The Ringer NBA Show - Will Playoff Small Ball Neutralize the Big Man Boom? | The Answer

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

Chris and Seerat begin the pod by talking about Kentucky's upset loss to St. Peters in the first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. They then shift their attention to the NBA to discuss the two big men currently leading the race—Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid—and analyze the front courts of other teams like the Nets, Bucks, and Celtics as they head into the postseason. (6:36) They wrap things up by debating the viability of the center position in the NBA playoffs (27:02) and give some love to the recent play of the Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves. (29:06) Hosts: Chris Ryan and Seerat Sohi Production Assistant: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Chris Ryan. I'm joined as always by Syriot Sohi. What's up, Siritt? How's it going, Chris? It's been better. So every year when I fill out my NCAA brackets, my method is to always pick Kentucky. And every five years or so, I'm right.

And so on the long tail of my investments, I feel like every once in a while, like every five years, I do really well. But Kentucky lost in the first round yesterday. So not a great start for my bracket. Are you into the tournament? I forgot to make a bracket this year. I did catch some of the games yesterday, though. And where are you at with like the level of play at college basketball?

I honestly, I way prefer the women's tournament to be. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I take in enough men's basketball all the time. And it's just like, you know, the energy to me is just a little bit better. I just find it to be a little bit more exciting. But, you know, it's fun though. It's like, it's always interesting.

I was like, I watched a game yesterday drinking a few green beers. Okay. It's going to be one, but you know how it goes. It's always like fun to watch everybody melt. Yes. Because like everyone's bracket breaks at the exact same time. Because everybody has Kentucky at least advancing past 15 seat. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think there were a couple other upsets too. So being able to see that as an observer this time was actually a little bit. I didn't like it. I didn't like it. Okay. Yeah. I regret not making a bracket.

You know, the ups and downs of it are fun. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing like getting like that first round and like maybe only having one or two wrong and feeling like, man, I'm really rolling. I could win 16 grand and start my life over again, you know? Yeah. I had a friend who bet on Butler to win the year that Gordon Hayward missed at. Oh, my God, really? Yeah, that was a tough one for him. Do you look much when you're watching the tournament, do you ever look for prospects or doing any like tape crunching?

Like, are you like, what's Chet doing out there? Or are you, you save that for when the draft comes around? Not really. I feel like the way that I watch college basketball, you got to like, you got to watch with a scout's eye. Yeah. In some ways, too. Like, there's certain players that just look really good in college.

Let me assure you, as someone who likes to, like, go to bars and be like, really loving Jabari right now, you don't have to watch with the Scouts eye. You just have to say it with enough confidence that you really like to. That's true. It's like podcasting. Exactly. This is my problem. This is like what I struggle with with this job, too.

is like, I think that I have to be right. And like, you're never right. So it doesn't matter. No. It's just experience some bullshit. So let's experience some bullshit here. Let's do it. So what we were going to talk about today was the fact that we've got this two-person MVP race coming

down to the wire between Nicola Yokic and Joel M.B. It's been a year where we've seen some absolutely startling dominant center performances from these guys who are kind of redefining the position anyway. But as we approach the postseason, as is almost an annual tradition over the last, I don't know, eight, nine, ten, eleven years, we start talking about small ball. And we start talking about lineups becoming more fluid and guys just shooting all over the court and perimeter defense and how can this coach find this mismatch and hunt this defender. And, you know, the center position and the traditional work that the center does throughout

the regular season kind of starts to lose value right around this time of the year. And Cyril and I wanted to talk about whether or not that's going to happen this year, especially when the two quote unquote best players, although you can make an argument about who the best player in the league is right now, but the guys having the two of the best seasons going in are centers. So let's start generally, sir. Do you find that Yokic and Embed are such outliers at the center position that it's not really like a binary of are you going to go through a center

or are we going to see small ball in the playoffs? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that, you know, and the fact that they're both in different conferences kind of makes it so that you do have to worry about it. But the other thing is that you have different types of big men who you still have to account for, even if they don't necessarily play the style that Embed and Yokic play. You still have to worry about Janus.

You're going to have to start worrying about Jaron Jackson and just at Memphis front court in general. I feel like Boston is kind of Memphis East in a way where they have, they've started playing Time Lord and Horford together at the 5, and that's really working out for them. Like they're playing two actual big men starting them. And that's just something that I don't think we ever really thought would happen. We have two really good teams that are doing that.

And then, you know, like you go down the line. Then there's guys like Bamadabio, DeAnd Aten. And it just kind of paints this picture. If you look at both conferences right now, everybody is big. Are the teams that can win championships. Everybody is big pretty much other than the Warriors and the Nets. and they are small in like a scintillating way. So I think it's just going to be really fun.

Yeah. But even the Nets though, they want a drummond in the Simmons trade. And they've played him, you know, he's gotten minutes. And it looks like they've been relying on him. And they certainly relied on him in that in that Sixers clash last week that we talked about in depth. And I also found it interesting. The Sixers obviously went out and got DeAndre Aitin to back up and meet and like want to have maybe his locker room presence or his Vibe merchant presence. But also another big.

body so that when Embed comes out, and this has always been a Sixers talking point since Doc's gotten there, is maybe when Embed's not on the floor, you shouldn't just try and put in a version of Embed that's 112 times worse, but you should be a little bit more creative and try playing Tobias at the Five or whoever at the Five to kind of create this, you know, just a different look, a plan B for the team. But yeah, it's kind of fascinating. No matter like what we're about to see in the postseason, I don't think any of the big teams in the league want to go into the playoffs thin up front. Not at all. It's going to be a clash of style is pretty much no matter what. Should we start with the Nets? Sure. Let's talk about the Nets. Yeah. So the Nets to me is like it's

kind of the same story as last year in a way. And just in general, I feel like I was I was pretty much guns blazing like two weeks ago just saying like, why are we just ignoring the fact that the whole league is big right now? And then, you know, you have the Nets, Nets beat the Sixers. Um, Warriors beat the Bucks. And you've got two teams that essentially, like, the Warriors have now with, when they have Curry, Clay, and Poole on the floor together,

which won't happen again until the end of the season at the earliest, right? Yeah, that's been the problem for them this season, right? Like, they just haven't been all healthy at the same side. But watching that Bucks game, it just kind of reminded you when you have three really dangerous shooters on the floor like that, like, you can't, like,

Jordan Poole is not a replacement for Kevin Durant by any means, but it did give me like flashbacks to when those warriors would just completely discombobulate other teams and, you know, get them to play really undisciplined. And you're seeing the Nets do that? Yeah, the Nets have a similar version of that now, now that they have Curry. You know, it's KD and Karee and Seth Curry essentially. It's uncanny how similar these teams are and their structure. Like when Simmons plays, like he will kind of be able to slide into the Draymond role.

And then you kind of just decide who your fifth is that day. Like, are you going to go big with Drummond? you're going to go like the Bruce Brown, Captain Thomas Row, or are you just going to go like all shooting and go Patty Mills? But they are functionally very similar teams. And I think it just sets up the situation in both conferences where if they want to get through, like it's just going to be different now. Like it's going to be different than it was five years ago.

And for the Nets, I think you could be very similar to how it was last year where you do have a bunch of like, you know, you've scintillating scoring talent, but can you handle the attrition that comes with playing the Milwaukee Bucks seven times, right? And this year, it's not just going to be the bucks. Like right now, like, their path would go through, well, it would be a playing, it would be a playing game against Toronto. Yes, which in Canada, Kyrie would not play. Or in Brooklyn, Kyrie would not play as it is now.

That's a whole other thing to it. But let's assuming that he can play, even if he can't, you know, the Raptors are a really good offensive rebounding team. They're cagey on defense. Like, you know, that's probably win, but that's not fun, right? And then after that, you're dealing with like the Celtics and the Bucks and the heat. And they're three of the best teams at not allowing anybody to score in the pay. And also, I mean, the Celtics don't score that well in the pay, but the Bucks and the Heat can get there real easy.

So it's just going to be really interesting. I don't really know what's going to happen, but I really want to dig into it because it's just, it's going to be two really different styles going up against each other. If these two teams are to, you know, go as far as they'd hope to. It's interesting that the teams that are playing with these solid front courts, like Miami, like Boston, to some extent, Philadelphia and out west with Phoenix with Aiton, Memphis to some extent with Jackson and Adams. Like those teams are kind of not coasting into the playoffs, but like just definitely have to feel like a little bit more balanced and a little less erratic. But the guard led or perimeter led teams feel like they're like banana peeling into the playoffs where it's like, oh God, we're going to be healthy enough. and is this guy to get vaccinated? And once we get there, can we stop anybody?

Or is it just going to be 140, 1.30 every night? And it might be. And I think that it would have been kind of an interesting fork in the road for the postseason and postseason basketball had the Nets had a healthy Hardin or a Healthy Karee or a Healthy Hardin and Kairie last season against the Bucks because they came so close to beating the Bucks with just Kevin Durant, a one-legged Hardin and like whoever they had on the street playing that for that Nets team. And now we get to this year.

and it's even nuttier. You know what I mean? Like, we just may or may not have Kyrie. Have you been doing a vibe check on Kevin Durant these last 10 days? Because it's like, he's really getting after it. Not only is he playing like some of his best basketball, but then like after the games, he's just like, I'm unloading on the New York mayor or I'm like shouting at this guy sitting

court side. I just don't want him to peek too early. I feel like he's just like really running hot right now. But yeah, it should be really fascinating to see how they kind of negotiate these really, really significant Eastern Conference front courts. Yeah. Did you see him? I feel like either he was looking in the direction of shams or he was mean mugging shams.

I didn't see that. I saw the one where somebody sitting courts at a Nets game. I think a Nets fan was like, Katie take over the game. And Katie was like, shut the fuck up. And I was just like, I think he was cheering for you. Should we just make this like ballet rules where people just clap at halftime and like nobody says anything? Katie would love like a golfing audience, I think. No, because golf, they've gotten so rude at golf where now they're like getting the hole

every time anybody makes contact. There's a lot of heckling going on in golf now. Is it? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So who else do you want to talk about in the Eastern Conference in terms of like these big men? We've spent a lot of time talking about the Sixers.

So I'm curious to know what are some other squads like. Do you want to get into the Celtics a little bit because they've been so hot recently? Yeah, for sure. For sure. Let's do Celtics. I like the idea of looking at everything kind of like through the framework of the Nets or the Warriors on one end. Or how these teams would match up.

up with them, right? Yeah. So I think one of the advantages the Nets have is like, like you said, they did sign Underdarmine. You know, they've got Claxton, James Johnson kind of sticks out as a guy who can, you know, play some front court minutes. They play this weird Bruce Brown at center kind of small ball thing. Yeah. Yeah. So they have a lot of different looks that they can throw. I think ultimately in a series against the Celtics, they would probably just be able to outdo them on offense. Right. I feel like that's going to kind of be the problem with the Celtics in the playoffs is that they do have the right frame. right like they're the they've been the best they are now actually without any you know having to say in the

last 15 games or 20 games they're actually just the best defense on the NBA now you officially become a ringer employee that you could say that yeah yeah exactly exactly but you know I think I think they've sort of figured out some ways to get a little bit more easy buckets and stuff like the positions that they're putting jalen in are better but in general like I love the formula that they now have with Allen and Time Lord where, you know, when you have two guys who can block shots on the perimeter, it actually allows you to switch a little bit more easily. Watching Warriors Celtics, for example, Al Horford can kind of like on those switches get up a little bit on Steph because he knows that he has an actual rim protector behind him.

And vice versa as well. And they can pummel the boards as well. And the Nets, by the way, the worst offensive rebounding team in the NBA. That's just kind of like, you just wonder what that will do to you in the course of three series. Like the Celtics, I don't necessarily worry about like beating the Nets, but I worry about them beating them up a little bit. I would say the heat or the bucks or the two teams that would give the best shot to. The Nets are essentially banking on the idea that you don't need offensive rebounding if you don't miss shots. And you know, like they might not be wrong.

I know, but that is like the most amazing bet. I know. I know. Yeah, it's, it's fun. It's fun. You mentioned that Boston was kind of Memphis East. What if they're Cleveland East? Like, do you, I wonder if Boston took anything from Cleveland playing multiple bigs at once in the beginning of the season.

I mean, they have been throughout the season, but they've been dealing with so many injuries throughout. Like, you know, but the Jared Allen, Evan Mobley duo, I mean, Markinen is essentially like goes out to the corners and a lot, a lot of those sets for Cleveland. but the way in which like mobily has that mobility and Alan can kind of watch his back. It's such a unique thing, but I think Boston in some regards has that. I mean, Horford's unwashing of himself, though he was like essentially cooked and now seems to have, I don't know, been rejuvenated somehow. A little bit of All-Star break, you know. Yeah, the way that Time Lord can just kind of, you know, patrol that paint and kind of get across

the court is really amazing to watch. Watching what they did to Golden State, Steph injury aside, Marcus Marchermanigans aside, it really did, like, a lot of people were commenting on this during the game, it was just like, this is such intense playoff level basketball,

like in terms of the defensive intensity and the competition for every possession that's happening. And obviously that, that like kind of let go once the Celtics ran away with it. But those opening, like, quarter and a half was just like, oh my God, these guys are, this is real gladiator stuff. Yeah, I think everyone copied the cap.

in a way. Well, everyone that we're going to talk about here, right? Well, everybody, you know, it's just that's how the league goes, right? Like, the cavaliers do it first and everybody else kind of follows, right? People steal from playbooks. I'm just curious whether or not, like, the calves were not, the calves have not been a flute. They weathered Rubio going down, Rondo going down, Sexton going down. Like, they've lost guys, they've lost Allen. And they still fight every night. No, for sure. It's a really good insight because, like, they were the first team this year to do it. You see, obviously, the Celtics are doing it. But, you know, In Memphis as well, they decided to, instead of, you know, keeping Jonas,

like they just kind of replaced him with a defensive version of him and probably a little bit better of a screener who can still score in the paint. And I thought that was just a great signing. We'll talk about Memphis a little bit later, but, you know, to your point, like, they do a similar thing where, like, the Celtics do this with Time Lord as well, and the Cavs also do this, where they will hide one of their big men on a non-shooter just so that big men can stay in the paint still. The Sixers do this with Embeded as well. Their issue is that they don't really have like that versatility in the front court around him that to allow them to like kind of do

multiple. I noticed that. Yeah. Yeah, have you? Maybe, yeah, maybe the cabs were like the originator. And like there's like a there's like a story here about like, you know, play like playbooks being stolen because it totally makes out. Like there are a number of teams that are that are kind of using that style just for the sake of being able to keep their rim protectors. at the rim, which is a challenge now, right? But, you know, every once in a while, like, you do have, you know, like, well, Matisse is a guy that you can put a big man on for the Sixers or Bruce Brown or, you know, for the Warriors, probably going to be like Gary Payton or Iguodala or Draymond.

Like, every team sort of has, even though we have, like, this, this, like, Renaissance with shooting and stuff, like, they're almost every team has somebody that you can hide your interior guy on and just having patrol. The other night when the Sixers played the Cavs, there was, before the game, was like this report like that Embed had back soreness and that maybe he was going to sit, he was questionable. And of course he played and of course, you know, he had a really good game. And at this point, I'm, well, I'm just pretty concerned that it's like the MVP is so important

to him that he's like playing through rest days, essentially. And I do notice now that I feel like he's flagging a little bit towards the end of games, which is a kind of typical late season dip for MB, but when it was rumored that he was going to sit, a couple of Sixers writers and people on Sixers' Twitter were kind of like, this would be kind of cool to see what Doc has to do if he doesn't have him beat. Like maybe he plays around with lineups or maybe he comes out. And it's like, that's the one thing with Doc that kind of sucks. I mean, is that you watch Tyloo or you watch Bickerstaff or you watch Adoka

and they have weathered some storms this season and had health problems with their team. And they've kind of mixed and matched and adjusted. and thought of different things on the fly and like use the best players that they have and it created a system that really works for them, like with the calves. And then you've got teams that are just kind of like, we just do what we do, you know?

And we do what we do. And rather than playing around with a couple of different rotations or lineups towards the end of the season, just going to lock into my seven guys. Yeah. I guess on one hand you could say, well, do you really want a coach

who's still playing around trying to find his rotation at the end of the regular season? Yes. But on the other side, yeah, but on the other side, it's Doc.

who's just like, it's early March. I've been just like three or four guys are just excommunicated from this team who used to be contributors. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I'd much rather see us lose games or they see the Sixers lose games with experimentation than barely beat the calves

playing and beat 40 minutes. You can say us. You think it's okay. You can go with us. Yeah, I think it's fine. If you want to, I think if it's more of like for your own personal health.

To not say we, to not like make myself personally, liable. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, just like the emotional attachment, but professionally speaking, I think you're fine. But you see what I'm saying, though, right? In some ways what we're talking about with these big men. And, you know, Embedin Yokic specifically are in and of themselves like their own systems, like they're their own tactical approaches to basketball. Like, guys Yokic's size should not be leading the break and throwing hit ahead and outlet passes like he does. People like Embed should not be pump faking their marker at the top of the key and then

drawing like three help defenders and getting fouled as they drive to the to the hoop. But in some ways, like, I don't know. I mean, I almost sometimes would prefer to have this highly malleable, like, Clippers-esque lineup than one that's centered on this one big guy who has to be able to do his big guy stuff. Yeah, I agree with you. I was actually, when I was like thinking about all these teams, I kind of threw the Sixers out of title contention this week.

And that might change next week. That's just, you know, that's my. you know, championship non-pick of the week. We should see if Fandul will boost that for you. The Syrac championship non-pick of the week. Yeah, that could be like, that could be a segment. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, no, it's exactly because of what you said,

because I was looking at the front court versatility of all these other teams, and that's the thing that the Sixers just don't really have. That net Sixers game is honestly, like, it's kind of stuck in my mind right now. But just watching over and over again, Embed just dropping back on pick and rolls and not contesting shots from guys who can shoot jumpers. Like that's not a sustainable method. And that kind of becomes like the other side. Like there's going to be attrition for a team like that too where, you know, like I don't know how many times in a series Embed can step up on those pick and rolls, right? Like how many times are you going to ask him to switch onto Seth Curry or onto Kevin Durant or Kyrie, right?

like he can do it. He can't do it consistently. Otherwise, he would be doing it right now, but he just isn't having the same defensive season that we'd kind of like expect him to have. He's not playing, he's not playing to his defensive ceiling essentially, right?

Which is fine. But it does kind of show you like, there's a body maintenance stuff that you just have to worry about with him and you can't really ask him to do everything. And then on the other end, like you're absolutely right. Like they just don't really,

like you need to be experimenting. You need to be trying different things. Like I would like to see, you know, some like weird small bond lineups out of them. They just don't really have like a good stretch for option either. And that's been a problem for them like all season. Pretty much, you know, as soon as they, you know, like Simmons was kind of the perfect guy in that position, right?

And they just, they weren't able to replace that in the trade. And it's just been, I don't know. I'm a little bit low on them after, especially after looking at things like through this framework. I look at teams like the nets and the bucks and I'm like, okay, your big men or like your nominal big men being like Bobby Portis or Janus or Bamatabio like I trust them to consistently switch I trust them to be to be up on perimeter players I think they're going to be better defenders on perimeter players too and then beyond that I just look at the rest of the lineup and I'm like oh okay like you know you can still go small with PJ Tucker we're kind of in a

sense going back to tradition with these big lineups but the bucks and the heat the suns Celtics, if the Celtics had a little bit more scoring, I would like a little bit higher on them as a championship contender. But defensively, those teams are the ones that have the versatility in their front court where I feel like they're going to be able to weather a lot of different looks at the like small teams throw with them. Yeah, I'll be curious to see what happens. You know, the Bucks have been kind of a mid, middle of the road defensive team this season. And I think they're like 14th or 15th in defensive right now as we're recording this. and Brooks coming back or Brooke is back and does that give them a sense of continuity from last season

is this a team that can maybe with the playoffs their defensive intensity just goes up a notch and they become what they were last season it doesn't seem to have affected teams like say Phoenix who are the second best defensive team and if anything I feel like have improved over the course of the year and they're in the house stout they've been defensively you know I think there's just

there's just not a lot of trying going on In Milwaukee or in general? In Milwaukee. Which is okay. I'll give that pass to a championship team. And they've also, they've just, they've had some injuries and stuff. But I think they're, I think they're 32 and nine now. They've won eight out of their last 10.

Like, they're pretty good. Yeah, they're not bad. The bucks are okay. But, you know, like watching that Warriors game, for example, right? Like, they got, they got scrambled really easily. Drew was just kind of like, he was sagging back on Clay Thompson and stuff. And, like, you know, they were just having to, you know, even Janus was like way back on Wiggins at some point.

Like, there was one possession, and it was so vintage warriors, where they only had, like, six seconds on the shot clock. At this point, Clay was already hot. I think Middleton and somebody else, like, basically followed him on the inbounds. Leaves Steph Curry open, of all people. Then two guys go to him. I think it's Grayson Allen and somebody else, and he passes to Jordan Poole, who was wide open in the corner.

And we were just seeing so much of that. Like, we saw that against the Nuggets as well. And they're a really interesting team in this framework, too, because absolutely nobody in the NBA can guard Yokic, right? Just seeing that play out over and over again is kind of what has made this more of a question for me is like, well, like the Warriors, like if they're healthy, can do that over and over again. You seem very vibe on the Warriors considering what's happened to them over the last couple of days. Yeah, I don't know. I still feel just like, if they're healthy, they're just really good. These two games probably, I guess, gave me more optimism

than anything else, right? Like the Denver game and the Bucks game. And the Boston game did not take away all your optimism? Well, you know, any, anytime. meantime you lose Steph, that really sucks. But they've just had a lot of shit luck this year, right? Like, they get Dramon back and immediately, then it's, it's Curry that's out. But they've been able to get Kvon Luni to play that Dramon role. And it's just really tough when, like, he's, like, setting dribble handoffs with, with Clay.

And you try to switch that. And Clay is, like, the best at slipping. And then he's a meet, like, the big man drops back, trying to, you know, recover against Clay. And then immediately after that, Luni is setting a screen for Curry or for pool. And then if that doesn't work, there's going to be another one for the third guy. And, you know, just watching that Nuggets game, it's like, you know, you look at Yokic's defensive improvement.

And it's, it is significant, but at the same time, it's like the imbeat issue, right? Like how many times over and over again can you do this to any team really without completely discombobulating them? Do you think that we will see not any of these guys, because, you know, Denver is obviously in this kind of unique position where Yokic will probably win his second MVP here, but I don't know that they have the firepower

unless they get an emergency Michael Porter and Jamal Marie infusion at the end of the season. It sounds like that's going to happen. But I also don't even know, like, what is a guy who's just been out for either half the season or three quarters of the season or an entire year look like going right into playoff basketball? I don't remember

this many people, Paul George, Jamal Murray, Ben Simmons, all possibly being like playoffs and I start playing and I almost like it's the hypothetical but I also don't want this to happen because I'm like I don't want more guys just be like I'll just come back to the playoffs it's cool it'd be like the new the new load management is no regular season for me which would be a sick though like if you were just like I wonder if you'd see guys play to like 42 because they're like all I do is play the postseason

that'd be pretty incredible we would I think that that might be like finally what pushes the league to stop having 82 games which I'd be completely in supportive if the player is just really force the issue. I'm trying to articulate my question, though. I think that there have been post seasons in the past where one of the hallmarks has been really good centers getting played out of series to some extent. So it did not happen to Aiton notably. And I think that was one of the things aside from his obvious like just visibly and statistical improvement. It was that Aiton did not get tactically managed out of any series last season. You know, that has happened to Gobert. That has happened to other centers. It

kind of like obliterated the center position for a while when Roy Hibbert was kind of just played out of kind of functionality like in the beginning of last decade. So I'm kind of curious to know whether you think these centers, bam, Joelle, Nicola that we've been talking about, Gobert, to some extent the sort of hybrid guys like Jaron Jackson and Evan Mobley that we've talked about, do you think that they'll have like good post seasons or do you think that we'll start to see again coaches just say, you know what, I'm going to spread you out, I'm going to switch you up and have you skating out on the perimeter and just basically play you out of series. That's kind of the ultimate question that we're asking here, right? And I think it all just

kind of comes down to what you can bring on the other end. Somebody like Embed, I don't think he's ever going to get played out of a series just because of how important he is on offense. And at the end of the day, like, yes, he will get tired. But like overall, he's not going to be a minus defensively, right? He's just going to be somebody where it's going to be tough. Like, there will be times when, like, Kyrie and K.D. like, hit a tough shot over him. And Like, there's just nothing you can do. I don't see BAM or Aiton getting played out of a series. I could see it with Gobert again for sure.

You could see it with a guy like Stephen Adams too. Don't necessarily see it with like Jaron Jackson. Like, you know, last playoffs, he just wasn't healthy. But he's just a monster on defense and he's so incredibly versatile on offense. That you can't really, that's the thing with these new centers, right? Like, you can't game plan a lot of them out of a series the way that you could, even just a few years ago. Like, if you look at that Clipper series from last season,

they got Gobert out of that series and they tried to do the same thing to Aiton and it's like well Aiton's got a little floater so that's it if he's hitting that floater then he's just going to be able to do it and like right now if you look at the league like you know those guys that we haven't even talked about

like Carl Towns right like you're not really like on offense going to be able to find a way to make him negligible the T-wolves look more like the nets to me than like a traditional like big man led team you know what I mean like the way they're scoring and the way that they're emphasizing like we're just going to go for 130 and see if you can match us is kind of almost Netzian.

If Boston is Memphis East, then Minnesota is Brooklyn West. That's interesting. So I had the wolves as my Cavs West. Shocked, I thought about this, but I had them as my Cavs West as just a team that I was thinking about the teams that we'll talk about and we won't talk about enough. And I was like, we're not going to talk about either of these two teams enough, but we probably should. I'm glad we ended up talking about them both a little bit, though. I love why. I mean, like, right now the wolves and the calves are still like, if I'm watching Lee Pass, they're like two of the teams I'm checking for it. And I'm not even trying to be like a hipster

basketball nerd. Like, I just really enjoy like the energy that both teams play with. I'll see a guy like Godwin on on the calves. I'm like, who is this dude? Like, he's really effective. And a number of guys on the wolves that where I'm just like, oh man, like they're just really like, they've got guys contributing all over the team. I feel like they could be, they could be a sleeper pick to go far. Last 10 games, they're top three in offensive and defensive rating. And towns is just obliterating everybody. He's unguarded right now. So I don't know. They're a good sleeper pick.

I think the Mabs are too. Another thing I saw like kind of just going through a bunch of big man stats and stuff was that Powell's just a really good defender on some of the guys in the West that you want to be able to stop. I think he's one of the better Yokic defenders this season.

No one can really defend him. Aiton did a pretty good job in the playoffs and I think the Suns probably have the best shot at being able to stop him one-on-one, but even then, like, you know, you still have to throw in a lot of different looks at him. But they're, they're an interesting sleeper too. And they also, like, that's one team where it, like, that could be a question in the playoffs. Like, can you get Dwight Powell out of a series? Because that would definitely impact the way, like, how far the Mabs can go. Right. No, well, I mean, maybe what we should do is right before the playoffs start, we should have like a sleeper, like,

love, like, love fest, like for all of our teams that'll probably get nuked in the first round, but that we still like. That'd be fun. Um, we can wrap it up there. We'll be back. We'll be back next week. Sir, thanks so much for joining me. Do you feel like we've arrived at like a, are we pro big man or are we con big man? I like leaving it at this place. You love not answering the question on the answer. It's my favorite thing, especially with the playoffs coming up.

We just don't have to. The answer will reveal itself. And we should revisit. Yeah, we will. We will. Thanks so much to Chris Sutton for producing us today. We'll be back next week.