The Zach Lowe Show - Timberwolves Steal Game 2, and CJ McCollum’s Heel Turn

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Zach is joined by Mo Dakhil to quickly preview Tuesday night’s games before doing a deep dive on all the remaining series. Finally, they close the show by discussing what comes next for Billy Donovan after stepping down as head coach of the Chicago Bulls, and other news and notes around the league. (0:00) Welcome to The Zach Lowe Show! (2:26) Mo Dakhil joins the show! (3:39) Which game tonight are you most interested in? (6:42) Denver-Minnesota game 2 was a thriller (19:48) Jaden McDaniels says the Nuggets are all bad defenders (27:07) Knicks and Hawks tied at one game apiece (33:02) CJ McCollum embarrassed Jalen Brunson down the stretch (45:05) Cleveland has been all over Toronto so far (52:19) The Cavs seem to finally have a sense of who they are (57:08) Welcome to the NBA season Orlando Magic! (1:11:56) Let's quickly cover OKC-PHO (1:16:33) Billy Donovan stepping down as Bulls head coach (1:23:44) What could the future of the Heat look like? Host: Zach Lowe Guest: Mo Dakhil Producers: Mike Wargon, Jonathan Frias, and Billy Gil Social: Keith Fujimoto and Michael Szokoli #ULTRACourtside could get you closer to the game! https://michelobultra.com/courtside MICHELOB ULTRA:registered: COURTSIDE ’25 to ’26. No Purchase Necessary. Open to US residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1, 2025 and ends on June 30, 2026 Multiple entry periods. See Official Rules at https://michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. 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

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See official rules at michelope ultra.com slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. Up on the Zach Lowe show! Oh, boy, the playoffs have officially arrived. Knicks Hawks. The Hawks with an improbable come from behind when. C.J. McCollum. Holy smokes. Hello to the newest New York City postseason villain.

What happened? Why did the Knicks have no timeouts? What are the adjustments going to be in that series? And in Denver, Minnesota, the same thing. Minnesota with a really strong win in a super high-level game down to the wire. In Denver, we had missed free throws in both games. We had interesting coaching decisions in both games. We had clutch baskets galore in both of those games.

Moat tequila is here to help us break down. Wait, how do we get here? And now, more importantly, with a couple of days off, what comes next, what adjustments need to happen, what adjustments do we expect to happen, what are the adjustments to the adjustments? Then we get into Raptors' Cavs, which is a little less interesting, 2-0. Not a great start for the Raptors. And then lots of news in the NBA. We talk about Billy Donovan leaving the Bulls and the coaching dominoes, the future of the Warriors, the future of the heat, which I feel like we fast-forwarded a little bit too quickly on. And then also,

Detroit Orlando, are the Pissons in trouble? A deep dive on that. And a, not even a dive. We just sort of weighed into the zero entry pool of Sun's Thunder. And is there any hope for Phoenix to even make that competitive? So tons of stuff. And a brief look aheads to tonight's three games, too, Philly, Boston, Houston Lakers, boys, this a show me game for the Rockets and Spurs Blazers, all coming up on the Zach Lowe Show with Mode to Kill. The Zach Lowe show is brought to you by Fandul.

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Call 1-888-7-777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. Welcome to the Zach Lowe's show, the playoffs have officially begun. After a whole home opening weekend of mostly chalk and a little bit of Orlando magic, magic. Last night, Monday night, we got rolling. Forget raps, cabs. We'll get to that. The Knicks, a thrilling fall from a head loss at home in game two, one-one. Kaka!

Kaka! And Nuggets Wolves just exceeding the hype. An awesome, well-played, tense, super high. level game between two legitimate finals level teams. Yes, I'm calling the Wolves the finals level team. Sue me if you disagree. That series is one. One. We had missed free throws. We had clutch plays. We had clutch mistakes. We had coaching mistakes. We had everything going on. Motiqueu. We're going to break it all down. How you doing, bud? I'm doing great, man. It's playoff times. This is what we live for, Zach. A series doesn't start until the road team wins.

Two road teams won last night. One candidate's team did not. Before we go on to those games, just we should quickly acknowledge there are three game twos tonight. Typically, I don't talk too much about tonight's games because by the time this comes out, there's not a lot of lead time. Philly, Boston, Portland, San Antonio, Lakers, Houston. What's the one of those that you are watching most closely tonight or the one thing you are watching most closely tonight? Portland, San Antonio, I think, is the most interesting of the three for me.

And it's not just because I'm enamored by Wemby. I want to see what Portland does defensively. They threw everything at him in game one. And I want to know if they have more. Are we going to see something? Zones? Are they going to press full court? They had started out with Klingin on Castle.

They had Kamara on Wembe. Then they switched eventually to the Biggs on Wembe. And I just want to see how they kind of figure this stuff out. And what do they have in the bag left? And to their credit, we're throwing it all out in game one and seeing what we can do and what's going to work. And to Wemby's credit, None of it worked.

Yeah, I think that's the most interesting of the three series tonight. And I said this with Bill on Sunday. Just what a debut for Wemby. Obviously, the numbers were sensational. But the how he got there was unbelievable, just in the sense of what you're talking about. Like, Portland just went right away. Like, we have nothing to save for game two. We're throwing every gambit we have at you right away in game one.

And they problem solved all of them. I think we might see more zone. That's one adjustment. Portland played a good deal of zone this year. we might see more, but they're just at such a talent deficit and a scoring deficit. Philly, Boston, tough hill to climb for the Sixers. Thought they did some good things against Boston's defense. Boston loves to, like, I call them peel switches or jump switches on pick and rolls

where the guy guarding the ball handler will go over the screen and then peel out to a shooter and that shooter's guy will peel in to the ball handler. Philly knew that was coming, scouted it pretty well, prepared for it pretty well, just missed a bunch of shots. But the one to watch tonight to me is Lakers Houston. This is a must show up game for the Houston Rockets who laid a disastrous egg in game one, no offense, no structure, no plan, no second idea on any possession. Yeah, Durant was out.

So were Luca and Reeves. Yeah, Van Vlitt was out. So are Luca and Reeves. You got to have a better showing than that. I know that Finney Smith is giving you nothing. The bench is thin. Stephen Adams has heard. That was a disgusting performance by a Rockets team who should beat the Lakers

without Luca and Reeves and instead looked like they kind of got outclassed and outsmarted. Any other thoughts on that game tonight before we move on to the fun stuff? Yeah, I want to see how they use Shangoon offensively. If KD.'s not able to go, how are we going to work

that through? And is DeAndre Aiton going to show up again defensively? Oh yeah, dominating, baby. Yeah, like, I think that's the battle. I'm trying to kind of figure out when I'm watching that game tonight. I'm going to be looking at how are the Rockets going to use Shangoon with the last of space that they have to give him some sort of room to operate.

And I think that's the big problem for them. We shall see. I expect Celtics win, Spurs win. I'll pick Rockets win tonight. Okay, let's go on to the two games of last night and then look forward to adjustments to come as these series move to the other arenas in game three. Denver, Minnesota, an absolute thriller in Denver where the nuggets get off to a scorching start. The Timberwolves are making all kinds of.

mistakes on defense and transition in the half court, you're thinking, oh, my God, maybe, you know, Ant's knee is bulky. He doesn't look like he's moving well. It's just been sort of a weird year from the Timberwolves. Maybe we're just not going to have the series we'll hope for. And then Ant shows up and shows out. The Timberwolves just across the board. Randall played with the level of physicality and aggression they need. I thought it was just a super high level game on both ends of the floor. Like both teams played super hard, super smart. And then down the stretch, What a stretch one. Do you want to go through the last couple minutes?

Yes, yes, please. A minute 30 left. Ante Vincenzo, left side of the floor pick and roll. They're hunting Jamal Murray. Ants hunting Jamal Murray. I think he should do more of that. Ants hunting everybody and he's pushing a lot of the right buttons. These teams are not messing around.

They're pushing their right buttons. They get the switch. Minnesota overloads that side of the floor. Kind of doubles Ante to get the ball out of his hands. He kicks it to Dante Devenzo on the right side. Tim Hardaway Jr., who's playing an enormous amount of minutes with the other starters. Partly because Cam Johnson was in foul trouble and Payton Watson's out,

and that looms large. There's a lot of Tim Hardaway Jr. happening. This might be the single best defensive possession of Tim Hardaway Jr.'s life. He runs DeVincenzo off the arc. He rotates over, runs him off the arc. Devenchenzzo drives, kicks it to Jada McDaniels. Hardaway peels out of the middle of the floor,

off DeVincenzo onto McDaniels, forces a crazy twisting fadeaway jump or miss by McDaniels, otherwise had a pretty nice game. Denver runs it up. Aaron Gordon hits a three. At that point, what's the score at that point? I remember. It's a one point game at that point. It's 112. 112.11. Devinchenzo then hits a three off the same kind of action. It's 115. 11. Nicola Yokic runs an inverted pick and roll with Jamal Mori, which is something I talked about going into the series. I think they should run it even more. It puts Gobert, who's been awesome defensively. Stoned Yokic in the post multiple times last night. Got a massive offensive rebound, put back dunk over Yokic late in the game.

He's just been awesome. Kind of got stuck under the screen and Yokic starts rumbling toward the rim. And I swear to God, Mo, when he went up not with two hands with one hand and dunked it, I literally screamed, holy shit in my office. You just don't expect him to dunk the ball like that. Then Ant travels and the door is open for Denver. It's a two-point game. Ant travels.

It's like, oh, my guy, okay. It's nervous time. Christian Brown has fouled under the rim for Denver on another inverted pick and roll. No, it was a Murray-yoketch pick-and-roll straight up. One out of two, nervous time to one-point game. Julius Randall gets fouled on the other end. They take the foul. He makes two of two.

Kudos to Julius Randall. The Wolves had balked a ton of free throws. Julius Randall Dunbog those. And then Jamal Murray takes bottom five all-time worst quick two in the history of the NBA. with his team down three. Not that quick and not close to the rim. No chance of drawing a foul. Miss, game over, Devencenzo run out.

Just an awesome game. I just thought it was such a well-played game. And I think it highlights like how difficult this road is going to be for whoever wins this series. Because the more I get into this, the playoffs are just so hard that I think if you're going to win a title, I think somewhere along the way you've got to have a four or five game series. You just can't load up on six and seven game series. I'm going to get into this with the

Knicks. I was joking before Knicks Hawks with our buddy Sam Morrill, great stand-up comedian, huge Knicks fan was courtside, taunting C.J. McCollum last night. I said, I picked up the Knicks and six, and he's like, I would love it if it was four or five. And I just said, I just don't think the Knicks are built to play short series either way. Like, I don't think they're going to ever get swept or losing five games. I don't think they're ever going to win in four or five games. They're just not built to play that kind of series. And I think you just need one. And now Denver had a chance to make this one, and they didn't make this one a short series.

So, okay, after two games, Denver's offensive rating is 112 points for 100 possessions. That's nine points below their season leading average. What are you seeing from Minnesota? How did they dig back into this series last night? Yeah, I think it started first off, really on the offensive end for them. They crushed them on the boards. And that allowed them to play slower basketball, right? Allowed them to play set defense because they get the ball on the hoop more when they're getting those second chance points.

They're able to set their defense on the other end of the court. And you mentioned it. But Gober has been absolutely phenomenal on Yokic for two games now, like in the post. And they've kind of taken that away. And something that was key to me in this one was they didn't really double Yokich all that much late in the game. And that's their way of saying, hey, we'll let Yokch score. but we're not going to let him get four or five assists in a quarter and hurt us with the way he kicks the ball around and has his flying and in rotation and in tough spots.

I felt like that was the first thing I kind of noticed right away was just saying, we trust Rudy to stand him up, play him well in the post. We're not going to send help. And when they did that, it made it harder for everybody else to get those things. You know, the cuts from Aaron Gordon or finding Murray open for a three or all that, Christian Brown and that stuff, I think it kind of slowed them down offensively and had them playing later into the shot clock than they wanted to. And I think that put a lot of pressure on the nuggets on the offensive end. I think they should post Yokic more, even if it's against Gobert.

And especially like going into the series, I wondered, they're just going to have to attach Gobert to Yokic and just play him every minute that Yokic plays. And obviously, the nuggets are very smartly staggering. Murray and Yokic, perhaps Mike Brown should watch that series a little bit. We'll talk about that. I have to know. The wolves, on the other hand, are resting and Randall at the same time as they have done throughout the season. It's been one of the sort of pushing pulls for them, and they won those minutes last night. But I think they should post Yokic more, even when Gober is in the game, and especially when he's not in the game.

I think there are some places they can poke at Minnesota's defense a little bit more. Nas Reid, I think is another guy that, like, Jamal Murray should hunt him a little bit and try to attack his feet. But I don't think they're posting Yokach enough. The other thing is, like, the Muriel. Murray Yokich pick and roll, you can count on one hand, I think the number of pocket passes Yokic is caught in the floater range. They are just committed to taking those away by either just letting Murray drive and staying attached to Yokic by having Gobert stay just close enough when he drops back that Murray's like, I don't know if that pocket pass is there. And then they late switch and Yolkich is popping a lot for threes. And they're just psyched if Yolk is taking threes.

How are they taking, like, what are you seeing from that in terms of the two-man game and how they're taking that away? Yeah, I think you've touched on it. I think they're focused more on the fact that they're focused on taking that specific pocket pass away, like that, or at least make them hesitant a little bit. And it's everything that you said, we're going to stick with Murray, we're going to fight over the top of it. We're going to show a little bit, but still stay attached. We're not going to get too overextended. And then we're also going to have a little bit of help from the other side, right?

where the side Murray's coming towards, you know, just a little bit of just, hey, I'm going to show a little bit and then get back to my guy and kind of, dig, excuse me. It took me a minute to find the word. Just dig a little bit or stunt and then get back to my guy. Well, and also let the other guys shoot threes. Let Christian Brown shoot threes. Let live with those guys. If you have to, if you have to swarm the middle of the floor to keep the ball out of Yokach's hands or to just stop Murray at the rim when you just sort of let him go and let him drive to the rim. Let the other guys shoot. Yeah. And I think that's, sort of the way they're doing it. It's not just two guys defending the pick and roll. It's really kind of the whole team. And then to your point, too, Yokic is popping a lot. And he's, I mean, his three ball has been gone. Like, I don't know where, like, it's, it's definitely, you know, missing on a milk carton somewhere. He hasn't had that thing since post All Star break. And it's really a thing where they will happily live with him settling for that. Then, then him roll into the rim. And then even the times when he did get get it late in that game, the play you were talking about, we're Christian Brown got fouled and missed the free throws.

It was off Yokic and the pick and roll, having possibly a floater, and had Yokich kind of indecisively deciding, no, no floater, and then I'm going to throw it to Brown there on the baseline. And I think that was, you know, just an encapsulation of this is how they're defending it. It's basically all alert by the wolves. We're going to pull in completely on that. He had another turnover, Yokich did on a Murray Yokic pick and roll where he got the ball in the middle of the floor and had a decent look at a floater and also had Christian Brown wide open in

the left corner and just weirdly tried to pass the ball back to Murray from like two feet away when Murray was not open and Gobert knocked it away and stole it. And like Yolkutche only had three turnovers in this game. I think I had five in game one. It's just some of them are just not characteristic of him. And this has been a theme since he came back from knee injury. I mean, Randall, Randall, for the wolves to win this series, the most obvious thing was they need Julius Randall to be the guy who was an all-NBA level player

twice in his career. And he was not that in game one. And in game two, he just came out and was like, I'm just going to beat the shit out of everybody. Like, if there's any moment when Aaron Gordon is not on me, if I switch on defense and I have a cross-match on offense, if I just the random flow of the game, all of a sudden Christian Browns on me or Cam Johnson's on me,

I'm just going to bulldoze those guys and go to the basket, and he made his free throws. Defensively, I thought he played pretty well. They're going to need that kind of Julius Randall three more times to win this series. And Ant playing on a knee that's clearly bothering him. He only shot 10 of 25, 3 of 11 from threes. He only had two assists. I thought he played an awesome floor game.

Like, when they're putting two on him in the pick and roll, he's getting off the ball. He's making the right pass. And that's when the wolves are at their best. The ball starts moving, and here comes Nas Reid, driving from the corner. Here comes Jada McDaniels driving from the corner. Here comes the blender. I think he can do even more, particularly in the moments when Gobert is not on the floor and the spacing's a little better. Just pick your matchup and attack.

And he did this with Aaron Gordon a couple times. Aaron Gordon cannot stay in front of him. And there were two drives in this game where he got Aaron Gordon. It was Aunt Julius Randall Pick and Roll. Aaron Gordon switches. He didn't bring the ball out. He didn't dance with it. It was just one continuous drive blow by Aaron Gordon. He drew a foul. let the rim on one lay up, I think, on another. He had unbelievable instances of rim protection on defense, like really, really gutty performance from him. And I just thought, again, super high level game on both ends. Yeah. And I think, you know, talking about just ants knee, there was one possession, I think it was early in the first quarter where he actually even grabbed at it.

You know, like bringing the ball up the court past it and then stop for a second. And then that's where I was just like, wow, we're in trouble. But again, defensively, too, like the way he was getting some blocks. He had a late chase down block on Tim Hardaway Jr. In a big possession, all of those things. But when you're talking about what he's doing offensively, he's really kind of orchestrating it. It's a conductor almost at the symphony, excuse me, and just sort of just getting everybody in the right spots. He's getting it out so quickly off of the double teams. Every time they send the double, it's out quickly. That Dante DiVincenzo 3 is because of that,

And it caught the nuggets off guard. Tim Hardaway Jr. wasn't in position to rotate over and help clean three and that opportunity there. And I think the thing we're seeing more importantly is this is where they miss Peyton Watson if you're the nuggets. Like this is where, like that was the matchup for the nuggets was we're going to put Peyton on it and we're going to be able to help from behind there. And then Aaron Gordon can rotate over, be the second guy and meet him at the rim and be more of a rim. protecting threat. And I think that's been the big thing that they're missing right there because Gordon can't stay with him.

He's going to overpower Christian Brown. Like there's not really a lot of, you know, Bruce Brown doesn't have enough size to really take Ant. Like there's going to be a lot of problems. Cam Johnson's not good enough defensively as a one-on-one defender to take on ant. Like there, there was a lot of holes there when they don't have Watson. That's a missing piece for them on that end.

Totally agree. And by the way, you know, who, Who else pointed out the Nuggets defensive limitations? Jada McDaniels after the game. Did you see this? We have, you know, you know what's not missed? Peyton Watson's missing from the series. You know what's not missing is spice.

And this is why the playoffs are awesome. And this is why rivalries are awesome. This is 30 times these teams have played now in four years. Three playoff series in four years. It's 15 apiece. And Jada McDaniels after the game. What are you going to do? What's the game plan?

Go after Yokic, Jamal. All the bad defenders said, Daniels, Tim Hardaway Jr., Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, okay, the whole team, just go at them. Question, so they're all bad defenders? Yeah, they're all bad defenders. Okay, we're not even being careful anymore. We're just going to just say the whole team sucks at this one element of the game. We also had at least the third high profile incident of Yokic trying to inbound the ball

in a playoff game and getting into a confrontation over it. This one was when he tried to take it from Anthony Edwards. a long distinguished line of people, Jeff Van Gundy and of course, famously the flop-tastic Matt Ishbia in Phoenix. Yokic wants to freaking ball. If you have it, just beware.

I don't remember quite a comment like that from a player. I mean, we're only going into game three. Jada McDaniel shoved, did you shove Yokic from behind in game one? I think, yes, it was Yokic,

yeah. Started to unravel. Like, this is, I mean, I don't, These teams seem too mature and too much aware of what's at stake for any sort of a like conflagration to happen where people would risk suspension. But my God, Jada McDaniel, okay.

I mean, you better, I mean, you better back it up. You better put like 140 points up on them next game. Well, I mean, I think that's the fun stuff, right? Like, we've talked about it all the times and everybody's been complaining for years. Like, where are the rivalries? Rivalries are built in the playoffs. And I didn't even realize it's been 30 games over the last. four years. I know it's been a ton. And it's been a, you know, Minnesota winning a game seven in Denver

is always going to be a big thing. Right. And I think that's a huge thing to kind of look at it. The rivalry is awesome. And I love it when they jump into this a little bit. Like, let's have some of that spice. Like I appreciated Jaden McDaniels. I don't agree necessarily with everything he said, but I appreciate that he's putting that out there, putting his name on it. And it's just, hey, yeah, I said it. Let's go with it and see what happens. And I hope the Nuggets respond in game three to give us another one of these wild battles. I hope Aaron Gordon looks at him going like, yeah, I'm a bad defender. Me? Okay, let me show you. You're like one step away from just being like his mom's ugly. His face is ugly. His dog stinks. How far is this going to go? He drives a shitty car. Have you seen his car? He doesn't know how to dress. Like let's get real personal here. what else? I just think these teams are pushing each other to the limit. And that's what's fun about this,

is you see how, I think Denver has largely defended pretty well in this series for a team allegedly comprised of bad defenders. And I think Minnesota has defended pretty well in this series for a team that's largely comprised of good defenders. Minnesota's top seven is just A plus plus. And then whatever they get from bones and slow-mo beyond that is gravy. Denver, we know they have a great starting five.

But you see, like, the amount of the lengths that these two teams have to go to to just get good looks in the half court. I think you're seeing both teams try to get, like, get Ant moving off the ball on an empty side of the floor, get him a head start. You saw the wolves doing that. You saw the Nuggets doing that with their guys, too, just like, how can we, like a Yolkich, a Murray Yokch pick and roll on the left side with no shooter there? Is that a place that we can poke? And the wolves are doing that with DeVincenzo coming off pin downs and Ant coming off pin downs. And if you watch them, they are sprinting into the ball, like sprinting into the ball, getting the defense to commit, getting it to the second side. I think both teams need to dig even deeper into those kind of bags offensively and trying to look at my other notes to see what else I have here.

I just love this series. I did think it was interesting. I'm interested in Denver's defensively. Do they try to mix it up a little bit more? In other words, like Minnesota understood by the end of that game, all right, they're hunting. I'm sorry, we're hunting Jamal Murray, they're going to give us that switch and then they're going to double.

What we see sort of more random blitzes by Denver, will we see a little bit more zone defense, not like surrendering the switch quite as easily. And I think on the other end, the kind of same thing, like Kyle Anderson unleashed a random blitz out of nowhere that caught him off guard. And we saw glimpses of Yoketch hiding on McDaniels. And even Dissumu, which did not work,

I'll blue by him. but just the chess match of like, where's Yokic going to be defensively is interesting too. Yeah, just finding moments where you can at least give him a break defensively. You know, like when he's there with Rudy, he's still banging with Rudy, battling for boards, you know, on the offensive glass,

you know, and everything. Like there's a lot, you want to find a way to give him a little bit of rest. The conceding of switches, and this has always been a problem for me, and this is going to, it drives me insane.

But like, we know Murray shouldn't switch on to aunt. And I know the plan is, okay, then we're going to go double, and that puts us in a tough situation. We've been through this enough. Or at least, like, can Murray have learned by now the Steph Curry dark arts of let me show really hard and slow you up? And then, you know, we chase underneath and get back to Ant and then I go back to my guy. Like, at what point are we just going to stop conceding switches? And it's not just the nuggets.

We're going to talk about it when we get to the next game. Like, it's just constantly, at what point our team is going to start looking at it going, I'm like, we're going to give you the matchup you constantly want. And then we're going to put ourselves in rotation to cover for that. Like at some point, you're the problem. It's you're allowing these switches. And it drives me insane when they can see these switches so easily. And sometimes, Zach, they're bad screens.

Like, it's not a good enough screen to force the switch. And it's, that's the stuff that just drives me nuts when I'm watching these games. Well, I think, I think part of it is that these offenses are so good that you just can't do the same thing over. and over. So if you did try to blitz them or trap them, and if you do that every time, all right, you know that's coming. We're going to work around that. We're going to put you in the blender. We're going to get open threes. We're going to get dunks. I think the key is you just have to mix it up a little bit so they just can't walk into a comfort zone and know what's coming. Similarly, my favorite thing that Ant does against Yolkich, I call it no pun intended from where I work,

putting him through the ringer on the pick and roll, which is like, all right, and they had one where he missed a great three out of it last night where one pick, Aunt Gobert going to Ant's left. Yokic shows up pretty high on the screen. Ant pulls up and and kicks it to, maybe it was Aunt Randall, actually. I can't remember, but anyway, it was Aunt Randall.

Ant kicks it to Yon to Randall. Randall takes like one hard step in and Yolk, which is like, all right, I'm going back into the paint. Randall pitches it back to Ant. And now Yokic can't show high because he's taking a step back to protect against Randall's drive. When they make Yokic defend two or three actions in a rapid fire sequence like that, it's hard for him and they get good looks. Fascinating series.

I picked Denver in six before the series. I guess I'll stick with that. Did you make a pick or no? I did. I also had Denver in six. And, you know, I'm hoping for a seven game series. Just more fireworks. Okay.

Nix Hawks. One-one. Just an incredible weird come from behind game. by the Hawks where the Knicks ran out of timeouts. C.J. McCollum missed two free throws in a row with the Hawks up one and the Knicks had to sprint up. Got a decent look at a McAill Bridges game-winning two-point jump shot from the left side. Would have probably gotten a better look. Certainly, that's a reasonable look even if you advance the ball and take it out of bounds because you have a timeout.

That's still a reasonable look. But your universe of possible outcomes is still much better, including fouls, drives, all that stuff. If you have a timeout and you advance the ball, the Knicks ran out of timeouts. We had O.G. and Inobie missing a couple of clutch threes. We had Brunson missing a great runner, but then a good runner and then making a three. We had just like a lot of stuff going on in this game. And the Knicks fall from ahead and lose. I thought, frankly, like Mike Brown and his coaching staff, coached a bad game. Running out of timeouts is one thing. I just could not believe after the first half when they sat Brunson and Kat together.

And I know, I watched the next. I know they've been doing this for two, three weeks, the last two three weeks for the regular season. And I think the intent is good. The intent is we have to get the Brunson, cat, two-man game going together. Let's maximize their minutes together and hope we can survive offensively

with, you know, multiple point guards on the floor and Deuce and Jose or Deuce and, you know, a hybrid guard like Clarkson and Robinson's offensive rebounding. Hope we can survive and they get them back on the floor together. Well, they didn't survive in the second quarter. And then they did it again to open the fourth quarter. And in all, they were minus seven in 12 minutes with Kat and Brunson on the floor. I just couldn't believe they risked it again.

I thought it was a huge mistake. And not only that, you're only have one starter on the floor. It's a bunch of bench guys. And it's either and an OB or heart, it's just not reliable enough offensively. And before I let you go, what you saw from the Hawks, I will say the moment I saw Steve Cohen, the owner of the Mets sitting court side at the game, I thought well, the Knicks are going to lose. Like, this is all

this guy does right now is lose. And then tweet about, I'm sure, I'm surprised you haven't seen a tweet from him about how he saw some green shoots from the Knicks in the fourth quarter. Just like when the Mets lost their first game to the Dodgers, he tweeted the most tone-deaf tweet of all the time. Oh, sorry, nobody likes losing. I saw some green shoots. Lindor hit a hard home run and blah, blah.

You know how many games of the Mets have won since the green shoots came out? None. somebody must have cut the freaking grass or the green shoes got too much sun and turn brown. Mo, we had a big comminga game. Les Dyson Daniels. The cat matchup on both ends of the floor. Super interesting. He was invisible mostly in the fourth.

What happened? What's going on? I just want to go back to the Mike Brown timeouts because this drove me nuts. And it's, I guess playoffs drives me nuts. First off, going into the possession with the. three minutes, 16 seconds left. They still had three timeouts. You had to use it or lose it timeout.

Doesn't use that timeout there. And they get a missed Josh Hart three. Then after a possession with the Hawks, Brunson looks like he has a driving lane. With 243 left, he calls a timeout. And I'm like, wow, you used your first of two timeouts, like way too early. and gave up an opportunity where Brunson looked like he had maybe not an advantage,

but had a chance to put the Hawks in a situation where they got to rotate. And it was so bad, actually, everybody was so shocked by the timeout. They thought the rest were calling a foul. If you look at it, you go back and watch, Nikol Alexander Walker's like, I didn't touch him. And it's like, no, there's a timeout. And everybody's like, oh, okay, fine. And then what do you run out of the timeout? Just a Josh Hart, Jalen Brunson, inverted pick and roll, and you got nothing out of the play.

I thought the Hawks, by the way, I thought the reason, and we'll talk about, the lack of Brunson cat two-man game down the stretch. I thought the reason why they went to Brunson Hart was because the Congwu was on Josh Hart. And so they thought let's bring their big man into the two-man game and see if they switch and Brunson can attack

that. If they blitz, we can attack that. I thought Atlanta, to credit them, did a fantastic job covering that play, starting with Alexander Walker on the ball. But when they blitzed it and they would double Brunson temporarily and Hart would slip, that's when the Knicks

normally hit their platonic ideal, where they start swinging the ball all the way around. The Hawks, by just little stunts here and there, including by Alexander Walker, sometimes retreating half a step toward Josh Hart with his hands up, made Brunson's decision-making a little cloudy and sort of covered that play without surrending much. I thought they did a nice job defending it. Continue. But so you blow that time out, though, and they did, and give the Hawks credit, great job defensively. But it wasn't like, you couldn't have called that on the fly.

Like, that needed a timeout. And for me, those last two timeouts in the last three minutes are so critical for exactly what you talked about, Zach. If they got the CJ missed fritos and were able to call a timeout and then run a play, right after they just ran a great ATO and got Jalen Brunson a clean look at a three, you have another opportunity to really improve your situation and your chance to win this game. I was just blown away by that. You already mentioned the lineup to start the fourth quarter, which just like completely drove me insane. with how they did. This was a coaching loss at the end of the day. And that's going to be a thing.

They blew it, especially in the fourth quarter, with how he kind of coached that game. And my Hawks fan friends calling around are going to say, well, why are you giving all the blame to the Knicks and undercredit the docs? Number one, I just told you how well they played defensively. Number two, C.J. McCollum just, I mean, talk about spice.

This dude wants, like, is getting booed for kicking people in the balls. and calling Jalen Brunson a flopper, basically, made one big shot after another. I frankly embarrassed Jail and Brunson late in the game. They wanted that switch every time. The Nix gave it every time. As you alluded to before,

I expected Nix to provide a little bit more variety and resistance to just leaving Jail and Brunson out on an island. And that doesn't mean you switch and then you double and C.J. McCollum can see it all coming. I think it means you mix in blitzes, you mix in different kinds of defenses. And by the way, on his jumper, which put the, I believe it put the Hawks up by two with 33 seconds left in the game,

he kind of kicked Oce and O'Nobie in the growing. I saw that too. Like there was kind of another, O.G. didn't react. Like, maybe he's just got a lot of protection down there. It was a light hit. But it was the same motion. And I thought, oh, my God, are we going to get another thing? CJ is the most unlikely New York City playoff villain that I can think of in a recent vintage

because he's just such a nice guy. And everyone respects him. And people are like, wow, CJ McCollum, what a playoff moment. Don't act like this guy hasn't done this before. 2019 with the Blazers, that dude closed out Denver on the road in game seven and the second round of the playoffs. This dude is clutch, fearless, and has a deep, deep bag of tricks, and he unleashed all of it against the Knicks last night. But to your point, it did feel like everything was pointing the Knicks way. They're up double figures.

The Brunson cat pick and roll has been really effective, particularly in game one. one, you've got a Congo guarding cat for a lot of the game. They started with Daniels on Kat in this game after mostly a Congo in game one. They wanted Dyson on Kat to switch to take away his threes. They gave up on that in part because they kind of gave up on Daniels for a bit and put a Congo back on them. They're gifting you the matchup that you want that has worked so well. You're up by double figures. You have the Hawks confused about who to play. Like can we even play Daniels and Jalen Johnson and Kaminga together? The answer they concluded was no. And That trio is minus six in 20 minutes, just not enough shooting.

You have the offense successfully directed away from Atlanta's best player. Jalen Johnson, just had two OK games, but doesn't feel as involved as you should feel because of how you've sprinkled your defensive assignments around. You have a lot of McCollum going at Brunson. You have a lot of McCollum, Daniels or McCollum, Kaminga, two-man game to attack Brunson and Kat, which is all well and good for the Hawks. But if you're the Knicks, you're like, hey, that takes you out of what you want to do. everything is pointing to

2-0 and we're on the road to a 4-1 win. We're going to split in Atlanta, come back here, get the job done, get a short series, and now it's anybody's series, but it did feel going into the fourth quarter like everything was pointing to a roadmap to a short series

for the Knicks and the Hawks took it away from them. Yeah, and it was really impressive. Also, like, Jonathan Cominga played one of his best games as a hawk, like in a big moment. I thought he was good defense for the most part. I thought that he started the 11-0 run by getting out in transition after they got to stop. I want to ask you this point blank. Let's clarify it because he basically became

Dyson Daniels. Like it was the starting five with Kaminga in Dyson Daniels place. And you want to say, well, what's the difference? Like they're both people that are not going to get guarded from three. They're both often like Kaminga guarded cat down the stretch just like Dyson Daniels did. But I'm asking you like, what was the difference? Why did it work better? with him in Dyson Daniels place? I think one, he just has a little bit more size, right? And I like it's like a kind of a cop-out answer, but he just had a little bit more size than Daniels.

So it's a little harder for Kat. But then also he can, he had a big time block on OG down the stretch and that, you know, that's something like Daniels can do, but I feel a little bit more confident with Kaminga coming in from behind and getting that big time block and doing all that. I thought he was just all and all every which way he switched with his size and physicality. Like, OG can't really bully him just on the physical side of it, whereas Daniels is a little bit thinner in that area, I think is a bit more of an issue for them. And I thought, ultimately, this is this is the comminga you want.

The problem with comming is this is not consistently what we get, right? Like, that's why he's not, you know, in the starting lineup. And it is Dyson Daniels, and they do trust him to start the games more. But I think ultimately you can get a lot of the stuff, not the steals that Daniels does. So the Great Barrier Thief is, you know, he is what he is. And it's going to be that. But I think with Cominga, you get a little bit more like physicality and can stand up guys a bit more. And I think that's the big difference.

And he guarded Kat a lot down the stretch. Kat guarded him a lot down the stretch. And, you know, I still think like, like, just because the opposing center is not guarding and Cat doesn't mean if you're the Knicks, you go away from the Brunson Cat two-man game. Because you still have Nikiel Alexander Walker and Kaminga involved. Let's see what they do. If they switch that, now you have Nikiel Alexander Walker on Carl Anthony Towns. That's a friendly post-up for him, much more so than him on Kaminga.

I also think to your point about Kaminga's size, he got a monster contested rebound down the stretch. And he's just more forceful if you're going to use him as a roller, which they can when Akangu is spacing the floor. he's more forceful going to the rim and dunking. He had a pretty hard dunk in that game. I also think the Knicks, like, you're letting C.J. McCollum off the hook. He's over here on Josh Hart, and he's over here pointedly on McHale Bridges for a lot of

the fourth quarter in the second half. You traded five first round picks for McHill Bridges. Fucking use him. Use him as a ball handler. Use him with cat in the pick and roll. Either way, I don't care. If C.J. McCollum's on him. Have him screen for Jalen Brunson.

You are letting C.J. McCollum off the hook. offensively, allowing him to just exist out there and save all his energy to cook your ass down the stretch of the game. Yeah. And that's been one of my frustrations with the Knicks usage of Bridges overall. But I think also at the end of the day, too, it's like, this is a matchup waiting for you to take advantage. Oh, okay, he put him on McHale.

We don't run that. So we're fine. We're not going to kind of attack that. Like, you need to go at this constantly. And really, like when we're talking about staggering lines. end up, put Bridges with Cat when you want to arrest Jalen Brunson and let Bridges run some pick and roll with Cat. And then, you know, you're able to attack more and get bridges a little bit more involved as well. Because, yeah, you've given up a ton for them.

I want to go back a little bit. There was a big moment to me that it was subtle. Well, not so subtle, but that CJ Jose Alvarado moment where they were kind of chirping at each other. And all respect between those two, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. It was, and, you know, former teammates in New Orleans and all that. I'm sure they were saying, isn't it great? We're both in the playoffs.

Look at us now. But I felt like that moment was a situation where it was a big moment for the Hawks. It was CJ kind of signaling to the Hawks, yo, we're not taking this bullshit anymore. Like, let's go, you know. And there was a timeout. They were talking about one of the reports where Nikki Alexander Walker was talking about, you, we got to ramp up our physicality and things like that. I felt like when CJ did that,

I felt like it was a slight little turn for the Hawks where they were like, yeah, like, let's go. Let's go to work now. Like, let's put up a fight there. And I think that was a small moment that will go under the radar, but I thought it was a bigger moment than people realize. I like it. Obviously, the spice factor high in this series too,

and that's what that's what you want in the playoffs. A couple of things that are other things that I would look for in game. I do think the Hawks will make a pointed effort to get Jalen Johnson going some on offense. The Knicks have been very smart going way under on pick and rolls when they do use him as the ball handler and have a guard screen for him. So the Knicks have been on that. I do wonder, didn't feel like Mitchell Robinson played enough in this game for how impactful he could be. Obviously, some of that is the hack of Mitch that Quinn Snyder is clearly going to use. They pulled them for that reason.

I also wonder if like, will we see the sort of five outs? spacing lineups that the Knicks don't play much with Kat at the five and Josh Hart not on the floor and a guard in his in his place. When we see that a little bit, like I just think there are little tweaks here and there for both teams. Obviously, no Risa Shea, a tiny bit of Kisper. Hawks just cinching that rotation even tighter. I was hoping for a long series and it looks like we're getting a long series.

Any other closing thoughts about what to look for in game three? No, I think this was pretty impressive with the way the Hawks kind of battled back. And this is what the Hawks do, right? they just stay in these games and then find a way to pull it out. And I think that was a big one. And, man, is Madison Square Garden going to learn? Like, you started taunting CJ. CJ started taunting you back.

And then they go nuts. You know, and CJ goes off. Like, it's pretty fun. It's just fun overall. They are not going to learn, and I don't want them to learn. I actually thought, you know, they got, the crowd got some eye-rolling flack for the F. Tray Young chance in game one. I just thought, that's like an interesting hat tip to history.

Like it's like, I feel the same way when the wizards are booing Kelly Olinic every time he touches the ball and the crowd and have people on the crowd and even the announcers are like, wait, why are they booing Kelly Olinic? And you have to go back and explain like, well, like nine years ago in a playoff series, there was this thing that happened. And it's just a delight. I like the hat tip. Even the mayor blamed Trey Young for high ticket prices.

That's right. That's true. Like we're getting it all around. I love it. And I love what these two teams meet. We're just, we're going to have fun. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about the return of Lebranto in Cleveland, Toronto. The Zach Lowe show is brought to you by Fanduel.

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slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details. Okay, the other game from last night that did not result in a road win or a one-one series, Raptors, Cavs, just a sort of general pull away for Cleveland, like didn't, felt mildly threatened here and there, never really felt like Toronto was going to get over the hump, get within two, take a lead or anything like that. just a very dispiriting start to the series for the Raptors. Number one, as much as it feels like the Raptors have a hard time generating good shots, and they do.

The Cavs have averaged 122 points per 100 possessions through two games. They are lighting up. That would have led the league. That's Denver, basically, offense. They are lighting up the number five defense in the league, and they're doing it in the easiest way possible, which is just like, we're just going to, like, you got all these good big defenders.

Bring us Brandon Ingram. bring us RJ Barrett, like bring us Mamu, but really like Mitchell and Hardin are going at Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett and just saying, you guys can't stay in front of us one-on-one. Let's keep this as simple as possible. Both the guards are playing great. And for Toronto, the other dispiriting thing is, and I said this in Bill's podcast on Sunday, I said,

I'm waiting for the moment where they start Colin Murray Boyles over Purdle. It already happened at halftime. They completely benched Pertil, just decided he is too much of an offensive zero, doesn't bring it any. We lose some rebounding and some shot blocking, but we gain some switchability and a little bit more offensive punch. And look, I feel bad saying it over and over again. It's the single most, it's the single most inexplicable contract in the entire NBA from the last 24 months is their decision to make a big money extension, Diaka-Purdle, a year and change before they even had to begin thinking about it. And now we can't even play in this playoff series.

And it doesn't even matter who they play. Because Cleveland's just like, if Scotty Barnes is in the game, we'll put Mowbly on him and we'll hide our weaker defenders on Mamu or even Murray Boyles or Pertil. And maybe we'll actually put Evan Mowgli somewhere else and put Jalen Tyson on Scotty Barnes and have Evan Mowgli as a helper. They just feel comfortable putting their best defenders wherever and just daring Toronto without Emmanuel quickly to create any kind of offense against their guards. and they can't do it. Yeah, well, I mean, they can't create any sort of real grubel penetration. Like, they're just not getting into the pain enough with their actions

in the way that they're going about it. One note I kind of had, like on my podcast with Jared Dubin, the double dribble podcast, after game one, I said, you got to start calling Mark Murray Boyles, like right off the bat. Like, this is over. It's not going to happen. I amended it halfway through the first half. And I said, you know what I'd actually do?

and this is a little bit crazy, I would start him with Pertl and Ben Sheed Shed, and just go from there and just see if we can get more physical. Can we just be physical and just bump the hell out of these guys constantly through the course of the game? Because nothing else they have really works.

Because when you talk about it, we saw that line up a little bit in the first half before they benched Pertil, like this super big CMB Pertil group and just switch everything and create havoc. And I agree with you. Like it's hard to play against that group. Yeah, it's physical. And I think the problem that they have ultimately is even when they put Barnes on Hardin or Mitchell, they still were getting by him.

Like there's an element of, you know, like they can't stay in front of James Hardin, like, or Donovan Mitchell. And Mitchell's phenomenal with how quick he is and his attack, it's explosiveness, I think is the thing that's really a big problem. And even if they get quickly back, that doesn't fix it. It gets worse. You know, you're in a worse position off defensively in that situation. their problems besides getting Ingram going offensively, they can't get any stops. Mowgli's killing them. Struz killed them in game one. You're getting crushed in every aspect. And it's really the thing that's so disheartening for this team. Because I look at it going like, I don't know what answers you have. Well, and they're trying to move the chess pieces around defensively.

Like, you know, you mentioned Scotty Barnes. Often he's on Mowgli. And then they'll be like, you know what, we're going to put, they started putting R.J. Barrett on the Cav centers to switch everything. and allow Scotty Barnes to guard James Hardin or even Donovan Mitchell. But it's like one screen and he's not. And his bald denial has been awesome. He blew up a couple of possessions where they couldn't even get the ball to Donovan Mitchell or James Hardin. But one screen, two screens, he's off and they have the matchup that they want.

And you also lose his room protection a little bit if he's out there guarding Hardin or Mitchell. And it's just like they're just able to manipulate the matchups on both ends of the floor without any real concern. Like there was one stretch of the game where they. They had Allen on Ingram and Mowbly on Barnes because they just don't care. Like if you're playing Mamu at center, we'll put anybody on Mamu. If we're playing Colm Murray Boyles at center, we'll put anybody on him. We can put anyone we want wherever you want. And you don't have to guard play to hurt us.

You want to run a Scotty Barnes-Gamal Shed pick and roll to go at Donovan Mitchell. We're just not going to care about Jamal Shed rolling to the rim or flaring out for threes the way we would for quickly. So you can pin this on Quigley's out. And their offense would be better with him. Their defense would probably be a little worse. And their defense is just getting lit up. And we say this about everything, every series so far. They just can't leave Ingram and Barrett.

Like they're okay defenders. They're just sort of quickness, tenacity, disadvantage, craft disadvantage against Hardin and Mitchell. And if you leave those guys on an island against the Cleveland guards, they're going to lose that battle every time. And those guys are just going to light you up with step back threes and drives and kicks and all that. it's another instance where I'm like,

you just got to mix up different tactics. You got to trap them and live with them passing it around a little bit. Trust the fact that you're one of the most frenetic, biggest, fastest rotating teams. You just can't let Donovan Mitchell be like, oh, it's just me and RJ Barrett.

Like, you're not going to win that way. You can't leave these guys on islands. They're not good enough defensively. And I think that's kind of the ultimate problem there. And then with Pertil who's, you know, been banged up,

you're not really getting a lot of, a rim protection. Like there's, it's, you've said it, there's nothing the calves fear about the raptors right now.

On both ends of the floor. If you want to play two bigs, we're comfortable with places to put our two bigs on either end of the floor. We're mostly playing one big because we don't think you can score on us anyway

and we're comfortable putting the matchups any way that we want. And I do think the good sign for Cleveland other than the fact that they're beating a worse team than they are is they, despite not having a ton of time

with their main guys together, they have a good sense of like who they are and who should play with who. So Hardin and Allen are mostly attached. Mitchell and Mobley are mostly attached. Schrooter and Mitchell are mostly attached because they've concluded Schrooter and Hardin is a little bit redundant. Therefore, Hardin and Keon Ellis when he plays are mostly attached. Tyson is back in the rotation. And if you have two or at least one of Tyson, Struz, and Wade on the floor, you've got some decent size.

And Wade has been a really good guarding Brandon English. who was three of 15 last night in the series. Cleveland has kind of found, now they'll be tested if they, assuming they win the series and face a better opponent, they'll be tested, but I think they have a good sense of who they are, and the Raptors are kind of searching for,

like, who they are, even putting Barrett on Jared Allen to start the second half or Barrett on Mobley when he's the only big man and saying, oh, we're going to switch with our, on your screen and rolls. It's like, the Cavs are like,

oh, you're going to switch RJ Barrett onto our ball handler is awesome. We'll just run a pick and roll. It's been a, it's been a, not the prettiest series either, I would say. No, and I don't think it's going to be. I think it's going to get a little ugly, but it's, again, for the calves, this is great. Cool. We figured out, we've kind of worked our way into these lineups and the rotations and who plays

with who. And now they get to kind of sort of test all of these things through this series. And I think that's kind of a big point there. And then when you look at the defense, not. just wait, but everybody's kind of playing on Ingram. It's pretty impressive. And you could feel him kind of disheartened. That block Mowbly had on him when he went baseline for the dunk.

Like his, I mean, like to like, first off, holy cap, like unbelievable play, you know, and I know he's, I'm glad he won defensive player the year last year because he ain't ever winning it again with, with, as long as Wembe's around and, and, and play 65. But I think the, the ultimate thing is you could feel Ingram kind of get the flayers. on that. And part of me, too, when I watched it back was, you know, like, you could have gone a little harder. Like, you needed to go into, that needed to be a forceful drive. He thought, he just didn't think Mowley was going to get to it. And then he did. But again, it just goes back to they're not afraid of this team. So there's not, they're toothless.

B.I had, I think it was in game one where he ran some kind of two-man action and had Sam Merrill on him. And Sam Merrill actually guarded him in the regular season as the primary guy at times to test out. And he's decent at it. But he got him at the nail and he didn't settle for a jump shot. He bulldozed through him and got a layup or a near like just sort of took a big hard step to the rim. And that's the force he needs to play with. And I actually thought Scotty Barnes brought all the force last night. Like when he's got to dominate the matchups when Mobley is not on him when it's Struz or Tyson. And I think he did that even when at Mobley for a big, you know, and one layup at one point in transition when he's got a cross match. He's just putting his head down.

and trying to score. I think he brought the requisite force last night. He was really good. Ingram was not good enough. And they just, 22 turnovers last night. And it felt like 15 of them were just keystone cops, like live ball.

Where did you think you were passing it to? What happened there? Short-circuiting their good possessions and then giving the calves steals to work with. And you just can't get it. The turnovers were, I mean, just laugh out loud, bad by Toronto. You dribble off your leg, like all sorts of kind of things where you're looking at it going like, they had a chance to keep this really kind of tight, especially in the first half.

It's a different ball game if they have eight less turnovers. They finish with 22. And that gave up 22 points, you know, for the calves. Like I think if they can kind of, if they're at like 15, maybe even up to like 17, they probably are in a tighter ball game and are able to press the calves a little bit more. But if you're just going to throw the ball around like that, you can't win. You can't win a regular season game with 20-something turnovers. How are you going to win playoff games with that number?

So I picked Cabs in 7. I thought the Raptors would be able to give them a series with their size. I also thought quickly would play sooner than this, and that turned out to be wrong. And I wondered how the Cabs would react if they got punched a little bit early. It doesn't look like they're going to get punched in this series. This, again, looks like a Cabs and five series. You go up to Toronto, you go up to LeBrono, excuse me. And you split and you come back home and finish the job.

And if that's the case, I think this becomes, I think Toronto joins Miami, who we're going to talk about later and maybe Golden State as sort of a very interesting offseason team because they came into this playoffs thinking, I'm sure they came in. And I talked about this with Jack Armstrong. Like, this might be kind of all this group is. Like, they just don't add up to much more than the sum of the parts are good. We've maximized it, good defense, decent enough offense. Can we, we didn't beat any good teams to share our record against the bus. 500 teams and elite teams is atrocious. If they go into the playoffs and they lose 4-1 and the games are like this, they have all

their picks, they have all their swaps, they have a bunch. Now, they have a dead money contract in Pertil that no one's going to want. But I think they become, I mean, they've always been like a sneaky, honest team to me. I think they'd become in play for a lot of stuff. But that's for another day. Cads in five looks like the outcome. I overestimated the Raptors. Okay.

Let's move on to the number one versus number eight series, both of which resume tomorrow night, Wednesday. And the headliner here is obviously Orlando, Detroit. Okay, welcome to the NBA season, Orlando Magic. It's great to see you. It took 84 games, I think, for us to see your full team play hard and play together. But boy, did they do that in Detroit in game one and kind of shocking the Pistons. Part of it is they're healthy now. Franz is back, Black is back. They have their top seven, top eight intact, and they've been missing that all year. Suggs is just shot out of a cannon healthy and playing with reckless abandon in the playoffs with like, hey, if I get hurt, I get hurt.

But like, this is how he has to play. And they kind of took it to Detroit in the first game. And it was, if you're a piston fan, this was everything you worried about already happened in the first game of the playoffs, which maybe is good. Cade had an amazing game and nobody came along with him. J.B. Bickerstaff couldn't decide who to play down the stretch of the game. A Saar Thompson only played 25 minutes because of the shooting issues. And it's like, all right, I guess we're going to play Dennis Jenkins and Cade a lot.

Do we want to play Stewart and Dern together a lot? Well, Kevin Hurt, we need a little bit more of you. Asar Thompson, Ron Holland, a little bit less of you, Javante Green, almost none of you because of the shooting issues. It was everything kind of encapsulated in one game. And maybe that's almost a relief for Detroit to just see it all happen. Game two at home for a number one seed that loses at home is, usually an easy win. I don't think there's going to be an easy win. I am expecting Detroit to to bounce back and win this game because they're the number one seed and they should.

But what are you looking for from the Pistons in terms of if you're, if you're Bicker staff and his coaching staff, here's what I saw in game one from the magic. Here's what I'm anticipating in game two. And here's what I'm doing to counter all this stuff. Where's your head at? I think starting point is like how do I get Jalen Duren going? I need to run my my first five possessions should be scripted. We're going to run our favorite plays for Jailen Dern. And they did it and get credit the magic who, Zach, you know, I've been, they've been the team, I've been the hardest on all season.

They did a great job defensively and they decided something that was most important. We're going to let Cade cook. We're not going to let the other guys go off. We're going to switch Carter. We're going to switch our bigs on to Cade. and whatever happens happens, but we're going to stay attached to Duren. Duren only got like, what was it, like four or five shots in the game? Like it wasn't even like he was that in the game.

Like you almost forget about him offensively. And if you're the Pistons, you can't allow that. Your first point has to be we're going to get Duren going. Maybe it's more double ball, double high ball screens. Maybe it's more putting them in situations where like, hey, we're going to, cool, we're going to send multiple screens at you. It's screen, re-screen. then, you know, or flip.

Confuse you. Yeah. Flip the screens at the last second. Do everything you possibly can, but you need to get Duren going in all this. Because as great as, Cade's been phenomenal, but even when he was out,

it was Duren that really helped kind of hold them up, him and Jenkins. And I think it's important that they don't lose that. And that's got to be the first few plays right off the bat. My focus, if I'm the Pistons, is we're going to go. go we're going to get during involved right away. And that has to be the number one thing.

That had to be the thing we walked into the, the film room session yesterday talking about. That had to been the thing you're talking about in the coaches meeting. That had to be the thing that kept you up all night last night. If you were part of the coaching staff, you got to get him going. I got it. You got to praise Jamal Mosley and his staff.

Who've taken a lot of deserved flak this year from me, from you, from everybody, probably coaching for their jobs. It was a really smart game plan in game one. And the game plan was not just switch Cade and Duren to take Duren out of the game. You're not getting the lobs to Dern. We're not putting ourselves in rotation. It was the way they did it. You set the ball screen high enough.

Not only are we going to switch, we're going to go under the screen for Cade and switch at the same time, which is unusual. And the reason that's important is because if you go under the Duren screen for him and you switch that guy on to Duren, you're taking away the role to the rim too. You don't have the thing where you're on top of him and he can slip to the rim. And now you're putting yourself into a mismatch on both sides. Carter was okay on Cade. Cade started to burn him a little bit late in the game. But here's the thing. If you're Cade Cunningham, you beat Wendell Carter off the dribble. If Assar Thompson and Jalen Duren or Javent or Javent or

Isaiah Stewart and Jeter—if two of the like shaky shooters or non-shooters on the floor, you can't get all the way to the rim. You're going to have to just make mid-range jumpers and that's tough sledding. Now, the other mismatches, why don't you give the ball? to jail and Duren in the post against a small guy on that switch, whoever it is, Sugs, whatever. And the reason is because A, they're fronting and B, they're just not going to guard any of the above-mentioned non-shooters. They tried it two or three times at the beginning of the game, and they couldn't get on

the ball. Lobs were deflected. Entry passes weren't made, whatever. And to your point, I would expect this again in game two because it worked. And you've just got to be ready with the entry pass angles have to be better and more decisive. You've got to slip screens. You've got to run different. You just can't run this predictable high pick and roll every single time. To your point, run a Duncan Robinson, Jalen Duren stagger screen where one guy flares out, one guy slips. Run empty side pick and rolls with Dennis Jenkins and Cade waiting

to catch it on the weak side. You got to cut hard, you got to slip hard. That's the way you beat switches. You slip them. You run different kinds of actions. And I would expect Detroit to just be a lot more unpredictable. And that helps offset the shooting issues, which are always going to be there. So that would just be counter number one to me. Maybe it doesn't get Jailander in 25 points. It probably gets some 18, but he can't have, what did you have, nine, eight, eight points? He can't have eight.

He's got to be more involved. He's just, you got to feel him in the game. Like, I just didn't feel him offensively when I was watching that game. And I think that's the important thing there. And then it goes back to what you're saying. Just change it up. If you become too predictable, it's easy. easy for a defense then.

You know, we know we're going to see this multiple times. Cool. This is how we're going to defend it. We know what we're going to do. And then that allows you guys instinctively to make plays. And then it opens up opportunities for steals and things like that. You know, there was some smart plays defensively. A lot of it from Suggs just flying all over the court place on the defensive side of the floor.

Like it was an impressive game plan. And again, coaching staff I've killed all year. That was impressive defensively. And this is the magic defense we've kind of been expecting all year that we just didn't really get. Welcome to the season. I mean, like, I joked about this with Bill. I was like, they won 45 games this year. Their over under was 50 and a half.

I took the over. Now, you could explain it away with Franz missed a bunch of time. Suggs missed a bunch of time. They always have guys that miss a bunch of time. Their young guys haven't really progressed. Like we see no jet, no Jace Richardson, some of DeSilva, who's been fine. They just didn't play with this level. of ferocity in the regular season.

And it wasn't just on defense. It was on offense, too. Like, they were running their shit hard. It would be like, Frans pick and roll at the top, swing it to Bain coming off the pin down on the left side, empty side. And he's full blast, full speed ahead. There was a split action they ran with Franz. And it might have been Palo, but I don't think it was Paolo.

It was a split action off the ball, two guys, Franz and another guy coming together and breaking apart, the action that the Warriors made famous. And it was switchable. Like the defenders involved were Tobias, Harris and Assar Thompson, I think, easily switchable. And they didn't switch. They actually read it well. Franz slipped to the rim.

Tobias Harris was on Franz and stuck with him. But Franz cut with such force and had enough space to go full speed at the rim that he got to lay up out of it anyway. We just didn't see this team. And I was like, is this, this team is not what a playoff series together. Are they the first team? Are they the least accomplished flip the switch team in the history of the NBA? Is this like what we're seeing?

I don't understand. where was this team all year? It's unbelievable. Their offense, like, part of my morning regiment this morning was get up and watch their offense, just to go through their offense because I didn't believe all of those things that I saw. And it was impressive across the board. They ran all sorts of actions. They stayed with their actions all game. There wasn't a ton of just ISO. There wasn't a ton of just, hey, even if we're going to give Paolo a post up or give him an ISO, it's out of an action that gets the defense moving. Maybe we get a switch and then we're going to ISO.

And then what would happen is the pistons would load up, overload too much on Paolo. And then with his vision, I mean, he had the skip pass to the corner where two guys rotated to, I think it was Suggs in the corner. Then they kicks it automatically to black and it was a clean three. We had the same plate. I should have mentioned AB's healthy too. He's a big part of their team. Yeah. And that happened earlier in the game in the first.

quarter except they missed the three. But the way the ball was moving and hopping, even when it looked like it was Apollo ISO, he was still finding guys. There was a baseline cut from Anthony Black. He had one from, he found to Silva early on. Like, there's so many different little things that they did offensive. This was the team I've been waiting for. Like, thank you. This is what I thought we were going to get at the start of the season. Offensively, everybody was involved. Franz's start of the fourth quarter, part of that screening action you talked about where he got the layup. He had a bunch of little runs in that fourth quarter that got them going and open things up for them. Like, if they can consistently do this, like, this is going to be a real tough series for the Pistons.

Normally you have to, like, win a championship or get to the finals or in the Wolf's case, the conference finals before you become a flip-to-Switch team, before you can even say to yourself, oh, well, just flip to switch when we get there. The Magic haven't won a playoff series since 2010. The Orlando Magic have not won a playoff series in 16 years. and it's like, did they, did it take them? Like, were they this confident they were going to beat Charlotte in the 8th seed that they just were waiting with plain possum this entire time?

That doesn't make any sense. The one exception to your point about the offense, if you watch the last two minutes of the first half, and I thought this was telling in an encouraging way for Orlando fans, they began to lose the plot on offense a little bit. And there was one possession with two minutes left. Somebody took a bad shot. And Palo reacted with like anger. He's in the left corner.

You can see him be like, oh, come on, guys have got to do better. And then there was another possession after that where Bain and Suggs ran a pick and roll. And you're like, well, that's a weird pick and roll combination. Where are Paolo and Franz? The answer is not involved. And Bain took like a 20 footer from the right corner over no switch like regular matchup. And Franz crashing the glass at the same time is screaming.

And it's inaudible what he says, but he's clearly angry about the shots. collection. And if I'm a magic fan, I'm like, they're dialed in enough to realize one or two possessions like that is worth being pissed about. Now, if I were a Pistons fan, I'd be optimistic for all the reasons I said before about what happens, number one, seeds. Number two, Palo made more than his usual share of contested two-point jump shots. And number three, I thought they played a bad defensive game in a lot of fundamental ways. Like, you overload on Palo's ISOs from 25 feet away. First of all, I don't think you need to do that. Second of all, two or three different occasions. They just lost sight of the very first layer of cutters underneath that.

Wendell Carter Jr. got a dunk. Anthony Black got a backdoor cut. Just very basic mistake. There were misreads in pick and roll coverage. Now, this is where Duren's inexperienced shows. Like, there was one Franz pick and roll where he thought they were going to switch, I think, and the defender set up to send him to his week hand, or sent him to his left hand, actually. Yeah, as we can. And there was nobody there. He just had a clear lane to the rim. And there was a dunk like that in the fourth quarter. It's like, guys, they looked a little frazzled to me by the moment. I expect them to play much better defensively in game two. But this is going to be, I picked Detroit in five because I thought, all right, K's back. This team's so eager for this.

The magic had been a mess all season. If I had to repick it now, I'll stick with Detroit because I'm going to imprison myself to my pick. But I would say this is a seven game series. I had Detroit in six, just because I thought Orlando's physicality was still something. The size of it was going to be something to at least can cause problems for them. But I want to go back to the cutter because you were talking about there was one in particular that stuck out to me. It was, I think, late in the, or middle of the fourth quarter. But Anthony Black cuts, Jenkins has no idea he cut from the slot right to the block.

and that pulled Jalen Duren and then that led to from the weak side when Duren got pulled first Duncan Robinson slid over to take Wendell Carter and this is the play you're talking about where I think he got the dunk and then immediately switched out with Jenkins taking him over and the ball hits Carter and goes you can't have

those mistakes so those are fixable as stuff you're going to sit in film going like come on man you know better than this you know this stuff their mistakes were fixable I am excited to see how they respond but it's the weight and the pressure of being the one seed now, right? Like, this is going to be interesting now. This is what are they going to deal with when they're going into this?

How are they going to handle, hey, we blew game one. We're the one seed. We're not supposed to do this. Like, we got to be better than this. They didn't win a series last year. This is a new experience for them as well. And they got to lock in into how they're going to kind of figure this stuff out as they go through it.

And then the other things, Zach, I totally afraid. They haven't won a whole. playoff game in years. That's an unbelievable stat. I forgot that they lost all of them against the Knicks last year. And beyond that, I'm just interested in who plays in for how long. Like to me, the other interesting wrinkle in all the minutes and trying to balance the non-shooters with the weaker defenders and all that,

Karris Levert did not have a very good year this year for them. Four minutes is just like, wow. For a team that needs secondary ball handling, like they only could find four minutes for Karris Levert. That's, I mean, it's not like I'm sitting here being like with Caras Lever, it's awesome. He should play 30 minutes. It's, I understand it. He's not been good.

I think they need to at least let him stretch out a little bit more than that. But, okay, let's move on quickly to Phoenix, Oklahoma City, a series that I do not think will go seven games. And I would not think it would go seven games, even if Mark Williams, Grayson Allen, and Jordan Goodwin were all healthy. Just a textbook, Oklahoma City. Oh, you thought our defense was awesome? Watch our playoff defense. get a clean shot the entire goddamn game and we're going to outturn over you by 10 and run it down your throat. And I don't even know like what there is really to say about about that game and

about this matchup. It's just Phoenix just doesn't have enough. We knew they didn't have enough. And it was an avalanche of defense in game one. Well, I mean, I it was so clear and evident like at halftime I did a video for offside and basically it was all live ball turnovers. That killed them, right? The sons would have been better off. That's every team. Every team, every team. But in particular against OKC, you want to get them going? Just turn the ball over. That's what I mean. That's every team against Oklahoma City. We can sit here and say, don't turn the ball over against Oklahoma City. They are incredible at getting their hands on the ball. They get a little bit of leeway from the refs, I think, to play physically because they are so physical. And like,

if you can solve that mystery of like how to turn the ball over 10 times a game, times a game. Someone do it because no one can do it. But even if you're if you're trapped in the corner, just chuck the damn thing out of bounds and go set your defense. Like you're better off almost in that situation than trying to find a way out of it. But the swarming aspect of that team is just too much. And then it's the other things that kill you. You know, the free throws at the end of the half that lead at Jay Will dropping a gorgeous pass to Chet for the three going into halftime. No pressure on the ball on the passer at all on the embounder and things like that. All the small things that you're trying to figure out. At the end of the day, this Sun's

team is just kind of drawing dead. Their offensive style is very ISO-heavy. And I think that's a problem against the Thunder defense want that, right? They, when they have a hard time with teams, it's teams that move, cut, get the blunder going, get the ball flying around the court. Then you can put their defense in tougher spots. But when you're playing, you're playing right. into their hands when it's screen and roll Devin Booker ISO, screen and roll Dylan Brooks ISO. Screen and roll Jalen Green Isso. Like those are problems for you. And they just don't have enough. And they don't have the

front court deaf at all. Even with Mark Williams, they just don't have anything. I do think at least Mark Williams, they'd have to be nominally concerned about him rolling to the rim for Lob's verticality. Igadaro is a very good player. They're not concerned about him at all. They'll switch on him and they don't care. Malawatch was in the rotation. Then out of the rotation,

and they're playing Haywood Highsmith, it's center. That's not going to work. I just, there was just no airspace anywhere. And you're for Devin Booker, it's like, oh, Lou Dorts guarding me. Well, he'll come out of the game at some point. Or maybe I could get a switch. And it's like, oh, no, no, it's Caruso. It's Casin Wallace.

It's AJ Mitchell guy's kind of annoying. This is really just not great. I thought they actually had as good a defensive game plan as you can, which is we're just going to load everything towards Shea and make him pass the ball and make him take tough shots and he took tough shots. I think it was, what was he, five of 18 or something good? And make the shooters who are okay, shoot threes and like it was an okay game plan.

Like with I Godoro, I think they could try to switch everything and stay out of rotation completely. They're not a team that plays a lot of zone. They just don't have any answers and that's fine. It's they're the eighth seed and they're playing Oklahoma City. It's still a win of a season for them, right? Like they made the playoffs, which is something a lot of us didn't have. And I think that's a big win for them.

Yeah, I have no other notes. My other notes would be Jalen Williams looked awesome. And the lineup I keep waiting for the Thunder to use, and maybe they just don't want to use it because they just have too many options, is Shea, Mitchell, Caruso, J-dub, Chet. And they had four of those five guys on the floor

and different combinations a lot. But obviously you have no Wallace, no door. They have a plethora of options. But I'm just keeping my eye out. And it's a little, that lineup plays a little small. with Mitchell in place of one of those guys. But just something I'm waiting on.

But whether they play one big, two bigs, they just looked unbelievable. All three of their bigs are, I mean, Chet's going to make all NBA. Hardinstein's awesome. Big Jalen Williams is awesome. No notes. All right, let's take one more break. We'll do a little news. This episode is brought to you by service now.

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All right, big coaching news this morning. Billy Donovan is stepping down as the Bulls head coach. The Bulls announced it today. He had at least one more year left on his deal. I think Sean's reported that it was an option that he's turning down. This is really interesting because I don't know where he's going to go. I do know that coaches typically don't just walk away from money without money waiting for them on the other end. I think Billy Donovan's a really good coach.

I think his best quality has been his adaptability to all sorts of. to different rosters from Oklahoma City with Durant to Oklahoma City with three guards of Schrooter and Chris Paul and Shea back in the day to the Bulls, whatever the hell this is. And now we just finally reached the point where they're like, I just can't adapt to this. Whatever this is, my adaptability powers have run out. And I just think there's going to be a lot of interesting coaching Domino's coming. Portland, that job is, I mean, I think they're being disrespectful to Tiago Splitter right now, to sniff it around all these coaches, but whatever.

Orlando is now up 1-0. People, coaching agents have been sort of waiting for that job to open. We'll see. Milwaukee is open. Dallas, like the Jason kid stuff, does he want to be there? Like what's going to happen there? Taylor Jenkins is the biggest, I think, most sought after name on the market. He's already interviewed in Milwaukee, according to the athletic.

Eric Name had that yesterday. Who's willing to wait around to see what jobs open up? I think Billy Donovan's a really good coach. This didn't surprise me. me, but it's just the domino is starting to fall and where they fall. And maybe he doesn't even want to coach in the NBA. Maybe he wants to coach in college or the UNC stuff. That job's been filled by Michael Malone.

And now it's just full on reset, I guess, for the Bulls, who have Josh Giddy and Montes-Buzellis in a bunch of cap space. And they have Portland's pick coming up in this draft along with their own pick. And Noah Senge, who didn't play at all really this year with injury. Like, okay, well, good luck to everybody in Chicago. It's going to be a long haul for you. I, the situation in Chicago, it's going to be a young, assisting, up-and-coming assistant coach type situation,

hoping to find like some of that Charles Lee magic with that stuff. The roster doesn't have the same magic pick capabilities. One name you forgot to mention, too, is we don't know what's going to happen with Steve Kerr. Oh, yes, we're going to talk about the Warriors in a second, but yeah, he had, you know, pretty like emotional end of the season. Yeah, almost like an even draft. Raymond felt like it was a little bit of a goodbye from the stuff I've read. I have a wild conspiracy theory that I saw kind of floating around.

The rumor was that the Lakeham family is pretty close to the Florida coach because he used to coach at University of San Francisco. He gets the job and then Billy Donovan goes back to Florida. Well, that's interesting, Mo, certainly. the only thing is if Steve Kerr were to leave and Bill and I have been talking about this for I don't know five months now it's been obvious he didn't have a contract extension that this was in play

you'd have to imagine that do you really go bridge to the next era with a new college coach or do you're like well Steph Curry is still here Draymond Green has a player option he might still be here Jimmy Butler is recovering from a torn ACL he might still be here probably will still be here

Christopps Porzingis, we might be able to be signed him on the cheap because he's not been available enough and it looked like he'd be a good fit with us. He might be here. As long as Steph Curry is there, they're going to try to win and they're going to try to win with experienced guys. Like, I expect them again to go all in for Janus. If that fails, I expect them again to call on Kawhi Leonard. If that fails, or maybe if it doesn't, I expect them to try to get LeBron James. And you can laugh at that all you. you want because they're not going to win a championship with those players, I don't think they

think they will. I think their whole dream in Golden State is, can we get to a point where it's two, two in the second round, us in San Antonio? Because San Antonio, Oklahoma City are going to be so goddamn good for so many more years that it's just not realistic that like, yeah, we're going to make the finals again. Right. Even Denver has probably like another two to three years of super elite play with Yolkich and Murray, and maybe more. Who knows? They've got some cap issues, obviously. But for the Warriors, just like, can we just catch lightning in a bottle and give the

Steph era like a true, not we're in the play in and we're scrounging to get up into the AC, but a true like, hey, we won a round like we have before, like we did last year. And it's two, two in the second round against a powerhouse. And we're just, we're in it. And that's what I would expect. And I don't know if you hire a college coach to do that, but maybe you do it. I have no idea what's going to happen. I hope Steve Kirste stays.

They seem to all hope Steve Kirsteis too. Yeah, I want Steve Kirtis stay. I'm just saying my antenna went up when the Billy Donovan news broke going like a because it was right after I had just saw the report. It was from Kevin O'Connor talking about Todd Golden, the coach of Florida. And I just thought like, oh, well, maybe he's going to go back home to Florida. And maybe he knows something we don't. Ultimately, I think Kirste stays.

I think this is too fun of an opportunity to finish it out with Curry. I actually had a conspiracy theorist in the, I don't know, let's say the agent ranks speculating with me a month or so ago that maybe if Steve Kerr actually stepped down, that this is going to blow you away, that Tibbs would be the answer in Golden State because he is a veteran win now, coach. He knows Jimmy Butler really well. I was like, that doesn't seem, boy, what a change that would be from like, we're playing music and practice. We're all loosey-goosey and here comes Tibbs. I don't see that one happening. But you're right. There's going to be a lot of dominoes to fall.

And I just would be surprised if Billy Donovan didn't have an inkling of something that was going to come up. And Taylor Jenkins is certainly going to have his pick of stuff. So we'll see. The other coaching news, Jordie Fernandez, got an extension and so did his entire staff in Brooklyn. And you know what? Good job, Nets. That's what you do. When you give a coach a shit situation, Jordy Fernandez will probably never be over 500 in his entire career as long as he coaches because he had this hunt.

on him for two seasons and he's done well. The Nets were too competitive for their own good last year. They were on course to be maybe too competitive for their own good this year. So they start sitting veterans with fake injuries and playing all the young guys and all this. None of their five first round picks will make an all rookie team this year, be that as it may. This is what you do. You say, this is what Utah did with Will Hardy. If we think you're good, here's job security. And here's years of job security. And the next thing that you do, and this is where the rubber always meets the road is, when the team actually gets good,

assuming it happens at some point, you give this guy a chance to coach the good version of the team and not just, hey, thanks for coaching these young guys up. Here comes a 65-year-old who's won in the league before. So good on the Nets. And can we talk one last bit of off-season news? Yes. The team that I don't,

I think we said goodbye to a little too quickly, is Miami. I think just a really strange end to their, season in a lot of different ways and a team that just if there was any sort of you know hey we've come out of the play in to make the finals to make long playoff runs before maybe this team can do that i mean that was wishful thinking to begin with now even the most cock-eyed optimist has to just understand this is just who we are this is what the tyler hero bam out of bio and an okay supporting cast team is.

And yeah, we've got some upside like Kalaela where I'm higher on Kalaura, the consensus. Hakez had a great year. He might win six men in the year. Yakut's shown us the young point guard. I think it looks like he's going to be a good player. But like there's just, this team is not, there's no finals upside anywhere on this team. And I think this is to come to Jesus moment for the heat to know that. I also was shocked that they just gave up playing Hero and Powell together completely.

One made the All-Star team this year. One is a franchise mainstay who made the All-Star team last year. I understand the defensive limitations, the overlap in skills to some degree. They actually don't play very similarly on offense at all, but whatever. To just decide we can't play them together for six minutes a game when they're two of the four most talented players on your team is really shocking to me. and hints at just something under the hood there wasn't right. I don't think both of those guys are going to be on the team next year.

I think there's a chance that neither of them are on the team next year. And all of this is to say the way that ended for Miami, I just wonder, this is a team that missed on Dame, that missed on Durant, and that is so far missed on Janus. They have up to four first round picks the trade, or they can get four first round picks the trade with some finagling of protections and all that. I just wonder if this is the year Pat Riley is like, we're just doing it, guys.

Like, we're throwing everything we can at Janus or whoever. And I don't really care what the outlay is. I'm just tired. Like, I'm tired of being mediocre. And at least Janus makes us interesting. The question I would have for them is like, let's just say they trade, there's a world where they can trade hero where maybe they have to put in hotkeys, maybe not. all the picks, all the swaps for Janus. And then they use bird rights to re-sign Powell.

So they keep Wiggins and Powell. So I've got Wiggins, Powell, Bam, Davian Mitchell, Yonis, Yonajon is still around, Yovitch, who again, like talk about a strange thing. We extend it for $16 million a year. We don't play them at all. Like, that's a pretty good team. There's also a world in which you lose Wiggins and Hero and Powell somewhere along the way a free agency, Powell's a free agent, you got to trade one or both, whatever happens.

And you're left with a team that's like Bam and Janus, which is not an awesome fit. Like, talent can beat fit, but it's not a great fit. You're going to have to work at it. And not quite enough else to make you think like, yeah, we can beat Boston and, you know, Detroit and Cleveland. I will say the East is maybe a little bit more, is definitely a little bit more in fluxed in the West. Like if there's a conference where you're looking at the top and being like, well, maybe one of those teams

makes a salary move. You know, Philly's never healthy, is hard in a long-term fit for blah, blah, blah. It's the East versus Oklahoma City and San Antonio in the West. But I do think if you do that for Miami, you risk having traded your entire medium-term future for a team that's good and certainly exciting and certainly will placate a fan base that's hungry

for a superstar to actually get, like, to actually get a superstar. But probably not good enough. And also the superstar you trade area, for is 31 and injured all the time and about to sign a gigantic contract extension. Like that's a, that's a dangerous proposition for Miami as exciting as it is. And I wonder if there would ever be like a Pat Riley wants to do it because he's old and he's sick of this versus, look, we're actually kind of in a good spot asset-wise right

now. We're recouping our draft picks. We know we know we're not good enough. But can we just sort of keep making little moves? And then instead of everything for Yanis, maybe we can like pick off. a really good player. I'm just making this up from the Knicks as part of a Janus trade for them. Maybe we can

pick off another disgruntled star who's a little bit younger. Maybe everything goes Haywire in Houston and we can revisit Durant again for like a much cheaper price. There's other things we can do. Maybe like Julius Randall or someone, I'm just making a Naz Reid, like somebody from Minnesota

because they break up in certain ways. But I do find them to be a really, even more so than Golden State, because I I know I'm pretty confident what Golden State's going to do. I find Miami the most fascinating maybe offseason team. Yeah, I mean, because they're at the crossroads and it's trying to figure out if we're going to throw everything in to get Janus.

And I agree with you. Like making that trade for Janus, there's still not going to be a championship caliber team. I still think they'd need a lot of work and everything that they would give up in the process to get Janus puts you in a bad position going forward. And then the massive contract that you're going to sign him to, now you're just in a a tough position. I understand Pat wants to win right now with everything, but I think ultimately you got to stay the course.

I think I would go along the route you're talking about. Let me see where I can pick and choose and start to find the right moves and make the smart deals here at this point instead of just going for the big fish. Because they've chased the big fish, hasn't worked out. I don't even know if they would have how much. But I guess it hasn't worked out because they haven't gotten any, the one they did get was Jimmy Butler, and they got it in such a sort of distressed and manipulated scenario that they didn't have to give up much to get him.

And it's been hard. That's a very hard situation to replicate as evidenced by the fact that they haven't been able to replicate it. Yeah. And I think that's the thing. It's like, when I say getting the big fish, it's giving up your entire asset covered to go get him. And I think that's kind of the problem where they're at, whereas I'd want to see them

stay the court. See if you can find a way to pick off Trey Murphy or it's a great name. You know, or just where can you start picking around the margins? You're not ready enough. Your roster's not built enough where when I get this guy, we're going to be a championship contender

in the Eastern Conference. Boston's still going to be Boston next year, most likely. Detroit, who knows what happens, but still up and coming team. I think across the board with everything you have, you're not ready to be a championship team. That's an all-in move for a team that maybe gets you to the second round.

I mean, but again, this is not what a portion of heat fans are just, they're just tired of this and they want to take a moonshot. And I understand that. And what we're saying is not going to be popular among that about, and maybe they take the moonshot. I don't know. A couple other things need to be said. Number one, Bill pitched the Bam to Charlotte trade on Sunday. I just don't think Miami is in that kind of headspace. That's a full-on rebuild trade. and it's trading a guy who they've been very upfront about, like, this guy is what we represent. And we're like, he is heat culture. He is us.

And looming over all of these decisions for every team are the lottery rules. And if the lottery and when are they going to be implemented? Are they actually going to take a vote next month to change the rules for the 2027 lottery? If so, if you're a team like Miami and you're in the middle, the middle becomes profitable enough relative to tanking that I think you're okay if you're like just a good team that's tweaking on the fringes and you're definitely not going to bottom out if the odds are against it. You never want to do that anyway. I think it makes you a little bit more likely to say, well, if our choices are a bottom out

moonshot or stick in the middle and try to tweak, I think if you're confident the lottery odds are going to change, I think for Miami and some other teams, it mitigates toward, you know, let's just stay at the court. I mean, forget the clippers. They don't even control their picks. But so I think that is an interesting thing that's kind of hovering over all of these big picture decisions. But yeah, the heat. That was a, I mean, Charlotte, we said goodbye to them.

I think they're just in a great spot. I don't expect much significant action for them in either direction. I think you let this marinate a little bit. Miami is the one that's along with, we mentioned Toronto and Golden State is super interesting. All right, Mo, we got three more playoff games tonight, man. I'm excited. It's the best time of year, man. So when we get like, Zach, I watched the Denver, Minnesota game again right after the Denver

Minnesota game. Like, it was so exciting and fun to watch. Like, I wanted to watch it again. This is the fun time right now. It is, it is the fun time. It's just so much basketball, just mainlining all the basketball. Mo DeKille, if you want to know what happened in the game, listen to his podcast with Jared Dubin, Offside.

Mo, you're the best. Thank you for coming on, buddy. Thank you for having me. All right, that's it for today's episode of the Zach Lowe. show will be back on Thursday with more playoff, bonanza, basketball, who knows what other offseason storylines will have emerged by then.

Thank you to Mo DeKiel. Thank you, as always to Mike, Billy, and Jonathan on production. Thanks to you all for listening to and or watching the Zach Lowe show. We will see you again on Thursday. Buckle up. The first round is in full swing. 21 or over in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation

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