Alley Oop 9 (Part 1): Pistons, Harden, and Who Will Be MVP? w/ Kofie
14:55 Share

Take your plans out of the group chat and get long weekend ready in new Abercrombie. From day to night, pack new outfits for every part of your itinerary. Grabbing brunch? Throw on the A&F Mila dress. Then head to your dinner reservation in their new Bubble Hem mini dress. And yes, permission to overpack for pics with the girls. Abercrombie's best-selling Scarlet Squirt deserves a post in your feed. Your plans are worth it.

Shop Abercrombie's new long weekend collection online or in store. Hey, babe, I pulled up the McAllister's Deli app. What are you thinking? Good call. McAllister's Club might hit the spot. Oh, yeah. Chicken tortilla soup. Forgot about that.

Oh, Savannah chopped salad. Well, now I'm stuck. What are we going to do? How about we just do choose two mix and match our favorite items. I do like the sound of that. With so much variety at McAllister's choose to might just be for you. McAllister's deli. Welcome back to the NBA. Let me start over. Keep all that in.

Welcome back to the alley-oop. You got to know we got my dog back after a very, very upsetting first loss for his Pistons. Kofi, how you feeling today, man? I'm feeling good. I actually can't complain, man. I can't believe that we were a part of the wildest playoff series on the Eastern Conference. It was the most exciting series in the Eastern Conference, I feel like. And we didn't play awful. Right?

We had some bad games. We didn't have a truly embarrassing showing. Didn't get blown out the entire time. I really cannot complain. The Knicks are a great team.

Bro, put me right next to you when Tim Hardaway Jr. does not get the call at the end of that game. I wasn't even thinking about that because the thing is that at the end of the third quarter, Dennis Schroeder got a steal and handed it off to Tim Hardaway Jr. for the dunk, and it didn't count because they ran out of time. And that whole time I was thinking, oh, that's going to come back. I know that's going to come back, especially in a game where every bucket counts.

I was like, oh, no, that was a free two points, and that's definitely going to come back to bite us. And it did. I was upset, bro, because I feel like JB, for the great coach he is, I would have realized a little earlier that, bro, Dennis Schroeder should not be on Jalen one-on-one, like, not for the majority of the game, especially at the end of the game that he had him in. Like, I was wondering, because, like, Asar, like –

Osara was doing such a great job the entire series on Jalen. And so to switch him out at the end, I don't know if it was for offense or what, but that's when Jalen started to cook. You feel me? But I ain't going to relive those old wounds. I don't want to do that to you, dog. The NBA playoffs are still trudging along, you dig? And look, it's not a bird. It's not a plane. It's playoff James Harden reenactment.

Oh, man.

That's my favorite player. Yes, I love a left-handed basketball player. So every time this happens, it really gets harder because at the end of the day, it's too big of a sample size to ignore and be like, no, it's just a bad circumstance, a bad situation. It's just unlucky.

And I think that this really gets magnified because the Western Conference is just comprised of so many good teams so that a first-round exit in the Western Conference, especially when it goes seven, to a team that you think can definitely make the Western Conference finals or even the NBA finals if they catch lightning. So whenever James Harden plays bad, I feel some sort of sadness as well because I know that this is going to –

Right.

And he's also like fought really hard saying that. I mean, I remember the game where he played 53 minutes on a hamstring injury, but that's not going to get brought up in the grand scheme of things. It's just going to be remembered. We're going to be remembered as James Harden, the guy that had eight shots total and seven points when his team his team needed more of that. And it's really frustrating and sad to watch as a fan.

Hell yeah, bro, especially considering they remained healthy. They was the healthiest I've ever seen that team. I was waiting for Kawhi to come up a little lame at a certain point. He didn't. Norman Powell stayed fit. Bogey, Zubach, everybody was playing their part. Even Derrick Jones Jr. came out firing the last game. But...

James, I don't know, bro. It's your favorite player. I'm going to ease up on him. I'm pretty upset about it because I just want him to show a little bit more aggression. Like, bro, damn you. I mean, salute to your teammates, but it's game seven, bro. Do the little tween, tween, tween, tween. Get the foul. Swipe through the—do whatever you do, bro. I don't like how it happened, bro. Play it out for them. He's my favorite player, but that criticism is not unfair, though.

That criticism is not unfair because I wouldn't feel this bad if I knew that he could play at a better level because we saw it earlier on in this series. I just don't – it's something that I can't really explain why this keeps happening in game sixes and game sevens.

And when it was the 76ers, I was like, okay, well, some of this is James Harden, but some of this I could look at Doc and be like, Doc is also involved in this and whatnot. But here it's – here's one of the ones where –

You were – for years we've been asking for a healthy Clippers, and you're right. We got it this year. It's just sad that it ends up like this because I feel like this is the healthiest Kawhi has been in years in terms of an overall standpoint. Yeah.

But, yeah, it's just unfortunate. And I don't know where we go from here because James Harden is like 35, 36. There's how many – I don't know how many – again, we are in a generation where players can play for way longer, but I still don't know what the limit to that is.

for uh people not laying uh lebron staff for kd right salute to the brody tweet that was the most like well received technical file in the history of technical file bruh tried to break the goal i'll take the free throw we're up we're still up double digits well i don't know what you're doing yeah right that's where you can take good tech that's a good tech there's a good tech and a bad tech you could that's a good that's a good tech

Right, bro. You had the most viral tweet on Russell Westbrook, too, in the history of Russell Westbrook tweets.

What you say, he was the mystery box, the Mario? Yeah, I said that. I was at a Detroit Lions, Detroit Pistons bar in Los Angeles when I tweeted that because I was getting ready for the upcoming game. But then I tweeted that and I sat back. Sometimes when a tweet of mine goes viral and I'm just sitting not even on Twitter, not even monitoring it, and then you look down 30 minutes later and I'm like, oh, okay. A lot of people. I was like, oh, okay. This is...

Okay, this is what's going on. Right. So that he even answered questions after the last game. Like, he understands the Russell Westbrook experience is something like you described. I like the self-awareness. I can't knock the self-awareness. It's like he understands that he has only a couple of speeds left.

He has a couple of speeds. It's all out and then all out plus more, you know, and I can't knock that. Definitely one of the greatest. You feel me? Like he's going to go down in history as the greatest. We all get the age. Father Time is undefeated, and he's doing his best to give him hell right now. And right now his team moving on, finna face some thunder. You dig? SGA versus the Joker. This is why I wish they would. They should announce the MVP award right after the season.

Because now I feel like, well, whoever wins this series should be the MVP. They definitely can't give it to the loser of the series, like, no matter what. Like, bro, what you think? Like, SGA? First off, who do you think the MVP is, SGA or the Joker?

I think it's Shea because I think you have to give it to him because of how great his contributions to his team are. But I will say that the season that Joker's had, he's been better than some of his MVP winning seasons. So that's really a hard argument to

to even just like think about the two of them and debate because it's like this is probably joker's best season statistically analytically or close to his best and still people are going to be like well it should be shea because how it's one of those things where i'm like we've we've had co-rookie of the years before a co-mvp i feel like probably is out of the cards given uh how we

That would be awful for how we talk about it. It would be like, oh, we've talked about the MVP race for three months and it turns out it's a tie? Oh, no, we would raise hell for that. I swear. But it would be funny, though. Yeah, it would be funny as hell. Who do you think is going to win the series, though? Because I'm looking at the Nuggets as one of the dark horses of the NBA championship. You feel me? I think that...

You can never count them out. I feel like the worst nightmare was when the bracket linked this way for the Thunder, which that 4-5 was the Nuggets and the damn Clippers. I know that they could pretty much have their way with it. Definitely, we'll get to the Rockets' ass in a bit. But the Warriors, the Wolves, I think they can outlast them boys. But the Nuggets just got something that...

Once Murray is clicking, once the Joker is clicking, once Christian Brown, I'm going to call him Brown, I'm going to call him Brown. Once he gets to flexing and doing them tights on, I don't know, dog. They be scary in the West, man. What you think about this series? I got Oklahoma City in six.

I really think there's only a handful of teams that can throw out all the different lineups and strategies that OKC can, whether it's playing the double big lineup, whether it's playing small. They have so many people that they can throw at Jamal Murray this series. And

Honestly, they have so – I think they have a couple of different ways that they could throw Jokic, whether it's Chet guarding him or whether it's Chet doing like the Rudy Gobert thing where he's like the second line of defense. So if Joker gets to the rim, then Chet's at the rim and not guarding him when he's posting up and stuff like that. So I feel like this Oklahoma City team is one of the deepest teams I've ever seen, especially on the defensive end. Yeah.

and I feel like it's going to be a puzzle for the Nuggets to crack because, again, the Nuggets played so well last series that I forgot they fired their head coach before. I forgot. But I feel like this is a series where a lot of people are going to remember because people are probably going to look at Mike Malone. They're going to look for Mike Malone, and then they're going to see on the sideline where it's like, oh, yeah, that did happen. I feel like this is a series where we're going to be reminded of that a little bit. Yeah.

But I'm never going to really count out Joker because he's just that good of a carry talent, and especially Jamal Murray with the games that he can have. But I feel like OKC has more than enough and should take care of business. What do you think Mike Malone, like in his living room when he's watching these games, do you think he's rooting for the Nuggets or do you think he's rooting against their ass? I don't think – I feel like he's going to root for his players. I mean, I feel like he's going to root for –

I mean, I really don't know, but I feel like he would root for Jokic at least because, I mean, they came into the league together in terms of he was the head coach while he was a rookie. He hoping that the coach make a mistake and call a timeout they done got or something, bro. Like, you don't just fire me for the playoffs. Hell nah. And win the championship? I will be damned. Wow.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. The hate watch. I'm sure the hate watch is probably there's probably something even if he's just smiling on the outside. There's probably just some little kernel. That's it. Yeah, I totally understand that. Right, right. It's playful now, but they get past the thunder. It's going to be like, all right, bro. Now, voodoo doll. It's clear. Get them out of here, bro. Getting a little too getting a little too serious. Yeah, for sure. Right, right.

We finna goddamn wrap this shit up. Any last words you want to tell these folks, man? What should we check out? What should we be looking for from the coaster? You dig it? Feel free to check out my YouTube channel, Kofi, K-O-F-I-E, and feel free to join me on Nebula.

K-O-F-I-E as well. What's Nebula, bruh? Nebula is a content creator's own streaming service. You can watch my content on Nebula ad-free. That's the best way to support me as a content creator. Come on, man. Support my dog, Kofi, man. My boy's supporting us, putting up on us. It's only right, man. Let's support my dog, Kofi, man. I appreciate you, man.

Thank y'all the listeners for tuning in, man. Without y'all, who the hell are we type shit, you feel me? So lock in, you feel me? We'll be back with another episode next week, same bad time, right here on the network. You dig.