The Ringer NBA Show - Lessons of the Postseason for the Offseason | The Answer

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

Chris and Seerat contemplate some of the roster issues facing NBA teams this offseason and what they could learn from current playoff contenders, notably the Boston Celtics. They discuss and debate a few of the most prominent players and teams in this regard, including Zach LaVine (10:15), the Dallas Mavericks (20:31), the Minnesota Timberwolves (25:21), and the Brooklyn Nets (27:32). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Seerat Sohi Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. We're not just reacting to the NBA playoffs on my podcast. We're also doing it on the Ringer NBA show and the Mismatch podcast. They are coming after some of these NBA playoff games. Check it out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights on the Ringer Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Ringer NBA show. It's The Answer. I am Chris Ryan. I am joined as always by Siritt Sohey. What's up, Syrit. I'm good, Chris. I'm much like pretty much every team in this playoff. I'm starting to lose a little bit of steam. Are you having like kind of a metaphorical chronic hamstring issue? Yeah, kind of. I think the general chronic hamstring issue that the NBA is going through right now is, yeah, I think energy attract energy, right? Sure.

Or the reverse, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, I was, I think we're at the point in the year where you're hoping for a little bit of a boost, you're hoping for a little bit of adrenaline from like some crazy playoff matchup and, you know, it was overtime games and game winners and shocking developments. And we don't really have a lot of that right now. But we're going to try to bring the heat ourselves. Well, not the Miami heat.

We're not really going to talk about these two conference final matchups because by the time you hear this on Friday, the Warriors may have already put the Mavericks to bed back in the bay. Game six of Celtics heat would be happening on Friday evening, and it does seem like the Celtics are in the driver seat for that one because they are up 3-2 on Miami going back to Boston for the closeout game. So, Ciro and I wanted to talk a little bit about something. of the rumblings that have been coming up already that portend to another really active NBA

offseason. But the thing that I was curious about Sirot is we talk about the difference between playoff basketball and regular season basketball in terms of what we're seeing on the court. But I started to read some of these stories, you know, obviously they're making a lot out of a little or just speculating or just here's what we're hearing and we'll go through some of these names and some of these stories. But I'm almost starting to wonder whether not the NBA offseason is a completely different sport from it from the NBA itself. Because it doesn't seem like maybe teams or star players are exactly learning the lessons that they should be from this postseason. And that's what I think we wanted to talk about today.

Yeah. What will you mean by that, Chris? Who are you pointing your criticism towards it? Well, I'm not even criticizing anybody in particular as much as like you could just do like 15 minutes on the Lakers and they're hiring a coach by committee thing and who's a, in charge and is it Rob or is it Kurt or is it Linda or is it Jeannie or is it LeBron or is it Phil and which coach is whose favorite there and what they're going to do with their team in general and I'm not even really talking about yeah I'm not even really talking about say the Sixers who have to make a decision what James Hardin has to make a decision about whether to opt into the last year of his deal but then the Sixers have to make a decision about what they want

to do with him and what they if they want to offer him a contract extension now and what kind of contract extension that would be. I'm thinking more just in terms of like the general appetite for just living in a world of constant change if you're an NBA team, constantly kind of seeking out a big name player, redoing your roster, maybe redoing your coaching bench, and hoping that this combination of people works this season to get you far enough. Whereas I think when you look at these teams that are remaining, we're seeing like different lessons than that. Not a lot of teams here built purely out of free agency blockbuster trades

and bring in the next best thing that you can. Yeah, and I know you didn't want to talk about the Boston Celtics here, but... Well, we can, no, we can totally talk about these guys as examples of what, I guess, you should be doing. Yeah, so I appreciate your grace in this moment, first of all. Thanks. Yeah. But really, I think the best example is just like the amount of non-trades that happened under Danny Aange's watch with the Celtics. Now, every single trade deadline, And you know what? Like he definitely did it to himself. He actually did it himself in a lot of ways because of the amount of leaks that came out of that team about, you know, potential trade targets and guys that they would love to have.

And, you know, was Jalen Brown going to be put in a package for Kauai Leonard? And there was a moment, there was a moment when I think that's the one we're going to talk about for a while. Because it looked like that was a non-starter for them. And then the Raptors won the championship. And that was a year that the Celtics, you know, went all in for Kyrie Irving. and they had Gordon Hayward, and obviously, you know, best laid plants didn't work out there, which I think is going to be a theme of this podcast. But, you know, I think there was some criticism of that at the time,

considering, you know, how Jalen Brown still has some of the same characteristics that people criticized about him then. But he's definitely come together in a lot of ways. And if you look at it now, the Celtics somehow by keeping everything together are on the verge of the NBA finals, one game away from the NBA finals, largely having some of the same flaws personnel-wise that they had. If you look at Jalen, for example, if you look at last game, it's still barreling into the lane and turning it over half the time

as much as you're dunking over everybody too. And with Tatum, I mean, obviously the playmaking has improved so much, but a lot of incremental improvements within the reality of the confines of what those guys are, and they still have, they still lack the main playmaking vessel, and that's something that they've been able to to make happen internally too. That it's just, it's interesting to look at because... Hell, that's a team that actually reassembled an older version of itself. Like a previous...

It's like they undid the software update and went back to Catalina. You know what I mean? Yeah. My phone's just running so much slower now. I gotta get Hal Horford back in here. They went back to Dice. They went back to Al Horford. And I think that that Derek White...

was sort of an unremarkable. I mean, I think people were like, oh, interesting, but wound up being this kind of exactly what they hoped it would be, which was this connective tissue addition, where it's like this guy can be the bridge between the starters and the bench. He can be the bridge between Marcus Smart and the other perimeter players. He can be the guy who makes the right pass. He's not going to be looking to ISO and get 17 a night

and want to take the biggest shot, like despite Jason Tatum or despite Jalen Brown. He's the exact right player that they needed. Bill and Ryan have this very funny thing about, like, how many top fives are there that Jason Tatum is in? Jason Tatum, you could make the, I would very much hear the argument that Jason Tatum is in the top five right now of NBA players.

But they've got two really great two-way wings, the defensive player of the year playing point card, and Robert Williams and Al Horford backing up the front line. So they obviously have like a really great defensive core, and they have some very special. talents on the wings. But I think the thing that I admire the most about them is that they have just kind of stuck to what they had and tried a different voice in the room. Obviously, Brad Stevens left and Udoka came in to coach them. But do you think that like the Celtics continuity

and to some extent the heat continuity and to some extent the Bucks continuity if you want to give the Bucks credit for getting to the seventh game there? Like that this should be a lesson to say the Utah's of the world to not give up on the core that they've put together. Definitely want to get into which teams this actually applies to later. But on the Celtics point and on the point of the rest of the teams here, sometimes it is just better to solve your problems internally. You're going to be closer than you think. And the other thing, you know, when you mention a guy like Derek White, he's also just

insurance against Marcus Smart falling on his ankle at like a perfect right angle or falling on his wrist, which is an inevitability that you kind of have to price in with a player like Marcus Smart. And I think that was just really smart of them. Like they have depth that allows them to maintain their continuity, not only, you know, as a team for like the last five years or so, but also just like when certain guys go out of the game, right? Like whether it's Mark is smart, then you can plug in Derek White.

You can also plug in Grant Williams, who is also just going to be like talking just as much and being just as annoying and switching just as much as he is too. And like you can kind of go down the line with that. Like one guy I think about is Thice who we probably not see for the rest of the series, who has been maligned, I think, for pretty much just not being the Time Lord, right? And that is actually kind of the greatest gift that he could give the Celtics in a moment like this, when, you know, Robert Williams has been in and out of the lineup. Just to be able to be a facsimile of what somebody else provides so that everybody else doesn't have to go and change their role.

Like, everybody else can still go and be who they're supposed to be. Like, Jason Tatum doesn't have to change who he is because of Marcus Smart being hurt. and then Al Horford can still continue to play the role he does because he's still going to be with the guy like Thice and you can continue to keep your rotations the same and that's kind of a theme that I think we've been seeing throughout the playoffs as well. We have some teams that have what could be termed redundancies.

I think if you look at the Phoenix Suns now, like it could feel like redundancy. A lot of it is like if you win, it's good, if you lose it's bad. But if you look at the Warriors with Steph Curry and Jordan Poole, the way that he's been able to sustain the force of, Curry and what he does for that team when Curry can't do it. And the heat as well. I think with the heat, their issue is just going to be that they won't have enough of it.

But being able to have Victor Aladipo step in for a half and just become Jimmy Butler on defense and be aggressive on offense is probably not something that they could have predicted, but it definitely helps that he can just. I'm sure they couldn't have predicted that Duncan Robinson would turn into like basically an unplayable player too. I mean, like, it's almost like planning for all eventualities there. Yeah, and then you just have, like, Max Drew step up and become Duncan Robinson. Dreddy.

Except for these last two games. Do you mean step up and be Duncan Robinson in the missing threes part? Yeah, I guess. I guess. Like, that was an ugly one for Miami. Some of the names that have been thrown around so far for this offseason. So there was a delightful Lavar Ball media appearance where he suggested that Zach Levine is definitely leaving Chicago. I think then there were some secondary rumor-mogering about.

that being related to him not wanting to be the second option behind D'Marre de Rosen and watch D'Marrozen just, like, ISO all the time. I found out hard to believe since this was definitely the best season of Zach Levine's career, the best team he's been a part of since he's been in the NBA, pretty much. And all indications were that, like, Chicago was going in the right direction until they got decimated by, like, a variety of injuries. But the suggestion is basically that he is essentially up for grabs, or at least he's going to entertain his first. He's going to entertain his free agency and that Portland, Atlanta, Dallas, the Lakers, and Philly are all in the mix in a variety of different ways. So Zach Levine's out there. There was an article in the New York Daily News

by Christian Winfield about Kyrie Irving's current status with the team and whether or not the team will commit to Irving and whether the lack of commitment to Irving could hasten his departure from Brooklyn and whether his departure from Brooklyn could upend KD there because Katie and Kyrie certainly feel like a package deal in Brooklyn. And then we have all the front office moving and shaking that's going on between Denver's, Tim Connolly leaving the team, going to New Minnesota, getting like an ownership stake reportedly and taking over basketball ops and Timberwolves. Calvin Booth moves up and becomes like he's running basketball for the Nuggets. But usually when there's a new front office head, like, you know, moves can be made. So you have to wonder whether or not the Timberwolves are going to run it back or whether the Nuggets are going to look to.

trade porter or something like that. So all of a sudden there's just like a bunch of pretty big names out there, along with the usual Beal speculation, along with the usual hardened speculation. But I guess I'm asking you, let's say when you take one of the teams from the playoffs, like Dallas, and you're looking at Luca and you're looking at what this team is capable of. Is Zach Levine what you need? There's a lot of moving and shaking potentially happening that I don't think nobody really asked for. Yes. Yeah. Like, well, let's start with Levine, right? So the Bulls have probably what could be

the best start you could possibly imagine to the season for them before they get decimated by injuries. Like you got the Demar-Dorosen, you know, Renaissance MVP campaign, like the best feel good story of the year. And maybe that's part of it for Levine. And then Lonzo goes out, Caruso goes out, and you just don't really have like the same transition zip you do. And things start to taper off a little bit. But within that, you find a guy like Iowa Dissuno, and Patrick Williams is going to be a year older. And those are the things that are important to me because if you look at what the problem with Chicago was, it was their interior defense. And then they just so happened to run into the one team that they really shouldn't have wanted to run into in the Milwaukee Bucks because they just were not going to have an answer for what Yonis can do to you in the paint. But they have some guys that can maybe be that one day.

and, you know, I think there's also something to, you know, signing some role players in a situation like that, as opposed to, you know, kind of blowing up what you have. Because I think the problems that Chicago can pose for other teams with their perimeter defense and just like how blistering they were on offense earlier in the season, just like you can put that pressure back on somebody else, hopefully next season, right? And to me, for everything that Levine is looking for long term, Chicago just seems like the best option. and they're obviously going to be able to pay him the most.

Like they have a history of potentially, you know, like they didn't pay Jimmy Butler. This seems like a different situation. We have a new front office. I don't know how much that changes what ownership feels, but there's also an ownership shift from like, from father's son. We don't really like, there's like a- And I saw Casey Johnson reported that like the Bulls are still confident that they can bring Levian back. So it's like Lovar Ball's, you know, rumor versus like the sort of reported confidence

that the Bulls have for what it's worth. Continue, though. I do think that, you know, the fact that Zach Levine is with clutch sports is something. And I think also he's never been a free agent before. And he said before that that's something he's really looked forward to. And, you know, he's always wanted to just see what that's going to be like, you know, just be able to make his own decision for the first time. So maybe this is just Zach Levine wants to have a bunch of dinners, right?

And that's totally fair. I think. Yeah? Like, yeah, scratch that itch. Scratch that itch. but I do think Chicago is the best option for him. If he wants to be the primary scorer in the future too, like, DeMarre's not going to do this forever.

And like he probably shouldn't do it next season too, just for configuration of your offense that is going to be more sustainable in the playoffs. Like, you know, it's just not. That happened out of necessity, and I think there's a version of this team where Levine is maybe the one getting the most touches. If that's what he wants, I also, I wonder about that too,

because that's what he was doing. for all these years in Chicago when he was miserable and not making the playoffs. And I don't think that was fun for him. I think he's happy to have these guys here. I think it seems like there's a lot of sour grapes with like what has happened in the past with the team. I don't think he really loved the old front office and maybe that that's still lingering. But right now in this situation, I just look at them and I'm like, come on. You barely got it back. Yeah, you got no time together. And you were awesome in the time you got. The playoffs are heating up and you can make every game feel like game 7 on Fandul's

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Tennessee Redline is 1,800-889-9-9-878-9, 1-800-5-2-4700 in Wyoming, or visit www.1-800 gambler.net in West Virginia. For some reason, the most notable post-game press conference that I saw this entire playoffs was Janus after Game 7 with Boston. Because he could come out, and let's just say, now obviously Janus has the benefit of having a ring and those MVP awards. So, like, in a lot of ways, he's in the Hall of Fame. He has done something that hundreds of other really good to great players didn't get to do, which is win a championship.

He has that comfort level. But I would never call Janus satisfied. You know, he seems to be like this, maybe the most relentless superstar we have. But he comes out after game seven. They basically, like, they gave away game six in Milwaukee. They lose game seven. And he comes out. And generally speaking, I thought was just like, you know,

what, like we lost. It's all good. I love these guys. We'll try to get better over this summer. Can't wait to come back and play more basketball next season. Now, far be it for me to say that that's what everybody needs to say. I think you can have satisfaction with your team situation. You can be like, I have to put pressure on the front office. Maybe I'm not psyched about my coaching situation. But I completely agree with you about Levine. Like, forget the free agency for a second. Just think about fit and situation. It's fine. finally good. It's finally good in Chicago. Like, yeah, I know Lonzo Ball's knee is weird. I know Damar's going to be a year old. Maybe there's a little bit of shine comes off the apple here.

But like that seems like the best possible situation for you. You finally, it's coming, it's paying off. You're going to get the check from Chicago. And then like, as we've seen, you can essentially like orchestrate your exit from a team anyway if you want to as you're a star. So I'm kind of like surprised to consider like would you want you want to go to portland like you want to go to Atlanta you don't want to stay in chicago and like have that crowd and play with those other guards and have that fun team and like take a shot at it when maybe one year crusoe doesn't have like this catastrophic injury and lonso maybe gets his knee fixed yeah i'm with you i'm with you and i and maybe this is just levin wanting to make sure he gets the most money he can out of chicago

and if so i'm i'm here for that but the one option there that is a little bit intriguing to me. And I think like poses similar questions for that team as a Mavericks. Okay. So this is what I wanted to ask you about was because he's got a problem with DeMar's dominance of the ball. I mean, is there a version of Luca that's like more sherry? I think there has to be right. The Mavericks are in an interesting situation where I feel like they've come away from these playoffs having learned a lot of things about themselves. And I think the Warriors kind of expose them in the same way is that they expose James Harden and the Houston Rockets for, you know,

Luca just being one of the most ball-dominant players of all time, they have not exactly put him in a cage. Kevin Arnivet said a story on ESPN today where he cited that Luca's been scoring, I think, 1.21 points per possession against the Warriors on, I think it was on switches. So it's definitely more efficient than the Hardin situation. I think it's more of a, how do you build around LeBron James type of question than it is that. Which, there's a lot of recent examples in history that are complicated.

It's really, I don't have, I want to talk this out with you because I don't have a good sense of how I feel about how they should move forward. So when they were playing the Sons in the first two games of that series, when the Sons won and it looked like Luka was exhausted and, you know, the, the offense for the Mavericks really, really turned to, like, it was granted to a halt. No one else was really doing anything. It looked really ugly. Obviously, you know, Brunton, Dinwiddie came alive after that. That series completely shifted. But it got me thinking, like, is what they need to do actually just right in front of them right now in the suns? In terms of, like, okay, you've got the generational superstar and now you need to find a second star to go alongside with him. like the double heliocentrism that we've talked about in the past, where it's just...

So in the son's case, adding a Paul to a booker? Right, right. And if you want to look at it that way, then your question becomes, do you think that Jalen Brunson is eventually going to become that guy? And if not, can Zach Levine be that guy? Because in this kind of configuration of it, I would put Luca more... Luca is like the 6-7 CP3, is like the playmaker, and he's not going to have like the same size issues that Chris Paul has had in the playoffs.

And Levine, Levine and Booker used to get compared a lot before Booker eventually made the playoffs and kind of got to redeem himself. But that good score or bad team narrative is pretty much down the line for both those two. Their averages are very similar. So I could see that type of partnership

playing out in a similar way. And maybe with Luca, because of his size, it doesn't bite them in the ass in the same way that it bit the suns in the ass. but I don't, you know, I go down the line and maybe it's another sort of Chris Ball situation where you have James Harden and Chris Paul together and you've had the version of it that's worked with Kyrie and LeBron or LeBron and Wade but these wing partnerships are really tricky.

Yeah, they're incredibly tricky. I mean, we actually like, we don't even have the evidence. We have like a feeling that a fully healthy Clippers team even would have been a title contender if not even maybe a title favorite. But, like, that's the sort of model that I think we're looking at is this idea of, like, shooting all over the place and two stud wings who can play both ways and score at three levels with George and Kauai. But, like, we actually haven't seen that team play together for an extended period of time

where they're, like, where they're both healthy. So I completely agree with you. I think that those wing combos are a little bit tricky. Yeah. And look at Jalen and Jason. They've only figured it out since, since this is. second half of this season. Yeah, and maybe that's the thing. Like, maybe you need to give a duel like that more time. Like, if you look at Brunton and Luca, right, they're still very much

figuring out how to play well together. When they're on the floor at the same time, Brunton's numbers go way down. And that's an evolution that Luca needs to make in his game. And I don't know, I kind of wonder if that's just, that's just the way that they should go. Because I really like the fact that Brunton can step into the Luca roll off the bench. It kind of goes back to that continuity thing that we talked about. And they are different enough. I think they can attack sort of different types of players. So I don't know. I don't know about any of this. Like, I don't know about Tim Connolly going to, like that sets different. Like it's, you know, the GM, it's kind of like a little bit who cares. But that's another one where I was a little bit surprised.

Well, I mean, I was almost more interested in that just as much by, you know, first of all, it's, it's a new regime. So while I'm sure that he's going to come in and see Chris Finch and see the success that that team had. Does he immediately say, I don't have the same sort of preconceived notions about Carl Anthony Towns as importance or DeAngelo Russell's importance? Or does he say like this, we have to do X, Y, and Z, which had previously been thought of as like kind of verboten in that front office? Like, I don't know.

I mean, Tim Conley put together a really, really, really good team in Denver. And it was really only injuries this season that didn't see them as one of the conference favorites. I guess if I were Tim Connolly and I had that Wolf's team and they played so well, especially in the second half of the season, is that another example of maybe you guys should just run it back and get like another year older of Anthony Edwards? I'm happy that there's somebody there that probably isn't in love with Angela Russell. The Connolly perspective on this, it seems like a big reason it was just like, well,

it looks like this Timberwolf franchise is willing to spend. And, you know, nuggets were a little bit, you know, a little bit tighter with their wallet. So you get why he did it, but I also wonder if there's just something to, the nuggets are close, right? And they're just, all these teams seem close. All these teams seem close. As we talk about this, I'm realizing that we're kind of proponents of everybody staying together. And that in and of itself maybe becomes the issue because not all these teams are going to succeed.

And they probably all see that too. But, you know, the nuggets, if not for their injuries, they would be in it right now, probably, right? And when you look at the wolves, if they had traded, Angel Russell, which could have happened, then they never, like, figure into this, like, weird defensive system where he's like, they're, like, an awesome perimeter communicator getting deflections all over the place, and, like, fitting into Chris Finch's system really well. But now you look at the playoffs and what happened, and then you start to wonder, right? Like, was that just a Memphis thing? Like, how, how physical Memphis was with him?

Or is it just, like, is it that lesson that the playoffs teach you? Right. And I think that Connolly's going to have a, it's probably good to have an outsider perspective on that. Although they did have, they could have potentially had that with Sajun Gupta too. Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, some of these other stories that we mentioned at the top is obviously, we talked about Connolly moving to Minnesota and possibly putting some of those stars in play or looking to revamp that team a little bit or make them, you know, or he might just stand pat and say like we're moving in the right direction. The Brooklyn thing is pretty interesting because even if Christian Winfield wasn't trying to say, like, this is definitely happening.

I think what it does is show the consequences of all-in behavior, you know, and basically tying up your fortunes in two to three players and then looking to add on around that and hope you get lucky with the Nick Claxton's or whoever else you're talking about. And we don't have to play Kyrie Irving trade machine right now. but I guess what's fascinating is none of these teams that are remaining in the in the final four here strike me as overly deferential to their star players like their star players are obviously like in concert with what they're doing and I'm sure Jimmy Butler obviously will let himself be known if he wants to if they lose to the Celtics maybe he'll have some opinions that he hasn't shared yet or that he only shared with Eric Spolstra on the bench that day but like tying up your entire franchise's viability in the relationship between two stars, which is, I think you see it in other places besides Brooklyn, is pretty complicated. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the teams that aren't in it right now, that's what they did. That's what the Lakers did, and it's what the Clippers did, and like Leonard has barely played, and it's what the Sixers did.

And we barely got any minutes of Hardin and Joelle and Bede together before the playoffs started. Well, that was almost more of the relationship between the president of the team and the star star player, right? Yeah. They're like, yeah, who's like, who's your, who's your favorite best friend duo? James Harden and Darry, or Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant? Um, I don't know. I guess the James Hard and Darry-Morri duo at least want a playoff round this postseason. So that was, that was nice. They actually do have a better track record of success together than the Nets do. Which, yeah, I mean, look, it's weird when you have these conversations because to me, it's not necessarily about player empowerment.

I think there's a lot of ways that you can have all of that power but still kind of seed certain things on the basketball side of things which I think is the key here. If you're Kevin Durant, first of all, this version of Kevin Durant, I'm not sure should be commanding the type of respect from a franchise where he can demand that another player who wasn't available for a lot of the season is also worthy of a max contract. And then also you got to sign my buddy DeAndre Jordan.

And also you got to pay him. And it seems like that's kind of what's happened with the Lakers and just like, you know, the funneling of clutch clients there. And just, you know, I think bringing in a guy like Westbrook and then, you know, not being able to bring somebody like him off the bench is what hurts you. It's not necessarily the accumulation of the stuff. but I think the way that you do it then dictates how accountable you can hold them in the future. Sure.

And some of that is also going to be self-selecting too, like Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat. Butler was never a big enough star to be able to do any of those things in the first place, but Miami was also just never the franchise that's going to allow you to do that. They never allowed LeBron James to do that. And guess what? Those were some of the best teams that LeBron's ever played with. So, like, I think you just need that balance of like, yeah, okay, like, you know, you can be the mayor of the city. fine like it's that's that's totally cool but just let everybody else do their jobs too and like yeah

you know if you want to if you want to have your trainer on the payroll and you want to have your security guard in the payroll that's totally cool too you want to have an assistant coach on the like go ahead do your thing like whatever you want your whole family but just leave the roster alone what are some other lessons that you think we can take from this postseason and apply to like what some other teams are going to be going into the off season with think we covered a lot of it but I think I think I think the defensive stuff really jumps out of me yeah and every season I think I spend the entire regular season enamored with more and more hot shot offenses and high octane offenses and you know three point dervishes and all the like and obviously we've just seen a playoffs that have in a large part been kind of determined by the wild variance of three point shooting in some ways but the final four teams are all top ten. defenses. You know, and that to me is the thing that's still at the end of the day is going to be

the difference between being a cool second roundout and getting to a conference finals. And even when I watched Alice, and that's a pretty good defensive team or they certainly were during the regular season and they have a lot of cool concepts that kid applies there. The problem for me is not really like whether or not they're making threes, which is just kind of like it is what it is. it's that the Warriors have a layup line. And I understand that Cleaver shoots better than Powell, and Powell isn't even that great in the first place.

But there's just nothing there once you break through whatever they're throwing at you on the perimeter. I think Powell is getting a lot of crap for having a couple bad games. But that's, yeah, that's neither here or nor there when it comes to this conversation. But maybe in terms of the Mavericks. I would literally drive to Texas to get Dwight Powell to be the backup center to Jolumbie. Don't get me wrong. You know what I mean?

But I think that my, every season I'll go into the playoffs and be like, I'm barely thinking about defense. And I think the Celtics changed that a little bit, especially with the run that they were on in the second half of this regular season. And then you get to it and it's the pistons and the spurs and the, the heatles and the teams that are like always routinely elite defenses and those Warriors teams. And you're just like, man, it's so boring. but this really does win championships.

And maybe that's kind of the lesson for a team like the Mavericks. You know, instead of going hunting for Zach Levine and seeing if he's potentially a better fit on your team than Jalen Brunson is, when that's, to me, you know, should, Levine right now obviously is a better player that's proven more than Jailen Brunson. But I think when you look at the playoffs, what he's been able to do, like he's also proved himself that he can produce within your system alongside your best player, which definitely counts for something to me,

that let's maybe pivot to looking at, you know, clear, like getting a guy like maybe Moamba. Or maybe you go big, maybe you try to get DeAndre Aten, right? Focus on shoring up your defense, and then all of a sudden, like you said, Dwight Powell, backup big, who, like he might be, he might just be, you know, trying to bite off a little bit more than he can chew in a role, this, but then you kind of allow everybody else to shift to a more natural role. And you can build on top of the defensive principles that you have this season. I can't remember who wrote this

story, but I was reading about how, I think it was Cleaver who said he's getting bored of the Mavericks defensive rotations essentially at this point. He's getting bored at shoot-around because he knows it. But that's exactly what you need, because that's how you go into the next year. And that's how you eventually start to communicate as well as a team like the Celtics on defense, who are basically like, you know, they're like a transformer. Like they all just kind of work together. I know. It's, it's awesome to see. And that type of synchronicity, it's like the warrior synchronicity. It's like the Miami Heat synchronicity. It is, you can only get it from years and years of playing together and understanding each other's tendencies. And you can build on

that with, with a couple of guys. Like, you can add a Derek White. And, you know, you can integrate a Jordan Poole or Gary Payton into a system that is already in place. Or a Reggie Bullock. Yeah. Or Reggie Bullock, right? But if you work on the foundation of it and then find guys that fit that foundation, then you can actually start building towards something that is going to be, end up being inevitably unique because it is, you know,

you can only be formed by like these combination of players. But it's also just very hard to guard. Because that's like, that's really like, to me, the silver bullet of the playoffs. and it's like being able to communicate well enough to adjust. You know what it is? It's like Verno and KOC did a really good show earlier in the week about all these blowouts and like the spread of victory. I think it's something like up around 18 or 19 points

is the average margin of victory over the last like 19 playoff games and they were going into all the reasons why that might be. And I think because there have been all these lopsided wins, I've stopped sort of thinking about that old adage that what it really is all about is having guys who if they have the ball on their hands and it's one minute left and you're down one, like they can go get their own shot. Like it certainly does matter. But when you start watching all these like 20 point wins or wins that are 10 points but really feel like 20 points, you just start to get obsessed with like the value of depth and role players. Like kind of like what you're saying where it's like I understand that it's attractive to. think about the Levines or the Towns's or the Hardens or the Beals or whoever could hit the market. But I wonder whether or not the success of a Celtics, a heat, to some extent the Mavs,

is going to start to really spur people to be thinking more in terms of 1.5 stars and then eight guys behind them that can automatically step up if there's ever a guy down. And the hardest part to manage with all that is that when you're working with veterans and you got like your Tobias Harris's of the world, it's like, can this guy be getting paid this much on this team to be the fourth best player? Right. But when I watch like these teams now, I'm just so enamored with the Struces and the Vincens and the Bullocks and the Brunsonsons and the guys that not are, and the pools and the people

that have been developed and brought in and maybe are affordable for now and can give you so many different things and provide safety nets in case you do see these inevitable rash of injuries. And essentially, like, the Sun season got decided on the fact that campaign was not capable of backing up Chris Paul in the last couple of games there, right? Like, Chris Paul was there something up with him and campaign wasn't able to step in and be like a simulacrum of him. And I don't, you know, maybe you can't plan for that. But I certainly think it's really like, it's worth thinking about if you're a front office and building out that players three through eight like what's the best version of that squad that i can put together yeah i agree i think that's that's a great place to

end it i was going to finish with a just taking a last shot at the super teams but i'll relax do are you out on super teams now i think your monologue just kind of turn at me there that's great i'm so glad i'm so persuasive um well we can't we can't wrap it up there thanks to chris sutton for producing us uh we'll be back by the time we're back next week it'll be the NBA finals. So we'll see whether or not it comes down to one minute, which guy do you want with the ball in his hands down one, right? And then we'll have to go back to talking about who needs a star.

Yeah, you know, honestly, if we can just get any games that are decided in the last minute, I'll be happy. Even if guys are throwing it off the side of the backboard, not getting their own shot? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of what the NBA finals are anyways, right? Exactly. Sir, thanks so much.

We'll talk to everybody next week.