history, given what player got hurt and in what moment? Like, I'm with you. Like, it's hard to think of something that was, like, more important or massive and might have, like, more consequence than this one. It's just, like, I couldn't believe it in the moment. I don't know that I'll believe it tomorrow or for the next couple days to come. And then, like, even in just that in the game in that moment, the ripple effects were immediate. You went from in that game in that moment, basically, like, I was slacking with Devine and I'm like, man, you know, before the injury. I'm like, man, do you think that Boogie catches a DNPCD tonight? And then Katie goes down and he goes

from not playing to you have to play him and bring him in. And he ends up having like one of his better nights in the finals against the Raptors because the Raptors Biggs had basically cooked him all years long. And he came in and he like, he provided some offense, which they desperately needed. He scored 14 points in 20 minutes. And he was still a net minus in the in the in game plus minus, but it was like one of the better 40 performances. He had a goaltending, an offensive

goaltending and a moving screen. I mean, like it was just wild that somehow Golden State survived that and Raymond's back court down the stretch. Yeah, the back court down the stretch. I mean, like just so many things stemmed from that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't imagine being Steve Kerr and Steph and Clay Thompson and you're like, we've got to get on the plane.

We're still in it. Like, now what? Yeah, now what is the biggest thing? Now what is, is there anything from this game that is actually real? Like, do you take anything from this game? Like, the only thing that really alarmed me down the stretch was the thing that I was a little bit worried about with Toronto. Honestly, throughout the playoffs was their shot making ability under tight circumstances.

Was aside from Kauai, is there a guy out there who, they can rely on to get buckets, to get a bucket off the ball or with the ball in his hand. And I didn't see it from Seaccom, and we didn't see it from Lowry down the stretch. And we didn't really get it from Gasol, who didn't play, who got kind of played off the court in spots during this game.

So that's the only thing that's really unnerving. Otherwise, like, if you're Toronto, you just have to like, to borrow filiism, trust the process. Because everything that they've done so far in the playoffs has worked out exactly right for them. Yeah,

I thought like, you know, at the end, Lowry obviously got a clean look and it was not a good shot. But that's been sort of the story for the Raptors all postseason long where like during the regular season, I thought, you know, their depth was one of their greatest attributes. And then in the postseason, it's kind of been, there were multiple moments at least in the Sixers series where I thought like you could see. Seaccom didn't want to take the shot. Yeah, you just read about this. Yeah. Lawry disappeared.

And then in the finals, I would argue that that has not been the case, that they've almost all taken turns. Like we got that Siakum game in game one. Lowry had a pretty good game in the loss. Gassau has been clearly more willing to shoot, certainly beyond the first two series. And then since then, you know, like he took only six shots tonight,

but there have been plenty of other games where at least he didn't pass up the open shot, which is just a killer for spacing and like you're going to make it much more difficult on your offense. But yes, tonight it was once more, oh, it has to be Kauai in this situation

because if it's not Kauai, we're not going to win the game. And by the way, I thought it was Kauai and I thought they were going to win the game and they still didn't. We were literally got out the hammer and the chisel and started carving

new Jordan into a piece of stone. I mean, those few shots he made down the fourth quarter stretch where he were like, oh, kind of a quiet Kauai game. Kind of like he's in third gear and then all of a sudden he hit the booster rockets and just tonight

of all the times in the playoffs pretty much it wasn't enough. Yeah, and I wrote about this for winners and losers where I had him as a winner because, you know, he goes and he scores that 10 straight and 12 of the final 16, and he has a double double, 26 and 12, board man had 12 rebounds, and then he had six assists and two steals and two blocks.

And yet, you're right, it still wasn't enough, which I think, like, when you have had so many huge moments in the postseason, and you have clearly been the best player in the postseason, and you have willed your guys to win many games and through many series, even when you have a game like that, people will look at the line and go, oh, yes, still not enough. They needed more Kauai because he went nine for 24, which is crazy town. It is so wild. I mean, I'm trying to imagine right now. I mean, John, you were covering the first four games of the series in person.

What did you think the vibe was, I mean, it's impossible to extrapolate, but what do you think the vibe was around the warriors? Like, do you feel like they're ready to get it going, like, even in the face of all this? So I thought initially they put on a really good face, like after game one and two in Toronto, certainly after game two because they won that game. Even you could even argue after game three, you know, those first two losses. They did the whole, you know, we're the champs and we've been here and we've done that and the muscle memory is going to get us out of it and, you know, not to worry.

And like they definitely sold me on it to the point where I wrote about it. And then after they lost what could have been the last game in Oracle, they were flat out dejected. Like, Steph was like, this is not a good spot. I'm paraphrasing. And this is not a paraphrase from Draymond. Dremont. Dramon was like, this sucks. It sucks a lot. I mean, like, I think they thought we're going to go and we're going to try to play our best game and hopefully we get KD back because there were some rumblings that he might be cleared at the time and they were hopeful. But they were, they were for the first time since I think, you know, losing the 2016, blowing that three one lead to the Cleveland Cavaliers. I think that was the first time that they were

genuinely shook. Like, even against the Rockets last year, where the Rockets were up three, two, and then went on and missed those 27 straight threes and Chris Paul got hurt and whatever. And it looked like the Warriors were in a really bad spot before that happened. I didn't think that the Warriors looked off their game or shook. They looked shook going back to Toronto. And now all of a sudden, they steal this game, but also KD goes down. And I don't know how they should feel or what they feel or like, it's probably what you said earlier where it's probably all of these things at once. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just honestly like, this is a weird podcast. to do because I'm kind of like processing it in person. Like, I'm looking at Twitter as we're talking, and it sounds like Bob Myers is essentially crying on during his press conference and talking about how important Kevin Durant is, how it was crazy that anyone ever questioned that he wanted to play.

He's saying that the first injury was a calf injury and that this is an Achilles injury and he doesn't think that the two are related. But, you know, obviously people will be second-guessing him about that. I usually have like a harder heart when it calls. comes to stuff like this. I think. I usually... Do you? I've always thought you were a pushover. No, I can be sentimental and stuff, but I think that, like, I'm a little bit more, like, injuries are a part of sports, and I just think that the emotional outpouring that happens for

them is often a little bit overdone, but not, maybe not, you know, not in this case. And it really, honestly, it has nothing to do with his free agency. It really does have to do with just how screwed up the discourse was around him coming back. I don't know that it would have mattered one way or the other if nothing had been said about like, maybe he's dogging it a little bit so that he doesn't like miss out on free agency. I mean, Kevin Durant can get as much money as he wants in free agency with one Achilles or no Achilles. I think any team would probably pony up to give him whatever he wants. And so all the Warriors probably. But it just feels so weird to be watching this in real time. It really is. I have a lot of thoughts in my head about the actual basketball in

the game, but every time I go to, like, you know, look at how the Raptors bench did or, like, look at where the Warriors were able to steal minutes when they needed to, I keep thinking back about, and like, it almost feels callous to even, to even entertain these ideas so soon after the injury and, like, we're still in the finals, but, like, the ripple effects for the offseason and his free agency and, like, how these pieces were going to get moved around the board. I mean, Bakes just wrote a whole thing about how the Knicks, because of KD, have become becomes sort of the center of the postseason, despite the fact that they're not in the postseason, and that is very much true.

Like, I have covered multiple rounds of the playoffs from the beginning with the Sixers and the Nets up through these finals. And invariably, wherever you go, the talk is, oh, Katie's gone, where's he going to go? And then it's, well, what would happen if he doesn't play in the finals? Like, would he maybe come back and entertain? Like, if the Warriors lose, would he maybe come back and stay with them on like another one-in-one or something like that? Would he reconsider?

and everything has been filtered through this, you know, pending free agency for KD. It's been such a hot topic for so long. And it almost feels perverse to be thinking about it in this moment, but it's also impossible to not. It is. I mean, this whole postseason has been kind of positioned as a prelude to the offseason in a crazy way. Yeah. You know, everything from Jimmy Butler to Quilenter to Kevin Durant to could Anthony Davis get traded to another team that could then enter

this elite group of teams. Where's Kyrie Irving going? What will Boston do in his absence? What will the Sixers do with their free agents? Everything is about questions about the future. And it's been a very strange playoffs. I think it's only had like a handful of signature games. It's had a couple of gentlemen sweeps.

It's had a couple of like we get ourselves all up into a latherer about something. And then Milwaukee loses four two. So it's nothing to really talk about. But, you know, this year kind of defies our constantly moving forward discourse about the NBA and asks us to tap the brakes and just kind of sit in it. And all you have to do is look at the quotes from the guys in the Warriors locker room. And also even before this Durant thing, everybody on that Warriors team seems to be playing with something wrong with them.

You know what I mean? Like Looney, Curry doesn't look always 100%. Thompson's obviously playing hurt. Boogie's playing hurt. It's just such as... barely even race his arm up at some points during the game tonight. And he was taking some massive hits when he was, you know, trying to grab rebounds and hitting the deck. And there was one where he went up for a rebound in Lowry was sort of underneath him. And he just sort of like,

somersaulted onto the court. And I'm like, the amount of pain that that guy is playing through is incredible. And like, you're right. Like, they're all banged up and they're in this situation now. And emotionally and physically, they've got to be absolutely drained. Yeah, man, I mean, as weird as it feels to talk about all this stuff tonight. And we didn't really talk about like, did Lowry have a good game or a bad game? Did the Warriors figure something out with how to get Gassol off their backs a little bit? Like, how dependent are the Raptors on Seacom because the games that they're losing are the games that he's not having good games?

There's a lot of tactical questions to be asked. But yeah, I mean, just even talking to you, like I kind of thought maybe we would talk about Duran for a few minutes and then talk about adjustments. but it's obviously going to take over this entire finals. And I'm sort of fascinated from a kind of guy at the aquarium way, like, how are these guys going to respond to this? You know, like you're almost like watching this through the glass being like, hey, what happens when something really, really heartbreaking happens?

Does it galvanize a team? Does it just defeat them? You know, do the Warriors have anything left in the chamber to come out in game six and take it back to Toronto? everything from the finals adjustments for game six and rotations and how they play to what happens after game six to you know his health to you know free agency like i'm with you when we first started this podcast i'm like all right we have to talk katy off the top and then we're going to move to basketball and the more and more we discussed it the more i think that everything that we

talk about and write about and pot about for the you know however long is going to be with our kd goggles on. And that's how significant this was. I just can't believe that happened. It's unfortunate. We're going to have lots of content about this and the NBA finals and KD and where we all go from here on the ringer.com. So please check that out. And there'll be plenty more podcasts moving forward in your Ringer NBA show feed. So be on the lookout for those. We want to ask everybody to please rate and review us if you would be so kind. We also want to thank you for listening. For Isaac and Chris, I am Don's. We will be back. See ya.