The Ryen Russillo Podcast - “Blame Everyone” - Heat Take Out Bucks

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Russillo reacts to the Bucks shocking round one loss to the Heat, why there’s never been a larger gap between the regular season and the playoffs, and what it means for Giannis, Coach Bud and the rest of the organization. Host: Ryen Russillo Producers: Mike Wargon and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessy, one of the hosts of the Prestige TV podcast. HBO's Barry is back for a fourth and final season. And that means I'll be back recapping the show with co-creator and star Bill Hader to dive deep on the themes, scenes, and major moments in the series. Bill will provide insight into how every episode was made and why it's ending. New Prestige TV Barry recaps will go live every Sunday night when the episode ends. So make sure you're subscribed to the Prestige TV podcast wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats.

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Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for We don't normally do a third episode during basketball because Bill and I are on Sunday. I was scheduled to do Friday after the draft. That's what we've decided to do the last couple of years because it made more sense. And then it didn't make any sense because the Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Miami Heat. We could battle headline here and go,

the Miami Heat beat the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, eight seed taken out of one. It doesn't happen very often. And it happened here in five games. So there's a lot to get to. And yeah, I'm still a little stunned. It feels a bit like when you're really young, let's say younger college roommates. Yeah. So not crazy young, but just sort of young and you're piecing it together the next day. And you're like, wait, didn't Dave? And we're like, oh, that's right. Was that a taxi or a guy? Right. I woke up today and I didn't even, all I did was watch the bucks. I woke up today this morning and I'm like, wait, did all of that actually happen? I got a piece. I need roommates. I need to go into somebody else's room and be like, Hey, did that bucks thing really happen? Because that's how it felt. This was significant. It was real. It was a lot of different things. So let's kind of run through it.

and always liked that I felt like some of the stuff that we see in the regular season, the gap between regular season and the NBA playoffs, it's the biggest gap that we've ever seen. All right. In recent memory, at least. Right. I think this is something I've been talking about for a while. There's just certain things that will happen in a regular season where I go, I don't know that I love that in the playoffs.

Doesn't mean I'm right all the time. Certainly plenty of times you can still be wrong, despite noticing, I think something that we all agree on, that there is a big difference. But it shouldn't be as different as it looked last night. It shouldn't. In the NFL, one of the things I think that I both love and don't love about the sport is that we can spend all this time talking about it, breaking it all down, who's good, who isn't.

And it's like, man, it's actually just limited possessions. The scoring thing is more of a marketing thing than a true reflection of what the score is. And if you have two turnovers and the other team doesn't, you're going to lose. That's it. The NHL playoffs every single year, it's like, why is it so different?

Oh, goalies, dude. Goalies get hot. Here's the thing. When you watch the NHL playoffs with the intensity of what's happening, you'll get like two goals and then the game winner, a lot of times in those games, is like, oh, it deflected off the back of a guy's leg and then another stick and then off a skate and it went in and it's like, oh, we're done. We're done. We were the better team.

We were done. What I always loved about basketball is that as the series would go on, the talent disparity would show itself. Okay? Basketball, I felt like, told less lies about the results because in a seven-game series where if you don't have one or two of those top 10 guys, you probably weren't going to figure it out. Now, others could argue that actually makes it a worse product in the playoffs, and I wouldn't tell you you're even wrong from it. But again, the gap should not be like this. The gap should not be to the point where you're watching Miami, who all regular season long, I'm like, look,

at least last year when I didn't like them, they were the one seed. It was daring and it was wrong. This year wasn't daring. And it's perhaps even more wrong because now I don't even know what to do with this. If you look at the Jimmy Butler shot at the end of regulation, when it went in, I was like, eh, I wasn't even surprised because of him and what he's done in these last few games, and because of how bad the Milwaukee Bucks have been and had been in game five for so long, to watch them collapse again in the back-to-back playoff game after watching game four where I was like, you know what? They're up big. They're going to take care

of this. They'll be fine. Butler goes for 56. At the end of that one, I'm like a bit of a foot off the gas. I thought Milwaukee was going to smash them last night. Same deal. Up double digits, late. You're like, they'll figure it out. They'll be fine. Look, they can't do what they did in game four because there's no room for error. And it happened again. And it happened in a way with a team that's actually already won an NBA title, which is what makes this so strange. They look scared. I don't like saying that about teams a lot. They were scared to death. It's the only thing that you can look at with what they were trying to do on offense. They had two made field goals over 11 minutes of real game time. At 7.09, Drew hits a shot. From that point on, 7.08, two shots in regulation, two shots in the final 7-0-8

regulation. They didn't make a field goal the first four minutes of regulation, excuse me, the first four minutes of overtime. You want to go back and watch that, how horrified each individual player was about not wanting to have the ball in his hands? It was real. And it's so weird because it's like, wait, how did that team actually win a title two years ago? Because you have to go through all those moments of lacking confidence. You have to fight through them. You know, they look like a young team that's really talented, that was a high seed. And you're like, oh, they choked.

They just weren't ready for it. You know, all the different cliches that we throw out that sometimes are accurate and are sometimes inaccurate. But it usually never happens to a team that's already done the good thing. It's almost all the same guys. It doesn't make any sense. Imagine explaining to your friend who's kind of casually aware of what the NBA is and maybe you'll watch the finals or, I don't know, had a poster when he was younger and they would ask you and be like, hey, what's going on? I saw Miami beat Milwaukee. Is Miami good this year? No, dude. They actually were the worst scoring team in the NBA. Worst offense in the playoffs. They're missing their

best shooter. Well, how did they beat? Wasn't Milwaukee the best team in the league record-wise? Yeah, but they suck. How? How is this possible? How could the worst offense beat the team with the best record? Playoffs, dude. Playoff Jimmy. Built different. Oh, they have Bam. No, he actually sucks now. What about Kyle Lowry? Is he any good?

No, but he's battle-tested. What about Giannis? I mean, that guy had like 15 in a finals game. Yeah, he lost his clutch team. But what else is going on in the East? Well, Boston's good, but everybody's kind of down on them because now Trey is better than Luka. Cleveland had the best defensive players, but they suck

too because it's the playoffs and the Knicks are grittier and it should be wide open for the Sixers and Embiid, but Simmons and Rosillo didn't like them in a sweep. Yeah, but didn't they vote Embiid MVP? Yeah, but they can't

be trusted. It would be impossible to explain what we've seen. Because again, I've run through it all day long. It doesn't make any fucking sense. If Giannis didn't have a title, can you imagine? Can you imagine if Durant's shot was good from three? Everybody wanted Bud fired that playoff season. I don't know what to do with Bud, man.

If you type in Mike Budenholzer, the number one Google return is how long is his contract. It's another year, I believe. There's some places out there that say it goes to 25, but more of the reports say it's just next year.

There's another thing I was thinking about with the gap between the regular season and the playoffs. Has the combo guard destroyed the point guard, the old school point guard who would watch everything falling down around him going, Hey, enough of this shit. Let's run something. Let's get somebody a better look. Let me get a screen up here and get a better angle on an entry pass while you go and seal or you screen block to block or something. Get Giannis deeper. Giannis didn't want the

basketball because he was missing every single free throw last night, as we saw with him throwing it out of bounds and Middleton making an incredible play to save it after the jump ball, after all the other nonsense that happened that they couldn't get right. It's one thing to just not run any kind of offense. It's another thing on the Jimmy Butler tying play where you're like, man, do I want size on the inbounds, which I'm a huge proponent of. If you have Giannis, throw him on the inbounder. If you have another huge person named Brooke Lopez, who was, I think, a bit fraudulently involved in the defensive player of the year conversation, but was, I think, a bit fraudulently involved in the defensive player of the year conversation. But hell, I voted for Mobley and now everybody thinks

that's the worst thing ever. You don't have Lopez in the game. I believe they subbed Connaughton in for him. And Budenholzer tried to explain it, but it's like, why wouldn't you want at least a guy standing around the rim as Butler makes what will be historically one of the most absurd shots in NBA playoff history? As bad as that was, it's not even close to as bad with 0.5 left and a timeout to not advance the basketball. But after it was like, yeah, we needed one there. Not as much depth on that explanation, but he's been around a long time. The longer you go explaining it, the worse it looks, right? Giannis can attest to that. We'll get to his quote in a second.

That doesn't make any sense. And on top of it too, like what led to the jump ball earlier was an inbounds pass where you're throwing it away. And then when they run out the clock in overtime with a Grayson Allen Euro that starts with a tenth of a second, you're like, that's probably not going to get off in time. So that timeout, I know that Bud likes to just kind of have the guys go and run, but his best player at that point. Look, if Giannis had better marketing, you'd be hearing about how severe this back injury was. There's other players in the league that would definitely, 48 hours you'd have a severe medical update he's going to see a therapist physical therapist i don't know about the other part um never doubling jimmy never like we've always talked about bud stubbornness and when you have that ring like it

covers up like because i'll always think all right everybody's complaining about this with this coach i wonder if there was something else that he was trying to do, right? This one felt like he was trying to lose. So I don't have any zags for you on this one. None. I mean, we've had some incredibly weird coaching things that have happened in a very short amount of time that don't, I mean, Quinn Steiner's a terrific coach. He kept Trey on the floor in game five for a defensive possession where he got the block on the attempted flop for a charge. He's like, wait, what was going on there? I normally always put it on the players, but I don't know how Bud survives this because it's not the mistakes that the experts see. The other players, the other coaches, a lot of the stuff that we can't see every single night.

It's the obvious mistakes that everybody can see. What are you guys doing? In these moments, I always like to remind all of us to kind of go, all right, what does it mean? What are all these things? The best thing is kind of to take a deep breath. Giannis is still going to be really good next year. Milwaukee still has a good team. But this is a bit haunting, right?

This is a haunting feeling. I don't know what it means for the rest of these because I'm telling you, anyone that you meet, whether it's somebody you meet in person or watch on TV or listen to that is definitive, that is certain that they know the outcome of what these playoffs are going to be, I would say, I don't want to say stop listening to them, but I would say they're just, they're kind of lying to you.

I don't feel good about anybody. Maybe Denver. Do I feel better about Philly now than I did on Sunday? Okay, cool. Maybe that's the play, but what's going to suck for Giannis is that the longer this goes, this wasn't so bad.

It takes away all the credit for the ring. But there is some math in there where he's going to start dealing with some stuff again that he was dealing with before, which I thought was far too early. I just don't like it when the guy's still under 26, 27. It's like, oh, can this guy even win? Sometimes it's true. Sometimes, a lot of times, it isn't. But the Giannis quote afterwards where he was asked if the season was a failure, which apparently he was asked the exact

same question last year, I guess, Coach Bud. I mean, look, it's a failure. You're the one seed, you had the best record. You lost to a Miami team that looked like they were going to be a possession away from not even being in the playoffs. So it is a failure. So his answer that's going around right now about it not being a failure, I don't agree with, but I do think there's kind of, there's this moment where when the really bad thing happens to the thing that we thought was good, because there's also a bit of a victory lab.

Like I told you the bucks weren't any good. Oh really? Did you pick the heat? You picked the heat. Did you? I also think because Giannis basically played two and a half of the five games,'ll be forgotten it'll be forgotten like wait a minute how did they lose in five like well the janice was out i don't know if his back was was more banged up like i said i think some american players would already have that message out there true or not the message would

be out there to kind of protect them a little bit but what i i'll give you honest this even though i think all of us generally disagree when you're this good and you're already, you know, you have certain expectations, losing to Miami in the first round. That's not like, Hey, you know what? We had some real personal growth this year. Good stuff. And the quotes being paraded around is like some kind of lesson. The part that I do like for Giannis is that it's really easy in that spot to have said all the right things, even if you didn't mean right. We, when the good thing is bad, we, we like fake shame more so than we like honest pride. All right, let's bring Cerruti in here. Uh, Van Pelt called me at midnight. He was like, what just happened?

And I know this feels a lot like, oh, you guys aren't giving the Heat enough credit. Yeah, you're right. I'm not. I'm not giving them enough credit. They deserve all the credit. I'm totally wrong about it. So when I'm saying I'm not giving them enough credit, I'm not saying that in an asshole way to be like, oh, I don't want to give them credit. Here's my credit bucket.

I will dump it out on your front lawn. But the Bucs part to see a team, and that's what you, when you called me last night, we talked last night. What was the first thing that jumped out? I texted you, I think, I just can't believe what I just watched.

And then you called me a couple minutes later because it's really screwed up what I think of this Bucs team. And you're right. It doesn't take away the title or anything like that. But what happened in the lead up to them winning that title, right?

They lose to the Raptors that year. Then they lose to, I believe, the Heat the year before. And we're all basically like, this Bucs team is a regular season team. They do not have the closing ability to do this. Certainly Giannis doesn't.

And then what happens that next year? They win the title. They come back down from 0-2 against your boy Chris Paul and the Suns. And I think we were just like, oh, all is forgiven. They're fine. They fixed whatever this problem is.

And even last year, most people think that they probably make the finals if they're healthy and they beat the Celtics and probably maybe even win it last year. Who knows? But man, that was like, it was like they went back into a time machine, all of the bad things that happened to them a couple of years ago that we were knocking them for when Giannis was winning these MVPs. But we were saying, Hey, he's a regular season player. I'm not sure that he's the guy that you want in the ball, the ball in his hands, the end of the game, all that stuff happened last night. So like, I'm kind of having like deja vu about what is real with this Bucks team because they were all terrified. And the

other thing that to me that stood out a ton was, you know, we talked about the athletic poll of Drew Holiday as the best defender in the league. And you've got Jimmy just barking at him saying, you can't guard me. You can't guard me. That was the most alpha thing I think I've ever seen anyone do outside of combat sports that you brought up to me last night the most alpha thing i think i've ever seen anyone do outside of combat sports like you brought up to me last night like outside of combat sports he was just owning the guy that we thought is the best defensive player he couldn't do anything with him so it just kind of has me again maybe it's recency bias maybe the bucks will be fine next year although you look at you know lopez is 35 drew's 32 middleton he's certainly not you know young anymore i i don't

know what their future is. I think they'll probably still be a good team. But this thing last night really kind of screwed up what I believe the Bucs are. Yeah, look, Drew had a tough one. And it's something we brought up earlier when you look at some of the shooting stuff from him and no one ever brings it because it's just like Drew doesn't live in superstar guard neighborhood. So if he has, and he's not even the number one, he's never even been confused for being the number one for that team. So like the benefit of that is you get to make all the money and win a ring and all this stuff. And, you know, unfortunately,

I feel like the NBA is turning into a carousel of, do we shit on this guy enough, you know? And it's either you're not getting, you're not getting your flowers, or is this guy actually suck more? Right. Like we put all the people that we talked about on some big spinning wheel and then spin it. And the game shows, do we shit on this guy enough? And then like three guys are on a couch. The guy turns like, you know what?

I kind of think we don't shit on that guy enough. And it's like, all right, let's go. What do you think he sucks at? So there's a part of it. I just think it's worth mentioning once when you're running screens also, like there's times he got drew straight up, but there's other times where he's getting them off some kind of screen. And the thing that's maddening, if you're a Bucks fan is like, how can you be an NBA

coach and not really want to change it up? And it's funny because I remember I used that Pelican Zion game where Valanciunas went bananas because Brooks stayed back because they always wanted a second guy back the whole time against zion you could see brooke go to bud and be like do you seriously want me to just keep letting valentine's shoot the entire time and it was just one of those things i was noticing and then antonio daniels is on the call he played with uh for bud when bud was assistant san antonio so he was explaining a lot of the stuff as it was happening so it was like a really specific thing that you'd be watching for if you were lucky

enough to catch that broadcast and it was very uh it was there was some real teaching going on right and then you're watching it when it doesn't work and you're like are you fucking serious like you're gonna like why wouldn't you go hey let's let's at least try something else and now i'd always defer to somebody who did it and be like well what they don't want to do is this this and this this, and this, and this, and this. And it's like, okay, how come the two timeouts and not having a big at the rim? And it's like, you can't really say anything. So then you start really going like, what the hell is going on? As far as the Giannis thing real quick, I'm not saying this as if like I told you, because once Giannis, even in losing to the Celtics last season without Middleton, like that was the clincher for me where that was,

it was more of that series than even the NBA finals. Cause I'm like, all right, he, this guy at least very least like is wired that way. Like for whatever I think of Trey young, I do know that he's not afraid of anybody. Yeah.

And that was my, my banking. It's like this, the most physically gifted player is also not afraid of anybody and wants to get into get into it with other guys so i don't think you can look at last night and go like oh none of that shit was real that seems ridiculous i'm not going to then spin it back around like this is why i was always resisting it because of durant didn't play and then that last year series again in a series he lost kind of clinched it for me a little bit but this is this is kind of

back to that carousel point where if you were having those honest doubts you'd be like see he actually doesn't have any kind of finishing move other than getting downhill especially off of a miss um or a deep seal and if he doesn't have those and he's not making his free throws what is he on offense it's fair but i also think there's like a version of it where it goes too far yeah i mean it's definitely gonna go and i'm not saying like they don't deserve credit for that anymore i'm just i'm just saying it's messing with my like who i thought this team and yannis was specifically but it actually made me think too of it's kind of like remember your remember your joe flacco thing like you were just like you know he wins the superbowl and you're like yeah i just i still don't think jo Flacco is any good. But like now I kind of have to say

that he's some elite quarterback, not to, you know, go the PFT route. But like now I have to say that he's elite because he won a Super Bowl. I still don't think he's very good. I kind of think like Bud was basically going to get fired, right, if they didn't win that title that year. Like Bud was kind of already on the way out.

And then he wins a title and you're like, oh, Bud, he's a champion. You can never take that away from him. And you can't. But all of the same issues that we've had with bud over the years just show themselves last night in in like the most ridiculous way possible so it's one of those things where you can you can get take tied sure like you're saying oh all the people that doubt yannis are sitting here taking a victory lap today but there are some things like that even you know with bud and stuff like that that you you're like, hey, just because you won, it doesn't really change who you are if you're still the same guy.

Like, I think Giannis, like, I don't think Giannis all of a sudden is going to be some beta and is not going to, like, want the ball in his hands at the end of the game. So, like, I don't think that change would be here. That would be weird. Now, that doesn't mean, I mean, Jimmy Butler is just on a whole other level maybe than Giannis. It's like we thought Giannis was the most, like Giannis was the most motivated or whatever guy in the league. That clearly is Jimmy now. But I think the Bud thing is interesting because

it was just such a bad, bad showing. And you can't convince me that if you don't switch head coaches that that thing is... The Bucs win that in five. It's maybe even a sweep. The coaching mismatch in that series might have been...

I mean, I don't want to say that the Jimmy versus whoever in that series, that's probably the biggest mismatch, but the coaching one is definitely number two. Yeah, I hope people understand, too. We did so much on the Butler thing just two days ago that this wasn't going to be about the Miami Heat today. It wasn't.

We'll have plenty more time to talk about the Heat. I mean, they might be in the... There's a good chance they're in the Eastern Conference Finals. I need a January 6th-level rapport on why there was no timeout at the end of regulation. Assistant 2 said to Assistant 3, are you fucking kidding me? Assistant 3 shrugged and said, I don't know what's going on. I need to understand that people make mistakes. We do seem to forget how often,

like how intense this stuff can be, how your mind is racing. Cause none of us are actually, you know, most of us will never ever experience what that is, but like, that's what the money's for. That's what the job is,

is to not fuck those up and not do a multiple times in the same games. And, you know, beyond that too, like some of these coaches with these early challenges like what are you the early shy i mean what are you guys doing especially in ones you know you're not gonna win like what at least kerr's challenge which was wrong to do which almost cost them a game because the cost of the time out was late but again i i kind of have a rule that I would never, I would never challenge anything until the fourth quarter, unless it was like a situation where Giannis picks up like his, you know, his fourth or fifth foul early in the third quarter. And like, it's not a foul, so you can get them on the court more, but like you saw it last night, like Spoh saved his for

late. And it, it, it was a huge factor in the game. Like, I just don't think, I don't see any real point in challenging anything in the first half, anything in the game. Like, I just don't think, I don't see any real point in challenging anything in the first half, anything in the first half. What if it's Grant Williams three minutes into a game on a reach-in for his first personal? Where he's doing the circle thing.

Doing the old finger twirl. Honestly, the more adamant guys are that they didn't do something, the less likely I'm actually going to challenge it because I just think those guys all lie about it. I think the CBA should have

added two things. You can't talk to a ref unless you average 20 a game. And you can't ask your coach to challenge after. It's like a player's challenge. Each player gets one challenge for the entire season. And if you tell your bench to challenge and you don't win, then you don't get any other,

you can never for the rest of the season, go to your coach and say, I want it reviewed. And it seems harsh to only get one a year, but I think it would just move the pace up. Okay. Heat in five over the number one seed in Milwaukee Bucks. you