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La is really nice in the summer. Come see us. Coming up on this podcast, Brian Rusil and I are going to talk about Denver's Return from the Dead. Four very interesting playoff series for different reasons. Then one of the weirdest lotteries I think we've ever had, if not the weirdest, it's all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this a little after 7:30 Pacific Time. Ryan Lucillo is here. Lucillo, there are certain nights when it's just great to do what we do. When it's like, let's watch that game. We'll see what happens. We'll do a podcast after. I didn't know what was going to happen tonight. The line was Minnesota by three. It moved to Minnesota by four. You could have told me they were going to win by 20 and put a defensive performance of the ages. You could have told me they weren't going to be ready yet. What I wasn't expecting is Denver playing as great of an offensive game against good defense as I've seen in a while. They shot 19 for 29 from three, 32 for 50 from two. These were high degree of difficulty shots, Rizolo.

This This is Jamal Murray at the top of the third quarter, just making four straight long jumpers on good defense with a hand in his face and Jokuj maneuvering down the stretch. Gordon's 11 for 12. They were just awesome. So I'll start here. Feels a little Mahomes Chiefs, December 2023-ish, right? They're down on two. We're like, It's over, including me. It's done.

You thought it was over.

I did. I thought Minnesota was going to sweep them, mainly because I didn't think Murray had what he did the last two games in him. He looked like he was physically compromised to me. Then all the other stuff, it was like, Hey, man, they had a great run. Hard to go back to back. It's Minnesota's time. In a weekend, it shifts.

I picked Minnesota. I felt like it was a coin toss. And after game 2, it was defensive display, which was like, I think it's the best 24 minutes I've seen from a team defensively in a long time.

We both led our pods with it.

Right. After you're at Denver defending champs, those first 24 minutes, I just think were horrifying for Denver. But I think once it turned into the sweep talk, I don't ever think there's going to be sweeps when the teams are bad because it's human nature to let down a little bit. And then in this case, you have Denver where you think, okay, look, it's hard to win a title. We can talk about an easier path for them with the heat in the finals, the Lakers in the Western Conference finals. Yeah, traditionally, if you look back at it, it's not the toughest course, but they'd gone through the years of disappointment. They'd gotten their playoff scars. The one tenant of the playoff for me every single year is you can never be as desperate as the team that is down 0-2. You just can't be. If they're any good, which we've learned, again, that Denver is really good, that they're going to come out and fight. I thought they went a lot quicker in game three because the biggest problem I saw in game two is when you wait, and Denver likes to be methodical. They'll run their offense, they'll wait, they'll see what's going It's like, look, if you wait, they are on you.

I thought they were more aggressive. Then tonight's just an absurd display, as you pointed it out. It's 76-60. Denver shooting splits were 67 and 53%.

It's nuts. Well, you think like game three, it was tight for the first quarter, right? And they called that game differently, and they didn't let a lot of the physical stuff go. Minnesota missed some layups. They missed some easy shots. Denver, all of a sudden, is up 12. And then they just started to separate. And it was like, Oh, they got their mojo back. But I'll be interested to see if they call this differently. And Minnesota can do what they did in game two. Can Denver handle it? What I don't understand, and I was really watching carefully today, trying to figure it out, how did Jokuj and Murray figure out the pace on offense. Part of it was, I think they put their shooters. If you look like Gordon's basically under the basket and two guys in the corner, or there were two guys on one side, but they were trying to give those guys as much space as possible. But something slowed down for them that in the first two games, it was just too frantic and too frenetic. They figured out a way to just comment to the pace that they wanted to get to.

I didn't really fully understand how they did it. They made some great shots. Gordon made five shots he makes once a month.

Right. That Murray shot that he hit him, McDaniel, where McDaniel was just all over him. It reminded me a game two defense. I was like, Oh, here we go. Is They're going to get a stop here in some momentum, and then Murray just finds a way to finish it off to his right side. I like talking about game three and four here, if you're cool with it, just because I think the officiating part of it, I went back and watched the first seven fouls once it got to 6:23.

You're talking about game three.

Game three. I thought those first seven fouls that were called, the only one that was suspect was the first one where Jokić initiates the contact into Katz-Chin, and he knew what he was doing. The officials were like, All right, on the floor, which always makes me feel like the officials are like, We don't even love that we're calling this, but we have to call something on this play. The rest of the time, they're just hacking them, I thought. Yeah, I agree.

But they were hacking them in game two, and I think they were getting away with it. I think that was part of the problem because it was prison ball in game two, and I think they thought it was going to carry over, and it just didn't.

It felt like game two, Denver was like, Wait, are you guys seriously going to play like this? We're not ready. Okay, we're not ready. The combination of really good players getting incredibly frustrated That's what happens to great competitors is they're usually going to just start losing their minds because they're going, I can't believe we feel this helpless.

Yeah, Minnesota was doing the Hager Herns pace in game two, and Denver was like, Wait, what?

So then when I looked at game three, so you're right, I'm sampling in some game two stuff here as well. But when I think about game three, first of all, Denver didn't turn the ball over until deep into the second quarter. I thought Minnesota His offense stunk.

They missed him. So many bunnies and labs.

I think there's some real truth in that this Timberwolves team is young and was really feeling themselves on a couple of days off hearing about... Because I had moments in game two where I was like, Is this the final? I feel like this series is the final.

I agree with you. I said that to my family because my whole family, my wife, my son and daughter, Mother's Day. Nothing better on Mother's Day than watching an NBA play-off game. I know my wife was fired up. At some point, my daughter said, Who are you rooting for? I was like, I think I'm rooting for Minnesota because Denver is probably slightly... But I think both of these teams are probably favorite against the Celtics. They're just playing at a level of efficiency. Minnesota defensively and Denver offensively, that I'm not positive the Celtics can match over the course of two weeks without Porzingis.

It's a funny question to ask.

If you gave me Porzingis, I'd be okay.

It is funny, though, because when you think about who you root for, and a lot of it's just you and I with our investment in our takes. It's I want to be able to retire on this take, or I don't want to be dreadfully wrong, even though it's going to happen. After game two, where it turned into like, I was like, Wait, we Can't Jokić lose in the series first before everybody is ready to pile on about how undeserving is of all these things?

I couldn't believe the text I was getting from people who were smart. I'm not going to name them, but they were like, Oh, your guy Jokuj. I'm like, What? Did you see what Minnesota did? Who was stopping them in that game?

In a weird way, I felt like after game two, and then they won game three, I was happy for Denver. I was just happy for Jokić because I went, Well, he can't possibly go out this way. Then again, tonight's an even more dominant reminder because he just wanted to shoot. He took 26 shots tonight, and there's only been one game in two months going back to the regular season where he's taken more than 26 shots in a game. I think he He has a plan. I think Kat does a good job of holding up with him physically, then a strength thing, and then with the go bear part of it floating, maybe more likely to want to play make a little bit. That pass that he had to Gordon, and that was actually Ant's fault. He just lost Gordon behind him as Kat and Rudi- Oh, the one where he leaned to his left?

That little sneaky... Oh my, that sneaky pass around three guys, that was nuts.

Right. Jamal is on the call going to Reggie Miller. Did you even see that pass? The perfect answer would have been like, Yeah, after he made the basket, I saw it. But you can see with Jokuj, there's a tier of what he'll do depending on who's in now. I think that's what he's figured out going back in a three and four. If he has just Rudy, he's going right at him every time. He can't wait. If he goes at Nas, even more so. With the cat Rudy thing, he's probably a little bit more reserved because he's trying to figure out how Rudy is going to come to him. Because I think cat, at least, and we'll get to Cat because it wasn't very good tonight. I think Cat, the very least, holds up somewhat Not physically, knowing that there's help there. But you can see, depending on what Minnesota is doing and matching him with personnel, he seems to change. I think at this point, the scary part for Minnesota is I think he's figured out all of their options already.

Let's stay on this because I like where you're going with it. Because it's not to bring Mahomes back into this, but Mahomes will have those playoff games. When it's like, I need to use my legs today, I'm probably going to have to run nine times. Jokuj in game three, I thought he realized everybody's got to play. We need collectively to be awesome. This is not a game for me to take 35 shots or whatever. Today was the game where, especially the way Edwards came out. Edwards came out like he was 2001 Kobe. Jokuj played differently. He had, I think, 16 in the fourth quarter, but he'll put the weight on himself when he knows that they need it. But they also... When you think like, Gordon's 11 for 12, Murray makes a 55 footer and five other crazy shots, and then Joka just shooting the way he shot, and then they get the random couple of holiday threes. You're not going to beat them. If I'm in Minnesota, if I'm the coach in the locker room after, and I probably ask, Carl, can you stay after everybody leaves for just two minutes? Just want to talk to you.

We'll stay between us. We'll go in the equipment room. If I'm in Minnesota, I don't feel terrible about that game. Just look at some of the stuff we're doing. Mcdaniels was picking dudes 90 feet and putting the miles on Murray and doing all the stuff you have to do. But Murray was just different physically than it was five days ago. The guy in game one and game two was not remotely resembling the guy from game three and game four, I thought. When he plays like that, they're at a different level. But there's other stuff here. Nobody showed up with Ant tonight offensively. Nas, I think, was five for six off the bench, but Towns was just so abhorrent in this game and just was playing that. It was another Towns' greatest hits, bad game. I think at one point, he had 17 shots for 13 points. He did his requisite, terrible foul, 55 feet from the basket. Then Gobert, here's the other thing I got for you, Rosillo. They played their best game in game two. Gobert didn't play.

Here we go.

We got to talk about it. It has to be discussed.

Let's do the cap part first.

Yeah, let's do it. I wouldn't call him one of our favorites.

I can't stand He started 1 of 10. He heated up, got to 4 of 16 at one point. He had the half-court foul that is completely pointless for a guy that's always been foul trouble.

Trying to take the charge at mid-court? How many times have they called the charge at mid-court this season? Like four?

He did try to take the other charge there, which is fine, but he complained. Look, this is turning into a complaint first league. But if you're really, really good, even if I'll be annoyed over two hours, that's okay. Katz not good enough to complain as much as he does. Then he had, later in the second half, he had that offensive foul where he checked Michael Porter Jr. And he celebrated the make Thinking he had to end one.

Have to shove them backwards into the basket support.

He's got his hand up in the air as everybody's walking to the other end of the court. He was the last person in the entire arena to know that the foul was on him. He also had another play where it looked like Minnesota wanted to try defend their pressure as much as they could. The problem is, you might win a possession with that, catching them off guard. But against a team like Denver, you're just opening up all this space behind it, and they've been torched on that. He had a play where it was like, you couldn't foul there. You can't foul. He actually hit Jokić in the back. I think the rest are just like, We don't even want to do it. It's crazy to think he's the best three-point shooting player. I don't know what the number is after because I didn't look it up after the game sorted tonight. But coming in, he's the best three-point shooter in the playoffs, and I don't care. In theory, he's what you need for Ant, somebody who can match another big body, which I think he's actually done okay with. But when he has to think about defensive decisions, Then it becomes a mess.

He had plays in game three, Bill, where there'd be a baseline drive, and he'd be in the paint, and he would run to close out on Christian Brown on the opposite side of the ball. Of all the places you should prioritize, That's not where it should happen. I know he's going to have a big night where he's going to hit a bunch of threes or whatever. I just don't care. I don't care. I don't trust him.

Well, he was so good in game one and game two that it made me that. He turned the corner. I mean, he is hitting his mid 20s. Here's a good example, and this doesn't show up in the box score, but Edwards starts out and there's flame shooting out of his ass, and it's just clear he's going to have at least 40 points. Then all of a sudden, Towns is like, Now it's my turn. He did that thing. When somebody who was going to have the game Edwards was going to have tonight, where I thought he was absolutely spectacular, and I actually saw him tired in the fourth quarter, which I don't think we've seen him tired ever.

He got tired in the third quarter after he went on that barrage. Then there was a moment where he was like, he had to take a couple of possessions off. You could see it from him.

So you're right. It was like a Drago. Oh, my God, the Russian has caught. It was like, oh, my God, Edwards gets tired. But I think with Edwards, especially the way he's playing tonight, you just want supporting actors with him when he's going to have a game like that. You want like, this is he, and he's De Niro and Pacino combined. You want Towns to be Seismar, where he's going to have three scenes, and he's Then he's going to do his, for me, the action is the juice. It's like, Oh, cool. Tom Seismar had a moment. Now get out of the way. We're going to get back to De Niro and Pacino. But Towns is just... I feel like he thinks it's the two of them together. And tonight was the night when was not. The other guy that I just felt like wasn't involved enough was Conley because I like the matchups Conley has in this series. We've seen point guards over and over again be able to get into the paint, do slash and kick stuff, and just create offense. A lot of times, he's just standing over on the side because everything has to run through Edwards and Towns.

Do you think Chris Finch being injured actually might have cost them a game here in this series out of the first four? No. I voted for him second in Coach of the Year.

No, because he's right there.

It's different, though. You're walking around. When you're actually coaching and you're able to move and move up and down the sidelines and talk to your guys versus I'm just sitting on the side like I'm Denzel and the Bone Collector. I just don't think it's the same because I thought they lost their composure and did some weird shit tonight. It was a really sloppy offensive. I I just thought their identity was all over the place. If Bant didn't have the game that he had, they would have lost by 25.

Yeah, I couldn't believe. There's a bunch of moments where I go, Okay, 6 minutes, they're down 11. Are they going to grind this thing out? Are they going to find a way to grind the whole thing out? But there's just too many moments where I didn't trust anybody else around Anne, whether it's the cat stuff that we've already talked about. Rudy ended up with some points because he got fouled a bunch of times there at the end. But he just had those moments with him where with the ball in his hands, you're like, Oh, man, what's going to... His post against Jokić. That's going to end up on TNT at some point. Jokić just chest moving him to be like, Oh, wait, you think you're going to Mikael me right now? I'm just going to Matador off to the side. You're not even going to feel me because you're so uncomfortable already. And then Rudy gets called for the travel. That'll be in some one-shining moment version of the NBA broadcast.

Wait, can you hold on on that for one second? Because I think for guys like us, we've never had a chase-down block against the backboard. No. But we have pulled the chair. I'm retired now. But when you pull the chair in a really good way where the guy almost falls over and hits his face, it's about as satisfying of a defensive moment as you can have. What's better?

I don't like when people do it outside on the asphalt. I think it's bullshit.

What about inside? I didn't realize you were anti-pulling the chair.

Yeah, I just think it means you can't play defense. I guess I've just had too many people pull the chair when I was younger. Some older guy, lunch hoops.

Do you want to do a PSA? Should we do a PSA for the Ringer NBA channel?

I'm Ryan Risillo. I'm going to get killed for even bringing it up. I want to talk about pulling the chair. Yeah, he's going to...

No, the way to... When you pull the chair, when it's okay, is when you're going against the tall guy who thinks he can just swing into you with his elbows out and basically bulldoze over you. And that's when it's okay. No?

I don't think you're wrong. Listen, we'll agree to disagree. Yeah, we can disagree sometimes. I think more people will agree with you, and I understand the position. Hey, at least it's not a charge. At least it's not a charge. Because you start trying to slide over outside in a pickup game, and then you just decide it's the charge. If you put the effort in and then get hit and then fall down, no one has ever in the history of pickup. First of all, you shouldn't do it in the first place, but nobody would ever be like, I think I was still moving. The guy's always like, Charge? Someone else has to see it for you to be able to get the call. What are you kidding? Anyway, everybody's favorite part of the pod.

I have more in this game, but let's take a quick break. Just quickly on Denver, we talked about what a great moment this was for them. I think the three days off helped everybody, including myself, just pouring dirt in them, being like, It's fine, man. It's really hard to go back to back, especially with how deep the league is now. The amount of pride that they showed in game three where they just came out throwing haymakers and got their identity back, just rebuilt it over the course of 72 hours. And then winning that game today. The crowd seemed like it was good both nights, too. But winning that game today on the road with the way Edwards was playing.

I thought the crowd was better tonight. I think they were so ready to just erupt in game three. This is a Minnesota franchise that hasn't felt anything like this other than- This is the Steve Kerr theory.

Steve Kerr always said the young playoff team that hasn't had a lot of great playoff moments that first came home, the crowd's almost so fired up. It was like game three, Net Celtics, when the Celts had the big comeback in the second half. But that first half, they suck because the crowd's like, Let's go. Everyone's in the seats 45 minutes for the game. And then somebody makes two threes in the other team and you're like, What? Oh, no. What's going on? It's just like it doesn't go by the plans. But I just love when champs defend the title, which we've talked about. I don't know how we've been doing this probably for seven years on Sundays. My favorite, I think it's one thing to win the championship. I think it's another thing to defend it. It's something I wrote about in my book. I really feel like the title defense should count when you talk about the great teams. I love that they fought back because I didn't think they were going to. I really thought this was going to be a passing of the torch. They had no chance in Minnesota type of series.

As blown away as I was in game two, I guess then once I started seeing everything that was happening in the TV shows and everything, the question I'd ask any of us is, haven't you watched series before, though? We've been doing this 40 years.

I know, but this one's unusual. Do you see this stat? This only five times somebody has lost the first two at home and then won the Series. Five times ever.

I'm We're not even talking about game 4 because I didn't know what was going to happen in Game 4. But for Denver, who we both think is really good. Before we saw the Minnesota Phoenix series, before we saw the Denver-L. A. Series, I think both of us were leaning towards, I know we both We're not going to pick Boston against Denver unless you saw some version of Boston. No, I had Denver. I just think there's so many moments in a series where the teams look completely different 48 hours later. I I guess I feel like sometimes I'll be just listening to stuff going, Wait, is this your first year doing this? Not you necessarily, but this... Denver's too good to have had everybody being like, This is a wrap. There was just so many people talking sweep. I was surprised.

I think the Murray thing was a big piece of that, though.

That's your out then.

No, it's not even an out. He just looked like he was legitimately hurt and it wasn't going to get better. I don't know if they did the Mexico, Miami, Germany trip between Game 2 and game 3, but he looked way better and was moving way better and looked like Jamal Murray again. And that was a guy I did not expect to see in the play-ups. He was 11 for 21 in game 3. Today, he was 8 for 17. Ant finished with 44 and was 16 for 25. But we didn't mention this yet. Sometimes this happens in a basketball game. We just know the other team is going to lose. And that eight-point barrage at the the end of the second quarter was just so stupid. It's like, nobody's ever won when they did something this stupid at the end of a half. And that turned out to be the eight-point. And that eight-point cushion they had the whole second half, basically with these 20 seconds that they just fucked up.

They give up the Pope three, then you get the turnover. Okay, fine. But in a game that happens this much- McDaniels doesn't run back.

Gordon just goes down.

But to inbound it that way, knowing there's as rare as the chance is, to even open yourself up. I think that's one thing that you've always talked about with the playoffs that we see it play out all the time, was just certain people aren't comfortable as the series goes on. I don't even know if that's what happened there. It was like, Oh, this young team, they just weren't smart enough. They weren't comfortable. Although I thought there's just a lot of dumb stuff that's been happening with them on top of everything else. But that eight-point swing, because you're like, Hey, this has been a drive. Denver can't miss. Jokić has been incredible. And all of a sudden, it goes from what? It would have been... It ended up being a 50. So it was going to be a seven-point halftime lead to a 15-point halftime lead.

They get a stop at seven points. It goes to 15 instead. I have to talk about this, even though it's the most sports radio topic possible. I couldn't believe they didn't suspend Murray for game three. Because any other time we've had that situation in the NBA playoffs, they've always defaulted to, Look, we can't say there's special circumstances here because it's a huge game for the other team or whatever. It's just the rules, the rule. The rule got broken, and it's a suspension. And yet in this case, they didn't suspend him. And they fined him $100,000 but didn't suspend him. And what he did was clearly a one-game suspension. I guess there's less precedent because I was thinking about the 07 Phoenix is the all-time worst for me when Horry throws Nash against the scores table and the guys on his bench who see their leader thrown against the scores table, take five feet of steps toward it for stopping. And then I got, You guys got to sit out now. The '97 Nicks heat, which I'd... It's so long ago, I forgot, but they stern, staggered the suspensions, spending their best five guys over two days because they left the bench.

And then Drayman was the other one where they could have rescinded the 16th whatever tactical, and they decided not to. And then Cleveland comes back in 2016. But over and over again, They've told us, Hey, we don't play favorites with this shit. The rules are the rules. In this case, I felt like they totally played favorites with this. They're like, We can't suspend Murray. Then they have no chance in the series. I thought it was crazy, Rosillo.

You're probably right. I didn't care. It didn't bother me.

I would rather they handled it this way, but now I want to go back retroactively and be like, Could we have done that with some of the other ones now? Could we get Stoudermire and Diia to play in game five now? Can we get Draymond to actually play in game five and try to finish off the title. It just feels like it had no correlation to the rest of NBA history.

Do you remember when David Stern went on with Dan Patrick for that sons thing?

Yeah. I don't know if you He was super arrogant about it. No, he was arrogant about it the whole time.

Right. So Stern came on, and I don't know if it was booked ahead of time, but I think Stern may have reached out because at that point, Dan's doing the number one afternoon show in the country. And Dan's whole point was, hey, this is what I've always said about a lot of this stuff. Punishment is not consistent. When people are like, I just want the officiant to be consistent. I want this to be consistent. It's like, well, then you're hoping for something that's never going to happen because there's nothing in life with punishment and what happens to people. Hey, it happened to this guy, but yeah, but this guy. But this guy. He's like, yeah, okay, welcome to this game that we all sign up for. So when it comes to punishment and like, okay, well, it should have been this. And like when Jeremon Green chimes in, it's like, well, hey, dude, you think there might be a little bit of a difference based on your background and everything else? Your background and everything else, your track record is really what I should have been looking for there. But I remember Stern coming on because Dan Patrick was just like, Hey, this is one of those things in the gray area where you shouldn't be this punitive.

You should be able to say, Hey, the intent was this, but then it was stopped. If you're going letter by the law, this is way too harsh, and it could very well decide the outcome of his series here because that Suns team was... Everybody loved it. We didn't want to see it go down that way. Stern came on and was like, You're wrong. You're wrong. He's like, You are an opinion maker. You shape opinion. Dan Patrick must have said Mr. Commissioner 50 times in the back and forth. He's like, Yes, but Mr. Commissioner.

Stern was scary when he got like that. I've faced the wrath a couple of times. You're on your heels. He becomes like a prosecutor and you're on trial, and he's just going at you.

I can't describe how scary it is. It was scary listening to it because it was It was awesome audio. Patrick was just really good with the way he did it because he was still like, he wasn't really packing down, but Stern was just going to steamroll him. The reason I even bring up any of that stuff, though, I don't think Silver goes that way. I think Silver is somebody that his approach to this, if Murray, for the most part, has been a really good guy, is I don't want to take a player. I don't want to take a player out of this spot because that might have been the series. I know some people could have a huge problem. I'd rather have played the way that it did.

But I would rather have the same thing happen in '07 with the Suns that I rather would have had Draymond play. I remember Parish when he beat the shit out of Lambert in Game 5, 1987, one of the greatest moments of my life. Then Just stayed in the game.

Behind Zoe, I had a band.

It's somewhere in there. I'd group it with having two kids. They won the game and they went up three, two. Then the league suspended Parish for game six. It was the fucking best. Even after he had just basically committed assault on Lambert in game five, they just left him in, let him play the rest of the game. So they've been all over the map with this stuff. But for the most part, they've always defaulted to the rules of the rules. I thought what Murray did, that's about as an easy of a one-game suspension. And I'm a Jokuj fan. I wanted the series to keep going. I didn't want him to get suspended. I just assumed he was going to get suspended. So predictions going forward? I mean, this series is now impossible to predict, but Denver is going to try to do something that would put them in a pretty special category to come back from 0-2 down, losing the first two at home.

Only five teams have done it. They had that on the broadcast at the end of it tonight. For me to say, Hey, I still like Minnesota because I picked them. Who's going to sit here today after those two games? It would make sense. Hey, young team, a little too soon, feeling themselves after the game two success. Denver figured them out. When This game is 10 points down the stretch. You're like, Denver is not going to get bad looks here. Is Minnesota going to get good looks? Is it going to have to be Ant the entire time? I'm not ready to just write off Minnesota despite what we've just seen through the first four games. Maybe this is Minnesota. Do they figure it out this year? Do they figure out between games four and five, or do they figure it out this summer?

Right. It's one of those. We've seen this a lot of times in NBA history where just an awesome seven-game series, they give them everyone's hugging afterwards. Like, wow, you really brought the best out of us. Might be their destiny, but I still like the way they played defensively today. I don't know if Denver can do that again. I have no idea what's going to happen the rest of the way. To me, this is now an official, I'm not betting on this series anymore.

No, it just feels seven, and it feels like it's going to come down to something. It's getting there somewhere. At this point, if you said, Hey, I trust Jokić to get two of these down the stretch more than anybody else out there as as we all love Ant, you're right. Here's something I thought was really important, though, because if you looked at the regular season to the playoff numbers of the on-off with Jokuj thing, and we know over the course of the regular season, it becomes this absurd number. And part of it is Denver's Benches and all that great. But it's like those first few minutes of the second quarter. It's those first few minutes when he comes in, depending on the regular season of the game, the matchup comes in nine, eight minutes left in the game. If they're way ahead, it's later. But those numbers shape this thing with Jokuj. But then Jokuj plays more minutes in the playoffs, and the thing wasn't getting destroyed against LA as much. But tonight, I was looking for it. Jokuj sits after the first quarter, and Denver goes up nine points with him sitting at the beginning of the second.

That doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. And then Jokić picks up the fourth foul in the third quarter. They sit him with six minutes to go. So that's not even close to his normal rotation. He'll play the full third and then sit in the beginning of the fourth, depending on how the game is going. He's not afraid to put him back in earlier. So you're thinking, wait, we're going to get six minutes without Jokić out there, and then Denver doesn't miss a shot. Now, granted, they lost four points in those six minutes up, I think it was either 13 to nine or 15 to 11. That's a huge win to only lose four points when Jokić isn't playing for six minutes. But then you're also going to get him fresh at the start of the fourth, as opposed to having to wait for him for a little while.

And he has 16 in the fourth.

Look, there's a million things you can point to. Say, Hey, the game was this, the game was that game. When I saw those numbers, I went. That's incredible, that entire time.

There's one other number along what you just said. Edwards had to play 45 because they couldn't take him out of the game. He couldn't come out today. That was it. He was not just playing offense, but he was playing real defense on the other side, too. I think Minnesota has to figure out how either towns or Nas Reid can carry them for four minutes a half because probably not sustainable.

Well, not in any shots, again, too. Conley is going to have some moments here or there. The cat one for 10 start was brutal. Rudy is not providing anything offensively until the very end. You hit on it, but we spent more time on the cat stuff. Hey, When game two happened, I brought it up as a joke of like, Hey, this is how good they looked without Rudy. Like, huh? I'm like, Hey, look, even me with my Rudy position, that's completely unfair to Rudy Gobert, that there's this one game. They were this dominant defensively and It didn't happen. But now, he didn't have a great game three. He's always going to have some moments defensively that are incredible. He had a close-out contest on Murray where he stayed in front of him late when it was still a huge possession. You're like, Man, look at him working his ass off, staying in front of him. Then he came out at 3:33, and I was like, Oh, my God, are they going to do it? Are they going to do it to just try to get more offense on the floor? And then they brought him back in the game.

It's just something... Let me put it this way. I'm monitoring that situation.

Me as well. I don't know who's going to win, and I'm not making a prediction. I really thought Minnesota was going to sweep them. I thought Murray was hurt, and I thought that was it for Denver. They won last year, and shit happens. Now, I don't know what to think. Nicks Pacers was the other one that happened today. We don't have to spend a ton of time on this other than to say, Tibbs really went for it on Friday night. He's up 2-0. Tibbs? He was up 2-0, Ananobi's out. I thought maybe they throw away game three or get cautious with it and just be like, We got to play Sunday in the afternoon. If we're going to shoot Bullets tonight. Game 4 is a throw away. But no, they went for it on Friday night. I think part of it was because DiFincenzo was just feeling it. He had 35. That's probably going to happen once a playoff. But they lose that game. Then it just felt like today was, there's, to me, no question that Indiana was going to win today. I didn't see. The line was five, five and a half. That was the one where I was like, this is nuts.

The adjusted line, I think, was minus Eight and a half or minus nine. It was like, the next, there's no way. They have five guys. Now they're in a position where they basically have to pick two of these next three games to throw all their eggs into, which I think will game five and game seven. There's some strategy with this. There's some load management stuff where I don't think they can fuck around anymore. He can't do the minutes thing like he was doing. I do believe in the cause and effect in it, at least a little bit. It's just he's playing dudes at levels that are pretty crazy historically, including Josh Harder, who has not been hurt yet. But I thought this was a pretty brutal stretch They went Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, early afternoon. They lose Ogie. Bogey's gone. Randall's gone. Mitch is gone. Whoever wins this series, This is the fucking gift of all gifts for the Celtics. I can't remember a better slew of events happening for one team in a conference like this before. Giannis, Embiid, the Knicks, this Indiana team that isn't even at full because they lost Matheron, and the Celts are just going to get to potentially cruise to the finals without even really getting tested unless Cleveland can somehow throw something at them.

Anyway, do you agree with my theory that they're going to have to pick two of the next three or would you just go balls to the wall the rest of the week here?

I don't think there's any chance Tibbs is going to do that, even if you're probably right. I think the best thing that happened in the Knicks today is they didn't cut it to 18 or 20, and Tibz was like, All right, let's ride.

Ice, ice.

Seriously, I'm watching it going. Hey, this is good. Because then he waved the white flag. You got Brunson out at the end of the third. You got him out of it. But if there was 18 going to the fourth quarter, these guys all would have played 40 plus minutes again. Because I was thinking the exact same thing that you were thinking on the three days off post-Philly. So he plays everybody a million minutes now in game one, and then he only has a day off in between game one and game two. But he's like, All right, well, they're home. I was like, Maybe he's doing that. And then maybe he has to figure this out now. And it's like, You know what? Who am I kidding? He's not going to figure it out. He's not going to dial it with these guys. Hart played 48 minutes back-to-back playoff games. I said on a Thursday, it's the first time somebody had played 48 minutes in back-to-back playoff games since 2013 with Jimmy Butler and Tibbs in Chicago. Butler played 48 minutes in five out of seven playoff games during that stretch. But Butler, that was only his second year in the league, so he wasn't exactly like somebody you're running a ton of plays for.

The Brunson stuff, as much fun as this has been, as great as I feel for this guy owning this city, owning this team, and those MSG games where all the old guys are there. I've never cared about the Knicks. I've fallen in love with this team through the Philly thing in the beginning of this Pacer series, but I kept getting back to the point going, So this is just going to work? This is just going to work? He's going to take this many shots? Here's a number for you. Brunson going into the day is at 27 points. Excuse me, was it 27 field goal attempts per game? Twenty-seven, okay? You go back to the last 40 years, here are the top field goal attempts per game players, and then what happened in the playoffs. Jordan took just under 32 shots a game in '86. Sweat by yourselves. Jason McGrady took just about 31 shots per game in 2001, lost in the first round. Westbrook took 30 shots a game in 2017, the year he won the MVP, lost in the first round. So That was the first round. Iverson took 30 shots a game in 2001.

Two things there. They got to the finals. No one else in that team wanted to shoot or was allowed to.

The whole team was built around him shooting 30 times a game.

Right. And That East was so putrid that year. There were seven teams in the entire conference that were actually over 500. Then you have Brunson, who's now, depending on the numbers, it's called...

When I did this number, it was 20. It might drop a tiny bit.

It might a tiny bit. So then I'd have Luka. I think Luka will jump Brunson, and Luka took 28 shots a game in '21, and he lost in the first round. So other than Iverson, this shit doesn't work, and yet it was working. It was working against Philly because they have their own limitations, obviously, in that first round. And as I was watching the Pacers go down 2-0 in this one, Bill, I'm like, You know what, though? With the way the schedule is playing out, they lose O. G. I think the Pacers are still in this. Them smoking them today was not remotely surprising. I thought they'd win today, and they get up 34, 14. The biggest... I struggle with the minute thing because sometimes I think, I bet you guys could play more minutes, but everybody's freaked out about it. They don't want to do it. What's the difference between 42? Because some games you're playing 36, those minutes are harder than the 41. But when it's every other day like this, if you watch the drives by the Pacers' offensive players, they're just right past these guys now in a way that we didn't see at the beginning of the series.

Yeah, and Carla was telling them to just go, go, go. He was trying to put the miles on him. Listen, O'Gian and O'Bee missed 120 games in the last four years. This is not somebody who's meant to play 40 minutes a game every other night. This is not Cal Ripken. I'm not saying he shouldn't do it. I'm just saying if you're going to roll the dice and be like, This is our only chance to win. Brunson's got to play 43, 45 minutes a game. Hart's got to never come out, and I need 40 plus minutes from Ananobi. The odds of those three guys staying healthy for a month and a half are slim. We've already seen two of the three get hurt, and Hart hasn't gotten hurt yet. But I know they have another choice, and it's super fun. Everybody loves it, but this is not sustainable.

I'm guilty of loving it, too. But I watch Alec Birks play today. Let's Let's just focus on today. I know he had 20 minutes in game three. You just go, Is he so terrible? Is he so bad with his defensive rotations that you couldn't spot each of these guys five minutes? I don't even know if this is true. I have a hard time with Once you're past this minute, now this means all these things are on the table about potential injury. I mean, Ogie gets hurt all the time. So your point on pushing it with Ogie is the right one. But when I watch Burick's like, okay, he's not perfect, but you're screwed. How could he have not been sprinkled in to take five minutes away from all these other guys? And the great thing with Burks is that he's actually pretty aggressive offensively. He's not out there getting the ball going, What the hell am I supposed to do with this thing right now? Some of these other guys that I've seen out West that we'll get to. I don't know if that's really the series, but the Pacers are positioned because when I look at their bench, like, Isiah Jackson would be in the rotation for the Knicks.

T. J. Mccona would be in the rotation. Ben Sheppard is a really nice player. Would be in the rotation. Oby Toppen would be in the rotation. The Pacers have four or five guys in the Knicks wish they had one of just to be their seventh player right now or eighth.

You made me think of game six, game seven of the 2010 finals, Perk gets hurt, and Sheldon Williams had to play. It's like, Well, how bad can Sheldon Williams be? And it was awful. Then in game seven, he didn't play. Doc was basically down to six guys he trusted One of whom was Rasheed Wallace, who was in the same shape your buddy is in after a five-day bender in Vegas. He ended up playing 35 minutes in game seven, but they had to play Tony Allen in that game, and they didn't want to. But it was like, Well, can we sneak five minutes of Tony Allen in this? It was minus nine. I think coaches know better than us. They're watching these guys. They know their team the best, and they're just like, If they don't want to put somebody in, just think about the fear factor because everything you laid out was correct, and you end up in that Doc, Sheldon Williams situation. I remember Sheldon Williams came in one of those games and put together three of the worst minutes I think I've ever seen in a playoff It was like, Oh, my God.

I guess this is why he wasn't playing. But it is weird that... I guess they lost five guys, so maybe it's not weird. You'd think it's the NBA. Every team's so deep. Detroit has 20 guys who feel like they could play 10 minutes. They don't have an eighth guy, but they've lost five guys. That's where they are. I feel bad for the Knicks fans, but at the same time, they haven't been in a lot of playoff series over the years, as we've talked about. Sometimes this happens in the playoff. You just get bad injury luck, right? And they had bad injury luck, unfortunately, in the first fun playoff experience they've had in 20 plus years. But this is a crazy stretch.

When I'm having moments, I'm like, Oh, I wonder what's going on here. I usually just go like, Well, he probably knows Ben and I do. He's the one out there. He's with these guys all the time. However, we were always strengthened in our positions when you're like, How could you watch Nemhar against Brunson and think that was a good idea? And he switched it to Neesmith. Because once he had Nemhar, and there's a lot of parts of it now with all the minutes and the shots and all adding up here, so I don't think it's just the defensive assignments. But getting away from Kelly Ubrey's size, getting away from Batum's size, some of the moments where it felt like he was slowing him down against Philadelphia, but he got off to a shooting start that wasn't great in that series, and then it was just on. But you could see early in this series where he's like, You guys are going to keep me single cover with Nemhardt? Oh, my God, that's amazing.It was weird.

I didn't understand it at all.

And Neesmith, who's actually a pretty good shooter when you look at the numbers, I feel like he hasn't made a shot from three in the playouts. The numbers are way below what you would think on his shooting percentage stuff. I mean, He's a career 37 guy, but it's not... Maybe it's because, hey, the single focus that you have on him is just trying to challenge Brunson better than what we're doing. I think it's different.

We should have mentioned this sooner, and it's my fault because I'm allegedly the host. Despite everything we just laid out, Nemhardt hit a shot that I think had a one in 20 chance to beat them in game three. He hit a panicked end of the shot clock. Halliburton hung them out to dry and just threw it to him with four seconds left. He took a step back 31 footer with a hand in his face. He had made a shot all night and it went in. It's like when a shot like that goes in, You're just like, what the fuck are you going to do? What were the ads at? Was it 5%, 10%? What are the ads that shot goes in? It has to be single digits. The way he's been playing, 3%. So they lose on that. And now all of a sudden, the series is tied 2-2. I think Indiana is going to win because the biggest thing that's happened for them. A, what you mentioned earlier about how now they're going downhill, that the Knicks just look tired now and they're going downhill. But then Halliburton is starting to look like Halliburton again.

Did you notice that? Yeah. He's looking like November, December, and he's got confidence. He's got a little swagger. He's talking shit. And whatever mental hurdle he had with his injury and just not playing that way, I think he seems back to me. So this is all lined up for them. I'll ask you this, what's more improbable to you, the Knicks making the Eastern Finals with all the shit that's happened to them this year and even in the last four weeks, or this Pacers team making the Eastern Finals, being one of the four teams left in the 2024 playoffs. This is a thing now that I think has a real chance to happen. To me, it's like, I can't remember a less likely conference finalist, even like the 2019 Portland team that made it with Dame and Macaulin. I was like, All right, at least those guys have been in some playoff games and won some stuff. This feels like we were happy to see these guys in the in-season tournament. It's like, Oh, that's great for those guys. They're going to be in the Eastern Finals?

Look at shirts.

It's fucking nuts.

Look at the East, though. There was going to be something weird that was going to happen. I know. It's just crazy. Hey, look, after game two, Cleveland, Boston, and this is an extreme thing and not where I'm going, but I was thinking of What if the Pacers come back because of these injuries against the Knicks, because they're better positioned, because they've had better depth, and the next however many games are just easier for them, even though there's going to be a break there, what between five and six? There's going to be an extra day for obviously, both teams. In game seven, I think there's only one day off if it even gets that far. But I was like, What if the Pacers just offensively become really hard to guard? Celts don't make many threes. Would this Pacers team be more- Could they beat them? Right. Would the Pacers be a more unlikely final team than Miami last year? It has to be, right? Based on pedigree alone.

It's not really even a question. I'm trying to think. You'd have to go back. I think you'd have to go to the 1981 Rockets level of unlikely final teams. I don't even think. They must have been 151 to win the title, even when the playoff started or 100 to one or whatever. But their style is like, they have a really good home They play without fear. They can hit threes twice a series. So you know there's two games where they're probably going to win just with the way they shoot. And they have a guy who can get to where he wants on offense. It still feels to me that Boston, with or without Porzingas, should be heavily favored in that series, right?

I think it'd be a massive disappointment for Boston if they get through Cleveland, which I expect they will, to lose to either one of these two teams, but three different things here. In game two, the Knicks scored 130 points on 91 possessions. And I'm like, Okay, there's your Pacers defense. This is the defense and why I can't take this team seriously, even if I actually look at their roster and think about Matherin coming back, if they re-sign Siakam, which I imagine they already know they have a good chance of doing to go ahead and make that trade. And I look at all that stuff and I go, Okay, well, I can't take you this seriously. Look at this defense. I thought the defense was a lot better. I don't know if it means because the Knicks are just that worn out, but I thought there was a real-I think that's what it means. Real push for them. Then there's also a bit of the shooting variants here where at one point when it was 94, 57, the Pacers were 13 of 28 from three. The Knicks were two of 20. They were two of 20.

The best three-point shooting team in the playoffs was two of 20 in game 4. And I think Breen was doing a really good job, as he always does on the call, where he was pointing out how many shots were coming up short. He was like, Short again. Short. Brunson is short. Short again. Yeah. Yeah.

Indiana, Boston, which has happened. Well, it happened '91. That was one of the legends, the last great playoff moments. Chuck Person and the gang, that left Reggie Miller, took them to five. They had the 2005 series that the Indiana one in Boston in game seven. There was the one, pierce, when he torched Al Harrington. Not a ton of great playoff moments, but it I just feel like we're headed that way. I'll tell you this, though. Brunson just needs to have two awesome games, and he can single-handly drag the Knicks to the conference finals, and that would be unbelievable. So it's sitting there. I mean, he could just have two 45-point games, and we'll be like, Oh, my God, I can't believe the next made it. Let's take a break because we got to talk about the other two series quick, and then we got to do the latter. Mavs Thunder. The Mavs come back, win the last two, and Kyrie has been the MVP of the series so far. I will start there.

Kyrie. Watching the third quarter yesterday, I noticed something. I was like, What's he doing? Because he didn't have a great game, too. It didn't matter. Because P. J. Washington, you could argue, is the MVP of the math, but he isn't because Kyrie's making more things happen. P. J. Is being set up. So I started counting him. I was like, Okay, there's a passive play by Kyrie. There's a spot where he could have pulled up. He didn't. Okay, He didn't even look to drive on this one. He just swung it. It was five passive plays in a row to start the third quarter. We know that he turns it on in the second half. He has throughout the playouts. And then he just went nuts. And then he carried that into the fourth quarter, and he's turning into this weapon where we're at... Lucas had two good three-point shooting games out of the entire playouts. He's not shooting it the way you'd expect Luca to shoot it. Even though the point totals aren't matching Luca or even P. J. Washington, I think he's fifth in total points of all the players in this series. He won him game three.

In game two, he made a couple... I thought a couple of the biggest plays we talked about on the pot on Thursday night. In the end of these games when OKC has been in these situations at this level of pressure and competitiveness, and Kyrie just seems really comfortable. I can't believe I'm saying it, somebody you'd want on your side. This is one of the most remarkable... Let's say they make the conference finals. This is one of the most, to me, remarkable, unexpected rejuvenations of a great player. I don't know if he's a great player, a very, very, very good player. However you want to classify him.

Yeah, it's complicated with him because talent-wise, it's great.

I just given up on him. Yeah, because I even looked at my pyramid. He's on the bubble for the top 100 because just because of the way, after 2016 and '17, when he was really great, in the playoffs, it just got really spotty after that. But he has a chance to rehabilitate this in a real way. The PJ Washington piece is the crazy piece because he was a 10 and a 5 in the last series. Now he's 22 and 7 playing 40 minutes a game and looks awesome and super comfortable. They're starting to feel a little big three-ish. I don't know if it's just a three-game hot streak or if there's been some breakthrough, but he's in person and on TV has just looked really comfortable with these guys. It still feels... I don't love the Mavs, and I don't love the... The big guys seem a little raw to me. I don't really love their bench. But to me, the story to them for the last two games was they seemed comfortable, and OKC just seemed like the new guy. There was new guy energy from OKC, and I thought both those losses because I thought both of them were winnable, right?

Yeah, I mean, the final scoring game Two tells a different story, but I thought it was... Look, game 2 in the start of the third quarter, I thought this series was a wrap for OKC because Luka looked like shit the first six minutes of the second half of game 2. And I'm watching it going. It was just one of those things where you'll notice. I'm like, I don't even want to watch anything else. I'm only going to watch him. He was standing 35 feet away from the hoop. He was waving it to the other side.

It's like you got Ben Simmons out there.

You just came out of halftime. This isn't because you're worn out from running and down. There hasn't been a stoppage yet. The only thing he did defensively, he wasn't even close to closing the corner. Then he had this one block where it actually shocked me that he moved that much. That was in this six-minute stretch. As I watched that, I go, I think Dallas is done. Because I'm like, Is this what he's going to look like? Because it's not going to get better. But the other tricky thing with Luca, as much as I like him, when he's hurt, and he's clearly hurt at times, he's going to let you know he's hurt. It's very dramatic. He had that play where he and Dork got tangled and he turned his ankle and it looked like, Oh, no. Is he going to come out of the game? But the ball was still live and the ball got back to him and he just was like, I guess I'll shoot it, and he made it. Then it felt like he was like, Well, I can't really limp too much now.

Yeah, now I got to scale it back. Because I just- I'm not going to go for the Oscar now.

I can't fall for that anymore with him, is my point. Because in those six minutes, I'm like, How What are they going to do? This guy looks like he's toast, and I know he's battling real injuries. But the P. J. Washington thing, this is the whole point. Every time you watch matchups, Bill, you'll go, Okay, what are you willing to give up? They've been willing to give up the P. J. Washington stuff. Sga has 93 points in the series. Luka has 70. P. J. Washington has the third most points three games into this series. That's not supposed to happen.

It feels like both of us, as much respect and admiration we have for how talented Luka is, I think both of us are starting to get annoyed by parts of the Luka package. The amount of times he spends bitching at the refs, in person, it's unbelievable. It's a running. He's doing a Mike Berbiglio one-man show just for two and a half hours, yapping. Every time, Oh, there's a dead spot. Now I can walk over to the closest ref and just yell at him about to play five minutes ago. It's like, I'm watching those coaches that just work the refs for the entire game, but it's a player that's doing it. I don't know if I've ever seen somebody bitch at the refs more than him. I'm trying to think. Whatever the shortlist is, he's on it. But I don't know if I've ever watched somebody who... It seems like it fuels him and gets him going to do it, but it's really weird. The refs are just like, Oh, man, this fucking guy. They've had it with him.

I'm not making excuses for it because watching it live is even worse than TV, if you can imagine. But I don't think he can help himself. I think it's just as soon as he gets out there, he's just a motherfucker. It's like to anyone else. It's just you're the opposition. It was funny because there was one play, I think he yelled at Ben Taylor, and then he realized, I'm just spazzing out on you right now because I'm mad because the shot didn't go in and I actually wasn't fouled. And he apologized by the time. He complained after the shot. And then by the time he hit half court, he was like, You know what? That one's on me. The good thing for Luca and Matt's fans is that when you complain this much, then people, they build up a tolerance to it. It's like the Draymon thing. So nobody's going to get on your case. You actually get away with murder.

I think to me, it's more like John McEnroe, where it's just like, you just know he's going to do it during the game or the match, and it becomes part of the package, and it keeps people on his toes. But he's also really hard to officiate. I think he uses some of the bitching to his advantage. But I talked about this on Thursday. I like watching guys when they're hurt because I think you find find out different things about how deep the basketball goes and how many tricks they have and how smart they are. When there's a little bit of a physical disadvantage, how they overcome it. He's been great at that because he's clearly hurt. But the fact that he's hurt, I think, is making him mad. So now he's even angrier at the refs and going more nuts at the refs. Also, the way OKC has been pretty physical with them. They've tried different people on him.

Well, the door part of it has to be annoying. I also think part of it is people will listen to this and say, Well, Draymond complains the entire... Yeah, but Draymond doesn't have the ball. He's not initiating the offense every single possession. So there's more opportunity. There's more opportunity for it. But look, we need to get back to giving the Mavs a ton of love here, even though I'm not even close to writing off OKC, not a chance. Are you to the point where you think the Mavs just take this series?

No. I think OKC has a better team. I don't know if they're ready to win this series, which is a cop-out answer. But I think they have more talent. I think their bench is better. I just don't think they totally know how to win some of these games. Then on the other side, you have Luka and you have Kyrie, who've been in a bunch of big games already. Then P. J. Washington is just playing great. Then everybody else is either like, If I'm open, I'm supposed to shoot a three, or if I'm a big guy, I just need to be around the room with my hands up. That's what I do. Dallas knows who they are, and their best two guys just have a shitload experience. The Shay part is the most interesting subplot to me in this series because I actually liked a lot of the shots that he was getting. I thought he was rushing stuff, but I feel like he can go to the spots that he wants to get to. I think if he's ready to take a little bit of a jump like what we saw from Edwards tonight, we're just like, I'm winning tonight.

I feel like he could have the game, but he doesn't have a lot of reps with this stuff. Sometimes you need the reps. Sometimes you need to grow into it. The problem for them is they might run out of the series before they have a chance to grow into it. I wanted more from Jalen Williams, too. I just didn't think he was at the level he was during the regular season with some of the crunch time stuff. He led them at fourth quarter points, I think, during the season. But Chet didn't show up in game 2, was really good in game 3, was super impactful. It seems like their best lineup has Isaiah Joe in it late. It's like Isiah Joe, J-Dub, Shay, Chet, and Dwart. And that's their five because Joe gives them the... And it was interesting, they ran a big out of bounds play for Joe when they were down six. They really trust him. I guess the question is, is that a team that can beat Luca and Kyrie and what Dallas is doing if that's your five? If Jalen Williams isn't going to go up a level like he did in the regular season.

Yeah, going into it, I like the OKC. I like the talent better. I think Kyrie has answered any of our concerns, at least for this year. So it wasn't a Kyrie thing. I didn't expect P. J. Washington. I saw a headline. I clicked on a story today just reading different game stories from this. It's like Dallas's trio of stars. I'm like, trio?Meaning PJ?Yeah.

We're trying to sneak a big three in there right now.

It's a shoehorn.

But if you're Dagenal and you're thinking about your approach to this, you're going, Okay, well, let's see here. The points in the paint thing hasn't been a bludgeoning except for game three, where Dallas was plus team. But OKC won the paints in the point game one and game two. The rebounding differentials haven't been a disaster for him. They were minus seven in game three. The gitty part that I liked when SGA was in the regular season where Gidey was basically playing the best offensive ball of his career, and I thought, Hey, this is probably going to be good for him off the ball, build him back up a little bit. Those minutes have been disastrous, and they may pull the plug on this entirely with Gidey.

It's so funny. They're in the same spot they were in with Perk once upon a time and Derek Fisher, OKC.

Roberson?

Yeah, Roberson is another one. They always have the one guy. It's like, Oh, man, look at those plus minus minutes. I looked up the 2011 Dallas OKC finals, and I wonder if this is going to play out like that one did. Okc, they were like a year before they made the finals. They had more talent. Dirk was awesome. Dallas one and five. All the games were pretty close. And OKC just wasn't ready to win the series yet. They came back a year later and blow torched everybody and made the finals. Part of me wonders if that's OKC, but I still think they have more talent. I think OKC is going to... If I had to I would bet on OKC to win game four. I think it's going seven. Then if it goes seven, I think it's bad for them because that's so hard for a young team, even if they're home. Just so many guys who have not been in a game or a situation like that. We saw it with Orlando and Cleveland. The young guys in a game seven, man, I just don't trust it. Dallas in a nice spot.

That's a good comp because it's like, all right, well, whatever you think of Donovan Mitchell, you're just going to trust more than anybody in Orlando. Even though there's not some extensive playoff resume there, it's better than anything you have on the magic. And maybe that's it. Because I think if you're the thunder, you're going, okay, well, this P. J. Washington thing can't continue. He's 54% from the floor and from three. So both of those numbers are 54%. You got away. You probably felt like, Hey, if Kyrie is going to have the low output that he had in game two, you should have been more in that game. They weren't. And with Luka having that stretch in that third quarter that we've already talked about, it's like, Okay, we'll find a way. But they got up big in game three, and then Dallas goes on their own 16:0 run. You probably expect Chet to shoot a little bit better. I really like who Chet is. I like how he fills in all these different gaps, offensively for him, but you're still not going to be ever using him, probably in these playoff moments, to be like, Hey, Chet, go get us a bucket.

That was the whole point of having SGA and having Jalen Williams, and having a team that was number one from three in the regular season and has not matched it here. As we keep talking about the talent and the things we like about the Thunder, I'm willing to say maybe Dallas is just tougher these guys. Maybe Lucas had it.

To that point, the thing that worries me, the rebounding differential isn't that terrible for OKC, but it feels like over and over again in these big sequences, they don't get the rebound.

Yeah, I thought it was going to be worse. Right. So when I went back and looked at the numbers, God, I feel like the eyes told me it was more of a problem.

I don't feel like they're getting the rebound when it's like, Oh, three-pointer bounces in the air. I'm like, They're probably not getting it. Dallas is probably getting it back. Well, we'll see. Last series is Boston, Cleveland.

How are we feeling? Let's go back to game 2, Bill. I didn't get to talk to game 2, Bill.

No, game 2, Bill was like, this is when they don't come out of the game and play defense, this is what happens. They came out of game 3, they played defense. The defense leads to the offense. It was so funny watching the pregame show. You know they're going to do it. It's like, Jason Tatum needs to step up, and they have to do that whole thing. It's like, no. They just need to play defense because when they play defense, everything else good happens off the defense. They start running the ball more, they start moving, guys get more invested, they get fast break. It's a really good fast break team. Game three, people were coming out of it. I like the way Tatum, there was a control that he had over the game, and I like the decision to me. I didn't think he shot that well. I thought Jalen was awesome. It was so funny. If I'm Jalen, I'm like, Fuck. Tatum's the story? Jalen was awesome in that game. It was the two of them together. It was a classic Jay's game where they just, the two of them together. But the alarming thing to me was, this is where I was texted with my dad the last 24 hours and FaceTime in this morning.

Joe Missoula just 39 minutes for Horford. Just take the yellow pages and just fucking hit me over the head with it. I just can't take it because he was dead. He wasn't just short-arming. When he was taking those threes, he looked like a guy who was putting on his right arm and trying to lock some safety harness it and then chucking it. I just don't understand what world they should play Al Hoare for 39 minutes in a round two play-off game against the team they're going to beat. If there's ever a situation to try to work some more dudes in there. So I see stuff like that and I'm like, Man, this guy, is he ever going to get it? And then I didn't like the Tatum quotes after game two either. I just didn't understand it. Yeah, that was weird. It was like, I love Tatum.

Hey, we're not that good.

Yeah, I love Tatum, but he's like, You guys are telling us we don't have an MVP. We don't have a coach of the year. So how are we some super team if we don't win awards? It's like, not the time, dude. You guys sucked in game two. Play defense. That's it. Play defense.

I have a lot here. It's not so much just in game three. So you can cut me off whenever you want to cut me off. But the Tatum part of this is always going to be a challenge for him because he's not a top five player. He just isn't. There's been seasons maybe going into it where you're like, Hey, there's going to be five guys. And for me, it's still the four. It's Jokić, Luka, Janis. I think SGA is there. Ant, to me, has surpassed Tatum. I don't really have much debate about it. I know statistically, MB, but when we do this next year, when we do our top five, I don't care what MB stats are. I'm just not putting them in it anymore. That's what this playoff series has meant to me as far as my future MB ranking system. But when you start looking at... Look, Tatum overall could be better. He could shoot it better. But specific to how the Celtics have been defended in these two series, I don't know how many people are going to agree with me on this one, but when I look at the overall approach to Tatum, I think more teams would be better off having, if you don't have a top five guy, having a guy with Tatum's mindset.

The fact that Tatum has been willing to defer because the way the defensive matchups have lined up in these two series, I think is a massive credit to Tatum's maturity and who he is as a player.

And the rebounding. Don't forget the rebounding because that's the other... He really gives a shit. He protects the boards and he gets them.

Yeah, because his rebounding and then the free throw attempts, too, which is way up here in the playoff.

Two things we've always wanted from him.

If you look at the last four playoff games, his average shots per game, excuse me, the last four playoff seasons, so I should say, previous to this year. Go through the previous four playoff seasons. Could have set that up better. 20, 22, 20, and 20. Going into last night, he was taking 16 shots a game. So it's really easy. They lose the game, too, against Miami. And they blew out Miami in so many of these games. There's another reason why the shot totals aren't as much. But the most important thing that I've noticed is Miami was so screwed because of their own limitations with their roster. They're like, We have to put Caleb Martin on Tatum. He's the most important player, he's the best player. That ended up with Hero and Brown. And instead of Tatum being like, Hey, I'm the superstar, I'm the one, and Brown's the two, I got to take all my shots. I got my 30, so nobody's question me on TV shows all the time. I'm just going to let Brown destroy Tyler Hero's trade value this summer. I'm just going to go let him do that. The first thing I look for in game one of Cleveland, like, okay, what are they going to do?

Well, guess what? They put a Koro on Tatum because really this series, I don't think should be close against Cleveland. If you look at the perimeter matchups, every one of them is bad for Cleveland. Then you can't put Mitchell on anybody real. So he's hoping Drew Holodey is an aggressive that night. Then you've got Garland on white. I know a lot of this stuff gets crossed up over the course of a game, but that means it's Struce is on brown. So Tatum is going, All right, well, look, let's let Jalen Brown eat a little bit more. I think that's the bigger picture thing that's happening despite frustrations about some of the overall shooting numbers, then I think these first two series are a real positive for who this guy is as a player.

Well said. You agree. Yeah. My only nitpick is I don't think he's nearly as good of a three-point shooter as he seems to think he is, which I talked about on Thursday's pod. We just have a two-year plus sample size now that he's just not an elite three-point shooter. He's streaky, but he's a 33 to 35% three-point shooter here for two years now. The step back, I think if you're the other team, you love nothing more than when four guys are standing around watching him and he's driven between his legs and taking 27 footers. What you don't want is the tatum that we saw the other night where he was inclusive, he was rebounding, he was getting in the basket, even if the shot wasn't falling. I just thought he was impactful the whole game. What's weird, I've watched him so many times now, in the first quarter, you can tell by his demeanor, the look on his face, how he approaches the first six minutes, you're like, got it tonight. Looking good. But I still felt like that game, Cleveland didn't play well in the second half. I thought the Celts let them hang around.

There was a couple of moments where I was like, Oh, my God. It reminded me of that game when the Dean Wade game from the regular season.

They tried to Dean Wade you last night.

They really did. I had Dean. I was like, I'm monitoring every... They're up 17. I'm like, We were here in January, February, whatever that was. It's like three-pointer miss, three-pointer miss. We're up eight. What happened? And it never really happened yesterday. But the team's just not It's the same special without Porzengas. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't matter with these three playoff matchups they're going to have. But it's going to matter against Minnesota or Denver.

Yeah. The Mowbley thing was really nice to see from him game two because I think most of his offense is supported by something else. They were trying a lot of this stuff where they bring Horford up to screen. There was a ton of Horford hunting in game three. It was getting bad for our guy. And what they'll do is they'll just bring the ball wide, and then Mowbley has that roll behind it, and it's wide open. Instead of going on the drive with it, they'll go away from it. And then Mowbley's just eating free. But then Cleveland even tried to do this small lineup, and I'm sitting there going, okay, well, if you guys don't start attacking this, if you can start pulling up for threes against this. And that's where Jalen Brown was incredible. But I think everybody that's listening to this that's a Celtics fan, like game two, this was the possession that I just went, are you guys seriously going to do this stuff? They're down 99,83 to Cleveland. This is in game two. There's a timeout. They get the ball in, little whatever misdirection. They get it to Tatum on the left side, and he holds it for seven seconds, and no one moves.

No one moves. And of course, guess what he does. Step back, elbow, jumper, misses against Struce. It's like, this is one of the biggest possessions in the game. This is what you had. This is what you had. This week came up with. You just had a time out, and this is that... I'm going to stop. It's this habit. I don't know. I think that might be... Maybe if they find a to win with this group, but I swear to God, if you ever had to do a video intro on this team 20 years later and be like, Hey, how come that team never won? It's like, They used to love this one play. They called it Everybody Watch. And as good as they are, and there's no... I mean, man, if they didn't get out of the East this year, I saw that play and I just went like, How do you... Everybody has bad shots. Every great player has some shots. You're like, What are you guys doing? Pritchard's three, although I wouldn't consider him a great player. A 31-footer? That was an awful, awful decision at that moment.

I liked it. I thought it was going in. When he steps into it like that, I think it's going in. I'll tell you this, when Cleveland went small. I was like, Just do it for me, Jomes. Just two minutes. Go small and put Tatum at the center. Just do it. Just do it for me. I love it. Just put Tatum and Brandon at three guards. I just want to see what it looks like. He just won't do it. He just He'll play a center against a small lineup until he dies. But I think my fear with the Celtics team is that Miami wasn't afraid of them to the bitter end, even though they were completely outmanned and losing by 20 a game. I still don't feel like they were that... Like, Oh, man, we're running a buzz saw. I felt like they felt like they could come back in all those games, which was ludicrous. I think Mitchell thinks that Cleveland can win the series. I think he genuinely thinks it. You watch him, the way he carries himself during the games, how he's talking in the timeouts. I could totally see them winning game four.

I could. Without Porzingis, I don't trust this Celtics team in the same way. They look great when they're up 15. They look great when they're up 17. But it'll be a nice little interesting tester for them if tomorrow's close. I want to see them play a close game on the road and have to pull it Because we haven't seen them in a close playoff game yet that they've won because it's either been a blowout or they've lost.

One of my favorite things about the playoff is that it happens every single year, whether it's on TV shows or social media or just your friends, friends and family. This is what we do for our job. We watch all this stuff year-round. It's a great job. It's a great job. I've had jobs that aren't great. Even my worst day on this job isn't even close to being as bad as the worst day of jobs that I've had in the past. But the part that's so revealing is how many people actually don't watch but have been totally okay sharing their opinions all season long. And then they watched Donovan Mitchell for the first time, and they see him get 50 against the magic. They see him, you just know. He's pencil him in for 30 for game 4. It's a matter of, is he getting 30? Is he getting 45? And he doesn't miss from three like he did in the first half of game three. But then all of a sudden, it's At least in my friend group, it's like, Dude, you'd rather have Tatum than Mitchell? And I'll go, 30 teams would take Tatum over Mitchell.

And I like Mitchell. I voted them all NBA two years ago. I would have voted them all NBA this year. I think I defend Mitchell a little bit more than others do, considering- You do. You're pro Mitchell. I'm pro. Everybody's favorite cliché for me. I've always been pro Mitchell. But last year, you go back one year, he was one of the most unpopular scores in the lead because of how that next series went. He's an unafraid dude. He's the best you can do if you can't get one of those other guys. That's why I still think a ton of teams would be interested in him if Cleveland has to face some tough decisions here. But if you go end-to-end of a season or tomorrow, you can have one of these two guys to start your franchise. I think 30 out of 30 teams would take Tatum, yet the people closest to me, because they haven't watched anything, are going, Wait, Mitchell, what's this guy? He's the sixth best player in the league. He's awesome, but he's not that.

I also think we'll go to break, but I think it's weird that I feel more comfortable with the Celtics on the road than at home.

Yeah, what's the record now?

No explanation for that at all. Is it 500? They've been 500 at home for a couple of years now. I was talking to somebody about this, trying to figure out a reason for it, because I think the Celtics have great home crowds. We've all been in the building. The energy is great. I think part of the problem is we've been watching these guys for so long that we know the signs when something bad might happen or they don't have it or it's feeling choppy and it's like the crowd, the sphincters get tight because they recognize this pattern from the past. You know with this Tate and Brown era when it's off in a game. Like, Oh, no. That white guy in the other team just made another three. Up. Tatum, 27-foot stepback miss. Up, fast break layup. Joe won't call time out. It just becomes Groundhog day. I wonder if that's part of it. Anyway, we got to talk about the lottery, so let's take a break. All right, the lottery was today. I don't know why I was on a Sunday. I thought that was weird. I thought the telecast was just all-time bizarre.

We didn't even know that the number 13 team jumped. I don't know if they said it. Then it was just more chaos than the top four than I think we've had in a while. If there was ever a time to spend 10 minutes with people who know what they're talking about, about the draft and what teams landed where, that would have been the time to hear it. But we had to interview all the draft pics for the first 15 minutes of the show, which I don't know who wants that. I can't name one person. I just want to know who won the lottery. Give me immediate expert thoughts from people, what it Atlanta gets the number one pick. I thought Scoot looked great. Scoot, our guy, I was happy for him. Atlanta jumps into the top four and then the top one. They had the second worst odds, 3%. They got the first pick for the first time since 1975. David Thompson, who ended up never playing there. One of the weirder draughts because the ABA was involved. So we're going on the ramifications of that. But then the Rockets jumped to three, and then the Spurs locked down four.

So we Hawks, Wizards, Rockets, Spurs. Everybody knows this is listening. This is, by all counts, one of the worst three draughts the last 25 years. It's a draft. Somebody who knows the draft said it would be a draft if you took a normal draft and you just chopped the top three guys out of it. So the normal top three you would have were like, Oh, that guy might be a superstar. Whoa, this guy, look out for him. He's got all the tools. And you just took those three guys out and started the draft at four, where like, DeAndre Hunter gets picked or Alex Lynn, those kinds of pics. That's what this draft is. It just starts there at four. What have you heard about the lottery? We could go into all the ramifications of the Hawks getting the first picture that they blow it up for. But what does it even mean to get the first pick?

I texted after the lottery was settled. I heard from eight teams that I texted a few more, but hey, it's Mother's Day. You saying this is starting at four, that's the nicest thing that I've heard because my responses from front office people today was far worse than that.

Starting at six? Starting at eight?

One team said, Our analytics staff does a projected value on what this player is coming in for the people that are in the conversation. You're number one. This team said that their team suggested it's the seventh or eighth pick owning first pick this year in a normal draft. I asked another team, I said, What player could you get in a trade for the number one pick? And he said, Maybe the fourth or fifth starter on a decent team. I think that was a little high. Lou Dore? Yeah. No one said Lou Dore in particular, but yes, that's a good... Derek White's a no.

Right. So Atlanta says, Hey, Boston, we'll give you the number one pick for Derek White, and Boston Right.

Hangs up. Okay. I had another guy say- The Clippers are like, Terrence Mann?

No way. Hang up.

Seriously, Bill? That's the vibe that I got from all of these people. I was asking, I was like, Give me a good name. Somebody give me a good name. I had another guy say it's starting the draft at 10th. I was like, all right, that's the worst thing that I had heard from today. Here was a It's like, would the Knicks do... See, there's the Atlanta problem. Okay, so just in a vacuum, what is this pick worth on the open market? But then there's the Atlanta problem about what they're going to try to do. But say the Knicks, would you do Julius Randall? But then it's like, okay, so what are we going to do? Trade some foreign guy who's the number one overall pick to Tib so he can rot in the bench for a year. Right. Buy Jericho Sims because Tib hates him.

I don't think I've ever heard- The number one pick for DeAndre Hunter and The number one pick with DeAndre Hunter for Mikael Bridges is an immediate no from Brooklyn.

No way. Immediately no. Yeah.

Kam Johnson?

Now, maybe we I'm going to talk because then I asked somebody else. I was like, give me comps on the top because I haven't done any work. I've debated sitting this draft out.

I think you should sit it out. Maybe just get it to... I'd make Revolutionary War. Maybe make another run.

I have a lot. He was saying this is essentially like a Derek Lively or Tobias Harris being the number one pick in the draft.

But that would make sense if you said, Cut the top 10 off. Derek Lively was like the 11th pick.

Yeah, and Harris was just outside of that. Was Harris 18, actually? He might have gone later because I remember being like, Hey, he's too good to go that late. Was I right or wrong? I don't know.

Well, Atlanta getting it, it's too bad the draft is not good because it would have made them an intriguing blow-it-up team.

19.

Harris was 19. Did you know the number one pick has only been traded three times?

I do now.

1990, 1993, 2017. I am leaning toward Atlanta being not a blowed up team, but a pick between Murray and Young and just take whoever they think is the best guy and try to be decent because San Antonio has their pick next year. So blowing it up, I don't know what that does for them because next year's draft is awesome by all accounts. I don't know why you'd want to blow it up when you don't have your pick unless one of those two guys was going to San Antonio and you can get your pick back. Then blow it up would make sense. So I don't know. I'm not to tell you. Trey is making 43, 45, and 47 next Murray's making 25, 27, 29, 31. They got Capella, 22. They have a congrue at first of four years, starting at 14. Hunter's at 21, 23, 24 next three years. Bogdanavich, 17, and 16. They also have Jalen Johnson, a couple of young guards.

I love Jalen Johnson. He's one of my favorite-Me, too. Talk stories of this past year. I'm going through some more on my text here. Another team, front office guy was like, Could you do a first to the heat for Jimmy Butler, but you have to give Butler the extension. Granted, that means money going out, too. I'm not going to get the Trade Machine.

You have to do Hunter and Bogdanovitch for Jimmy Butler.

You throw in the first pick. But then you go, Well, that's not the way Reilly operates. What if Brandon Ingram now is available? It's like, so what do the Pelicans do? Do you add another pick from the draft that nobody likes? Would Chicago do something? And it's like, none of these guys are worth blowing up. I think what ends up happening, this would just be my guess. It's still probably cooler to go, what if we're all wrong and one of these guys is being really good and we guess right? So why don't we just keep that first overall pick? But I think the Hawks end up making it so much different. If it was Washington, they go, Hey, dude, these pieces that are being offered back to us doesn't even make any sense for us. We're not any good. We want to be bad next year anyway for Cooper Flag. So what's the point? We'll just take the guy. We're going to keep it because it's just cooler to say, Hey, we took the number one the draft this year, and maybe we're all wrong, and we get surprised because we're surprised all the time in this process.

But for Atlanta, you're right. I think they have to figure out the Trey Murray thing.

Well, he changed agents last week. Kim and Murray were both clutched. Now Trey is CAA. That's a real thing. It's really starting to come out in public that those guys didn't like playing with each other, so they got to pick one.

Well, no. People don't like playing with Trey. I don't know how many times, how many years I got to keep this. When they trade him, maybe- I was being nice. Yeah. Maybe finally, people that have argued with me about this for years who have apparently zero information will... Basically, let me just put it this way. I'm not going to be a dick when the day comes, but understand I'll be smiling in solidarity.

There's no Miami possibility for him, is there?

Oh, I think that's a good guess. That Miami just goes, Hey, we know how to do things. We're better. The whole Miami spiel to him. You know what's crazy is I'll never forget certain blind spots that you can have sometimes as a man. Where you're like, Wait, is that something that happens? I don't know that that happens because I've only been a man. There was a headline with Zackerts, tight-in, the NFL. His wife, her name, is it Julie? Is it Julie?

Really good soccer player. Yeah, Julie Ertz.

Right. Great soccer player. There was a headline that was like, Zack Earth's Wife Describes whatever, whatever, whatever. It was once that headline came out, it was fucking on. It was like, She has a name. The thing It's just she's accomplished enough that you would go.

Yeah, she'd earned Julie Earth status.

She earned Julie Earth status. But the way it was being brought up, I was like, Wait, is there something here that I've never noticed before? Is this a misogynistic that happens with headlines? And so I started paying attention to it. I was keeping logs. And what I learned is it doesn't have anything to do with it.

Like in a Google Doc, like a Microsoft Word?

Yeah. Well, actually long form. I got this new tablet.

Okay.

I promise there's a connection here. Once I started tracking it, I was like, it actually has everything to do with Fame and what level of Fame you're at or not. Whoever made that shitty headline decided at that point that the NFL player was the more recognizable name. I remember when Meek Mill got in a fight with Nicki Minaj's fiancé, it was Meek Mill gets into altercation with Nicki Minaj's fiancé. It was just that guy wasn't famous enough, so he got left out, and the other two people were mentioned. If you were to say, get arrested, it may say, ESPN Host arrested, if you're not famous enough. The point that I'm making here is I saw a link today that said, $250 million dollar All-Star, not likely to go to Lakers based on news from today. I'm like, Trey Young couldn't even get his name in a Lakers media piece? That was the headline. Wow. Yeah. I'm just telling you, it happens to everybody. It's just a level of fame. Trey Young is famous enough to have been in that headline. Julia Hertz is certainly famous enough. Others, not as famous.

I like how you brought that around. It's something I've been passionate about for a while as well. I've noticed on the AOL home screen 20 years ago, you'd be like, NFL Running Back, Found Dead. And it'd be like, Oh, my God, who was it? And then it would be somebody you'd never heard of. Apple News does it, too. Apple News loves Lakers. Lakers star snaps at press, and then the Laker Star will be like Jackson Hayes.

Yeah, right.

Exactly. Lakers star.

It'll be like former- You bait and switch me. They'll It'll always be like a real estate thing. Like former Clipper Star buys Palace Verde's estate and you're like- It's like Bobby Simmons. You just go. I'm glad you're as passionate about this. No, I love it. I know it took me a while to get there, but I just- You landed the plane. Okay, thanks.

I was trying to figure out a Nets, Nets, Hawks trade.

Lay them on me because I'm too dismissive. When we have this, just a little heads up, and I want to apologize you. When we do this exercise, I got to have a more open mind.

Well, because we have so many trades. Well, I guess where I was landed was I had eight possible Trey young teams: Miami, the Clippers, New Orleans, the Spurs, who I think have already said they're not interested, the Magic, the Nets, Washington, and the Lakers, and the Lakers would be stupid. But if there's a Nets, Knicks, Hawks trade, where I'm really going with this mentally is, how do we get Mikhel Bridges to the Knicks? Because I don't I think the Nets will just trade him to the Knicks for Picks. They have all their their their pics going to Houston, and they're going to want people back who are actually going to be confident. So not just be like, Here's Mikael Bridges. Give us Picks back. It needs to be some three a two-way trade? And is there a way Trey Young could go to Brooklyn and Bridges could go to the Knicks? And then maybe Randall and Picks goes to the Hawks. There's some arrangement where everybody's happy, which leads to the second question is, are we even sure the Knicks want to trade Randall? Do they look at what's happening in the playoffs and say to themselves, Man, if we'd had Randall, we could have made the finals.

I think they do like Randall more than most. But I just like the idea of Bridges with the Villanova thing. I was talking to a Knicks fan about it, about how special those three guys are together. They've talked about it, about how when you win a title like that, and it could be in high school, it could be fucking college, wherever it is, the connection and the chemistry you have is just completely different. There's a trust and a confidence those three guys have and reps with each other that's really special. I think that's one of the reasons you and I care less about the Knicks. It's fun to watch Brunson, but it's also really fun to watch those three guys. Brunson's kicking. Difincenzo is just moving to this spot in the corner. Brunson doesn't even have to look over. He just knows exactly where he's going to be. And it'd be like, How cool would it be to also put bridges there who's the fourth guy who thinks like those guys. If I was the next, that's who I'd go after. It's like, how do we add Bridges to this? Because remember we were talking the other day about who would it make sense to add to this?

Would you add Donovan Mitchell to this? Would it be too weird? Would you trade everything you had to add doesn't make sense.

Mitchell things, as much as I like him, it doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't make sense for what this is, how they're built, but Bridges does make sense. That got me thinking there's some three-way thing. That would be my main preference. I also am really interested with the magic with Trey. I think for selfish reasons because of our guy, Cerruti, having him go through the day-to-day Trey Young experience would be really fun. But I also think that's the guy they need. Maybe as he gets older, they could hide him defensively in some ways.

I think Trey needs to go somewhere where he respects someone else on the team. If he goes to Orlando, it's just going to be the Florida version of the Hawks. Of the Burntal. Everybody else will get worse.

Well, the most fun for you and I would be Clippers for Paul George, a sign-and-trade, and then we got to watch Trey Young and Harden together. That would be the most fun, just personally for me from a comedic standpoint.

No, I would love to hear Lakers fans that never watch them play talk about how they're the favorites, and then people on TV, talk about how they might be the favorite, and then have it not work out, and then hear behind the scenes, LeBron never liked to trade in the first place. Lebron never wanted to. But now that the clutch part, the clutch part hasn't happened, though. The clutch part of it before, it felt like a real possibility.

They couldn't make it happen when he was on clutch. Well, the other guy that's out there is Ingram, and New Orleans has a million pics. That's one where You could talk yourself into they keep Murray, they add Ingram, they add a bunch of picks. Trey goes to New Orleans. That gets a little weird with Zion. Do you want Trey to have the ball that much?

Okay, but here's the thing. You might be on to something there. Thank you. It's not just Trey being the best lob guy in the league to Zion, which would be a lot of fun.

And to Trey Murphy.

But if you go Trey Murphy, Herb Jones, Zion around Trey, and I think Zion became passable defensively with an all defensive player like Herb, and I think Murphy will get better. They still got to figure out what they want to do with this Valenzunas, Larry Nantes thing. There might be enough defense around Trey to maybe get away with it.

It may be a Konglu is in that trade.

I like a Konglu.

Because the funny thing about- They probably wouldn't do that.

They probably... Yeah, I don't know.

Well, the funny thing about them getting the number one pick is people think the center, Sahr, is going to be the first pick, and that's the one position I made. They don't need point guards or centers. They need everybody else in between. But the center seems like the logical pick. Yeah, there's an Ingram and Hawk.

Well, that's why the Spurs. If the Spurs had won the lottery today, I'm like, What are they going to do? Now, granted, they could trade it.

Right. Well, we should talk about them, though, because that was one of the important things that happened. The Raptors had the top six protected pick. They go into the lottery six, they fall back to eight, and the Yaka Pertle trade just becomes a mass murder at that point. Now, number eight in this draft might be number 17 in a normal draft, so maybe it doesn't matter that much, but it just sucks to lose a first-run pick when you had a shitty season. So San Antonio has four and eight.

When they take Toronto's tanking, they take it to another level.

They tanked hard. Yeah, they won the tanking Championship.

But no one likes… I should say, Dershey love Yaka Pertle as much as Toronto, so they're probably like, Hey, we love the guy.

Yeah, we're so happy we had him. We wouldn't have been able to go 29 and 53 without him. Santana has got four and eight. There's a French wing guy. I'm not going to try to pronounce his name. And there's three point guards that will go Nikola Topich. Topich? We know how to say his name. The point, he's like a drogge type of point guard, lefty. Dillingham and Sheppard. And it feels like all three of those point cards are going to be top 8 picks. So the Spurx can get one of those guys and maybe the French guy, I don't know. I just want the Spurs to get creators, people who are fun to play with, people who are inclusive, people who know how to throw a fucking entry pass, people who can... Just like, I want two guys to play with Wemby. Yeah. Can you throw an entry pass? Can you throw a lab pass? Can you cut without the ball? Does the ball move when you get it? That's what they should be looking for. But those are nice pics. But if also, if they wanted to make a trade and package those, too, with some of the other stuff they have, they could get pretty aggressive.

Somebody wanted to blow it up. It seems like Detroit wants to trade number five because they're tired of ticking young guys. And then the other big one was Houston jumped to three. Houston, from an asset standpoint, Schengen, Van Bied, Brooks, Jibari, who I really thought I'd like this season he had, Jalen Green, Thompson, Whitmore, third pick. They have Brooklyn's first in '26. They can swap them in '27. Pretty good spot for a mega trade if they're thinking about it.

How about that story about how Stone asked the Nets, Do you want your Picks back for your Phoenix Picks?

Is that true?

I saw it. I don't know. You're right. If I brought it up, I probably should have checked it out.

No, that would be, Which Picks would you rather have?

Because the Phoenix Picks, there's four. That was the whole point.

Four of them. There's three firsts in a swap. And then Brooklyn's got next year, 26 first, and then a swap in 27. So I guess there's more Phoenix Picks. I wrote down possible trade targets this summer. Tell me if I left out anybody.

That was Sports Illustrated reported it.

Yeah. Possible guys. Guards. Just possible. I'm not saying these guys are available.

It got aggregated. I'm sorry. It came from the Houston Chronicle first. I just want to make sure I try to do my best to do that, considering I can't hate. I just hate how much everybody just bites everybody's shit now. Keep going.

Possible guys available this summer. I'm not saying they're going to become available. I just think it's conceivable.

Conceivable.

Donovan Mitchell, Booker. I'm still putting them on there. I know they're not going to trade them.

He has to make it ugly, and I don't think he would do that yet.

I'm just putting him on there because he'll be on Coach 7, the new owner syndrome personified, and maybe he'll just be like, Get me out. Hero, Levine, LaMelo, I'm putting on there. Simons. Forwards, Ingram, Randall, Bridges, Jimmy Butler, Paul George, KD, I'm putting them on there. Jeremy Grant. I'm throwing on Jalen, just if the Boston thing gets so fucking awful over the next four weeks, they have to blow up some way. Then Towns, Draymond, and Ayton. The reason I bring all this up is not as many people as I was expecting, because I don't even think 80% of those are even plausible. I don't know how many guys Guys are going to be available. Maybe you put Jared Allen on there. If the Cavs decide Mobile is the center, we'll go that way. Maybe Garland's on there, but I think they'd be nuts to give up on Garland, especially. He broke his jaw this year.

They can't with the Mitchell thing. I still think even though Garland's had some disappointing stretches through this series, I'm still a fan of Garland. The Mobile-Alan thing actually might be the more long-term concern than even the Mitchell-Garland part Because I was thinking about it. It sucks that Allen isn't playing. Allen is the type of player where 30 teams would love Jared Allen. I like to have this list in my head. Even Evan Mowbley, who clearly is not getting to that place offensively, and we've talked about this too many times already. I I don't care about the 21 in game 2. I need to see more to think I'm going to have faith in him just all of a sudden now becoming this offensive threat and create his own. The problem is, when you look around the league, how many teams are playing two non-stretched bigs at the same time? It just doesn't happen.

Yeah. Well, especially if they think Mowbley can play center, then you have to think about Jared Allen. I think a lot of teams would like him. He's a good contract.

Would you rather have Allen than Mowbley?

I'd rather have Mowbley because of the upside. He's still only 22. I think defensively, he's pretty special.

Yeah, I think Mowbley is switching defensively. If this is all he is, it's still a nice player. It's just super frustrating because when he came out, man, his feet His hands, his passing, the stretch is where you go, Oh, there's another great play, another great read. Perfect instincts there. Then he can't even... He had a right shoulder turn finish at the hoop the other night, and I was like, Oh, my God. He actually did it. He turned the other way. I couldn't believe it when I saw it because there's just so many other times where I feel like... He had a dunk in game, too, where he was so awkward in his takeoff that he wasn't quite sure, Oh, my God, I guess I'm going to be able to do this. And he finished, but the journey was alarming.

Yeah, the footwork is really clumsy. Almost like when you go to a high school game and you're watching their big man, he's got a lot of potential and he tries to do a drop step or something. But I think he's 22. I just feel like it should be a little more fluid at this point. But then he'll do three things defensively during a game that I think four guys in the league can do.

So he wants the rookie max. You're giving it to him?

I think you have to.

Oh, man.

I don't feel good about it, but I think you have to, especially with the cap going up. I mean, shit. By the way, one of the funniest things ever is that we're all pretending that the TV deal wasn't done like a week and a half ago.

I listen to you and Ethan. I'm just not as on it as you guys are.

No, me and Belanie were on it. I think it's done. I think Warner already lost it. I don't know why we're waiting until after the playoffs. Maybe that's how they have to do it, but It's a wrap. Mbc is getting it. Just telling. Brooklyn, this is the third top three pick they've given another team since 2016. They've won two playoff series in 10 years. They do not have their pick next year because they get the worst of a swap with Houston and OKC. Basically, they're getting OKC's pick next year, which would be like '27. They don't have their pick in '26, and they have this swap in '27. Just a long ouch with multiple H's. Really tough. I don't think they've ever been less relevant in New York. You think that whatever was available for them, especially in the late 2010s, when it really felt like the next day rock bottom, now it's swung back where this is the most popular next team in 25 years and the least interesting Brooklyn team since the mid-2010s when they had no first-round picks. This is why I think they're a Trey Young possibility. You have to be.

You don't have your pick anyway. You have to have somebody that could be like, Hey, they have Trey Young. Oh, he always kills the Knicks. Oh, now we have a rivalry. They have to get Trey Young.

But the Atlanta thing still is because all the rumblings are like, Okay, they may really You have to find a way to be different here. And since they've already spent the pics on DeJante and whatever that is, DeJante is not perfect. I think you ended up being really down on them this year, and you might be right. But there was enough games there where Trey wasn't there. And if you looked at all the different numbers It was like they ended up being 14 and 14 without them, which is actually an improvement for who they were this year. They're going in the wrong direction. And then you throw the number one pick for the whole thing. I don't think Of all the teams that could have gotten it for all the to-do list stuff that we felt like they were a part of. If you had to pick three teams, Hey, give me three teams you think will be different this year, not just because of expiring contracts, but might actually get aggressive and to break things up a bit. I think New Orleans is in that group. Atlanta. Atlanta would be one of the other teams you would pick in the three.

And Philly. Philly is a good one, too. Philly. Then maybe that means there's a Clippers thing, but they have a couple of big decisions to make. Atlanta is going to be sitting there going, imagine if we get this pick in the end of the other year. We have this incredible asset so we can maybe do two things at once. Is move one of the guards out, bring back this other piece. We don't want to rebuild. That ownership thing was weird forever. It seems solid now, but I can't believe they ended up with it. I mean, I don't care that they ended up with it, but it's such a weird fit for whatever it is they want to be moving forward, where if the Wizards get it- Especially when they don't know what they want to be.

Yeah, if the Wizards took it, they would just take the center. I wonder if they called the Spurs and said, We'll give you back, Murray. Just give us our 25 pickback and dump the swap. We're good. You can keep that 27. We're good to go.

Well, if San Antonio traded Murray, even though they got a haul for it, that might tell you that they were still okay moving on from them. But then when you think about what they for Derek White in comparison to DeJante in the way of the branding of a player can change their value around the league, there wouldn't be one team that would want DeJante over D errick White. I would think.

I'm still reeling from him making that one shot against the Celtics and celebrating for a minute and a half.

Well, the Atlanta games at the end of the year in the regular season are still those haunting Celtics games, or when you see what happens in game two against Cleveland. The Miami game was such a shooting aberration. I don't even think that wasn't shot variation in game two, but now we're back on the Celtics, so let's keep it moving.

Other losers, Detroit dropped to fifth and Memphis, who I think deep down was thinking, Man, this could have been a pretty cool outcome if we end up with a top three pick. This is the year from how we'd above Gigi Jackson, Vince Williams, Jaws coming back next year.

A confident LaRevia.

We have Capsbate. Yeah, Marcus Smart's healthy. Got some good pieces. We'll add a top three pick at a shop walker, and they fell all the way to eighth, which was tough because I think they would have taken one of those centers. But it might be too high for him, and I'm not going to pretend to know anything about this draft, but Jared McCain, who you knew I love from the high school scene, is the most Memphis grizzly pick of all time. I just feel like he's going to end up there somehow. I don't know why. He's just so Memphis-y. I remember thinking that when he was at Centenario, I was like this guy's a grizzly type. There's guys in this draft. Connect, I think, is another one that could clearly come in. The Yukon wing is clearly an elite defender. Castle? Yeah.

He's one of the most impressive defensive players in college. I think he's going to go a little higher than people have him now.

I think Connect will go a little higher than people have now because he's the best shooter in the draft.

Because I watch more of him than the other guys as I figure out what I'm going to do here because it's turned into an expensive time hobby. But Castle, I think our guy KOC was doing a bit of rounding up on his offense. He was great against Alabama, but he hit a few shots in that. The problem is you're drafting a wing now, like fifth or sixth, where you go, Am I going to get any offense from him? And granted, Yukon didn't need him. Their point guard was terrific. Caravan was terrific. Klingon took over some of these games. Their bench guards would come in and hit shots. So it's not like Castle was getting a ton of... There'd be certain haves, where you're like, They didn't run one play for him, and he never even had the ball on his own. But his athleticism and his toughness in the defense, but when I see Some of the offensive stuff in the scouring floor, I feel like it's rounding up the best possible scenario, which, look, we're all guilty of doing. Could he be a Jaden McDaniels type of defender? He's not as long as Jaden.

I mean, Jaden's so damn long. But I think he could have… I mean, Jaden's just so big. But Castle off the ball, the stuff he was doing and just destroying the game for the other top scorer was really high-level stuff. I liked him. They were up 40 in that first game that I went to, and he still was playing as if it was a tie game. I couldn't believe it for a freshman.

No, he's clearly a playoff guy. I've studied even less of the draft than you, but that's at least like, Oh, this guy He has this elite skill that I know will work in the playoffs.

But like, Klingon was incredible, but he still can't shoot.

Yeah.

And he doesn't make free throws. So you're like, All right, what? Are we just drafting a younger Zack Eady?

Yeah.

And he's not. He's not Zack Eady. He's more active, clearly. So I shouldn't even say that. We don't edit it out. My point being that, like Clingin, you may be drafting this incredible defensive presence in certain matchups in that stuff. But it's going to be just a lot of... Look, maybe Derek Lively is more athletic and covers way more ground than Klingon does, but maybe that's good enough. Maybe that's good enough. Hey, we got a really nice role player here.

You guys see him at the athletic who does the tiers? Vincini?

Yeah.

Yeah. He had nine tier one or tier two guys from the last two draughts total, and he's got zero in this draft. His highest guy is tier I would vote as somebody invested in your welfare who I have to talk a lot of hoops with, my friend. I would vote you skip the draft this year. I'm fine with it. I think it's an awful draft. I probably won't. I know you won't. My vote would be skip it, really dive into maybe the 20 years leading up to the Revolutionary War. I don't know if you're as boned up on the 1750s. I don't know. There's some holes.

No, I do have some holes.

I do have some holes. Later 1800s, California. I don't feel like you could really talk a lot on.

I'll tell you right now, though, this Captain Cook book, Wide Wide Sea. Yeah. Can't put it down. Hamptonsides. It's just incredible. Can you imagine being just an absolute shit stain of a citizen in Greater London. But you get on board a ship and you're hoping not to die a scurvy. They took this Southern route around Cape Horn. Excuse me, not Cape Horn. They went around South Africa.

Yeah.

They work it into these islands and it cold because they're above Antarctica. They work it up to Tahiti. And these guys are getting off the boat. And for a couple of red feathers, they have a girlfriend for a month. And then it's like, all right, guys, we have to leave now and go to Alaska. Jesus. I can't believe there wasn't one ship that just said, hey, you know what we're not doing the rest of this quest? We're staying here in Tahiti, and we're not going anywhere. But I guess the problem would be that once England didn't hear from me the whole time and they were like, Oh, they lost at sea, another ship would be there in six months, and then you'd all be hung. So maybe it wouldn't be worth it.

I watched a Brook Shields movie on Netflix today with my wife and her mom and my daughter. But between basketball games.

I just see things are going well.

Yeah. Was set in Fuck It. What's Fuck It? What's that part of Thailand?

Oh, yeah. I don't know. I've never been there, but I know what you're talking about. Fuck It.

I don't think that's how it's pronounced. Yeah, I like calling it Fuck It. Benjamin Bratt was an old college flammer of Brook Shields' and turned out he was the dad of her new son-in-law because they were all there for the wedding. Then Chad Michael Murray worked at the hotel, and Rachel Harris was at the wedding as well. You're not going to believe this, but Brook Shields ended up with Benjamin Brett. It didn't seem like it was going to happen halfway through, but they worked it out. Spoiler alert. It all worked out at the end. My wife will never get tired of these movies. She loves them. She loves knowing where they're going to go, making fun of them as she watches them. Netflix's algorithm, obviously, agrees.

Cape Town is what we were looking for just west of Still Bay. Don't know why Cape Town escaped me. I knew it's late.

Can I ask you, do you think if it's Celtics versus the depleted Knicks in Round 3 Full account. Is that worth me going back to the East Coast for the entire time and abandoning my family?

Yes.

I feel that way, too, but it's a hard sell for my wife. I'm going to have to make believe Ogie's coming back.

I know because I had some buddies that were fighting with their wives today on Mother's Day, and I was like, Can't you just say, Hey, if it weren't for me, you'd be homeless? Have you tried that? Because no one emailed me back. I was going to test Just drive it with you.

I'm not going to pass that one along. That was a great mother's day. I had a good time.

Doesn't she realize who she's married to? Msg Celtics? What's the last time you had this?

What about Indiana, though?

It's a super easy place to get around, catch out a fever practice.

Fever started. When's that started? In a couple of days?

I ordered my WMBA pass. I actually did. I added it to my package there. I just want to supportive. I'm not being sarcastic. I'm serious. Go out there, add it.

Make it happen. Yeah, I actually have genuine WMBA team opinions this year.

I don't have opinions. I just wanted to make more money.

We're going to wrap up. When are you doing next podcast?

Taking a month off. See you after the finals. Okay. Tuesday. I'm back Tuesday.

Tuesday. I don't know. Go check the Drake May Rooky Minnen camp footage when you get a chance. I already did. Started developing a lot of chemistry with Polk. They went to the Bruins game today. Put on jerseys. Feeling great. I'm really enjoying the Drake May era. We're still great to see you. This is produced by Steve's reading. Kyle Creighton, as always. Don't forget, we have a live Rewatchables coming on Monday at 12:00 on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. Check it out. Rosillo, good to see you.

See you later.

On the wayside, I don't have a few years with them. On the wayside, on the channel. Check it out. Rasella, good to see you. See you later.