NBA Playoff Reactions and Overreactions With Ryen Russillo
02:09:14 Share

You're listening to the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. FanDuel Sportsbook is the best place to bet on the NBA. We have these fun little Tuesday, Friday player performance stuff. We have a same game parlays. We have picks for me sometimes and boosts and all kinds of fun things. Get ready in the playoffs. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app today to get in on the action. And by the way, the ringer is committed to responsible gaming.

Please visit theringer.com slash RG to learn more. Listen to the end of this episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus presidents like states game problem call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit RG-help.com. Coming up first two days of the NBA playoffs are in the books. We have a lot of subplots. We're going to talk about all of them with Ryan Rosillo next. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. What do I look forward to every NBA playoff season? Well, I'm always hoping the Celtics do well. I'm always hoping we have great storylines, great games.

Great matchups, great game sevens. I just hope for good basketball. But the NBA playoffs are even better with Michelob Ultra, the official beer partner of the NBA. Plus, they're getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside tickets and more. Enter now at MichelobUltra.com slash courtside. Michelob Ultra, superior access, courtside 2024 to 2025. Sweepstakes, no purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 or older. Ends on July 1st, 2025. Multiple entry periods.

Visit michaeloboucher.com slash superior access slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and official rules. Message and data rates may apply. Void where prohibited. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I have a new rewatchables coming for you on Monday.

Monday night, we did Minority Report. It is our 17th Tom Cruise movie. And I think it's our eighth Steven Spielberg movie. So Cruise is number one by four movies and Spielberg is in second place. So that is coming Monday and you can watch it on Ringer Movies as well. I talked about Sinners a little bit with Van Lathan. That's a special video

on the Ring of Movies YouTube channel so you can check that out as well. Don't forget, episode eight of Celtic City. So we got two basketball games tomorrow night. Finish the second one

then plow right into Celtic City because it's a really good one. It's basically about the KG era in the 2000s and the 2008 title. And all those guys are interviewed and all their interviews are really, really good. And I think it's a really, really, really entertaining watch. Celtic City, HBO, 9 p.m. And then it is on Max as well. So there you go. Coming up, Priscilla and I are going to

Rip through all of the NBA playoffs subplots from two wild days. We did this live on YouTube at nine o'clock. So you're about to listen to it. First, our friends from ProJet.

All right, 9.04 p.m. Russillo and I are going live on YouTube for the BS Podcast. Russillo, good to see you. We just watched eight games in two days, including the Warriors beating the Rockets in a rock fight. All right, so those eight games, Russillo, did any of them change what you thought specifically heading into a series? And we'll talk about Warriors-Rockets in a second. But out of those eight, did anything flip your opinion? Because I'm ready to overreact.

No. Now that I think about it, I don't know that there's anything that happened this weekend. Yeah, nothing. Nothing. 0 for 8. I have one. I have a half one. It seems like you have one. What is it? I have a half one. I thought that Minnesota-Laker game...

was a worst case scenario for the Lakers in a lot of different ways. And I want to tackle it in a second, but that was the only one. Cause I thought Lakers in seven, I thought they'd have the history, but watching some of the matchups and some of the stuff Minnesota did and the fact that the Lakers didn't have a lot of options for a counter, uh,

It just kind of made me tilt my head a little bit. I still don't know what's going to happen. I'm really interested in game two, but we'll talk about that. Let's talk about Warriors Rockets. So we had in the Warriors Rockets. My fear for the Warriors was they got 75 points in that Memphis game from Curry and Butler. And if these games go into the 110 to 120 range, where are they getting all those points from? Right. Then the Rockets fears are, well, what happens when we get to the playoffs and somebody turns defense up on them? How are they going to score?

Well, that fear won out over the other fear because the Rockets couldn't score. And it was a karaoke greatest hits of all the terrible fourth quarters we've watched from the Rockets all year. It was really, really bad. What are the fixes? What'd you see today?

they get down 23 right and at one point you're going this team only has 41 points in an nba game like what's what's going on here but we knew that the offense was the more challenging part of it despite the great regular season and at least on paper the different options they have but jalen green's terrible tonight van vliet can't hit his shot he hits that three he had started one for ten so at that moment it felt like kind of a big three the question i would have for udoka after this is

You got back into this game being huge. And Golden State doesn't have a big lineup. They can run Looney out there for a little bit if they want to. Clearly, they're not comfortable with that. Post is a stretch five, and he's just going to foul everybody. How about Post is just a stretch? It was a stretch to have him out there for 12 minutes. He was a stretch while you were out there. Anyway, go ahead. Draymond finished with a four, six, and three stat line because he's tasked with...

playing Shingun and the way he was playing off of Shingun like it was the one thing that was actually working for Houston because I think Shingun deserves a lot of credit for going okay this is how you're going to play me like I'm I'm going to pull up like I've got a little bit more touch but that stretch of like the first six minutes of the fourth quarter when Houston got back into this they got back into it being huge Stephen Adams was a beast and even if

Golden State couldn't get a rebound to save their lives, and when they would contest anything, there were fouls. Granted, Houston didn't make their free throw. So I guess I would just wonder...

Did he may do Golden State a favor by bringing in their best offensive player back into the game and getting away from the size that was just overwhelming Golden State? It wasn't pretty, but Golden State couldn't do anything with it. But then at 519, Adams is out. I mean, I'd love to ask her like in a moment of honesty, were you thrilled when they took Adams out of the game? Right. It was 66-47, five minutes left in the third.

And Shingun made that just ridiculous shot clock beating three in the buzzer that never should have gone in. And I was like, all right, mark that one down. And then Adams kind of took over the game the rest of the third quarter. And then into the fourth, he was getting those offensive rebounds. Easton had a couple of big defensive plays. And it just felt like there was some sort of combination of guys that would be the right combination. It was like watching somebody work up safe in a bank ice move. It's like, how did he get it? And he just kind of never unlocked it. And I think

If I'm leaving that game and I'm watching the tape, I'm really interested in the double bigs. I'm really interested in the double bigs with Jabari. I think I'd want to see Eason more because I just thought he was just a major issue the whole time.

Thompson is the one. Thompson just looked like a guy who had smoke up, blown up his ass all week that he should have been defensive player of the year. And all of a sudden, he's in a playoff game guarding Steph Curry and Butler, and he just wasn't good. The Van Vliet thing, we've seen a bunch of times, though. We've seen him have those games. And over and over again, it seems like when everything stalls...

It's just him jacking up 24, 25 footers. And I don't know how he fixed that because that was the worst of Jalen Green today. When he's just like going to the basket, he has like no gears. He's either fifth gear or first gear. And he's just going to the basket, flying in, either trying to get fouled or whipping off the backboard. They don't have that one settler. And that's why it was so interesting to talk about them in February. I felt they were a year away. So did you. But it's like, man, if they could just get one guy who could

I got you guys. Let me get a couple of baskets here with much the way Butler was, was doing it for the Warriors down the stretch and tonight and they're missing it. And yet I don't think they're out of this series. I did. This is not like an overreaction. Oh, the Warriors have control because they only scored, you know, they scored less than a hundred points too. I just think this is going to be a rock fight series and Houston has a lot of wildcard guys. So great win. I think I still feel like this is going to be a long series.

I agree with you on that one. I mean, there's going to be a night where, you know, Steph isn't going to be able to bail him out, probably because they put so much attention on him. Especially like if it's a close game in the step positions to or staying with Steph. He had a turnover. He had another one where it should have been a turnover where he let himself get trapped at half court. But they didn't have a challenge because they were going to challenge the Pajamski drive. So there'll be there'll be times where.

the stuff off of Steph is a bit of a letdown. Like Moses Moody hitting that three tonight in the corner, it was probably the biggest three because it's like, all right, finally. Like it's always the third shot. Yeah, it's the third shot taker for this group because, you know, clearly there's nights where Curry can do what he did tonight and there's nothing you can do and he's just going to hit a bunch of ridiculous shots. That's not going to happen. You know, I don't know that you can bank on that for four wins. Maybe you can in a seven game series, but

I look at the Pajemski minutes and he looks confused. I almost don't like the ball in his hands right now. And if he misses a few, this is a guy who has a ton of confidence to even get to this point. But I think you can see it happening on the court where it's like, oh, he's hesitant now. He's a little shot. And then if you end up with like a Gary Payton second shot,

corner open look like houston will gladly take that same for post don't forget to throw in post in this conversation i think they're good with all wide open trees from him until he makes one right they're gonna play off a dream on a ton and dream on i'll have better offensive nights but it's still like if he has another single digit night it's not gonna be that big of a deal and butler even had like a stretch where i was like where are you like where are you and then

He was able to, you know, because even if he got Shingun or Adams in a switch, he's not the kind of guy who's just going to like fly past them. He wants to dribble to a spot and pull up and try to get away with a clean look like, you know, without much of a contest there. So, yeah, I think there's going to be nights where Golden State against this Houston defense is going to look really lost. But I wonder internally if the Rockets coaching staff is going to

Did we let them off the hook a little bit by going with Shingun, who was our best offensive player? Because it wasn't like they did anything great on offense. They just had multiple possessions and Golden State was just overwhelmed. Like you would see all this traffic at the Rockets hoop and you couldn't see the blue jerseys because they were so much smaller than the guys in red. Yeah, that was like the scrappy...

like the football team of like scrappy, smaller guys battling some massive offensive line. They were able to get away with some stuff tonight that I don't know if it's going to work in later rounds for the record. Like Butler played 42 minutes today, right? Curry played 39. Once you start going every other day, the way they were leaning those guys, Curry also was really quiet and then all of a sudden got hot, which is usually a danger for the other team if he's slow first quarter. And it reminded me of that. What was the best game he ever played? What was that, 2019?

when he was quiet in the first half and then just completely annihilated Houston in the second half. It's my favorite Steph game of all time. Yeah, it is. You're number one. Listen, if Golden State can play those five guys together and get away with it, I think they're delighted. If they can play Moody and Podzemski with the three...

And they can rebound just enough and they can defend just enough, but then get what they want offensively. And Moody can step up like he did with that three. That's where they want to be. I don't know if that's going to work for four rounds. And I'm going to say it again. And this is the most polarizing Warriors topic. I just find it hard to believe Kaminga can't play 12 minutes a game for this team. I find it hard to believe.

And it just seems like they're completely out. I just find it hard to believe he wouldn't have been better than those 12 Quentin Post minutes. Don't you have to defer to Kerr on this one, though? I do. I mean, he's had him a long time. I get it. That's why I tiptoe into it. I'm just hesitant. But I just like, man, because at least with Kaminga, he's unafraid, he's athletic, and he's going to fight. And like, there's just, I don't know. Right.

There was that one Santos play when he just like lost the ball. Like they just have dudes that are out there where you're like, man, what's this going to look like if you're playing OKC in a series? You have these guys out there against that OKC team we saw today. So I think they can patch it together. They closed the third quarter of four minutes. The last four minutes they didn't hit a shot. And they were bad shots. There was like shot clock violation.

You know, it was like bad, bad stuff. So look, they have to go 12 and nine to make the finals. Now they have to go 11 and nine. Could it happen? Sure. But you know, it's, it, this is, they, they still feel like they're a guy short to me, Rosillo.

I can't shake it. There's this collection of teams where you look at the Clippers numbers after a certain point and you go, oh my God, look at that. I know we're going to talk about them. I swear to God, TNT and ESPN love to throw up the Jimmy Butler trade graphic four times. It's like a read. I don't know if it's sponsored or not.

but they'll just say since the all-star break like and it's it is really interesting but you always have to remember like we're not the normal audience so they're getting everybody up to date on like what the story has been so you have this golden state thing that feels entirely different the clippers thing that feels different i think minnesota for whatever reason has been completely overlooked as we'll get to that game because i can't wait to talk about that one but i haven't really looked at golden state even with that split post the butler trade because of some of the limitations and

and because of their preference to be small and not have any big option. Like you're talking about them going, hey, you only have to win 11 more games to get to the final. I don't even, I don't know. I'm surprised you're even like mapping it out that way. Do you really think they have a chance to win in the West? Did you think that? I like the bracket they're in more, right? They play the winner of Lakers, Minnesota. And from what we saw last night in that game,

You know, two flawed teams. Minnesota looked great last night. The Lakers looked terrible. Both have some pluses and minuses, but I think they're in the right side of the bracket. And then you think, OK, see, maybe it doesn't matter the way. OK, see, it's just completely terrifying. I was thinking that Butler graphic you mentioned. Maybe they maybe just they feel like the casual ESPN fans can't understand how Jimmy Butler ended up on the Warriors. It just doesn't make sense when you're watching one of these games. You're like, how did they get that? Would they give up?

Wiggins, what? Wiggins, Schroeder, Kyle Anderson. Was there more in there? No, there wasn't. Houston going forward because we have three days between games, which means we have a Monday and Tuesday of what's Houston going to do if they can't get this going? And there'll be a trade machine team, I think. They're young.

The biggest question they had. It took us 12 minutes to get to Houston. The big question is this Van Vliet player option thing. If you're talking trade machine stuff, but I, and I don't know if I'm just, it's because what we do for a living, but when I watch them, I'm constantly thinking of what player I would add to make them a championship contender, because it's clearly not the team they have now, which I still think is a very good team, but there's, there's something that they need.

And so when I watch it, I'm like, hmm, I wonder, would Booker, would you just like pay 200 cents on the dollar for Booker and just give Vishby the ultimate life raft or what would you do? But anyway, that stuff's going to go the next two days. That'd be too early. This series, I think there's going to be a night where Houston looks so much better than Golden State. Do you think Houston's, we look great when we're up 12 team? You know how we have those teams?

Yeah, I don't know. Who looks bad when they're up 20? Like, who looks like they're having a bad time? The Celtics. Is there any team? The Celtics. It's always the most dangerous when they're up 22. It's like, I don't know. Call timeout. Keep these guys in check. And look, they're down 23 to this group with this offense. And I cannot. I'll say it again.

They didn't really even do anything that was that great on offense to get back into this. It wasn't like they got hot from three. It wasn't like, oh, okay, this guy's cooking or they can't guard this guy. They're hunting. They're hunting this dude. It's just, hey, we were big. So that's something that they can go to. That's not shooting variance.

that's something that they know when they watch this film they go we might want to go to it earlier you know there's also something too when you're down 23 the effort that it takes you to come back and cut it to three points and then you start timing it out being like can they sustain this for another five minutes yeah like that'll happen a lot too is like you're right there you're right you're just about like what they get within four at one point it was three points four point game yeah didn't never felt like it but then all of a sudden it was close

When you did all the draft work for the Jabari Smith draft, did you think he would be a better scorer than this? Well, he had to develop more of a handle. That was a major flag for him. And he had those guards from Auburn who didn't want to give him the ball a ton. But you looked at like the best version of him going, if you can get a bit of a handle and get to a spot, he's shooting his defensive instincts, the rebounding, all that. By the way, I know he wasn't good tonight.

But he's been better the last few months. I think it's the most comfortable he's ever looked offensively. You know, I don't know that you're ever going to be running like a side pick and roll for him. And then if he gets cut off, he's going to reset with the dribble probe and then go. Like, I don't know if he's ever going to be that guy. But like that was the biggest difference is Paolo. He could get wherever he wanted to as a draft prospect at that size. And with Jabari, he felt a bit like a true dribble guy, even though I still really liked him a lot.

I like them. The most, the Rockets, the offense was brutal to watch, but they, there was one time in the fourth quarter when they posted up Thompson on Curry and he kind of, and he kind of whirled into the paint, had this little jump hook. And I was like, Hmm, that's something like instead of just having these guys facing the basket and flying toward the basket and bouncing off dudes, whipping off the backboard, maybe, you know, try to use their athleticism, try to put them in different parts of the thing. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see what they do.

Heading into game two. I still think it's going to be a long series. That's where I sit. Hey, Rosillo, are you a forward thinker? Because if you are, you need an HR and finance platform that thinks like you do. Workday is the AI platform that helps propel your organization and workforce and your entire industry into the future. Workday, moving business forever forward, which leads us to Minnesota and the Lakers. They make this town's trade right before the season. They get

d vicenzo and they get randall and it's controversial and the trade was on full display yesterday and i thought towns was excellent in that pistons game um but minnesota looked really good against the lakers and i think the thing that i saw last night re-watching that game because i was i was at wrestlemania last night but i was able to power through it this morning should we think of that i have some cena stuff for you at the end cool um

Minnesota's just, I'll give you a heads up. Minnesota's just really comfortable wherever they're playing. I think that's my favorite thing about them. They're just really comfortable. They don't care if they're in LA. They don't care if they're playing against LeBron and Luka. They're an irrational confidence team personified. And you saw it last night. And granted, they shot the lights out.

But I saw a team that walked in there and thought, we have the best team in this series and we're winning this series. And they carried themselves that way. Now, the Lakers, I don't know what happened to them the entire game. I don't know where the ball moved. They had 15 assists. There was a stagnant offense. And on defense, I just thought they looked slow. It'll be different on Tuesday. But I really liked what I saw from Minnesota. And that was the series that it didn't flip me.

Because I had Lakers in seven, but it did make me go, fuck, I think I don't feel great about Lakers in seven. So what was your takeaway? I went last minute. Wow, look at you. Yeah. You're like the new Diane Cannon. You're there every game. I'm hoping to get my upgrade material this offseason. We'll see what they offer. But I picked Minnesota, and look, I'm not taking credit for it as if I saw all these things. It just felt a bit like a zag because there's – if you just –

felt like this overwhelming vibe decision by the general NBA public, right? Where it was, okay, the Lakers, another run with LeBron, the Lucas stuff, you know, that peak that they had, which we've talked about. I brought it up in my playoff preview on Thursday, where it's like, if you go on the season defensive numbers for the Lakers at 17th and sometimes like the season is so long that that's a completely irrelevant number for a lot of different teams. And then they have that 18 and three stretch where we were talking with that

awesome Denver win at Denver mixed in there and you're going wait they're the number one team on defense now for 21 games because when the Luka trade was made it was almost a thought of

Well, they're going to have to figure this out defensively. Those three guys in the perimeter, depending on what you get from LeBron, and then, you know, Reeves just gets hunted because of a size thing, probably more so than anything else, because I think he at least fights for position and that kind of stuff. So we just didn't think they were going to be good defensively, and then they're off the charts defensively. And then after that stretch, when I ran the numbers again, it was like, hey, they're back to like 17th. So I think the truth was is that was a bit of an anomaly, even if it looked like they were doing a great job prepping guys based on the opposition. So

You look at Minnesota on the other side of these closing groups. They closed since March 2nd, 17-4. They had the fourth best net of any team in the NBA. They're also the healthiest they've ever been. Do I love Randall as a number two for multiple playoff rounds? No, I do not. What? But he's played great. I mean, he's played great at least for them in this whole thing. So when you're thinking about this matchup, you're like, is Rudy going to get exposed? Is...

It's something where Minnesota will want to go small. Is that actually doing the Lakers a favor? Because the Lakers do not want to play Jackson Hayes, and I don't blame them for not wanting to play him. But they have no other move.

They go with Rui at center, and in the beginning of the game, it was like, hey, he's hitting those threes that we talked about last week, and then that cooled off. Then they have this other small group where they'll go Finney-Smith and Vanderbilt and then figure out what the rest of the perimeter guys. And JJ's talked about like, hey, we're not small. We're big perimeter players, but we just don't have a traditional center. Well, in this game, they were small. So the alarming part of it, when you think of it as a matchup, is what's the adjustment? The Lakers are going to grow?

But then if I'm on the Lakers side of this, I'm going 48 points from Nas Reed and Jaden McDaniels. 48 points from those two guys. Like that's not happening. 21 for 42 from three. It's pretty hard not to win any playoff game when you go 21 for 42. I struggled with it because I thought Gobert offensively could be a problem for the Lakers heading into the series because of the lob stuff. Because they don't have rim protection. And that's like the one that Gobert is good at.

And I was trying to figure out how much Jackson... If they pass to him. Right. But he's still around the rim with his arms up. And if you're not playing a center at some point... So Hayes was minus 11 in eight minutes. They couldn't keep him on the floor. Right? So you have that. You have... They haven't been playing him at all, by the way. This is pretty consistent. This is like, all right, we just had to find out. Minnesota did some interesting stuff with where they put Connelly. Were you following that?

They put him on Rui for a little bit so that he wouldn't be on Reeves. And then the Lakers kind of figured that out. And then they started moving around. The second half, he was on Reeves again. And it seems like they were so aware that the Lakers were going to attack Conley as a strategy that they just wanted to kind of move him around like a yo-yo, which I thought was smart. Yeah.

I don't really know what the move is for the Lakers if that one lineup they have, which got killed last night with the Rui, LeBron, Luka, pick Reeves and pick a swing. If that lineup's just going to get torched by Minnesota, I don't know what the next move is. Because the next move is basically playing LeBron at center and going super small with wings and shooting. And I just think Minnesota would be delighted if they did that. But the big takeaway for me last night is when McDaniels plays like that, Minnesota looks awesome.

And he's their wild. Every team has a wild card guy, right? When he's good. Daniels is awesome. Minnesota looks like the scariest team in the West other than OKC. And he was awesome last night. I went through the three point attempts because it just was, it was just out of control. Place is quiet. People are just laughing, being like, when are these guys going to start missing? And,

I have it at 43-point attempts. It's 42 for the game. I'm not counting the last two garbage ones. But of the 40 attempts that I would say were in the time that we were still wondering, whatever, this isn't totally relevant, but I count it as 40 attempts. 27 are absolutely wide open. Like, not debatable. Which was the fear with this Luka-LeBron combo that

It would just be open three frenzy. I'd say seven more were open and then I'm going to give them. And I was being nice. I gave him six contests because some people will go through and sort all these different things. And, you know, there was one place that was trying to say there was like zero. And I was like, well, that's not true. There's a few contests. But 27 of the 40 are like nobody's even close. And there's a few things. One is they're packing it because they're worried about ant hunting Luca. And so that means help.

I think there's even a chance that Randall, even though he probably got a little emotional about at some point, like if he gets LeBron, it seems like he wants to get real physical with him. And that's one of the few guys that, you know, with the ball in his hands, it's probably a really good showdown physically, which is not something we'd say about LeBron a lot.

So you packed it in and you're leaving these corner threes that are there. And Nas hit a ton. Jaden hit a ton. But then there's just other stuff where LeBron has to be better. If it was a second action where he was heading in one direction and then it's like, no, the ball's going over there. He just wasn't quick enough to go over and contest it. And then Luka, like if you run something to one side and then the guy Luka is assigned to away from the ball comes up,

Luka just doesn't even pay attention to him off the ball. He lost...

you know, numerous guys on those attempts. So you could think G.A.J. could just go through it and be like, hey, dickheads. Like, what? Do you guys, are you ready now? Are you ready to play? Because it was so overwhelming and it looked so bad for the Lakers. You're going, okay, so if they're only small, like, why is this going to actually get better? But I'm not going to fall for it. I'm not going to fall for, like, a game one thing here saying that L.A. can't get back. That would just seem irresponsible because we've seen so many game ones look bad.

like just be so misleading. But the size thing was alarming last night. And I think you're probably a little, it was probably a bit of a reminder. I'm like, wait, are they good? And are they too big? So Nico still in this thing you're saying side note, do you think when Anthony Davis was going off against Sacramento, Nico had like an inner dialogue where he's like, I'm going to be right about this. Yeah. I'm still, he definitely, there's one person in his life that is still like, just hold on.

I'm still not out of this. It's still going to happen. Can I read you the most critical thing I read about the Lakers last night? Coach JJ Redick did a great job all season, but he didn't do a good job for game one. The Lakers stood around on offense, played too much one-on-one basketball, and he didn't make any necessary adjustments. A tweet from Magic Johnson. That's when you know things are bad. Like that's as critical as I think he's ever been on Twitter. He was not happy. What did you see at the game? What was the vibe?

Give us the feel in the arena because they're all excited for this game. Game one, Luka playoffs, little kids wearing the Luka jerseys, and then the T-Wolves hit threes for an hour straight. It was...

Yeah. Cause it's game one. And I think that that fan base has an arrogance that's deserved. Like they have a right to be arrogant. I think the more alarming thing, you know, as a, as a Lakers guy, when the place was going nuts for Steph in the regular season, it was the Steph MVP chance, like big time. It was loud. I was like, boy, you don't expect that. Uh,

No, you know, I don't afterwards. It wasn't like anybody because I was milling around a little bit afterwards. It was just kind of a shrug in a well, that was alarming, you know, but I still think like the same thing. If you were in Boston, if Boston gets smoked, granted, if they get smoked by Orlando, that's worse than getting smoked by Minnesota. But it's just all right. You know, they'll figure it out. They'll come out. Let me ask you something, though, because this was a thought that crap that crept into my head. Yeah.

A little too much Luka trying to figure it out on his own on offense? It does feel like it's month four of let's really give him a lot of latitude here, especially in the first quarter. Like a subletter that extends his lease? Like, this is how I really am. Like those Apple News stories you read where somebody won't leave somebody's cottage and they've been there two years?

Um, yeah, I, I was, I was wondering in the two days between games, if we might get some sort of something from the LeBron camp, LeBron really wants Luca to get more involved. There's some sort of something. It's a lot of time here. It's 72 hours. So who knows? I'm on pins and needles waiting to find out. I will tell you just to add though, if you were a Luca detractor, right.

you would go, okay, well, he just runs his pick and roll until he gets the matchup that he wants. And it's a lot of staring around. And the design of some of those Dallas teams...

for that specific reason, right? But when he was with the other really good player, it didn't really work out. But Kyrie needed a place, and it worked out for Kyrie, even though I felt like during that playoff run last year, the ups were celebrated and the downs were never criticized because that's usually what happens in the number two anyway. But there were some moments throughout that run to the finals where you were like, you need more out of Kyrie here, and it's just not really that much of a topic. I felt like there were times watching where...

like Rudy played 24 minutes and I was like, all right, now I'm going to try to kill Rudy Gobert. And it's like, all right, but like Austin Reeves is pretty good. LeBron's got a pretty decent resume. I think that there's probably something to be said if you don't, if you don't get the switch that you want immediately swing it. And I'm not like knocking. It's just not how he plays. He has seven years of habits. He's like a child actor who just learned on the set how to behave.

It is what it is. It crept into my head. Just a thought. I'm not, you know, we're also talking about one of the most efficient offensive players of all time. But, you know, there's also something to be said of like,

everybody needs to touch the ball i think they need to get going downhill too when rudy's out right like they need if they're going to have randall and naz hanging around the rim right then you should just be like i don't even care if you make it i'm going i'm just going i'm trying to finish over and over again i'd see i like to see them be more aggressive during those non-rudy minutes

When we talk about the wildcard guides, McDaniels from Minnesota, no question. And I guess Nas too, but Nas is pretty consistent. But you're so right. When Jaden's like that, it's tough. Did they win 70 games? Yeah. Yeah. They look just amazing. And Reeves is kind of the guy for LA in a lot of ways because when he's awesome, all of a sudden they seem...

like impossible to stop, but Minnesota, and this was, I had such a tough time with this series and finally ended up, I think I took Lakers in seven, but I really thought it was gonna be a seven game series where you have these two teams, the strengths and weaknesses are basically the same for the most part, except for the center spot. Like Minnesota's weak spot is point guard.

I don't know how many minutes Conley can play, but Conley's the guy every team targets. And he's the guy who- But it doesn't matter because it's still Ant. Doesn't really matter for them. Right. Because Ant's playing point guard, basically. And then they can go bigger and really not have a point guard, but then you can pressure him. There's ways you can do it, and the Lakers are similar. And Rui is basically their Nas Reed, but Nas Reed's a better player. But they have this Gobert piece that the Lakers just don't have. They have this extra-

extra wrinkle they can bring in depending on the game. And the Lakers are kind of stuck with this roster and it goes back to the Mark Williams trade. Can I give you a compliment? Yeah. You said years ago, we were talking about Carmelo in the playoffs. Yeah. And you basically said like, look, even though he isn't, he takes the floor with LeBron and Wade and these guys. And he feels like he belongs. Right. Right. I'd say Ant's a better player

in comparison to like what Ant's contemporaries are right now, that maybe even like the gap between prime LeBron and Carmelo is wider than I think the gap between Luca and Ant say right now. Okay. From 09 to 13, LeBron was here and Carmelo was there. Right.

But Carmelo didn't take the floor going, oh my God, that guy's so much better than me. Right now. And Ant never taken the floor thinking any of these guys are better than him. That has to be an incredible feeling. Now, like another year in with this group, with this team having a playoff run where it's like, even if things are going really bad, at least we know we can get it back to a guy that you can't really do anything with Ant. Seeing Ant in person, by the way, I would put them on the very short list of people that are worth to see in person. It is incredible.

just another level of, of like impressive, not just cause he can jump and do all these, there's just movement shit with him, with the ball where you're like, what did he just do? And then, you know, you're not even watching, you're just waiting for the replay because you can't believe what you just saw. So I think that is, um,

I just thought it was a really valuable thing that you had said about that. It's valuable to a team. And I think Ant, it's not the same thing because I like Ant more than I like probably Carmelo. But it's important. He's certainly better too, I put. They have a bunch of guys like that. They're not a rational confidence because it's kind of rational and confident. But they have Nas Reed. I think Dante's like that.

Randall can have moments where he's like, if I could just get the ball more, I'd be a 35 point a game guy. And I don't think it's a team that really cares if they're on the road or not. Here's what's interesting. So in the Clippers series, the Clippers were minus 118 favorites on FanDuel when that series started. They lost game one and now they're plus 118. So it swung a little, but not that much.

Minnesota was a pretty big underdog heading into the Lakers series. They were like, I think it was like plus 160, something like that. They're now minus 153 favorites off of one game. That's one big. So I think there was some matchup stuff there that the Sharps probably looked at and said, this is going to be long haul. Now what they're forgetting is that literally everybody in Minnesota is going to foul out a game too. I'm just preparing America now.

It could be a 60 foul game for them. Well, LA didn't get called for any fouls in game one is because they weren't near anybody. True. Anyway, that's a, that's our segment on Lakers, Timberwolves, and you can learn more at workday.com. Well, the NFL playoffs are here. You knew this already.

There's no better way to be in the action than with FanDuel, America's number one sports book. So many fun things to do. We got profit boosts, future bets. You can dive in, make your bet, activate your boost, go for even bigger winnings. Monday.

I think we have Knicks, Pistons, and then we have Clippers, Nuggets, Game 2. I still like all the Clippers series bets, the future bets. I think they're plus 118 for the series. I'd like them to win outright in Game 2. So I would recommend that. But don't be a spectator this postseason. Head to Fandle.com slash BS to download America's number one sportsbook.

and make every moment more. You must be 21 plus and president of select states or 18 plus and president of DC. Opt-in required. Bonus issued as non-retrievable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fandler.com. Gamble problem call 1-800-GAMBLE or visit rg-help.com. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Spring is here. My favorite time of the year. That means the NBA playoffs are

are here too. What am I the most excited about? I'm excited to see if the Celtics can defend their title. I'm excited to see if Steph Curry and Jokic can keep going and going and going round after round. I'm excited for the potential of an LA versus LA playoff series. It's never happened. Clippers, Lakers, never in my lifetime. Is OKC for real? Is Cleveland for real? Is SGA going to prove that he is the best scoring guard in the postseason? Basically,

since Michael Jordan, since Kobe Bryant? Is he on that level? We're all going to find out. There's plenty to look forward to on and off the court.

Like Michelob Ultra Courtside. That's another thing. It's getting fans closer to the game with unique prizes. Plus, they're giving you a chance to win tickets to the NBA Finals. You heard me. The NBA Finals, which I hope are in Boston. Just head to MichelobUltra.com slash NBA Finals. Michelob Ultra Courtside, NBA Finals, sweepstakes, no purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents, excluding Maryland residents, 21 and up.

Begins 9 a.m. ET on February 16th, 2025. Ends on May 5th, 2025. See official rules at makelobalture.com slash rules for price and details, message and data rate may apply. Void where prohibited. Clippers Nuggets, game of the weekend? Has to be, right? That was the best game we saw. It was an awesome, awesome game. The Clippers curse is undefeated. I'm happy to talk about that later when I'm up to that now.

Here's my first question for you. If you're a Denver fan, are you more or less scared after that game? Do you feel better or worse? You won the game. Do you feel better or worse? I don't feel better. Well, I feel better because I'm up a game. So if we're just going with that, but if just what you watched and how it went down, I don't feel better. You? I think I feel worse. All right. So answer your own question because you're right on this. So stay on it. No, I was curious on your take. If I'm a Denver fan, I can't believe I won that game and

I'm already fucking nervous as hell for the series. And I think that's why the line didn't really budge because you had Porter who was a section eight, who basically got benched for Russell Westbrook, who was a big piece in the coach GM drama where both guys ended up getting fired and who is just a complete rollercoaster ride possession to possession and was a better option than Michael Porter who makes $40 million a year. He's out there. And then you have Murray who was seven for 20 and it felt worse. And the clips just have...

A bunch of fucking dudes to throw at him. What are you looking up? No, no. I'm listening to everything you're saying. A bunch of dudes you can throw at him. I think you even swore in there. Yeah. And I don't know what I'm getting out of Porter going forward. I don't know if I'm getting 50% shooting from Jamal Murray in any game with the way the Clippers were defending him. And I don't know if I'm ever getting a worse possession performance than the Clippers in big spots where they just...

Look, it's going to sound like I'm making excuses because I picked them to win the series. They just fucked the game up. That was a we fucked the game up. You leave that game and you're like, I can't believe we lost that game. You're going through. There's 12 plays you're looking at. Like, what are we doing here? We can't inbound the ball over here. We can't get a better shot here. We're sending Jokic a double team late here and leaving this guy 10 feet open. Like, what are we doing?

And I guarantee their coaches, and we both think they have one of the five best coaching staffs. I guarantee their coaches were fucking knocking tables over today going, what the fuck were we doing in this? So the question for me is bad game or is this just like, this is what this Clippers experience is going to be like between the fact that James Harden is involved. You have guys like Chris Dunn, wide open, open for a reason as Jalen Rose would say.

And you also have Jokic, who's the best player in the series. But I still feel like the Clippers are going to win the series, and I don't think it's crazy. We agree. I thought the Clippers with 20 turnovers, so many of them were just... 20 turnovers, Russillo. Bad turnovers. Like, you're getting ready to inbound the ball. You can't inbound the ball. You know, it's probably more on the pass than it is on Harden positioning himself. And Westbrook's energy was just off the charts because I want to get to his timeline of events here. But...

20 turnovers. They took way more free throws. I think Jokic was as good as he was overall because we all expect that from him. He was atrocious on defense in the first half. I don't know if that's a halftime wake-up call and that he's just going to play at a better level, but when he got caught in any kind of on-ball thing in the first half, it was a joke. There's a baseline drive on him where he was terrible. Then with Zou,

No matter what, and you can sort the numbers and say Zubac, based on minimum number of possessions against Jokic, you can make an argument that he's better against Jokic than anybody else. The very least that you're getting out of it, because you're never stopping Jokic, is that there's about four or five shots, I think, from game one where you're like, that's a tough shot. He got even Jokic to have to take that shot. I feel really good about that. I'm mad about the turnovers. I don't think it was just because of trapping. Every now and then, if there's a double-team,

on the guy with the ball, like a cut would be nice from some of the other big name guys. But, you know, Harden was really good. He hit those two floaters. He had a huge three. So there's not really like a thing you can point to there with Harden. I think it's this is whatever we want to do with this Westbrook topic. The fact that he took 17 shots in a playoff game. If I'm the Clippers, I'm like, good. If he takes that many shots,

The rest of this series, including the biggest shot of the game. Yeah. Um, second, I'd say second, the Brown three was the biggest shot of the game. Hold that thought. Um, so Harden was 32, six and 11 and played 42 minutes. Kawhi played 41 minutes. At some point they were like, we got to get this game. We can take this the way Porter's playing. Well, it's overtime too. So, well, yeah, but I mean, with the way Porter is playing, I think they were like, we can steal this. We can steal this. And it felt like they were going to win it. Um,

The Norm Powell, who I don't think has been the same guy since he came back from his injury, and I don't know if the stats completely back it up, but I think they do. He had a good march. He was slow. A little up and down, right? Yeah, right. But I mean, he's playing less minutes too. I looked up the five-man numbers for all the... I did it before the Golden State game, for just game one.

And you can see that in these lineups play like 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 11 minutes. The Clippers played that one lineup 26 minutes with Dunn, 26 of the 53. And they were like minus nine with that lineup. And I wonder going forward, do we see a little less Dunn and a little more Derek Jones or maybe a little more Batum? Do they go a little bit bigger, just play Harden as a point guard? I think my point is they have moves to make.

Whereas Denver has no moves. If Porter's going to suck, then it's it. It's just Westbrook. Who else is playing? Nobody else in your roster who can play in crunch time of a playoff game. So they're going to be at the whim of this Russell Westbrook rollercoaster. So take the floor because I know you have a timeline you want to do.

I mean, we can keep going. LA's bench got outscored by the Denver bench 23 to 13. It was, that's weird. I mean, you want to start looking at how dumb plus minus can be. I think sometimes it's telling sometimes it's totally misleading. Zoo was minus eight and 39 minutes. Simmons who doesn't want the ball in his fucking hands was plus five.

on the game so they're so desperate they have to play simmons in those non-zoo center minutes and even if you think okay at least he provides some kind of body that can move around a little bit he doesn't once he has the ball like all he's doing is trying to figure out how he can get rid of it and then he'll try to do like a pass that looks kind of cool or whatever so i like when he gets a rebound and he takes off with the ball like it's going to be a fast break yeah johnson style but then he sees the half court logo and he's like

Three, two, one. I have to get rid of this ball. I can't dribble within 35 feet of the basket. I can't believe he's playing. The one thing I liked with him was I thought he was physical with Jokic. I guess if he can at least do that, he's probably playable in this series, but offensively, he's a zero.

I can't believe he's playing. It's a legitimate zero. I cannot believe he's playing real minutes right now, but it really speaks like they just don't want to go with Drew Eubanks over it. And I guess if you're being as nice as you possibly could is that once you give him the outlet, he can cross half court with the ball. Right. He looks good. Heads up.

You're so right, though. When he takes off, you're like, oh, my. This is going to be on the VHS. Well, remember him in the pre-COVID Ben Simmons? Sure. He would take those rebounds. And he honestly looked like left-handed magics, LeBron sometimes. He really did. I don't know what happened. So we don't like...

There's just a lot from this game where the first half was playing out the way I thought it would play out. I thought Jokic is even worse defensively than whatever standards you have for him. He's in every action. They're hunting him constantly. And a lot of times I think he doesn't get enough credit for how he's at least smart enough to know what position you're supposed to be in, which I think is more than half a defense. But at the rim, it's not like there's going to be a ton of

contest or people are going to do U-turns, you know, like against the really good defensive guys. You can see it's like, I don't really want to go in there. Well, it's a good one for Harden too, because that floater he has, he just knows he's getting it against the, against the Nuggets. Nobody's blocking it. But I, I still was, was okay with the Clippers after this whole thing, because like, let's, let's go with that Westbrook timeline here. He hits the three. He hits three.

By the way, Denver's offensive rebounding in the fourth quarter also won. They had seven offensive rebounds just in the fourth. So Westbrook takes down a huge offensive rebound when they're down 96-95. He hits the huge three. But then...

At the end of regulation, he gets it back again, has a chance to take a three, and then decides to jump in the air and throw it off another defender as the clock expires. Sure, like, okay, what's going on here? I actually felt like that got swept under the rug as one of the worst in the game plays in the history of basketball. Yeah. Just even leading up. I mean, he was put in a bad spot. There's three seconds left, but everything about it was a botch. Here's the other thing that'll be forgotten forever, and I'm going to forget it too, but

Up 108, 107 when they were trying to trap. Murray swings it to Westbrook to run clock. And then Westbrook was 16 games. Yeah, 16 seconds left in the game clock. 13 left on the shot clock.

He actually drives, and they said it was a pass to Aaron Gordon. I think Aaron Gordon just ended up with the ball, and it was almost a disastrous turnover when you factor in when all this Denver stuff started going south, and everybody was getting pissed. Right, right. Would you hear Bob Myers' reaction to that? The play settled. I think they ended up getting free throws out of it somehow, and there's like a pause, and Bob Myers is like,

Well, I'm not sure Westbrook should have taken the bet. He was just like, I'm really not sure that should happen. You kind of have to pull up there and maybe not do that.

National broadcast default. Nice setting with that. I mean, there's another thing here that I wrote down, like Jokic misses those two huge, like when do you expect Jokic in that spot to miss two free throws? So look again, Ramona Shelburne had a really good note on ESPN.com on her piece today, where if you look at the spacing that LA gave Westbrook in this game, it averaged out to 9.6 feet on his three point attempts, which is the most space he's ever had in a

in a playoff game since they started tracking this stuff 11 years ago, minimum five attempts. So nine feet is almost... Nine feet is... That's like two-thirds of the free throw line. That's like second and six. You get four yards, three yards. Maybe they spot... It's either second and seven or second and six, depending on how they spot it. I really want to talk about the Westbrook spacing because...

First of all, this was another thing we didn't properly kill the Clippers on. Whatever the fuck these staggered double teams they were sending at Jokic, it just felt like over and over again, it was the wrong timing of it. And he just had it figured out in the second half in OT. They're going to do this. I'm going to just hit this open guy. But that shot Westbrook hit the three. I don't think I've ever seen anyone left more open at any level of basketball in any game I've ever watched in my life, including like girls high school basketball in the eighth grade.

He was open. Chris Dunn just, Jokic got the ball and Chris Dunn was closest to Westbrook, but he was probably six feet away. And he just said, fuck it. And he went to the top of the key and

to double Jokic. And Westbrook had, when I say nobody around him, if you just did a screenshot, it would look like he was by himself before the game, like taking threes and somebody was there. Yeah. Like he had time to line up. So then he made it and he's like, that's what I do. That's what I do. He's doing that whole thing. It's like, dude, nobody's ever been left more open than you just were ever in a playoff game ever. It was amazing. I love that play.

Because I wonder how many people would throw it to him in that spot. Now, the uncontested three shooting numbers for Westbrook this year are actually pretty good. By the way, for the whole Nuggets team, because if you look at their three-point shooting, it's kind of better than you think it would be. But the reason it's better than you think it would be is because a lot of these threes are just wide open because of all the shots Jokic creates for everybody. So you're shooting 39%, but most of those shots are wide open shots.

I just would wonder if you could ever get a couple of beers and yogurt cheers from now and be like, did you have just a moment of hesitation of going, this is the right read. It's the right basketball play. Do I really want him taking this one? And I think that this is why you can't ever question this guy's motivations is because I think he just wants to play the game the perfect way and that he would make that pass again if Westbrook missed it. I think there's a lot of guys that don't pass it to him. I think he is just conditioned to do

He's the terminator walking into the bar, making the calculations with all the math and just makes the decision. I think every decision is just whatever the best basketball play is, that's what he does. So even if it's Russell Westbrook alone by 12 feet in the corner down to the biggest play of the game, I just think he's throwing it to him. That's like, that's a wide open guy. I am conditioned to throw it to that guy. And that's it. You're right. I think it could have been, it could have been Cerruti in the corner. Like he doesn't care.

Whoever that guy has a jersey on, I'm wearing the same jersey. He's open. I throw him the ball. That's what I do. A criticism of Jokic, if you wouldn't mind. Sure. It's a great time. It's been a lot of Jokic love lately, especially in this podcast. Go ahead. So the inbounding the ball thing that he does. All right. Denver fans, it's going to be okay. We'll get through this together.

But this came up when it was the Ishbia thing. Remember when Ishbia had the ball and Jokic went to grab it from him and Ishbia was just like, whatever. I caught a ton of shit because I was like, I could totally see just Ishbia thinking, like, what are you doing? Even though if it were just a normal fan, you've got to give the ball back. But the argument is, well, Jokic loves to check it with the ref so he can inbound the ball ahead of a defense getting things sorted out.

All right, because there's numerous times throughout a game where you can see that he's doing it. He's quick to get in a position to inbound, then get the ball back, and he's trying to catch the defense off guard. It's smart, right? He should keep doing it. However, there are times where it doesn't matter how quickly Jokic wants to inbound the ball. The rest have to sort some shit out.

And on that play where he and Van Gundy are battling for the basketball, there's no version of events where Jokic rips it from Van Gundy and then checks it and the ref just gives it back to him automatically, advantage Denver.

There seems to be these people that think that Jokic just gets to do whatever he wants on the inbounding. What would happen? The ref's like, oh, shit, he inbounded it, guys. I know we have a review and I know we have all these different, but he wanted to get it in, so I just let him. So there seems to be this misunderstanding of who's in charge here.

Because there's plenty of times where it makes sense when the ref doesn't have anything that he has to sort out. There's nothing that they're worried about. There are other times where it's very clear, and it's not as many times. It's clear the refs have to figure a couple things out before he gets to just start the game because he wants to start the game. I don't mind him doing it. I mind people defending the idea that he's supposed to be able to do it every single time. You know who used to do it once upon a time? Cedric Maxwell. 50 minutes. Larry Joe Byrd.

He would get furious at the ref if they didn't throw him the ball in time. I think he saw it the same way as Jokic. It's almost like soccer where the guy puts the free kick down really fast to try to get the advantage.

But like on the Ishbia, the Ishbia play specifically, there was other stuff they had to get through and figure out. They weren't just going to go, well, we had some questions about what happened. But he got the ball in. So Ishbia, it's the most positive Ishbia reference in a while. The idea that he's on pace to be the worst owner in NBA history. Thank you. I was going to do this later, but let's do it now. Look, we both like Stephen A.

I'm so tired of the historical hyperbole. He's got my vote. There's been so many worst owners over the course of 80 years than Matt Ishbia just trading a couple too many things for Kevin Durant and throwing some swaps at a Bradley Beal trade. Sarver used to just sell picks.

George Shin, they had to move the team to get him out of town because the town revolted against him owning a basketball team. Ted Stipian, they had to create a rule that

So that you couldn't trade draft picks and consider it because he demolished the Cavaliers for the entire 1980s and basically helped the Magic Johnson 1980s Lakers dynasty with stupid trades. Like I could go through a million of these. He's not in the top 20 yet. Was Dan Snyder that long ago? Well, he was saying NBA, right? Oh, was it just NBA? But even if it's NBA, I can come up with 20. We haven't even mentioned Donald Stroud yet.

Yeah, we've had, but we've had a million of these. FYI, James Dolan wasn't exactly crushing it for 20 years there for the Knicks, right? Ishby is, I don't know, not to defend him, but Jesus. That's not defending him. That's just, it's like, it's ridiculous. Like this whole thing where everything has to be the greatest, the best. Maybe it's an Ishby pod. Let's pivot. Let's get in front of that. Did that game make you feel better about voting for Jokic for MVP? Because it did for me.

Did the OKC Memphis game make people feel worse voting for SGA? That seems totally unfair. So I retract that. No, look, I was totally comfortable. Don't 100% retract it because that game was a fucking two hour display of how awesome OKC is. Like that team's awesome.

That was part of the case. If you were kind of nudging a little toward Jokic and a little away from SJ, it's like, okay, see, he's awesome. And okay. See, it was, I mean, they, they beat Memphis to the point that I almost wonder if like, if you win game one by 60 points, should the series just end? Like what would be the right number where it's like, look, if you lose by 60, we're not playing the other games.

It's done. Well, I love the idea of this, but they're never giving up the television. No, I know they're not. But what would be a number that would be like if you can't stay within 60 points of somebody in a game one, you can't play the rest of the games. Yeah. If you get it to 60, does that mean you're up to? Oh, we'll see a game three. It's a double win. Yeah.

I think if you get up 16 in an NBA playoff game, there should be some... It shouldn't just be 1-0 on the graphic next time Memphis plays basketball. All right, so before we do any of that, though, because I don't know if we're going to spend a ton of time on that. I have a Clippers thing. I don't want to leave Clippers nuggets yet. I'm not done with it yet either, buddy. Great, go. But the Jokic MVP, yes, I voted for him for MVP. Anybody listening to this podcast knew that I was going to do it. I felt totally fine about it. I don't want to sit here and argue against SGA because...

he was awesome. He had an incredible candidacy, but you got there too, huh? I did. I did. You, I, you could tell it was coming like two, three weeks ago. The 60, 10, 10 game was probably the final thing for me, but I just, you know, I talked about it on my Thursday pod at some point, if somebody is having the best offensive season you've seen since Michael Jordan, you gotta have to reconsider some of the, uh,

Some of the standards you have for the award. I have a point. My point about you asking, but I wasn't on the fence. And then like the third quarter I went, okay, I got it. I got it. Right. Thank God. Clippers. I have some Clipper fans in my life.

It's an underrated, oh my God, it's happening to us again team. Because we always think of like the typical, the big teams, like the Buffalo Bills, like these teams in the playoffs where if something goes wrong, you start thinking about the history. And the Clippers are such sad sacks, you kind of forget how bad the history is. And that loss was a bad loss. And yet, I still think the Clipper fans just feel like we can beat this team. We have a really good team. Kawhi being healthy,

and playing that many minutes and playing that many minutes just in general, it's one of those things you don't want to talk to on a no-hitter, but he looks really good. Like for whatever we thought he was going to be at this stage of his career at age 33, after all the time he's kind of missed and come and gone. Like this is, think like that. I think Harden, I think his legs look really good for an older team. They look pretty good. I still think they're the second best team in the West. Maybe Minnesota can

steal that ceiling title for them but i still think they're going to win the series um you have to if we if we're not done are you done with the series because we haven't talked about michael porter jr we have to do a minute on that go benched at the where do i have it here 814 mark of the fourth quarter during my note-taking exercise to try to remember stuff of all these games yeah i did have a first half third quarter mpj wtf question mark

just notation that's code for like, sometimes I'll just write down a guy's name and I'll go Andrew Wiggins question mark, you know, Tobias Harris, three question marks. Hey, not in the first half, but yeah. The lack of urgency from that guy is it's not new. This isn't breaking news, but it's like,

It just blows your mind. Like if you really try to like, hey, I'm going to watch him. Like, where is this guy been? Like, let me watch what he's doing out there. Doesn't fight for rebounds, doesn't fight for positioning. If it's an offensive rebound and he's on defense and then the guys in front of him, he just kind of like is there. There's there's no contest. There's no effort. So they bench him.

And it's funny too, because you're thinking about like, how's Westbrook going to play? Does this mean because Adelman's now coaching that we're going to see pick it out there closing? Cause that's the sample that we got in that Sacramento game where it was like, Oh, wait a minute. Westbrook's going to be on the bench. They're going to put picket in that game, which is becoming a must-win game like that. It would have been insane, but that, that was an actual option. But then it's, well, now it doesn't even matter because it's going to be Brown and

Gordon, obviously, who would be one of the three main guys with Murray and Jokic. And then Brown's going to be out there with Westbrook because there's no Michael Porter Jr. And so Adelman covered for him a bit saying, hey, I didn't think it was fair to have him sit long stretches and then bring him back in. It's tough to get back in and say you haven't played for a while. What does that tell you? That tells you that he cannot, Michael Porter Jr. is either somebody who does not respond to the criticism or responds poorly to it.

Hmm. Because I always think of like, if you're that bad and this is not new for him, as I've said, like he's, he's a classic, like, Hey, he hit a bunch of threes and I had 21 points, grabbed a few boards. Like he was really important for them. Hit some awesome shots in the fourth quarter. Like clearly he's already done that in playoff games. Um,

But then if he has zero, you know, like a lot of these guys that we talk about, you're not shocked. Hey, how do you end up with three points? Like you got the other version of him. But Jokic's quote here was pretty incredible. Now, again, three points in 26 minutes. And Jokic was asked about it. He said, quote, if you're not going to be engaged right now, then you're not supposed to be playing this sport. So you had the coach probably knowing like I can't get on him. Yeah, I just got this job two weeks ago. I'm a temp. Yeah.

uh we'll see he's going to be back out there i'm sure he's going to be back out there with the closing group and he's going to get another opportunity but uh it'll always blow my mind well but here's why this matters though not care i don't know oh in 23 when they won the title he played 20 playoff games 32.7 minutes a game 8.1 rebounds a game during that playoff stretch like and and i thought he was good during that run and we kind of hit

Whatever you had in your head of where his career was going to go, it was like, you know what would be cool? If he had 40% of his threes and he tried on defense and he rebounded. If you just get those three things, we're good. Now he doesn't rebound and the effort isn't there in the same way. And I said, Zach and I, I was on Zach's pod last week. We were talking about OKC and I asked how many guys on Denver would play for OKC.

And we went and he's like, no, there'd be more. And I said, well, I don't think Porter would play for them. I don't think he'd play over Wiggins. And Zach said he'd play over Wiggins. And I don't know whether that's right or wrong. I genuinely don't think he would play over Wiggins. I think Wiggins really gives a shit, plays defense, hits threes. He's athletic. He gives a shit. I said that twice. I don't think Porter would get on the floor for them because he doesn't play hard enough. He wouldn't play.

He wouldn't play over Hart. Two years ago, he would have. He wouldn't play over Chet. He wouldn't play over Dort. He wouldn't play over Wallace. He wouldn't play over SGA. He wouldn't play over Jalen Williams one. He wouldn't play over Caruso. It's basically the Wiggins spot. Isaiah Joe or Wiggins. Yeah. I'm playing both of those guys over Porter. This version of Porter.

And knowing what they prioritize, he's the antithesis of what they're about. So here's the thing. This might have worked out for Denver where Porter has some sort of come to Jesus moment, but he's also had a really, I think, difficult year. And maybe that's affected the off the court stuff with his brother, which was pretty horrible. He's already won a title. So when you win a title, it's like, I don't have to sacrifice in the same way. I'm already a champion.

And maybe you're in that mode of like, I'm tired of hearing about how great Jokic is. I'm good too. I'll never, nobody will ever appreciate me on this. Like who knows what's in his head, but whatever he did in game one was disgusting. It sucked. The problem is, is the off the court stuff is significant, right? Cause it's not just his brother. It's, it's, yeah, he's got a lot of shit, right? It's a lot of shit going on. But if this were abnormal for him in a game,

I think those excuses would be more of like,

the conclusion that I've come to. The problem is, is this is kind of who he's been. This has always been. It's just even crazier to like thinking back to all of the stories that work their way out of like the divide between Calvin Booth and Mike Ballone. And then Booth at one point saying, Hey, we need to trade Michael Porter jr. Cause there probably still be some kind of fake attraction to the idea of him. He's still really young. What? He's 26, 27. He's two more years. Would you trade him for Levine?

I think Levine is a bigger losing player than even Michael Porter Jr. is because he has the ball in his hands more. So probably not. But there was this Missouri connection, and you just think, what are you guys talking about? That can't be true. He was barely at Mizzou. He was barely there. And so now it's like this guy that seems to be indifferent at the wrong times. I'm looking at our YouTube chat to see if anybody has Michael Porter Jr.,

Yeah. Doesn't seem like he's very popular in the chat. But the thing is, they don't just need him. They actually need him to play like 32 to 35 minutes a game. It's not just like, oh, it'd be nice if he helped us out. They actually need real minutes from him because the more minutes he plays...

you know, the less other people play. So, but just to review though, he played 53 minutes in college, 53 minutes. And we're supposed to believe because of the Missouri connection to ownership, there's it's, that's like me being on Minneapolis Zillow because I've used the airport. Like I like it here. Like, have you ever been outside of the airport? Like I've been to that airport probably 40, 50 times. I've never been to the town. I think I've been to the Atlanta airport like 30 times and I've been to Atlanta twice.

Only twice. That'd be an interesting one. Most airports you've been in versus times you've actually been in the city. Detroit's up there, but I've been to Detroit. Because of Hartford, Detroit? Hartford, Detroit to somewhere else? Yeah. Well, I used to just spend a lot of time in Detroit. I'd leave Hartford being like, if I can do this, I can do Detroit. But when I... Canada's right there. I've never been to Minneapolis.

I didn't even go for the Super Bowl. I skipped that one. This episode is brought to you by Nissan. If you're planning on an adventurous 2025, you're going to need a car that can keep up with you and conquer anything in your path. The Nissan Armada Pro 4X is that car. With a twin-turbo V6 engine ready to propel your adventures, up to 8,500 pounds of towing capacity to haul all your favorite toys and space for eight passengers.

This unshakable fortress will chew up and spit out anything you throw at it. Learn more at the all new 2025 Nissan Armada at NissanUSA.com. Towing capacity varies by configuration. See Nissan Towing Guide and Owner's Manual for additional information. Always secure.

cargo. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Summer is almost here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered through Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well-groomed lawn delivered, but you can get chicken Parmesan delivered. A cabana, that's a no. A banana, that's a yes. A nice tan, sorry, no. But a box fan, happily yes. A day of sunshine, nope. A box of fine wines, yeah.

Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets, product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Can we do OKC Grizz really quick?

I think Memphis is not a good basketball team, and it made me mad that Dallas couldn't beat them. And I bet the sweep immediately, like immediately for this series. Maybe I'll be wrong. What was the odds? What were the payouts on that? What would they be? The odds were... I have that here. Plus 140. That's what I got it at. That was...

as big of a first half ass kicking as I can probably ever remember watching in a play off game. And I know there were, there were games where there are bigger blowouts, but it wasn't just that they were killing them. It was like, they were just rebounding and getting three on ones. And, uh, I thought Memphis gave up. It was a Jaron Jackson, a trademark, your trademark, an all time hall of fame to buy a Cyrus game.

I didn't realize he was out there for a half hour at one point. I thought he maybe left and was playing video games in the locker room, but it turned out he was still out there. It's just grim, and I don't see any chance. This is a team that is really built to defend Ja with as many options as you could possibly come up with, plus rim protection. Unless Desmond Baines just can hit 12 threes in a game, I don't see a case. But

I think Memphis, can we officially make them a team to watch this summer? Because I don't feel like this will be the same nucleus in a couple months.

Yeah, I don't know. Ownership loves jaw. And Jaron had a great year this year. He was terrible today. It's an awful matchup for them because it's jaw going up against door and then Baines going up against J will. So then it's, it's nine for 29 combined from your backcourt who physically has no chance against that group. And then on top of everything else, Jaron Jackson's like shit. So I get Chet or Harten, Hartenstein against me here. Hartenstein was, I thought incredible today. Yeah.

Yeah. Bane was incredible. Bane was a minus 51. JJ was two for 13 minus 51. Yeah. You don't see that a lot. At one point I was rooting one 10 55 was in play.

I didn't get there. I watched the entire game. My mom was over for Easter and I was like, hold on. Like I, I was really, I liked the double the score. That sounds like something I would say. Don't you think that's a little sad? You watched this whole game and your mother wasn't down? Well, I had it on. I was, it was on the kitchen. I was focused on it.

But here's the other part. SGA started this game one of nine, and it was 63 to 32. SGA had 15 points. It's his lowest total since Team Kenny and Team Shaq.

If you don't count those games, it's the lowest. The lowest he had had was very early in the season when he had 18. So game one of the playoffs, they come out here and do this. And he only had 15 points and he missed like all of his shots until he hit some more a little bit later. This was so gross. It's the biggest blowout in the playoffs in 10 years when the Bulls beat the Bucks back in 2015 by 54 points. Hmm.

And it's always easy to say, but yeah, but this felt worse. I think it's just because it's like, if I have to hear about the Grizzlies being a fucking two seed anymore, it's like, yeah, all right. Yeah. The standings broke one way and you were kind of a two seed and you were two seeds in that other year. And you guys really are proud. Like, when are you guys raising the two seed banner that started? Like we were a two seed at one point and it just, what was that? Indy Colts banner.

what was it the uh the afc south champs or whatever is that what it was i don't know they had a bad banner i'm trying to that would be a good website worse banners that would be you start that if things don't work out after the pod i guess look anybody that heard the vernal pod could tell i was kind of like running out of patience with this memphis group oh that was general saruta said 2014 afc finalists was the colts banner

AFC championship finalists. It's pretty bad. It's a tough banner. I just, you know, the buildup and like Jaws looking around and it's like, all right. And then Jalen Rose is even like a shoe comes out today and he wants to announce to the world that like, even though SGA is getting all this love, like I'm at this level. And then OKC is just looking at me like, what are you going to do?

We're going to go under every screen. You're going to hit the first three. You're going to miss the rest of them. And then you're going to do shit where you get into the paint. Sometimes it works. But against us, like if you wait around against OKC, as I've said all season long, if you dick around with the basketball, they're going to make you pay. And so breaking the paint and then just kind of dancing around, hoping you're going to get some angle against all these guys that are so much bigger than you. So.

There sounds like there's real dislike in my voice. I know when I talk about Memphis, and I actually feel bad about it a little bit because I think they do do a really good job, and they've done a really good job on the margins with all these players. I'm like, hey, nobody really liked this guy. They were smart about it. They nailed all these draft picks. Even Pippen Jr., that guy's going to play a really long time. I love his toughness. But to come out and just get stomped like that,

It should be, however the rest of the series goes, this should have been some kind of wake-up call of like, we might be lying to ourselves down here a little bit about what our ceiling actually is. But they probably won't do anything because Jha's easily the most famous guy in sports. You could talk yourself into a, well, the coach thing was weird. We don't have Brandon Clark. Jalen Wells got hurt.

Let's take a look at this in the offseason. Edie turned out to be a great pick. Feeling good there. Great pick? I think he's serviceable. Well, for number nine. In a bad draft, fine. I'm just trying to do the glass half full Grizzlies case. The question for me is, if you're sitting in whatever office talking about let's make a big move, who's out there?

whether Memphis would admit it or not, they're not hanging up if you're like, I have this really good offer for John Moran. Can we talk about it? They're not going to be like, nope. I think John's the kind of guy owners love and will defend forever because he's their attraction. And if you're in Memphis, that's probably as important as, well, I guess they were a two seat. All right. Well, they have their three guys.

And they feel a million miles away from OKC. And OKC is still stacking up. And they have three draft picks in this draft. And I mean, you're so far away. I don't know. It'd be a tough exit interview for the group. And we don't know if that coach is coming. I'd heard that the...

Maybe they did that Jenkins move because they wanted to lock down that coach because they're afraid they're going to lose him. So maybe he's the coach going forward. I don't know. But anyway, I'm going to probably not watch a lot of that series going forward unless the score is like 150 and I can get excited that they might double a score. Let me ask you this. What would OKC need to do or is it irrelevant because it's Memphis before people start to realize how special this team is? It's not going to happen until they play Lakers, Patriots,

Who for, Oh, it's Clippers Denver. Probably that series, probably round two. If they're just walloping, whoever comes out of that Clippers Denver thing. That's when I think people would be like, Holy shit. But yeah, it's not, I just think people aren't going to believe it until they see it against real teams in the playoffs. Um, Nick's Pistons. What is your opinion for why Cade was so bad in that game? I have an opinion, but I'm interested in yours because Cade was bad.

Yeah, he was. I think OG makes you work a lot, and I think it kind of slows down the first thing that you're going to do. I thought they were doing a better job bringing him off the ball in some of the regular season games and then coming back to the ball. It seemed like they kind of abandoned a lot of that stuff. Hey, they were a mess. The five-second violation to start the fourth quarter, next possession, 24-second violation, turnover, turnover, turnover, campaign of all people going off. The missed dunk, although Asar made up for it.

That was a disaster start to that 21, nothing run the whole time. You seem like you have something specific though, to the Cade matchup here that you want. You said the number one thing I would have said is I, first of all, OG has been awesome for two months here. And I thought he was really good yesterday. No, I had a big picture point. I don't think home court matters anymore. Really that much as we saw with like how good the Celtics are on the road and that home, they would just blow these games left and right. And I,

We've seen teams lose game sevens at home over and over again every playoffs. And in general, I just don't think it's not like it was in the 80s. Even if you're watching Celtic City, some of those games that even I was lucky enough to be at.

The crowds were different. The crowds were on top of you. You had the people on the bench. They had people sitting in the rows behind them, just screaming at them the whole game. There was like an intimidation factor that I think is just not there anymore. I think it's, I think it's just more benevolent to be on the road just in general. It's easier to fly to a game, your private jets, your standard nice hotels. There's just things that are more in your favor if you're the road team.

I think the Knicks still have a home court advantage. I thought the Pistons got rattled when that 21 to nothing, as that was happening. It was a thing that you don't really see that often anymore. A younger team getting affected by the momentum of a game and how much the crowd was into it. Cause I thought the crowd was great. And I knew a bunch of people that were there who said the same thing, but I thought the crowd and the energy of, of what they had and what some of the players had and towns, which, um,

That was about as much fun as I've had watching Towns as a two-way guy probably ever. OG, Brunson was, you know, Brunson, it seems like he's hurt, then he's not hurt, then he seems hurt again, then he's fine, but Brunson was gutting it out. And everybody won from that game except for Bridges because Bridges was bad and he was on the bench basically the entire time they brought it back. But if you're Detroit, you're like, fuck, we got this incredible Harris game.

Right? At 22, what, at halftime? Yeah. We were able to match their energy. Stewart gets hurt at the beginning of the fourth quarter. And they get nothing from Cade, but they still hung around, hung around, hung around. And then the Knicks just made them look like the young team that wasn't ready to be in an atmosphere like that. That was my takeaway. Yeah, I think all that's really fair. That place is awesome. That's not breaking news, but...

it really kind of went the way I thought. I thought the third quarter was so impressive from Detroit. Yeah. When in that one, 36-26, I'm going, this is not what I expected. I just figured Detroit's going to get reminded that there's levels to this and that New York, even though they had the injuries last year, they're just going to be way more comfortable in these games than Detroit's going to be. And if I look at a Malik Beasley who hit a ton of shots, I feel like

Do I expect that those are going to go in in the fourth quarter? He's in that group for me right now where he's feeling himself. He's been awesome this entire season. He's so important to what they do. Just the idea of actually having spacing around Cade this year as opposed to what they tried to do last year. But I don't know that I expect those shots to go in in the fourth quarter. And then you have another play where there's a turnover. Look, this is a playoff game. New York's running away with this thing. The place is going crazy. Tons of momentum. Get back on defense. Tim Hardaway lets Brunson run away from him.

There was just so many bad plays, turnovers, looking like they're not, they just weren't up to the task at all of the emotion of what that game was to close it. And I think the cap part of it that's great for him in this series is even if Stewart's going to stretch the floor a little bit, it's not going to lose you the game.

So Cat doesn't really have to worry about that. Cat has to figure out a way to just be in position on some of the Cade stuff that he was out of position on in the third quarter. But if Duren's in, as much as he's going to make you work because he's a beast out there, you don't really have to defend him. And Cat's big enough and he's rebounded at a Hall of Fame level his entire career, so he's going to be able to fight for some of those rebounds. I'm sure Cat's looking at this being like, okay, I'm going to get hurt on some of these where I come up to meet the ball and I'm going to get burnt.

But I'm also not worrying about like Porzingis as a stretch five, or I'm not worrying about some super dynamic guy who's going to get all of these options offensively at center. So that's going to be a bit of a relief for him. And, you know, campaign scoring 11 points in just a few minutes. They didn't even bring back Mikhail to your point until like it was kind of over. So,

I don't know that there's a, a of Detroit had done this. I just think they were completely overwhelmed, which the fourth quarter made way more sense to me than the third quarter did yesterday. The third quarter of the fourth quarter was hilarious from a tech standpoint. Cause I think at this point I was either at WrestleMania, we were going there and, and I just decided it's too hard for me to watch this next game. I'm going to just, I'll bang it out when I get home, I'll bang out like the second half. And I,

I had these texts. I won't say who sent them, but one of them was, this is very disturbing to say the least. No ball movement. Brunson dribbling away. They're a better team with Robinson. And then 10 minutes later, I take it all back. That was one. Um, there was a, another one, uh, um,

The Dante Julius trade is such a disaster. Motherfuck. And then right after timestamp above is when we tied game, by the way, it doesn't matter. And then I was like, ha ha, you guys came back. It was a lot of those. The Knicks fans were freaking out in the third quarter. And that was what was so funny when the energy shifted watching on TV, knowing what had already happened. Look, it's a really good team.

I don't think they're in the class of Boston. Like to me, they remind me of, oh man, this is going to get clipped and probably come back to haunt me. Um, they remind me of one of those NFL teams, like the, like a Houston Texan season where they win the wildcard game. And it's like, do you think they can win three more? And it's like, not really. Um, I just think they're going to beat the teams that they're better than. And when they get to that next class, that higher class, I don't think they have enough.

Even the campaign thing, that's ridiculous. He's not going to, he's going to do that once every three weeks, right? That's not going to be a recurring thing with campaign. That's if he does that again, it'll be a miracle.

It's campaign. I don't know how, what other conclusion is anyone supposed to come to? Okay. I mean, this becomes, is this what you think is going to happen based on your analysis? Or is this what you hope happens because you have a poster home? All right. And I can't, I can't argue with anybody like that. The only evidence we have is that they don't beat the elite teams because they didn't beat the elite teams. I mean, they basically want to fucking parade for losing an overtime to the Celtics. Like the reaction that I saw from that stuff was, Hey, this is a turning point and proves that they can, they can hang. Yeah.

with with this team uh they should smoke detroit detroit's not ready for this and they they proved it in the fourth quarter but that third quarter was fun that third quarter i was like what's going on here there's one thing with detroit that i'm gonna be really interested to see if they do it a little more i thought schruder had a really interesting second half

I've always liked Schroeder. I probably like him more than most, but I think he's a pest. I always felt like he was the best guy in the league defending Steph. Out of anybody in the league, he would have been the number one guy I picked to just bug Steph. I feel like he can bug Brunson. I do think there's some sort of lineup with two smaller guards, with Beasley, with the center, and then with the shooter that

they might be able to at least hang around in these games. If I'm the Pistons, I thought this was one of my favorite bets that the series would not go six games. I still don't think it's going to go six games. But if I'm the Pistons, you're at least talking yourself into, look, Cade's not going to be that bad again. He was really good all year. Like he has another, this will be a good motivating for them. That's what I'm saying. There's also something with Bickerstaff in this one that I don't know if it's worth even mentioning, but I'm going to mention it because it's a podcast. Okay.

matching the asar minutes with brunson now asar should be plenty fresh he's young he's literally more athletic than everybody else in the league except for maybe his brother an aunt you know but they actually had him out there when brunson wasn't in in the start of the fourth quarter and i was just wondering it should be like a cornerback coming in to just defend a specific receiver

Because even if you expect like no one with that profile and that age would ever actually get tired in a basketball game, I imagine the excitement and the adrenaline because of the stakes and the playoffs. Like, I don't know if I'd want to waste a couple minutes of him playing

being out there chasing other dudes around and then bigger staffs clearly to you know a bit like the email thing he was he was trying to figure out what he thought was the best lineup because it's like do I want to have a star out there without any kind of spacing because spacing is like the number one thing with Cade I have to find a way to get spacing but then it means defensively like does

Does that mean now we've got guys hunting Beasley? We have guys hunting hard away. And by the way, if the Pistons get down to, oh, here or it's ugly, if it were ugly at the end of game two, I'm fully expecting like abs, red wings type of moment. Like somebody Beasley is down for something. Schroeder's not afraid to screw around. I don't know if it'd be a sorrow. I thought it would happen during that 21, nothing run.

I was waiting for the clothesline or something like that. And by the way, that also should have been Memphis today. How many baskets can OKC before you just have to at least contest a layup, for God's sakes? It was pretty brutal. I'm not doing the old guy. Back in my day, we would have clothesline, blah, blah, blah. Well, the problem is when Memphis, there was one miss on that Jalen Williams dunk, not the one where he dunked on everybody. I think

That was a little later. There was one earlier one where outside of, I think it was Pippen or Bain missed the shot and he was deep in the paint. And then I looked at where everybody was in transition and all four other Memphis players were feet below the free throw line. Like a couple were on the baseline. All four were on the baseline. So they didn't even have anybody positioned to do anything. Yeah. It was, Jay Williams was gone. I think you're right about game two. They're going to definitely muck it up.

That would be my Detroit. That would be my guess. We are going to get a way more physical game. And we'll see the Bridges piece of it, which has been up and down all year. And we've talked about it a bunch of times. But he finished better. He definitely finished better, man. He did. I felt great about him as the season went on. But it was a storyline is my point. It was discussed on and off during the season. I just want to shout out one thing that Thompson does.

I think he's the number one guy if I'm inbounding the ball and I'm a point guard and I just have to dribble 50 feet to set up my offense. I think he's the number one guy I wouldn't want to see in front of me. There's something about what he does with cutting the angles off to the guy, like pushing them toward the sidelines, but being able to move his feet with his hands up. I've never seen anybody. I can't think of anybody who's been better. Maybe like- Alvin Robinson? I don't remember that one.

You can go way back for me. Pippin used to do that. Remember when Pippin and Jordan would do this sometimes? So they'd be like, hey, let's just go get the ball.

And they would just like defend 94 feet and people like literally couldn't dribble the ball up to midcourt. He is so terrifying. But I think for the Pistons, like putting those miles on Brunson where he's just like actually working just to get the ball 60 feet, like it's a real thing. So I bet they do that more. Well, that play where Brunson freaked out and got mad and started clapping at the ref. Yeah. Asar had position on him. He just wrote him right out of bounds. And maybe if I had said Alvin Robertson, you would have remembered.

Alvin had a good fight with Shaq. Remember that one? Yeah, I don't know why I used David Robinson's last name, but Spurs getting older. It's fine. We're getting old. Cavs heat. Is there anything you need to see from Cleveland this series? Man, more Ty Jerome. 20 of 28 points. How many games has he done this? Like 20? Where he just completely takes over a game? Six. It's not 20. You think it's 20? No, where he just takes over like a four-minute stretch of a game.

The Orlando game was off the charts. This felt like a lot. I mean, he just comes in. First of all, 17 points in five minutes. Mitchell and Garland are taking turns. So that's all working. So there was never like that lull. And then if you're Miami and you're fighting, you're trying so hard. You have no chance in the playoffs with the construction of this team. And this is the best I've ever felt about hero as a shot creator. Right.

Him being the one option, you get to see some of the stuff that he's capable of doing. And it's really, really impressive. It's also really hard when the number two is Andrew Wiggins, who has like three makes in the first quarter and then didn't have another make until like the fourth quarter. I think he had like two more, but it was just one was like sort of in the game. The other one was completely irrelevant. So part of the Andrew Wiggins experience, as much as I love BAM, I love BAM.

But offensively, there's going to be some limitations there. So that's your one, two. If you're Miami trying to hang with Cleveland, that feels like they have all of these offensive options. And Ty Jerome comes in to close the game scoring 20 of 28 points of Cleveland. Like it's just making like a 30 footer. Right. You left out with your Miami options. You left that you left out the high screen with our guy Davion.

How about him in the Atlanta? Like it's a little difference with Trey Young is assigned to you. But Davion did have some more buckets because Davion feels like he probes a lot and there's certain people that he doesn't want to challenge. So I've been kind of mixed on like how much is he really giving you offensively? And he's been terrific for him. So he's definitely a rotation guy. Oh, easily. I think next year he's 100% could be on a good team playing 15 to 20 minutes a game.

But the thing, I texted this to you. I still don't understand why they punted on Schroeder and what the thinking was with that. I'm sure there was tax apron stuff, but I don't understand how the team we're watching in this game today didn't need Schroeder for 20 minutes, 25 minutes. They basically nudged him away. And I know there were some financial implications to it, but it's a weird one. For Hero to have to go up against this defense, knowing that even if you

Pull a rabbit out of your hat because he is like, there are some shots that hero gets into that are really high level shots. Yeah. Just on my own or floater things. He's doing is. Yeah. Pretty nuts. You know, I can't believe Portland said no to him and that Lillard trade. Cause this guy's awesome.

but the the rest of the guys around him like and even bam like there's only certain places he can start with the ball in his hands to be like hey we need a bucket now bam so then heroes coming out of there that's why i just you kept looking at the score going when is this thing going to be over when is it going to be over there's no way cleveland's actually going to lose there's no way this is going to be like a possession well i miami's not miami shouldn't be a playoff team and honestly neither should memphis like there's 13 teams there's memphis and miami there's uh

I think Orlando at least can throw some punches and has two good scores. They feel playoff team-y to me. I'm okay with them in the playoffs. They're obviously a guy short. The argument for the play-in is there's plenty of teams that have had injuries and Memphis would say, hey, look, if we'd had Ja the full year,

But I don't know. The West is so packed. Is it guaranteed that they're a top six? I don't think that guarantees it. I think the Kyrie thing was the biggest one of all of them. I think if Kyrie had never gotten hurt, I think Dallas would have been a really good eight seed. They would have lost, but at least they would have defense and a score and they would have been something of a team. Yeah, that would have been a fun team. I'm with you there. But I just want to come full circle on this whole playing thing. Yeah. Because this was the reason I didn't like it.

Because you're going to have these teams. I would think an eight-game win separation based on the 10 seed in the West. Yeah.

And then what, the seventh seed or eighth seed? I forget. So I guess I could pull it up right now. But the point stands is that why are you giving these teams that stink another chance to get into this entire thing? Now, there still had to be eight teams, but it just was funny. Like when you had Lakers Warriors with the Steph LeBron showdown four years ago, and it's like, oh, I thought the plan stunk. And it's like, no, it's the principle. It is what the what the plan stands for. If the games are good, then, of course, we're all going to enjoy good games. But guess what happened this year?

Now, everybody doesn't like the play in simply because of the results of the games and whether or not they were entertaining. And they don't tell Amazon because I think this is part of their package. Amazon was excited for the play in. But there are how many good. It's not going anywhere. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's just we went to the play in this year. I'd love to know the batting average for the four years, but it's got to be about 30 percent. Miami Atlanta was great. It's a fun. I enjoyed it as well.

It was a fun one. I wonder if it should just be eight, eight, nine winner of eight, nine plays the seven for the seven, eight seating or something like that. And we just get rid of the 10 seed. I think it's going to be hard to find a, a 10 seed that is kind of deserves to get any sort of stage. You're going to end up in like that weird Sacramento thing. I mean, we didn't even talk about the Sacramento. This, this is, this is now a top three. What the hell is this organization going to do? Organization. This is a bonus piece of it.

I don't know where that goes. I thought Bonnie McNair did a good job. I guarantee you Vivek wanted Zach Levine. He seems like the kind of guy an owner would be like, but he scores a million points. Celtics-Orlando, anything before we go to Pacers-Bucks? I thought we were going to lead with it. That's what you had said in the text, the show rundown that I got. Which one? Celtics-Orlando? Go for it. Come on. Give us a couple minutes, Bill. The Celtics are really good. Orlando doesn't have enough good players, and

And Orlando needs some sort of guard who can create stuff for them because what they have is not enough. That's my analysis. The disparity between the two teams was significant. I never for a split second thought the Celtics were in danger of losing the game. And Tatum didn't even play well offensively. He's had a good rebounding game. I liked how hard he played. I thought he was good defensively. I thought he attacked the rim. But the guards won the game. And Drew clearly has multiple gears.

Like the Drew that was in the game today, they were, Drew, he's doing the, Chad Finn called it the Dennis Johnson. Like I'll turn it on when the games start mattering. And he's, you know, he's, he just looked great. Porzingis looks good. Team looks good. Feeling good. Jalen's knee looked okay. Didn't see any red flags anywhere. Tatum wrist x-rays.

All good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I had a couple Celtic fans in my life who were mad about that foul. I thought it was a good play. I thought they were trying to stop a dunk. Like, it's fucking playoff basketball. Your job is to

try to stop somebody from dunking in traffic, you know, and they caught a flag or one on it. I could have gone either way on it, but I didn't have a problem with that. I didn't think it was cheap. Did you? No, I didn't even think it was a flag or run. It's all depends on how you land. Everybody's, everybody's is in their mind. If you want to tell me Wendell Carter has his hand in his back a little bit. Okay, fine. But I didn't think it was like an extended arm thing out, but the standard of what we all now think is flagrant. It's like concussion experts.

on Twitter on Thursday Night Football. I don't know, dude. It didn't look very good. You're not even on the sideline, dude. You're home. Look, I didn't think it was a flagrant foul, but you're right. Tatum's 8 of 22, 1 of 8 from 3. Jalen Brown's 6 of 14. And by the way, his foul at the end of the third quarter, which then restarted the end of the third quarter, he has got

I don't know what's going on over there at Harvard, but there needs to be a, hey, this would be a good time to foul. This would be a bad time to foul. Maybe it's a one-credit course. Yeah, maybe we get a paper. Somebody put a paper together. Because he just...

He has these moments, man, where I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Anyway, six of 14 today. So that's what? 14 for 36 from your two best players. And you close this one out almost up. Yeah. When the guards play like that there. Yeah. It's very hard for them to lose. There'll be no Palo slander also because you got to see that tonight. And I thought Drew on Palo at least making him have to work to get into his stuff.

But Orlando has no chance. We knew they had no chance. And I also thought if we're doing a Wendell Carter, maybe update he played today, you may not have noticed like 12 rebounds. Yeah. But to see his effort level,

against somebody like Al Horford's effort level when Al knew they needed to crank up the energy. And Al's fighting, and he's grabbing loose balls, and he's starting the fast break. And you're like, man, Carter was actually like when I did his draft year phrasing, I was like, he kind of has a little Horford-ish stuff in there. That's even a word. And then it's like, yep, there's no wonder look for desire, Bill.

I was trying to think of a scenario where Orlando could win a game because I still feel like Boston's not going to sweep. I think Boston will have a weird game where they just don't make threes. But I also think if they play defense, it would be impossible for Orlando to get to like 98 points. So it would have to be the combination of not making threes, not playing defense for like an hour and get Orlando up. But if Boston plays defense, I just don't see how Orlando is going to score even in the game today.

They had 18 points in the first quarter, 18 in the third, 19 in the fourth. Like, it's just going to be really hard. They're so bad on offense at times. It's just tough to watch. Right. So their third leading scorer with Jonathan Isaac, you want to guess how many points? Ten? Seven. Oof. Okay.

This episode is brought to you by Cognigy. Customer service can be so frustrating. Waiting on hold, being transferred around, repeating yourself. So flip the script with Cognigy's Agentic AI. Their AI agents do more than automate. They collaborate. Seamlessly integrating into any system, Agentic AI works alongside your customer care team to deliver service, support, and experiences at scale, reducing costs and making customers happy. Experience Cognigy's Agentic AI at Cognigy.com slash happy.

This episode is brought to you by Visit Myrtle Beach. If you're dreaming of a beachy summer escape, then head to the beach. In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, you'll find 60 miles of stunning coastline, hundreds of attractions to explore, and the South's newest foodie hotspot. This is where you play hard and beach easy. You belong at the beach. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Start planning your summer adventure at visitmyrtlebeach.com. We'll end with Pacer's Bucks.

Best for last. I love the Pacers in this series. I thought the single best bet on FanDuel heading into the playoffs was Pacers win game one, Pacers win the series was, I think, plus 138, something like that. Look at you. The Bucs looked horrible. Dame didn't play. There was this weird...

Dame's back. I think people thought he was going to be back for game one just because of the way the announcement came out. Well, they said he was off the medication. Yeah. Because he was off. But even if he comes back, he's not going to be in game shape. The Pacers love to pressure the ball full court. I just think there's so many things wrong. And then you move into, well, what has to happen for the Bucs to win the series? Well, Kevin Porter needs to really come through. It's like, well, he wasn't on the team two months ago. So if it's okay, I'm not going to count on that.

Um, and just like pencil and Giannis for 38 and 20 every game, I still don't think they're winning the series. And I also think the Pacers are good. I think Pacers Cleveland is going to be a really, really good series. But the big question is, you know, is, is the clock going to start on Giannis? That's going to be the ESPN topic tomorrow.

especially if they fall down to nothing what happens to yannis where is he going to go like and this is we said all this before the playoffs yeah but we can't do that to the bucks you can't do that to the bucks after one game there can't be a yannis where is he going to go after one fucking playoff game it was starting on saturday after that game where it was bad you know right it was a bad loss and you start going okay this but it sucks if you're yannis he's been

30, 12, and 6 for seven straight years, and he's never been in a weaker situation with this roster. It is what it is. I'd like to submit a weekly Nico Harrison award based on the quote that you're like, what? Yeah. And I'd submit Bobby Portis had some pregame availability with Katie George, who did the sideline for this game pre-ESPN.

And she was saying, Bobby, you know, he's been around here a long time. And he said that this Bucs team is the best version of any of the teams that he's been on. And I expected like, except for the team that won an NBA. Yeah. And no, no, no, no, Bill. Not so fast. He said even that team. He did an even that team for the team that won the title? Wow. The 22 team was better. The 22 team was really good. If Middleton had been healthy, who knows? Grant Williams, six threes.

Rushmore. Start talking about it. Not the movie. Best player. Giannis was fantastic. Nobody else did anything else around him. I think at one point he had like 36 of the 50. I never liked the Kuzma trade at any point of 2025. It's Tony Snell off the hook. You think Snell is replaced by Kuzma? Yeah. Which is the meme? 22 minutes, 0 for 5, 0 boards, 0 assists, 0 points. You want to guess how many blocks and steals he had?

None? Zero and zero. Zero turnovers. Well, tomorrow we have Detroit, New York, and Clippers, Denver, which I think is a... That Clippers, Denver, that was a really hard game. Of all the games I would have said, it would be nice if those guys had one more day off. I probably would have picked that series, but somehow they're playing again. So we'll see with that. But those are two really good games tomorrow. I went from thinking Indiana would win in less than six...

to now wondering if this could potentially get ugly. Because if I'm Milwaukee, I need Dame to come back for the third game. And I also need him to be pretty good. And that just seems like I'm keeping my fingers crossed on both of those at that point. I continue to think Indiana's really good. I put some of my favorite playoff bets on Friday. And I thought the Indiana was 28-1 to win the East.

I don't think they're going to win the East, but I thought those odds were pretty good because you'd have to take out Cleveland and they know they can play with Boston. And just 28 to one is, those are crazy, crazy odds. It's at least if you're going to take a crazy flyer on someone, not a bad one. I think Indiana is a good team. And sometimes they're their own worst enemies, but they are definitely better than Milwaukee. And I don't think it's going to matter what Giannis does. So.

Um, so we try not to overreact to game one, but that game confirmed everything I thought heading into the series that Indiana just has a better basketball team. Yeah. No breaking news there. I mean, you expect a little bit more to Kuzma. Um, Torian Prince also had zero Kuzma versus Porter who had a worse weekend. I mean, it was just an absolute donut from everybody other than AJ green hitting a few threes and Kevin Porter getting to the free throw line. Uh,

It's, you know, Giannis owns any of the numbers that you would look at. It's like, hey, what has he done against the Occam? All right, he's done this. What has he done against Turner? Okay, he's done this and he owns these dudes. But now he's playing point guard now. I mean, you want to talk about a dude out there by himself. You know, this is some people were calling it the John Popper, the NBA. And I don't know if that's fair to the guys in Blues Traveler. But he's had a good run. It's tough when a basketball player hits the point.

Where you can give them the best possible stat line for the game and also say their team's still going to lose. Yeah, like no chance. Like game two, Giannis, 42-27 assist. Do they win? And I'd be like, eh, probably not. That's where it gets tough. I know how you were talking about just all the nonsense, but we have to be, because we're guilty of it too, but...

We don't do it, but we're guilty of referencing it. And I know I am. And sometimes I try to stop myself from doing it, but sometimes you can't, right? Because you see so much of it. But just like there's a whole anti-Curry camp, right? And they argue these points. There's a lot of anti-Tatum people.

and yeah it's a weird one it's it's very strange like today would be another example of like oh once again tatum needs to be bailed out of like a bad playoff i heard from a laker fan today who mailed me his box who are like yo your boy yeah 14 rebounds yeah you gave up 40 open threes last night buddy uh so all of that exists so all of the yana stuff exists but you know until i would see like

whether it was you thinking you've heard something or a wind horse or Shams, like there's somebody that really mattered that kind of like brought it out on a radar where it was justifiable. I know that it's being talked about, but a lot of stuff that's talked about, it's just like, okay, but who, who are the people that are actually talking about this stuff? Even it's being discussed all of the time. Yeah. And there was a really funny one. Cause I would put this in the category of like something that I've read and I forget who wrote it, but I was reading a bunch of the playoff previews and the person made the argument. It was like,

I like the bucks in this series. If Dame doesn't come back, I'm like, Oh, and after this game, right after this game, I'm thinking, all right, well, whatever you think the low end of the Dame experience is, at least there's another score out there that also balances out the court. And it's some outlet that's better than, you know, all of these dudes. Kyle Kuzma does the zero, zero, zero across the board. Um,

So I went to WrestleMania in and out yesterday. How'd that go? Did you drive car service? No, I was, I was able to, uh, somebody I knew was going in and out same day. Yeah. Very nice. And at one point was sitting with, um, Dana White was like four seats down with his right hand guy. Very nice guy. And my son, big UFC fan, um, and his buddy, uh,

kind of, my son has a way of doing this. All of a sudden is in a conversation with the right-hand guy and, uh, got some info on international fight week. And, uh, there's a fight coming in that week that my son he'll, he'll make this face three times a year that we always make fun of where he's been making it since he was a little kid, where he's overwhelmed by something. And he's kind of just deer and like legitimate deer in the headlights.

And he found out one of the fights and made the deer in the headlights face. But I'm not going to say it because I don't want to betray the confidence. But let's just say my son is now demanding we go to International Fight Week. By the way, how does your son handle, I would say over the years, the access of your friend group and some celebrity? Yeah. Let's not pretend. How does he handle himself? He's great. He's got a good handshake, eye contact, kind of knows when to move in and out of the combo. Not annoying? No.

No, not annoying. Low usage rate. He'll space the floor. If it's somebody he wants to engage with, he'll do it. If it's something like there's a common interest thing. Like a go-bar switch. Yeah, or he'll move back. Okay. That's good. Keep going. I'm getting in the way. It seems like we were there for the better WrestleMania day because I think today was a little bit worse, although John Cena, I know you were focused on that.

another massachusetts title scene about the title again bad guy uh turn heel and but he won the title with some help from your guy travis scott came in and helped him out that's cool guy but he came in surprise i think he did a really good job of the shoes uh my highlight that was behind behind like in the uh in the back room underneath um

Stephen Bell was there who was starred in Heels, which is a show that I really liked that was on Starz. This guy, Chris Bauer, was also on Heels. He played the bad guy, but he's been in a bunch of movies. He was Sabaka in The Wire, and he's been in a bunch of movies, but he was Machine in 8mm, a movie that I love and Van Lathan loves, and my friend Jeff Gow loves, and I'm not sure anyone else loves, Nick Cage.

So I was really excited to meet him. And I opened with, I'm a huge fan of 8mm. I love Machine. I don't think he gets it much. Seems genuinely surprised. So he's the main union guy, Sabatka. Oh, yeah. Frank Sabatka. Yeah. Yeah. He was great. I thought Sabatka, I know the storyline in season two, people don't really like it that much. No, season two is good. People got to give season two another chance. Plus Pablo's in it. Like there's great actors in that season.

Pablo Schreiber, Den of Thieves. Yeah, I like Sabaka. He's totally, totally believable in that role. I thought he did a great job. He probably gets Sabaka the most, I would guess, from the interactions. I don't know if he got a lot of Machine. Machine was the killer in 8mm. He was the killer in the stuff film. And he wore like a gimp leather mask. And there's a big fight scene at the end with him and Nick Cage. So yeah.

Good one. Okay. But is there anything, is there any wrestling stuff that we need to know about the world needs to know about? Um, you know, I think Charlotte flair is really great. I think she's the best woman's wrestler I've ever seen in person. No, just best in general. China. I don't think China, China's not a lot of conversations. I think China's China's a little more like, uh,

I don't know. Like she had a brief, brief apex. Who's the Irish one? Becky, Becky Lynch. She married Seth Rollins. She had a, she was the biggest star in the company for about a year. And then, um, she married Seth Rollins and they had a, they had a kid. So I think she kind of phased back a little bit. Um, I found her sports center ad annoying. So did you notice in the masters, they were rerunning some of the old, uh, sports center ads. I forgot how great those were.

They were rerunning the Tiger Woods ad, a couple of them. I love those ads. Yeah, I love them too. It's kind of nostalgic for them. I remember, I think when they first started the whole This Is Sports Center campaign, it was some...

it was some ad agency in Portland, Oregon, I think. And I wrote them a letter. I was like, oh, you know, I like sports. I mean, you know, this is me doing my Douglas Copeland shampoo planet writing letter phase of my life. But, uh, Wieden Kennedy, that's a denim, right? They're in Portland. You would know better than I would. Yeah. It was just, they were so good. The funny thing was, is then once I started working there,

They actually kind of like made sense because you could be in a situation where you're like, why is so-and-so in the salad bar line with me or something like that? But then there was like a real, like that guy's in one or. I was going to say the funniest thing about sports center was the, the fucking jockeying to be in the sports center commercial. There were so many stories about that. People be mad that this person got in and they weren't, this person's been in three. I haven't been in one yet.

He's been in four. I've only been in one. It was fantastic. Yeah, and then they just kind of fell off. I mean, they had a really good run for a really long time. I think there was always a little animosity that Van Pelt was in so many of them, but he was just really good at it. Yeah, I liked him. And I saw Sinners on Friday too, and I thought it was spectacular. I saw Warfare in the theater on Thursday. A couple moviegoers. It is so fucking good. Okay, it is that good. I love it for a bunch of different reasons.

But I love that a studio let a couple of guys make a movie on an experience that they knew firsthand. And they were like, here's the script. It's going to be just one location for like 90 minutes going through this one thing. And it's going to be really graphic. It's going to be very stressful. It's going to cause anxiety and it's going to have all these different moments, but it's going to be like the most realistic approach possible.

to a war scene you can possibly have. There's no girlfriend. There's no, does this kid betray someone? And there's a forbidden connection based on cultures. It's like, nope, these guys are in this room and they're fucked and they got to get them out of there and we'll see what happens. And we're going to stay in this room with them for 90 minutes and seeing it in the theater. Yeah. The, the number of moments were like, it was just the sound and you know, it wasn't like a super complicated scene,

there's not some like memento, like, oh my God, this is, I can't believe Christopher Nolan did this. I just love that they let them do that. Now, Sinners, everybody's raving about that. Give us the quick pitch. Sell. I just think Coogler's on the short, short, short, short list of the best directors. It's so original. I went into it knowing nothing. I intentionally read nothing. I didn't want to know anything. I just knew vampires were involved and Michael B. Jordan was in it. I knew nothing else. And, uh,

It's just so original and so cool. Um, and it shifts a couple of times and it has a couple of surprises in there. I thought it was the best Jordan performance ever. Um, he's playing, I don't want to say, I don't want to spoil it. The jazz finals, Michael B. Jordan, his best performance ever. Um,

I was just blown away. I thought it was great. I'm going to see it again. It's a very short list. You're going twice. I'm going to go again. Yeah. It's very short list of movies I've seen twice in like two weeks in the theater. Cause I think it's a theater movie. Um, you'll have still have fun watching it in, you know, in your house or your apartment, wherever you are out there. But, um, I think it's a crucial theater movie.

And, uh, I just thought it was really cool. And I'm still glad I felt the same way. I remember walking out once upon a time in Hollywood, same way. You're just like, man, that was just so original and so cool and so well casted. And there was, everybody was so good. And I just had a great time. Um, so anyway, I loved it and it seems like it's doing well, which is nice. So movies not dead yet. No, go to the theater kids. And you're still in the office, right? You're still not the office, the studio. Yeah. Uh,

There's a couple episodes. One episode I dipped a little. Yeah, it's a little erratic. Yeah, but it's really well done. So I've enjoyed that part of it. I like your Friends and Neighbors too. I've enjoyed that. I really enjoyed 1923. I thought it was another strong season. I really liked the Sheridan universe. I have not watched Mobland yet.

By the way, decent things. Yeah, I'm just about to start that one. May even do it tonight as I wind down for the adrenaline rush of this podcast. But this YouTube live warfare. I think I forgot I was live like five minutes ago. Warfare. Cosmo Jarvis, the lead in Shogun. When's the IPO and what is the limit? Because I think Cosmo Jarvis might be next. Speaking of ESPN magazine covers.

Cosmo Jarvis. Yeah. Make the case. You know, Shogun, I wasn't 100% sure. Like, he was great. I love Shogun. It was awesome. I was surprised even how much I loved it. Maybe I shouldn't have been, you know, history guy, ninjas, you know, pretty much everything I need. But he wasn't like just badass throughout that. He was playful. He was funny. But then he was dealing with like the romance part of it. So he had to like

do a bunch of different things because I think if he was just the punisher for 10 episodes, that lack of depth and storyline maybe gets a little bit old. He, for whatever reason, just in this, he's, he's mastering the, I don't have to do that much and owns the scene. Yeah. So are you excited for the Damon Affleck movie? Rip? Which one is it? It's called a rip. I think it's a rip torn. It's a heist movie. Yeah, of course I am coming out in the fall.

Where does it take place? Accountant 2, Affleck and Bernthal. A lot of good stuff coming out. All right. So we're going to wrap up. You have two more podcasts this week. Tuesday, Thursday. What's the number one thing you're most excited about for the playoffs this week? Oh, it's Clippers. It's Clippers Nuggets game two. I can't wait. Me too. You know what's sad? We were far too aligned tonight, by the way. God. That happens sometimes. You know what's sad, though?

The Magic weren't quite good enough today to pull on Cerruti for like four minutes. That was like the bar. It's like, can the Magic be good enough that it's like, hey, there's something to pull Cerruti, and it just wasn't there. And I think deep down, he knows it too. Anybody that's watched him post Suggs, I think the only thing that you do is you go, hey, you have a real chance years moving forward because of Paolo. That's what today was. It was a reminder to Magic fans that already know that. And it's, I think...

A necessary reminder, because I'm sure Paolo wasn't exactly a guy a ton of people were watching on League Pass. Paolo Franz sucks some cap space, potentially some moves. I don't know, man. Franz is starting to feel like a recalibration nominee. Oh, no. Adjusted ceilings. Man, he was so good for that three weeks before he got hurt, before the oblique virus caught him.

If we let Cerruti in right now, he would just start to say, oh, okay. We can't. There'll be another 10 minutes. We got to wrap up. We got to wrap up. The shot hitch is terrifying. It's terrifying. It is. Yeah. He didn't have it in November. Cerruti tells the truth, man. How fired up are you for the draft on a scale of one in 10? NFL draft? Yeah. I'm always pretty excited, but I'm getting selfish as I get a little bit older. It's just a lot of stuff going on. I'm an eight. In fact, I'm not going to Clippers game three.

Gave away my ticket already. I would rather watch Denver Clippers than watch like with the draft. The Pats have the fourth pick. I'm not I just not I can't juggle it. Plus, they might trade back up into the I'm not missing it. It's too important. Are you thrilled that Belichick doesn't have the pick just so he could not use it? And then he's like, we got a 28 from who Cleveland?

I, I, I'm kind of shocked how embedded I've been in the mock draft stuff. I even cold called McShay on Friday. We finally crossed that line. I just called him on a Friday. You just called him. Yeah. Just called him. I want to talk about the giants at three. I just was like, fuck it. I'm calling McShay. McShay called me. 730 Friday night. He's like, there's something in my contract. He's like the number length hour shows. He's like, all this makes sense. He's like, there's something he said.

That Bill gets seven emergency phone calls per 12 months. Simmons can just call me on a Friday night out of nowhere. Yeah, I just had some thoughts. He has good intel. Fun person to talk to. I'm glad you brought him into my life. He's here in LA this week. We're going to be doing stuff with him here. Doing draft stuff. He already flew here. He has a lot. The number gets different. Again, he's not the reporter or whatever, but he talks to everyone. So those phone calls with him are...

far more valuable than I think even he can provide. I think he's been, I know I'm biased, but I think he's been absolutely lights out with the draft this year. I've loved the newsletter. I've loved the podcast. Um, the Intel's good. I trust his mock draft stuff. I like our ringer draft guys too. Like, I just feel like, as you know, I don't watch a ton of college football and I'm diving into this and trying to grab all these opinions and get a feel for the tears of the draft, all that stuff. But, um,

It's a pretty interesting draft. This, this gentee could go to the right team and it sounds like he could just be incredible right away or he could be trapped behind some shit offensive line, but it really does. It is fun when these running backs can come in right away and be like one of the four or five best guys in the league coming out of the gate out of nowhere. There's, you know, my thing with the Pats and I'll probably say this five more times in the pod this week, but like if you have the fourth pick, I feel like you have to get a blue chipper. You just have to.

It's too high of a pick. You can't be like, we like this left tackle. He has a chance to be the 17th best left tackle of the week. Like I need to get somebody who's like an impact fucking dude. And, uh, we'll see what happens. Need the giants to make a mistake. Basically. Anyway, you'll be covering this on Tuesday on, uh, on Thursday as well. I'm sure I will be talking about as well, at least on Tuesday. Uh, Priscilla, uh,

We're going Friday. Yeah, we're going to do a big recap. Good to see you on this YouTube Live. Thanks to Saruti and Gahal as well. Thanks to everybody who watched and threw some stuff in the chat. I kept going in there to try to grab some stuff, but it was like scrolling fast. It was hard to follow. But we will see you in a couple days. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chris Sutton. Thanks to Gahal. Thanks to Saruti. And don't forget to rewatch what's coming on

Monday night, we did Minority Report. Don't forget Zach Lowe's first playoff podcast. He's going to be taping on Monday morning with Howard Beck. So it'll be a nice little bookend to this one. And we also have the group chat guys on Ringer NBA. They're going on Sunday morning. So we try to stagger this. So we'll have something going every little bit. So pods aren't overlapping. And then we have Ringer NBA show. We have

Logan and Raja. We have that going as well. We have the mismatch with Jacoby Inverno. We have Ringer Gambling Show. We have stuff covered all different ways. JJ on New York, New York. Brian Barrett on Off the Pike. So we're here. NBA playoffs. Favorite time of the year. NFL draft coming as well. McShay Show. Ringer NFL Draft Show. McShay is in LA. Bunch of great stuff. So great week for us. Hope you enjoy all the content. I will see you on this podcast on Tuesday.

on a way so... Must be 21 plus and president in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and president in D.C. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat

in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8HOPE

NY or text HopeNY in New York. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. What do I look forward to every NBA playoff season? Well, I'm always hoping the Celtics do well. I'm always hoping we have great storylines, great games, great matchups, great game sevens. I just hope for good basketball.

But the NBA playoffs are even better with Michelob Ultra, the official beer partner of the NBA. Plus, they're getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside tickets and more. Enter now at MichelobUltra.com slash courtside. Michelob Ultra is a peer-accessed courtside 2024 to 2025 sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21 or older. Ends on July 1st, 2025. Multiple entry periods.

Visit michaeloboucher.com slash superior access slash courtside for free entry, entry deadlines and official rules. Message and data rates may apply. Void where prohibited. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. During the season, every baseball team plays 162 games. It's a true test of endurance. It's not enough to have a hot month or two. You need sustained dominance throughout.

While the same is true for your small business, it's not enough to have a great Q2 or even a great year. You want year-over-year growth that starts with better hires that'll be there for the long haul. To find those hires, use LinkedIn. LinkedIn has strong hiring data and insights that you won't find anywhere else to help pair you with the best candidates from unique skills and interests to the connections you have in common. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses say that LinkedIn helps them find high-quality talent.

LinkedIn also lets you go beyond people who are actively applying in a given week. 171 million LinkedIn members aren't actively seeking jobs, but they are open to new opportunities. That's a big pool to miss out on if you're not hiring with LinkedIn. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Simmons. That's linkedin.com slash Simmons to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.