Coming up, the Celtics are one win away from an NBA title, and Doc Rivers is here. That's next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did Breaking Away. You can watch it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel, or you could just listen to it. I also did two podcasts this week, one with Rosillo on Sunday and then another one on Tuesday. Did a six-pack, talked to Chris Manek, even talked some boxing at the end. If you missed that, That is there. This is the third podcast of the week, and it's a big one. Just at Game 3 of the NBA Finals, I am in Dallas, Texas. I went to the game. The Celtics prevailed. They played all the hits. They looked great. Then they didn't. Then they did. They pulled it out. They're 79 and 20, which is absolutely... It's just incredible. They haven't lost in the playoffs on the road. One thing, Doc and I talked a bunch of this stuff. Doc Rivers is coming on in a second. The Jalen Brown piece of it, it is so cool to watch a guy for their entire career and then have what's happening to Jalen happen as a fan.

I remember this happened with Paul Paris, and I remember writing a column about it back when my fingers worked. When Paul Paris won in 2008, which was my favorite thing about the 2008 title other than being there with my dad, it felt like we'd been on a journey with him. They drafted him in '98. He fell to the 10th spot, and he was on that crappy Patino team for a couple of years. Then he literally almost got stabbed to death on my birthday in 2000, survives, plays all '82 games, and was just a tough Mfer. Then had this roller coaster ride the next couple of years, made the Eastern Conference finals with him. Then by 2004, they were a lottery team. He starts acting out, which Doc and I talk about in second, 2005, seems like they're going to trade him. He sticks around, and then he turned into a pro. Kg and Ray show up. They win the 2008 title, and he becomes this beloved Celtic that game one, game two, you still see him at the games. He's still a huge part of the franchise. His number is retired. He's one of the best 50, 55 players of all time.

They show him in the games that it means something because this is a guy that has That we went, had all the ups and downs with. We won a title with him. We cared about him. He delivered for us, and he's still around, and he's still a part of the franchise. That's something that I think gets a little lost with professional sports these days. Guys bounce around. A situation like Curry with the Warriors becomes so rare. I think one of the cool things about Brown and Tatum, not just the fact that they've been together for this and they have all these playoff scars now. You need the scars to win the title. The game tonight, the scars start popping up. They're up 21. All of a sudden, the lead's three and it's one. You're battle-tested. That's what this team is. They're mentally tough in a way that they weren't a couple of years ago. A big piece of it is Jalen. Jalen, two years ago, and even last year, probably would have folded in a game like today. In this game, he was awesome. He made the biggest shot of his career with, I don't know, 65, 70 seconds left, up to the lids on a basket.

Dallas is playing great defense, and he just comes through. He's been coming through this whole playoffs. He's been coming through the whole season I voted for my NBA, partly because of the intensity that he just had day after day after day after day after day. But you think back, he gets drafted. The Celtics, some of the fans, booed the pick because I think people wanted Jamal Murray. He shows up. Tatum shows up a year later with a little more fanfare. For a while there, Jalen was like the middle brother. We never knew. I even did a podcast at the beginning of this season about he didn't play well the first couple of weeks of the season. He had gotten that big contract, and it's like, What's going on with this guy? Is he trying to justify the contract? Where are we? Just to watch him evolve and stand among the legends. If they can pull off one more win here, the 18th title for the Celtic team. And Brown and Tatum, they're going to be the biggest reasons. There's Derrick White, there's Drew Halley, there's Al Horford, there's the KP in the first couple of games, there's the bench, there's the dramatic improvement of Joe Missoula, Brad Stevens.

You can go on and on and on. But ultimately, It's Tatum and it's Brown. It was always Tatum as the favorite child, and then Brown as the other brother. We love him, he's great, but not quite as much as Tatum. Now it feels like they're equals. To watch that dude come through tonight, it was just really thrilling. I watched this guy play for eight years, and I feel like we watched him just solve different video game levels, and then tonight was one of the final levels. I hope he's a Celtic for life. You never know with this business. You never know what happens with professional basketball guys bounce around. But it really felt like in the last couple of weeks, he cemented some place in Celtic's lure. You knew it was going to Implantate them. Then the people like Drew and Derek White and Holladay and even KP, those are the people like how we think about DJ and Danny Ainge and Paul Silas and all these Celtics from years past. But this is the J This is the era, and it's been earned. These are co-partners, co-stars, co-superstars. Jalen, 30 points tonight, eight rebounds, eight assists, and was just absolutely awesome.

We talk about it with Doc Rivers in a second, but I'm really happy for that guy. I just want to say that. We're going to bring in Doc Rivers for the first time. In a long time, we're going to talk about his Milwaukee Bucks experience, everything he learned the last six months, and then we're going to dive into Game 3 in the self-picks and everything that we saw during the finals. I had a great time. Let's bring in our friends, Pearl Jam.

All right, I'm taping this.

It is 10:30 Texas time. Just went to game three of Celtics, Mavericks, Finals, which we're going to talk about in a second. But once upon a time, I had an occasional podcast partner. We would come on and we would talk basketball, and I really look forward to it. I had a great time, and I thought we really had something special. Then one day, I see the bottom ticker of ESPN, and my podcast partner, who had told me at dinner, just a couple of weeks before with Larry David as a witness, how you didn't miss coaching. This was the most relaxed you'd ever been. You can't believe you had to take a year off. And then all of a sudden, in a couple of days, you were the Milwaukee Bucks head coach. And your explanation was, I have a chance to coach Yannis.

That was really it. It was so funny because we had great dinner. Everybody was relaxed. I was very relaxed at the time. And then the Bucks opportunity came up and I took it. It was just such a good opportunity. Not only Yana's with Dame and Chris Middleton, a team that had won it already. Yeah, things changed quickly.

Well, and the case I made, and we didn't really have long conversation about it, but I was hurt. I was trying to put the pieces together. But ultimately, you've been competing your whole life since, I don't know, when you started playing basketball, but then you played forever, then you coach forever. It's just this switch, you just couldn't flick it off. You have to compete.

It's true, Bill, but I would say this. I was not going to just take any job. I told you guys that night. If a coaching job had just opened that I didn't think it was the right organization or the right people, the right guys to coach, an opportunity to win, or at least Bill winning, I was out. If that job had never surfaced again, I was not going to take a job. I was literally sitting there. I was getting better at golf, finally.

That's not what I heard, but fine.

I'll believe it on the pod. We do have to talk about that because I heard right when I left, There's a guy named Larry David who made a comment that he's going to lose money now. Is that true?

I think that is true.

Oh, my goodness.

I think it is true.

I'm going to let him I'm going to live with that.

I'm going to live with that comment. What was it like to just walk into a season without a training camp and without a summer and without any knowledge of the team you're coaching, and you're basically just coach for higher, coming in, trying to figure out team, the players, all the coaches you have. You're in a new city, you're living in a hotel room. What were the first three, four weeks like?

It was hard. Bill, way harder, honestly, than I thought. I coached for over 20 years. I thought I can just jump right back into it and get things going. And that just wasn't the case. First of all, we were going to go on our toughest road trip of the season right out of the gate. I think the biggest The worst thing that I would say for anyone who has done this is that you don't have your staff. I found that to be very difficult starting out. And all the guys that I had were fine coaches there good. They just weren't mine. I wasn't used to what they did.

That you inherited, right.

I inherited two staffs, Bud's old staff, and then Adrian's new staff because they co-mingled. And so now I'm coming in as a third person That was difficult. Trying to figure out who I would use in different spots, defensively, offensively, all that was hard. And then we had all the injuries. But it took a while. But I will say this, by the end of it, I felt like, Man, this is going to be a great job. Obviously, with Yana's out and Dame injured and Chris playing at probably 90% with his health, you knew you weren't going to go far in the I did feel like if somehow we could sneak this first round out without Giannis, with Dame getting healthy but not healthy, if we can get to the second round and Giannis comes back, I thought we could make a run. But that never happened.

The Yannis injury, we've seen that injury a couple of times where they're a little cagey about how long it's going to be. But if you just Google the injury, you're like, Oh, that's a month and a half injury. You know You know at least it's three, four weeks, right? And of course, that takes you through the first round, so you know you're going in the first round without Yannis, basically.

Yeah, I know if anybody can come back, it would probably be him, but I never thought that he would make it back for the first round. I was hoping There was whispers that maybe game seven, I don't think that would have happened. And truth be told, because after the playoffs were over and watching them work out, I don't think he would have made it back for the Knicks series until probably game three or four. But that's how playoffs are. You have to have health. You have to have a lot of things to go for you, go your way. And we just didn't have that.

Does the KD, what happened him in 2019, hang over the heads of a situation like that? It has to, right?

It really does. I was surprised by that because it wasn't an Achilles, but it looked like one. Just like I was actually at the KD game.

Yeah, it was.

No, No, no.

No, it was the Rockets. Yeah, it's sorry.

It was the Rockets, and Austin was playing for the Rockets. I think that was the first time or maybe the second time in my life that I got to see Austin play a live game that I wasn't coaching him. And I remember sitting in the stands and right when it happened, as you did and everyone did, we thought, Oh, wow, he just tore his Achilles. Now, with Yannis, I didn't know, but I can tell you, forget the KD flashback. For me, it was a KG flashback. Utah. Because Utah, I remember sitting next to Eddie Lassert, and KG was running down the floor all by himself, and he just stopped and went to the floor. I remember Eddie Lassert turned to me and said, This is bad because no one's around. That's the bad injuries in our league. If you run in, the collision injuries rarely happen. It's when you're running by yourself and your body decides, I've it with something. Honestly, when that happened, that was the first thing that I thought about was Kevin Garnett.

Somebody like Giannis, he seems so indestructible. You just assume it's like a LeBron thing. It's shocking when he even tweaks anything. You're like, How are you even hurt? You're superhuman. To watch him go down, you go, Oh, boy, this has to be bad to have him be hurt.

No doubt, especially knowing that he doesn't like to sit in practice. He doesn't like to sit in games. Fortunately, we were up by 40 against your Celtics that night, if I remember right. But even that game got close after Yata's went out. They made a run. So it was an interesting night for sure.

What was the most surprising thing just being with him day to day for two months that you weren't expecting? Obviously, you coached against him. You had a pretty good feel for him. But was there anything you learned from the day to day?

He's a much better playmaker than I thought. The energy and the athleticism, some of the things he does. Bill, you can watch him every day for the rest of your life, but some of the things he does, you'll shake your head every night. Taking off from the elbow, one dribble from half court, making it to the basket. He does things that no one else can do. But coming in and taking the job, I thought one of the things that I had to do was make him a better playmaker, see if he can facilitator. I was surprised at his vision. He really has good vision. He, in a lot of ways, was our point guard at times for us. I think that's one of the reasons we missed him so much against the Pacers. Then other than that, he's our best player. But his vision surprised me. It gave me more hope that when we get this right, that we can really do some things offensively.

It was funny talking to you on podcast about Milwaukee you took that job when you didn't know you were going to take the job. And talking about Yannis and Dame, how it's a little harder to mix those guys than maybe people think because ways people can sag off because Yannis isn't a great three-point shooter and just little tricks and just things you have to do. So then you take the job. And did you feel like you unlock that at all by the end of the season or no?

Yeah, I thought we got really good at a lot of little things with Dame and Yannis. I thought, first of all, they start connecting, and their two-man game was becoming lethal. I think it was second or third best in the league, and it still, in my opinion, hasn't scratch. You know what was the most difficult thing? And it took me a little bit to figure it out. Dame didn't have the ball in his hands a lot at times. And it was hard to visualize, why is this happening? And the reason is on missus, when Giannis gets the ball, he's elite. You want him to break out. Dame was He's going backwards half the time to go get the ball. Giannis is gone. Then, okay, so on misses, Dame doesn't get it unless it's thrown ahead to him or unless it comes to him in the action, but he has to be in front of the ball for that to What happened? And then on makes, Giannis brought the ball up some, and then Chris brought the ball up some. I started thinking, Wait a minute. If that happens, we're cutting about 80 % of the time that Dame is used to having the ball from Portland.

And you just can't do that. And so what we came to by the end on makes, Dame brought the ball up the floor 90 % of the time. On misses, we wanted Giannis to go. And so we're getting the best of both worlds. And that, to me, is where we're headed. We really never got a chance to work on it, but I thought that was a huge breakthrough for us.

And the Dame situation where he gets traded, he leaves his family behind, he's going through a divorce, and just seemed like a lot of personal stuff that was weighing him down. How did you navigate that during the season and try to get his spirits up?

That's hard. That was really hard. Two things. And it's funny because I was podcast with you and golfing with Larry. I didn't even realize that Dame was traded two or three days before training camp. And so Dame was telling me we were at dinner, and he said, Coach, I didn't work out all summer. It's the first time in my life That I've not worked out. I was so scared of getting injured working out.

Oh, because he was a possible trade. Yeah.

He knew he was going to get traded. So he said, I did some light running. I did some shooting with no one in the gym, but I didn't go at all. He said, I'm out of shape. And he was honest about it. That's one of the reasons you love him, because he is honest. He said, This is the worst shape I've ever been in. When you start camp that way, you don't ever get in shape. You never catch up. And he felt that way. It's funny. I start calling him names jokingly with him, talking about his weight and he's heavy. And all summer now, I'm working twice a day. I'm down to this. He is so proud that he's in great shape right now already, which is amazing. It also tells you, I shared this with him last week. I said, It's amazing. You're doing two days right now, and the Celtics and the Mavs are still playing. It just tells you how long of a journey it is for you to win a championship. Half the league is back to work for next season, and we still have two teams playing. It doesn't It looked like two teams be playing much longer, but we have two teams playing.

Yeah, there was a photo the other day of KD and Chet and another guy all working out, getting ready. It is crazy. It's so long. Plus, we had the Olympics this year. We'll see. But I'm sure you're watching the playoffs, and we haven't talked, at least on the podcast in 2024, but you're watching the playoffs, and it's just so funky, right? Denver loses in round two. You have the East just loses its marbles. Butler gets hurt. The Knicks just fall apart one guy by one guy by one guy. You lose half your team and Beads hurt, and then he's healthy, but he doesn't still see him. The East just It completely falls apart. On the one hand, everybody's like, Well, Boston, they haven't beaten anybody. On the other hand, the East blew up. But you're probably watching it going, Holy shit. If we just got them by round one, we match up with Boston, the best in the conference.

Well, we felt that. You still have to beat them, Bill. They're awful good, and you got to give them their credit. They've been the best team in the NBA the entire season. And it's almost like no one wanted to believe it. It's everywhere. The criticism criticism of Jason Tatum and of Brown and who's the best player. I tell you, first of all, I don't think Joe gets enough credit. I've shared that with you before. I think he is such a detailed Coach. I mean, in the game tonight, he fouls up six with 22 seconds. He was trying to foul. Those are strategic things that are big. But watching how they play is just absolutely beautiful. How they play basketball right now. They share the ball. Everybody accepts their role. They know exactly where each other is at. I don't know how many more slot cuts they're going to get in this series where a guy drives a guy drives from the slot or cuts from the slot. It's a layup. You drive, you find the corner guy. They're making the right plays. Every night, and they're over themselves. I say this to you all the time about it's so hard to win.

It is so hard to win a title. But when you see it, it's The visual, to me. It's like art for me. When you watch, you watch every single guy that is over themselves. There's no drama, there's no jealousies. Everybody is good with their role. Everybody is becoming star in their role. And when you watch Boston, Jalen, Brown is going to be the MVP, I guess, of the finals.

Through the first three games, definitely.

But you can make a strong case for Halley.

After the second game, I would have said he was leading the way.

Yeah, and he did stuff tonight. Defensively, I thought the play where he drove and got a kick for the three might have been the biggest play of the game. And he just does it over and over. White makes a big three. You know When he came down to it and Dallas made that run, the two biggest shots was, I think, holiday drove, kick for three. White makes the second three. Back to back, bam, the game's put away again. And it's what they do. They're just a solid, well-coached team. Kevin Garnett made this comment years ago. Sometimes you're good enough to win, but you can't because you're not ready to win. And Boston, watching them play right now, they're ready to win. They're just playing that way.

I want to dive into this because I went to the game tonight and I saw the same thing you did. But let's take a break. You're talking about when teams get over themselves, which I think is a great way to put it. There was a moment in this game, I was sitting behind the Celtics bench, about 10 rows up, and they go on that run in the third quarter. I've so much of this team over the last seven years. But the one thing they have this year is they'll go on these runs and they know it's happening as it's happening. There's a little swagger to them now that I just don't feel like they had in other years. They'll go up 85, 70 at the end of the third quarter, and then they hit to two threes at the start of the fourth quarter. They were up 91, 70. I was watching the bench and how locked in everybody is. It really reminded me. I texted Steve Kerr. I was like, This reminds me of what was happening with you guys years ago. It was somewhere between the fourth and the fifth game of the finals, and just the team, the Warriors, locked in.

You know these moments in the series where you're like, Oh, they figured this out. I remember this happened with the '08 Celtics in the Piston Series, somewhere between game five and game six. And somewhere in game six, it was like, this is over. They're winning this. What happens? How does... Explain, because you coach teams that that's happened. What happens when the Five Guys lock in like that and the bench locks in and everybody's just like, holy shit, this is it.

It's a combination of the whole season. It's funny. I had this conversation with our team this year and our staff. Each round, you get better. People who have never been on the journey have no idea how much you improve from round to round as a basketball team. And it's not that you're improving as a player. You're improving as a team. You start trusting each other more. You start getting less insecure about stuff, individual stuff. You're no longer concerned about the one thing, and that's giving yourself to the team. You buy into everything. And there's a happy place. I really believe this. There's a happy place that teams get to. And the only way they can get to it is by... Sometimes it happens in the Eastern or Western Finals. You can see, oh, boy, they just hit the button. Now you're going to have to beat them. You know what I mean? And Boston has been there. But even in this series, you can see, a year ago, they lose the game tonight.

I agree.

They lose that game.

I actually think they lose it twice. I think they lose them the first quarter when it's 19:09 and the crowd's into it. I think they start doing hero ball threes, and all of a sudden, they're down 20. And Then they lose it again in the fourth quarter as the lead's slipping away, crowd's into it, they can't buy a basket anymore. Everyone's just jacking up 20 footers. I think they definitely would have lost it in '22. They definitely would have lost it last year, and it's the difference.

And it comes down at the end of the day to trust the two things that happens. Your star players trust everyone on the team, including the coaches. And then the role players They trust themselves, and they trust the star players. And then when that all happens, it's almost impossible to beat that team. And you see it every year. Every year happens. It happened to Denver last year. Every year. It's funny. It was beautiful Golden State, their last title, because they had won it, but then they lost it. And then they had to go back on a journey, and they had to to bring in some of these young guys. Jordan Pooh played great for them. Wiggins. Yeah, Wiggins. It was a retrust. And what's better to watch is Tatum is great to watch, and Brown has been great. But It's awesome to watch Derrick White. I'm forgetting the backup center tonight.

Oh, Tillman. This was a borderline Tillman game. 11 minutes, good defense on Luca, hit a big corner three.

He was great. Hauser made big shots in the first half.

Three for three.

Yeah, all trust, though. That's all trust. And the only reason Hauser can make that shot is the star players have to make a play, and then they have to trust instead of forcing shots. And that's what they do. Watching the Celtics play in the first half compared to watching the Mavs play, it was just two different... The Mavs, first time there in a long time. First time there this team. And you can see the difference. It takes everything to win, and the Celtics are doing it.

Yeah, the Celtics had 26 assists, Dallas had 15. And what they've done to Dallas The whole series is it's hero ball, one-on-one stuff. Nobody else is involved. Kyrie and Luca, I think, took 55 shots combined tonight. Then you felt that in the end, Luca fouls out, and we'll talk about the six foul in a second. But It becomes like, All right, this is going to be Kyrie's show, win or lose. As a Celtics fan who's been with this Tate and Brown era now for two-thirds of a decade, seven years, this game played a lot of the hits where they look great. Uh-oh, we're up 21, now it's 15, now it's 13. There's a lid on the basket. This is the exact type of game they've either lost or almost lost 20 times this year. But then there's this Kyrie piece where Kyrie, he comes in as the big brother, right? Tatum's first year, and then it doesn't work out the second year. All right, the last level of the video game now to go up 3-0 in the finals, you got to beat this dude that you played with and was supposed to be there for it.

It was just weird. It was surreal to watch, right? It's like, this is how it's going to end in game three.

Yeah, but still, it's funny because Dallas has gotten a lot of criticism because of their offense. It's not their offense. It's what the Celtics are doing to their offense.

Yeah, so explain that. Explain what they're doing, because I don't think people fully understand it.

You have two superstars on the maps, and they know that they're going to garner help. They come into the game knowing that every team is going to send two guys. They're always going to send an extra guy when they get to the basket. The Celtics aren't doing that. They're staying home. So in a lot of ways, the Celtics are getting away with guarding Luca for the most part, and Kyrie all the time, single coverage. And even when they beat them off the dribble, they're still not sending help. They're saying, Beat us over the top. Make shots over the top. We're going to get out to all your players. And so it looks bad.

And by the way, spend energy doing that. Yes, spend- Because Luca and Kyrie were dead in the third quarter, and then they rallied a little bit. But they were When you're carrying an offense like that and just over and over again, banging bodies, Luca is not in the greatest shape either.

No, he definitely is not. And so like those shots that Washington was getting against Minnesota, they were wide open. Now there's someone there. And you can see, I don't know how many times... I thought there was a play late that they threw it to Washington into the corner, and he should have shot it right away.

And he drove to the paint.

And he drove it and it had nothing. And the reason he didn't shoot is because people He would have been there all night. And so we always used to laugh. He's seeing people that aren't there. And on that, when no one was there, he should have shot the ball. But that's what happens. And give Austin credit. Their defensive game plan has been fantastic. And let's be honest, they have the ability to do it. They have so many good defenders. To me, as good as Brown has been offensively, he's been unbelievable defensively. And not only on Luca, but more on three because of his size and his physicality. He's been amazing.

Yeah, I voted for Brown for all NBA. And part of the case was the two-way game and how hard he plays night to night. Because I think, especially in where the league is in 2024, and this is one of the things I love about Yann, who, as you know, is a competitive sociopath who just literally is incapable of not trying 100%. Brown was like that this year. I thought Brown set the tone. One of the reasons they won as many games as they did, they're 79 and 20 right now, which is, you know how hard that is. That's a crazy record. One of the reasons is because that guy, he went up a level. We've seen this, really, the money started to come in in the late '80s when you were in the week, and the '90s was when it really came in. We saw guys go a bunch of different directions, right? Yeah. You played against how many talented dudes in the '90s that once they got a contract, it went sideways. Or something happened, or they got hurt.

Yeah, it's either a contract or this is a different generation where everyone has their own like image, and it's harder to get everyone to buy in. They're so worried about their brand. The guys that do win, and they realize their brand is even better.

But Brown gets 304 million, and everybody's like, Oh, my God, that's so much money. He's the most overpaid guy in the league. He got better. I've been saying this on the pod all year. He's been better all year. He was the biggest guy in the game tonight on both ends. He made the biggest shot of his career with a minute left. When they're up to, they need a basket. Dallas is looming. You could feel the Kyrie 3 coming. He hits this 18 footer. It's just money that won the game. But I think the mental toughness with him compared to two years ago, it's night and day.

It's night and day and going left. He made that shot. You watch him. This summer, he worked on his game. Everyone said he couldn't go laugh. He couldn't do these. He's done them. I think the biggest difference watching Brown play for me is Brown has fluctuated energy-wise, I think, or focus-wise, I think. I think he's mature. I think he's turned into, as we say, a grown-ass man. And he comes into every game with that mindset. I think a lot of it is work on the court, but a lot of it is who he is mentally and where he's at and that he's grown up. You can see it.

Remember when this happened to Paul? When that year, the Indiana loss, when he took his... When he wore the thing on his head. You were so bad. And all of a sudden, he's in trade rumors. But then he came back that next year, and he was awesome. And the team sucked, but he was That was awesome. And that was the first year he put together a really professional start to finish, awesome two-way veteran leader year. And then that led to '08 when he did it the whole year with KG and Ray and everybody.

Bill, to this day, I tell people the reason we wanted in '08 is because of Ball's second year with me. You remember, we butt heads a lot because we had... Paul, I just heard him telling this on some podcast, we had this big falling out of my office. He was pissed because I asked him a question that he thought was, Why would you ask me this? I asked him, Could he shoot? I said, Are you a good shooter? And you know Paul? If you know Paul, Paul has confidence. And I remember him saying, What question is that? He said, No, I'm serious. Do you think you're a good shooter? And he says, I'm a great shooter. What are you talking about? I said, Well, you're shooting 40%. I I said, So, Paul, either you're a shitty shooter or you're taking crappy shots.

Right. You're a great shooter who takes shit shots.

Yeah. I said, It's got to be one of the two. You just told me you're a great shooter, but you're shooting 40 %. And he was yelling like, What are you trying to tell me? I said, I'm trying to tell you, you take bad shots. And if you want to be a winner, you have to move the ball. We'll get the ball back to you, and the defense is now shifted, and you'll score easy. And I've told this a hundred times. He came back in my office after budding heads the whole year and said, We're good. Now, I didn't know what that meant. I thought I knew. I thought he was going to try it the way that I wanted to. And he did it. In that following year, if You go look at his percentages, they skyrocketed. The problem is we sucked. Our team was bad.

He should have been an All-MBA guy that year, and the team was too bad.

Yeah, he really should have been.

Yeah, he was great.

It made it easy, though. When Kevin and Ray joined, it was easy for him. He had already done that. He had already given himself. He was professional. Yeah, so it's the same thing. He grew up.

The reason I wanted to talk about Paul versus Jalen was Paul in that playoff goes head-to-head with LeBron. It's a younger version of LeBron, but it was still LeBron. He was in the league for five years, beats him in a game seven, out plays him. Then in the finals, let's be honest, he outplayed Kobe. For real. He at least played him to a draw. But the thing that was cool about it was he really thought he was as good as Kobe. Whether that's true or not, we could bait it. I think we know the answer. But he thought he was as good. That's what I'm seeing with Jalen in this final. Luke is better than him, but Jalen doesn't think that. Jalen really thinks it's like me and Tateum are on this dude's level and he's carrying himself that way.

The thing that has made Jalen great is two things. Number one, he thinks he's better than everybody.

Right.

But he also knows he's on a team with another great player, and it's not a competition. It's not a competition for them. I think it used to be, but it isn't anymore. Again, I keep going back to the maturity thing, and they're competitive. That's the point I meant with Jalen, just watching how competitive he is now. He doesn't back down to anyone. I do think Ed and White, I think Horford, I think they all help him. They all help each other. But, man, they are a connected basketball team. If you're going to win, you have to be connected.

Does Jable remind you of Paul?

He does. Same size, can get a shot wherever he wants.

Can guard different types of players, can guard smaller players, bigger players. He's stronger than you think.

Better defender than Paul, and Paul was probably a better offensive as a player in some ways. Where Paul was special, and all the great ones, the Kobe's, at the end of the game, they could tell you, they could tell their opponent where they're going to get the shot at and where they're going to shoot it from. Paul, anybody I coach, knew his spots. And he felt like if he can get to it, there was nothing defensive you were going to do to stop him unless he just missed the shot. And that's what made Paul so good.

Well, you know it's funny. Then you coach the ultimate example of all time of that, Chris Paul, who shot the same jumper from the same shot two inches over from the right side of the foul line over and over again, and nobody ever realized he was shooting it from there. Going right. Like a thousand times. Going right. Going right.

Yeah. But it's funny. As a coach, I do remember as a player, Mike Ratello against the Milwaukee Bucks. John Lucas went left, left, left, left, left. Beat me left three times. And he calls a time out. He's screaming at me. Basically said, You have another game like this, you'll be out of the league. He yelled at me. And I'm thinking to my mind, I swear to God, I'm trying to keep him from going left. He's good at it. And by the end of my career, I was never on that level of these great players. But I remember a young player walking up to me before the game and said, Hey, Doc, you're not going right tonight. And I told him, Well, I'm not going left.

Something is going to happen.

But you, great players, they're going to get to their spot. They just are. They're just that good at it. And you can see it every night.

Yeah. One of the things that was amazing this whole series, but especially tonight, because Kyrie, he sucked in the first two games, and it was a lot of hero ball stuff, and he didn't get his teammates involved. That's about as bad. I think the crowd got to him. There's no question. The game tonight, you could see he had a hop in his step. He was making threes. At some point, especially in the second half, Holiday was like, All right, I got him. Yes. They started whatever Holiday was doing, and then Kyrie responded to it. It was like watching those boxing matches where it's like the light weights or like those 125 pounders where they're moving at a speed where you can't even keep track, and it just seemed faster than everyone else in the court. But it was great to watch. And the reality is it was a great moment for Kyrie, and they made him take hero ball shots, and he couldn't make the plays.

It's funny. I don't know if Kyrie sucked in the first few games or their defense made him struggle. Yeah, or maybe both. Yeah, and I think it's a little bit of both. I thought the biggest change tonight is you're right. I thought the holiday, instead of picking them up at half-court, because I thought Dallas did something really good tonight, they took the ball out, and they got the ball up the floor quick. And so Boston never got into their full court pressure. But then if you go watch the last six minutes, think about it, one of the biggest fouls of the game was they try to set a pick on holiday at half-court because he was up pressuring the ball again, and that's what affects them. And I thought he started doing it late. And think about if you're, Cari, Luka's out of the game. I got holiday picking me up full court. And once I get it across, then I have to make the play.

And I have no other offensive creator on the floor with me.

No No one else that can create a shot for him. So, yeah, he was against a lot the last five minutes.

You took over that Bucks job, and they had traded Drew, what, six months before? Was there still a shadow with Drew at all when you took the team over? Because he was one of the most beloved Bucks of all time.

Yeah, it was funny. It was more not that they wanted them back, they loved Dame and all that, but he was their leader. He He led by example and by what he did. You don't just replace that. That takes a little bit of time. And think also, again, they did this trade late. So it had everybody probably in a shock a little bit. But you heard his name. It's funny. I've always been a big holiday. I've always liked him a lot. I thought he really took care of Austin, his rookie year in New Orleans. He was Austin's rookie, and Austin always... I mean, Austin being the first person, we were talking about players. I remember Austin's rookie year, after his rookie year, was sitting there having dinner. He said, You know what the most who the rated player in the NBA is? And I said, Who? And he said, Drew Halley. I said, What? What are you talking about? He said, This guy defensively, there's nobody in the lead that can do the things that he can do. Well, then when you get to Milwaukee and you coach and you hear, you just hear stories about him, not on the floor, just as a person.

And you think, Man, now you got to put this guy on another level. You like him even more. They just don't make a lot of people like that. He's like a champion, and so it's really cool. It looks like he's going to get another one. It's because of not just his play, but who he is.

Yeah, there's a confidence with him. Yes. That when you've won, when you've won on the biggest stage, and he had one of the great sequences, probably in the history of the finals, when he's strip Booker and then throws that crazy alleyup to Yannis. To Yannis. You have a play like that. It's You're minted after that. But you could feel it in the first two Boston games because there was a couple of moments. Tatum wasn't playing well in game one. That game was never really in doubt. But in game two, there was a couple of moments when previous Celtics teams, I think, I don't know if they would have folded, but they could have had a little patch where all of a sudden they're down eight. He was, I thought, the alpha on the court, which I hadn't gone to a playoff game yet until this series with them. But I was surprised by that because everyone says he's a quiet guy, quiet leader, but there's an intensity to him that you can feel, right?

He reminds you of Maurice Cheeks in that way.

Oh, yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah. Maurice Cheeks would score eight points in the game, and they would be the most meaningful eight points. A team makes a run, and he would push it up and take that quick pull-up jump shot. Then he'd go back to doing his other stuff, and then he'd do it again. Drew does it more. He's that plus a better score. He does it more. That's what makes him so good. It's amazing watching all the little things that he does, their team does. They're fun to watch. I hate to say it because I'm the coach at the Milwaukee Walkers.

They're in your conference, right.

Yeah, but they are a fun team to watch.

Let's take one more break, and then we got to talk about that foul call. All right, so Boston's up 91-70, and everyone on Dallas has disconnected the body language was awful. Nobody's talking. As you know, I'm the body language, one of the premier body language experts of all time. Celtic's body language, A plus. Dallas body language, Luka is standing in the corner, Kyrie's over there, and I'm like, Oh, man, we broke him. We Broke them. This happened. Then a couple of miss shots. Dallas makes a couple. All of a sudden, it's coming back. Luka picks up, I think, a fourth foul at some point. A stupid foul on Pritchard, just like a hand check foul. It's the foul When you're the best player on the team and in the game, you can't have. Then he gets a fifth foul, and then all of a sudden, six foul. When they're really coming back, it's 93-90, 4-12 left. Jalen drives it to him. They call the Now, kid has to challenge. You have to. But he's moving. They can't reverse it. Were you shocked by that call? This is the best guy in the game.

I didn't like the call in general because I just didn't like the call. But if you're going to blow the whistle on that, it was the right call. It absolutely was a foul. It's funny. I was watching the game over Larry's house, and Luca picks up his fourth foul, and Larry will tell you, I turned to him and said, Luca is going to file out in this game. He's not going to make it through this game. He's really emotional. There was a play- Really?

So you read it? You just didn't like... There was something you noticed and didn't like?

Yeah, I told Larry, sitting right there, I said, Lucas is going to foul out in this game. I said, he's really emotional. There was a play, and he got fouled on that drive towards the basket. And I think it was Tatum forearms him, falls out of Bounds. They lost it. That was a clear file. To me, that call literally has to be made. They didn't make it. They didn't make the call. And so from that point on, Luca, those files came right after that. He snapped in some ways. I wouldn't say he snapped, but he just- I know what you mean.

He just got lathered up. Yeah, he got lathered up. He started playing angry.

He started He started playing angry. He started playing physical. And he does this thing sometimes, and all the great players do it. They start daring the ref.

Yeah.

Well, you didn't call that make this call. And so they said, Okay, we'll blow the whistle. We will. And listen, you have Cape as a rep and Mark D. Those aren't the guys you want to mess with. Right. And Larry was laughing because I told him, I said, Luca's messing with the wrong group tonight. This is not going to well for him, and it didn't. We were laughing because Larry was laughing and said, You just said that. I said, You could see it happening. You could literally see it happening.

They were letting everything go. It was a super physical game. And I thought one of the reasons Dallas came back was because kids... He's one of the best 50 players ever. He's been in games like that. And I think he told his team, Ramp it up, man. They're not calling anything because their defense got so physical in the fourth quarter, but it was working. It was working. I mean, it was one of the reasons Boston's offense. I know people, they see it and they're like, Oh, Boston's choking. This game turned into a rugby match, and Dallas realized it before Boston did. That was one of the reasons they came back, I thought.

That was a reason. And Boston did something that you do. That's another reason it's so hard. They thought about winning a title for about five or six minutes.

Yeah, they started thinking about, Oh, my God, we could close this on Friday.

Yeah, you could feel it. They start slowing the ball down. They were milking the clock. You can see it. And they had a momentary lapse of thinking about what's ahead instead of staying locked in. And then all of a sudden, they got locked back in and they win the game. I think it'll allow them to close out now because they've already had their scare. Dallas is going to have to play unbelievable to win this next game or it's going to be a sweep. And the thing we're not talking about with Boston, they've not lost a road game in the playoffs. This is an historic run. If they win the next game, they've only lost two games in the entire playoffs, and they went undefeated on the road.

I think 34 and 14 on the road, just period, this season. And I told you this, so you I'm not lying. Everyone asked me before every game, What's going to happen? What do you think? And once KP got scratch, which we haven't even talked about, and I think people just assumed Dallas came three, they're home, they're going to win. I was telling on everybody. I think the Celtics are going to win tonight because they haven't made threes yet. And for whatever reason, I can't explain it, but they play better on the road. And I don't really fully understand it, especially Tatum. I think he plays, I think, home. I've asked people with the Celtics about this, why is Tatum better on the road than home? What are the reasons? There's a bunch of it, right? When you're home, you're dealing with tickets for everybody, you're with your family. I'm preaching the choir with you, though.

Yeah, but usually you play better at home. The only place that I thought it was difficult to play at home was in Philly because of the crowd, and I thought it affected our players some.

But I think this is the Tatum piece, though. I think people have been watching him for so long. When it's not going well for him, you can hear this weird murmur in the crowd. It's just that energy is a little weird.

Once that happens, it's hard to get it out of your brain when you're a player, but they are awful good on the road. It's amazing how comfortable they are. The other thing, their role players play well on the road.

When they hit threes on the road. They were 17 for 46. That was one of the things I was telling people. I was like, watch our threes for over 15. That's where they need to be. By the way, I think they're going to be over 15. I think they're finally going to hit some of these. They just played free and loose.

Jalen Brown used a term that I've never heard. I loved it. He talked about their bench, and they call them stay ready players. I've never heard that before. I was like, Oh, I love that. I'm using that. I'm stealing that.

The stay ready?

Yeah, he said, The Stay Readys were all great tonight. That team has had a lot of talk to each other about, Hey, one might You may play 15 minutes. One day you may play none. You just have to stay ready. And they've all bought into it and you can feel it. That's another thing we talk about, made teams, connected teams. They've become that.

Well, and that's the thing. So KP, that injury that I can't even explain what it was. It's part of the body nobody ever heard of. And they're saying the 30 people in America have had this injury this year. It's like, okay. But then he gets scratched. Have Have you been in a situation like that where one of your best players is like, All right, he's out. He's 50/50, might play, might play. No, he's actually not playing. But with this team, I was like, I don't know. I think they might be okay.

They're so deep. I mean, they really are. Your replacement is Horford.

And some Pritchard minutes and a little Tillman. Tillman was awesome tonight.

Tillman was unbelievable. And this is where from a coaching standpoint, you're so happy for any guy that has gone through the journeys that the Tillmans have gone through. When the Bucks wanted, obviously everybody was happy for Giannis, but you're really happy for the Rick Lopez, the Pat Connaittons of the world. Same thing. That's what a coach looks at. It's all the other guys that have to put in the same amount of work, and sometimes even more work than the great player. They get their shine, and it was really cool to watch.

When One of your closest friends on the planet is Sam Casselle, who you've sat next to a lot, who was on the '08 team. He was at the tail end of his career, but got a ring. But then you went through a lot of wars with him, and he's on this self-expense. What does he tell you about the team that you could talk about on a podcast about portraying him?

The closeness. He says a couple of things that Joe holds everybody accountable and everybody allows him to hold him accountable. He said something last week. He said, I remember you telling me, he was talking to me, and he said that players have to allow their coach to coach him. They have to get to a place where, you know what? I'm just going to drop my guard down and I'm going to allow him to, I use the word get in there, and just let him do his thing. And then the coach on the other hand has to allow the player to do his thing through the team, and that's where they're at. He said, It's really amazing. He said, Joe holds them accountable all the time, and they're allowing him to do that. And then the second part is, he said, Doc, these boys are connected. The word I always use, and he uses it now, there's no clutter. There's no clutter on this team. There's just none. There's no clutter. Nothing can shake this team. And he talks about that all the time.

When you see the media shit that goes on, and look, I do three podcasts a week. Sometimes there's narratives you want to talk about. But I've never the Tate and Brown thing. I'm all in on those guys. I've never really wavered. There's something special with these two. But then when we get to the playoffs, there's something to talk about. Then it's like, who's better, Tate or Brown? Is Is Tateam good enough? Is Tateam elite? Tateam, he's a first-team on an NBA guy, but is he really that good? How do you navigate that stuff as the coach? Because you know the guys see it. They're in a hotel room, they're on Twitter, they're getting text from people. How do you keep their heads from not drifting toward this dumb shit?

Well, as a coach, you call it the peripheral opponent. Pat Reilly used to use that term all the time, the peripheral opponent. It's It's more if your team is connected and if your team has a goal that is bigger than the individual, it doesn't affect the team. It really doesn't. I'm sure they all see it and they all hear it. The family members, Bill, oh, can you believe they're... You're sitting at dinner, and I can tell you it works. You're sitting at dinner sometimes with your family, and your brother may be sitting there, Hey, Jason, can you believe they're saying Jalen is better? I guarantee you Jason hears it, and it's white noise now. But a year ago, two years ago, they may have gotten a discussion out of them.

It's blue noise. Yeah. Yeah.

It's so whatever. That's what happens.

Well, you had this in 2008, Paul won the finals MVP, you could have made a really good case for Ray. A really good case. I actually probably would have voted for Ray. It was even either way, right? I'm sure Ray didn't care because he was so excited to win the title, but that's something in this current- Yeah, that stuff happens in this current league.

I think it's even more so. Jalen wins the MVP of the Eastern Finals. There was pure joy from everybody.

Right. It becomes an ESPN segment anyway, where they're like, Wait, was Tatum really happy? It's like, Wait, what? He's happily smiling and clapping.

You know what we all miss? Who's every team's best defender on? Jason Tate him every night. And so we always miss that sometimes. The reason the other guys can get off because sometimes they don't have the best defender. Now, in Brown's case, it doesn't matter who guards him either. They're just two great players that plays on the same team that are over themselves and are more concerned about winning than they are about the individual stuff. And that's why they're winning.

Yeah, I did something top of my podcast a couple of days ago about Just the culture of basketball. It's like, well, somebody has to be the best player, and that's what happens because when Michael Jordan was in the Bulls, he was the best player in Pitbull was second, and that's just how we think about basketball.

It only happened once that you can make a case that the Detroit Pistons with Larry Brown, that you couldn't circle who clearly was their best player.

Yeah, but you'd have to go way back because the '79 Sonics' were like that. Yeah. Even the '89 Pistons, I say it was their best player, even though they had a bunch of stuff.

But the Oasis was clearly. But I think it was clearly.

Kg was the best player. You could have made a case for other guys, but KG was the best player.

No doubt. But you Eight separators. You want your best player. You want everybody to know. Perk always laughed. I swear I don't remember doing this, but it was in Milwaukee. We had won a game, and I must have felt Rondo, Perk, Baby, all those guys start thinking that they were part of the big three. Okay.

It's extended big three.

I walked in the locker room after a win. I said, I want to make something clear tonight. We have a big three. We don't have a big four. We don't have a big five. We don't have a big six. We have a big three. And this is who we play through every single time down the floor. And these big three guys will get everybody else shots. But don't get this twisted. We have a big three. Perk says it all the time. I swear I don't actually remember doing that, but him and Rondo. Who I was at Rondo's wedding, by the way, this past weekend, which was amazing. It was where the James Harden toss, the bouquet toss.

Oh, that was that video?

That was that. That was that Ronda's wedding.

Well, you think about it, 16 years ago since that team won and does it matter who you think was the best player of the 2008 Celtics? Not really. Do you think anybody gives a shit? And that's the thing. Let's say the Celtics win Friday night, Jalen Brown wins the MVP, and then two days later, it'll be like, Jason Tate. Basically, what happened with Steph nine years ago, right? When Igwadala win the finals F. B, it's like, Well, what does this mean for Steph and his legacy? It's like, I guarantee you he doesn't care. He just won the title.

Even though I thought Steph should have won the MVP that year. I will say that. But it didn't matter. You know who it did matter to the most? Steph. He could get last. He's a champion. That's all that matters.

Then we had the same thing when he was in the 17 and 18 Warriors, when KD was there. It's like, He's really happy to win back-to-back titles. I promise he's not sitting in bed at night going, Oh, man, I can't believe I lost the finals MVP.

Yeah, for my legacy, I need an MVP. No, he doesn't. He could have won that year, too. It's not like he wasn't great in those series. He was. I think that's the stuff that is talked about more outside of teams than it actually is worried about inside of teams. If it is a worry, then that team is not going to win. If it is a worry with that team, that's not the team. They're not connected, and they're not going to win anyway.

Do you see a scenario where Tatum and Brown are just together the whole time, like Bird and McCale were?

Yes, I do.

I think I do, too.

I think because of the salary structures now, that they're going to both... Tatum is about to get paid a lot of money.

315.

And so once they sign those deals, they're basically on that team. Now, the only difference is they're both young. So they have another... Both of them have another big contract coming after this one. And that will be the only time that they would be considered, and possibly you separate them. But they can live an entirely They had a career together, which when you can do that for any team, it's pretty special.

Well, that's the most special thing. That's what is at stake for Clay this summer, right? Because I'm sure Philly, Orlando, somebody's going to have a ton of money to offer him, but you got to start weighing.

That's a hard one.

It's like Jordan Pippen. Pippen ended up leaving because Jordan retired, but they played Jordan's entire, most of his entire career. Pretty special. Bird and Mikael, same thing. But yeah, it's a It's a different level when you stick together that long. I mean, you had it with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Oh, wait, no, I guess that's a bad example.

No, that wasn't a good example. That didn't last long at all.

No. But that's what You think about that, that's one of the reasons it is special when it happens. Think about all these twosomes, threesomes. Oh, my God, this has so much potential. And then it just blows up. All of a sudden, Ben Simmons is in London as your season is going on. You're like, What happened? We had this special thing. Where'd it go?

Bill, it can go so quick. I think about all the years that I've coached. And again, I'll go back to all the teams that I've coached. And there's times where I think I have my team overachieving at times. I thought the Philly team, the year before they got swept in the first round by Boston. Now we've just won the regular season conference with the same team. But it doesn't take much. And that's what's so cool when teams win. Vin starts struggling with free throws, and it became a thing. The next thing you know, he's gone. I look at the Chris Paul game in Oklahoma City. You remember? We're going to win that series. We're up. And Chris is the smartest player in NBA, one of the smartest players in NBA history. And he had literally two minutes of mistake basketball. And we didn't foul. Chris tried to throw the ball from half court to draw a foul, which... Those aren't Chris Paul plays. And then we lose that game. We lose the next game, and we're out. And the team never returned back the same after that.

And then you had the Josh Smith-Cory Brewer game the next year.

The next year. From a coaching standpoint, we're up. And all of a sudden... And Chris was playing on one leg. That's the one thing I always tell people. We didn't have home court, and Chris was playing on one leg. And then all of a sudden, the guys you want taking shots start. Think about that game. Kevin McKeel had benched James Harden.

Harden, yeah.

And he was about to take the white hour out. And all of a sudden, they win the game. It's amazing.

I went to that game, Harden had a towel on his head, and he was checked out for the season. He was checked out. I think he might have been on Expedia making Vegas flights, and then all of a sudden, Josh Smith made a couple of threes. That basically almost happened in eight. It was 91-70. I think with the three-point era, I never feel safe because I was getting congratulations text, and I get so mad when people congratulate me, especially with the Celtics team. Don't ever congratulate me during a Celtics game. I never feel safe. Don't reach out to me. Yeah, no, I just get mad. I just pretend I don't get them. All right, this was fun. I had a good time. What happens Friday? Any guesses? Or do you not want to make a guess? What do you expect from a big picture standpoint? Like down three, nothing. Does Dallas shake it up?

Do they just play the heads? They don't shake it up. I think they have to play the way they play. This is what got them there. I think and Curry have to be incredible in this game for them to win. But I would not be surprised at all if Boston went four straight.

It's game three and Kidd plays 11 guys in the first half. When you're at this stage of the playoffs in round four, you really know who your eight or your nine is at this point. That told me that he wasn't positive who he could trust beyond his first couple, right?

Yeah, you're searching. And that happens. You get down to Hardaway hadn't played a lot. So you knew coming in, he was going to play a little bit more. They needed their role players to play better. And I keep saying this is difficult because boss is not helping. And so their role players aren't getting the shots that they're used to getting. And I think it's very difficult for them to play well.

Yeah, this game four is weird because you think Oh, yeah. They're going to sweep. But we've seen situations. In 2017, Golden State goes up three nothing with one of the four best basketball teams, probably of all time. And then they blow game four in Cleveland, and they have to go back to Golden State close. So you just never know. Wait, last thing, Jerry West.

Yeah, that's sad. I knew that he was struggling. I saw his wife, Karen, a couple of weeks ago. I was able to text with him a couple of times, but It's really sad. But it's sad because we lost Jerry West. But then when you just sit back and think about this guy lived a life, I remember I was at a funeral years ago and a guy was saying about the Dash, whatever, 1904 to 2000 is where he lived, and the Dash in between. He filled his Dash up.

That's a great way to put it.

Yeah, he filled the dash up completely through his life. Jerry was a complicated person because he lived a very dark life growing up. To beat those odds from West Virginia, to become the logo, to be almost as good of a front office guy as you are as a player when you're one of the greatest players ever. The dude overachieved everything Of all the people that maybe of anyone I've met, his love and competitiveness for the game was unmatched. If you talk to Jerry last week, if you could, and you start bringing up the Celtic series, he would start crying. He would start having literally tears in his eyes. Think about how long ago that was, and it still affects him that they couldn't break through. That just shows you the passion and the love that he had for the game that he was so great at.

Yeah, I loved researching him when I was doing my book. Somehow, he's one of the 12 best players of all time still, but it's somehow underrated because he was so great year after year after year and had just the worst luck on the planet. He wins one title but really could have won five. You just could go through and Well, if that didn't happen, if Elgin doesn't get hurt, Frank Silvi shot goes in, you start banging all those out. But what was really interesting was how the other players revered him. In the '69 Finals, Havlicek goes up to him right after they win and just hugs him. He's like, I love you. I really want you to win a title someday. I feel bad that we won. For a player to reach that level with the other players that they're trying to beat, where they're like, I feel bad we're beating you. I've never heard of that.

There's very few people like that. I think the reason was because the way he approached the game. He played the game as pure as you can play it and as hard as you can play it. We always talk requirements. He had the required amount of intensity every single night, and it's what separated him.

Yeah, I thought even watching the tapes and studying it, he's one of the guys from that era that you actually could have put into to any era. I think he's probably just as effective. He just would have figured it out. It's like, Oh, we have the three-point line now? I'll become one of the best three-point line. He switched positions. You know how hard this is. He's basically the point guard of the Lakers the last four or five years. He was a shooting guard.

He really was.

He was a shooting guard. But he was bringing the ball up. He led the league in assists. Whatever it took, he did.

You know who could have been a great player in this era? Kevin Garnett. Because Garnett would have been a great three-point shooter. We No one just took him. But I always think, Man, he was almost made for this era. Then the last thing I'm going to say about eras before we get too lost is every old player loves that the game over the second half of the year became physical and scoring dropped. It answers every question. All the arguments, Well, the game was more physical. And then you have these guys saying, The game is not more physical. It's Guys would have scored in your... No, the game is physical and scoring dropped. And it's a better game to watch right now, in my opinion, because they're not calling all these files. They're allowing them to play. And the game right now is really perfectly wrapped in play, and I love how they're doing it.

So when you were coaching, you noticed this immediately that they flipped the rules.

No, I just noticed they weren't calling files. The only mistake, the league didn't tell anybody. At I had first. Usually, we get memos, Hey, guys, we're going to stop calling this. It was like they had a meeting in some dark office. Say, We're just going to start letting them play. But it didn't take long. And then Adam had to come out and say, Yeah, we're allowing it. But it was obvious. I mean, think about, I coached the game this year, Bill, against the Boston Celtics, that there were two foul shots in the entire It was their game.

But you probably loved it.

I loved it. You know what I loved? The game was over in under two hours. It was unbelievable. It was amazing. I actually love how the game is being played right now.

It's good. I like what you said about the dash with Jerry West, because I think start to finish, lifetime of basketball, that has to be the greatest career anyone had, right? He was the top 15 player ever and then was the top five executive ever.

He His dash is full completely. He lived a life that no one in NBA history has ever lived. You won't look at the year that he was born. You shouldn't look at the year he died. You should look at the dash in between from college, from high school to pros. The man lived his life to the fullest. God bless him. We're going to miss him.

Hey, I had a great time podcasting with you. It's good to see you. I look forward to seeing you in this summer, but I miss doing this with you. It's great to have you on. Good to see you. Thank you.

Let's do a couple more. Let's do dinner.

Yeah, good to see you.

Take care.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks so much to Doc Rivers. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti. As well. Don't forget about the rewatchables, which we put up a couple of days ago. We did Breaking Awai. I might have to do a podcast on Friday night. I don't want to jinks it, but it's in play. I might see you later this week. Go, Seltz.. Go, Celts.