The Zach Lowe Show - Round 2 Begins! Plus, Reactions to a Pair of Game 7s With Howard Beck and an NBA-‘Severance’ Crossover With Zach Cherry.

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

What up, Beck? Howard joins Zach to break down the Warriors’ Game 7 win last night (1:10).  Then, they discuss offseason plans for the Rockets (20:08) and Clippers (34:20), before previewing Round 2 matchups: Warriors vs. Timberwolves (52:26), Nuggets vs. Thunder (1:03:15), and Knicks vs. Celtics (146). They also give a quick reaction to yesterday’s upset by the Pacers (111). Afterward, a double dose of Zach! Zach Cherry joins the show to discuss his NBA fandom, while Zach Lowe professes his love for 'Severance' (1:39:19).The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Zach Lowe show sponsored by Fanduel. America's number one sportsbook has made it easier than ever to get in on the action during an NBA playoff game that's right now. Even after Tipoff, just look for the live SGP tab on the Fandual Sportsbook app and build your bet slip. Then sit back, relax, and track the outcome of your parlay right in the app. And if you don't already have it, download the Fandle app today to make every moment more. The ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit RG-Help.com to learn more about the resources and help. Helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details.

Must be 21 and over in President Select States. Gambling problem, call 1-100 gambler or visit RG-dash-help.com. This episode is brought to you by Microlabe Ultra. Playoff season is here. So what better way to get into the spirit of things that with a tournament of your own? Compete to see who can make the best tip. Test your basketball skills with a game of around the world. Even better if Mickelope Ultra is on the line, especially since they're giving fans a chance to win courtside tickets.

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it ends on June 30th, 2026, multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelope ultra.com slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. Coming up on the Zach Lowe show, Howard Beck, and I react to everything that happened

over the weekend in the NBA Warriors Rockets, Game 7, Clippers Nuggets, Game 7, Pacers, Cabs, Game 1. We look ahead to everything coming up in round two of the NBA playoffs, which should be awesome. Plus, a special guest from my favorite current television show. I can't wait to talk hoops and severance with him. Coming up on The Zach Lowe Show. Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show Monday. We are live on YouTube, apparently.

I don't really know how any of this works, but I know this. It is time to say the three most anticipated words. in niche basketball podcasting and apparently live streaming. What up, Beck? What up, Zach? We've never done this live before. It's, I don't know. I'm a little nervous.

There are people watching it. We can't, we can't, like, edit. We can't, like, just stop and say, no, get rid of that. I was, I sounded like a moron. If I sound like a moron in real time, I'm just going to sound like a moron for all time, apparently. Listen, you're talking to a microphone long enough and often enough you're going to sound like a moron. It's going to happen. It's sadly the case.

Two game sevens over the weekend. Warriors Rockets. Your boy picked Warriors in seven and said the Warriors have done rude things on that floor in elimination games before. And they did it again, just like in 2018, all the mysteries. 2019, Steph has a million points in the second half after having no points in the first half. And six years later, with Buddy Healed in the role of Clay Thompson, Draymond and the role of Draymond Green with a technical foul and limbs flailing everywhere and always

connecting with sensitive body parts. And Steph Curry playing the part of Steph Curry. And I saw some people online, Howard Beck, saying, ooh, the media really talking up, Steph. Oh, big deal. 22 points. Twenty two points, 10 rebounds. 10 rebounds.

Big deal. Seven assists, eight of 16, four of 10. every dagger that they needed, he got them. And the warrior's entire defense was anybody but Steph, we're trapping you on the pick and roll. We're giving you absolutely no breathing room off the ball. We're switching everything. We're dialed in.

How are you going to score? And for a while in the third quarter, the answer was, oh, we may not be able to score. And they would trap him and the other guys who are not great vertical finishers, who are sometimes not great shooters. We're kind of like, I don't want to shoot it. I don't want to shoot it. Draymond, can you take another end of shot clock three?

Because those are going great. And then Steph decided, you know what? I might have to take matters into my own hands. And he got Jabari Smith Jr. on him, bringing the ball up early in the fourth quarter and waved everyone away and said, I got it. Blue by him, lay up. Next possession, Amman Thompson pulls up with the calf. Steph crosses him over into an ISO 3.

And the game was kind of never really the same after that. Yeah, I thought he had a sensational game. And the Rockets offense, all their worst nightmares came true throughout the entire series minus a couple of Van Vleet hot shooting games and won one, one, Jalen Green hot shooting game out of seven. And they are going home and the Warriors are moving on to face the wolves. Fun game, tense game, felt like the Rockets were the classic young team that was walking down the old guys and the old guys were getting tired.

And then Steph got hot and they made enough plays late in the game. game. It's funny. I think I had Warriors in seven as well, like much, much respect to the Rockets who are physical and athletic and feisty and obviously a lot younger than the Warriors and gave them everything they had. And like, listen, when was the last time you and I saw Steph even had just have to work this hard throughout the course of a series just to score? And there were times where like game six, you know, after game six, we always overreact. Game six, it was like, all right, there's no way. The Warriors are just done. They're cooked. Game six was legitimately alarming to give away game five and be like, you know, we're just going to save everything for game six and just come out with zero juice at home and get rolled at the end of the game.

It was legitimately like, oh, do they have enough left to finish this series? There were a bunch of shots that Steph took in game six where it was like, these are absolute desperation shots that if anybody else were taking them, you would think this team is screwed and that guy shouldn't even be taking those shots. But because they were Steph, it was like, these are all. all shots he could make. And these are all shots that when he's on one of his step heaters, he just does make and like, oh, hey, maybe they close it out in six. If Steph just makes really tough stuff shots that only Steph can make. But still, it was the desperation that it felt like hung over every single one of those. There was a point where several times in this series, but especially in Game Six, Zach, I kept having flashes of, you're obviously a

top gun fan. We're all top gun fans. It's our generation. I still haven't seen Maverick. the quote-unquote new one I haven't seen. Very good. I disagree with people who think it's better than the original, but whatever, I'm trapped in the 80s. There's the moment in the original where Goose is back there going, do some of that pilot shit, Mav. I felt like that was the Warriors the whole time in this series. Like, do some of that pilot shit, Steph. Like, just get us out of this because he was the only thing that they could rely on until Game 7 Buddy healed.

Game 7 buddy healed. Holy shit. nine three's record, all-time record for a game seven. He also had, where's my Justin Kubatko stat here. Justin Kubacco says he's the second player to score 30 or more points on 80% field goal shooting in a game seven. It's good. It's good percentage. Yeah, the other one of course is Will Chamberlain back in 1965.

Well, and they needed it because they were running out of flares. Gary Payton the second was sick, missed the game. Quentin Post, gradually rendered not playable in the series and played three minutes. Caminga, I don't know what we're going to see John the Cominga again, although he's played a lot against Minnesota in the regular season. And his size is important, potentially in that matchup. It was a disaster. And Looney was awesome off the bench. Moody, who I think they're going to really need in this Minnesota series, looked a little overwhelmed by the moment.

and his misses were like bonged off the backboard, bonk, like not even close misses. And without Buddy Heald, they don't win the game. And Buddy Heald went bananas. They lost him in the zone a few times. We made a couple contested twos, which were big shots. Every basket felt like oxygen at times in this game for the Warriors, when the rockets were kind of walking them down.

And Shengun was imposing his size. He was only 9 of 23. I also want to shout out Dremont, by the way. I made fun of the threes, and he made two, and then he missed six. Five of seven on twos. That's a lot of two-point baskets for Draymond Green, and they were mostly not easy shots. All of those were like oxygen.

I was trying to look up as we were talking because I forgot to look up yesterday. When's the last time Draymond Green took 15 shots in a game at all? Actually happened back in March. He had 20 in a game recently in this series. I think he had 20 in a game. Yeah, it's a lot. And every time he's shot, I just kept thinking how, why, what, there's got to be a better alternative than this.

but they got away with it and he made enough of them. But it just, it's a statement about where the warriors are right now, Zach, that so many times in this series, and granted, a lot of this has to do with the rockets, but the wolves have a great defense to and we'll get to them. But the fact that the warriors, even with Jimmy Butler, seems so step-dependent. And again, I know, Buddy Healed went nuclear. I don't know how many of those you can expect in the course of a postseason. Draymond Green made a bunch of shots

that we wouldn't normally expect him to even be taking but the Pajemski, Moody, Cominga, Post, whatever, like that whole young crew that has been grafted on that you're hoping for something, somebody to pop. It doesn't have to be the same guy every night. We know how the playoffs goes. Like, you know, sometimes it's just a guy's night. Okay, it was Buddy Heald's night.

But in the next series, I'm very curious to see where this goes because it's getting, it's getting late for Steph to just be the do that pilot ship Mav, Steph. Butler had such an interesting series and interesting game seven. 20 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, seven of 13 shooting, made a couple big jump shots late in the game. He doesn't feel like Jimmy Butler to me yet. And you look at the numbers and he's averaging 18, six and four still getting to the line

seven times a game, making his twos. it doesn't he and again he's recovering from an injury that maybe he'd be sitting out right now if this were not at the playoffs it didn't feel despite the numbers like he was imposing his will on the game the way we've seen him do in the playoffs before then now granted the rockets are a very physical team they do not have a lot of guys you can bully even van vliet is like a fire hydrant in the point van vleet really became like Kyle lowrie 2.0 it's bizarre how similar they are as players on both ends of the floor after playing together of course in Toronto Van Vleet got him in the post once and took the ball away in the second half of the, or yeah, it was the second half of the game. But it doesn't, like, they're going to beat Minnesota. They're going to need the Jimmy Butler who can pop off for 35 on a moment's notice. And it just didn't feel like he was that guy in the series, which is why they needed heel.

And in Bill, Pajemski and Moody are going to be up and down on threes. That's just how it is. And that's why they needed buddy healed and they got buddy healed. Can I tell you my favorite stuff play from the game, by the way? Hit me. You can, the threes are cool. We all know. he hit the one from the logo in the first half on a pick and roll that rockets didn't see coming.

And by the time you see it come and it's like, oh, it's in the net. Okay. Just a classic 35 footer from Steph. If you go back, there's about a minute left in the third quarter. And this is when the Warriors are starting to extend the lead back from three to like nine. And boy, did a nine point lead in this series feel like 20 at times. And Steph sets an off ball screen on Draymond's guy. and Draymond gets a layup in the lane.

And you're like, I've seen that a million times before. Like, Steph is the, you know, the greatest little guy screener of all time. We all know the power of the best shooter of all time setting screens and what it does for the rest of his teammates. The screen was on Stephen Adams. And if you go back and watch it, it is shoulder to shoulder. Both of them are kind of accelerating into the screen. And it rocks both, like, they both vibrate from the impact. And you're like, that's Steph Curry.

How much weight is he given up? there, 80 pounds, 100 pounds. I don't even know what it is. Being like, I am going to throw my body, my little skinny body, stronger than you think, but still, into a guy that is considered the toughest, strongest,

least movable human playing basketball. And by the way, what a redemption season for Stephen Adams. What a wonderful story, him coming back to health and blocking shots. Like, he and Nick Batum are blocking everything left and right, RIP Clippers. like don't just overlook the sacrifice of a play like that screening Stephen Adams that hard

that fucking hurts and that's not easy like if I did that I'm out for three weeks just one screen on Stephen Adams when he hits me back I'm out for three weeks it's a big deal that he does stuff like that and if you go back and watch that play it's a hard-ass screen and that's the kind of stuff that this guy's been doing for a decade and a half now and it just should be lauded and it got Draymond an easy bucket and again, Oxygen. Oxygen. Draymond Green baskets.

Oxygen. By the way, I looked it up while we were doing this on stathead. Dremont Green, the last time in a playoff game, he had more than 15 field goal attempts, Zach. Care to guess? Game 7, 2016. It's 2018. Yeah.

Against the Pelicans. But there's only been 10. He's played a lot of playoff games. He's only had 10 games counting yesterday's where he had 15 or more field goal attempts. So, like, normally I would have considered that to be very alarming. and it was in real time for the Warriors on some level because it was just, it was sometimes the only shot they could get. And sometimes it was just, they got really weirdly indecisive at times.

And so I think you noted this earlier, just like a lot of times it was Draymond taking those shots very late in the shot clock. But I thought that when they were at their best yesterday, some of it was just the fact that with two guys always on step with or without the ball, it seemed like he was making faster decisions with that. They were taking advantage of Draymond then, you know, cutting into the lane. So it felt like the Warriors adjusted in real time in this series

and found a way to actually beat this just absolutely suffocating big physical athletic defense. Not for nothing, you know, we should mention, of course, Amman Thompson hurting his, was his quad hamstring? What do they end up calling it? I don't know. It was capped during the game. I didn't see it. It was his leg.

It was a leg. Something leg-oriented. That was unfortunate. The improbable mid-series playoff, leap from Amen Thompson who was a little skittish the first couple games and then was like, oh no, here's the regular season version of me, but better for the last part of the series. On Jermond, he had a steal in this game with like two and a half minutes left in the second quarter.

Just an absolutely classic Jarmon play. When I say that Jarmond is a savant, these are the kind of plays I'm talking about. Shengun had the ball at the nail on, I think Butler was garland. guarding him. Draymond was on Thompson in the dunker spot. And Stephen Adams was at the opposite dunker spot. And Shingun's working on the nail, like getting like carving out, getting closer. It was very laborious for Shengu in the whole series. So much physicality. He's already sort of an awkward player in a good way, but still awkward. He's getting a little traction. And Draymond makes a little stunt towards Stephen Adams, like across the lane. Just a little

stunt. I don't know why he was doing it, maybe to help out on a potential boxout, maybe to just trick Shengoon and Shengoon picks the ball up and begins to pass to Thompson. Dramond's base is always open. I'm going to hit him. Dremond is retreating to Amen Thompson in a blur before the ball is even out of Shengoon's hands. I watched it multiple times. He's already heading back to steal the pass before it's out of Schengun's hands and he just intercepts it like a defensive back.

And speaking of finding a way, don't forget the Steph had two baskets in the second half where he just sort of like wriggled his way under the basket. and lots of traffic and just sort of kept wriggling and burrowing and just flip shots off the backwards. It's like, my God, great win for the Warriors. And by the way,

an absolute home run for them to be here. I wrote last year the sort of obit of the Warriors after they got eliminated in the playing tournament when they had now missed the playoffs at that point three of the last previous five years. They had missed the playoffs.

They had big decisions on Clay and all that coming up. And I wrote in there like, the fairy tale end. ending probably already happened. It was the 2022 championship. That might have been the fair. That was probably the fairy tale ending.

Because this is what happens to old championship teams. Even ones they get shots at the top of the draft like the Warriors had, and they missed it with Wiseman. And they tried to trade that pick too and they couldn't find anything great for it. They get older. And the young guys who are coming up are not ready in time for the old guys who are coming out. You get expensive. You got to cut costs.

Everyone else is coming and rising up. And the best case scenario was probably like striking gold on some trade. And if it's a game changer, franchise changer, fine. Is Jimmy Butler that? I don't know if he's quite that, but he's very, very good. But the most likely scenario was, and it's a positive one, that the Warriors are a good team in a stack conference that is able to win a round, maybe win two rounds, play meaningful basketball late in Steph Curry's career, probably never win the title again,

but go out with honor and competition. And this is the A plus best case scenario. They're doing that and they turned Wiggins and a minor draft asset and some other stuff into a great, great player, not quite like Janus or the home, you know, they flirted with the rant. They tried to trade for Annanobi a couple years ago. They flirt with everybody. But a very, I mean, Butler's better than Annanobi, obviously.

It should be obvious. And here they are. And this is for Steph's Twilight, given the tip of. track record of aging championship teams, given that the young, the two timelines thing, which was an accident to begin with, like totally not planned and not intentional, hasn't really yielded much in terms of production from the young guys. One of those two timeline guys is pool and he got punched right off the team. This is just, they may not win another game.

They may not win another round. I'm going to pick Minnesota in the next round. This is a A plus Steph Twilight season, the best they could pop. possibly have hoped for. Yeah, all of that being true, I think the one thing I keep thinking about the last couple of years with Steph, with LeBron, those two in particular, when dynasties crash or when superstars, top 10 all-timer types eventually fade into, I don't want to say irrelevance, but are no longer a postseason threat, right?

It's usually because they themselves have eroded, right? Like, Kobe wasn't nearly the same his last couple years in the league. Bird, Magic, Kareem, anybody you can think of, aside from Michael and Scotty, you know, Michael and Scottie go out at Michael's still looking sort of like peak of his powers and Scotty still had good seasons left with Portland and Houston after that. But Steph is still awesome at 37 and LeBron is still awesome at 40. I put Steph on my first team all-N-B-A and fake ballot. I think I had him on my real ballot all-N-BBA first team.

And LeBron, I think, made second team. I can't remember off the top of my head. but they both were on my ballot. So in past decades of the NBA, literally the entirety of the NBA up until now, this is not possible. And so the difference in this construction of, well, hey, this is just what happens with great teams.

You get to the end. And yeah, it's nice if you could just make the second round. The difference is that Steph and LeBron are both still playing at a level where if you can get the right guys around them, and yes, all the other stuff is true, especially in today's salary cap environment. It's hard to keep a team together.

It's hard to keep building. It's hard to find young talent when you're always drafting lower, you've traded all your picks for help in the immediate term. All of that's true, except that in the case of LeBron and Steph, and possibly the first time in NBA history, you've got guys in their late 30s in LeBron's case 40 who are still viable as key members of a potential contender.

And that part's different, and that part puts a different kind of urgency on their front offices, which we've seen. That's why you go get Jimmy Butler. Luca kind of, you know, I don't want to say, fell on their lap, but he fell on their lap for the Lakers. But it definitely changes the way you calibrate.

It's not just, oh, it would be nice to just be competitive for his last couple of years. No, you've got an imperative to still try to make deep runs and then be a contender. Let's talk about the Rockets because we're now going to enter a very important offseason for them as they are running out of time to have cap flexibility. They, in fact, probably will not have much of any cap room this summer, depending on Van Vleet's $44 million team option. And they need Fred Bamblite. I mean, that was hammered home in this series.

They either need Fred Bamblite or the equivalent of a steady hand like Fred Bambly or else. Or else they're toast on offense. They're already kind of toast. Whatever is below toast. Crumbs, crust, unwanted crust. I don't know. And obviously, the speculation is going to focus on two guys. And one is Kevin Durant.

The price point will be much lower for him than it will be for if and if, if, if, Janice to Tentacompo. And the Janus stuff is going to run wild, right? We know this. We know that Houston's got a bucket of young players and a bucket of draft picks, including Phoenix's pick this year in the lottery, Phoenix's pick in 27,

and two of Phoenix, Dallas, and their own pick, the best two in 2029, plus all their own picks, essentially except for this year's and all the swaps. So that's a lot of stuff. And it's important for the bucks

to get picks from as many different teams as possible if they trade Yanis. So they're betting against not the team Janice is going to, but a little bit that team, but teams across the league like maybe Phoenix, whose future is uncertain. And if I'm Milwaukee, here's the question I'm posing to you.

If I'm Milwaukee, I just watch this series. Here are the seven crown jewel young players that the Rockets have on their team. Shen Goon. I thought, didn't shoot well, but I thought he was up for the moment. Tough, physical.

like, he's a real dude. Amen Thompson. Untouchable. You're just not getting him. Sorry. Yeah. Cam Whitmore didn't play. Reed Shepard didn't play. Jalen Green played and played horribly. Tari Isan and Jabari Smith are good players. I am a Tar Heeson fanboy.

What are they long term is somewhat unknown? Well, Isan is frenetic with the ball, had some bad turnovers last night. He's a great energy player. he can shoot threes, he rebounds the hell out of it. Is he ever going to be steady enough with the ball on his hands to be more than, and this is not a bad outcome for him, but like a really good role player. Javari Smith Jr., same thing. Houston hasn't really developed him as a five or like a ball handling semi-wing.

He's sort of just been lost there as finding, and he's good at what he. I love Javari's Jr. is about the right things. He can make shots. What is he long term? this is all leading me to, if I'm the Bucks or if I'm the Rockets, whatever, can I get this trade done without including Shengun? I'm not including Thompson. Can I get a Yonis trade done without including Shangoon? Are the remaining pieces and picks appealing to me enough as Milwaukee? So I'm talking something like Ysen, Smith, Green, and all the picks. The three Phoenix picks, Houston, Houston, picks, is that enough? Because if I'm Houston, if I'm Milwaukee, I'm looking at, you know, okay, like Jill and Green, well, we just got through like a horrible playoff series, Easton and Smith I just went on, if I don't get Shengun and Thompson, I'm really doing the

trade mostly for the picks, if not entirely for the picks. Is that enough for Janus? And conversely, if I'm Houston, I really want to keep Shingun because I want to have a really good team around Janus when he gets here. And if I don't have him and I don't have Amman Thompson, it's like Jalen Green and Van Vleet and all these dudes who haven't played, like Whitmore and Reed Shepard. I think that's a really interesting conversation. My prediction, and obviously there would be a bidding war for Janus. My prediction is, I bet Houston could thread the, I don't know if they, you know, I actually don't know. Because another wildcard here is if Janus in Milwaukee decide its time, I think Milwaukee will send him.

someplace where he wants to go. And if Houston is on that list, that obviously helps Houston's leverage a little bit. If I had to bet, I don't feel great about it. I would bet Houston could get it done while keeping Shengoon and Thompson just because the picks are so valuable

coming from Phoenix and potentially Dallas and Houston's own picks. If I get seven first round picks and five swaps, whatever it ends up being, and those picks are triangulated around. the league. Maybe I can trade some of those picks to get one of my own

picks back so I can tank properly. And I get some interesting young prospects. It's palatable, but I think that the Shangoon piece to me is the very interesting. It's not like he and Yannis are a great fit offensively. You can nitpick that, but talent is talent. Shangoon is really good. He's on a good contract. I want to keep him if I'm Houston. And I am

definitely keeping him Ed Thompson. So some of this is going to depend on one, does Yannis ask out? Because you're not going to proactively just trade him probably, right? It's the Damian Lillard conundrum where it's like, maybe we should have moved off of him sooner, but you can't trade Damian Lillard unless he has to be traded. Oh, he has to be traded. Cool. All right, now let's move. I think it's the same thing with Milwaukee. Does Janus ask out? If he does, does he have a list? I poked around a little bit a few days ago and the initial thing I got

from one person was just like, you know, some rumblings that it's already just the big cities. It's, you know, one of the LA teams or one of the New York teams or maybe, you know, Miami not big market, but glamour market, mid-sized market. I think, I think they threw Chicago in there. I can't remember if Houston came up. It should. So first is like, where does Janus want to go and do they honor that? Because again, back to Dame, you were not obligated to honor it.

The second piece then is, yeah, so what does the bidding war look like? You can say, well, Amman Thompson's untouchable, Shangoon's untouchable. Well, it depends on what other teams are offering that you might have to be bidding against, right? But you're right. I agree with you. The picks alone, the son's picks alone, should put Houston in the lead because you can do those picks plus some very good promising young players, even if it's not the two untouchables you listed.

I will just say, though, I agree. Amman Thompson, absolutely positively untouchable. I don't think Shingu's untouchable. No, I mean, we'll see. And again, like, it sounds ridiculous. Say Amman Thompson's untouchable for Janus. Well, if he's touchable, that means Shangoon is also touchable because Amman Thompson is a more important trade asset right now than Shengun.

And you just get to the point where as exciting as trading for Janus, who's only 31, I think, is if you got the entire present and future or like 75% of both to get him, you're going to be left with a team that may not be good enough. And you're going to have cost yourself a lot of future assets. Like you have to maintain. And this is a guy who has had injuries in like three of the last four playoffs whose jump shot midranger came along this year. but, you know, that the aging curve of someone without a jump shot is not as great as someone with a great jump shot. I'm just saying, like, you, it's tempting to throw the whole boat at all of these guys when they become available because the names are so exciting. You've got to hold on to what you can hold on to because you have to get them in the door in a place where you are at or close to the inner circle of championship contention. And it's nice to say Janice and Reed Shepherd and Cam Whitmore and Shengoon and whatever is there, like maybe.

it is, maybe it isn't. And by the way, Reed Shepard should not just be glossed over as just as sort of another guy that's been thrown in here. Camp Whitmore's had two seasons to earn Emeo Doka's trust and hasn't. Reed Shepard walked in as a rookie undersized, going to have some defensive challenges on a team that won 52 games. He's still a really high wattage prospect, who was the number three pick. And as much as teams talking to Houston will try to be like, well, you know, how valuable is he? You couldn't play for you guys. he's valuable. He's like a real legit trade asset, as is this Phoenix pick, which, by the way, we don't even know where it's going to be until a week from today when the lottery happens.

And we're going to find out that pick could be three, four, eight, wherever it ends up falling is a big deal. Yeah, if you're the Rockets, if you're any team trading for Janus, to your point, you can't trade away so much that you're now scrambling to try to backfill around him, both for your own sake and the window that you have with him, but also for Janus's sake. Yonis is not going to want to go somewhere where they just gave up all of their best rotation. players or half their starting, you know, three-fourth of their start, three-fifths of their starting lineup, which is why, like, the Nets, I'm still not sure I'm sold in the Nets as a destination for Yannis here in my backyard, because what do you have to trade for him other than they do have a

boatload of picks, including their own? I think they still have at least a couple of those Phoenix picks and some other stuff. I think there's a Philly pick in there somewhere. Like the Nets have a lot of draft capital, but if you gave up, you know, Claxton and Cam Johnson, well, then who is Yonis playing with him? Why does he want to be there? So, like, there is that issue. The other thing that's interesting just to consider here is, like, how do the Bucks value some of what, in Houston's case, they have to offer? Like, how are teams viewing Jalen Green right now?

Because, you know, whatever, number two overall pick a couple years ago. I was listening to Bill and Ryan last night. I didn't, I haven't heard them yet. But, like, his, like, this was disaster. Bill posited, like, Bill posited is Jailen, Green worth a top five pick in this draft. He said, no, I don't think so. I'm like, I was sitting there being like, what?

No, no, not even close. Not even close. Was that, by the way, was that Jalen Green with the towel on his head, you know, toward the end, Jemari Smith was patting somebody on the head with a towel on his head on the bench toward like the last few minutes, like just kind of disconsolate? I think that was Jalen Green. I didn't see it. I think.

I didn't see it. But, you know, yeah. No, I just, I like that he cares. And the kids got a lot of personality and a lot of passion. I don't know about his basketball judgment and his learning curve so far. And, you know, there's results vary depending on who you talk to in the league on things like this. But once you've been in the league for a couple of years, if you haven't quite popped, if it hasn't quite come together, it doesn't mean that it won't later.

Guys bloom at various times. But especially when you're a really high lottery pick and you're expected to have like the huge leap. If it hasn't happened, doubts start to creep in among analytics guys, among scouts about, well, for this guy, it's probably just not going to happen. And so do the Bucks look at him as still a blue chip type prospect who may blossom here? Or do they look at him as like, hmm, great athlete, not a great player? So when I wrote about him last year, he was my most interesting player going into the season in the league. And I don't pick superstars or rookies.

It was a targeted pick. The most common comps to him, and this was among like mild optimists, to tepid optimists for Jell and Green were, well, is he just going to be, not just because you can't say just about guys who have made all-star teams, but is he like, does he top out as like Bradley Biel, Zach Levine? Like a guy who scores a lot of points and doesn't, it's unclear how much they help you win high-level basketball games. And I thought that was an interesting comp. Look, this year was a disappointment. I mean, he was fine in the regular season. It was, it wasn't the leap that I thought would happen. It was a mini, mini, mini, mini leap, but the passing judgment was the same.

defensively I thought he improved a lot and was not out of place in this series. I thought he was pretty good. It's just the passing decision making just isn't there. And he's very young, still very young, and he's super athletic. And finding your way on a team that's trying to win with the demanding coach is not easy. There's also the alternative where you just say, hey, you know, it's easy to trick yourself into being like, well, we were the two seed. We're very, very close. Like we really have to make an all-in move now.

You were the two-seat, but the difference between two. and seven, both in terms of wins and net rating, is not enormous. What you really were was a middle of the pack Western Conference playoff team who happened to win a few more regular season games than expected in a few more regular season games in some of your rivals. And I think you need to look at it from that perspective rather than, well, we're the two seed, two seeds are contenders. You were the two seed and you were very close to seven and not anywhere in the universe

of one. And there's, so the alternative of just doing nothing and standing pat is, I think, think a viable one for them. It's not the one that I expect them to take, though. It's an interesting debate right now for the Rockets. There's already been talking about, oh, the Pistons is going to make it all in move. Like, I think for Detroit, like, they're even earlier, I know they just, both of them just made their playoff debuts with their respective Thompson twins. But like with the Pistons, it's, you already have your guy. Kate is the guy. And the Pistons have all these really interesting young players who have a lot of upside still.

They just broke through. In the Pistons case, and I wrote about this on the, ringer.com last week that Detroit should just chill. Like, you don't need to make any all in moves right now. The Rockets, it's a little bit different. You mentioned there's the cap coming cap issues and a bunch of young guys who all need extensions, but there's also just the fact that

they have these pieces to work with, right? A plethora of interesting young rotation guys, all those picks, the sun's picks. A plethora of pinatas. Would you say have a plethora of pinnia? You don't know you're older than me and you don't know that from the three amigos? Oh my God.

that's one of those movies I saw like exactly once, whenever the hell that was. Probably problematic now. Probably, almost certainly. It might have been problematic in real time. 10-year-old me did not understand why it was potentially a problem. Maybe I haven't seen it since then, so maybe it's, anyway, you have a plethora of something you were going to say.

I don't know, do you think that, let me put it to you, I do think that the Rockets, yes, there's a path there where they could just play it cool and be methodical about this and just, see where this goes and let guys keep ascending. I think there's a case for, you know, pedal to the metal. I think there's a case for if you're the team that Janus, if you're on his list. For sure. Yeah.

For sure. There's an opportunity here. For sure, there's a case. Okay. Less interesting is the future of the Clippers who, as we turned to the other game seven, got embarrassed on the road in Denver by a thousand. I don't know what the final score ended up being. It was a million points.

Lots. Watch the game with my daughter because I was solo with her. We got to watch it live together. She had a lot of questions about a lot of different things. It was great. Is she worried about James Hardin's postseason resume and reputation? She likes James Hardin because of the beard. And I had to explain to her the history of James Hardin in games like this,

which has continued apace. You wrote about it very well a couple of years back. And I've cited it many times in the last couple of days. in fact, had to text it to somebody to note that the large overview of playoff Harden to regular season of Hardin does not do justice to just how bad he's been at critical times in the postseason, which you documented well. You can caveat it all the way around. Like, well, you know, he's had some great game ones and game threes that we just don't remember because they end up losing the series. That's true. Game three in 2019 against the Warriors stands out a 41 point game in a series they end up losing in six.

he had some other great playoff he had a big two big shots in game one of this series which ends up being one of two incredibly regrettable losses for um for uh the clipper i almost said the rockets the clippers we like he was great against dallas in game four clutch shot after clutch shot and then melted down in games five and six like i like i'm sorry that going for 40 when you're down three o to the warriors is like like cool and like potentially clutch if you come back, but you don't. And I'm sorry that game six and game seven are more important than games one and game two.

I'm sorry that the fourth quarter is more important than the first quarter. You can tell me every basket, every possession is equally important. They're all very important. Games can be decided in the first quarter and the second quarter. But when they're close and time is finite, every possession does carry a heavier weight. And the statistics are what they are. And since I wrote that article, Howard Beck, that was 2020. God, Atlanta that I want to go.

20, 21, one of Hardin's great playoff moments, guts it out for the nets against the bucks on one leg and plays like the entirety of game six and game seven and plays as well as possible. Awesome moment. 2022, Philly, Miami, the ball never found me. Okay. 2023, Philly, Boston,

three of 11 in game seven, four of 16 in game 60. The entire team no shows game seven. Last season I went through two of 12 game five. I'm sorry that it's true. And he was, yeah, he had 13 assists. Awesome. Like they were forcing him to pass by as a great passer. The whole team played with such a malaise in that game that I will say this.

Like their future is like not interesting. They're going to have to decide on Hardin. You know, he's got a player option. Do they bring him back? They do not have a lot of maneuverability with this team. We always thought this team was sort of a placeholder, like competitive, fun, Inuit Dome. until they get their picks back, which they don't control until 2031, and can really, or they get

cap space and can lure a free agent the way they did Kauai. And it turned out for a while to be better than that. It was an elite team for half the season once Kauai came back and a 50 win team that, you know, people are going to shit on them, deservedly so for the way they played in game seven. They ended up playing an awesome team in the first round of the playoffs with the best player in the world and lost in game seven. Not a shameful outcome. And Tyloo said after the game,

you know, look, I mean, I'd love to have Hardin and Kauai for a full season. Hardin did a great job carrying the low without Kauai that we got Kauai back. All these signings on the fringes they nailed. And I'm like, cool, I'd love you get to have Hardin and Kauai together for a full season. Like, there's really not much evidence to suggest

that that's ever going to happen. This could end up being the best case scenario for this, what I've called the placeholder Clippers team. Really good season, really fun season, should be lauded. However, I think it's actually okay to quote, overreact to one game and say, this taints the whole thing. This taints my view of Hardin again. This taints my view of Kauai, who was like great early in the series and just okay

the rest of the series. I think it's okay when a game is this important and you get outplayed that badly to say, you know what, that colors my view of your entire season and colors my view of, is this just going to be like what we thought it was, which is a fun, competitive placeholder as they likely bring back hard in and wait for high flexibility down the line. That was an awful, awful loss. And it does color my perception of the Clipper season. Sorry to be the guy overreacting to one game.

It's game seven. And you sucked. From top to bottom, you sucked. I will go back to October when I said on the Real Ones podcast when we were We were doing some, Raja and I were doing some predictions for the season. And I declared, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I basically had written off the clippers entirely. I wasn't sure they were even making the play in tournament. Like I, or maybe they were a play in team.

I had written them off pretty definitively just because, you know, letting Paul George walk proves to be the right smart thing for cap reasons, for competitive reasons, for all kinds of reasons. But having been completely invested in Kauai and an aging James Hardin, and then, oh, I like, I like, like the offseason. You know, Derek Jones Jr. Nice. You know, Batum's coming back. Great. Like, all that's fine. But it just, I didn't see enough upside there, especially given that we never know how many games Kauai is going to play. So, confession, I wrote them off way too soon. I was incredibly wrong about the Clippers. They were fantastic this season. Harden did an incredible job. Like you, I had him as an all-MBA player. I had a third team on my balance. Thirteen all-MBA. It, it came down to the wire, but I ended up putting him on.

So look, October view, I thought they're there an afterthought. April view, they might have, I think a lot of us thought they might be the biggest threat to the thunder in the Western Conference. I pick Nuggets and seven for the record. Yeah. So, but they had a lot, there was a lot of, of Clipper excitement over the last couple of months, the way they played down the stretch of the season, the last six to eight weeks of the season. Their defense was incredible.

and Kauai looked like 2019. Kauai again, all of that. I'm not going to allow Game 7 to taint what happened this season because I think this was, again, by my expectations, I will. You play like that in a decisive playoff game. Sorry.

I think if it affects anything, it's how I look at them for the future, but I already had a kind of bleak look of their future, which is that Kauai's under contract for two more years, but Kauai is about to turn 34 next month. Hardin is turning 36th.

in August. I don't know what he's going to be asking for. Probably a lot. He always asked for a lot. How long are you signing him for? Do you just match him up with Kauai and then just say, this is it and just hope that each of them can play 70% of the games for the next few years? I don't know, but there's nothing really, like, Zubach had a nice season. Norm Palin, these guys had breakthrough seasons, but like there's no other upside on this team. There's no other extension eligible to, by the way, Norm Palau. Yeah. I just, it feels like the placeholder is still just a placeholder.

You could just run it back, be really competitive for as long as these guys stay healthy and on the court, and you'll be a fine, good, respectable team, but you're not a, you know, you're not a threat to anybody. You're not a contender. And I don't, I don't think you can count on, you know, 75 game seasons from Kauai. And we just lauded the Warriors for being a fine, respectable team who won a game seven on the road. the difference is the Warriors haven't given up everything draft-wise and young player-wise to become a fine, respectable team. The Clippers have, and they made the conference finals once.

Kauai was injured in the middle of that playoff run. They've had a nice run. Yesterday it was a disaster. Denver, awesome performance. Aaron Gordon, shout-out, just tough. Every game, never have to worry about him showing up on either end. Christian Brown, ditto. We will talk more about Denver as we move forward.

Greg Popovich. Before we move off the clips. Oh, sorry. Before we move off the clips. Just a thought exercise. We don't have to get into it now, but just something to think about. Is there a pivot here now? Like, would you just, like, is there a market for Kauai?

I just been contemplating this the last couple days. Is there a market for Kauai? Could you offload him? Not re-sign James Harden. You know, just bring down the payroll. Figure out what to do with, you know, Zubotch, Norpal. I know you don't have picks. I'm not saying this is a tank scenario.

I just wonder if there's a pivot coming here where you, you, you, recognize everything that you and I just discussed. You've already gone as far as you're going to go with this team. I built fake Kauai trades for a pod like last summer or something. I don't remember what any of them were. It's not crazy, but teams just don't know if and when he's ever going to play. Greg Popovich retired. We must address that.

I never got to know Greg Popovich. Personally, I've interviewed him a few times here, there, including for a story I wrote on Genoblee years and years ago. So I will not wax poetic about his meaning. to basketball or me or whatever. I will say he's number one and wins of all time. Maybe the greatest coach of all time.

There's a couple people who have an argument for that. And what I will remember of Greg Popovich is how ahead of the curve he and the Spurs were every time the league evolved. They rise as this defense first juggernaut, just impossible to score. And Pop would have been the first one to tell you and was over and over again,

that everything for him, for the franchise, starts and ends with number 21 with Tim Duncan. That's it. They don't win that lottery. This is, he's probably been fired years and years ago. Then the league lifts the hand check out of the league. It kind of bans the hand check. They immediately pivot to spread pick and roll.

Tony Parker unleashed culminating in the beautiful game of 2013 and 2014. Finals appearance championship. Heartbreak to championship. Heartbreak to pop, consoling everyone at dinner the night of Game 6, the Ray Allen game. and in the beginning of next season, making everybody rewatch the games again to prepare for the run of revenge that happened. And that team not only symbolized

sort of how the Spurs had evolved, it symbolized how Pop really believed basketball should be played, which is unselfishly. No one gets to dominate the ball. It's not about you. It can be about you when it's your turn for it to be about you. It's not like you're never going to get to shoot or do cool moves.

Those have to come in the context. of how the game flows. And, you know, they were ahead of the curve on corner threes, along with the spread pick and rolled. Like, that's, I don't know Pop personally. I've heard all the stories. I've talked to all the Pop coaching tree people. That's how I will choose to remember his career.

And look, obviously, Pop had a stroke. My mom had a stroke three and a half years ago. I know how debilitating that is. Their cases are not comparable at all from what I've heard. Pop is doing very, very well. But physically, it's just super taxing. And it's not surprising to anybody. I think that this happened.

I know you have gotten to know Pop more than I have. You had a famous lockout interaction with him in 2011, I believe, on the street. I actually missed that one. Oh, you missed that one. Okay. But you, I just, I yield the floor to you. Yeah. I missed that pop interaction during the lockout.

There was a lockout pop walking down the street while the media was all doing the stakeout. I missed it because I was working for the New York Times at the time and they had sent me to go cover a couple of red socks. games out of the blue because the Red Sox were in some like awful death spiral that September. And so I was away that day. My most memorable pop interaction personally was they had hired Becky Hammond. I got the opportunity to go out, sit down with Becky to do a big feature for Bleach Report at the time. And I walk into the Spurs gym that day at practice and preseason. And pop had just grown out the beard.

And it may have been, he may have done the beard before, but this, I remember this was like a big thing that that, that, that, that sees with, oh, Pop's back with this beard. And I, so I was going to get Popper for 15 minutes or so to talk about hiring Becky Hammond, what she's about, what stuck, you know, really stood out about her and his interactions in the hiring process or when he first met her on that plane right, back from the Olympics, whatever. And so practice breaks or Pop maybe finished a scrum. So I'm walking up to him to go talk to him. And as I said, hello, and I noted the beard. And I said, you know, with that beard, you look even more intimidating than usual or something.

And he just waves his hand, he goes, ah, it's all just stick. I loved that because so much of how people view pop is through the prism of those sometimes tense and testy in-game interviews, which, listen, are really tough on everybody, right? Like, no, no coach ever, very rarely does any coach ever say anything interesting anyway. I don't blame the sideline reporters, many of whom are my friends, but like there's just not a lot to get out of that. and I don't blame coaches who don't want to do it. And could Pop have been a little more graceful at times? Yes. On that note, though, like, as much as he would, like, bust Craig Seger's balls all the time,

like he also, when Seeger came back from his own health issues that one year, and as soon as Pop saw him put his arm around him, man, it's just so great to see you back, and was like, that was the essence of Pop, right? He could be acerbic. He could be crusty. He could be dismissive. He could be condescending. But there was a genuine warmth to the man, too.

and that duality goes for the way he handled us at times in the media. It's the way he handled players. He's the guy who could bark at you and like, you know, get all over Tony Parker, like nearly break Tony Parker and then put his arm around him and say like, no, now go out there and kick some ass. And I love that about him. Like there was a lot of depth to the man. And I am wearing my Popovich Kerr 2020 t-shirt today in honor of Pop.

And, you know, listen, nobody has been more, has been bolder and I think at times braver than pop and speaking his mind about the issues facing our society, our country. I admire all that. It's among the things that I now miss with him being off the sidelines. He doesn't have the podium that he had before, the stage that he had before to sometimes just say, you know what, guys, today I'm not talking about basketball.

Today we need to talk about fill in the blank. There was a moment a couple years back where he was at the garden pregame for Spurs' Nix. something big had happened that day, and I can't remember what. It might have been one of the many Tommy Tuberville things. He loved to rip Tommy Tuberville. And pregame access scrum was winding down with Pop. And there was that awkward silence is sometimes happening. He looked around.

He goes, what? No one's going to ask me about, and whatever it was. No one's going to ask me about, man, you got. He was expecting and hoping New York Media was going to do the New York Media thing and ask him about other stuff floating around, the things that he would normally gravitate to. And that's the thing. When Pop is dismissive of or shuts down a question,

it's usually about mundane perfunctory basketball stuff that either it's a too general of a question, which by the way, quick aside to my aside, I appreciate this about him. I don't always appreciate when coaches put us in a difficult spot where it feels awkward, but it keeps us on our toes. We're supposed to ask precise questions. We should ask more informed, intelligent, precise questions.

And I've had other people in the years I've been a reporter who have done this, And it's like, in the moment it sucks, but it makes you sharper. And that day, he really wanted us to ask about whatever the political thing was. And he was disappointed. And I, like a year or two later, I saw him and I made a crack about it. And I said, what was it about? And I couldn't remember.

Anyway, the totality of pop is awesome. The last thought, and I said this on the Real Ones pod last week, he's as close as we're going to get to a red hourback type figure, who not only encompasses all that the Spurs were about. We were talking about Spurs culture long before heat culture. In fact, in my memory, the Spurs are the first team in the NBA we ever started using the word culture about on a consistent. They made it a cliche before the heat took it to all new cliche heights. And the Spurs would tell you, Pop and RC would tell you, well, that's about Tim Duncan.

None of us do anything. None of us means anything. None of us, we're not winning. We're not considered great or anything. No one's praising us, if not for Duncan. All true. And Duncan encompass a lot of what was Spurs culture. But so did Pop.

And that pop can connect all the way from the mid-90s to now the mid-2020s. Our back to the Celtics, especially with Grosbeck and Stapalioca brought him back. Jerry West with the Lakers for so many decades, that's pretty much end of list, isn't it? And there aren't that many teams where it would matter either, right? You have to have multiple eras when you were great. But to have somebody who embodies all that your franchise is about, all the great things about it, and can instill those values over and over again through multiple generations of players, that's pop. So, like, he, there's all of it. All of it should be praised. All of it should

be recognized. I don't know how ceremonial or, or detailed this job as president of basketball ops, which the title he's held for a long time anyway. I hope he's still around the game. I hope he's still around the spurs. I hope we get to still bump into him and have a snap at us for stupid questions and talk politics. I suspect you will be two other quick notes before we preview the second round. NBC announced over the weekend that they are bringing back round ball and that they're going to broadcast starting lineup introductions for games. Oh, I missed that part. 10 out of 10, no notes.

Welcome to the party, NBC. Awesome news. This episode is brought to by eBay. You guys know that watching basketball is my thing, obviously, but you know what else is? Collecting basketball memorabilia. And that's why you got to love eBay. It's like a never-ending merch store, vintage basketball cards, old school jerseys. one-off fan-made artwork. On eBay, you can always find whatever your thing is. From our collectibles

and vintage cars to design or fashion, it's all there. Millions of finds, each with a story. eBay, things people love. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to watch basketball, think about basketball, talk about basketball, but even dream jobs have the stuff that nobody dreamed about, the busy work that gets in the way of the actual work. Service Now's AI specialist tackle that work. Request handled. Case is closed, the whole thing done. So you have more time for the work you actually want to do. For me, that's breaking down SGA film whenever I want,

and then talking about it, and do a microphone. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Okay, rapid fire second round previews, starting with Minnesota Golden State, Jimmy Butler, back for vengeance against a Minnesota team where like nobody is left from when he was there. Draymond Green versus Rudy Gobert, round 17. chokeholds, making fun of Rudy Gaubert crying, all of that. Warriors Wolves, the 6-7 matchup in the second round.

We're going to talk about it and make predictions. What's your first thought, Warriors Wolves? By the way, only the third time in NBA history that there's been a 6 versus 7 matchup. Not upsets, by the way. You touched on it earlier. Not really upsets. Like it is on paper, but it kind of isn't. Wolves defense, not quite the same as the Rockets, but just as good as the Rockets.

So I don't know the Warriors are going to have any easier time scoring now than they did in the first round. And the Wolf's offense is way better, especially in the half quarter, just in general. They've got a lot more pop. I mean, Anthony Edwards is better than Jalen Green and Julius Randall at this point is better than Alperin Shengoon. Tia's. I mean, as I start to think about who they have to reckon with, who you have to account for on the Warriors' defensive side of the court, is that Kavana Luni starting on Randall so that Draymond messes with Gobert? Is it, is it Draymond on Randall? Randall can score inside and out. He's a much more, I think, confident and physical score than Shangoon. He's a better passer, I think, at this stage, too. Maybe that's close. Shingu is a very good passer.

Disagree. No, Shangu is a very good pass. Let me take that back. Shanku is a very good passer. Randall has had teams play through him where he was effective in being that inflection point where it's coming through me and I'm deciding whether the passer score

or sometimes deciding to shoot too often. But he has played that role at a more confident level than Shingu. Not a better passer, but has used it to better effect in the past. But he had playoff experience. Draymond versus Gobert Draman already had a really weird first round Not weird Just but like one of those

series where You know at least two or three times in the series It was like is he going to get kicked out So all of these things When he kicks Ethan And he smacks Van Vleet Are all Like you could spin them as accidents

Like he's doing basketball stuff And then his limbs go where they go I said this with Bill last week and now I've figured out what it reminds me of. There's a scene in The Simpsons where Bart and Lisa are fighting. And they both say, Lisa says, I'm just going to be kicking in my room. And if, like, Bart, I'm just going to be kicking my feet constantly. And if Bart happens to walk in to my legs, that's on him.

And Bart's like, well, I'm just going to be, I think he's punching. I don't know what he's doing. I'm just going to be punching my arms out like this. And if you happen to walk into it, well, that's on you. that's how Draymond is in these entanglements where a normal person, most players, would sense a collision coming and try to be like recoil back a little bit with your arms or like not follow through the way you normally would. He's just like, I'm doing what I'm doing.

Get out of the way. My follow through was coming. We're going to have a collision. Get ready. It's happening. Okay. You inadvertently nailed the first question of that I is on my mind for this series, which is who are the Warriors starting?

And can they start this small ball lineup that they've been starting off and on against the rockets of Curry, healed, Pajemski, Butler Green against an enormous Minnesota team and an enormous Minnesota starting five. And it boils down to this. Jimmy Butler and Jermon Green can only guard two of Anthony Edwards, Julius Randall, and Rudy Gobert. Now, you could find ways around that while keeping the same lineup. Maybe Brandon Pajemski is fine guarding Anthony Edwards.

I don't really think so, but maybe he is. Maybe Brandon Bajemski can guard Rudy Gaubert and you can toggle the matchups that way. Teams have put smalls on Gobert plenty. He just did destroy the Lakers in an elimination game doing that. I think more likely the Warriors changed the starting five again. That could mean upsizing. It could mean Gary Payton the second starts for Buddy Healed because Gary Payton the second has guarded Ant quite a bit.

And then you could have Butler on Randall, which I think is perfectly fine. untenable and Draymond on Gobert or flip them out how you want. I think Moody could start for the same reason. He's guarded Ant quite a bit. He could guard Gobert incredibly if you want to semi-credibly at least, if you want to finagle the matchups. Either way, I think both of those guys, particularly Moody, have a bigger role to play in this series.

But every time you do that, you're sacrificing some shooting against the defense that is big and fast and mobile. So that's where I'm sort of. starting in the series is how do they match up, just who do they start and how do they match up? You mentioned, you know, the Warriors offense, and we know how they're going to attack. They're going to try to find Gobert,

get them out in space, move the ball around. And that's why I mentioned Butler earlier. I think they're going to need a big Butler series to have a chance to beat Minnesota, a better Butler, a more dominant, physically imposing Butler, a Butler that's going to be like, Mike Conno, you can't be on the floor. I'm going to beat the hell out of you.

Dante DiVincenzo, you're bigger than Mike Conley. I'm going to beat the hell out of you. Nikol Alexander Walker, you're even bigger and longer than DeVincenzo. I'm going to beat the hell out of you. I'm going to get to the line. I'm going to play bully ball. And if they don't see that, Jimmy, I think offense is going to be not tough for them, but just it may be tough.

And, you know, the other upside about starting small is who does Julius Randall guard if the, if the Warriors start small? Because Gobert is probably going to bar Draymond. And, well, does Julius Randall afterguard Jimmy Butler. On the other side of the floor, you know, again, the matchups,

like how much physically larger is Minnesota going to be than the Warriors, depending on who plays where, you know, and they're going to hunt Curry. And the Warriors have switched Curry on to Ant quite a bit in previous matchups. Wiggins, by the way, was the guy who guarded Ant most of all for them, and he's obviously now gone.

And Steph has stood up well. against Ant in a lot of those matchups. Ant really hasn't developed the back to the basket game that I thought he would at this point. And I think, you know, Randall Randall going at Curry is interesting to me. Like Randall, whoever Curry is guarding pick and rolls. Because that's a guy who can hurt you on switches.

Like to your point about Randall earlier, he can hurt you on Switches. I just think the matchups, this is going to be a game one where I sort of sit back and soak up the matchups, because I think everything is going to flow kind of from how teams attack are going to flow from there. And to just pull back for a second, that game one that we are so eager to see is tomorrow night. It's like, you know, 30 something hours from now as you and I record this.

And the Warriors, I imagine, either spent the night in Houston, we'll have a brief team meeting and then hop the plane to Minneapolis or might have maybe they went straight there. I don't know. But they just had to play a grueling, physical, emotionally, physically, spiritually taxing seven-game series, and they're an older team. And now, like, this is the worst-case scenario for the Warriors as a team advancing. Obviously, worst-case scenario is losing. But if you're going to advance, the last thing you needed, especially when you were up 3-1 and could have closed out and gotten some rest, you're an older team.

Like, there is, there's, I'm sure, plenty of data out there about this. But, like, the Timberwolves are young and spry and just sitting in wait and have had more time to rest since the first round. It's going to be a factor, and these are every other day schedules now. Games one through four are all every other day, through five. And then if they're still going, there's a like three, four day gap between five and six. So there's not a lot of time to recover. Jimmy Butler had that bad hip back, whatever it was from the hard landing in the Rocket

series. Steph's still dealing with the hand, the finger, whatever. I do wonder how they will hold up overall, whether this series, all of the other matchups and strategy and everything else aside, how much this just comes down to whether the Warriors, the older core, have enough left against the Young Wolves team. Rapid fire, a few other things to watch.

Minnesota can be turnover prone and the Warriors have forced a lot of turnovers as soon as acquiring Butler. Got to take care of the ball. Warriors take the second most threes in the NBA. Minnesota's defense allows the seventh fewest. That's a battleground there. How many threes can the Warriors get up?

Jada McDaniels is going to guard Steph quite a bit and is done fairly well against him. That's a really interesting matchup. Nas Reid with smaller defenders on him, something I'm watching. And just flag it. Just flag this. Because of matchups and injuries and other things, Trace Jackson Davis has a lot of experience playing against the Timberwolves. If you go back and watch games from the last two years,

he's been on the floor for a lot of it. Wouldn't shock me if he gets dusted off a little bit in the series. Predictions. I'll go first, Howard Beck. Wolves in six. Wolves and six. Again, I'm picking a road team closeout. I get it.

I should pick wolves in five. Wolves and five feels disrespectful to the Warriors. Seven feels too long. Wolves and six for some of the reasons you mentioned in terms of fatigue. Wolves move on to the conference finals. Against all logic, I'm going to say wolves in seven. Not all logic. I think it's just out of an abundance of respect for the warriors and who they are and what we just saw again.

And that if they're not completely fat-out exhausted by that series, I think they're going to give the wolves everything they can handle. So I'll say wolves in seven. I think there's a slight chance the Warriors pull this out. Oh, no, there is. Warriors could absolutely win the series. I'd be tempted to pick them, but it just feels foolish. Well, look, the wolves prove something to me against the Lakers, which is that they, staved off the haywire factor,

which I thought was going to work against them. They were steady. Ant was very steady making decisions when they put two on the ball. And, you know, the Warriors have their own haywire factor too that Jimmy has really helped them tamp down with the crazy turnovers and all of that.

It's going to be, it should be a great series. I can't wait. Speaking of, I can't wait. Oklahoma City, Denver. This is the basketball fans second round series. This is so much fun. Oklahoma City hasn't played in what feels like a month and talk about a battle of a fresh team versus a team that just went through a slug fest.

This is one. We got the MVP front runners going against each other. We have the Russell Westbrook vengeance tour, although there's no vengeance factor in this one really like there was against Clippers. By the way, Russ, look, I'm not a Russ guy. I've been hard on Russ. Sensational in that series. Sensational. And you want to say, oh, he's giving him his flowers.

now. Yeah, you know why? Because he averaged 14 points a game and made 42% of his threes and was the force of nature on the boards. Last year, I believe he was 13 of 50 from the field in the playoffs and was completely on tilt against the Mavericks. So yeah, he was way better. He was sensational

in this series and the intentional technical foul for hanging on the rim when he teed himself up in almost perfect concert with the referee making the tee up sign was glorious. One of my favorite postseason moment of all time.

And now he gets to go to Oklahoma City where he'll always be beloved. There's no tension, anything there. He is a hero in Oklahoma City. And the Thunder, okay, here we go. You get the best player in the world. You get a team that won the championship two years ago.

This is the round you lost in last year. You won a million zillion games. I can't wait for this series. It starts tonight, so we're going to be a little quick. And this is this, and we barely got to see it during the regular season when they matched up. And we really barely got to see it with Aaron Gordon on the fork.

He got injured in the middle at the start of one of the games and then missed the next one. This is the Hartnstein-Holmgren series. This is why you got this guy in free agency to emulate what Minnesota did against Yolkich, which has put Hartnstein on Yolkich and say, we're going to shade toward you in the post. We're going to send some help, but we're going to try not to double you. and some of that help is going to come from the seven-foot shop locker who's on Aaron Gordon or sometimes Christian Brown or sometimes Russell Westbrook or sometimes one of many people that are going to be left open for the Denver Nuggets.

And he's going to be the one waiting for you at the rim. Now they won't play that way the whole game and the Holmgren only minutes are super interesting and the Hartnstein only minutes are super interesting. I'm not sure there should be any big jail in William's only minutes, although he's guarded Yolk some too. to me, that's the first thing I'm going to be watching is Oklahoma City, how they guard Yokic, how much they can shrink the floor. I mean, there is no better team.

Giving the most voracious, fastest, longest, meanest defense in the NBA, a team that is short on shooting to the point that if they take out one of Murray, Michael Porter Jr., or Yokic, it feels like their shooting collapses into a sinkhole. They can't even take out two of them at once now. They've rendered that impossible. You give that defense a team that's got some non-shooters that they can help off of and recover back to. It feels like the toughest postseason test of Nicola Yokach's career,

one where he's going to have to make due in tight spaces, where he's going to have to find cutters in traffic, and those cutters are going to have to finish in traffic. I just can't wait to see this defense in. particularly the two-headed big man monster against the best player in the world. You said the exact thing that I had in my notes here right under my capitalized Thunder hyphen nuggets. First bullet point, this is why you go get Isaiah Hartnstein. And it's interesting, too, right?

The Celtics are the defending champs, but the last Western Conference team to win the championship, of course, was the year before was Denver. And so in a lot of ways, like, I just love this, you know, thematically, this is the way the NBA is supposed to go, right? you're the scrappy young thunder team that you know busts through 68 win season everybody's talking about you as a finals favorite Shay's the you know MVP favorite or Shea versus Yokets for MVP all the other wonderful things being being said and then lobbed your way

but you got to go through the raining power and in the west that is that is Denver as far as I'm concerned wait isn't it Dallas still is that Dallas still the reigning power is defending Western Conference champions how are they doing? Who are they playing in the next round. I don't remember a Dallas team doing anything recently. This is why you go at Hartnstein, and this is, I love the fact that this is who you have to go through. Like,

this is the way it needed to be. I was also just checking this because the Nuggets, you know, to your point, Russ was great and I too have been, you know, critical of him for much of his career for various things. I love that moment. I love the hanging on the rim. It was the most intentional, obvious just F you to everybody, including the clippers who, you know, traded him away. Benched him, traded him away. And I love anybody, and I'll say the same for Hardin, somebody else who I've sometimes been critical of, we both have. I love when a guy gets to that backstretch of their career and can kind of, you can't

rewrite your history, but you can put a attack on a new chapter that puts you in a different light, you contribute in a different way. You settle into some, whether it's a mentor role or whether it's the same. six-man role, whatever. And it's what you do with it. That's our last memory of you, right? It's the opposite of Dwight Howard who, like, blew us all away the first half of his career and the second half of his career just made us all wonder why we ever, you know, praised him in the first place. I love what Russ is done for Denver. We'll see what more he has in the next round. But the Nuggets, that rotation, first round, they played six players 25 plus minutes and some of them very, very far

beyond 25, plus Peyton Watson at 13 minutes a game. That's it. That was the Nuggets rotation. The Thunder had seven guys playing 20 or more minutes in the first round on average, and two others in double digits, Isaiah Joe and Andrew, Aaron Wiggins, the other Wiggins. The Thunder, their depth, you know, depth does not necessarily matter as much in the playoffs, we know, but they can throw waves of very functional, very good players at you. And if Shay or J-Dub or anybody else needs a breather, they've got guys they can go to and not worry about falling off a cliff, and the Nuggets do not.

And I know we talk about shortening rotations of the playoffs, and you really only need seven or eight guys. The Nuggets barely have the seven or eight guys, and the Thunder have 12. Imagine being Jamal Murray. Lou Dort's going to start on him. Going to get a little Kaysman Wallace, that's no fun. Then Caruso.

Then Caruso comes in. Caruso's going to guard everybody. Caruso is going to guard Aaron Gordon. He's guarded Yokach before. like on purpose and in mixed up schemes just to switch it up. I don't know how much, if ever, we'll see that. And he's going to guard Murray.

And, you know, the Memphis series, if you can remember it, it's ancient history. It's clear that they've saved Caruso for the play. I mean, it was clear during the regular season. They were load managing Caruso for the playoffs. And he has emerged as, you know, if there's a six starter slash closer in place of one of the big guys, it's going to be him.

And he was awesome against Memphis. The matchups are going to be Dort on Muriel. Murray, SGA will guard Michael Porter Jr. J. Dub will guard Christian Brown and then the big guys on the big guys. That's the starting matchups. That's that's tough. And by the way, Jamal Murray, a lot of the Denver angst has been justifiably about the bench, which is thin.

A lot of it also was they've got two guys making max or maxish money who are not producing at max or max just levels. and like every team structure falls away if max guys don't perform at max levels. Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. gutting out a shoulder injury. Jamal Murray in the playoffs, 23 points a game, six rebounds, six assists, five rebounds, 48% shooting, 40% on threes. That's on par shooting efficiency-wise with his championship run. Now the points per game are down by three because his uses is down, but he's playing

awesome again. And if he's playing awesome, Denver has a chance against anybody because they have the best guy. And so Denver has a chance. in this series if Jamal Murray keeps playing like that. I just can't wait to see how Denver's offense responds to this challenge. I think something to watch is how closely Hardinstein and Yokic's minutes are matched. Like Yolkich plays almost the whole game. Hartnstein won't.

The other minutes are going to be really interesting because when Holmgren guards Yokic, they're just going to go right to the post every single time. And they should. Because Holmgren as big and long as he is, he'll got to block every. right now and then he can't he cannot sustain against yokitch in the post and then you say okay we'll just help and like okay christian brown beat us with three is erin gordon you shot 45% for me three we're still going to dare you it's still hard for shed holingren and it's still hard um for the thunder to wit i was watching film of yokitch's post-ups against the thunder this year and i was like man this is

a lot of post-ups and i looked it up for the season he averaged 11 post-ups per hundred possessions the Thunder, that went up to 15 and a half. So he posted up a lot and he posted up Homegren a lot. And maybe you have to have big Jailen Williams in there when Hardinstein is out. And if you do, I think that's a win for the Nuggets. Thunder offense, let's switch sides of the floor. Nuggets have matched up with Christian Brown on Shea. Good luck.

That's so fun. Yolkich on Hartenstein. Aaron Gordon on Jalen Williams. Michael Porter Jr. on Chet Holmgren. That's a pivot point in this series. Michael Porter Jr. on Chet Holmgren. Put him in pick and roll, hunt him down. I didn't think the Clippers hunted Michael Porter Jr. enough,

particularly since he's playing with one shoulder. I think the Thunder will. How much can Holmgren punish him as a shooter? How much punish him as a shooter, driver, whatever? And does Holmgren make enough shots than on pick and pops, they start sending a third guy rotating at him. Because if that happens, the series really begins to lean, or at least that little battle really begins to lean toward Oklahoma City.

I think this is a really fascinating matchup. And the defensive matchups, by the way, obviously get a lot friendlier for the nuggets when Russ comes in for Michael Porter, Jr. You can slide everybody over, or Peyton Watson comes in and you can slide everybody over. I just think the shooting reaches a point where it's asking so much of Yokic to create with just a swarm of dudes around him. A couple other notes. The free throw differential needs to be huge for Denver.

Oklahoma City fouls a ton and they're okay with that because they get all the benefits of it. They're number one in turnovers, force, etc. And they also don't get to the line at offense. Denver is the opposite. They don't foul and they get to the line a lot. I'm talking like plus eight to ten attempts per game for Denver if they want to win this series.

And obviously, you know, Denver needs to protect, protect the ball. They're average at that. Oklahoma City is incredible at it. I can't wait for this tonight. Do you want to, you have any thoughts and then we can do our predictions? Nothing else major. Just, you know, there's a lot of a, I don't know what the nuggets get from game to game from, you know, are we going to see, you know, we start to see playoff Jamal Murray

again. Is he, is he back to stay? How much are they getting from him? Because without that, I just don't think they have a shot. And then, you know, Russ, Russ, give us and Russ taketh away. And you just never know, especially when they're, you know, they're obviously going to be playing off of him because everybody does. He's going to make those shots or not.

What do the nuggets get from Watson, Pickett, Strother, who just, you know, random dudes off the bench. I'm just, I'm curious about all of, I'm curious about everything that is not Nicola Yogich, essentially, on the Nuggett side of this. One last thing I forgot to, by the way, Pickett Strother, obviously, you got essentially nothing in the last round, who will give them something out of this general group.

Watson gave them stuff, and they needed every bit of it. Interesting thing about the Thunder against Yokic and the Murray-Yokic pick and rule, they have been loathe to switch much less so than almost any team of film I've watched against the Nuggets. We saw the Clippers would do that late switch when Yokch would pop out. They were scared enough of his three-pointer to switch on him, and then he'd go into the post. They'd do it late, but they would do it. The Thunder almost never do that.

they trust Hartenstein and Holmgren to like contain and get back to Yokic and they are fine with Yokic shooting semi open, semi-contested however you want to characterize them, threes, which means another pivot point in this series, another must lean Denver's way for them to win the series is Yokic is going to have to shoot well from three and he's going to have to get a lot of momentum on pump, drive, and then create in tight spaces on that exact play. If they're not going to switch and they're not going to send a third guy rotating to him. They're going to make him create like that, and you can do it. I am picking Thunder and 6.

Wow. In 6. Out of an abundance of... I have too much respect for Denver. Yeah. They don't lose in short series when Yokic is healthy, and the team around him, he's always healthy. When Murray and Porter have been healthy, they do not lose in short series.

So I have too much respect for Yokic. I wanted to go 5, and I'm like, you know what? Six. I'll go 6 again. I'm going 7. Thunder and 7. It is maybe too much. And maybe I'm being prisoner of the moment with the way the Nuggets closed out the clips.

It's an abundance of respect for Yokic and for the Nuggets and who they are, what they've done. And maybe I have just like a little bit. I don't want to say I have doubts about the Thunder. I picked them to make the finals. I picked them win the championship, in fact, all the way back in October. But they still are a team that's had like a couple of playoffs series under their belt. And none of them against this team and this superstar, this all-time. So, Thunder should win the series, yes.

I'm saying seven out of respect for Denver and Yokic. Nick Celtics begins earlier tonight, so it would be a little bit quicker. Celtics getting healthier, it sounds like, on the Drew Holiday front, the Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum fronts, wrist and knee, respectively, the other way around, actually. And the Knicks just gutted out a tough one against the Pistons, highlighted by a crazy Gell and Brunson cross over and do a three to put them ahead and cap a big, big rally.

Everybody just incredible Gail and Bruns and stuff. This has obviously been a nightmare matchup for the Knicks. The Celtics won all four games. They scored 130 points for 100 possessions against the Knicks defense, completely gashed the Knicks. And they set the blueprint right away. I mean, they didn't set it. Other people have done it for defending the Knicks,

which is they're going to put a wing on Carl Anthony Towns. it will usually be one of the Jays, and they're going to put Christop's Porzengis on Josh Hart and have him be a roamer. And as we saw with the Pistons, the Knicks have sort of sometimes they hit it, sometimes they don't, sometimes they find counters,

sometimes they don't. It just sort of takes them out of the rhythm and flow that they just want to be in. Drew Holiday has generally guarded Jailen Brunson. That's no fun when Drew Holiday is guarding you. They obviously have a plethora to use your word of guys who can switch on to, to anybody on the Knicks.

And one sort of indication of how committed the Celtics are to putting a wing on towns and taking away his pick and pop game. When they go too big against the Knicks, when they put like, let's say, Horford, Cornett, Horford Prozingis, and the Knicks just have towns, they will sometimes put neither big on towns, even in that situation. They'll put one on heart and one on bridges or Ananobe and just say, hey, deal with this. How about these mind games? We're still not putting a wing on you.

And one of the counters for this scheme is to use Josh Hart as a screener. It's like you're going to put your centers on Josh Hart. We're going to have to use Josh Hart as a screener. Kat can space. That makes a lot of sense. Josh Hart set an enormous amount of screens against the Celtics in the four games this season. According to Second Spectrum, two of his top four ball screen frequency games or against the Celtics, four of his top 19. that feels like the Celtics directing the Knicks offense in places where it doesn't necessarily want to go but can still work.

And on the other end, the Celtics offense is awesome. And we could talk about how the Knicks might defend it. I think the Knicks are tough. Maybe a hair underrated. They look a little bit scattered right now. And this is not a good team to be scattered against. No. I went to all the home games that the Knicks played against the Pistons in the first round.

And, you know, look, some of this is just, you know, credit to Detroit, but some of this is, I think, just some concerns about the next two. Like the Pistons could have absolutely won that series and with a little more polish might have. And aside from game one. Or with Josh Hart getting called for the foul that he committed against Tim Hardaway, Jr. Yeah. They get blown off the court in the fourth quarter of game one with that 21-0 run.

Like, okay, that was legit. and that was just you, you know, getting your butts handed to you. But every other game was either a Pistons win or a very close loss. And I think the losses, the other three losses were decided by a total of six points. The Pistons gave them everything they could handle, and the Pistons are not the Celtics. I think the Knicks, there are times they feel very over-dependent on Jalen Brunson. And there's a lot of ISO and a lot of, our buddy Dan Devine had a great breakdown last week prior to game six about how often, how slow their paces and how often they're getting down to like the last ticks of the shot clock.

Seth Part now weighed in on that too on Blue Sky. They were discussing this. That it's, you know, I don't know, is that a Tibbs thing? Is that a Brunson thing? Is that a Tibbs and Brunson thing together? I don't know who to pin that on exactly. But the Knicks end up with, I think, a lot of harder shots and a lot of Brunson late shot clock attempts. And there's not a lot of dynamism to that offense.

When they got Mikhail Bridges last summer and they gave up a shit time to get him, I thought, you know, the bridges that we saw in Phoenix could, you know, run the offense at times was, you know, sure, he was the third wheel, but he was a very effective third wheel and with the ball in his hands. And they came to Brooklyn. And, you know, I never thought he was a true number one. But that's what they had to use him as for that first couple of months when they got him. And he did so very respectfully, not so much the second season with him. I just think that bridges as a as another conduit for the offense, as somebody who could run the second unit perhaps, and also just take some of the pressure off Jalen Brunson when they're out there together, I thought would have been the best use of him, and they don't play through him as much as I thought they would.

And they don't, you know, and Kat disappears at times, partially because the offense goes away from him, partially because Kat is Kat and he's a very frustrating postseason player throughout his career. And then there's this. I just think that given all, as reliant as they are on Jalen Brunson, going up against a team that can throw Drew Holiday, Derek White, Jalen Brown,

Jason Tatum, Al Horford on switches, whatever. The Celtics are always going to have a body or bodies in front of Jalen Brunson. This is as difficult a task as he's going to have to navigate, and they're all bigger than him. Almost all of them are bigger than him as well. I just, this is a very, very bad matchup for the Knicks as seen in the regular season.

As you note, they got swept. Well, look, we can talk all about how Boston matches up defensively and this and that. If they score 130 points per 100 possessions, it doesn't matter. And so the Knicks defense has to be a lot better than they were against Boston in the regular season. We know what Boston is going to do. We know what they're going to do. They're going to hunt Brunson relentlessly. If there's one thing Boston is never guilty of, it's letting an opposing star who's maybe a little bit of a weak spot on defense off the hook.

They're going to go at him and they're going to go at Kat. And it's cool you have these three interchangeable huge wings in between them. they're all really good. We're not going to go at them. We're going to go at the weak spots. They're going to run cat ragged. They're going to try to. Cat's going to start guarding Porzingis.

And let's take it creative. Let's take it creative. Not really a word you'd associate with a Tom Thidivode defense, but there's a world in which they can move Cat around a little bit. It's tempting to say, could he go guard Drew Holiday? The problem with that is Jalen Brunson has to guard someone. And they don't want it to be Derek White. They definitely don't want it to be one of the Jays.

It's kind of got to be Drew Holiday, too. And so that limits reflects. ability. So they're going to run Cat in a bunch of Porzingis picking pops. They're going to run him through screens on the way to the pick and pop so he's even further behind the play. They know that they can fake him the wrong way by kind of faking toward a screen or flipping the screen. He's prone to guessing wrong. And look, Porzingis hasn't shot the three well in the playoffs. If he starts hitting enough of them, then you've got to send that third

rotator flying at him and then you're scrambling and then you're in big, big trouble. It's just, it's been a tough matchup for the Knicks defensively. The Celtics know exactly where they want to go at all times. I will say the one benefit of cat guarding Porzingis is, and this goes to your point about Brunson and stubbornness and slowness. Both of these teams play slow. I think the Knicks have a greater urgency to play a little bit faster in this series, both to maximize heart as a passer and a distributor and just a one-man crazy fast break. But also, if Katz guarding Porzingis, that means Porzingis is going to be stuck on

cat now and then after stops. They have to attack. Anytime the center is on cat, abort the entire offensive plan, whatever it is, and go right into the Brunson cat pick and roll, or the Bridges cat pick and roll, an empty side on the list of, whatever. Use that against the Celtics, because that is what you got Kat for. And when you are gifted that, as you often were against. the pistons for various reasons.

You must use it. This is not the pistons. You cannot fritter away these possessions by doing other useless stuff here and there and then asking Brunson to create with five on the shot clock. Use it when you have it. I don't know. I mean, what else you want to say? There's a lot of interesting little battles.

I mean, Boston takes the most threes. The Knicks don't give up a lot of threes. The Knicks also don't take threes. And I think another fundamental problem that they're facing is just math. Boston's offense is so good. The Knicks are 27th and three point rate. It's just going to be hard to beat Boston four times when you're, they're going to have two games in seven where they shoot 45% from three or whatever it is.

And they just bury you. And you're going to have one game where you don't take enough threes and you're cold and you shoot five for 26 and you're just math out of the game. Assuming good health for the Celtics, I'm going to go Celtics in five. I have the same. I have the same. The Knicks will get a game there at some point. I think their best hope is that Brown is still dinged up or holiday still dinged up or both of them or whatever.

I just like I don't think there's a world where both teams at full strength. The Knicks have a chance to really extend this thing. I mean, it's been, you know, we're both in the, you're in the New York area. I'm in New York itself and I have a lot of friends who are Knicks fans. And I check, do my pulse check with them occasionally. It's been a very angsty season for Knicks fans in general. Like this, you know, like seeing Hartenstein. thrive elsewhere

and Devencenzo for that matter ideally I think they would have never let those two guys go they couldn't do anything about it with Hartnstein and then they needed Devencenzo with Randall to get to get Kat and they got better offensively, slipped a little defensively they don't quite have the same spirit or the same grit

that was so much fun about last year's Knicks team in the playoffs and Nick's fans have felt very indivile when they ran out of players when they ran out of players at the end of the playoffs but that was part of the charm that team is like guys kept going down and they just kept like fighting their asses off. Charm loses.

That's cool. Charms cute. Charms cute until you're playing four, you have four guys left and you lose. Yeah, fair. Okay, we both have Celtics and five. This is going to be a chalk, chalk, chalk prediction round, I think, for everybody. Quick reaction to Indiana Cleveland game one. The Pacers storm into the series.

Good at basketball, the Indiana Pacers. Win game one on the road. shoot the lights out from three. Darius Garland's still out. I picked Cavs in five. That's not going great. That prediction is enough to a flying start. I thought Garland would be ready.

For game one, I was wrong. He obviously changes the entire series in multiple ways. It's harder to hide Tyrese Halliburton defensively. Now the non-Donovan Mitchell minutes have Darius Garland. Now Cavs are kind of searching for an offensive identity in those minutes. If there is one thing. that you want to take and digest and talk about from game one. What is it?

I mean, I have mine. I can go first, but what did you notice? What did you find interesting? The theme of the calf season has been largely, I mean, one of the themes, a prominent one, was, hey, look at how great it's been to see Donovan Mitchell giving up more control of the offense and empowering Darius Garland. And Kenny Atkinson's got this team moving in a different way. The offense was just much more dynamic.

and this, you know, this is how they have this massive breakthrough in big leap in the wind total, have the number one seed, all about so much of it about Donovan Mitchell being able to kind of recalibrate. And in this really important game without Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell takes 30 shots and makes 13. Barkley made the point on the broadcast right after, which I didn't, the numbers had it hit me until he said it that Mitchell and Ty Jerome combined for 50. 50 shots. 5 shots.

Ty Jerome is not playing around us. there, Howard. Tidro was out there to score. Okay? He's out there to do his floater where he's like on the way down and leaning back. It looks like it's going to have no chance. And it goes in Ty Jerome is out there to score. He's out there to flex. He's out there to shoot logo threes. He is not messing around. The Orlando Magic and their caps a case are watching right now, Ty Jerome, baby. I support Ty Jerome being Ty Jerome. Let Ty be tied. That's fine. Maybe not to the tune of 20 attempts. No, 20 is not enough. If Darius Garland's out, I got to get minimum 25 shots from Ty Jerome. I looked this up.

So as a cavalier, Donovan Mitchell had, has nine games counting yesterdays where he took 30 or more field goal attempts. Nine games. Nine times. Nine times. Okay, you're baiting me, four and five. Three and six. Okay, I was close. And the two of those wins were in overtime.

One of those was Donovan Mitchell's 71 point game in January of 23 against Chicago. you've got to believe that if Darius Garland is healthy-ish and functioning and playing it on the court, that the offense balances out a little bit, and we don't get the Stonovan Mitchell Overload, which can sink the calves just as it sometimes sank the jazz. And I don't want to boil this down to simply, like, oh, you know, with Garland, they're great, and without Garland, they're toast. But, like, you know, this was an ensemble built around four stars or potential stars. and a really, really important one is missing right now.

I don't know if you may have more intel than I do. I don't know what the odds of seeing him back for game two and then what the rest of the series looks like, but it seems like a lot hinges on that now. Speaking of the, you said jazz, just said the word jazz. We should mention Will Hardy got a contract extension this morning. And you know what? Good on the jazz.

This is how you treat a young coach, a rising young coach, who pretty much everyone in the league agrees is at least a good coach, potentially a great one. And you put him through the ringer, no pun intended, of crap teams and bogus injuries to the point that the league finally finds you and rebuild and half tank and then full tank and half tank, oh, we're going to pull the rug out from under your team halfway through, halfway through again.

And this year we're just not even going to have a rug. The rug is gone. You're going to be crap from the beginning. We're going to handcuff you in every possible way. This is what you do. You give them years. you give them security and you give them money. Will Hardy, you earn that money, you're a good coach.

Congratulations. Cavs, Pacers. I don't know what the hell I was going to say. First of all, I ain't worried. I'm worried about my Cavs in five prediction, but I ain't worried about the Cavs yet. The one thing I'm going to watch is this, and we saw this with the Bucks too against the Pacers.

The Cavs switched a lot yesterday on defense. Now, they've really, to Kenny Atkins's credit, been a pretty diverse defensive team this year. They've done more switching than you would expect, given their personnel. They've experimented with zones. They've done a lot of stuff. It's not like they're doing something that's completely out of pocket for them. And so, thus, you're going to struggle. It's something you have no practice it.

They switched on 36 ball screens. That's tied for the third most in any game this year. Indiana scored 1.3 points per possession and about 1.2 points per possession directly out of those plays. That's a lot. It's too much. the reason they are switching and the reason the buck switched, despite the bucks not having personnel that could switch and stay in front of Tyrese Halliborne,

is that these teams, these defenses have so much respect for Halliburton and such fear of Indiana's offense, putting them in a blender, where it's just catch and shoot three, catch and shoot three, that they are willing to switch and live with bad matchups, live with Pascal Siakum posting up Sam Merrill or Donovan. Mitchell. Live with Jared Allen, who started the game on Pascal Seaccom and defended him for the most part, which I thought was interesting. Live with Jared Allen on Tyrese Halliburton. And you want to blow by him and get a floater, fine. Pascal Seaccom, you take fadeaway jumpers in the post,

Miles Turner, you take fadeaway jumpers in the post. Guess what? Those are twos. They're not threes. And some of those twos are going to be easy. They're going to be wide open layups. They're going to be dunks, whatever. They're not threes. And I think both the bucks and now the calves are over worrying about the Pacers offense and switching too much. And I expect the Cavs to keep switching. I think they'll switch a little bit less. And you saw in game one, like, you can't switch and still give up catch and shoot threes. And that happened too many times in game one. A lot of that is fix. So what you'll see is they'll switch and a guard will be on Siakum or Turner in the post. And someone will come from the wing, a bigger defender and rescue those guys.

They call it a scram switch and say you get out, go on the perimeter, I'll take your guy. And they were a train wreck on those scram switches in game one. They totally were confused. They weren't communicating well. And so there'd be a mismatch in the post. Neesmith hit a backbreaking three with like four and a half minutes to go in the game. when Hunter tried to scram Donovan Mitchell out of the post on Miles Turner, I think. And Donovan Mitchell was tangled up and could not get out and go guard Neesmith.

And Neesmith was just wide open and shot a three and made it. That happened a bunch of times. Eventually, Tyrese Halliburton, if you let him dance with Jared Allen over and over again, he's going to have a game where he makes five step back threes. And we don't do it doesn't make five step back threes. He's going to draw so much defense that it's going to be a dunk. Pascal Seacom got an and one in the post on Donovan Mitchell. That's a three-point play.

Your whole switching scheme is designed to not give up threes. You're giving up threes anyway. I just think teams like, can I see Miles Turner make some semi-contested pick-and-pop threes before I start contorting my entire defense to stop that shot from happening? Siakum made a pick-and-pop three over, I believe, a Mobley close-out early in the game. It was a good close-out. It was a contested three. He made it.

Cool. Make it again four more times. You can switch. They switch 36 ball screens. Can that number be 25? That number goes to 25 because I do think switching and holding them to twos has some value. Can it go to 25? So you still switch a lot and you clean up the scrams and you clean up like I thought

they overhelped and down low a few times and had open threes. Clean that up. I think there's a better formula there and maybe they can switch just as much and clean up the scrams and the other mistakes and it works just as well. I would just dial it back a little. Like, make Miles Turner make some post-up baskets. Now, to his credit, he's gotten much better at that, particularly against small players. That's what I'm watching in particular, in addition, rather, to Garland's health.

I'm not worried about the cats yet. You know what? I am worried about their shirts. The diff? The diff is what you're going with on the shirts? The dip is so stupid. For those who don't know, the diff is something they put on their scoreboard. It stands for the difference, and it's literally the difference in the game.

So if the score is 29, 25, it'll say Cleveland, 29, Indiana, 25. The diff plus four. Like, thanks. Really needed the diff column. It was stupid enough on the scoreboard. Now it's your shirt. The diff versus yes, sirs, is the greatest possible gap in shirt cleverness in the NBA playoffs ever. And just like the Celtics deserve to start games down 5-0 when they wear their

stupid black jerseys that nobody likes. The Cavs deserve to start yesterday's game down 5-0 for the stupid Diff shirt, and the basketball gods punished them with a lush. Light those shirts on fire were something else for Game 2. The Diff is on their broadcasts too, by the way. That's what I said. That's what I mean. It's on TV.

Thanks, I'm watching the game. I can do 29 minus 25. I don't need the Diff to do it for me. It used to be just on their scoreboard, I believe. Like you were in the arena. The Humongatron? That's what they call the scoreboard. The Humongot.

Poor John Michael and Playbubla has to be like, oh, they just showed the replay on that Humongotron because these corporate mandates that he call it the humongatron and not the Jumbotron. Oh, my God. The yes, sirs is killing me a little bit, though, Zach. Like, just like the soft C has to take on the S sound in this, the SERS with Pace.

I guess it's Paceurs, but like, yes, sir, you're taking it a little too far. It doesn't look good on a shirt to have the C there where the first thing you think is like, I disagree. I disagree. And Howard, I think respectfully, I'm more fashionable than you. I think I'm a pretty, I think I have a good eye for fashion. All right.

There's a contest no one needs. Nobody needs that. We covered a lot of ground. Thank you for soldiering on the YouTube live. I don't know how that went. I haven't looked in the chat. Maybe everyone's being fun. I have no idea.

I can't want that to ask. I'm too old to multitass. Sorry, chat people. But it was fun. And we will do this every other Monday on the Zach Lowe show. And so that means two Mondays for now. ready. Be ready, Howard Beck. And thank you for your time. We now have podcast listeners. We'll get to listen to Zach Cherry from Severance. Talk about my favorite show in his NBA fandom. Howard Beck,

thank you, sir. Thank you, Zach. This episode is brought to you by Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video generation. Build for today's creative process, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast. Because the Masks aren't getting smaller. And the timelines? Ooh, yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life.

Learn more at Adobe.com slash Firefly. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever get hit with a plan out of nowhere and need something ASAP? Maybe it's an impromptu basketball game, a last minute trip with the crew, spontaneous date. That's when Prime's same-day delivery comes in. Get whatever you need.

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Anytime somebody on a show or in a movie that I love also outs themselves as an NBA fan, I'm like a shark. I jump on it. I beg them. I cajole them. I ask them to come on the podcast. We have Zach Cherry who plays Dylan, G on Severance.

And I am not cool and I am not hip and I am always way behind on anything that is cool and hip. Except for this show. I was on the road in Los Angeles, up late, insomnia, nothing to do in my hotel room. It's like, this concept sounds cool. Let me watch the first episode. I've been in from the beginning. It's been awesome the whole way through.

And Zach Cherry as Dylan has been one of the shining stars of the show. it is a joy to see you and meet you. Nice to meet you, by the way. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, I can confirm you were an early adopter because I remember you reached out like really early during season one and said you were watching, which was very cool, very exciting for me. Needless to say, anyone who has not watched Severance and would like to watch Severance, it's 2025. Spoilers may occur in the next 25 minutes of conversation. You have been forewarned. You live in Bushwick in Brooklyn with your wife. I suspect that in the blink, what feels like a blink of an eye for you, life went from

no one ever recognizes me to I cannot leave my apartment without being recognized anymore and walk my dog in Bushwick and go to Prospect Park. Like how dramatic has it been? Yeah, it's been somewhere in between both of those where like even before the show, people would recognize me from occasional things, from Spider-Man, I get a lot. people tell me to do a flip, which is a thing I say in the Spider-Man movie. But yeah, it's been wild, especially this season. And we do have a little dog who's very, very anxious.

So she has had to get used to meeting a lot of new people. Is it been fun for you? Yeah, it's been amazing. It's crazy how much people have, you know, like kind of connected to the show. And especially the second season, it's been like a real whirlwind. How do you handle the lag time between shooting and airing with people in your life probably asking you lots and lots of questions that you cannot answer? I either lie to them and say I don't know the answer,

or I maybe genuinely don't know the answer. But yeah, just take it one day at a time, get busy with other stuff. It's like, you know, it's not, our show definitely did take a really long time. There were reasons for that with this season. we were interrupted by the strikes and that like put a big pause on it. But it's not that unusual now to kind of, you know, shows used to come out every year. And now they don't. It's kind of just like how things work these days.

But this is a particularly sort of mystery box show. And I honestly, I have not had a mystery box show in my life since the X-Files. That's how I like I miss lost completely. And I know there's been a lot of parallels. I forgot how exciting. it is to be like, what the fuck is going on here? And like, it's a sensation. It's a sensation I really love.

My wife, who does not watch the show because it's just too dark and suspenseful for her. She does not like the sensation of not knowing what's going on. And I'm like, that's the point. And that's the thrill of it. It's so much fun. Yeah, it is. And it's, I think it's been cool watching it, like, build. You know, when the show first came out, it kind of came out in a vacuum.

And we didn't really know, like, what people would think of it. and it's kind of a weird show that's hard to describe. And it has been really fun watching, you know, like the various online communities spring up that are kind of dedicated to unpacking everything that's going on in the show. And regularly, they will catch things that I had not noticed, even though I'm part of it. Now, we are going to talk about the NBA shortly,

but I have to ask one more severance question before we go that way, and then I'm going to annoy you with other severance questions. I'm getting him. How do you, how does the script? rollout happen? Like, do you get them episode by episode? Like, I don't know how the shooting schedule works. Do you get the whole season's worth of scripts at once? Like, how much do you know in advance? I mean, I've read that you only like to read your lines. And so you don't know, like, what else is going on in the show? I don't know how true that is. But I'm just like,

how fast does this go script by script by script? So I do, I do read the whole script. That's from the Severance podcast, I do a bit on where they have me like make predictions. But because I've read the scripts, obviously I can't make real predictions. So we kind of fudge it a little bit and pretend I don't really know what's going on. But it worked a little different in season one and season two. Season one, I think we had all the scripts when we started. So we like, you know, we knew the whole season. In season two, we were kind of like walked through the arc of the season for our characters.

And then we would get the scripts as they finished. We were kind of like shooting as we. as we went for season two. And we shoot it a little different, like we shoot it almost more like a movie where we block shoot, where we'll kind of shoot a bunch of scenes in each location across multiple episodes.

So we don't quite shoot it in order just because it is such a big, complicated show. I think that's just like the easiest way to do it. Okay. We're going to pivot to the NBA before I get annoying. Explain to people, you followed me on what is now X. I will always call it Twitter.

And I was like, ooh, I got a little like verified follower. Okay, that's interesting. Oh, look at this. It's a guy on my favorite show. But you have a,

you have a very modern approach to NBA fandom apparently. Please explain. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I have been, you know, reading and listening to you for a long time.

And I'm, oh, there's my dog. Yeah. Oh, no, she's going to. I can't hear it.

It doesn't matter. Okay, great. All right. Yeah. So, you know, I don't have like, necessarily a team that's my team.

Although I will say now that I've been in New York for 10, 12 years, I have become more and more of a Knicks and Nets fan because it's like, especially in the Nix, it's really fun being in New York when the Knicks are good and when the Nix are winning and people are excited and like everyone's talking about, did you catch the game last night? That is a lot of fun. But yeah, I've kind of always just watched the league as a whole. I have players that I love.

LeBron's always been one of my guys. who I kind of follow in love. He, I grew up in New Jersey and we had this, like, high school basketball tournament in my hometown in Trenton. And LeBron played in it a couple years in a row. So I, like, got to see him in high school. So I've kind of always, you know, been rooting for him.

And, but yeah, I don't, I don't have like a team. That's my diehard NBA team. Okay. Who are your other, who are your other guys? Like, who are the guys that you have a soft spot for? Stars, non-stars. Like, who just strikes your fancy? I am a huge Brunson fan right now.

I love Ant. I love The Honest. I mean, he's basically just all the best players. I'm like a little kid who's just like, that guy's good. Lamello Ball. I mean, if you like Lamelo Ball, then you're really like a little kid. All the little kids love lamello ball. I do like lamello, but I'll be honest.

I haven't watched as many lamello games as I could have. I can imagine a regular person with a regular job that's not in the NBA. is like I'm not deep diving on the lamello ball, Musa Diabate pick and roll combination. Yeah, I'm not there yet. Is Stiller going to hook you up at one of these Knicks games? I mean,

like, when is this going to happen for? I've been to a couple with him. I missed. I missed it. Yeah, I've been to a couple with him. I went to,

during season one, we went to a playoff game together, and that was crazy. Which game? It was Nick's heat, I think, and it was maybe game, might have been game one, game two.

I do remember the Knicks lost, and I remember thinking, well, I might not be invited back because I'm now, I'm now, you know, bad, bad vibes for that. But then we also went to a game early this season. And it was, I think it was

Nick's Wolves, which was very exciting, but I think Cat wasn't playing maybe. so it was, you know, a little bit of the, you know, excitement was missing, but it was awesome. It's awesome to go. Sitting courtside is crazy. It's like it honestly feels like there's so much happening that it's kind of hard to process for me still. But yeah, it was very cool going with him to a couple games.

I'm guessing a few players while sitting courtside have come and talked to Ben and also to you. Have any talked, have any, like, noted you specifically from like, Oh, man, I love Dylan on Severance. What's the best player interaction on the courtside games? Yeah. So I actually, I also have been to, so for some context, my wife and I are now massive New York Liberty fans. There you go.

And so we've gotten to know some of the people there. So we got to go to a couple of Nets games this year and sit courtside. And during one of those games, RJ Barrett came over. And he was like, I don't know exactly what he's doing, but he was sort of like, oh, no. I'm severed. I'm severed. And I think he was kind of doing his impression of the elevator transition, like his eyes, you know, going from in any to outy. So that was pretty cool. And Garrett Temple said hi at that point, too. So yeah, that has been wild. It's been very, very, very cool.

And I heard that Cat is a big fan, but I haven't got to meet him yet. Oh, well, that's going to happen. Stiller is like, he's intense during these games. He is so locked in. Like, I actually remember during season one, we were still shooting during the playoffs. And we were getting towards the end of the season. So it was like some intense scenes. And he would have his phone right next to his director's monitor. And he would have the camera feed up on the monitor. And he would have the Knicks game up on his phone and kind of be going back and forth.

Because he's so plugged into what's happening with the Knicks. You saw he and Salome were both in Detroit for at least one of the Pizzles. I was like, God damn. They're like, they're really all in on this. Yeah, he is. He's like a superman. And that has made me more of a Knicks fan because it's like, partially I'm just like, I just want them to win so he has a good day.

It's like my daughter and her swim coach. Anyway, you've mentioned also that you like to, when you're in a new city and there's an NBA game, you like to, you like to sort of experiment, like let's check out this arena. Has there been any arena that you're like, man, I like the feel of this place or any game that ended up just randomly like this, this Hornets game was super fun. Yeah, I was in Toronto for work for like a month at one point and went to a couple Raptors games and that was, I loved the vibe there. This year, some friends and I, we went to, we went to Vegas to watch the tournament

semis, which was, which was fun. It was like exciting to be there. I will say, though, it was missing. What I love about being in the new, the other arenas is like the home crowd and, like, experiencing that. And so for the semis, because it was like a neutral site, it was, it was missing that kind of like intensity that you can get in certain places. But yeah, I think I think the Raptors was like my favorite kind of road experience that I've had.

That's what Toronto people are going to, like, you're going to be aggregated and you're going to be like an honorary Canadian. Well, hey, I will say, you know, I don't have like a team, but Vince Carter when he was on the Raptors was one of my guys growing up. I used to have Raptors shirts and stuff. Like, they were one of my kind of, like, honorary teams. I always have a soft spot for the Raptors. Well, they brought back the Purple Dinosaurs this year on their throwback jerseys.

Yeah, I love it. They looked awesome. Okay, it's time for me to nerd out. Unless you have other NBA commentary you want to get you, any hot takes, any MVP commentary? Like, you just get this to the place to get it out. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. It's not exactly a hot take, but I was talking to my friends about this, who I have to say, my friends, this is the most excited for anything I've done they've ever been. All my basketball watching friends, my high school buddies are like freaking out. I told them I was coming on the show and they can't believe it. So this is major credit for me. Okay.

So the reverse is also true. People are like, Zach, Dylan, he's like the most funny part of Severance. Oh my God. So yes, this is, that's awesome to hear. Perfect synergy for us. And I was taught, first of all, we were trying to figure out, I claim this is my idea, they don't believe it was my idea, they think that I must have heard this somewhere. But I have a pitch that I think would be fun, which is I think, and obviously this will

never happen, but it's, you know, you're on the ringer, you're in the world of sports pitches that aren't based in reality. I would love if when NBA teams defeat a team in the playoffs, they got to select one player to add to their roster and just collect players as the playoffs go on. I think that would be incredible. This is insane because last week,

the very last episode I did, I said that the Cavs beat the Heat so badly in their sweep. Like they beat it by 51 game, that they should actually get to pick a member of the Heat to join their team. Like if you beat a team that badly, and I said maybe the Heat can protect

like Bam out of bio and Tyler Hero like it's an expansion draft. This is incredible. I like it. Because I think it should only be for that run of the playoffs. You don't get to keep them for the next season, but it would be so fun to like, I was just thinking I was watching Warriors Rockets last night. And I was like, if the Warriors could add a men Thompson to like get in there with Dremont and just wreak havoc, it would be incredible.

So I'm putting that theory out there. It's possible I heard it somewhere. my friends don't believe that I made it up. I don't remember hearing it somewhere else. So I'm sure your listeners will have heard if it's out there somewhere. They will know where it comes from. I have not heard it. So I think you get the credit is what I'm going to say.

I'll try and popularize it even if I didn't come up with it. So let's get some momentum going. Get Adam Silver on the phone. If you have his number, we can maybe get me in a meeting with him. And I'll kind of pitch this. When he comes on my podcast, and this will happen. I'm going to ask this question

and just see what he says because now I have to. Okay, severance. I love severance. I love everything about severance. I actually re-watched the entire first season, which I've never done before

in preparation for season two. I've never done that for any show. The long gap had something to do with it. Definitely. And it really helped. I had forgotten, like, the whole PD subplot, I had kind of forgotten.

Okay, so I watched and listened to a bunch of your interviews. You have said that if you could take one prop from the set, it would be the John Totoro watermelon head, which is one of the spookiest things I've ever seen. Obviously, you don't have that prop. What do you have from the set? Have you actually taken anything from the set?

You know, I think I maybe have, I think I have one of the caricature portraits somewhere that are sitting on my cubicle, like the, it's like me surfing and stuff. I think I have one of those somewhere, but I don't have a ton of stuff. We have a couple of like little swag things they've given us. They gave us all, after season one, they gave us all crystal heads like Adam has on his desk of ourselves. So I have that somewhere, which is pretty cool. But I haven't taken home much of the set. By the way, you mentioned Adam, Adam Scott, if you're listening.

It's now famously known that Ben Stiller had to really fight for Adam Scott to get that role. Just Adam Scott, if you ever hear this, A plus performance. I mean, it's a plus for all of you guys. The acting is incredible, but, like, good for Ben Stiller for fighting for it, and Adam Scott has paid it off in spades. Okay. By the way, Tremel Tillman, who plays Milchick in that interview with you, said he would take the Keir Egan statue from the last episode, which is a great one.

And I did not know until listening to that interview that Ben Stiller was operating that statue. That's right. But it is his – whose voice is it? Do we know? So on the day, I believe it was the actor whose face Keir is modeled off. I believe he was there doing the voice. And Ben just had a little, yeah, it was like a remote control, basically, that he could kind of make it move around.

But I wasn't there that day. So I don't know. I didn't see it. That statue scene kicks off what I would describe and have described to my friends as the most insane 25 minutes of television I've ever seen, and somehow all of it works. The whole thing you're watching, you're like, there's a marching band and like,

what in the world is even happening here? And yet it works spectacularly. Okay, I'm going to ask you a couple, how did you keep a straight face questions? How did you keep a straight face, and particularly an angry face, a building tension face, when Milchick is bobbing and weaving and dancing

right behind your chair during the, the famous music dance experience from season one. And Milchick's dancing. Tramel Tillman's dancing, obviously legendary at this point. You just got to sit there and look angry as his face is like behind your shoulders and he's doing all. Like that, how'd you do that? I would be laughing the whole time.

Yeah. Well, you know, honestly, it's funny because it was kind of everyone else got to be like having fun and dancing. And I had to be like in my own little world. So I was kind of angry. I was like everyone else is having fun. Everyone is like, you know, that's like become. this kind of iconic scene from the show, everyone gets to show up their little moves.

And I just have to sit there stewing. So it kind of worked. I kind of was feeling a little left out. So I just used that. Okay. Dylan G. gets the waffle party, the waffle party where you go into the Egan house and you go in the Egan bed and the tempers

masked as goats and whatever else they are, are doing salacious dances in front of you. again, how did, what does that set actually like? And how in the hell do you not, I mean, either freak out or just start laughing at the absurdity of this? So that, you know, I don't remember exactly where it was, but we shot that like in some kind of museum somewhere. And it was like, it was our last day there. And it was like, it had to be about 1 a.m. or something because we, we, you know, literally we couldn't shoot there anymore. so we had to finish everything that day. And there was a man upstairs just making hundreds of waffles.

They brought in like a special like waffle chef. So it was I was so out of it that like, you know, I was just disconnected from reality. There was there was, I was on another planet during that scene. Okay. You are famous for, and everybody has asked you about your many and delightful uses of the F word. on the show. Just, I mean, the timing, the variety, the setups. There's all, there's entire, like, videos devoted to, like, the top 20 Dylan F-bombs and top 20 Dylan lines. My personal favorite line that you've ever said on the show, admittedly, it is a popular choice. But the deadpan nature in which

you say it is so perfect. I'm wondering if, can you guess what the line is or, and then I'm going to ask you about it? Oh, I don't know. I know this season, um, when I first hear about my Audi and I ask if he's dumb is a popular is a popular one. What's the exact line on that way? I think I just say he dumb, you know? But no, I don't know.

Season one, the egg bar is coveted as fuck. Ah, yes. How many takes of that is there before you get, like the timing of that and you're dead, the best part is you're eating and you're just dead serious. It's quick. It's serious. It's dead ban. Yeah, the egg bar is coveted as fuck.

Like, you don't know that the egg bar is this coveted? Yeah. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of... We shoot a lot of takes of most scenes, so there are probably a lot of takes of that. But I do think the character, he's obviously, you know, he's a funny character, but he is almost always dead serious.

Like, he's not joking. He's... I think that's kind of what's funny about him is he is so dead serious about all of his opinions. But yes, that was a fun day. fun fun little fact about that is at the time i was vegan i was eating vegan so they they made these vegan um deviled eggs for me and they were not good i was like i mean they looked amazing and they were they were totally fine but you know they were about to look and i was like oh i kind

of wish you guys had asked me because i would have just eaten how would have just eaten deviled eggs rather than this kind of, you know, fancy scientific creation. But, yeah, those were not real eggs. Another, how many takes are there seen from the most recent season? Your iny gets to meet your Audi's wife in a few scenes. And they're very moving scenes. They're very interesting how you play the Iny and the Audi Dylan differently. and how you approach her in those scenes.

And in the climactic scene of that exchange, you propose to her and you're almost, it's as the show is setting up that the inies and the outies are really different people and can have negative feelings toward each other and jealousy toward each other. And you propose to Gretchen and she cries and leaves because this is an incredibly bizarre situation. And no, she cannot actually marry a second version of Dylan. And as she's walking out, you shriek this gutteral shriek of granchin! And it's like high pitch, much higher than you've ever talked on the show.

And the combination of the, it's one of those moments where the way you say it and the fact that it's a higher pitch thing and throatier is so moving. It just hits you in the gut. How many screams are there? Were you like aiming for that kind of toll? I'm always so curious, like, how do moments like that happen? Sure. Because it's perfect. Yeah, you know, we definitely did that a few times.

You know, it was, it was a thing where it's, it's such a strange moment for the character where, you know, he's kind, the inies we always talk about our kind of childlike. And so, you know, he was like naive enough to believe that he might, that proposing was like a good decision. And this is like his first, it's kind of his first romance. You know, he hasn't experienced anything like this before. So I think, I think in that moment, it is this really kind of like childish scream of frustration and despair and like, you know, all this stuff is kind of crashing down on him. So we definitely, we definitely did it a few times and tried it a few different ways. But no, I don't know that I was like specifically, uh, specifically, uh,

it just sort of that's what that's what came out you know it was just sort of this like childlike uh explosion of emotion kind of well you nailed it um season one you are the any responsible for triggering the overtime contingency you are the one who has to stay in and pull a whole bunch of levers and you're in this what looks like a very uncomfortable stretch because the levers are on opposite sides from each other And in the show, you're in that pose for 30 minutes because that's how long, or how long the inies are on the outside world, the other three ines. How long are you actually in that pose continuously while shooting? And was it as uncomfortable as it looked?

Yeah, it was pretty uncomfortable. I was never in it for more than a few minutes at a time. Just, you know, we would, you know, shoot some takes and then move on. But at the same time, it took us all day to shoot that sequence. So I was in and out of it for like 14 hours. The benefit I had was they actually built that set based on the length, the width of my arms. So they like one day like measured me. Your wingspaned like an NBA player, a draft prospect.

They got my. I actually didn't get the stats. So I don't know what my wingspan is. I'm sure it's embarrassingly low. but they um so it was like just at the edge of where i could reach but to make it feel more real i was kind of like yanking on it so it was it was very uncomfortable it was it was a tough day and i was sore the next day for sure hey look like if i have to maintain a catcher squat for more than 15 seconds i'm like i don't understand how anybody does this like yeah yeah forget posing like that okay

one more nerd out question you mentioned on uh some pot i was listening to somebody asked you again a classic question what have you learned from watching and working with these iconic veteran stars like patricia rick and christopher walkin and john tauturo specifically and you mentioned like being in the trailer next to john tauturo and all the voice warm-up exercises that he does uh to get ready for a scene and then the whoever he was interviewing i don't remember moved on i'm curious about what what other things you've picked up or do does it acting not really work this way. Like, I'm picturing, we all pick,

when fans love shows, we all picture two things that are probably wrong. Number one, all of you are best friends off the set and hang out all the time forever and ever and ever. And number two, you're all just like during breaks being like, hey, Patricia Arquette, I have this question for you about true romance

or this like acting technique that I'm too, and that probably doesn't happen either. But are there any other like tricks you, not tricks, but techniques you've learned from them? Well, I will say on our show, I genuinely do love everyone. John, I love, you know, John and I have gotten quite close. We, we, I actually got him into into the New York Liberty. He's like now a Liberty guy. Obviously, he famously is a big Knicks fan, but we went to a playoff game together with

Britt who plays Helly on the show and like had an incredible amount of fun. And I, you know, I'm, there is some of that where people are asking questions. Like, Adam is actually, he, he is like, he loves to ask people questions about, you know, work and stuff. I tend to kind of sit and watch. And I did learn a ton from John. Like he did do those local warmups. He also, he would tell me kind of fun little tricks of like he'd be like, you know, if they're shooting a scene and you're kind of only going to be there in the background and you want to go home, just like suggest that your character goes to the bathroom or something. Like little tricks like that just about like saving your time and saving your energy. But also

I think from him something that I really just his he's such a great presence on set and he makes everyone feel so comfortable and welcome and he's so like encouraging that just just like feeling that kind of like confidence from him totally allowed me to feel more comfortable you know just in the work at all because he's a guy who I've watched my whole life you know like so then you start to do scenes with him and you start to be like, oh, hey, we're doing this together and he kind of believes in you. Just that adds so much to, you know, your confidence and lets you kind of like do things that you maybe wouldn't have been able to do without that. By the way, I would say the most popular Dillon line is, I think your adults are looking sick

as fuck and my Audi definitely does muscle shows. That might be the number one most popular Dillon line. that was that was a fun that was john and i they kind of just let us like riff in the background because i think britt is like doing some she's up to one of her schemes in season one and we're kind of just like blabbering about our muscles but yeah that was that was a fun day um all right before you go are you still doing stuff at ucb i know you've done a lot of ucb how often are you still doing that yeah i still do it occasionally they're you know they didn't have a space in new york for a while during covid their their theaters closed but now they're back up they're in the east village and i do the

Ask Cat occasionally on Friday nights. Then I do another show on Sunday nights called Rat Scraps, which is like a bunch of the people who used to do Askat. We do similar show on Sunday nights at this theater on the Lower East Side called Caviat. But yeah, when I'm in town and not working, I try and do those shows as often as I can. Anything else coming up that you would like to promote in the world of Zach Cherry, other than season three of severance, which I assume is coming out in six months. I assume you guys have gotten right to it, and my appetite will be satirate.

immediately. Well, I don't have a timeline on that. But yes, certainly, certainly everyone be ready over season three because I'm excited to get to it. Zach, any other, any last NBA thoughts? We're going to have the MVP announced this week. Nick Celtics starts tonight in Boston.

Any other playoff thoughts or anything you want to get out before I let you go? I mean, I guess is it just going to be, are we headed down an inevitable path of Thunder Celtics? Can anyone beat the Celtics? I think the Cavs would have a chance. I mean, that was my preseason finals pick. That was the chalk preseason finals pick.

The Cavs, the Darius Garland thing, you know, he was out again in game one. And Indiana won that game last night in rousing fashion. I think the Cavs could put up a good fight against the Celtics. I think the Knicks are in trouble. I just made my prediction for that series with Howard Beck. It was not the Knicks. But, you know, look. And the Thunder.

Thunder, they get to play the best player in the world now. We'll see how that goes. But yeah, I have seen nothing to take me off that path yet. Okay. Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. So we'll see. It'll be fun to see it play out. Zach Cherry, this has been a real pleasure.

You're just tremendous on severance. Now I'm going to look for everything else you do. Thanks for lending us some of your time. You are now a busy and coveted as-fuck guest on these kind of shows. Let's be in touch and I'll see you soon, hopefully. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Truly. This was a blast. What a treat, Zach Cherry was.

Severance is amazing. He's amazing. Congratulations to him on his success. And that's it for today's Zach Lowe's show. We'll be back Thursday, talking everything that happens in the NBA playoffs between now and then and looking ahead to the first real weekend of the second round. Things are heating up. The best teams are alive and battling each other. It's going to be fun. We'll be here on the Zach Lowe show. Must be 21 and over and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 and over in president DC. Gambling problem called 1-800 gambler or visit fandual.com slash RG.

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