The Zach Lowe Show - The Playoffs Are Here! Game 1 Takeaways With Howard Beck and Series Breakdowns With Steve Jones Jr.

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

What up, Beck? Zach and Howard dive into the major story lines from the playoff frenzy (00:59), including the game of the weekend in Denver (23:29). Then, Steve Jones Jr. joins the show for some in-depth insights on what to look for in Wolves-Lakers (57:29), Warriors-Rockets (1:13:41), Bucks-Pacers (1:20:06), and more! 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 presented by Fandul. America's number one sportsbook is the best place to bet on the NBA because not only does Fandul have all your favorite player props with now. You can even check out stats and recent performance trends right in the app before you make your pictures. Download the Fandul's Sportsbook app today to get in on the action. The ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit RG dash help.com to learn more about the numerous resources and help lines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 or over in president's select states. gambling problem called 1-800 gambler or visit

RG-G-Help.com. This episode is brought to you by Mickelob 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 the 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, prizes, and more. Micaholeu Ultra, Superior is worth playing for Enter now at micklob ultra.com slash courtside. Mickelope Ultra Courtside, 25 to 26, no purchase necessary. Open U.S. Residence 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2025, and ends on June 30th, 226, multiple entry periods.

See official rules at michelope ultra.com slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. All right, it's the playoffs coming up on the Zach Lowe show. We are going to hit every series. MVP's of the first weekend. Most disappointing players, things to watch in game two. Of all the most interesting series, we've got Howard Beck and Steve Jones Jr. to help us break everything down coming up on the Zach Lowe show. Welcome to the Zach Lowe show. It's Monday at 9.30 in the morning. Eight games down. The annual first weekend of the playoffs is over. And really, we only had two wild games.

Well, two and a half, I would say. Nick's Pistons got wild in the fourth quarter. Warriors Rockets was ugly, bruising, kind of wild. Steph went bananas. Jim Butler went bananas. The Houston offense went completely off the rails. And then Clippers Nuggets had enough wildness for an entire playoff series in one game. Russell Westbrook had enough wildness in both directions. And just like you could not even script a better Russ giveeth. Russ taketh away.

Russ threw the ball off James Hardin's ass at the last possession of regulation for some reason and then made up for it with offense rebounds. I don't know what's going on. Just a crazy weekend. Sunday was a chalk, chalk, chalk, boring day until Warriors Rockets. We have the Lakers pummeled in game one. Lots of stuff to talk about.

And it is time to say the three most anticipated words in niche basketball podcasting as we will do every other Monday at the very least. What up, Beck? What's happening, Zach? Three most anticipated words separated by one anticipated comma. That was a great intro. Did you notice Bob Myers at one point on the call?

I didn't watch most of that game, Clippers Nuggets because I was, as you know, at the garden. Big mistake, by the way. Huge tactical error by me on the first day of way too many games. Bob Myers at one point said something to the effect of, well, you know, that's Russell Westbrook. You know, he's going to do some great things for you. And then, you know, that's his, and then he just like trailed off into something else or kind of repeated it. Like he wanted to say like best of Russ, worst of Russ, worst of Russ, best of times worse, something. and he couldn't bring himself to say that he's going to giveeth and taketh away.

He dropped the taketh away thing because I think he felt like he was going to be, I don't know, mean-spirited or get aggregated or something. One of the things I enjoy about Bob Myers when he calls Nuggets games is just unabashed love of Yokic. He cannot hide, and we've talked about this off camera. He cannot hide how much he loves Yolkich, who was sensational in game one with 29, 12, and 9. Hardin was sensational for the Clippers, 32. and 11, only two turnovers. 20 turnovers cost the Clippers the game.

Kauai had seven of them. We will talk about that and whether the clippers indeed went too far away from the hardened Zubots pick and roll that was tearing the nuggets apart for the first half of the game. But we're going to go a big picture to start with. I gave you a homework assignment. Your homework assignment that I also completed because I am a diplomatic host was to pick an MVP of the first weekend, a most disappointing player or play or franchise of the first weekend and a coach of the first weekend.

So I will let you start. And we'll go through our runners up because we're going to hit a lot of stuff. MVP of the first weekend, I will let you get first pick, Howard Beck. Who is it? A lot of ways to go. But I went with Jimmy Butler. Playoff. Playoff Jimmy, who last week we saw play in Jimmy.

I don't know if we've ever had. I mean, there's been play in Jimmy before. But playoff Jimmy last night, the 25.7 rebound, six assists. just five steals, not only all that and got to the line six times made four. He was a plus 14, second only to Pajemski among the Warriors, who was a plus 17 for the game. But there was that moment. The first quarter, they're just getting battered on the boards. It looks like the size of the Rockets is going to bother them.

And, you know, they're just looking a little bit on their heels. Steph's missed his first couple of threes at that point, I think. So they opened the second with Steph on the bench and Jimmy leads them on a 14. to five run, Steph comes back and they're up 32, 26. And it's like, okay, they can hang and they can hang without Steph, which is kind of the important part of having Jimmy in the first place is not just when they're both out there together, but having somebody who can run that second unit competently. So I thought Jimmy really set the tone for the Warriors and for that that ugly, but somehow entertaining win. It was one of the, I don't think the Golden State Warriors somewhat

self-proclaimed zealots of the beautiful game could play an uglier game than the Rockets had them play last night. And the Rockets, we all knew the half-court offense was the problem. It's the reason I picked Warriors and Seven. Oh, my God. Like, Houston's, and we're going to bring in Steve Jones later to talk about potential adjustments in this series because the big overarching question after game one is what it was after game zero, which is what, how is Houston going to score in this series? their best offense in this game was missing their own shots. That was the best offense they had was just throw the ball at the rim.

We sometimes have both centers on the floor, Adams and Shengoon, even with just one of them, our wings are gigantic. We'll get offensive rebounds. That's the only offense they had. They had 22 offensive rebounds, a 41% offensive rebounding rate. That would have led the league by a mile. They led the league by a mile. And they still score 85 points in the game.

Obviously, you have to miss a lot to get that many offensive rebounds. but that's astonishing. 11 of 20 from the line didn't help. Amen Thompson, 0 of 4. And look, the Rockets live in terrible spacing when they play their two big guys together, and particularly when Thompson is on the floor. The Warriors defense was too good for them to live in that terrible spacing in game one. There was just too many hands in passing lanes.

Draymond was everywhere. Moody was great. Pajemski was great. Butler was great. And they just couldn't get out of their own way on offense. it couldn't generate anything resembling reliable half-court offense and lost the turnover battle. Free throws were even. If those things are even or tilt Golden State, the Rockets are in a lot of trouble.

And they couldn't even decide who to play. Sometimes they played two centers. Sometimes they had Brooks and Green on the bench for quite a bit of the fourth quarter. Jalen Green will come up soon. Don't worry. And they had Jabari Smith, Jr., who I thought played pretty well. Sometimes they played them at the three. Sometimes they played them at the five.

That's the versatility of the Rocketsmith. also felt like both teams were sort of struggling to figure out, like the Warriors were using line-up combinations they never used, including a double center lineup. But the bigger story was Houston's just lack of office. I think Butler is a great choice. Curry was on my list of potential MVP candidates. We might as well talk about him. 31 points, 12 of 19, 5 of 9 on threes. Three of those threes were absolutely bonkers just out of nowhere. One of them falling out of bounds. One of them, a pivotal one in the fourth quarter after a botched out of bounds call that went the Warriors way when the ball went off of their, I think Draymond

on the sideline. Just an incredible game from Curry. Would you like some Curry stats in this game? I would love some Curry stats. Second Spectrum tracking, 24 pick and rolls for Curry. That's about average for him. 1.385 points per possession when they got a shot directly out of those plays. And I think they could actually go to it more. Obviously, the rockets are are messing around with the matchups and where is Schengu and Schengun's guarding Moses Moody to start games, which is what I predicted they would do in my preview. Sometimes he's stuck on Draymond because of cross-matching because Drayman's on Schengu, and boy, is that just a wrestling match in the paint. And when they get that matchup, I just go right to it. In semi-transition, just go

set a screen, Draymond for Steph, let Steph cook against the big guy. Sometimes on Gary Payton, Steph GP2 pick and rolls are pretty good. And obviously the battle with the Warriors is, they're going to trap those, force the pass to Gary Payton or Moses Moody or Draymond Green, try to force Draymond to pass it at the rim to who's ever in the dunker spot and get the warriors in this battle of like your small, vertically jumping vertically challenged guys are going to have to finish over our gigantic athletic guys. And I just think the Warriors are going to win that battle.

enough times, including sometimes it's really hard. There was that one play which proved to be critical. Steph Dramon pick and roll, I think. Draymond rolls into open space, drops it off to Moody under the basket. Moody looks up like, oh my God, there's giant guys all around me. What are I supposed to do? Kicks it to Pajemski. Pajemski, because the defense is in rotation, pump fake, drive, draws a foul.

Houston challenges the foul, loses the challenge and then doesn't have it. So I think they could use even more step, Steph pick and rolls. He was sensational. and you know what, held his own on defense too. He had to make some really tough. So his first couple of threes I mentioned, I think he missed his first two in the first quarter. And then he started getting to the rim,

or not, I don't say getting to the rim. He got in the paint. And he had to convert some incredibly tough acrobatic shots high off the glass. Like it just, every time he goes in there, it just looks like he might just get clobbered. And like there's no prayer, but Steph can do. Like his finishing ability and his manipulation of the ball and those kind of drives, I think, has always been underrated.

I mean, you know, no one's Kyrie Irving. But Steph made some really, really tough shots getting into the teeth of the defense. And I thought that was really important for them early on when they were having trouble scoring and his threes weren't going right off. We might as well do my least valuable player choice now so we can dive into the series. I have a feeling we might bearded the same guy here, but Jalen Green was a disaster. for the Rockets. Three of 15, two assists, seven points,

0 of four on threes. And I mentioned with Michael Pina last week that, you know, I don't know what Houston's answer in the half court is going to be other than Shengoon has to have a monster series. And Shingoon did everything he could in game one,

considering the defense he's facing. One of their answers against the Warriors, and they played five times before this game last night, has been trying to get Steph switched on to Jalen Green. And I said in my preview, I just don't think that's good enough. Like, he's just not good enough of a one-on-one player. He's not powerful enough. He doesn't, like, slow down and draw help and make productive passes.

And that was true last night. Every time you got that switch, it was just a tough shot, a tough two, a tough, like, flailing shot at the rim, a drive to nowhere. Defensively, I thought he was actually all right. Like, he's the weak link for the Rockets, but he's all right. He didn't get smoked on that end of the floor for the most part. Just offensively, look, Van Vleet was four of 19, two of 13 on three. He's had a lot of good looks.

The difference is seven assists to two turnovers for Van Vleet. And I actually thought a lot of the shots Van Vleet took were just good shots that he missed and shots that he's going to have to take. I thought a lot of the shots Gail and Green took were just prayers thrown around the general area of the backboard that if you miss, the Warriors are going to run. And the Warriors were smart to run against the Rockets when the Rockets were playing double big. When the Rockets were in, we're going to try to set up their zone. Run, run, run, run before you can set all that stuff up.

Obviously, Jalen Green's going to go three of 15 every game. If he can't get going one-on-one against Curry, I just think they're going to run short of answers on offense. I just thought he was overwhelmed by the moment and just a disaster in game one. that I was actually a little surprised at Emeo Doka. Congratulations, by the way, Coach Udoka, one of the three finals for Coach of the year. I was surprised he brought him back late in the game. Just an awful.

And Amman Thompson could be a runner up for this. Like, eight points just couldn't. They just, the Warriors defense is just too good for them to get enough of like the, he's hanging around the dunker spot. Shangoon finds him on a like little slick interior pass, a back cut here. they just couldn't find any of that. And if he's just standing 15 feet from the basket and no man's land along the baseline, he's not of much use on offense other than rebounding.

And if he's going to go 4 at the line, it's a disaster. Six offensive rebounds fine, six assists fine, was just a net negative spacing-wise. But Jalen Green, whoof, the Rockets, by the way, advanced stats in this game, Rockets, let's see what they managed here, 95.5 points for 100 possessions. By the way, interesting nugget, Howard Beck. The slowest pace of play in the NBA for any team this year was Orlando at 96.5 possessions per game. 96.5 is the magic number. Through game ones, we have Boston, Orlando, 87 pace, Miami, Cleveland, 87 and a half pace.

Lakers, wolves, 88 pace. Pace. Rockets Warriors, what we're talking about now, 89 pace. Clippers Nuggets, 91 pace. Bucks Pacers, 97 and a half pace. So almost, that's the third fastest series and it's almost those dead last regular season pace. Detroit, New York, 99 pace, almost, you know, like 20th in the regular season. And then Memphis, Oklahoma City, 108 and a half of just Oklahoma City running them. That's a very slow first round. Anyway, that's my end of my jail and Green thoughts. He would It sounds like he was your candidate as well. Yeah.

The game slows down in the playoffs. Is that what we are told all the time? I guess it slows down to the playoffs. We'll see how any of this holds up. Some of these teams are slow. So they're slow to begin with. Yeah. And the Rockets don't want to be slow.

And the Warriors seem quite pleased with themselves for playing a, you know, a plotting game because they feel like they can take advantage of the fact that the Rockets don't have much of a half-court offense. And it's interesting because the Warriors, you know, throughout, this entire era have been such a high turnover team. It's like it causes Steve Kerr, a lot of agit to their their turnovers and they've been, they've been better with Jimmy. They had some insane ones last night when Jimmy was on the bench.

In the second quarter especially, it was like, have you guys lost your minds? Has everyone lost their minds in the game? Yeah. But if they can keep their turnovers down, then they're getting, you know, they're keeping, you know, the rockets from getting out and running getting easy baskets from Thompson and, and, Brooks and Green and the rest of these guys. Like they, like, that was, it's funny to say for a team that we've always thought of as such a high-powered offense, the Warriors, but, you know, grinding the game down to a halt is

to their advantage for sure in this series. And Jalen Green, yeah, was my MDP of the weekend as well. I just thought, and look, everything you said, I agree with here, but I do think, like, Jalen Green, you're bigger than Steph Curry, you're younger. You know, you're matched up with him quite a bit. he should be able to attack that. Like he should be, it seemed to me like he was settling for some like me midrange stuff, you know, 18 footers.

And I just thought like, you know, Jaling Green, you're like, you're this young spry gazelle. You know, why aren't you, you know, getting to the rack more here? And I didn't, you know, I didn't drill too far down replay anything. But it just seemed to me like he was settling. And I don't know whether this is one of those situations too where, okay, you know, we make a big deal out of youth versus experience. and then they play their first game and a guy like Jalen Green

craps the bed and do you say is this is this just okay it's his playoff debut it's his first time out there is it the moment is it something else is it the Warriors just being that good you know defensively against him

not getting not letting him get where he wants to go I don't know but for one game at least for one weekend he is the MDP I do like when there's part of me even though I try to be a thoughtful analyst. I do like sometimes when conventional wisdom just flies off the screen and is proven wildly true.

Like Detroit, we're not going to talk about Pistons Knicks much because that resumes tonight. And so there's just not enough time between the games. We'll talk about it more later this week. Detroit just like melting down into a puddle of nothingness in the fourth quarter on the biggest stage in basketball at MSG, throwing the ball all over the place, missing just wide open shots, wide open layups at the rim. And it wasn't only just the young guys. Tim Hardaway Jr. missed a bunch of shots and just they just melted down into just a disaster.

And the Knicks came back, scored 40 points in the fourth quarter and won that game. You were at that game. It must have been crazy. It was wild. I mean, the garden is just incredible in the playoffs. Like the last couple of years of going to Nick's home playoff games, the place is just so intense. I recommend, highly recommend people if you ever get a chance to. Although, I will say, so I was up on the Chase Bridge.

That's the, that's like the overflow press area for the garden. Yeah. So you can bungee jump down to the court from there. If one wanted to and was brave enough. It's an interesting vantage point, actually. But that is mostly fans up there. And I ended up having a conversation with a couple of fans who said they had, they were visiting from, I think it was Mexico City, tourists.

They couldn't, like, they were really excited to be there. They're like, we paid $400 a seat for the. on the bridge. This is about as high up as you can get. $400 a seat. Anyway, I was chatting with a couple of, actually before I mentioned the Pistons people, I should just say,

I ran to Doris Burke pregame. DB said to say hello. While I was milling about on the court pregame, doing our usual pregame schmooze fest. And I was chatting with a couple of Pistons people. And we were just talking about this whole thing. And like, okay, yeah, this is a very exciting moment for them. Their first playoff game,

what a great breakthrough season and all. this. And I just stream of consciousness and sticking my foot in my mouth, like not really thinking about this. I talked about, yeah, you know, it's interesting. And I remember, you know, Cavaliers Knicks a couple years ago. And, you know, Darius Garland and Evan Mobley, you know, their first time just looked like deer in headlights or whatever, like the Pistons person who I was talking to me, I was cringing like I was possibly throwing out a bad omen here. I said, no, it's not what I mean. I mean that, you know, sometimes it's interesting to see how young players react and whatever. And I had to kind of backtrack. But, and then three quarters,

the pistons looked like they were absolutely ready for the moment. They were fine until suddenly they weren't. That got out of hand very quickly. But it was a wild finish. Jalen Brunson, like just a typical Jalen Brunson, right? Like I'm going to fall down three times. Each time is going to look a little bit more scary than the last, or he's going to take a little slow to get up,

waving off his teammates, don't pick me up yet. I need to catch my breath. And then he just goes and, you know, destroys you. Yeah, I don't. I don't want to belabor this one with it resuming so soon. Kat was on my list of MVP candidates, which it's not a stat line that jumps off 23, 11, and five, four steals. Like maybe it is stat line 10 or 14, only got off three, threes, made one in part because

the pistons scrapped everything they did against the Knicks in the regular season and put Jalen Duren on Josh Hart and put a wing on Kat to try to snuff out his three point game. And I thought he made all the right adjustments. When the piston centers were on him, they spammed Jalen Brunson campaign. Oh, my God, campaign and cat picking pops and stuff and exploited the centers. And when they had Tobias Harris on him or, you know, other forward type players, he played his bully ball. He got in the post. He made some tough shots.

And the Knicks remembered late in the game, hey, just because you have a wing or a fast power forward on you, doesn't mean we can't run the Brunson cat pick and roll. How about Brunson runs a little free screen to get Malik Beasley on him? And then we have Beasley and Tobias Harris defending this action. If you switch, you're in big trouble because Malik Beasley's on Kat and they exploited that. Cat had a little roll to the basket, drop off to Josh Hart during the crazy 210 run in the fourth quarter. I just thought Cat Pit had played a nice, calm, defensively, and I don't love it. And it'd be interesting to see if the Knicks experiment with putting him on a Sart Thompson or Ron Holland, if Ron Hall and gets in the game again.

But I thought Kat was good. You want to hear some other MVP candidates? Yes, although I got to say, before I lose this train of thought, I thought for sure your most disappointing candidate was going to be Kyle Kuzma with the trillion line. We'll get to him. I'm trying to be, it's Monday morning. I'm on very little sleep. I'm trying to be a little positive to get through this.

Okay, I'm going to go through the positives first. Let's go. Other MVP candidates, the Jaden McDaniels, Nasreed. combo for the Minnesota Timberwolves who just picked apart the Lakers who looked old and slow. We'll talk about that one more later. Darius Garland, I just thought played an absolutely gorgeous game for the Cavs. Ty Jerome, both tied, first of all, Ty Jerome, just go off.

Like, Ty Jerome, he's not going to win six men to the year because I don't think he played enough minutes. He is one of the finalists. He did not make my fake ballot just because of minutes issues. I just, I can't. He is so fun to watch because he legitimately goes out there and he's like, I'm the best player on the floor. I don't like who,

who like Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Moble, you're going to make an all NBA team. I don't care. I'm tied. I'm tied Jerome. Do you know who I am?

I went to the University of Virginia. I'm a national champion. I'm tied Jerome. Took over the game, tore apart the heat zone, both Garland and Jerome. Wherever Tyler Hero was, they found Tyler Hero,

put him in a pick and roll and just got, whatever they wanted. I thought Garland, just great shot making, beautiful shot making. Janus, just because no one else came along for the ride in the Pacers blowout. Andrew Nemhard, big ups to him. Derek White, fantastic game for the Celtics. Palo Bancaro, one-man banned, took everything Boston gave him in terms of jumpers and mismatches and made them all. No one else came along with him.

But I think, even though they play late tonight, I think we have to talk about Yokic to get a little bit into Denver Clippers because that was the game. That was the game of the weekend. Yokic would be on my list. Not a spectacular game by Yolkish standards. A game I thought the Nuggets were pretty fortunate to win, considering Michael Porter Jr. Just didn't do anything and got benched for Russell Westbrook and sometimes Peyton Watson. And I don't think the Nuggets can win four times in this series without Michael Porter.

Porter Jr. having a couple of big games. But they battled back, and here's the stat for you that I just want to highlight this ahead of game to. Murray Yokic, 35 pick and rolls. That's number one in any game this season for the Nuggets, according to second spectrum. Number two is 29. So obviously went to overtime, and they played a lot of minutes, but six more pick and rules than they ran in any game this season. One point three points per possession. when one of them shot out of the pick and roll or one pass away. 1.4 points per possession when you zoom out for the whole possession. And I thought that was the, we're a little frazzled.

The clippers are big on the wing and switchy. And Zeus plays him, plays Joker in the post as well as anyone. I think Joker's going to get into a rhythm, though, in the post. He got into a little bit of rhythm when they left Zoo on an island, which they will do. And I think as the series goes, he's going to figure out some answers. And I'm actually curious because of how dominant the Murray-Yokic two-man game was. Will the Clippers ever experiment with the old Rudy Gobert tactic of trying to put Zoo on Aaron Gordon to get him out of the pick and roll and put like whoever, Kauai? I don't even know.

They're too small probably to do it on Yokic. But their de facto defense on that play was very often start out in a drop. And then depending how the Nuggets attack, kind of a late switch, like a veerback switch where all of a sudden a guard is on Yolketch and a big Zubots is on Murray. And they just sort of picked that apart over and over again. Murray hit a three when he was dancing with Zubots. He hit Christian Brown on a backdoor cut when he was dancing with Zubots on a switch and James Hardin, who was ball watching a lot in game one. It got smoked on the offensive glass because of it was ball watching again. Yolkich, they gave him the ball at the nail against Chris Dunn and other assorted,

undersized clippers. And he just went to work and found Aaron Gordon on threes and this and that. And that's when the nuggins, the clippers, rather, at the end of the game, decided, forget all that. We're just trapping. We're trapping. We're trapping him when he crosses the F-Corp. We're going to force the ball to all these guys who can't shoot.

But I just thought it was a very, like, calm down. Yokic may not put up all the numbers out of this pick and roll, but we're going to go back to the bread and butter that won us to championship and we're going to try to steal this game. And I really thought the Clippers have to be kicking themselves for that game because that was there for them. The Hardin Zubots pick and roll was picking the nuggets apart for the first half of the game. Kauai was 9 of 15. I thought he could.

The Clippers is interesting because they were getting hammered, including by Bob Myers, for not running enough Hardin Zubots pick and roll. I looked up the numbers. They ran it 24 times. So compared to 35 for Murayokic, that's actually the second most they ran it in any game this season, according to the second spectrum. One point four point, here's the interesting part, 1.375 points per possession when that pick and roll produced a shot directly out of it. Either one of them shoots or one pass away. Zoom out to the whole possession, that dropped to 1.18.

That's a big drop. It's still a good number, but it's a big drop. And I think it shows you that when the Nuggets could force more than one pass, when it's like you have to pass to Chris Dunn over here or Chris Dunn's in the Dunker spot and Yokic sprints from Zubots to him, the finishing is just so-so for the Clippers role players. And if you can force that, that's a win for the Nuggets. But I just thought I wanted to just highlight the Murray Yokch picket roll. That was obviously the game of the weekend.

I screamed, Howard. I screamed to nobody in my office when up by one with a three second difference between the game and the shot clock in overtime. Russell Westbrook was just like, you know what, I'm going for it. They're not fouling me. I can probably run the clock almost all the way down or force them to foul me later. I'm going for the layup over James Harden. James Hardin made a great defensive play. I'm like, oh my God, what is Russ doing?

And then Aaron Gordon gets an offensive rebound and makes free throws. and then Russ steals or deflects the in-bounce-pass and it's over. Unbelievable game. I lost my mind like five times during that game. That was the only stretch of the game I got to see because as we previously established, I'm a dupus and went to the garden. So I was either on the subway or, you know, running around the garden pregame and missed most of that.

So I got back to the press room, got to catch the end there, saw that play. I think I laughed. The only times I audibly laughed during basketball over the weekend, I think, was that Russ play and Steph's Ridiculous three last night where I just sat on the couch and just like laughed it was just because it was so preposterous um i had a question for you though because i didn't see most of this game and it's one of those things you glance at the box score and the first thing that leaps out to me um and james hardens had a phenomenal year he did make my all mba ballot at the end of the day um i had agonized over that one quite a bit but harden taking 22 shots

to coize 15 did something what what was going on in the course of that game where james Hardin is a bigger option than, was it just all the pick and rolls with Zubach? Like, I would guess or I would have thought ahead of time, like, you know, Kauai is a little bit more of the thrust here, but maybe not. What anything? Some of it is the pick and roll. Some of it is that the nuggets are switching a lot, as are the clippers. And so Hardin has his pick of the litter. Like he can isolate against Jamal Murray, and he likes that matchup.

Yeah. It's one of the reasons that Porter is going to be a wild card in this series because Porter's got no chance of keeping Hardin in front of him. He's got a better chance to keeping Kauai in front of him because Kauai doesn't operate with just sort of like straight up speed. But the clippers are interesting because as much as people wanted them to spam even more of that pick and roll, I thought the Nuggets got a handle on it a little bit as the game went on. they sort of settled into, they tried a bunch of different defenses with Yokic up to the level of the screen, Yokic dropping back. They were all just torn apart.

Then they started late in the game having Yokic drop back and pulling in, help defenders more aggressively off the non-shooters like Dunn and Derek Jones, Jr. That worked pretty well, well enough. But the Clippers are interesting because they have that element. You don't want to shove Kauai too far to the side, especially since Kauai can also probably pick out his match.

up if he wants to and go at Jamal Murray in the poster, whoever. And then I thought they left a little bit of money on the table. Not that you want to tilt your offense too much toward Norm Powell, but Norm Powell has Jamal Murray on him to start games. He's got Michael Porter Jr. on him at times. I thought they could have ran him off pin downs and some other stuff for handoffs and just high-flying Norm Powell, just get the ball straight line finish. And they kind of view, but it's a challenge to get all those elements in alignment. This episode is brought to you by Service Now. 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 specialists tackle that work, request handled, cases 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 for people, visit servicenow.com. This episode is brought to you by Men's Warehouse. So you've looked at all the data, you've looked at your lineup, and yep, you need to freshen up your wardrobe.

So check out Men's Warehouse. They've got you covered for every occasion with a huge variety of clothing and styles from tailored clothing like suits, sports coats, dress shirts, tuxes for more formal events to casual clothing like polo, shirts, shorts, and jeans for everyday wear. The Men's Warehouse experts can help you find the right look while they're on-site tailors guarantee your clothes have the right fit. for your body. Men's Warehouse has over 600 locations nationwide. They are here and nearby when you're ready to love the way you look. Did any of my other most valuable player choices

stick out to you? I mean, look, there are three drawing dead series in the first round. Orlando, Boston, dead. Miami, Cleveland, dead. And Memphis, Oklahoma City. I mean, we can go through my least valuable choices. One of them was, he didn't play a horrible game, but Tyler Hero, I just thought, did not do enough offensively. Particularly, he was being guarded by Sam Merrill a lot. And Sam Merrill stood up Tyler Hero and Andrew Wiggins at times one-on-one.

And I just thought Miami lost the plot on offense. Like, you've got to have Tyler Hero set ball screens for Andrew Wiggins, use them more in a pick and roll. Maybe one-on-one isn't the answer. Kuzma, you mentioned just what the hell. And I just, LeBron and Austin Reeves, I thought were both bad for the Lakers by their standards. And then I just wrote the entire Memphis Grizzlies. Hi, welcome, welcome to the playoffs.

You lost by a thousand points. Jaron Jackson, Jr., I mean, look, he's relegated to spacing duty on offense a lot when Zach Edie's at center. And they didn't play him hardly at all at Center, Jaron Jackson Jr. is the only big man. They might want to try that. I mean, not that it matters. He couldn't get anywhere posting up the army of just handsy, marauding guards and wings that the Grizzlies can throw at,

or the Thunder can throw at him. You know, look, they're not going to win this series. I don't know if they're going to be competitive in this series. But if this goes like, it's not going to go 51 points, but if this goes just like you're a miles away. And yeah, you don't have Brandon Clark and whatever, like the Marcus Smart thing was a disaster. Okay, fine. Canard didn't play until garbage time.

That was weird. If this goes like this, I think we're going to get to the end of this and say, what do we actually have here? Like this Morant Bain Jackson Jr., who's eligible for an extension, like, what is this amount to? There are three very good players. none of them one of them made an all-star team this year he might make an all-NBA team Jaron Jackson Jr.

Are we trending toward a situation where like we have three guys who are like Bain probably won't ever make an all-star team just because he's in the wrong conference and he's right around that sort of like C.J. McCollum just really good guard but not good enough to make an all-star team level.

John didn't make it this year he doesn't play enough. Jared Jackson Jr. You could see him making like one out of every couple of years, maybe one out of every three years. Like, do we just have three guys who are somewhere around the 25th to 45th best player in the NBA instead of what we hope for, which is top 10 player,

top 20 player, top 25 player? And if that's the case and they're all going to have to make a ton of money, like what are we doing here? Because this team has talked a lot of shit. They've puffed their chest out a lot. They've been around now for a while. This is not like a fresh, new, cool, like, up-and-coming team anymore. And they're going to get rocked in this series.

And we're going to be four years into this or whatever. And they're going to have one playoff series against an inexperienced Minnesota Timberwolves team. And then anytime they've put up against a real team, a veteran team that's ready, they just don't, they don't have enough. And they had nothing for Oklahoma City. nothing. I mean, at Oklahoma City, the defense was absolutely terrifying, but the Grizzlies had absolutely nothing for them.

And I'm just curious as to your thoughts, like big picture, what is getting, they get smoked in this series. What does this mean for them? I had the same thought just watching yesterday as it went from, you know, 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 to 55, whatever that margin ended up being at its peak. And a couple quick things, just to back up.

And they put themselves in this position by being a play in team, but going from the Friday night game just to qualify to get in to a noon local start on Sunday. Weh, we're kind of brutal. It's not great. Don't suck toward the end of the year. Don't fire your coat. Don't get in a position where you have to fire your coach with nine games left. I did.

I did say they put themselves in this position. I'm just noting. You did. You know what? They talk shit to everybody. So you know what? Just back it up. Back it up then.

Yeah. So there's that. By the way, also, though, because when you had texted me in my homework and you were talking about the three drawing dead series, and all I could think was back to my proposal once upon a time when we used to do our drunk with power podcast. As you know, I love the best of five first round. And in cases like this, I just think, my God, the sooner this series and the Miami series and the Orlando series, like the sooner these teams go away with all due apologies and respect to those teams, the better. These are not interesting series. They're not going to be. This one is interesting because of the question. that you raised, right? Like Miami's in transition. They had to trade Jimmy Butler, you know, at the, you know, under duress. They're in transition. Orlando is not healthy. They still need a point guard, blah, blah, blah. We're going to talk about them in a second. Yeah, they're a team on the rise, and I don't care if they get smoked in the first round. They're young and they're still kind of forming themselves. But Memphis has already formed. These are their three guys.

The curse of the term big three is that everybody then sits there in preens when they get, they find three really good players. Oh, we got a. big three. And we're going to have to max them all out now, by the way, and then deal with second apron issues potentially. Their big three are not big three enough. They're not big enough. I don't mean size-wise. I mean, you know, although in John Moran's case, maybe size as well. And I was looking at it, and it's not to get too reductive, but the fact is, and you alluded to this, in this league, you're a contender if you've got certainly a top five guy, hopefully maybe a top 10 guy. And if you have one of those

a top five or a top 10 and then hopefully your second best player is top 15 or top 20 and these three guys in our own ringer top 100, which neither you or I participate in. No, I do know. They made me. Are you? Excellent. All right. I love not being part of it because one, I'm terrible at ranking

and two, I have the ultimate alibi. You just, you just asked for it. People complain about it. And then I could say, you know, it wasn't me. I send them all to Michael Pina. In the ringers top 100, the highest ranked Grizzly, Jaron Jackson Jr. at 22nd. Jaws at 29th currently and Baines at 46th. People can quibble over it and maybe somebody should be a little bit higher or whatever.

But that's the basic reality. They do not have a top 10 or a top 15 player at present. I don't know. Can I say something crazy? Yeah. And I don't mean this the way it's going to come out. Like, peak John Morant is awesome. Okay.

Like, peak John Moran is awesome. pre all the shit, John Morant was awesome. Hasn't been the same guy this year as a basketball player, just not as aggressive, a finisher, not getting to the line as much, too many turnover,

etc. There have been too many games this year where I've watched Memphis and Jod didn't play or Jaws resting because it's not resting, like, Jod's just on the bench waiting to come back in where I'm like,

they don't look that much worse with Scotty Pippin Jr. running the offense. And like, that is not true. let me be clear like they are worse with scotty paper junior running the offense but the fact that i can watch them and feel that now and then is a bad sign i was excuse me i was defensive of jaw a couple years ago when it was like look how great their record is when it's just tyos jones and jaws out and i said

don't get too caught up in that i know there's like a 25 30 game sample the one season i said but don't get too caught up in that like you know teams can do this in stretches and you can like you cannot replace or long term you will feel the loss of a truly elite talent as Jha is. That said, as you just noted, like there are times when you watched. And I think part of this was, look, and I got in trouble for this. I didn't get in trouble for it. I got aggregated and the aggregation got me in trouble. In February, Real Ones podcast, we did a live show at All Star weekend.

And I mentioned in the course of conversation that a couple drinks in maybe, a couple drinks in at All Star. We may or may not have been doing shots before the podcast. Dangerous. You mentioned that Drunk with Power podcast that you and me and Rachel used to do. There was one we did. The Tiki Bar? At the Tiki Bar, we're at beer number three.

I almost said a couple of things and my brain was like, don't do it. And my dumb part of the drunk brain was like, do it. Just say it. And luckily the smart brain won. You were drinking beer. I think I was actually doing like the fancy ridiculous cocktails or whatever had God knows what in them. That was a fun day.

I'm a real man. I'm a real man, Howard. Okay. I drink beer. People say this about you all the time. I mentioned it All Star Weekend on the podcast, on a live show, which then got aggregated, that as a rival executive when I was just making the rounds after the Luca trade about what else was coming and what else to look for down the line and what does it say about

stars being traded, blah, blah, whatever. And someone said, just keep an eye on jaw. And that was all they said. And then it got aggregated and it blew up and it was really annoying because aggregators are annoying and it was out of context. But the reason that the person that said it to me at the time was, as we know, as we've had seen a lot of hand-wringing over because Taylor Jenkins then got fired, the offense this season had kind of de-emphasized jaw. Jha also de-emphasized Jha by not being available for a good chunk of the season. But the offense was less pick and roll-heavy,

less jaw-centric. And to your point about Scotty Pippin Jr. and non-jaw lineups, they had an offense that could do other things that wasn't just so static or pick-and-roll dependent or jaw dependent, which is overall good for them for the non-jaw minutes or the non-jaw stretches when he's out injured. But it raised the question of how does this sit with jaw? And I think we have learned since that maybe the person who I talked to was right to raise this as a concern. And they've now, you know, fired Taylor Jenkins and they fired the assistant coach who devised this offense. No, LaRose. So, LeRosch, thank you. And so there are concerns. There are some things.

to keep an eye on, as the rival exec said to me. It wasn't, you know, he's definitely getting traded. It was just keep an eye on. I think more than ever I'm keeping an eye on it, to be honest, because of the way this season has gone, because of the firing, because of where they are now and getting smoked yesterday and they're certainly

going to get thumped in this series. And they do have to reevaluate, and it's a smart front office led by Zach Kleinman. And I think like they're not going to be, we saw this, there was no sentimentality when it came to Dylan Brooks. John Morant's not Dylan Brooks, but this is a franchise that I think is very pragmatic in the way it thinks about its team. And John may be beloved locally, and he is, but there are no sacred cows in this league.

That was kind of the point of the Luca exercise, right? Huge mistake, but there are sentimentality and whatever fans love and everything. There are times when nothing means anything. My last quick jaw thought, jaw does not seem to be evolving as an individual or as a player as an individual because we've seen all the stuff with the finger guns and then his defiance of the league and grenade logs and all the stuff. The grenade thing is it's it's so stupid that I almost admire how stupid it is. Yeah. But it's it's the thing is it gets like I laugh but it's also like it's so immature like like the point of this all of all this that you've gone through is to show

that you have thought about this and why it was a problem and you evolve and you stop doing where else can we go? Can we go bazooka? Can we go like I said. I said this on the pod a week or two ago. He's just going to drive a tank on the court. Is he going to duck and cover, like, lay down, like, throw the grenade and lay down on the floor while the game is still going on? Like, where else can we go with this? But he's a slightly built, incredibly athletic, smaller guard. And still not a shooter.

And he gets the shit kicked out of him, just just gets beat up because he's constantly, these incredible drives that are why we watch. because he's so much fun to watch, but he takes a beating a little like Iverson back in the day, and that can shorten your career, and it certainly can shorten your seasons as it has. He gets hurt a lot. So, no, I'm not confident in this team's future as currently constructed, and I do think that at some point, maybe sooner than later,

at least one of those three probably has to be swapped out for different pieces, because this is not a big three that's going to make you a contender. All right. I'm just, I'm going to go fast. I'm very excited about this topic. It's difficult because since you have three of them, trading one. So here just let's do the contract. Jha next season, 39 million, following season 42, 27, 28, 45. Not that bad of a contract. It's going to be 24% of the cap. Bain, 36, 39, 42, 45. Jackson extension eligible after this season. We'll see what happens. But the challenge since you have three of trading one,

is does a rebuild deal, which is what you always, which is the classic star deal, does that make any sense when you have the other two left over? Like, why am I trading whoever for three first round picks when I have these other two guys making $85 million or whatever it ends up being? Number two, and Zach Klyman did his pound his fist on the podium. Like, we're not trading John Moran. All those rival executives can suck it. Okay. Did I, I said this with Bill. Like, did I miss the parade of teams who are calling with monster offers for the dude who plays half the games and

still is a non-shooter and still struggles on defense. I like job. So then I was like, I went through, just rapid fire. Here are teams who theoretically in some stretch of the imagination need a point card. Okay, might need a point guard, might conceive

of themselves as in need of a point guard, or just a shake-up. Washington, too far behind. Charlotte, Bill has mentioned the Lamello ball, John Morant, fake trade. Charlotte's not doing that. What if Atlanta decided to just dump Troy Young? Well, that doesn't make any sense.

They're roughly equivalent players, roughly equivalent ages, whatever. The Bulls, well, Josh Giddy, Kobe White, and is there, that sort of combines into being a point guard. Milwaukee clippers down the line if those two teams get old and shake it up. That's years, well, maybe not years away. Brooklyn in a salary dump because they have cap space. I don't see that. Like Brooklyn, Sean Marks came out and said, if we're going to,

go after a max level free agent, they got to be a, like, real game changer. That was code for like, it's got to be a top five to top 10 guy, wink, wink. The Pelicans, imagine a job for Zion just, just 2019. By the way, here's a thought. How about John with Zion? There's a nightmare. How about this? 2019 draft six years later.

Yeah. Would Darius Scarlin be the number one pick? Probably, probably. The order of the draft was. Zion, Job, Barrett, Hunter, Garland. I mean, that's crazy to think about. I mean, once you take into account availability and everything else, yeah. And Darius Garland is also just really good.

Yeah, I would take it. So here are the other teams. And this will lead us into a brief Orlando Boston thought process. Sacramento. You had two great point cards. Now you got zero. You seem to operate with just unending craziness. Why not?

Kangs. Miami. I don't see it. I don't think that's the star Miami will go for when they use their ammo and they inevitably will try to use their ammo. But they have ammo in their Miami. I don't see it. Orlando. I think if we're talking about Memphis in the fallout of this series, Orlando is going to get destroyed by Boston.

Their offense isn't good enough. We knew their offense isn't good enough. Franz Wagner actually looked a little, a little like shook at times during the game. like, oh, you're closing out short to me and okay. Like, I'm not used to being treated this disrespectfully. They're missing Suggs. They're missing Mo Wagner. Like, they have pieces that are missing.

There just isn't enough there. We have more than enough evidence now that there isn't enough offense there. I don't like Ban Carroll's awesome. Franz is going to make all-star teams. There just isn't enough around them. And they're not close to being good enough offensively. I think there are some things they could do better schematically, specifically in this series against Boston's switching defense.

I don't really care to get into it because the series is not going to be interesting. But I think Orlando's reached a point where this summer now is the time to go out and get a guard who can shoot and play make and take the burden off of them. I don't think Jal will be that guy. But you watch them against Boston and it's just like Palo is playing one on five. And they, you know, I thought, again, it doesn't seem like a super high scoring, Celtics game. It doesn't seem like they got a lot of threes off. That's because the pace was really slow. They actually took 37 threes on 82 shots, I think. That's a 45% three point rate. That would have been second in the NBA only to them. It's close to their regular season rate.

They did a great job saying, you're switching to take away our threes. We're still going to generate threes because of who we attack and where and where we kick the ball to. And the exes and those of that are somewhat interesting. But Orlando, there's just not enough here, and it's time. It's time to use the picks. It's time to use the young players. It's time, like, is Jet Howard anywhere? Like, is he alive? It's time to get a real guy in here. I mean, haven't we had some version of this conversation for the last couple of years? I mean, I think that we've, we come back to this periodically. I'm trying to remember, like, every so often there's been somebody, I don't know, maybe it was like the Fred Van Vleet summer or something when he went to Houston. Like, there have been a couple.

moments over the last three to five years where it was like when are they going to go get a point guard? And the more prominent they've become or the more the more Wagner and Bancaro have evolved as this one-two punch, it's become, I feel like more and more pressing. The magic

are, they're interesting because they spent a lot of years, Zach, where it looked like they absolutely needed the tear down and they waited forever to finally like, you know, blow it up and send out all these guys from the Vouch era, including Vouch himself. they've been really methodical would be the kind way of putting it in the in the rebuild the unkind way of putting it is that corey joseph is starting for the irlando magic and playing 26 minutes in a playoff game and yes i realize jalen suggs is hurt yeah but is jalen suggs a point card i mean it that's you know we've had a lot of cole anthony and and he's had some nice moments and and cori joseph and like how many other different point guards who are all like markelle the markelle

It just feels like they're content to just keep dabbling and not make the big swing. Pop quiz. Pop quiz. Who was the third leading score for the Orlando Magic yesterday with seven points in game one? Oh, my God. I don't know. Cole Anthony. Jonathan Isaac played 18 minutes, his backup center.

Looked great on defense. And the Celtics best offense was actually. I thought their best offense was not attacking the littler guys like Corey Joseph and the other little guys are not that little, Anthony Black, Gary Harris. I thought those guys mostly forced Tatum and Brown into tough shots. It was attacking the big guys, attacking Wendell Carter Jr. specifically and going at his feet and trying to get by him, get into the rim, start spraying it out for threes. And that's how they beat the switches with threes. Orlando's trying to depress their three point rate by switching everything. And Isaac is the cure to that.

because they couldn't beat him off the dribble the way they could. He just can't play. I guess he just can't play more than 18 minutes. Like he just can't. And he's their third leading score. It just, I don't want to be enough. I don't, like, it's time. There, there, it's been a fine season for them.

Um, I think they need to look at a total offensive just let's, let's, let's, they've got a lot of like good fail safe stuff. Like Palo attacking smalls and the pick and roll. That's a good fail-safe thing. Franz, same thing. I think they got to look at, we got to add layers upon layers to this in the off-season, and we just got to get a big talent upgrade. One more pop quiz before we bring in Steve Jones, Jr. to talk X's and O's.

What is the more evil camera cutaway currently going through the NBA Howard Beck? Is it the cutaways to Nico Harrison when Anthony Davis limps off the court, or the cutaways to Nicola Yokic looking frustrated on the bench? Which is meaner camera work? Oh, it's got to be Nico Harrison. I mean, that was almost gratuitous the other night. But I think we all kind of perversely enjoyed it. Social media very much enjoyed it.

There were super cuts of every Nico Harrison reaction. There were split screens. There were, you know, there were, you know, curb your enthusiasm overlays. People were having a blast with it. Thank you, NBA. Thank you network. I can't remember that was ESPN or Turner. Thank you, whoever, for all the Nico Harrison close-ups during various moments. His expression, to Nico's credit, really never changed. It was just some form of like pensive, consternation, yeah, little, maybe little, little growly, little kind of, I might be aware that this camera keeps focusing on me, get it the hell out of

face. I realize the whole world thinks I'm, I'm an idiot for trading Luca. Please leave me alone now. The expression I make when my daughter or one of her friends farts in my face because they think it's funny. Nikol Harrison, by the way, somebody just tweeted out a little bit ago. Nico Harrison's got his end of season presser in a couple hours today. Honestly, can I get on a plane to Dallas now and make it in time? That's how bad these media available. Are cameras allowed this time, I guess. I was going to say, yeah. Just just, just and leave all your, leave all of your

instruments at home, no, no recorders, no TV cameras, no pens, papers, chiseled. Have they locked Patrick Dumont in a closet somewhere so that he can't get on the podium and say something stupid? Like, every media availability they do is, look, Tim McMahon wrote it today.

One of the many, many, many long-time Mavs that they jettisoned in this overhaul of the franchise is Scott Tomlin, who was their PR guy for a long time and is super close with Dirk and is an awesome, awesome PR guy. And he's got to be watching this being like, you all couldn't use my advice a little bit because this is not going great. Okay. And Scott Scott's working for Dirk specifically. Like he left the Mavs to work for Dirk. That was, I think, two seasons ago. And at the time,

this is, I think, before Cuban had sold everything else. But like, man, Scott pulled the rip court at exactly the right time. Yeah, I guess they did. They didn't jettison him, although they probably would have eventually given the way that things are going. But he left on his own accord along with just a bunch of people that Tim wrote about in his story. Mark Stein has written a lot about it. I just think of him every time there's a PR disaster because Scooter, as everyone calls him, is fantastic at his job. And then let me just say this real quick, Zach, like you and I, we are not PR people. Thankfully, we are not PR people for the Mavericks specifically and we have not worked in

crisis management. I'll do it. You want to hire me as a consultant? The ringer might let me. I'll do it right now. I was going to say, don't do what you're doing. Here, give me $500,000. There's just so many unforced errors here.

Like the trade itself is bad enough. You've made it and you have to live with it. But there are ways, there are better and worse ways to deal with this. Being defensive and pricklish and pricklish. I think I just made up a new way. Prickly. It's early for me, Zach. It's only 10.30 Eastern and I'm still waking up.

You can handle this a lot better. Be at least a little bit more empathetic toward the fans who are hurting here. And when the media are sitting there in the room and I know you're, you're, you're tense with them because of the way they're asking questions and they're asking pointed questions and Tim McMahon has done a phenomenal job of putting them on the spot and so over the rest of the Dallas media. But the last thing you should do in a moment like this, when the whole world, 99.999% believes you made a catastrophic error is to sit there, double down, triple down, and on top of it be snarly about it. So hire a better crisis management person if you don't

have one, go get one. Find somebody who can at least tell Nico Harrison if he's, still doing this for the foreseeable future. And Dumont, you need to lead with some sense of acknowledgement of just how bad this looks. You have to be confident in what you did. You have to project confidence in the plan. I get that. But you can do it in a way that's a lot less dismissive and prickly or pricklish or some other term of the word that I now won't say because now I'll sound like an ass. All right. On that note, by the way, that's the correct answer to the evil cutaway question. It is that. That's very evil in a Dr. Evil delicious way. On that point, let's pause. And we will bring in X's nose guru, Steve Jones Jr. of the Dunker Spot podcast to talk about adjustments in two series that are very interesting. 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.

process. Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast because the asks 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 Panda Express. Look, it can be hard showing how much you love someone. But if you can't say how you feel, just say, let's get some food. Or hey, takeouts on me. And if you really love them, pick Panda Express. Express for delicious, authentically cooked American Chinese cuisine, whether it's game night or date night. Nothing says, I love you like orange chicken, honey walnut, trim, Kung Pow chicken, and black pepper sirloin steak. Have you eaten yet? Order now, or is it a Panda Express near you? All right, let's bring in an X's and O's expert, one of the best.

Follow him on Twitter. Listen to the Dunker Spot podcast. Steve Jones Jr., what's up, sir? Not much. Happy to be here. Excited to be here. glad to be the Zach Lowe show. I hate the name. I like the name because it's my name. I just don't like saying my name. Do you know how many people have like hit me, Zach, with various versions of like, why didn't

they do low this, low that? Everybody wanted to make a pun with your name and they're they're puzzled. I think they're a little disappointed. Not that they don't like your name. But I think they love the puns. My dad, when I was when my mom was pregnant with me, came up with various pun names that Like you could name me Hal. So my name would be Halo and things like that.

So low-hanging fruit. All right, Steve. Nuggets Clippers is a series of the first round. That resumes tonight. So I don't want to get too far into that because it will be a game two before we know it. So the two series that are in the West, both of them, that are super interesting. And massive game two is coming up. I want to hit you on what to look for in game two.

Starting with Minnesota Lakers, the wolves go to L.A. No one's picking them. Literally, I think on ESPN, every single person picked the Lakers, which I picked the Lakers in seven, so it surprised me that no one's, the wolves are good, and the wolves have been quite good for a long time now, and just destroyed the Lakers in game one, made them look old, made them look slow, got every mismatch they wanted to get, blew by Luca, sprayed the ball out for threes, looked bigger, stronger, tougher.

What did you see? And what do you expect the Lakers to try to do? You can pick either end of the floor, honestly. You know, defensively, the Lakers switched everything. I think the wolves knew that that was coming and exploited it with just a certain calm and steadiness that I didn't necessarily expect from them. Or offensively, when, you know, look, the Lakers aren't going anywhere if LeBron and Reeves combined for 35 points on 13 of 31 shooting.

Luca with the quietest 37 points I can remember, one assist. Pick an end of the floor. How do the Lakers get right here? Well, I think it's interesting. I know it sounds random, but I go back to when the Lakers played Orlando, and in my head I started to realize if a team can switch against the Los Angeles Lakers and keep the ball in front, and then if they can attack the Lakers switches, it kind of puts the Lakers in a box.

I think Minnesota did a really good job keeping the Lakers in a box. As far as you mentioned how prepared they were, and the Edwards making quick decisions. So the Lakers, they want to switch. They want to have activity. They want to show that early help. They want to close out and recover. On those nights where the closeouts are now getting beat,

the teams are able to get to drive and kick. They know where the shots are coming from. It can get tough for them because they're so activity-based. And on the other end, Minnesota was fine switching other things. I think the firepower of LeBron, Luca, Austin Reeves is undeniable. But if you are able to just say, you know what, we're going to pick this poison of switching. We're going to make you make plays.

We're not going to necessarily put two on the ball. That was the interesting part for me. So I think for the Lakers, you've got to find a way to find matchups that Minnesota doesn't like. You've got to find a way to get them in rotation. You have to find a way to kind of tilt it to where you can kind of get the shots you want. Because if Rudy Gober can be in a drop and say, hey, this is going to be a late switch as soon as you drive. And then as Luca tries to back up and ice foam. And Jamie Daniels is like, no, I'm going to come back and take that matchup.

now Rudy is able to be on the floor more. Not that you would get played off, but now we feel more comfortable throwing that at you. And then so I think they got to get more pass and cut. They got to be more decisive offensively, get the driving kick, get Luke and LeBron on the post, make Minnesota think about doubling or sending to

and then get back to, okay, we have you in rotation, we're good to go. Because if you're going to lean on small ball and Minnesota can just switch and they know you're switching on the other end, your margin of error is pretty slim. Yeah, Howard,

one of my other homework assignments for you was to pick a coach, coach of the weekend. Who did you pick, by the way? You're going to hate me for this, especially since we've now moved past when I thought we were going to do this. I went with Jeff Van Gundy for wrestling with Yonk it's for the ball. I liked the choice. He held his own.

It was incredible. The claw, the finger strength and the facial expressions were, yeah, this guy tangled with Zoe a million years ago. He's not afraid for a little arm wrestling with the basketball. Jeff was dead fucking serious in that moment. That was like, he wasn't messing around. He wasn't like being cutesy, like smiling. Like this wasn't like being like mischievous.

He was not letting go. His face was stern. And Yolkich is like, can anyone just let me play basketball? Like I just want to, can I just get the ball and start having fun? Like why are all these people like Ishbia now Jeff Van Gundy? They're taking the ball from me. I wonder what I have to do. My choice was Chris Finch.

And for a lot of the reasons Steve just said, they were super well prepared for everything the Lakers were going to do. I thought starting the game with Conley on Rui Hachamura, which is a thing I mentioned in my preview, I wasn't sure if they were going to do it, was really, really smart because it put their three best perimeter defenders, Aunt Jaden and Randall, who passes for a perimeter defender, I guess in this matchup, on the Lakers' three best offensive players

and forced them to say, look, if you're going to direct your offense at Conley, you're going to have to do it through Rui. and there was one bad Rui post-up, and that was pretty much it. Not only that, Howard, you mentioned the phrase earlier, no sacred cows, 24 minutes for Gobert, 22 minutes for Conley, 31 minutes for Reed, 25 Devinchenzo, 20 Alexander Walker. Like, it's clear he's going to play the guys he trusts to play. And if that means less minutes for Gobert, because the Lakers are five out,

and that's somewhat problematic at times, or just the Randall Reed combination is rolling, and Nas was awesome. Nas changed the game, not only with the shooting, but bullying switches, bullying Reeves on switches, as another place the wolves could pick at. Like Conley, you're the, like, the Lakers want to attack small guys, attacking big guys didn't work. Like, LeBron got swatted at the rim by Reed and Gobert.

Randall held his own. You want to attack small guys? We're going to make our small guys as big as possible. Like, Devenzhenzo is no pushover. Alexander Walker's no pushover. Conley is at a massive size. disadvantage against Luca and LeBron and even Reeves. And he played 22 minutes.

The other guys are like, they're going to fight and hold their own. And the wolves are going to make you prove that we have to send doubles. But to your point, Steve, I think one of the lowest hanging fruit adjustments for the Lakers is good things happen when you put LeBron and Luca in the post. Even when they don't get switches, like Luca got some fouls on Jada McDaniels in the post, he can get where he needs to go. like good things are going to happen like de Vincenzo and Nikol Alexander Walker lean into those

matchups and just sort of see how Minnesota responds forced them to make some decisions. I think that what was one obvious one. What about what about what about um what about defensively? Because as you said if this is the game plan just switch everything like Minnesota approved in game one. We can we can exploit that like we know where Luca is on the floor. We we can get aunt onto him or Randall onto him

Randall was super disciplined. I had a rule for this series. You do not get to go one-on-one in the post unless you have a good matchup that you've generated via a switch. He followed my Randall rule. The Randall rule. The Randall rule. He followed it very well and made the right passes.

And I thought their off-ball movement, for the most part, guys trading places, little flare screens, like was enough to confuse the Lakers help and pop guys open? So, like, the Lakers game plan can't be, let's just do the same thing. So what defensively are you going to look for?

I think for me I'm going to look for a little bit more nuance from the Lakers. I don't anticipate, though, go away from switching completely. I don't think they're going to magically wake up and Jackson Hays is two on the ball. But I think it's more, okay, we need to know when we need to send this help, when we need to show this help, how we need to show it, do our work early, maybe more ball pressure to just try and contain the drives a little bit better. Because it just felt automatic. And you could tell us the second half went on Minnesota was like, Let's actually just mess around with the spacing a little bit.

Not only do they attack different matchups, say, okay, we're clearing this swing. We're going quick on the move. That's why Anthony Edwards making quick decisions. Jewish Randall making quick decisions was important because with the Lakers, when they can load up and then go boxes and elbows and bring it back to the 90s and they can just kind of hold, it looks pretty good. They're pretty active.

They can disrupt you. But if you're able to just kind of flip it on them and they don't know where the help is coming from consistently, they can't get to the second level. They've got to close back out. That's tough. So for the Lakers, it's kind of the do better button. degree, but it's also just they should be more prepared

for a team that's going to look to drive. And so their help should be a little bit smarter. They should be able to contain the drive. Make them make tough twos if they have to. Don't be so automatic with pulling over and now you're opening up a driving kick and they're able to take the shots they want to. Minnesota's able to get high quality looks because they knew, hey, you guys are going to be

in, we're going to make it happen. Contest. Make them live with some tough ones in the paint. I think that's probably the biggest one defensively because they're going to stick with this core group. I think you've got to probably trust Jackson Haze a little bit more. Can't trust him less than eight minutes or else he's just not playing. So that's like you got to get something out of him.

And especially as offensively, they missed a vertical, like just something slicing down the middle of the floor at a fast rate. I thought they missed that. Now, Jackson Hays is no great shakes, but he should, you know, if he plays eight minutes a game, the Lakers are not going to win the series, I don't think. No. I think that's where Minnesota did a good job with the drop and the switches of saying, hey, there's actually not going to be a role here.

So two on the ball is not going to happen. Your Randall point was really good. And I think this is something I've liked about Randall for Minnesota. There's a lot of things you can say about him. But he's going to drive the basketball, especially if he has a matchup that he likes. And he's going to force someone in the other jersey to come and help. Can you disrupt that?

So Randall and Reed being able to be tall and dribble and attack the Lakers in different ways, I think they just need to do a better job on those two as well. and just get a better rhythm. I think that's key. Yeah, I thought to your point about tough twos, you could probably isolate three or four threes in the game where the Lakers helped, panic helped a little bit in the paint

when they didn't need two. I mean, there was an obvious one where Nasreed, you know, got an open three when Randall was posting up LeBron and Nasreed was one passaway and they're like, LeBron doesn't need help. Just stay home on Nasreed. But Minnesota, like, can I tell you my favorite amp play? Can I tell you guys my favorite amp play from the whole game?

He got Luca on him on a switch. Obviously, that's a matchup, the Wolves won. And for whatever reason, I can't remember exactly. It was in the second quarter. He just didn't have his footwork and spacing where he wanted it to be to like attack Luca right away off the dribble. So he passed it to somebody on the left wing, left sideline. And instead of like fading out toward half court and just getting the ball back, he suddenly

like burst to the rim and kind of back cut Luca. and when Ant activates those parts of his game, it really, really just energizes the entire Wolf's team and either got a layup or a dunk out of it. It was awesome. They were just super, super decisive. Howard, what did you take away from this game? Obviously, we all watched that this is one of the matchups of the first round.

What did you see? Just to get Steve up to date here. I was at the Garden Saturday night. Oh, that's right. I forgot that was a Saturday. So I missed most of it. I did want to pipe on Randall for a minute, though, because there was just an observation here that I'm curious what both of you think of this,

because it felt like Randall was an awkward fit early in the season. And it was because of usual Julius Randall things, which was being a ball stopper, being a little slow to make decisions and a little bit of tunnel vision. And I feel like this last part of the season, I'm not sure how far back to go. And I haven't looked this up quantitatively. But it does seem to me like Julius Randall has been a smarter, more judicious player for them down the stretch here. And when they first got him,

all I could think was, this is temporary. He's got a contract coming up. They're just going to plug in Nasree to move on. They'll flip him for something else. And I am wondering, like, this version of him actually makes more sense for them.

But, you know, is this a reliable version of Julius Randall? Take it, Steve. I think it is, and it fits this team because his driving ability is just an added layer to a team that can sometimes get slow or not put pressure on teams. Like, Minnesota has been an enigma for me all year in the sense that you've seen the good,

you've seen the formula, and then they just haven't done it. Like, oh my God, we got trapped. This is not a good game for us. Anthony Edwards wants to shoot the ball. Oh, wait, Anthony Edwards wants to make plays. You never know which version you're going to get. And so I think having Julius and his ability to make quick decisions kind of gives us that energy. And that takes less of the burden on Jane McDaniels, who now, you know,

I think second half of season had a lot better stretch offensively to where he understood, okay, this is how I am able to make plays. I can belly off everyone else. So I think his consistency and his driving and his quick decisions helps this group in those moments where they can't necessarily find things in the half court. And so I really thought he's been an important piece for Minnesota this year. Let's be clear. That trade was a calculated salary dump of Carl Anthony Towns.

calculated in the sense of we've gotten two players for one and a pick. And so we got we got enough to justify the salary though. We got enough for our future and we got enough for our present. And there were times this season when the present part of that bet didn't look like it was going to pay off. And it took time. And I think Minnesota probably right now up 1-0 in this series probably feels like we're comfortable with the decision that we made despite the hiccups, despite the lack of shooting, that is going to come back to bite us at some point in these playoffs.

But look at the bracket. We're in. If we can sneak out this series, we get winner of Warriors rockets. And the clippers and nuggets and thunder, you can all hang out there on the other side of the bracket. Like there's a pathway here for us to get back to where we were last year. Long way to go. Lakers have game two at home.

Steve, one last thing you mentioned, you don't want them. They are going to keep switching. the Lakers defensively, and they will. I would like to see them hit Ant with some blitzes. I would put two on the ball now and then and test his willingness to make the easy pass. Test Minnesota shooting around him. Test their ability to make two or three snap reeds in a row because I think that's been

inconsistent this year. And I just don't think they can sit back every single possession and just let them pick out whatever matchup they want. So I will expect selective trapping, blitzing, aggressive, defense that we did not see much of in game one. You know, the, the smartest thing I think the Lakers could do, trap him on his first one. Trap him hard.

Just hit him, hit him right in the face. Hit him, hit him hard. See if that throws off his decisiveness. Now is he anticipating the trap? Is he thinking switch coming? I think especially this time of year, the best players need to see different things, especially some of the younger guards, younger wings. You've got to try and disrupt their rhythm that way as far as,

okay, once they know what's coming, they know exactly good plays to make. The games, they're too smart these days. But if you can just give a little bit of doubt as to, okay, we might trap you. This might be a drop. Now we take you out of your rhythm. Are you making the same automatic plays you made in game one?

So I think that's a fair point. Okay. On to the only semi-exciting and yet gruesomely ugly game from Sunday's chalk, chalk, chalk, chalk, chalk fest until the middle of the night. Howard and I talked about Warriors Rockets a lot already. Now we're going to spin it forward. We talked about Jalen Green and Fred Van Bleet missing every shot.

We talked about Shengoon, Draymond Green, wrestling match. We talked about steps, brilliance, and Jimmy's brilliance and blah, blah, blah, all the different lineups that got trotted out in game one. My general big picture question for both of you, we'll start with you, Steve, because X's and O's guru that you are, is the same question that I had coming into the series only it's more urgent now.

How are the Rockets scoring in the half court? Like if you're on the coaching staff of the Rockets and you're digesting film from game one and you're trying to pick out possessions where, oh, we actually, this alternative over here might have been better than the one we use. Like there's only so many answers on this roster, right? Like Jalen Green, isolating Steph, that didn't work. Van Vliet, Schengoon, Pick and Rolls, Jalen Green, Schengun Pick and Rolls. Like, you can get some stuff out of that, but the Warriors of Dramon's in the game.

are pretty good at playing that semi straight up. And like, they're going to live with Shengun floaters from 15 feet. And Fred Van Fleet like 19 footers off the dribble. You can post Shengun and isolate them a million times. I just think with Jemon, the math is not going to be good enough as great as Shangoon was to just spam that and make that our whole offense. And they're not going to start like trapping and exposing other stuff. And so I'm watching the game and I'm struggling.

Like, what do I do? here. What's the place that I go for half court offense other than miss my own shots and get rebounds? I think as I was watching the second half and Houston was kind of making that comeback drive the basketball.

You got to drive the basketball. You've got to play faster. You don't have to necessarily play with the speed of the Warriors, but your tempo has to be a lot better in the half court. You can't, you don't have the type of offensive talent to be this methodical at every single point in time where you're starting with 15 on the clock and

Golden State's able to load up. You got to drive the ball. Give yourself the most opportunities to make Golden State have to guard. You know, make, make pods close out, make Steph close out, like give yourself a chance. If you got out through Dylan Brooks and Jabari Smith, some of those old school mid post-ups, throw it out there, you know? Give them one, give them to see if it does anything. Give yourself a mix, you know, but if you're just relying on Jalen Green, Fred Van Bly, to make a pull-up and pick and roll, if you're relying on Shingoon to make enough baskets to make Golden State double,

I don't know how far you're going to get, but you've got to go quicker. You know, you've got to make Golden State do something else. And so I think that's the biggest thing. I mean, even early in the game, Big game, Bill and a Postup against Steph Curry, Golden State was looking at him like, hey, what are you going to do? That's positive. So let's give a variety. Let's play with a little bit more force in the half court.

Give ourselves a chance. When you're a team that isn't the strongest offensively, you can't hurt yourself by playing slow, you know? Yeah, in my notes here, and I take notes in every game. I noted the Dylan Brooks post up of Steph and I think they got one more in the second half it got something out of it. Jabari Smith got either an and one or a basket over Steph in the post.

I would even like if he's trying to hide on Amen Thompson or Tarisan, those guys can back him down and just it's not the greatest answer, but it forces the warriors to make decisions and maybe slide some help toward those guys. Amman Thompson scored over him in the post

or drew a foul or scored I can't remember which I think he scored. Tari Isan is a strong dude. He doesn't have like a graceful back to the basket game, but you can do it. And the only other thing I saw was in the third quarter at some point, they started running some like, they emptied out the left side of the floor

and ran a couple of like handoff pick and rolls between Shangoon and Van VIII. One was Adams and Van Vliet and Adams got a dump off layup out of it. One was Dylan Brooks and Adams. And Dylan Brooks got all the way to the rim curling around and missed at the rim. him just a little more juice like that. But this was my big concern. And I just don't, I was sitting there struggling.

Like, it's my job to try to think of answers and pretend I'm in the coach's room. And like, I just, these are the only answers I can come up with. Howard, what else did you notice in that game from Houston? Other than again, 22 offensive rebounds, which is amazing. And the Warriors are small. And that's just going to be a problem, the entire series. I just don't know, like, how many more off. Can you rebound 60% of your own misses?

Like, I don't think you can get. get much more than that. I don't know where else they go with that, but I do, I mean, you and I touched on this earlier in the pot and Steve just touched on it too, but like, yeah, why aren't you leveraging your size and athleticism on the wings against this team? Why aren't you, you know, whether it's Jalen Green driving, a men, Thompson driving, it does feel like there are advantages there that they didn't really fully exploit. I am curious, Steve, where are you on Jalen Green at this stage of his development or or lack

thereof because it feels like he should be the answer to this question, no? Well, he certainly wasn't in game one, but I think his ability this year to grow as a driver has been good. The problem is in the playoffs, are those drives going to result in him being able to finish or get to the free throw line? And so he's now going to make that difference between the regular season of playoffs. I like to, he's trying to get downhill in the regular season. you try to initiate contact, that's fine. What's that look like now when the physicality is up and the help is up? And now you're taking wilder shots at the rim or in the paint.

It's kind of like a regression to year one or two, Jalen Green. So I think he's got to understand and read when he has what shot. And I like that he wants to get in the paint, but also what are you going to do when you get down there? Like, are you creating an advantage? Are you finishing? Are you able to kick out of it? So he has to be the answer for them to a degree. He's got to be able to get a switch on Stefan Curry and make a play.

He's got to be able to do some of that because, you know, Fredman Bleet's going to have a pull-up game at some point. Dylan Brooks probably have a good game. But if Jalen Green can't force the issue to a degree and make Golden State have to think about doing something different, it gets hard. It gets really hard for Houston. Let me hit you guys on one more series that we have been derelected, not talking about. and it does not resume until Tuesday.

So we have some time tomorrow. Part of the reason it's difficult to talk about it is because we don't know if Damian Lillard is coming back for game two, for game three at any point. And obviously that changes the whole series. The Bucks are drawing dead in this series without Dam. Like they can't win the series without Dame. I don't think I said before I would have picked the Pacers to win the series with Dame healthy from game one.

I just think the Pacers are a really good basketball team. Dame obviously changes the series. series. Game one, just total nightmare for the Bucks, total nightmare for anyone who's worried about Yannis looking at the roster and being like, what, anyone? Kooz? Kooz? Is this thing on Kuz? Brooke Lopez? And there was like an alarming amount of Kevin and Porter Jr. going on. Like he's alarmingly essential to the Bucks all of a sudden. And the Pacers, despite like a bad shooting game and I thought a fine all around floor game

from Tyrese Halliburton but a bad shooting game I liked every single three he took he missed all of them that's not going to happen again just blew the doors off the bucks unbelievable Seacum game unbelievable Nemhart game again it's hard to talk adjustments without knowing what dame's likelihood

Howard did you catch this game or no I saw pieces of it before I ran out the door anything strike you before we get to Steve on what to look for in game two. No, go Steve. Go Steve. What, I mean, I liked a lot of what, um,

Indiana did across the board. I think they could have leaned even more into Halliburton, C. Ackham two-man game. Um, and Janus was unbelievable. Like, I just don't know what else he's supposed to do other than shoot better than eight of 15 from the line, but 36 and 12, no one else really coming along for the ride until it was kind of out of hand. And AJ Green made some shots.

what do you just in general, it could be a Pacer's adjustment. Like what are you curious about in game two, dame, no dame, whatever? I think for me, the line has been can the Milwaukee Bucks sustained defense against the Indiana Pacers? I thought they did a good job of switching at times. They did a good job trying to contain the drives. Eventually they got to a point on a lot of possessions where, you know, whether there was a drive or there was a role, whatever, they had to help. The ball was sprayed.

Rotation, another pass. Rotation, another pass. We're out of rotations. And that was just an overwhelming theme for me. And so I don't think if the bucks can't sustain their defense, they're not going to have an opportunity. Because I mean, Yonis had, what, 12 of the bucks first 19 points? That's fantastic.

The paces are shooting 70%. And so you haven't got enough defense to make the Yonis pressure point matter. And now, Indiana has this wiggle room and this margin for error. And you're trying to figure out, okay, do we put Brooke at the level? we switch brook, do we go zone, and Indiana is able to poke it all of it. You get Yonis playing well, no one's making shots. You got 17 made field goals and eight assists at halftime. You haven't taken advantage of the Yonis game, and you can't stop them.

So when you got Pascal making the back breaking shots, Halliburton didn't even have to really shoot the ball. He was just able to be an engine as far as pick and roll. I can reject. I can attack. I can open things up. And Milwaukee's going to be in rotation. And so if they can't get enough of that defensively,

and not just 15 seconds of defense, they need 18 to 20. It's like, I don't want to say it's like playing the spurs of old, but like the hardest part about playing teams like that who move the ball, it's not the first action. It's not second action.

It's the third and fourth one that gets you. And with Indiana, the way they played as far as being committed to moving that ball, it put too much pressure on the buck's defense. And they can't guard. It's five at best, maybe. Yeah, it was just easy for Indiana offensively. It was comfortable.

And that's, Dame is not going to change that. If anything, it will get more comfortable. You know, I just thought it was easy for Halliburton. You know if Brooke Lopez is on Miles Turner, and maybe they shift him to Siakum at some points. We've seen them toggle that matchup back and forth.

If he's on Miles Turner, that pick and roll, pick and pop. And Miles Turner mixed in, I thought even too many roles, like too many short roles, but he made jumpers from 18, 19 feet. When he pops to three, it's just an easy decision tree for Tyrese Halliburton. If he's wide open, just give him the ball. And then he gets the ball. And if a third guy stunts at him, he knows where that's coming from and Miles Turner can make that pass. If Tyrese Halliburton

kind of dribbles and hangs out with it a little bit and he sees that third rotator, that third stunt they're coming, he just skips Miles Turner all together and hits that guy's guy, Andrew Nemhart. There's a pass that Tyrese made to Nemhart in the level. corner in this exact situation that was just a genius point guard thinking two steps ahead of the defense and saying, I see it, I see it, and it's over for you. And it was just too easy for them. And I don't know really kind of what answer. You mentioned zone, you know, and every adjustment, there's a counter for. And, you know, look, the Pacers made some contested threes early in the game. Seacum, Jarrett Walker made one that there was really nothing going on. He just rose up.

And if you hit those shots, it's just maybe, you know, not your day. But the other thing is five turnovers for the Pacers. The Bucs don't force turnover. So the Pacers are going to get shots every single possession. And if you just give them shots every single possession, they're going to score a lot of points. And the free throws were about even. And if the Bucks, if those are even those two categories, the Bucs are not going to win this series. I don't know.

Offensively anything. I mean, Janus was awesome. And I thought they're about. best offense was actually using Yannis as a screener. They just don't have enough dynamic ball handlers to really do that over it. He said 15, 16 ball screens, 1.55 points per possession out of it. That's a monster number. And if Dame does come back, I think you just got to lean into that two-man game as much as

you can with shooting around it because I don't know what else the answers are. I mean, I think the Yonest Dane two-man game improved this season. So that would be huge. It's hard. You don't want to put it all on Dane. especially after coming back from this but in theory dame helps their offensive flow in general it felt like it was yannis does something everyone kind of waits because the pacer is just so decisive on are you a wing are you a ball handler are you tori and prince we are you going under we're we're fine with

this so you have to kind of get that sudden aspect like are you tory and prince i like that part of the the industry are you a ball hand or are you shooter are you tory and prince if yes then do this so i like that Janus, like, he gets something. And then it's like, oh, I don't want that person to guard Yanis so much. Maybe we can get two on the ball. Dane being back can help with some of that flow. And so I think that's probably where Milwaukee needs to get to is just more sudden attacks and try and move the ball, move Janus around. And hopefully that can sustain you in the half court.

You get something from someone to make some shots. And then defensively, you just got to, you know, be decisive and hope you can sustain. I try it. I don't want to go big picture after one game. I don't want to. But the big picture has been the same for a while now. And the Middleton-Kuzma trade was obviously, like, I tweeted it at the time, even though I was unemployed, just a massive vote of no confidence in Chris Middleton. Like you can, like, Kuzma is whatever.

Like I, you and I, Steve, both, I think, tweeted something to the effect of like the coups that played for the Lakers would actually help this team. size, shooting, cutting, defense, toughness on the boards. Like, he's not great defense player, but he can be. This coups is not helping the team. But that trade was about like, we just have no faith in Chris Middleton being healthy and bouncy and mobile enough. And it's just the atrophy around Janus and the roster just is what it is. I liked the dame trade. The dame trade has not worked.

Not the way that I expected it to work. And you just like, Brooks is a free agent. this season. He's old. You know, Janus has two years left after this guaranteed. So there's no rush on any of this, but they better get their asses back into series one way or another. Because if this is another ugly loss and this time Janus is healthy, I'm sorry to Buck's fans. The questions are going to be unavoidable, but it's only one game. They haven't played at home yet. And as long as Janus is on the floor playing for the bucks, you cannot count them out of anything. But I don't know. I like Howard, anything. Just, I don't know.

I don't know how else to like politely address this topic. The roster around him is getting worse and worse and worse. And there's not really anything in the young player covered coming up because the draft picks have missed and or been traded. Kevin Porter Jr. is not fixing this. Is that what you're saying? The week before Middleton was moved, I was talking to a GM and we were going again, going through the list. So who's actually getting moved out of all the guys we're rumoring, rumor mongering about? and when he and he mentioned middleton and i and i was asking just you know the why he was so certain

he says middleton's cooked and they know it like that that the medical concerns at that point the health concerns were just so glaring that moving him just to get anything anybody of of use who they could rely on and it's this was not i want to make this very clear this was not a value judgment on chris middleton as a player his talent his his determination his will he's going to get his jersey in Milwaukee. Yeah. He was fantastic for them. They don't win a championship without him, but this has been a gradual erosion going on

years now. And it was, they'd reached the point where they knew they just weren't going to be able to rely on him. And they just needed to get something. It ended up being Coosma. So I wasn't surprised that they moved off him. And I don't think it had anything to do with, you know, it wasn't so much about getting Kuzma.

It wasn't so much about whether or not they like Chris Middleton. It was just like, there's just a reality setting. in here. But that reality has been coming into focus or has been kind of visible on the horizon for a few years now. Like this, that's the whole thing. Like I know, Janus has been hurt in the playoffs. And that's a lot of why they've been out early. But it's also been this slow erosion of, you know, you traded Drew Holiday, but Drew was was, you know, getting older, Brooke was getting older, Middleton was getting older and always hurt. And it's, this is not even a criticism of the way the front office has handled all this. It's really hard to adjust on the fly. You've got the core of

team around Janus that helped them win a championship. Figuring out when to start spitting off the older pieces and whether or not you can actually even get the right value for them and the right fit is really hard. And it's gotten harder in the second apron era. So I sympathize, but the reality is what it is. And I get it. Milwaukee fans are already fatigued of the national media speculating on Janus's future discussion.

But there's a reason it keeps coming around. And it keeps coming around because there are these inflation. collection points where it looks like they've stalled out and it's going to be really hard to keep building a decent team around him. And we've hit another one. And yeah, there was a New York Post story a month ago about the Nets are lying in wait with all their draft picks and other stuff to try to get Yannis if he becomes available. And there's undoubtedly other teams doing the same. That's the way this league works. Every front office is just staffed with vultures. And if you don't have a superstar, you are waiting for one to ask out.

to be discontented, to hit a fork in the road, or to hit a brick wall, or whichever metaphor you want to choose. And it's kind of looking like another one coming up potentially. Yes, we're ahead of ourselves. So I will address the Nets only because you brought them up. My question with the Nets and Yannis, and I talked about this on my old podcast before it went away, is like, that's cool. Like you got a million picks, you got your own picks, you got lots of extra picks from lots

of places. You got, you know, some guys. What's the, what's the plan? Like, who else is coming with Janus? Because who is Janus playing with if you have to trade whatever you got to trade, plus your picks to get them. And they have salary cap space, so it's easier for them to not trade out of their roster. But like, so I'm Janus. I'm looking around. It's like, okay, it's me and like Noah Clowny and maybe Cam Johnson if he's still around. Camp Johnson is a nice player. I like Cam Johnson. But and the roster's like younger. It's like Drew Timmy. Is Drew Timmy carrying me to, to, uh, to the promised land? Like it, there's got to be another shoe there because, um, and it's not like Janus is of the age where he has two years for you to wait to, to wait for you

to drop the other shoe, to get me the other guy, to get me the, and he's good enough that he can elevate, you know, Cam Johnson plus Nick Claxton, plus if Cam Thomas is still around and, you know, doesn't shoot every single time. because Janice is now on the team. He can elevate that team, but I just don't know. Anyway, enough. The Bucks can rally.

I hope the Bucks rally. I hope this is a nice long series. You said something else that interested me, and I don't remember what it was. Okay, guys, there's only two games today. So we can really dig in Detroit, New York game two. My pick in that series was Knicks in five. And, yeah, five.

That's right, Steve Jones. What did you pick? Did you make a pick? I think I went Pistons in six for the, for the, Oh, I like it. I don't see it. But the Pistons played well for three quarters and then pooped all over the garden floor in the fourth quarter. And obviously, Clippers Nuggets resumes tonight.

That is the series of the first round. I picked Nuggets in seven. I don't know if either of you guys made picks in that series. Would you like to share them? Logan forced me to make picks, which I hate doing on the pod last week. Thank you, Zach. I appreciate the sympathy. I think I went clippers in,

I must have gone clippers in six, but I might have said clippers in seven. It was probably clippers in six. I said nix in seven. I expected the Pistons to be feisty. I think we'll see a little bit better version of the Pistons tonight. And maybe that, you know, look, it is a young team, all cliches applying.

But yeah, you know, they got that one out of the way. They had their moment. And maybe they're a little bit more poised under the searing garden spotlight tonight. What was your Clippers Nuggets fixed, Steve? I had Clippers and six, but this Nicole Yolkid-Stremol-Murray two-man game just always does this. They're very good. I think Clippers and six, still very much on the table. Like, I don't feel confident in the

nuggets after that game, but I cannot wait. I may have to take a power nap today so I can stay up and watch that game because I don't think I have the patience to what. I mean, people are laughing at me. First of all, I'm old. Second of all, the game will end at like one in the morning. So yeah, that's late for me. Okay. That's true. I'm an old dad. That's late for me. I might have to take a pop up because I don't, it's that one has me tingling with anticipation. Okay. Howard Beck of the ringer. com can listen to him on real ones with Loga and Raja. He writes. He does everything. He's a

jack of every trade. Steve Jones, Jr. What's your, what's your podcast schedule? I've lost track of all in my, in my fun employment. I lost track. Every day was the same. So I don't know what days I happens anymore. So we are we are dropping on later this week but usually it's kind of pins on these days. It's either Tuesday or Thursday, but it'll be Thursday this week, I think. Thank you guys. Steve Jones Jr. just one of a kind. If you want to know, I always try to bring people on, if you want to know what actually happened in the game and not who's got guts and who shrinks from the moment, this is one of the guys to follow. Howard, I'll see you soon, at least in a Monday. Steve, I'll see you soon. Thank you guys. Enjoy the playoffs.

Thanks, Zach. All right. Thanks for listening. Enjoy the game two's tonight. And later in the week, I will be back on Thursday. And we will update you on everything that's happened. Get ready. The world one of the playoffs is here. 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 the 100 gambler or visit bandwool.com slash RG. Call 188-88-88-9-777. or is it CCPG.org slash chat in Connecticut, or is it MD Gamblinghelp.org in Maryland.

Hope is here. Visit Gambling Helpline, MA.org, or call 800327-505-0 for 24-7 sport in Massachusetts. Or call 1-8-H-7-8-H-O-P-E-N-Y or text Hope N-Y in New York. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. fit for your ambition for citizens back. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel

is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavatheater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary.

You in? Must be 21 to enter.