The Ringer NBA Show - The Raptors Ruin Curry’s Big Night | Heat Check

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

A well-rounded Game 3 performance by the Toronto Raptors wins them back home-court advantage from the shorthanded Golden State Warriors despite a transcendent performance from Stephen Curry. Host: John Gonzalez Guest: Dan Devine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Liz Kelly. The Ringer is introducing a new live Twitter after show covering season two of HBO's Big Little Lies with Jam sessions Amanda Dobbins and ESPN's Mina Kimes. Immediately after each episode, they'll be going live to give their initial reactions and break down everything we saw in the episode. And to kick us off, there'll be a special season two preview airing this Friday, June 7th at 12 p.m. Pacific. So join Amanda and Mina for that this week and then catch Big Little Live every Sunday night on Twitter. gentlemen, it's Heat Check time. Welcome to another special NBA finals edition of Heat Check. I'm your host, John Gonzalez. Our producer, Isaac Lee, is back in Los Angeles.

And I am joined in yet another hotel room. This time in a different city, though. We've changed locations. Dan Devine is here. We are traversing time and space to bring you takes. Yes, we were in Oakland for Game 3. We're now in San Francisco in the hotel. We're talking about Game 3, where the Raptors go up to 1, Dan, in the NBA finals.

I personally am surprised. Both of us picked the Warriors in this game. I figured, one, that Clay Thompson would play. He did not. I figured, two, that the Warriors would win the game. They did not. Over two on my predictions tonight, yet another reason why I don't bet on sports, because I don't know anything about them.

That's exactly right. I mean, if you're not alone on that, I think we all, when we heard that Clay Thompson was going to be active, I think the understandable thing to figure was, well, if he's active, he's probably going to play, as it turned out, not so much. Steve Kerr decided, or I keep saying Steve Kerr decided, and really it's the medical team. This is all on Steve Kerr. We're laying it all at the feet of Steve Kerr. It's going to be his now. But you did say, you were like, oh, he's active. And I'm like, ah, right. Like, he's going to play. And then all of a sudden it was like, he's not playing, but he's active. Yeah, he's active, but not available, which then really causes me to question the meaning of words and what we're doing here as a species. But evidently, Steve Kerr, I said after the game, you know, the determination was made. There was enough of a risk of re-injury, re-aggravation of the hamstring pull or tweak, rather, that if Clay Thompson did go out there, did wind up playing, he could wind up hurting himself worse,

potentially putting in jeopardy the remainder of the series, which now I think everybody seems to be expecting. This is going to be a long series. The Raptors have earned the respect that they're going to be around for a while. And so Steve Kerr's deciding sort of, better to be safe and sorry with it,

better to say, I think the line he said in his post-game press conference was something to the effect of, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if he went out there and got injured and we knew what we knew and we still let him go. So Clay Thompson was spoiling for it. He was pushing to get out there,

but didn't get out there. And certainly the other warriors could have used them tonight. So after game two when Clay got hurt, Steve Kurt said, well, if Clay was half dead, he'd say he's fine because he'd want to play. He had never missed a playoff game before tonight.

And so I think like that part of, oh, we can't trust Clay because, you know, Clay will play on one leg if we let him. I mean, you have before. I mean,

it's not like he's never been dinged up before in the postseason and you've played him. He didn't play him now. And why I think this is like sort of suspect, yeah, Steve Kerr, credit for not wanting to hurt his guys anymore. I believe him. I like Steve Kerr as a human being.

I believe him when he says he had his players' best interests at heart. However, there was a report from Ramona and Woj before the game that said the Warriors wanted to basically save Clay for the rest of the series, which to me, like taking aside what Steve Kerr's motivations were. And again, I think they were genuine and altruistic. For me, it feels like the Warriors were playing, trying to play a little bit with like, hey, we're super confident because we're the Warriors. We're at home. Maybe we can steal this game.

And if not, we can steal this series. And remember after Game 2 when Steph Curry was like, well, it was disrespectful that the Raptors left Andre Aguadol that wide open? Well, what is that? If you're like, oh, we're not going to play Clay. We're just going to save them for the rest of the series because we think we can either one, win the game without Clay or two, if not, probably still win the series anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's it is the, maybe we keep finding new extreme.

applications of that strength and numbers idea. You know, whoever the guy is that goes down, next man up and we'll figure it out. And we were talking before the game, we were talking with a couple other writers and trying to figure out who Steve Kerr would start for Clay if Clay couldn't go. And, you know, the popular choice was Quinn Cook. We were thinking, you know, another guy, you know, another shooter on the floor to try to keep the offense opened up. Alfonso McKinney was a suggestion that was thrown out there, like, you know, maybe get

a bigger body guy that can make a corner three. And I said, I kind of, like, it wouldn't be surprising to me if you went with Sean Livingston because just, you know, Kerf has faith in him. He's been, you know, been like a big part of what's been built here. There's like the equity in the program, all that kind of stuff. But Livingston really, you know, it's hard to do the next man up thing when the drop is as drastic as it is from Clay Thompson to what Sean Livingston can give you now. And, you know, the considerably different players. Considerably different players. And the impact was significant. You know, single game plus minus can be a little bit noisy. But the Warriors got outscored by

14 points in 17 minutes with Livingston on the floor. And it felt like it. You know, and so, you know, same thing with me, you know, DeMarcus Cousins also, a minus 12 and about 19 minutes, and it felt like it. Those guys, when they're not producing at the level that they need to, especially with Livingston struggling to sort of fill the shoes on both ends of the floor of Clay Thompson, it creates these sort of ripple effect and the dominoes start to fall down. And before you know, the raptors are up by 10 and the warriors are kind of playing uphill all night. And not surprisingly, and I don't want to make this just like a completely warrior-centric podcast. We should talk about the team that won the game. We should talk about the team that won the game and let's do that. Kyle Lowry, we got a Kyle Lowry game tonight.

And not coincidentally, no clay out there to help foil him potentially or at least slow him down a little bit on the perimeter. Yeah, you know, Livingston started with that matchup and Kyle Lowry just, you know, despite the differential in height and length, which has always been sort of Livingston's calling card as a defender, Lowry just seemed comfortable. He was aggressive right off the bat. Everybody on the Raptors was really aggressive off the bat. the beginning of game two, DeMarcus cousins picks up Marcus All like 40 feet away from the basket, like really aggressive tries to get in his kitchen. And tonight, Marcus Saul is giving it right back to him.

It's not going to be a game where I only take a few shots and I look scared. Gassall goes right at him. Lowry's going right at Sean Livingston, getting into the paint, going downhill in the pick and roll, trying to wreak havoc. Everybody on the Raptors was, you know, they were getting the ball. They were making a quick decision with it, whether to move it along or take the shot, make an attack or a pass.

And it knocked the Warriors back on their. their heels because the only answer the warriors had on the other end was going to Steph Curry and a pick and roll or Steph Curry isolating trying to get to get to the basket or shake himself free for a step back three. And the Raptors were able to just run their offense. They were, you know, they found in the post game, there was a lot of discussion with Nick Nurse and Kyle Lowry, the other guys about sort of pace and flow and we want to get the ball out of the, out of the rim or out of the net or off the rebound and just push and go.

And you don't want to, you know, we talk about, you know, it's not necessarily that you want to run with the Warriors because the Warriors have been a great fast-breaking team. But right now, the raptors have more bodies. They've got more capable scores. They've got more guys that can go and make a play than the warriors do. And so when you've got those advantages, and especially a gazelle like Siakam out there on the wing, go get it.

Go, you know, push the ball down because you're going to collapse the defense. You're going to get a kick out. You're going to get a wide open shot. And the raptors shut the hell out of the ball tonight. 17 for 38 from three point land. So much different when their threes are falling. Absolutely. And so much of that does really go back to that pace.

And a lot of that does go to Kyle Lowry kicking the ball ahead. Kyle Lowry, like you and I were talking about this during the game about how like, this game was sort of a microcosm of his career where like people were like, oh, you know, Kyle Lowry hit or miss and what do we like about his game. This is what we like about his game. I thought, you know, and again, Clay would have helped. But like the best defense anybody played on him was that guy who pushed him who went into the frigging crowd. Right. And Kyle Lowry, otherwise, like, ate the Warriors up tonight. Also, real quick, before we go any further, if you're sitting in the front row of an NBA game and a basketball player comes on to you, don't shove that basketball player. Maybe just be very excited that you get to sit in the front row of a basketball game and don't be a dick about it. So the guys who were sitting in front of me in front of press row were like super upset that Kyle Lowry was super upset. And we're saying, well, if that's Draymond, they're going to team up.

And I'm like, I don't know, dude. If Draymond got shoved by a guy in the crowd, Draymond would have a right to be very upset at the reps, who did not have a good night, by the way. Like, I generally think that the refs being good or bad one way or the other evens itself out. Like, basically every fan base in every city, like all 30 cities, believe that the refs are somehow against their guys and, like, we're blowing calls just against them. The refs tonight, however, did not have a good game.

They missed, what, three goaltending calls and a pretty egregious traveling call, all of which would have gone in favor of the warriors, but one against them instead. But in that instance, like, yeah, man, like, if you're fucking Kyle Lowry, I forgot for a second that it's the ringer and we can curse. If you're fucking Kyle Lowry, you should get. upset about that. Totally. And especially, you know, you're in the middle of a defining game for you. Kyle Lowry's been in the league a long time. He's had a lot of detractors and a lot of sort of opportunities that have gone by the wayside, a lot of difficult moments in the postseason, had two kind of tough

games to start the playoffs. You know, game one, it didn't really matter so much because everybody else, you know, Seaccombe was going off and Kauai was there and they were able to get a lot going offensively. But there was sort of this talk about you need more from Kyle Lowry. He can't just be giving you six points and then foul it out. We've talked about this, how many times on this podcast in this series where we're like, man, you know, if it's just going to be Kauai, like, and we're not getting the supernova kua that we got with the bucks and the Sixers, that it's going to be tough for the Raptors. The other Raptors have to do shit.

And tonight, it wasn't just Kyle Lowry. It was Kyle Lowry and all the other Raptors doing shit. And like, look what happens. Absolutely. So, but I can understand you, you're in the middle of this sort of amazing moment. And then some dude is why, you know, you're diving for a loose ball in an er Kyle Lowry kind of play. I'm going to throw my body into the first round, try to save a possession, any possession I can.

and some dude comes and pushes you. I can understand being pissed off about that. Living well is the best revenge. And right now that Kyle Lowry and the Raptors is living pretty damn well. Fair enough. They're up to one. I want to go through some of the other ones.

You mentioned Mark Gassau and Boogie. So in game two, this is something we also discussed on that episode of He Check, where at the beginning of the game, Boogie looked bad and slow and rusty. And he ended up in a podium game. And somebody asked him like, hey, man, how close to 100% are you? And he basically just like started repeating over and over again, like some version of like, I have no idea.

I don't know, I don't know. Tonight we saw the beginning of game two buggy, the slow, bad, couldn't move, going to get roasted all night long. Like Mark Gassau cooked him. Absolutely. And it was, it's interesting because,

you know, Gasol has turned into sort of just like a pick and pop big man. Or that's at least the way he's used frequently. And you saw it tonight, like he's getting the ball. DeMarcus cousins is sort of just getting a paw out there. They're not really, you know, getting into a good stance or we're closing out on Gassal on the perimeter.

And Gassal is saying, like, screw this. I'm taking the ball right at the rim. Like, show and go, go right to the basket, dunks. Like, rolling to the basket instead of just popping and with no defense, you know, because Bougy was just not, you know, not there on it. And it looked, it really looked. And, you know, I don't know what the situation is if there was a question of how DeMarcus was going to bounce back from having such a big increase in his minutes, if he was

physically in any way limited if or whatever the deal was. but it looked like after the first few minutes when Marcosal kind of punched him in the mouth, DeMarcus cousins didn't really want any more the game at that point. Yeah, and it got to the point where they had to go away from him and go to Andrew Bogot. And was significantly better. Which, you know, right there, I think, says quite a bit about what sort of position you're in. And, you know, like the Raptors took full advantage of that. And good for Marcus Saul, too, because I don't think Marcus saw has been of the ancillary, you know,

satellite surrounding Kawhi Leonard Raptors players, like pretty well. the definition of like hit or miss for the Raptors. There's been like games like game one where he was there and he was useful and game two where he sort of vanished again and tonight was a better Marcusaw game. But good for Marcus Saul for recognizing what was happening on him defensively and being like, I'm not going to pick and pop. I'm going to go and I'm going to get to the room because I can get past boogie and I'm going to force them to bring in freaking Andrew Boget.

Right. And play him 20 minutes, right? Yeah, Andrew fucking Bogot. It's the ringer. We concur here. It's just crazy to me. And we also got another spicy pea game. He played pretty well tonight, 39 minutes, 18 points, nine rebounds, six assists.

This was, as we used to say in the old newspaper business, a TTE, a total team effort for the Raptors. And we haven't even gotten to the guy, Kauai Leonard, who got, like, I swear it's just crazy. And I guess I've made this point before, but I'm going to make it again because it's worth making. Like, we've gone this long into a podcast in which the Raptors go up to one. And we just get to Kauai Leonard because for Kauai Leonard, by the standards he's saying, tonight was a good, and I'm like sort of shrugging while I'm doing it, Kwai Leonard game in which he has 30.7 rebounds, six assists, two steals, two blocks. He goes to the line 11 times and makes it 10 times.

I mean, like, that's for any other human being. We'd be like, oh, my God, like that's a huge podium game for that guy. And for Kauai, we're just like, man, it was pretty good tonight. Yeah, I was sitting next to Chris Herring of 538, who does a great job. And we were talking in the first half and sort of like, you know, Kauai doesn't seem right, does he? He's got, I think he had like nine points, three rebounds, three assists at half, but hadn't really put his stamp on the game.

It's like, you know, this hasn't been a, he hasn't covered himself in glory here. The Warriors were, I think, within around eight, seven or eight at a half time. And you're thinking like, okay, it's, you know, this could be a pretty close game. And if Kauai's going to, if Kauai's not going to put his stamp on it, then this could be a tough one for them. And then in the third quarter, 15 points on four for six shooting, five for six from the line, drills a couple of threes. And a couple of, they were real, like, answer of a short run.

The war, and this happened time and again. One of the things I'm going to do after we leave here is go back and try to look at the play-by-play and sort of figure out how many of these sort of silencer shots Toronto threw up because every time it seems like- When you say leave here, do you mean like leave this room or leave this part? Because I'm, this is my room. Yeah, no, I'm going to leave. I'm definitely going to leave your room. You're going to leave. I'm going to leave this room.

No question about it. But the idea that like every time the Raptors got the lead sort of got winnowed down to seven or eight, somebody on Toronto would hit a big shot. Yeah. Okay, you know, a kick out for a three-pointer from Lowry. Kauai pulling up, swing, swing for Danny Green, you know, these sorts of things. There were all these like, you know, momentum killing kind of shots. And if the Raptors hadn't hit one of those and the Warriors got down to seven or eight, Nick Nurse called a couple timeouts.

You made that point during the game where I was like, that's exactly right. Because in game two, they didn't do that. And look what happened. They went on that 18-0 second quarter run, 24-1 if you go back to this, or third quarter, 24-1 if you go back to the second quarter. And tonight, they figured that out where they were like, okay, yeah, there's still the war. is we should pump the brakes on them a little bit. Yeah.

Anytime they got something going, there was, Toronto was able to come up with an answer. And Leonard was up was a huge part of that. And so the thing I was talking about with Chris was that, like, that really is the true sign of a superstar. When you can feel like,

feel like they don't have the game in the palm of their hand for whatever reason, where they're not feeling 100% or the defense is keying on them or whatever. And then all of a sudden you blink and you look up and it's 37 and 5 or whatever. And so that's, Kauai Leonard, it feels almost, maybe it's appropriate that it feels like almost like he's quietly taking advantage of some of these things and quietly putting the game in a chokehold

a little bit. But he definitely, when the Raptors needed him, needed some easy buckets, when they needed sort of to keep the Warriors at arm's length tonight, he was huge in that third quarter and the second half. And, you know, a big reason why they took that two one lead. The Warriors have been regularly running out like 10 and 11 guys, kind of like as you called them previously a mash unit just seeing, well, we'll stick. But the Raptors, like with their rotation, like they've settled in nicely with their rotation this postseason. And, you know, there were moments in the playoffs where that bench didn't really look that good. And part of that was when Fred Van Fleet's shot wasn't falling. And now, like, I'm really enjoying Fred Van Fleet. I'm enjoying him on the court. I'm super

enjoying him off the court where he has been very entertaining and very willing to engage with us. Sure. And even when he's like deciding that he's not going to talk about the baby thing anymore, he was even good in that because as you told me, because I missed that avail, he said, Well, you say, you tell, like he said, hey, I got two kids. I can't, I can't just talk about one because the other one's going to get jealous. That's exactly right. So he wanted to make sure to shout out his daughter, Sanah, because he said, you know, if I don't do that, then, you know, she's going. I only think the baby's important for inter, and then, you know, valuable for me playing.

So he said, shout out to Sena. She's the reason I'm playing this well in the finals. And, you know, Sanah must have almost kept it going because her dad had another, another really strong night, 11 points, four for eight from the field, three more big threes. Big three steals, three rebounds, two assists, great defense. on Steph Curry with, you know, played almost the entire second half and played, you know, 33 minutes total without a turnover. So everything you need from Fred Van Vleet you are getting on both ends of the floor. And that's exactly right. You know, you don't necessarily need to go

10 deep if the seven or eight that you're playing play their asses off. And so you get, Serge Abaka has been kind of a trick or treat player at times, but he had a fantastic second half. He was everywhere defensively. He was feeling it too. He had an AN1 where he kind of like shimmy shook and like danced a little bit and was super excited about and the crowd was way less excited about it. Not really loving that so much. But I think that's part of it too. You know, maybe it's sort of an extension of Gasol getting into it with cousins and really,

you know, holding, not only holding his own, but winning that matchup. When Abaka got into the game, it was like, I'm just going to wreck shop. Like, you know, I don't think there's anybody, whether it's Bogot or or Cousins or Jordan Bell or whatever, they're not going to keep me away from the front of the rim. I'm going to go get the offensive rebounds. They're not going to, none of these players that are going to take it up soft to the rim, you know, nobody that's going to dunk on me. I'm just going to go reject those things, knock them out of the way.

He kind of tortured Quinn Cook and Jonas Derebko late in the game, snuffing out some of their sort of like softer takes. And when everybody's feeling good, you know, the shots go down early, the defense locks in, everybody starts contributing. And the Raptors don't necessarily need to have lights out performances from everybody or 45 from Kauai Leonard. If they get balanced scoring from the top six and then a Bacca is able to make an impact on defense, seven men might be all you really need, especially if they're playing all that well.

And that's really like what they've based. been down to, you know, they got Ananoi back, but they basically been down to that for a while now. And they like settled into the rotation. They decided that was fine. You mentioned Jonas Jurebko, as you mentioned during the game, bad time for people who have Swedish Larry Birdstock. Rough game for him. He got, I mean, Siacom cooked him. You mentioned Abaka cooking him. But this brings me to my question here. In this evening and in this victory, did the raptors stumble onto something here about like, and maybe they already knew it from game one where Siakum was going hard to the whole, like every fucking chance he got. But like, did they stumble

into something here where it's like, oh, our bigs are way better than your bakes? I think, you know, if you're looking at it especially the way that the Warriors bigs played defensively. And people kind of made, you know, poked fun. I wrote a thing, pre-game three sort of story about the vulnerability that the Warriors have. It's not just about being down Kevin Duran. It's not just about being down Clay Thompson. Also, losing Kavana Looney for the rest of the series. He's not somebody that you ever you would think of in the upper echelon of Warriors' talent, but

he's been their best center all season long, especially on the defense event, a guy that can handle a variety of different matchups. He's not like an ace rim protector, but he sort of puts out a lot of fires before they get there. And so you don't have him, you're relying on big minutes from cousins, and he's struggling. There are matchup issues that Draymond Green has to deal with, and he's trying to be a

help defender everywhere, so it's not like he can shut down the front of the front of the rim while also shutting down the perimeter, especially against really good big. So like the health and the talent of that Seacum, Casal, Ibaka, front line, then you slide Kauai in at the four at different times. Like, there's really good players that I'll cross those four or five spots. And the warriors just don't really have a whole lot of two-way players anymore or at this stage of the, of the postseason. Now, you know, the response from a wide variety of people will probably be, well, crime me a fucking river. This is what happens. This is what happens.

when you they're down from five all stars to three all stars yeah this is what happens when you you know you make the understandable organizational decision to say we're going to go in all in on kevin durant and all on our galaxy of stars but there is a practical reality that like well when you do that and when you don't have that guy and you don't have clay thompson and you don't have your like bargain basement find of a really productive two-way big man then you're relying on jonas durebko you're relying on Sean Livingston. You're relying on a version of DeMarcus cousins that looks very, you know, can look serviceable one night and can look very, very much less than that another.

And this is what you see. You see it leads to Steph Curry having, you know, the best postseason performance of his career and it not being nearly enough. Yeah, you're running out Alfonso McKinney for 18 minutes, which is rough. And like, yeah, you mentioned Steph Curry, like, somebody asked him after the game, preface the question. I don't even know what the question was, but he prefaced like the very first question with congratulations on your career high playoff performance or whatever.

And I was like, uh, probably a bad time for that. For example there, guy. Sure, he's not feeling great about that right now. But that is like yet another reason why, like, I'm sort of mystified here by why they're being so cautious with Clay when Clay obviously wanted to play and why they've been so cautious with Katie. Like we've heard multiple times, like all series long. And even into the conference finals, like the hot conversation and the hot rumor like among

everybody you talked to both in the league and among reporters was, oh, Katie's close to return. Katie could get back out there. Katie's like, you know, there was Draymond talking about always around the team now and like it feels like he's super close and all this stuff. And then you have on the flip side, a guy like Andrea Goddala who had an MRI on his leg after game one who was like, look, man, we got like a week to go here. It's time to gut it out. And like deciding to gamble, whatever that is where you're deciding, okay, we're going to save air quotes. We're going to save Clay for the rest of the series. you say, okay, but now you're down to one,

and this is like a really difficult situation for you. And like, and here's something else. Like, you decide all that, right? Like, we're going to save Katie. We're going to save Steph. We're going to play cautious, okay? Like, there's a school of thought for that. But instead, you're going to like keep Curry on the floor when you're down 16 with under five

to go and run him into the fucking ground. And he has this like supernova 43 minute, 47 point performance. You're not worried about saving him. Right. And yeah, him and Draymond. They're going to, they both, they both were well over 40. minutes again tonight, gigantic workloads for them. And that's, I mean, I'm always a little hesitant with the health stuff because obviously what we don't know about the specifics of these situations,

you know, dwarves what we do. But the suggestions or the intimations that Kevin Durant might be closer to returning than you expect, or that Clay Thompson, you know, apparently Steve Kurt told Tim Kawakami of the athletic after game three that, you know, they expect Clay to play in game four. Well, honestly, I mean, I should hope so. They absolutely need him. But the question of like, There's an aspect of it where Kevin Durant's return almost feels like the horizon to me. It's like the closer you get to it, the further way it seems to get. And we have this sort of idea that it'll be ready for game three. Well, maybe not game three, but game four.

Well, okay, but definitely by game five. Right. And it's like, well, it's gotten late early out here, guys. You're down to one. There's no game eight. There's no game eight. And this Raptors team is not screwing around. I would understand, you know, you can count on Pascal Sackham's not going to shoot 14 for 17 every game.

Danny Green's not going to shoot six for 10 from three. every game, you know, there will be regression. Danny Green had a game too. Fantastic game, yeah. And, you know, there will be, you're not going to get these sort of performances every night from all these guys, but they don't need to get these performances every night from all these guys. They already got two in the bank.

They got the Seacum game. They got the Danny Green game. So now what you need is you need one Kauai game, right? Or one game where it's, instead of him being regular hero superhero Kauai, it's like extra superhero Kauai, all NBA first team with a bullet level Kauai. And you get that. and then you only need one more fluky thing to happen because you need four to win the NBA finals.

That's good math on the fly. Listen, I mean, I'm pro analytics. But in a short series, it's not just about the percentages and the averagees. It's about what happens game to game. And the Raptors, I don't think you can count on them not getting these anymore, especially like their defense is, it's carrying. Their defense is 109 points is a lot of points for the Warriors to score,

but they didn't shoot 40% of the team tonight. And who knows what the heck kind of? performances you're going to get from Clay or Katie when they come back because they're coming back with injuries. They're coming back off the shelf. Katie hasn't played in forever. There are these questions. I'm not that rust off at some point. There are these questions as to what you're going to get, even if you get them back in the lineup. Maybe they both come back for game four and it's like Voltron forms again and they rip off three straight. That was Draymond Green had the great quote about that tonight. So the plan is, you know, we win tomorrow or we're in the next game here.

Then we go to Toronto and we win that game. Then we come back here. We win the next game. And then we celebrate. That's the goal. Fun times ahead. Yeah, but it hasn't been too fun for the Warriors through the first three games of this series. They're having to work their asses off and the Raptors are making them earn everything. I don't think that's about to change. Yeah. And, you know, like all of this just keeps coming back to like, I guess some people, including us maybe, are surprised that they're in the situation.

But that is by definition a tacit indictment of the Raptors who I have counted out consistently all playoffs long and consistently have been reminded that, oh, no, they're really good. And every time you think they're down, they're going to get up off the mat. you better like make sure that you keep them down because they keep getting up off the mat. So like, maya culpa, all of Canada. I mean,

like we had a really good time in Toronto. We left that city. I would say like 92% of our bloodstream was Moulson and Poutine. And it was really great. But also like we shouldn't have to keep saying, oh, the Raptors are a real boy because they've been for a while. And it's like kind of insulting by half for us to go,

oh, you know, look at the Raptors. They're really doing stuff. Like, yo, man, this is a real team. I think that there's a serious case to be made that this is the most difficult playoff opponent that they've faced since. They were down three, two against the Rockets last year in the conference finals, and they needed Chris Paul to go down and they needed them to miss 27 straight threes.

And now all of a sudden, you're going to need some other luck to break your way because the Raptors, as you mentioned, are healthy and clicking. Yeah, they certainly have earned a spot in that upper echelon of the teams that the Warriors have had to deal with during this time. dynasty run. You know, the 2016 Cavs with the 2016 Thunder with the 2018 Rockets and that, you know, that 2017 Cavs team that, if not for the Warriors being like an unbelievable wrecking crew, that 2017 Cavs team probably wins the title in most other seasons. But the Raptors are like, they are big and athletic. They are smart. They have multiple defensive stars. Kawhi Leonard and Marcosal are both former defensive players of the year. Sergei Baca has been a great defender for a lot of his career. Kyle Lowry, you know, all defensive caliber, point guard. Seacum, at this point,

in his, like, in terms of versatility and effectiveness, might be better than all of them on the defensive end. And Fred Van Vleet is making Steph Curry work for everything he gets as hard as just about anybody has. It's like the, what was the joke? Like, it's like if Matthew Delvedova actually was good, those sorts of things. Like, the idea they have so many defensive players that are playing so smart. Nurse has pushed so many of the right buttons in terms of figuring out when to push guys, when to pull things off, you know, when to sort of play it straight and say, all right, tonight, if Steph gets 50, stuff gets 50, but the rest of you guys aren't going to do this, they know who they are on both ends of the floor, they defend like crazy, and they move the

ball and they push the pace, and it's giving the Warriors fit. And it would, I mean, whether or not it would be if the Warriors were at 100% full strength all the way around is irrelevant, because you know what? You played a team that's in front of you. And right now, the Warriors are having a really, really hard time with a team that's in front of them, and the Raptors are two wins away from an NBA championship. Let me run this passed you to wrap this up because like, you know, starting to believe. Teams that win game three when the series is tied at 1-1 are 31 and 7 in the NBA finals.

Will it be 32? Now, Steve Kerr previously, after they lost game one, was kind of making fun of stuff like this where he's like, oh, we lose one game one. There'll be something on the crawl where it says like our win probability is 14.7%. But then if we win game two, then all of a sudden we're up to like the favorite. but like do you buy into this and what chance do you handicap or extraordinary or somebody who does math on the fly to know that they need four wins to win the NBA finals? You're really like straight out of MIT. You're the honorary doctorate. What chance do you give them to do this now,

like the way that this is looking? I mean, there's still so much uncertainty about what you're going to get out of two of your three or four best players if your Golden State. And so I mean, if the teams we saw tonight obviously play the next two games, I think you have the Toronto as an excellent chance of getting at least one of the next two games, which would then put them in the driver's seat for the remainder of the series. But even if you get, you know, you get Clay Thompson back and you get 75, 85, whatever percent of Clay Thompson. I think that version of that player makes tonight a much more equitable game on both ends

of the floor. I can't handicap at all what we're going to see from Kevin Durant because at this point, it almost feels like a ghost story or a myth or something like that. I know what he was when he went down. I have no idea what he'll be when he comes back because I don't know. when that's going to happen. So obviously the fact that the Raptors have already got two down, they've already rested back home court advantage.

All they need to do at this point is hold serve at home to win this series. And they've been one of the best home teams in the league all season long. And if you have a limping Warriors team going back to Toronto, I feel like you've got to feel pretty confident in the odds if you're the Raptors. So their chances get better and better, not just because it seems like the Warriors keep picking up more dings and bruises as they go along, but also because the Raptors are seeing it like, no matter who's in the floor, we can play with these guys and we can take them down.

And they're proving that possession by possession, incredibly locked in on both ends of the floor. And this is a very serious threat for the warriors. And it's a very real, you can almost feel it in the grasp for the raptors. That might have sounded to the lay listener as a little bit of a nuanced take. But having spent so much time with you over the last couple of weeks, I will translate this for the heat check listeners. Dan Devine just said Canada planned the parade.

It's happening. you guys are going to be super excited. As I said, all the putine and celebratory Molson that you can handle. It's going to be great. Butter tarts, ladies and gentlemen. Butter tarts and butter tarts. Oh, yeah, the butter tarts were also excellent. Butter tarts and the Nymobiles.

They were also excellent. Canadian comfort food, really pretty great. All right, Dan Devine, make sure to read all his stuff. He writes like 17 pieces a day. He'll have one up. By the time you're listening to this, he'll have a hot one for you on the ringer.com. We've got a whole bunch of other stories on that fabulous website. Be sure to check that out.

Dan and I will be back. after game. What are we going to? Four? I can do math. As Steve Kerr said, Steve Kerr was at, like he said, the old joke is, uh, every day is Wednesday is the NBA. And then he goes, what day is today? And people are like, it's Wednesday. Oh, yeah, it's actually Wednesday. It's all groundhog day for us. We've completely forgotten. But we will be back after game four on Friday, possibly with a special guest. I hope so. But I'm going to save that for a little bit later. He checked listeners. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Like I said, make sure to read all of our content on the ringer.com.

And don't forget about the mismatch corner three and group chat. Thanks so much to Dan Devine. Thanks so much to Isaac Lee. Thanks so much to all of you for listening. We will be back, gang. Thanks. Bye, bye.