Coming up, the Celtics were looking so great, and then poor Zingas got hurt. Oh, no. Next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where I put up a new rewatchables. We're diving into sports movies this month. We did Slapshot. We did Breaking Away This Week. That's the new one. You can find it on all platforms. You can find it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. Me, Sean Fentacy, Chris Ryan. This is one of the great late '70s movies and almost a perfect sports movie. So if you haven't seen it, how dare you? You should see it immediately. If you're from Indiana, you know it well. If you like cycling, you know it well. If you love '70s movies, you know it well. But this is a classic. And one of the reasons we do the podcast, because we want to keep spreading the word for movies like this. So there you go. Sports movie coming up a week from now. We did The Longest Yard. So that's going to be the next one on Monday. The real longest yard, the one from 1974. Yeah, the first great sports movie ever. That's when we did for a week from now.

So you got six days to watch it. Coming up, I'm going to talk to Chris Mannix about how the NBA Finals was looking great for Boston. And then it flipped because poor Zingas is hurt. What does this mean? We're going to throw all the story lines. And then after that, I did a little six-pack because I had a bunch of stuff that I wanted to hit in the sports and culture scene. So there you go. First, our friends from ProJip. We're going to kick things off with a special part of today's episode. It's brought to you by Michelobultra, which is the official beer sponsor of the NBA, my favorite sport. Win or lose, you're bound to enjoy the ride with a good beer in hand. And Michelobultra is good beer. It's crisp, it's light, it's refreshing. Only 95 calories. So order yourself an ultra six-pack while we unpack six major things going in the world of basketball and in sports right now. I'm going to start with the NBA Finals. You think I'm going to start with Porzingis, and I'm not. We're going to talk about Porzingis later with Chris Manix. I'm going to start with the concept of identity because the Celtics, who were minus 220 to win the finals heading into the finals against Dallas, even though the matchups were super favorable for them.

If you watch the first two games, They won both games, even though they shot the ball terribly in game two, and they just look like they're a better team. Now with Porzingas, maybe that'll even an out. But people had an issue picking them to win the finals. A lot of, especially national media people, gravitated toward Luka because the Luka framework made sense. It's a star. Stars win finals. Best player in the series usually wins the finals. But really, having the best player in a series is an identity thing. I was thinking about, sometimes Sometimes there's years where the identity of a team is the star, not the actual star. So going backwards, I did everything before the merger. I was looking at this. The 1979 Seattle Sonics during this stretch when Bill Walton should have won four straight titles, and he didn't. But they didn't really totally have a best player. Dennis Johnson went finals MVP, but really their guards were the star. It was Gus Williams and Dennis Johnson, and they had size. So they had things that made sense, but they didn't make sense in the traditional, we have a big star sense.

Then you go to the 1989 Pistons. Isiah is clearly the best player on the team. But that wasn't a star-driven title either because that's one of the best offensive teams of all time. That team was like a Swiss army. If they could go big, they could go small. That was their identity. That's why they won the title. 2004 Detroit, same thing. Defense, top five guys, played perfectly together. We weren't in 2004. With Tatum and Brown, Jason Kidd tries to nudge that whole thing before game two. It's like, I think Jalen Brown is the best player in the team. Everybody gets all fired up about, Oh, my God. Look at the head games. Wait, is Jalen Brown the best player in the team? The point is, it doesn't effing matter because the 2004 Pistons We didn't know who their best player was. I still don't really know. Probably if I had to pick Ben Wallace, that year was probably their best player, but ultimately it didn't matter. You know what we weren't doing in 2004? Having arguments about who is the best player in the Pistons over, wow, look at the Pistons. They're killing the Lakers right now, which is what they did.

This is a relatively modern thing where we have to argue about this stuff. 2006 Miami, that was a more fun argument because Shaq was still the best center in the league, but it was becoming Wade's team. Then in the finals, Wade just grabbed the car keys and he grabbed the steering wheel and he's like, I'm going to take us home, guys. He was clearly their best player by the end of the finals, but we didn't know that heading into the finals. 2008 Celtics always had a pierce or Garnett thing. Where Garnett was the best player in the team. Pierce beat LeBron in a game seven, younger LeBron, but still, and went toe to toe with Kobe in the finals and was a better player and won the finals MVP. I think KG was the best player in that team. The point is, and you, by the way, could have made a case, Ray Allen could have won finals MVP, but nobody really cared. The point was they were awesome regular season, awesome team, and they won the whole thing. It was the identity of the big three, the fact that they could play big, they could play small, they were deep, and that was what it was.

2009 Lakers, we argued that whole year about Power Kobe, who's their best player. Honestly, I still don't know. I'm kidding. I just wanted to make sure the Laker fans are still listening. Kobe is the best player. They don't qualify for this. 2014 Spurs is a great one because that's old Duncan. Duncan was their best player, and in 2013, I still feel like he was, even though Parker was. 2014, Kawhi won finals MVP, but Kawhi Parker, older Tim Duncan, really, he could have made a case for anybody. The real reason they won was their offense was just beautiful, the movement. They had the perfect guy to guard LeBron in a season where that Miami team was fading and becoming a different thing. Then you look at 2024, if it is the Celtics that win the title, what's the identity of the team? Who's the best player? The identity is the J's. It's Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown together. If you're going to compare them to some of these other teams, that's their identity. It's having those two guys, and then on top of it, having this incredible high-end depth with holidays with Porzingas, with Derrick White, even with Horford as a sixth man.

They probably have five of the top 50 guys in the league, plus Horford, plus some shooting. That's why if they win, that's why they're going to win. The point is, it doesn't really matter who the best player was. This is stuff for people like me to talk about, get talk segments out of. Who's the best player? Is it they? Coming up on first take. It doesn't matter. Winning the title is what matters. If they win, it's because of the Js. That's their identity, and That's all we should be talking about. That's my first thing for the six-pack. Second one is a little NBA-related, and it's a quickie. But Warner feels like they've blown the basketball package, which I've been telling you now for five weeks. And then people start reporting it after the fact, It's not done yet. We'll see. They might create a fourth package for them. Do you realize how dumb it is that they don't even have the deal sign for the three packages with the people that are giving them over $75 billion for the next 11 years? And because Warner screwed up and had an exclusivity thing, didn't exercise it in time.

And From what I heard, and as you know, I have good sources on this stuff, it came down to a couple of conference finals games. A few. Let's call it a few conference finals games. Not per year, just a couple, a few, over the course of 11 years, and that became a deal breaker as they headed to the end of the exclusivity period. And David Zaslow, who runs Warner, was basically like, All right, we'll take it in the open market then. I don't know if he said that specifically, but if you let the exclusivity window close, you don't get basketball, you don't have a deal, then other people are allowed to bid, and they didn't see MBC coming. And guess what? They screwed it up. Unless they didn't want basketball along, which is possible, but I don't think it's possible because for the next few weeks, they kept floating out. No, we might match. We're looking at the Amazon. The lawyers are going to be involved. And now it's either two options that seem to be sitting out there. One is that They're going to try to match a lesser offer, the Amazon thing. No way.

The second one is, Oh, they actually might create a fourth package for us. That's not happening either. Because guess who's not going to want that? The other three partners who are paying all this money for exactly what is laid out in their deals. So now it's like, what happens? Are you going to sue? That's really what you're going to do. They're like the spurn lover who won't move their stuff out of the apartment, Warner. And guess what, guys? Get boxes. It's time. You don't want to have the spurn lover syndrome. And if they don't figure this out soon, I think it becomes damaging potentially for the person who is running the entire company because at some point, you have to have some confidence in who's running it. If that person not only blew a deal with basketball, but then is trying to hang on on the ledge, Don't let me off, please. Not great. I would let this one go. Move on. They did the French Open thing, do a lot of smaller deals, and just admit that this basketball thing didn't work out. Next one, third thing. Just a random soccer idea. With apologies to Kevin Wilds.

It's a half baked idea. I don't know if you saw Team USA get their butts kicked by Columbia the other day. Well, I was thinking about how my entire life people have been saying that soccer was going to take off and that America was going to be good and a sport of the future here and we're going to have all these people. It just hasn't happened. Now I'm heading toward my mid-50s here, and it feels like we're further away than we were 10, 12 years ago, even though we have guys like Pooley Sech. It's probably not happening. I think it's time Instead of thinking about, do we invest in stuff, the younger academies, all that stuff, maybe we need a change in PR. I was throwing this by Sareudi, and he thought it was funny. I'm just going to introduce this theory here. Maybe Maybe they need to start going after five-star runningbacks, basically from eighth grade on in football, and just lay out the actual financial situation runningbacks in the 2020s. Because let's say you become Saquon Barkley. You're one of the best talents at running back in a long time. What does that mean financially?

Saquon Barkley, the Giants wouldn't even pay him. He ended up going to the Eagles for 11, 12 million a year. If Saquon Barkley was an awesome, awesome soccer player, could he make what he's going to make in his entire NFL career in three Premier League seasons? They need to market, Hey, guys, there's way more money in soccer. Way more. Not to mention all the ancillary damage from football, but just show all the running back ages. Show when running back's careers are over at 27, 28, 29. In soccer, you keep playing. Just come to the MLS when you're 39, you're washed up, you'll make another 20 million a year. This is now a PR campaign, and I think soccer should look into it. That's my half-picked idea to save you a soccer. All right, fourth thing. We got to talk about the Caitlin Clark content frenzy, which I've tried to stay away from, but I've been just amazingly amused by everything that's happened with it. Why am I amused? What's amusing about this? It's amusing because there's an old saying about when people People wrote hit pieces in magazines or newspapers or blog posts that when they really went after somebody, it often said more about the writer than it did about the person that they were doing the hit piece on.

Are they resentful? Are they jealous? What's their purpose? They're trying to get attention for themselves. This Kaitlyn Clarke story, whatever prism you view sports through, whatever prism you view your own career through, what you want out of it, what content You want to get day to day, week to week out of it. It's just perfect. Do you want to make this a story about race? Voila, here it is. Do you want to make it a story about older ex players resenting the new class of star? Boom, sitting right there. Do you want to make it about favoritism? You could do that, too. Did she deserve to make the Olympic team? No, she's not one of the 12 best players, so why is she on it? Do you want to make it about this is the fault of why we can't grow women's basketball, especially at the Olympics, which is a case Christine Brennan made. This is the most successful Olympic team that probably in any sport for it, they're going for their eighth gold and nobody's cared because they just kill everybody. So they actually needed Kaitlyn to to to to trumpet how good this team is.

You could do that thing. You could do any media beef you'd want to start. We saw it today. Steve got mad at Peter Rosenberg about something he said on a radio show and did an emergency YouTube clip on it. We've seen infighting with the media. It's like, oh, great. We all get to roll up our sleeves and just go at each other over this Kaitlyn Everything. We've seen reverse racism. I won't name the sites, but there's a couple of them that are trying to turn this into a sports helter-skelter. We have the ratings. There's a ratings porn contingent out there talking about how great the ratings have been. What does this mean? Is this all Kaitlyn? Is she getting enough credit for what she does with the league? Then you have the ex-players. I always enjoy that. The older current players, Robin Shatz. You had some incidents on the court, and everybody just lost their mind every time anything happened. It was weird because let's go back to the part where it was just fun to watch Kaitlyn Clarke play basketball and see how she was going to do as a rookie. In this league.

Instead, it just had to become about all these big issues and just people. Everybody's like, Oh, is it time for my 15 minutes? I thought it was ridiculous. She's, you could argue, has started more beefs and more conflicts between people without intending to do anything. All she's doing is trying to play basketball, but it's almost turning into this is like a hip hop story. But the part that got super weird, I thought, was the Olympics. Because on the surface, yeah, she should be in the Olympic team because people like Kaitlyn Clarke, and it's fun to watch her. But there's a bigger picture thing with the Olympics that I think people missed. They just picked all the best players. You go look at the team they had. All the ages of the players are between 26 and 33. Griner is 33, and then Tarasi is 42. She's the outlier, and she has to be in the team because she's going for six gold medals, and you have to have that. But it's a team where they just said, We don't want to F around. We just want to keep winning the gold medal. We're not trying to accomplish.

We're not trying to grow the game. We're just trying to kick everybody's butts. And they have. Here's the scores for the last four gold medal games. They won by 21. They won by 29. They won by 26. They won by 27. Putting her on this team when she was four or five years younger than every other good player, first of all, who are you bumping? Second of all, she's going to be the only young player you have. To me, this is a failure of vision because I would say this about the men's team, too. The men's team, Bam, Booker, Tatum, Edwards, Halliburton, even Anthony Davis, and Bede's not 30 yet. Then the older guys are LeBron and Kawhi and Durant, Curry, and Drew. You don't need 12 players on a team like this. You need nine or 10, and then you need two happy to be there people. This is what we figured out all those years ago in the dream team when crazy Laitner gets it over Shaq, which is, we're not going to litigate that here, but that was Laitner was one of the best college players of all time. Shaq was one of the best center prospects of all time.

If you had to do it over again, maybe put both of them on. But for a while there, they tried to youth on the team, and now they've just gravitated toward, We never want to lose the gold medal. We're just going to kick ass. I think I agree with it, but I think if I was If I was a sports star, I'm never going to get elected. I'm going to give up the dream. I would want a team of maybe nine hardcore All-stars, best players in their primes, peaks, or heading toward their peaks. So everyone from Edwards to Tatum to Booker and probably Curry is at the tail end of that. Then you want the one older star going for one last gold medal. So maybe in this case, that's LeBron. Then I would want the two young players. I'd want two people, somebody like Chet, put him on the team, get him the experience. It's going to make him amazing. He's not going to care if he plays anyway. Or even Palo, who was on the last USA team. But if you told me we had Palo and Chet as the two young guys, great.

That's amazing. What an awesome experience for those guys because they're not going to play anyway because you need nine or 10 guys to win. I think you could make the same case with the women's team. Maybe the the mistake was you take nine, Tarassi's the old lion as the 10th, and then you go super young with the other two. You have Kaitlyn, and then you also have Juju Watkins. You have Cameron Brink, whatever you want to do. But those last two spots, which are a little ceremonial for the most part, and then that allows Kaitlyn on the team. The other piece of this, which I think people are missing, and I would call this the Tim Tebo theory, which rarely happens, but when somebody is such a big star, it almost becomes not worth it to have them involved on your team unless they're just going to play all the time. I say Tim Tebo because there was a summer, I think it was summer 2013, the Patriots signed Tim Tebo as a backup quarterback. Super exciting. I was all in. I was like, This sounds great. It's a perfect Belichick player. We'll play him at tight end, third QB.

We'll run some goal line stuff for him. It'll be awesome. Well, what happened? The first couple of practices, all anyone cared about was Tim Thibault. It was like, You're going to play Thibault? Where's Thibault? You're going to play Thibault? And guess what Belichick did after, I don't know, I don't remember how long it was. He was like, F this, and just waved Tebo. He was like, I want no part of this. The ensuing Hullabaloo day to day over Tebo just made it not worth it to have Tebo. When that Hullabaloo becomes too big, you better really feel good about the player. I think with the Olympic team, to have Kaitlyn on the team, which I was like, How is she on the team? She's going to go to the game. Well, guess what happens? You go to the Olympics and it all becomes, Is Kaitlyn going to play? Why is she playing? Kaitlyn only played four minutes. Should Caitlin play more? Is Caitlin better than this person? It turns into a fucking nightmare. They don't want that. I totally get it. By the way, she would have been four years younger than everyone else on the team.

I get why she I didn't make it, but I think it's a failure of construction more than anything else. All right, two more things for the six-pack. I'm in the honeymoon period with Drake May, and it's marvelous. It's really great. What I didn't know, I haven't had... I guess this will happen when the Red Sox bring up Marcelo Maire, although I don't know if I'm ever watching a Red Sox game again. But really, with football, I've never had it before because I had the same quarterback for the entire time, the Internet existed, basically. We drew Bledso and Tom braided into the 2020s. The little pieces every day, I've really enjoyed. There was stuff yesterday about Jake May playing dodgeball. I watched multiple clips of Drake May playing dodgeball. I've watched him in mini-camps. I've watched his little 40-yard throws or his short throws. I've watched videos about people that think he doesn't have as fast of a release as Jaden Daniels doing side-by-side mini-camp videos. It's really great, but for the most part, it's fun as hell. All it is is ceiling and upside and happiness, and there's no downside yet at all. It's basically like having a rookie quarterback with social media in 2024 is the Instagram filter effect, where if you have kids or you have kids that you know they're friends, and they'll take this picture.

Then by the time it's done on Instagram, they look like Cindy Crawford, crossed with name a model from now. This is what the Drake May Honeynoon period is. Everything just looks great. He looks magnificent. I wish we could just freeze it right here because I know there's going to be a game Especially if he starts in the first year where he'll be terrible. Like, Oh, my God, is Drake May good? Right now, I feel like he's going to be the best quarterback of all time because I am in the honeymoon period with Jake May. All right. Last but not least, the Lakers. We talk Conspiracy Bill. I know you saw Conspiracy Bill on Sunday's podcast, who was very suspicious of the JJ Reddick and just the Lakers' audibly from JJ Redick out of nowhere to the Yukon coach, Dan Hurley. The reports were being broken by Adrian Rodgerowski, who once wrote a book about the Hurleys. It never smelled right to me. It It seemed like everybody was benefiting from the story being a story, but not the results of the story, which the results of the story technically were, oh, my God, they actually hired Dan Hurley.

And yet I wasn't talking to anybody who ever believed they were going to hire him. So it's like, all right, who gains from this? Well, the Lakers gained from this because they're obviously trying to cut the price down on JJ or they absolutely don't like any of the candidates. Maybe they half sincerely were trying to go for this. Hurley gains for this because now, Yukon is like, oh, my God, we might lose them. Even though it just extension, he can make more money. Then Woj gains from it because he's in this blood feud with Shams. Shams had reported the Lakers were about to hire JJ. So now it's like, well, actually, no. They tried to hire Danny Hurley. Here's where it really fell apart for me. They offered him six years, 70 million, which would have made him the sixth highest paid coach. If you're going to actually try to hire somebody who just won two straight championships in a climate where the five best coaches in the league are all making eight figures a year, let's just say this, it wasn't a godfather offer. What was Tom Hayden? It was a conciliarian offer. It wasn't godfather offer.

They basically offered Tom Hayden money for Dan Hurley, and it wasn't going to be enough. I thought I heard, and apparently I had the wrong information, but I heard it was triple figures, and it just wasn't. Seven years for 120, now he's got to really figure out if he wants to take the job. But then something weird happened after. There was a whole... There was some discourse about, Well, the Lakers are a family business. They don't really splurge like that. Family business was used a bunch of times. That was a big offer for them, their family business. I just got to cry bullshit on this one. First of all, they paid the luxury tax more than any other team in the league, so we'll start there. Second of all, the Buss family owns 66 6% of the team, and then the other half, the other whatever third is somebody owns a majority-minority stake of that, and then there's some other partners. If they were really hurting for money, With the way the franchise values of these teams are now, the Lakers, I would say, if they're going to get 5 billion for the expansion teams, 4.5 billion, 5 billion each, it's going Phoenix is going to be worth over 4 billion.

The Lakers are the most important franchise in the league from a value standpoint. So they're a seven billion team, let's say. I think that's reasonable. And you can't run the day to day because you're a family business, you could probably sell 5% of your business at a $6 billion valuation. It makes so much money that you could then nudge that toward the team, would be my guess. I don't believe the family business thing. I don't think they ever really wanted to hire Dan Hurley. I just don't believe the story. I think it was a strategic play to try to drop the price on somebody they liked would be my guess. But please don't call the Lakers a family business. There's nobody a family business. And by the way, the other thing with the expansion stuff, because now the media deal is going to be done. And I think what happens is the league probably just names the price, which they did with WMBA. They had the expansion teams, and basically the price, this was last year, was 50 million for the San Francisco team and the Portland team, which backed out. And then the Toronto ownership team just ended up getting it.

I think they're just going to say, Here's the price. It's four and a half billion each. It's five billion each. And it's going to be Seattle and Vegas. And can you hit the price? So when you think about the numbers in those contexts, I'm pretty sure the Lakers could have afforded Dan Hurley. I'm almost positive, which makes me think they didn't 100% want to hire Dan Hurley. Yeah, we really like him. We flew out to see him once. Here's an offer. Anyway, that's my superior take. The Lakers, you're not a family business. You have more money to spend than just about anybody. You have the best franchise, and you're probably in the best market for where athletes want to live and where you can get the highest tickets. I'm just not buying it. Not buying any of it. That was today's 6 Major Things. Remember, get yourself a six-pack of Mc globeultra, a superior light beer, an official beer sponsor of the National Basketball Association. It's refreshing, crisp, only 95 calories. Plus, right now, Mc globeultra is helping fans get closer to the game than ever with exclusive prizes and experiences. Wow. Like courtside seats to see your favorite team play in person.

Learn more and enter for your chance to win at McLobells. Com/courtside. Enjoy responsibly. 2024, Anheuser-Busch, McLobells. Light beer, St. Louis, Missouri. Mcclobultry, registered. Courtside, sweepstakes, no purchase necessary. Open to US Residence 21 up. Begins October 19, 2023. Ends June 12, 2024. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at micklobeultry. Com/rules-for-free-entry. Entry deadlines, prizes, details. Message and data rates may apply void. We're pre-evident. All right, taping this. It is mid-afternoon Pacific time. This is a guy that I should have on a lot more than I do, but I'm, as always, awful at booking my own podcast. You've seen him in Abu Dhabu. You've seen him in Saudi Arabia. You've seen him in basically every continent in the world. And now he's in the US covering the NBA Finals. Chris Banix. It's good to have you on on domestic soil.

You're one of my favorite guys, Bill, who comes out of the woodwork for every big fight. It's like you, it's Damian Lillard. It's a handful of NBA coaches that when there's a big fight that they don't quite know enough about, my phone starts blowing up.

That's me. I'm big fight, Bill. I'm also a medium-sized Bill. I'm medium-sized Bill, too, for fights.

Yes, but I helped you make a little bit of money. I don't know if you doubled down on USSEC after you texted me, but you texted to me a little bit before the fight. I said, You're going to make a good amount of money on USSEC.

I told you I bet on USSEC because that's my guy. I love him. But in general, there's been a lot of good pay-per-view fights that are just interesting enough to justify paying for them. But you wouldn't be telling your grandkids about any of them. That's where we've landed with boxing, at least until Tank gets the right challenger. But we're not here to talk about boxing. We're here to talk about a Boston Celtics team that came out of 2-0 in Boston on Sunday night, and it felt like they had solved Dallas. I was trying to restrain myself on the pod with Rosillo, but everything I had seen, we've seen so many times in the finals or in really major series, There hits a point with a series where you feel like one team has figured out the other team. I felt that way in game two. It felt like they just figured out Dallas. You remember this happened with Golden State in 2002 in game four? Some point in game four, Golden State just figured Boston, and it was a wrap after that. I felt that way with Mavs Clippers round one. I went to game five.

I was like, Shit, really seems like Dallas has just figured the Clippers out. It felt like Boston had figured them out. Now we're pulling Porzingas, possibly out of this. So now what happens?

Man, when it comes to Porzingas and his availability, my panic level is an 11. If I was as a Celtic supporter, I would make my panic level an 11 because look, his value is incalculable to me. I know they're 30 and 5 during this season without Porzingis, nine and 1 in the playoffs without Porzingas. But all you have to do is watch the first two games of the series to see just how valuable he is. I mean, he won game one for them. It was 37 to 20 at the end of the first quarter. Porzingas had 11 points in that game. Yeah, the Mavs made it close in the third, but that game, for all intents and purposes, was one in the first half, and that was all Porzings. A little bit less effective. A little bit less effective in game two, but he still got his points, still had some rebounds, still was a menace defending shots at the rim. Without him, I think this becomes a loseable series for the Celtics. I do believe that. I have faith in Al Horford to step up, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, but Al Horford, when he plays 30 minutes or less, he's a lot better Then Al Horford who plays 30 minutes or more.

He's just not a 30 plus per minute game, per game player. That means we might see some Luke Cornet in this game three if Porzingis doesn't play.

Or how about some Sam Hauser, who was just ripping off bricks in game two and looked like he lost his confidence.

I think Hauser is going to play either way, though. I thought he was really good in game 1. He was two for 3 from the floor, 2 for 2 from three, and he defended. I mean, there were some Sam Houser defensive moments in game 1. He was awful in game 2. But he's going to play no matter what. If Porzingas is healthy, Luke Cornet is not seeing the floor, not until garbage time anyway. Look, I think Luke Cornet is fine during the regular season, but the minutes I've seen him play in the playoffs, I've been very shaky. If you're needing him to play 10 to 15 real minutes with Porzingas out of the lineup, that would worry me if I was the Celtics.

This is the brisette spot that I've been crying for for two months because I actually think this is somebody that you can at least switch on defense with him. The KP thing, you mentioned the panic level being at 11. You meant 11 for the entire season, day after day after day. You didn't just mean this week. This is a constant thing of every game you get through where Porzingas is healthy, you feel great if you're a Celtic fan. The irony of that game on Sunday night was the game probably should have been over five different times. Each time, Boston just couldn't land the knockout That was why I was such... It was weird doing the podcast that night with Marcel because I was trying to not be negative. The Celts are up to nothing. They're 78-20, and we're nitpicking on, Tatum, I didn't love his shot selection. But there was a lack of just finish them off in that game where they just... Dallas was dying to roll over and be done with it, and the Celts just couldn't do it. Now it's close in the last 6, 7 minutes, and that's when Porzingas gets hurt.

So it was almost like them not being able to finish them off in the third quarter when Dallas looked like they were ready to go home. And Kidd put out Luca and Kyrie together when he normally rested them because he knew, If I don't save these two minutes here, we're done anyway. And then the Celtics can't finish them off. So I'm with you. They bring him in. He changes the game. He just makes it weird. He changes what Dallas wants to do offensively. He takes away their lobs. He creates these mismatches on the other end. And even in the six plays when he was hurt before they took him out, Kyrie had that layup. Roussel and I talked about it Sunday that KP was coming behind and just blocking against the backboard in game one. In game two, he didn't want to jump and Kyrie got the layup. It's those little moments like that that if I'm Dallas, I'm like, All right, that guy's now gone. Either way, if he plays or if he doesn't play, that guy is gone for the rest of the series. I guess my question is, have you seen enough from Dallas to think that it's even going to matter?

Because this looks like a bad matchup for Dallas anyway. Let's pull Porzingas out. What does Dallas need to do now? What needs to happen?

Well, I think for starters, and it's cliché, I think some of their role players will make shots at home. I think P. J. Washington will be better. I think Derrick Jones Jr. Will be better. Josh Green will be better. These guys couldn't buy a bucket in that last game.

How much does that have to do with the corner threes, though?

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it.

Because they took them away.

They took them away, but they did miss some open looks. They missed some open threes in that game. I think if you're Dallas, you can count on them being a little bit better at home. I just got to believe there's at least one Kyrie game out there. Look, I'm with the people that say it's a bad matchup for Kyrie not only does he have three elite defenders coming at him in waves all game, and Brown, holiday, and Derek White, they're also making him defend on the other end of the floor. They're putting him in action. Sometimes he's on a switch against Porzingis, Sometimes he's faced with Jalen Brown. They're forcing him to expend energy on that end of the floor. But he's too good a player to be 0 for 8 in the next two games from three. He's got to have at least one breakout game. And that game, too, was just close enough to make me believe if Kyrie has a breakout game and if some of these role players start making some shots, that they can take one of them, probably game three. Then all of a sudden, you're looking at game four and you're saying, Is Porzinga going to play in that one?

What's he going to look like? Then all of a sudden, the pressure shifts back to Boston for that one. That's why I think that this is still very much a series, maybe more so if Porzingas is out.

I don't agree with you on the Kyrie thing, but I see the point. No, I see the point. You're right, because he missed how many open threes in the first two games. Over eight from three. Over eight from three. Maybe five of them were wide open. On the other hand, I thought what they were making Dallas do, and this is whether Porzingas was in the game or not, was just a lot of one-on-one stuff and a lot of, Hey, Luca and Kyrie, why don't you pretend you're in a sports movie and dribble through your legs a few times and try to beat whoever's guarding you? Which I don't really think is how Dallas advanced through the first three rounds. I don't see that change as much. I'm with you on the role players. The role players that, to me, are going to be helped the most without Porzingis are the two centers. Because now maybe the lob threat comes back in a little more. Great point on Horford. The other thing is it's Wednesday, Friday. This was the worst possible time for this injury to happen. Because first game Sunday after nine days off, and then Thursday, and then Sunday was second game, had some time off, then Wednesday, this game three.

But then playing Friday, all of a sudden, this series could be 2-2 in 50 hours. If you're putting huge miles on Horford in game three, you also have to know we're playing in two days. Which Dallas has to know the same with Luca, to be fair. Luca, that one picture of him was wearing the full body wrap on the chest ribs and the full back. I mean, he looked like he was preparing to film a Sarah Live sketch or something. I'm not sure that's going to help him that much either. But I obviously heard Salford the most because he's old.

Now, do you walk away from game two thinking Luca figured some things out? Because you had the one assist in game one, you had 10 more in game two. I thought the Celtics were sending more doubles in game two than they did in game one. Is that forecast game three? We look ahead to game three. If Porzingis is limited or not able to play, it becomes even more important not to send doubles because we know if you send doubles at Luka, he's going to carve you up. He's going to find lobs, he's going to find corner threes. Without that rim protector in Porzingis, the last thing you want for the Celtics is for Derek Lively to get any confidence. You don't want Daniel Gaffer to start feeling himself during these games. You want these guys shooting two times. How many shots has Derek Lively taken and made in this series? Three? Same thing with Gaffer.

He's been out of control. He's had all kinds of dumb fouls, and he just is running around like a chicken in his head.

He's over his head. But the last thing a young guy, you want to give a young guy like that is any confidence. You want him to feel out of his element. You don't want him involved in the games. When I'm the Celtics, I'm looking at Jalen Brown, I'm looking I drew holiday. I'm saying, We're going to leave you guys alone on an island for the most part. If Luca gets 50 on you, okay, that's the way it's got to be. But we can't afford now more than ever to send extra bodies because we don't want to make Al Horford defend the rim all that often. I don't believe that Luke Cornet can do it. I think defending Luca one-on-one in this game three is going to be huge.

I noticed two things just from going to both games. One is that I thought he got noticeably tired in the second-halves of both games. Really just peaked for the first hour of the game and then held on after that because there was a moment in game two and it seemed like he was going to go for 60 points. And the Celtics were really concerned with not letting him just get that open 28-footer. Because you don't think he's in three-point range, but he always is. It's just this thing. It used to be the biggest flaw with Robert Williams. Remember how many times for Robert Williams, he was always 2 feet further back than where the guy was, and you knew it in real-time. Like, Oh, that guy's going to shoot a three over Rob. He's not going to see it in time. And noticing the self-expansion a couple of times when people would forget that Luke had the 28-foot range, and the poor Zingas fell asleep on one, and all the coaches get mad. It's like you could tell they've just been the whole lead up to the series. When that guy is in this territory, 28 feet away from shooting.

So I thought they took those away, and I thought he got tired as the game went on. The bigger thing that I noticed in person, and then there was a great YouTube clip today of all the times people blew by Luka in game 2. It's like 20 times, and they're blowing by him, and he kept doing the Matador. He should change his name to Luka, Luis, Castillo, Donchich because He was doing the Matador wave by, but then trying to pick the guy from behind, and that just became his move. But every Celtic was just going by him. There were times when he was lost and wandering around. I don't know how much of that had to do with him being tired, hurt, whatever. But I think the Celtics are going look at that. Everyone's talking about what's going to happen in the defensive without Porzingas. I think there's so much meat on the bone with attacking Luca, and they really were figuring that out in game two. They got, What do you think of my theory? I just don't understand why Tatum doesn't take 12 to 15 shots. Over and over again, he's just going by Luka and just not rising up Durant style.

He feels like he just has to keep going and get to the rim somehow and either kick out or shoot a layup. What's happened in his 12-foot shot?

Why is it gone? I mean, don't you feel like that's been drilled out of his game in recent years?

In the last two years, right? This is the Rassillo theory about the handling itis, basically, where you practice step-back threes and drives, but nothing in between.

I think the bigger problem with Tatum in these first two games is that he's not finishing with any force. He looks more like the rookie and second-year version of Tatum who was trying to artfully finish around the rim. Bubble Tatum. Yeah, I want to see the Tatum we've seen the last couple of years. Just put on 20, 25 pounds of muscle and try to dunk over guys, go through guys. Jalen Brown does that exceptionally well. How many times you see Jalen Brown dip around and look for layups. He's going to the rim hard. He's trying to get fouled. He's trying to get to the free throw line. I want to see more of that from tatum. That's a bigger concern for me. On the subject of Donchitz, though, I was at all the Timberwolves Mavericks games, I thought one of their fatal mistakes was that Minnesota didn't do enough to put Donchitz in action. They were so isolation-heavy, and it was like Anthony Edwards going up against Derrick Jones Jr. Or P. J. Washington. They just let Donchich hang out, defending the guy standing in the dunker spot. This is when Donchich, I don't know how severe his knee injury is, but he was complaining about it at the time.

Why are you not putting him in as many actions as you possibly can? Just like with Kyrie, I think Boston has done a decent job of that in this series. And Donchich, look, I don't know whether it's he doesn't care. I don't know if it's because he's hurt, but he's not a good defender. I've heard some things this year about how he's playing better. He's got the average level. I don't see it. When he's got a guy in front of you that tries to go around, he's either getting beat or he's trying to do that thing like you talked about, the reach around and the stuff you did in high school, where you're trying to poke the ball away and get a steal on that end. So I'd put him in as many actions as I can, if for no other reason, that's wear him down.

El Lucador? I got to come up with a good name for the Matador D. But the thing is, though, the thing is in the last couple of minutes of that game, and they showed this in the other series, too, he can dial it up defensively for Two and a half minutes because Dallas, I thought, played really good defense down the stretch. Part of that was because the Celtics fell into that walk it up mode. Once things slow down, they become a lot easier to stop. But they do have it in them. The crowd is going to help. The crowd is going to give him some energy. I don't know how many Luka games I've seen in person this year, but I thought it was interesting. He wasn't talking that much to the refs and to the crowd. And I don't know whether that was because he's not feeling good.

I thought he was talking to the refs as much as he always does. He talks too much to the refs.

I didn't feel like it was as much as in the... The Clippers was almost like they had to have an intervention with him in that Clipper series because it was two and a half straight. He was doing a one-minute show. I made that He's made a one-man show on the court with the three refs. Just babble, babble, babble. But every time he thinks he gets fouled, he gives up on the play.

Completely gives up on it. He spends the rest of that play on his side of the court arguing with the referee. If I was Jason Kidd, that would drive me crazy.

I was thinking if Porzingas was healthy going in this game three, because I really thought the Celts had a chance to go up, and we'll talk about the reasons after the break. But I was wondering, would this be the game where Luka just tried to bomb a bunch of threes and really, really, really take over and do that thing? Now, without Porzingas, if I'm Dallas, I almost want to wait for that. It's like the Rocky 4, where you want to wait for it to have the trainer go, No, and do like the, All right, now we got to do it. I want to see who the Celtics play and what my matchups are and try to save him for the second half. Let's take one break because I want to talk about the big picture Celtics torture piece of this. All right, so here you have the Celtics. This has been an eight-year odyssey, six conference finals, and a really fascinating run. They were the second Most successful team of the last eight years. But of course, they didn't win a finals. Coming out of the garden on Sunday, it's like, that was the game.

Played like crap, 25% from three. We played all the hits from the typical game they would blow, even dating back to the last couple of years. Shades of Game 5, 2002, Milwaukee, shades of some of those Miami losses, shades of Game 4, Golden State. We're playing the hits. Game 2, Golden State in 2022. They got through it. They got over this invisible hump, and now they're going to go to Dallas in game three, where for whatever reason, they're more comfortable on the road. I don't really fully understand it, but they play more freely, especially Tatum. I have some theories on that. They're just going to bomb threes, and they're actually going to blow them out in game three because they've solved Dallas. Now removing Porzingis. Are we sure we're not now underrating the fact that they still might do that? That we haven't had a good Tatum yet. That Tatum, for whatever reason, is better on the road. I don't get it, but it's true. That he seems to be a mismatch for Dallas because he's going by everybody and they're throwing three guys at him, and he's still creating all these shots, but his shot's not going in yet.

But if his shot starts going in, I don't know what their answers are. Anyway, talk it out with me. Is there a chance they come in and shoot the lights out? You've watched them all year. They've done this on the road over and over and over again.

I think there's a chance because every six weeks or so, they have a game like they had in game two, where they shoot sub 30%. It It looks like they're taking too many threes. More often than not, they lose those games, and it leads to these classic Gary Washburn versus Joe Missoula moments at the press conference.

It's a great local theater.

Where Gary wonders why the Celtics don't drive more, and Joe fires back at them and says that they're all good shots. But oftentimes, they lose those games. And generally speaking, they respond with more great ones, because they are a great three-point shooting team. What a 0.1 percentage point for me in the number one percentage team in the NBA last year. I have confidence they're going to bounce back and have a good shooting night in game three. The Tatum question, though, is interesting because everything Dallas has done, regardless of what Jason Kitt says, everything Dallas has done in this series is geared towards making Tatum inefficient. Game one, they're throwing multiple bodies at him. They're tilting the floor towards him. They're trying to get the ball out of his hands. Then you have the whole Tatum-Brown comment, which is designed to get into Tatum's head. Look, there are people in Dallas, there are people that will tell you they think it worked. Tatum did take 22 shots in game two. He did have the 12 assists, and That's what everybody's talking about. But he was 6 for 22 from the floor. People in Dallas might tell you that maybe he was overaggressive like they wanted him to be.

But have you ever seen, Bill, more times where Jason Tatum was hunted defensively than game two. I've never seen it before. He was put in every action, and they were trying to go one on one with him, with Luca and Kyrie every single time. I'd never seen that before. I don't think that's a reflection on Tatum as a defensive player, I think that's Dallas trying to wear down the best player on Boston and make him more inefficient on the offensive end. Given that, it's all about how Tatum adjusts in this game three to what they throw up because they're going to have something new. It will be something that he hasn't seen before or something they haven't done yet that's going to try to throw him off the mark. If he adjusts well and shoots like 6 for 10 from three, which is very possible, there's your Jason Tatum breakout game. There's your game 6 against Milwaukee from 2022, game 7 against Philadelphia. But everything Dallas is doing this series is geared towards making Tatum inefficient. So far, at least shooting-wise, they have been successful.

Well, I agree with everything you just said. I also think Boston can learn from some of those stuff that didn't work, too. Because even just sitting there in game two, one of the things my dad and I noticed was when Tatum was on the left side about 30 feet back, we're facing the dude. A lot of times the Celts make the mistake of they have him facing the guy either straight ahead, so the rim is straight ahead of him, or he's on the right. If he's on the right, he's not as good going to his left. He wants to go to his right. He wants to finish. He has that great Dr. J little swoop layup. When he's on the left with some speed, he was just going by Luca getting into the pain on his dominant hand. Then it's either a jump hook or it's like that scoop layup. I'm wondering if they're going to shift where he has the ball in the spots for game three. I would encourage people in the first half, look where he's getting the ball at these spots because it was the same looks. Are they going to shift people around so that he's attacking 45-degrees diagonal with his right-hand, maybe that'll help him.

Because I thought strategically, some of the ways they were using Tatum, it didn't make sense to me. If he doesn't have his three-point shot and he's attacking straight ahead, then everybody can come over and help. That's why Drew is open on those little passes sometimes. But it wasn't helping him get unlocked. So I got to unlock him. The other thing is the more Horford plays, if Horford's hitting threes, that's eventually going to just open up more space for him in the middle. Whereas Porzingas, he was at the top. So if he's at the top, now Tatum has to be at a little bit of a weird angle. I don't know. I'm babbling, but I just feel like they're going to put him in better spots than he was in the last game.

Well, two things. One, I thought holiday bailed Tatum out big time in game two. What was like six of his twelve assists went to holiday. That's because holiday is- Smart cuts. So smart. Just doing stuff you learn in high school, like follow the basketball, get in the paint, step Step into open space, make yourself available. This is all basketball 101 that guys learn when they're kids. I thought there were a couple of times during that game that Tatum found himself in no man's land and holiday bailed him out. There were a couple of times, too. I was sitting next to some of the reporters on Press Row. Very generous with the assist, I thought, some of the stack keepers on that one. There were at least two three dribble assists in that game.

Twelve did feel a little high, I will say. Did that feel like a twelve assister?

There were a few of them in that game. My question with where you put Tatum is, what happened to the post-ups?

This is what we saw from Tatum. The foul-line post-ups.

Yeah. Where has that gone? That was a big part of Tatum's offensive game all season. Is it something they're seeing in Dallas that it doesn't make sense? Is it because Washington is a stronger player? But we heard all year long that Tatum had developed into a much better mid to low post player, and especially as a passer. He was really good at passing out of those positions. I think if you're going to make an adjustment with him, give him a little bit of diversity. Don't force him to make decisions off the dribble quite as often. Let him put his shoulder down, get to the basket, get to the foul line. This guy is capable of going to the foul line 10 times a game. We've seen that during the regular season. Just give him a chance to get easier looks than just these dribble drives where he's walking into three different defenders.

Use him as a screener, post him up on the foul line, put him 30 feet on the left so he has a running start going to his hand. It's all stuff. I mean, he had no shots at the foul line in game two. He had no shots, basically from 8 to 15 feet. We took 22 shots in one foul line jumper. That's crazy. To me, they're using them wrong. Then the other piece is, I do feel like they were attacking Kyrie a lot. I feel like they could do that even more and put some miles on him. They have two guards that are really good at using screens, attacking the basket and kicking out, and they can leverage that. Jalen, I think, he wasn't as good in game two as he was in game one, and he had a bunch of turnovers, but has been really smart about, I'm going to attack, I'm going to get in the paint, I'm going to attack, I'm going to get in the paint. That mentality was there. I just didn't think they shot well. The Hauser piece of it, just wide open shots. It felt like they could have been up by 18 at any time.

You're sitting with all the seatmates. Who's the winning lottery ticket when you're at these big games? Is there anybody that's just great to sit next to that is just spouting wisdom the whole time? Is there an MVP or that person doesn't exist?

I don't think that person exists. I get stuck next to Jay King for these games, who is the worst dressed member of media that I've ever seen. He rolls in like he just played 18 minutes at the Y for every game. There's that part of it. But sitting next to the Boston media cartel is fun. Sitting right behind Christian Megliola during these games is fun.

Telling everybody to calm down about Tatum. That Tatum game, it was funny because from a national perspective, I think people were surprised that a lot of people, including me, in Rizelda, were talking about the Tatum. That was a weird Tateum game. Why are you even talking about that? You're up to nothing. Then on the local level, it's the complete opposite, where that's probably all they were talking about for the next 24 hours. This Porzingus really hurt and what's wrong with Tatum. It just never leaves the DNA in Boston. It just doesn't because there were other really fun story lines to talk about, like the Drew holiday, how magnificent he's been, what an amazing trade that was. He could go run the gamut. But I think it's because Tatum has been in our lives now, really since that draft, since the flip back, and then just was immediately on a big stage from the get-go. And now we have this seven-year reservoir of experience. I was telling somebody, I don't remember anything like this with people murmuring when they don't like what they're seeing from Tatum as the play is happening with another Boston player. You would see it sometimes in baseball with a pitcher.

If the pitcher throws two balls and certain pitchers, and you could hear murmuring in the crowd like, Oh, God. This would happen with Derek Lowe in the early 2000s. Oh, no. I used to call it the Derek Lo face. It was like, Oh, God, he's making the Derek Lo face. Oh, no. But you could feel it in the stands, right? I wasn't crazy. There's murmuring sometimes where it's like, Oh, God, seven seconds left in the shot clock, and Tatum's got the ball 35 feet from the basket. This is just such a bizarre relationship because on paper, he's everything you would ever want from a star. I love Tatum, by the way. But it's just weird. The push and pull of this whole thing has been nuts to watch.

Well, the conversation in Boston about Tatum is it's built around, is he... He finished sixth in the MVP voting. Is he a top six player in the NBA? Is he capable of doing what we've seen Jokić do in the playoffs? What we've seen or just recently saw Jalen Brunson do in the playoffs? The problem with Tatum is that, it's not that Boston has so much talent, but he's not been asked to do the things that some of these other players have been asked to do. There's the question of whether or not he's on that level, regardless of the stats he puts up, which validate that, which prove that out, that he is on that level. That's what the conversation is like in Boston when it comes to Jason Tatum. Is he the guy on this team? And look, all the stuff we've talked about, the six conference finals, now two NBA finals. Right now, when it comes to Tatum, it's almost being used as a negative. If they win this series, and I think ultimately, Tatum is going to have a big part in it. He's already played a big role. But if they get to four wins, he's going to have a massive scoring night in one of them.

I'm convinced of that. If that happens, all of a sudden, all the stuff we're criticizing him for becomes part of a more positive narrative. It's like, well, he won one championship, and he went to six conference finals and two NBA 5. So once you get that championship, all the times you came up short go from being negatives to part of a positive story, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it's also a fundamental misunderstanding of why this team was so special. When the 2004 Pistons were ripping off wins and ended up just killing the Lakers in the finals, nobody was like, who's the alpha on this team? Is it Rip Hamilton or Chauncey Billups? It's almost like a fault of how we talk about basketball now. I think one of the great things this Celtics team, and one of the reasons I thought they're going to win the series, is they can win games when Tatum isn't good. They can win games when Brown isn't good. With Porzingas, they could win games when Tatum and Brown weren't good. As long as those guys were out there and doing a bunch of different stuff, they could still patch wins together. And that was what made them crazy. The Mavericks, especially this series, cannot win if Luka plays badly. And they probably can't win in Boston if Kyrie plays badly and Luka is fine, not great. There's limits with both those guys. They just can't replace the offense. They scored 89 and 98. They just can't put the points together. The Celtics can. They could have these random games where they'll just hit 22 threes and maybe Tatum has one of them.

So when I hear that stuff about, well, can he be the guy in a title team? It's like, Well, they built a really good team. Maybe that should be the topic. They have more depth at a high level than any team's in a while. You're probably going back to the mid 2010 warriors. And if you're making a list of the top 60 players in the league, they have five of them, and they might even have five of the top 45 or 50. That's why I think the Tatum thing is silly. It's like, Yeah, could it be Jokuj? Probably not. Jokuj is one of the top 20 players of all time already. But I said to Rosillo on Sunday And A, what's your take on this? I felt like Tatum is not a finished product yet. And I still think there's more work to do, especially with shot selection. And I mentioned that little, that jumper 8 to 15 feet. And I think Rosillo was more on the side of, he's 26, he's played in over 100 playoff games. This is who he is. Do you think this is who he is or is there another level?

I think he's 90% of the way there.

I think that's a good percentage. You know I love percentages.

Yeah, you've got a little bit of wiggle room to grow. I mean, we've seen that growth.

You want to go 89%? We'll go 89%. What about 90.3%?

Oh, 50, 40, 90, one of those. We've seen growth the last couple of years. We talked about the post game. Early on, that was not part of his repertoire. He wasn't a post player. He wasn't a very good passer out of the post. He became both those things this season. I think there's room to grow. The mid-range stuff, though, it goes back to what we were talking about. Tatum is a Kobe acolyte. Tatum came up loving the mid-range game. He loved coming off screens and shooting the 18-footer. Do you remember they went to the conference finals that first year? Of course I remember. That was the year that details came out on Tateum, the Kobe series on ESPN Plus, where Tatum watched that like a dozen times. He was just obsessed with Kobe's insight into his game. He wanted to be like Kobe, and Kobe was, for most a mid-range jump shooter. But over time, the Celtics during the season, Drew Hamlin in the offseason, they drilled that out of them. They made him three-pointers or gave the basket. I don't think you can expect that part of his game to come back because nobody wants it to come back.

I mean, we might, but nobody internally in Boston wants it to come back. Certainly in the offseason, they're not really working on it, where I think the next 10% is finishing. Again, it's what we discussed. When When I see Tatum, Dipsy-Doo around the lane and not using that 6'9, 240-plus pound frame the way he should, it's maddening. That's the next step. When he starts finishing over guys and through guys and not worrying about using an angle off the backboard. If he starts doing that, he's, A, going to score more, and B, going to get to the free throw line a lot more. So that's where the 10%, I think, comes in with Jason Tatum.

You know what? I'm dropping that to 85% because we each had our own things that we thought he could get better at. So maybe that's our answer. I agree with what you said, but I also think I'm right, too, because as you pointed out, he used to be really good from 14 to 18 feet, and they've thrown this away. And yet you watch some of the baskets Jalen got, especially in the first game, were the shots Tatum doesn't take. Jalen was getting those little eight footers, those little push shots or like, Okay, I'm fine. I'll take this little twelve footer here. And Tateum just doesn't seem interested in that. So that's how I feel it can get better. I look at Jalen Brown, people thought that guy was a finished product, right? I think we thought maybe he could dribble better. But what did he do? He got stronger. He got way more aggro. He really committed to the defensive end in a totally different way. I thought he was a good defensive player before, but something is different. He takes that. He was pissed he didn't make all defense. I don't know if he was that great.

But if we voted for all defense with six guards, six forwards, and three centers, he might have had a chance to be one of the six forwards. But I think he's better than he was last year, and he's a year older than Tatum, which makes me think there might be up for Tatum. One guy who's not going to be probably much better, but I think is getting better from the IQ point, though, is Drew. Drew is like those guys. I remember when I hit this point and pick up basketball before my body parts started to go one at a time, when And you're just smarter than everyone you're playing. And it's like, all right, all these guys, but I know exactly what I can do and can't do and what spots to go to. Everything slows down a little bit. And you've been in so many games and watched so many games. You're just like, oh, he's going to do that. So the rebound is going to come here and things click in a different way. And that was what I thought. Drew is becoming the old guy in the pickup game in some spots where he's like, oh, Tatum is going to take that shot.

The rebound is going to go right here. I'm going to get it. He gets 11 rebounds. He's He's 6-3. Then the other thing is, anytime they wanted somebody to stop scoring, where did they go? It was Drew. I think Drew has a real chance to be final's MVP. It's where it is. He's plus 750 still. That's crazy. That's what I The only thing, I think if you had to vote after two games, who would you have voted for?

I would have voted for holiday. I think he's had two elite defensive games and one great offensive game. Whereas Jalen had one complete game and then one good game in game two. I think I would edge holiday in that one. The thing I love most about Drew's defense is that not only can he anticipate where a guy is going to go, but when he anticipates, he sells out completely. That Nemhar steal he had at the end of game four, he anticipated him going right, and he didn't just hedge over there or take a half a step. He went all the way over and forced Nemhar to effectively come into him. And what I've watched in this series against Dallas, he knows Kyrie wants to go right. So he is putting his entire body between the right side and Kyrie Irving. And if Kyrie wants to pivot around and go left, yeah, he might have a bit of an opening there for a minute or two while boss would adjust, but he's just not going to let him go right. He's going to form that wall right in front of him on that right side. And I love that because sometimes you see guys gamble a little bit, step out, do a little bit of hedging.

Not Drew holiday. He is all in on these these anticipation moves, and 90% of the time, they pay off.

One of my favorite players, future Hall of Famer, winning player. I love that he's on Team USA. It's the exact type of guy who should be on Team USA every four years. Are you ready? I asked my dad on Thursday's pod. I was like, Let's retire second row Joe. It's over. He's now first row Joe. He's doing a good job. He's got the winningest record of any coach after two years in the history of the sport. The Celtics, they were 77 and 20. We're taking it now, they're 70 and 20. I think it's been night and day him last year versus this year. A lot of the stubbornness has gone with him. He has a sense of the flow of the game now, and he'll realize the game's drifting a certain way, and he'll actually call timeouts, which he just never did last year. I just think he's way better. He's been better dealing with the media. Except for his foil, Gary Washburn, which I'm sure will be a 7 part 30 for 30. But having assistance, I think, has really helped him. I mean, he lucked out with Charles Lee, who everybody loves, but the assistant coaching side is better.

What else are you seeing from covering the team with him? What's different?

A more relaxed version of him. That's hard for people to see because publicly, he just comes off very different. He's a different guy. How many coaches defend three pointers after timeouts? There's just a general oddness to him that's not going to change. But he's much more comfortable in his own skin this year than he was last year, which is completely understandable. Sometimes we don't give enough credit to what he had to go through last year. He was a back bench guy about to get a promotion then three days before his boss leaves in a sex scandal. Then you mentioned assistance. He's got a bunch of assistants around them. Probably half of them thought they deserve the job. All those guys go at the end of last season. You bring in guys that are comfortable in their roles. You mentioned Charles. He's been great. I think Jeff VanGundi is a strong candidate to take that role next year with the team. And Sam Casselle, who if Sam Casselle doesn't get a job at some point, there's something wrong with the NBA because that guy has paid his dues. He's a really smart basketball guy. He has a great connection with players.

He has been exactly what this team has needed as that second assistant on the bench. I think all those are factors in Joe being better as a coach. A natural evolution, which for a 30-something enrolled is inevitably going to come. Then having guys around you that want to be there, that want to help you succeed, as opposed to maybe begrudgingly being there on the bench.

Yeah, we've seen that a few times with basketball. When somebody takes over midseason, he always gets a little dicey with the assistance. I still wonder if they got swept by Miami last year, if he would have gotten fired.

I don't think that they would have fired him and hired somebody else. I think if they got swept last year, Wick Grossback probably would have looked at Brad Stevens and said, You fix this. This didn't cause the Emeya Yudoka mess, but we elevate your guy, Joe Missoula, We failed to live up to expectations. If they got swept by Miami, you've got to go down. Look, I remember asking Brad after the Udoka stuff went down, did he consider taking the job? And he said no. But then Wick came on and was like, We had that conversation. It was a short one, but we had that conversation. My guess is that it would have been a Brad Stevens problem, that he would have made Brad take over and try to clean up the mess that was there.

That would have been a tough story. It's weird, but the game four Miami, when it just felt like that entire team was going to roll over, the coach was going to get fired, and the team might be blown up. Then what do you do with Jalen Brown? There were 19 different things that come out of that. Then they just played really well for two games in a row. Then White hits the miracle put back. Now we're going to a game seven. At least that saved some stuff and gave some levity and perspective to, All right, how should we actually approach this. Okay, Jalen, you're getting paid now. I really wonder what happens if they roll over in game four in Miami. I don't know what happens. I honestly don't know if Jalen's on the team. I don't know how much they would have blown it up.

Yeah, I don't know if they would have blown it up. I think a coaching change would have been possible because if you're getting swept by... Granted, Miami is one of the best eight seeds you'll ever see. But if you get swept, I think a coaching change was certainly- But it would have been off a game three, which was so dispirating.

And then you think game four should have been just as dispirating if you get swept. And then now you got to look in the mirror and go, All right. I mean, my thing never changed. I don't want to break up Tatum and Brown. I never want to break those guys up. But when it's bad and you're angry and you're mad and you haven't won in a few years, that's when weird shit starts happening. So maybe the coach would have been. But even trading... How funny does the Marcus stuff seem now? When they traded Marcus, how many people texted you? Why would they trade that guy? He's the heart and soul of the team. How crazy does that seem now?

It seems completely nuts. I think you have to factor in that he was traded before they knew they had holiday. He was part of that poor Zingas deal. At the time, I was looking around going, Well, who's going to be the point guard of this team? Is Derek White going to be able to do it? Do they have enough depth at that spot? It definitely raised a lot of eyebrows across the league. I mean, not that they thought there couldn't be an upgrade for Marcus, but you were doing a deal that didn't net you, Tyus Jones, too. You didn't have a built-in replacement there. I think in that sense, it did raise intent. I would say one thing, you mentioned That Derek White shot, I'll always remember it because we all have stories that wind up in the saved folder forever. After Derek White made that shot, I managed to get Dave Roberts on the phone the next morning. That's your fault. I was going to write a story about Because Dave stole second base. He's known for that in Boston forever. He could do no wrong in Boston, regardless of what happens in LA.

Derek White was about to become that guy. If they had one game seven, Derek White would have become that guy and had the whole story written, ready to go if they won game seven. They laid that egg in game seven.

That would be a good website. Stories I wrote that I had to just-We've all got them, right?put in the junk mail. Yeah. I remember writing a couple of two-thirds, three-fourths of a column, and then a game shifting and just like, Okay, toss that to the woodchapper. So state of Panic in Boston with the KP news with these parts of the body that I don't even know how to pronounce. We went from a one out of 10 panic to, I would say, probably an 8.5, but that could ratchet up if they lose game three. Luke Cornet, you're on Luke Cornet watch.

I need Luke Cornet to have a positive plus minus in game three. If he has a positive plus minus, I think they win. If he's minus six, I think they lose.

If he's Sheldon Williams in whatever 2010 finals game that was, what was he? A minus 11 in three minutes? It's still the record for worst half I've ever seen in person by anyone in a big game. Then maybe this will be the Tatum quiet down game. Who knows? My gut is that Boston in one of these two games is going to shoot really well because I've watched them do it all year, and they do it when you don't expect it, which makes me think, Could it be Wednesday night? What's the biggest fight of the summer?

The biggest fight of the summer so far is probably that massive Saudi Arabia car that's coming to LA on August third. It's Terrence Crawford against Israel Madromoth. That's the top end of a card that is stacked. One thing about these Saudi cards is that every fight on the card could be a main event somewhere else. You watch the fight with Furi and Usik. They had eight or nine other fights on that card. You've got Andy Ruiz against Jarrell Miller. That's a slobber knocker. You've got Issah Cruz fighting on that card. I think they changed the names a lot of time. Bmpc Park, whatever it is in LA, that's the biggest one. Headlined by Crawford, but probably half a dozen or more big fights on that card.

What's the heavyweight fight you want to see?

I mean, So Usik and Fury are going to fight again in December, and I don't think that's going to go any different. But if as a boxing fan, you're rooting for Tyson Furi to come out with the wings, you can finally get Furi and AJ. That's really the mega fight that's left to be made in boxing. Usik right now is an all-time great man. He has taken care of Anthony Joshua. He has taken care of Tyson Furi. He's taking care of Daniel Dubois. He is just cleaning out the heavyweight division. He's only had six fights. In a heavyweight division, he's beaten all the top guys.

How many times has the cruiserweight come up and just wreaked havoc like this? Because Holyfield came up, but he lost a couple of those.

He did. And David Hay had some success at heavyweight, but not like this. Not becoming, obviously, undisputed. Again, not rolling through the very best. You make a list of the top five heavyweights in boxing right now. Who's beating four of them? He would beat all five if he got in the ring with them. The never-ending debate is, is he one of the great heavyweights of all time? Probably not because he's only fought six fights at heavyweight. But he's now one of the great fighters.

He's one of the best fighters of the generation. No question. He has that one skill that some of the greatest guys have. Hopkins was my favorite for this, figuring out what the distance is. The first few rounds might look a certain way, but then he just figures out his angles and the exact distance where he's not going to get hurt too bad, and then that's it. It's always in the middle of the fight. He just seems like he'd be such a pain in the ass to fight. He just has crazy chin and just solves you as the fight goes on. It's like watching some of the great basketball, like what Jokuj can against certain defenses where he's like, Okay, you're doing that? He puts it in his supercomputer. But that's how I think of him. He's almost like a chess guy.

His thing, too, is that he's never switched off. He has these quotes that people love because they're in this broken English. Before the theory fight, he said, I'm not going away, or something of that effect. What he meant, and what he did, was that you have to box him for the full 36 minutes of every fight. He is constantly in your face. That's physical pressure that takes a toll on you. But more than anything, it's mental pressure. If you have to constantly be thinking about this guy who can crack, who is left-handed, who has great head movement, footwork, if you're constantly thinking, that is going to wear you down over the course of the fight. Then we saw the ninth round, it paid off. Usik was losing four of the first six rounds of that fight. He got buckled in the first half of that fight. But then just the constant pressure got to Fury. Then that ninth round came when he looked like Trevor Burbick in that Tyson fight from back in the day when he just bouncing around off the ring ropes. That's the greatest strength of Usik, the constant pressure for all 36 minutes.

Well, that reminds us of Brockton's own, Marvin Hagner. Not a guy like that. He was the all-timer of that. He just kept coming. The only way to really fend him off was to do what Mugabe did and just, All right, let's throw bombs. Let's go. I'm not walking backwards anymore. We're just throwing bombs. Herd is trying to do it. But yeah, Usik, he's never going to be a bigger deal because he's not Mr. Excitement, and it's really hard to say his name, but he's been pretty great. And then the Garcia getting DQed and looks like that was a tough one because that was a really cool story that all of a sudden went into the woodchopper.

Yeah. And now we're left to wonder what the New York State Athletic Commission is going to do with Ryan Garcia. It's a foregone conclusion that they're going to overturn the as a result of that fight. They'll probably make it a no contest. Haney's team is pushing for a DQ, but I don't think they're going to get that. Then there'll be a suspension six months to a year. But the bigger problem is that Ryan Garcia, he's unraveling. We saw the news just a couple of days ago where he got arrested at the Waldorf in LA for trash in a hotel room, like $15,000 worth of damage. His team is now just talking about his mental health and saying he's going through a lot of stuff. Well, you knew that months ago when his behavior was erratic. I can tell you, Bill, I've been around Ryan since 2018. Every one of his fights, who he was before this Devin Haney fight was completely different from the guy I've seen in the buildup to every other fight. You watch his behavior before the tank fight. Yeah, he's energetic and he's talking some trash, but he's not going off the deep end.

He's not spouting conspiracy theories. Something happened to Ryan Garcia over the last eight months that caused him to become a different person. And as somebody that really likes the guy, I hope more than anything, he gets it squared away.

Well, couldn't part of that be the fact that he lost the tank fight?

No, I don't think it was that. I think there's deeper rooted issues with Ryan. I mean, look, he's only a couple of years removed from needing a mental health break from boxing. He stepped away for, it was almost a year after the biggest win of his career. Like, he had that knockout win over Luke Campbell. He was flying high at that point and had to step away to deal with his issues. I think he's probably going to have to do something like that again. Look, I think he's a good guy. I really do. He's obviously great for boxing because he's exciting. I just hope he gets this stuff squared away so he can at least resume his life.

The PD stuff with boxing is really tough when it comes out after the fact. Because if it's like basketball and it came out, I don't know, Luka was on steroids when he beat Minnesota. We'd be like, All right, well, you talkers. But when it's boxing and there's real damage that sometimes guys might not be totally the same after they take all the left hooks that Hanei took. You think like, All right, not only do you lose the fight unfairly, but he might not be the same boxer now. It just feels like It's like, Oh, he suspended for six months. That doesn't seem like a fair enough punishment to me. It's not.

I think these suspensions need to be, generally speaking, one year or more, because that's the only way to make sure that they have any teeth. You're You're completely right about the punishments not really fitting the crime. It's not a question of if but when. We have a situation where a guy gets killed in the ring, and then the fighter that does the damage- Or the octagon. Pops for PEDs after the fact, and then everybody's going to care. Then it's congressional hearings. Then we're talking about federal charges. We're talking about murder charges going up against that guy. Boxing, it seems to be not dealing with it until then because these punishments- This speaks to the problem with boxing, is that there's no oversight whatsoever on any aspect of it. No. I mean, look, there's been a couple of cases. I'm not going to bore you with the details. There's been a couple of cases where a boxer has tested positive, and the state commission that was charged with regulating it did nothing. Just did nothing. It went away. Now, part of that is that this will be the most listened to conversation about boxing ever. Because there's not a media covering boxing.

They're not out there. Well, that's why Big Fight Bill is here.

I like Big Fight Bill. I will see Big Fight Bill in LA.

Big Fight Bill gets every fight, just for the record. Boxing has the same issue that hockey has in certain sports where people who are medium-sized or casual fans aren't really allowed to wade in because the dialog is happening at such a great level. You can do it. All the people that come on your pod can do it. But then if I do it, it's It's like, is he really? You just get all the big fights. It's like, yeah, guilty. But I see every big fight. I watch all of them, and I bet on all of them, and I have a great time. It's so much fun to bet on boxing. Am I going to watch a random Thursday ESPN2 fight at 11:00 at night? I'm probably not. But am I going to watch every tank fight? Yeah.

It is so much fun to bet on boxing, though. Because if I see a good fight, I'll bet on winner, outcome, over-under number of rounds. It's likely I'll have six bets going on on one fight alone. It's a blast. The only difference between you and Dame is your big fight, Bill, he's little fight Dame. I'll get text from Dame about those Thursday night, Thursday night fights. He's all in, man.

He is the most dedicated- There's some good boxing fans out there. Van Lathen, big secret boxing fan. Cousin Sal. We have Raheem Palmer, who's an open boxing maniac, but they're out there. Kevin Clark is a good one.

Kevin DMs me some of these. Yeah, there's a good one. Even the NBA, Paul A huge boxing fan. I saw him in Boston the other day. He starts talking to me about fights that are happening coming up. They're out there. They're in the closet, but they're definitely out there.

So pound for pound, you have Usik one, and who would you have two?

I would have Crawford two, and Noe in a way over in Japan is number three. But this is the first time that I can remember that the pound for pound is switched as often as it does.

You didn't even say tank.

Yeah, but Tank needs better opponents. I make a pound for pound list, partly based on the resume that you have. A tank doesn't have a great resume.

So he's the 2024 Celtics?

Yeah,. At least they had to play. At least they were forced to play.

They said they played Luka, right.

Yeah, but Crawford fights August third. If Crawford beats Madromoff, who's a really good fighter, I'd probably bump Crawford back up to number one. If Inoue has a big event at the end of the year and wins in dominant style, I'd probably bump him up to number one. So there's a fluidity to these mythical pound-for-pound rankings out there.

Yeah, and then I think the fact that the cards have been coming on these crazy times because they're in all parts of the world, I actually like. I like that Saturday at 9:30 in the morning, all of a sudden, there's a seven-hour boxing card on the zone that I could just have.

They don't do enough of that, man. In between game one and two, I took the train to New York to watch the top-rank car, just to watch it. There were some good young fighters that I wanted on there. For some reason, they started that event at 11:00 PM, 11:00 Eastern Time at the Garden, and didn't get over until 1:15. Who are you catering to? What audience are you trying to build if you're starting an event at 11:00 Eastern Time. Now, the Saudi cards, they're a lot because for me, it starts like 3:00 in the morning. When you're on site, it's a little bit much. But if I was just watching as a fan, I would love it if I could watch the main event of a heavyweight Championship fight at seven o'clock in the evening.

It's great. Well, I think this is one of the opportunities for... I think we all think TKO is going to get involved in boxing at some point, just waiting to see what their move is. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, but I think that would be part of the appeal, if you're them, to get in on this because there's so many easily fixable things about when should the cards run? What weekend should we pick? All the stuff they're starting to do with UFC and WD W. E. And just like, Hey, why are we having wrestle against this crazy final four weekend? That's stupid. We should move it to this weekend instead. So I think with boxing, the dumbest, most poorly run, most corrupt sport that either of us has ever liked. There's some room to fix, would be my guess. And the stay rights thing would be definitely a piece of it because that Garcia thing was bullshit. Haney got hit by what, 15 straight flush left hooks in 10 rounds? That guy might not be the same.

No. Anyway. Guys, you see over... Remember, was it Chávez, Meldric Taylor? Was Meldric Taylor ever the same after that Chávez fight? When guys go through wars like... The answer is no. Yeah, no. The guys go through... Even more recently, we called the Deontay Wilder fight a couple of weeks ago. I don't think Wilder has ever been the same since those last two fights against Tyson Furie, where he was catastrophically knocked out, especially in the last one where he was face down on the canvas.

How about Pacquiao, the third fight against Marquez or the third or fourth fight, whatever, when he just got knocked out cold? He was never the same after that.

There's a big downside. You see Pacquiao is coming back. You see that? He's going to fight, I guess, for a title in September or October of this year at 45 years old.

The damaging fight where you're never the same is one of the great betting inefficiencies after the fact. Like, Hagler, the Mugabe fight for Hagler, he was never the same after that. When he fought Leonard, he wasn't the same guy. That's one of the cases for, if you're going to say Leonard won that fight, which I still think. Like, Hagler was a shell of himself in that fight. He wasn't remotely the same. Riddick Bow, who had a couple of wars and was just shot completely from some of the punishment that he took. But then there's other guys. Like, Holyfield was in, I don't know, 12 to 13 crazy fights and just kept Kept going. Foreman had. He got knocked out by Ali, and he had that crazy Ron Lyle fight and was able to just come back and fight for another 10 years. I don't know. It affects people different ways. But I'm worried about Hanei, though, because that was pretty brutal.

I think he's young enough that he can bounce back. He's not going to intentionally be in those types of fights moving forward. He's a stick and move guy. He's not looking to get into those types of fights. I How did the Ryan fight changed on that very first punch. I don't think he ever recovered from that shot he took in the first round. He stayed on his feet, but he was never the same fighter after that. I think he's young enough and fights a style that's not damaging enough that he can bounce back. I was talking to him the other day. I don't know what the pay-per-view number was for the first fight. I don't think it was great, but if they do a rematch next year, it's going to be triple that, man. That's a million pay-per-view by event because of all the drama surrounding the first fight and how good the first fight was.

Yeah, it's a good call. All right, Chris Mannix, I'll see you at some point during this final. I saw you from afar a couple of times, but I'm going to make a point to be line over. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. Don't forget, what do you want to plug? Boxing podcast? Boxing podcast. What else? Sports Illustrated.

Sports Illustrated, Boxing with Chris Maddox, where this conversation, Bill, you get every single week on the pod with me and Sergio Mora, mostly.

Sergio could sell your jokes 20% better. I'm leaving this in the pod. Hey, Sergio. Sergio, be a better teammate sometimes. I don't know. Somebody's got to say it, right? Come on, Sergio. It's a give and take business. All right, Chris Mann. It's good to see you. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chris Mann. Thanks to Cochrane and Steve Cerruti, as always. I'm going to see you on Wednesday night. I'm going to do a podcast after Game 3 with a special guest. So stay tuned for that. Go south to see Wednesday. The wayside, on the fruits of leverage, I don't have.

On the wayside, on the fruits of leverage, I don't have.