Mavs Maul Wolves, NBA Finals Forecast, and Fake KAT Trades
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And now, The Low Post. Welcome to The Low Post podcast. Very late at night, but not quite midnight. Not even 11 o'clock Eastern Standard Time because we are recording this before the final buzzer of Dallas, Minnesota. The Dallas Mavericks.

who were eighth at the trade deadline, eighth in the Western Conference, 29 and 23 at the time, are going to the NBA Finals for the first time since they won one of the all-time great magical NBA championships, single-season championships in 2011 with Dirk Nowitzki. And they absolutely obliterated the Minnesota Timberwolves on the road in Game 5 of this series, highlighted by, let me check the box score,

36 points apiece for Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic. Kyrie 14 of 27. Luka 14 of 22. 6 of 10 on threes. Had 20 points in the first quarter before the Minnesota Timberwolves even realized the freaking game was going on and had them KP.

In every possible manner. Go under a screen, three. Drop back, floater. Drop back, deceleration. Step back into a mid-range jumper. Lob passes, pick and roll threes. Catch and shoot threes. Just a complete masterpiece performance for a guy who is barely 25 years old. Has been a playoff assassin forever.

Every single second he's been in the playoffs, one of the most feared players in the NBA, the minute he got into the postseason stage and now is going to the finals with Kyrie Irving as a sidekick, a trade that we don't need to belabor grades, KP. I'm not here to do that, but that I panned, lots of people panned, not for basketball reasons, for all the other reasons. And a year and change later, not only is the trade a success, but

I said this earlier in the week. If they pull this off and win a championship, I think they got a shot against Boston. I mean, there's no question they have a shot against Boston. This is now a full-fledged elite team. It has been for weeks now. And they get three, four, five more years of this level of play from these two guards. Then you can really start the best backcourt ever conversation because it's Steph and Klay until further notice. But what you can really start at that point, if they can play like this and lead this team to championship contention year after year,

Dorian Finney-Smith, Spencer Dinwiddie, one first round pick. This would become one of the greatest trades in the history of basketball. And the Mavericks are going to the finals. The Wolves are going home. The finals should be quite interesting. And KP, an all-time Luka taunting moment happened. Punctuated the game.

at a fan who apparently had been waving a handkerchief at him, brought a handkerchief, brought a hanky to the arena to mock Luka's whining at the refs. And he said, who's crying, mother****?

And the cameras got it. Too late for them to bleep it. Got across the TV broadcast. I love it. If you're a fan and you bring that kind of energy to the game and you're sitting close enough for the player to hear it and you're relentless and you don't stop, you better be ready for him to fire back at you. And wow. Where do you want to start, Kevin? A few scattered thoughts in response to that. Number one, I hope that Luka claims after the game that he actually was saying something to the fan in Slovenian.

Look, the Slovenian, you know what? I don't know Slovenia. Slovenian is a different language than the Balkan languages I know. So I assume their curse words and bad expressions are as creative and disgusting on a level so far above American expletives as Serbo-Croatian or whatever you want to call that language is.

Number two, the handkerchief is a very old school insult to associate that with with balling into a handkerchief. I don't think I've ever owned a handkerchief in my life. Number three, a lot of people pan the Kyrie Irving trade. Not all of their grades ended up memed in Kyrie's phone. I would say that that's a that's a feather in the cap. That's a feather in the cap.

And number four, it may not be midnight on the East Coast, but sadly, the clock has struck midnight on this Minnesota Timberwolves run. Yeah, they won one game. We'll talk about the future of this team and what this means. I mean, statistically, Ant and Cat put up numbers tonight. I didn't particularly think either of them were that impactful when the game was actually in the balance. Ant hit a bunch of threes in the second half. Cat was 9 of 20, 1 of 6 on threes, got to the line a bit.

A couple crazy turnovers. But this is about Dallas. And, I mean, it's about Luka and Kyrie more than anything else. It's a pairing that has made more and more sense. It made sense on offense the minute they put them together. But to watch the way their chemistry has blossomed

Yeah, I mean, I think it made statistical sense on offense, too. I don't think their offense was ever anything but elite with the two of them on the floor. Now, sometimes it looked a little clunky and there was that one famous crunch time possession against Minnesota where they kind of went back and forth and back and forth and couldn't get anything going.

um but it just continues to get more and more sophisticated I think against Boston we'll need to see them cooperate in two-man actions maybe even more they had one play tonight where uh I think Kyrie set a pin down for Luka on the left sideline I don't know if you remember it it was in the first half and um both both uh Minnesota defenders went with Luka and Kyrie

flared open on the sideline and hit the long two point bank shot, which was a hundred percent and intentional bank shot. It was absolutely gorgeous in game four. They ran a couple of split actions where they would screen for each other off the ball. And one of them would fly out of that and go into the pick and roll. It's just little wrinkles like that. But you know, look, Luca is one of these guys who I think one of the many reasons he's an even better playoff player than a regular season player is because

with him over and over game by game, possession by possession and knowing, yeah, we just made a basket. Oh, it's happening again. He's going to come at us. He's going to pick us apart. He's going to come. He's going to find the weak spot in our defense. Oh, we're going to try this. We're going to blitz. Oh, that didn't work because he just beat it in 14,000 different ways. One of which, by the way, I,

I love that they've kept setting these screens for him higher and higher on the floor at half court because you effectively can't blitz there. You can't drop there. It takes you out of your whole defense. It just, it blows up your scheme before we even know what hits you. You drop back. He's, he's pulling his whole, a whole deceleration game. And just like, you know,

I don't know what you're supposed to do. I just don't know what you're supposed to do. And when they dropped with Gobert, which they still did for most of this game, they brought him up a little higher sometimes. Sometimes they dropped. They tried to do this thing where they drop back and Lucas starts his drive and Lively or Gafford starts his roll. And boy, that ballet is fun to watch. Okay, and we know they're killing us on two-point shots. We're going to help in off Derek Jones Jr. no matter where he is. Weak side, high wing will help him.

off of him. We'll have Mike Conley come bump lively on the roll. And Luca just was like, that's cool. He's high on the floor. I'm just going to wait that out. I'm going to keep dribbling and keep prodding. And at some point I'm going to get below you on the floor. You're going to go away. The lob's going to open. He's just a genius basketball player. I had him number two on my fake MVP ballot over SGA this season. I thought that was at, by the end, kind of an easy decision. Um,

And he's on pace to be something crazy. But they've got another series ahead of them that is going to be the biggest challenge they've faced, the biggest challenge by a mile that Boston has faced. And tonight was just an absolute masterpiece against a team that I guess threw everything it had at the Nuggets and then threw everything it had at Dallas in Game 4 and did not have enough left in this series. What did you see from these two, from Luka and Kyrie,

That stood out in this game or I don't even know where else to go. Yeah, I think let's talk about Luca a little bit more because you mentioned one reason he's so difficult in the playoffs. I think another reason and this connects to a very minor talking point coming out of game four of this series is that.

I think even relative to other star players, Luka Doncic is uniquely impervious to the quality of the defender or the defense against him. Like other than Kawhi Leonard in stretches of those two series of the Clippers where he was still amazing.

Like has anyone really given him, you know, that much trouble in the playoffs? Like that doesn't mean every game he plays is going to be amazing, but it's not like, Oh, we have this great wing stopper. We have Jaden McDaniels or Anthony Edwards who has the ability to play at that level. And like,

you know, we're going to, we're going to shut Luca down. I mean, you're not going to do it with any star player, but after game four, he was asked about Edwards guarding him more and, you know, downplayed it. I think our Tim colleague, Tim McMahon asked him about it and he downplayed it. And I don't think that was just kind of the, you know, the offensive player. I don't like to ever give any credit to the defense. I think it was legitimate in Lucas case that it wasn't necessarily about even if Anthony Edwards is a better defensive option. I thought Kyle Anderson was,

you know, in game four in particular, it was really gutted him. It's, it's more about whether Luca just makes the shots and tonight he made all the shots. And when he does that, because of his ability to, you know, dissect every style of defense, he's seen all of these styles of defense, I get out of pick and roll so many times for years and years and years dating back to when he was in the Euro league and he still hasn't perfected it, but he's come awfully close. And I think the other interesting thing here is, um,

There was a bit of a question. I think Howard Beck wrote about this not too long ago. There's like this interesting statistical question of Lucas individual stats are so amazing, you know, traditional, obviously advanced stats, equally effusive his impact on his team's performance when he's on or off the court.

Hasn't traditionally been at that same level. And that led, you know, a handful of people, including Jerry Engelman, who used to work with us at ESPN, did the real plus minus that was on our site for many years, was the creator of that site.

He later worked for the Mavericks as a consultant and talked about how overrated Luka was because his adjusted plus minus impact didn't marry up with the stats he was producing. And we've seen that I think sometimes the players earlier in their career, Kevin Durant, it was a little bit earlier than this,

But infamously, Wayne Winston once wrote on True Hoop that he wouldn't take Kevin Durant if offered to his team for free based on his track record a couple of years ago. Oh my God, we got to stop. I can't hear anymore. I can't hear anymore. What tends to happen is when that leg's early in a player's career and they're this good, usually it catches up. And I think we finally maybe reached that moment in Luka's career. So this started years ago.

When the Mavs were kind of mucking around at 45 wins. And it started, I think, in part because of James Harden. Because people got tired of watching Harden play this heliocentric, I'm just going to dribble the air out of the ball and take step back threes. I'm going to dominate every possession. And they equated Luka with being the next Harden. And Harden never broke through in the playoffs until he won an MVP and is an all-time great offensive player. It didn't seem like players enjoyed Harden.

I don't even know if that's... Some players probably didn't enjoy playing with James Harden. Fans definitely didn't enjoy watching James Harden. And as the results for the Mavericks didn't really follow in terms of regular season wins, I think that... I think one thing shaded into the other was...

I always thought the discussion was, frankly, insane. And the reason I thought that is, you can show me the on-off numbers if you want. I watched the playoffs and I saw what he did in the playoffs from the first second he was in there. And it was very clear that every defense that faced him, every elite defense that faced him, had the same exact reaction, which was, holy s***.

I don't want to see this guy ever again. He dissects every single thing that we do. I, and, and I don't, and I don't think that first of all, he's bigger than Harden, which is, which matters in a lot of different ways. He can get to many more places on the court and score in the post. I don't think they post them up enough. Um,

which maybe he doesn't want to. It doesn't really matter. I think he's a better passer than James Harden. As great a passer as James Harden was and is, was in his prime, still is now. I think Luka is on a different level. I think he's going to go down as one of the greatest passers of all time. I think he has more passes, more facility, passes it earlier, sees things a little earlier than even James Harden. I just never...

I never got the argument. I knew what the numbers were. I understood generally that like, yeah, you know, maybe he's, I don't want to just stand around and watch him all the time, but he also adapted this year. And that's one of the great stories of the Kyrie trade. He adapted to Kyrie Irving's pace. He's now one of the Tim McMahon wrote about this this week. He's all of a sudden throwing some of the greatest hit ahead passes the league has ever seen. And this is a guy who was accused of walking it up because he wanted to be the puppet master all the time. It wouldn't play.

a read and react offense. And suddenly you see all these dudes that he trusts to make plays in open space. They're passing Derek Jones Jr. the ball and being like, keep shooting corner threes. And if you don't want to shoot the corner threes, pump and drive and make plays off the dribble. Josh Green, Josh Green, who I thought opened, I said at the beginning of the season, I thought he should have been a fifth starter. Derek Jones Jr. won that job.

I've always liked Josh Green. There was always something you can go back and read 10 things homes from four years ago. I'm like, there's something going on here with Josh Green, his passing, his vision. If he would just freaking shoot.

If he would just shoot, there's something here. Well, now he shoots and he's playing really well and he's been kind of an unsung hero. Jaden Hardy got a lot of attention for that. Derek Lively's gotten a ton of attention. Please stop hitting Derek Lively in the head. Please stop. Carl Anthony Towns needs a break from hitting everyone and anything with his knees, his feet, his elbows. He's just flailing around again. I just never got it. And the reason I never got it is...

I watched the playoffs. You can shoot the right. Like I wouldn't, when a guy does what he does in the playoffs and just destroys by himself. And I know they lost those first two series against the Clippers, but

Ask anybody on the Clippers. Do you ever want to see that dude again? Ask him before this season when they lost and Kawhi got hurt and all that. Do you ever want to see that dude in the playoffs again? You wouldn't even finish the question and they'd be running out of the room in fear. When you do that, and no one has that attitude toward James Harden in the playoffs. When you have that attitude, when you inspire that level of fear, you're a different kind of player. And he's a different kind of player. And Boston better get ready. Because...

To me, this is obvious. I mean, Boston's wherever you rate Jason Tatum as a player, fifth best, eighth best, ninth best, whatever. Boston's not fear, but Boston's team is built to withstand the idea that they might have to win multiple playoff series without having the best player in the series. That they could be a juggernaut championship favorite despite perhaps having to face two, three, whatever playoff opponents that would come in with Giannis.

with Embiid, with Jokic, with whoever, a player who is clearly better than Jason Tatum. No slight to Jason Tatum, but how often do we hear the best guy, the first indicator of who's going to win a playoff series is who has the best guy. Well, they got through the East without having that happen. It's happening now. Luka Doncic is the best player in the finals. I don't even think it's arguable. I got pushback from Boston people

on social media and other places that like, oh no, Tatum's better than Luka. Look, I understand he's a better defender than Luka. Luka's hung in on defense pretty well this season. Tell me what else he does better. It's not, it's just not, I don't even think it's an argument. Do you? No, I mean, there's levels to this once you get to that point of superstardom and Tatum, you know, has never finished that high in MVP voting. Yeah, no, Luka is clearly the best player in the series. I mean, I think, and maybe you're building to this, like,

Dallas can't have the two best players in the series, which they did probably against Minnesota. That's what starts to undermine Boston's advantage in terms of players three through whatever number we want to go to. Just an incredible postseason run for the Mavs. One of the benefits of watching on the League Pass feed that I get, KP, is...

And rarely am I watching it on time. Sometimes I'm skipping around, going back, watching plays. I started watching this one in real time by the second half. Sometime in the third quarter... A home team can be losing a critical elimination playoff game by a million points. And the game operations people are like, well, we got a thing. We got stuff we got to do. We got fun stuff we got to do during the timeouts. In the third quarter...

They did a call me, maybe karaoke sing along where they're cutting. The jumbotron is cutting to little groups of fans who are like supposed to be mouthing. Call me, maybe. And like making all the fun dance moves. And there would always be like two fans who were super duper into it. And the, and the game, the MC, the PA announcer was like, come on, it's karaoke, blah, blah. And they would just be surrounded. You could tell the fans who cared about the team and the fans who were there to watch the game. They'd be surrounded by these sad, sad,

just red faced fans who didn't want any part of it. And we're like, can we just get the camera off us? Our team is losing by a million points. I didn't expect that kind of blowout in this. I didn't know who was going to win, but I didn't expect that kind of blow. And it was over fast. Like it just was over within eight minutes.

Yeah, I mean, it felt similar, obviously, to Game 7 in 2022 in Phoenix from that standpoint in terms of, you know, oh, the trailing team, especially when it's the home team, oh, they're always going to make a run. And there just never was a real sustained run until it was way too late for it to make a difference in this game. And, you know, I think you said earlier Minnesota didn't –

you know, acknowledge there was a game happening until after the first quarter. I do think that was another case where I don't think it was so much what the Timberwolves weren't doing in this one, even if, you know, there's some things they're going to wish they did differently, you know, probably involving Edwards and Towns more early. Dallas may have baited them a little bit into a lot of Gobert-centric offense early in the game with their switches. But I think what you're really going to lament is the missed opportunities in games one through three of this series, not anything that happened tonight.

Rudy Gobert did get two and ones over Luka in the post, which I'm sure he enjoyed in the moment and Luka did not enjoy. So he has that going for him and the Wolves have that going for them. But the game was over within a quarter. And what are there any team building lessons in this game?

That we can take from the Mavs doing this. I mean, this is their second conference finals in three years. So that's the other thing that irritated me a little bit about the Luka discourse. So he doesn't help his team win. But I just watched his team make the conference finals two years ago. Does that not mean anything? Like the Clippers didn't make the conference finals for a thousand years and he just made it two years ago at the age of 23.

I mean, weirdly, that run did sort of demonstrate the point in terms of Dallas won two games without him in the playoffs. It's more that they've been unusually good in situations without Luka than not good enough with him. That's true. Those were the Brunson games against Utah that ended up that series that broke the Utah Jazz. Yeah, at some point midway through.

Yeah. At some point midway through last year when Brunson was emerging as this all-star caliber player, we didn't imagine like guy had my MVP ballot level player this year and Dallas was struggling last year and had like no offense outside of Luka before they made the Kyrie trade. It did occur to me that maybe the secret to this was just, oh, they happen to have a top 10 player in the league that they drafted in the second round the same year that they drafted a top five player in the league, which like that's an all-time draft. It didn't work out with them.

with Brunson in the long run. But man, I mean, and maybe that's the number one team building thing we can take from this is look, you have somebody as good as Luka Doncic. It's, it's much easier to find those supporting role players to fit in the PJ Washington juniors and the Daniel Gaffords when you have that guy in place. And the fact that three teams willingly passed on him is,

in the draft still remains one of the most shocking things you know even especially with hindsight it was it shocked me at the time given how high i was on luca and my projections were and it shocks it's even more shocking now well dominating is is dominating in portland though he's playing he's playing great sun's really nailed sun's nailed that one

And the other thing is that two of those teams did make the conference finals since then. So kind of a fascinating, but you know, I wrote about how the rosters of these four conference finalists were built a couple of weeks ago on ESPN.com. And one of the fascinating things out of that that I hadn't quite realized is that none of these teams have a free agent that they signed for more than the Timberwolves paid Kyle Anderson to be like their seventh or eighth guy.

New York obviously has built in a very different way and they easily could have been here in this round if OG Ananove hadn't been injured. And they did add Jalen Brunson and Dante DiVincenzo and Isaiah Hartenstein, all these key parts in free agency. But it is kind of fascinating how out of vogue that is as a team building model. And look, I think the success that Dallas has had immediately with Gafford and Washington, it

It's only going to embolden teams to trade all the more this offseason. You know, if you're looking to figure out how do we get from point A to point B, and you see that this Dallas team that, you know, missed the play in a year ago was not...

mired not far above 500 at the trade deadline this year. Kyrie's health is an underrated factor in that because he didn't play a lot in the first half of the season and he has been healthy nearly the entire stretch from the trade deadline on. And Dallas has generally had very good health, although they missed Maxi Kleba for the last parts of the last couple of rounds. But I think that's going to teams are going to be saying to themselves, who are our Gaffords and Washington's?

Well, those teams, if they're going to just be thrown around stuff, I hope they have a guy who makes first team all NBA borderline unanimously every single season, because I do think that is ultimately the lesson here is when you have a player that good and you know that player is that good and everybody knows that player is that good.

You can chase your tail on a lot of transactions and in doing so, quote unquote, overpay in the aggregate. Like they've been chasing the tail since the Kristaps-Worzingas trade. Then they get Brunson in a home run draft pick. They lose Brunson. They have to quote unquote overpay to replace him with Kyrie Irving. Grant Williams, they trade a first round pick for. That doesn't work. They have to undo that mistake by throwing more money at it or more picks at it and get P.J. Washington. And you know what?

Does anyone care now? Does anyone in Dallas care now that, oh my God, Luka could leave a three, eight free agency in three or four years and all these picks could be out the door. Maybe there's a doomsday scenario where that ends up biting them in the ass during the NBA finals. Now it's the whole point that we do this, but you better have a player that good. It is the ultimate sort of forgiveness for whatever transactional sins you have committed is having a guy that good in the door. And this dude is that he just turned 25 years old, like three months ago.

Do you want to hear some? So just for fun, I did this with Jokic. I should do it with Doncic too. So he just turned 25 years old. He already has just regular season only. Forget the playoffs where he's probably, I mean, if we project it forward, he's going to have a shot at challenging LeBron as the all-time leading playoff scorer in a million years or at least being number two. But for now, regular season, he has 11,470 points, 3,472 rebounds.

3,100, 3,317 assists. So ballpark 11,000, 3,500, 3,500. I just gave him and he's, he's, he's, you know, yeah, I shouldn't say he's healthy all the time. He has bumps and bruises, misses games here and there. I, I, um, I gave him,

10 straight years of the following numbers, because he's only 25. Let's just go bananas and say 10 straight years. And I factored conservatively based on his production from the last two seasons. I gave him 10 straight years of 1,900 points, 550 rebounds, 550 assists. 10 years of that would get him to 30,000 points, almost 9,000 rebounds, and 9,000 assists.

The 30,000, 7,000, 7,000 club is one guy. It's LeBron. So Luka would be guy number two. Jokic is going to sniff that too. The 30,000, 5,000, 5,000 club is five guys.

LeBron, Kareem, Malone, Jordan, Kobe. And then there's 11 guys in 25,000, 5,000, 5,000. Obviously, some of these guys have way more rebounds than Luka does, like Kareem and Karl Malone. But that's the statistical territory. I mean, we don't realize it in real time with guys like Luka and Jokic and others, but

And part of that is, I guess people maybe, you know, it's a little risky to project good health and all of that going forward. And by the way, these numbers, again, are conservative based on his last two or three seasons, which means they kind of probably average him out to 65, 68 games, whatever. But that's what we're talking about. And he's just, there's just nothing you can do with him in the playoffs except make it tough on him. And they're about to play a team that is pretty well positioned to do that. Any other...

thoughts on this game and this Mavs team building, whatever, before we look ahead to the finals a little bit. I think the other thought that I have, it's more on the series. I would say I thought Minnesota was in a lot of trouble after game one because the, even though that was a very close game, you know, they shot well, Dallas shot poorly. Dallas is shot quality by the second spectrum metrics that we have access to was pretty dramatically better. Um,

And, you know, I think that's kind of how the series ultimately played out. You had two games that were sort of make or miss games the last two in Dallas's favor in game three, Minnesota's favor in game four that still ended up fairly close anyway. But over the course of this series, every game Dallas got the better shots against one of the league's best defenses.

And I think that again is testament to the way that Luke and Kyrie and their pick and roll game just really stressed out this Minnesota defense in a way that the Denver Nuggets just weren't able to do in the last round on a consistent basis.

Well, I mean, look, Luka's playmaking is at another level. He solves every defense. You stunt Adam for a half second or he baits you into stunning Adam for a half second. You're reacting. He's manipulating. He knows exactly what that stunt will open up and what the stunt behind it will open up. And he's just out thinking. He's 6'8". He's huge. He sees every pass. He can make every pass. He sees these passes behind his head that no one else throws. And Kyrie is an all-time wizard. He makes five ridiculous shots every game.

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Okay, the NBA finals begin on June 6th. Got a little time between now and then. Might watch a movie. Might talk to my wife a little bit. Who knows? Let's get nuts. Who knows? I might go outside for a little while, walk around. The world is your oyster.

Um, the Dallas Mavericks will be facing the team that has dominated the whole season. Start to finish 12 and two in the playoffs against the mash unit of opponents, uh, missing key players, the Boston Celtics, who presumably I haven't seen the line yet are going to enter this series as fairly sizable favorites with home court advantage. Uh,

won 64 games in the regular season. There's not a lot of tape to fall back on that really is relevant here based on how much Dallas in particular has overhauled its team year over year, including in the middle of this year. I think this is going to be a fascinating matchup in part because any game and series involving Luka Doncic is a fascinating chess match from the first season.

from the first opening tip. And I think you'll hear a lot of people say some version of, well, boy, Boston has a lot of guys, a lot of guys to throw at Luka. You know, Jalen Brown has gotten the primary assignment in most of the recent games. Boy, has he had a great defensive season. And he just, I love the way against Indiana where he was like, all right, none of, or Alford can't guard Pascal. We've got no one who can guard Pascal. Just give him to me. I'll shut his water off.

And then, look, we can switch Jason Tatum onto him, switch Drew Holiday onto him. You know, we got Derek White, who's probably not quite big enough to jostle with him, but he's an all-NBA defensive player. Just on and on and on with bodies to throw at Luka.

I don't know that it even matters. I'm going to pick Boston. I've picked Boston to win the title all season. I'm going to pick Boston. But I don't know that any of that matters. Celtics are minus 225 on ESPN, according to producer Dan. That's not nothing. That's like a clear demarcation there. And I think maybe from the first possession, and Joe Mazzulla has done this in prior games,

If Porzingis is able to start or if it's Horford, they will start one of them. That player will spend a lot of time guarding either PJ Washington or Derek Jones Jr. To tell Luka Doncic, if you want to hunt our big guy in pick and roll, if you want to hunt the one guy that we can't switch on to you because I'm sorry Al Horford.

Luca looks very comfortable against him on tape and KP is just too slow. Boy, is that going to be fun, by the way. The KP reunion is the underrated reunion between the KP and Kyrie versus the entire city of Boston. He's flipped off the crowd. He stomped on Lucky the Leprechaun. Lucky the Leprechaun, leave Lucky alone. Lucky didn't ask for any of this. Red Auerbach's brother drew Lucky and now he's on the court and you get stomped on by every enemy player.

And I think if you want to hunt him, you're going to have to use a guy who's not your normal screen setter, which is...

Doesn't seem like a big deal and maybe isn't a big deal, especially because PJ Washington can pick and pop. If it's him, you know, if you trap Luka, he flares open for three. If you drop, he pops open, whatever. If you drop at all, Luka is going to pick you apart. But the quote unquote problem it is intended to present is that Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford have got to be somewhere if they're not setting screens for Luka and they're going to be under the rim.

And that makes the path to the lobs more complicated. It makes the path into the paint more complicated. And that's all cool. And Boston is the number two defense in the league. I think they're the most versatile defensive team in the league.

I just don't really think it matters. I think Boston is going, I think both of these teams are going to score at a decent rate and Boston's going to have to have a good offensive series to win it. And we can talk about all the counters that Boston can have to Luca and they're all interesting. And I think we'll see a bunch of different things, but,

And maybe that's all you can do is throw 25 different looks at him in the span of a game and, and hope that that's enough that he's 11 for 27 or 12 of 26. Um, but I, I just, I think it's going to be a close series, a tight series. And, you know, like, like, um,

A very good offensive rating this year was 118, 119, and therefore a very bad defensive rating this year was 118 or 119. I could see this series playing out at like 117, 117, 116, 116. Like the defenses will have their say, but only so much say. What's your first blush? Where are you looking at this series?

Yeah, I think to your point, I think this series is going to be determined much more by when Boston has the ball than when Dallas has the ball. And what's interesting is for like everything we've just said about the challenges that Kyrie and Luka present and how good this Dallas offense has been.

Like over the course of the playoffs, their offensive rating, again, granting they've gone generally against very good defenses, ranks seventh. It's really they've won playing this very defensive style a lot of the time. And it's been about the quality of their rim protection and how much that's changed when they can put 48 minutes of Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively II out there. And that what I, you know, you mentioned,

Where does Boston put Kristoff's Porzingis? I think the interesting matchup is going to be, is Dallas going to be able to live with Gafford and Lively defending Porzingis at the other end of the court if he's close to the Porzingis we saw during the regular season? So I happen to be there in March when these two teams played after the trade deadline at TD Garden.

Even though I said it was the one time all season I was going to be seeing two good teams play in person because my other games, unfortunately, all involved the rebuilding Portland Trailblazers. I did not anticipate at that point that I was previewing the NBA finals watching that one. But one of the big takeaways, and I rewatched the first half of that today in preparation for this podcast, is Christoph Sporzingis made three threes in the first quarter of that game, two in the first five minutes.

and was really presenting problems to Dallas with the pick and pop game as well as against switches. And, you know,

Throughout the course of this playoffs, Dallas has been able to keep its centers near the basket because they've either faced non-shooting bigs in Zubats and Gobert or played them on Josh Giddey through much of the Oklahoma City series. And then when they finally were faced to go up against Chet Holmgren, who is a stretch five in that Thunder series series,

they were willing to concede some of those shots to Chad Holmgren and just live with that because of what else they were taking away. And even though the shooting numbers for Porzingis and Holmgren weren't that different in the regular season, Porzingis was a little more accurate, took about one more per 36th.

I just think that that small difference is enough to, to change, you know, home grin from someone you're willing to let take those shots and maybe think about it. And Porzingis is someone who's more of a five alarm fire when he's open on the perimeter. Gets them up faster, which, which is, is massively important. The better and better the opposition gets. And obviously we're at the highest level now. And you just nailed it. Like,

The entire recipe of Boston's team construction, once they got Porzingis especially, is we can put our centers different places against your offense, as I just outlined, against Dallas and other teams. You can't do that against our best lineups because you can't put Daniel Gafford on Derek White. You can't put him on Jalen Brown. You can't put him on Jason Tatum. And you can't put him on Drew Holiday. Although, although...

Teams have flirted with that, particularly the latter, Drew Holiday. Jokic guarded him a little bit in the regular season games. He has had an outstanding playoffs. I'm not sure Dallas can really get away with that given they will put, I would guess they'll put Jones on Tatum and P.J. Washington on Jalen Brown, Kyrie Irving on Derek White, and Luka on Drew Holiday. That's been the assignments for them.

from the jump and the idea of that is for Boston to hey you want to hunt Luca like alright you're going to have to run your offense through Drew Holiday as a screener and we'll see a lot of Tatum Drew Holiday pick and rolls and Jalen Brown Drew Holiday pick and rolls but that what you're saying about KP's pick and pop game and to a lesser extent Horford's he's been wildly up and down in the playoffs had seven threes in game three against the Pacers has otherwise been kind of iffy on threes but capable and doesn't take that long to get him off

is you you have no other place to put your center you're gonna have to drop and recover and or do other stuff that exposes other stuff on defense because he's just gonna have to guard our big guys and our big guys can all shoot and that has been the secret sauce of the celtics on offense pretty much all season and you know it cleba coming back is a big deal um and i

It's very clear they just want to use Kliba at the four. They've used him as an ace in the whole center a lot this season, even with Lively and Gafford. I mean, certainly in that Clippers series. In the Clippers series, for sure. But those lineups have been good. But there was one game in that series where the Clippers just ate at the rim, particularly in crunch time. And they were like, I don't understand, where's our rim protector? But he does...

No matter where they play him, bring some switchability. Like he's been the primary guy on Tatum here and there. Not a lot, but here and there. It's not a switch. Like you're just going to guard Jason Tatum. They put him at the five. They can switch. They've switched with lively a lot against Boston here in a bit anyway. And you see it in different games. And that's where Porzingis is. Post game comes in handy too. Like, can you, can you prove Rick Carlisle, former Mavericks coach, no longer there. Can you prove his old adage wrong?

But I think all of this is really interesting. And I think each team has some answers for the other team. But you put the onus on Boston's offense as the kind of more interesting, more variable maybe end of the floor. Other than the Porzingis, first of all, how healthy is he? How available is he? How healthy is he? That's critical on either end. What other kind of...

What else about Boston's offense against Dallas's defense stands out as an important battleground to you? Yeah, I guess how hard is Dallas going to try to limit Boston's three-point attempts? Because...

Joe Mazzola, since day one, taking over as a Celtics coach. It's all about, we got to win the math battle. We got to win the math battle. We got to get up more three-pointers. And Dallas has been willing to live with more or less threes, depending on the opponent that they've been facing throughout this playoff run, and has really made a priority of taking away the rim whenever possible. And I guess in conjunction with that,

One of the things we saw from Minnesota a lot at the series was a reluctance from Anthony Edwards in particular to be as aggressive, putting his head down and trying to finish at the rim is we became accustomed to seeing from him. And that's testament to what Gafford and Lively have given them with that rim protection. Are they able to have that same sort of deterrent effect against Boston's players? Or does Boston, you know, space is able to space its way out of that problem, basically. Yeah.

The other thing that's interesting about this series is Boston's offense is at its best when they have a small or thin guard defender to just run everything at. It was Halliburton when Halliburton was healthy. It was Darius Garland in the Cleveland series. It was Tyler Hero against Miami. Wherever you are, and hopefully you're on Derek White because that really helps them sing.

we're going to bring your guy into two-man action with Tatum and Brown, and you're going to have to switch. And if you switch, we're going to play some bully ball. No, we're not always going to bully you. We'll settle. Tatum will settle for some hero ball shots. We're going to bully you, and you're going to send help, and the threes are going to open. If you trap, Screener is going to roll to the basket, or Tatum will turn the corner on the hedge, whatever, and you've got you in rotation. I don't know. Dallas is a big team. They're a big team across the board.

Luca is not someone that you pick on like that. He's someone you pick on with quickness and decisiveness. And as athletic and fast as Brown and Tatum are, that's not really how they go about mismatch hunting. Tatum's been better about just catch and go sometimes, and that can hurt Luca. And Kyrie is, I think he's listed at 6'2 or 6'3. 6'2, 195, yeah. He plays bigger than that.

and competes bigger than that and has really competed in the playoffs. And if you take that, not take it away, but if you chip away at Boston's ability to do that, and even the guys they're bringing off the bench are not, you know, small, just walkover guys. Josh Green's a really good defender. He'll guard Tatum some and he'll guard Brown some. It's going to be interesting to see where Boston looks for just sort of go-to half-court stuff.

And that's where the Porzingis question comes in because if you can't go there, that's where you go. And it's just much more dangerous if it's Porzingis picking and popping and throwing the pass when you rotate at him than it is with Horford. But I do think that's interesting. And...

You know, we all know this. Boston is at its best when they use those mismatch hunting plays to get their passing moving. They're at their worst when they stall out, when you switch or you play them in a way where Tatum's got the ball and it's just an okay matchup with 13 on the shot clock and the second action isn't coming. They just don't kind of, they're just playing. It's the number one offense in the league. You want to nitpick it, whatever. I do think that's an interesting, what do you think of that?

Yeah, I agree that sometimes switching against Boston can be a not a tactic of last resort, but a tactic of let's get them out of doing what they do best because we can, you know, force them into a lot of isolation situations.

Kyrie's defense in the series is going to be really important and quite fascinating because, you know, I think that's something to, to his credit has always set him apart from a lot of equally skilled guards of similar size. You know, the, the Damien Lillard's of the world, he's listed at the exact same dimensions. Uh,

you know, he's not the only one by far. I just happened to note that they were, they were, they were the exact same size that, you know, the 2016 finals Kyrie was outstanding defensively as Cleveland was competing in that comeback. His defensive effort in Boston was probably not at that same level, I would say in the post season, but again, in this playoff run, we've seen him really step up to the challenge and not,

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If we flip it the other way, an interesting little subplot here. Dallas took the most corner threes in the entire NBA this year. And Boston, I think, allowed the third fewest. They just do not allow corner threes. I think that's really interesting. Um...

They allow a lot of above the break threes, but not a lot of corner threes. And no one other than maybe LeBron has ever been better at generating corner threes for his teammates than Luka. And I find that interesting because I mentioned this last episode. If you look at the shot quality data and the shot making data of Boston's three very overmatched opponents, but whatever, um,

They are shooting horribly on corner threes, 25% on corner threes, and they are shooting incredibly well at the basket, 71%, which is an ungodly number for a good defense to allow. When they get there...

And Boston is really good at preventing you from getting there because they switch as often as they can to keep everybody in front. And now they're facing a guy that's very dicey to switch against. You can't switch out over it and whatever you can, you can try. It's not going to go great all the time. And a guy that creates a ton of corner threes. And another reason why I think Porzingis is important is if, if,

A small part of the argument for Dallas in the series is what if the luck on corner threes flips against Boston after flipping for them for three rounds and the bad rim numbers sustain for Dallas? And that's where Porzingis is so important because I think part of the bad rim numbers is that Porzingis is not there to block shots and be a giant person at the rim. I think they need him pretty healthy defensively.

and available for lots of minutes to beat Dallas. I think Dallas has established itself as an absolute bona fide championship level team that can really push Boston. And if Porzingis is for some reason not available, I'm going to assume he is because he's gotten a month to recover now. Boston very smartly decided early on, like we're probably not going to need him to win the East. I think they need him available and they need him able to play like 28 to 35 minutes a game, I think, to beat Dallas. Maybe that sounds...

I would say maybe 25 minutes a game. I think that's about the line for me where I would favor Boston in this series if you told me ahead of time what we're going to get out of Porzingis. I think the Dallas three-point game is interesting because we saw two different philosophies against them in the last two rounds. I think the Dallas three-point game is interesting because we saw two different philosophies against them in the last two rounds.

Oklahoma City was very much, look, we're not going to let Kyrie and Luka beat us. We're going to send help at them whenever possible. And it did feel like they set that toggle a little too far to the help off of Dallas's guys in the corners. And Josh Green was getting tons of open looks.

you know pj washington jr and derrick jones jr were probably shooting better in that series than you would expect them to over an extended period of time and they lost under a hail of threes in that series then minnesota came out you know their philosophy has very been very much to limit opponent three-point attempts the first two games of the series uh i mean dallas takes uh

the first three, they averaged 28 per game the first three. And that translated into you're losing to Luka and Kyrie beating you one-on-one. And maybe they, in game three at least, were unsustainably hot compared to what you'd expect. And that's why Stan Van Gundy started ranting on the

the broadcast about, you know, the need to blitz and give up a little more of those threes. So I think Boston has to kind of dial that in just right where you're not giving up a lot of wide open corner threes to the guys that you don't want shooting them for Dallas, but you're also not letting Kyrie and Luca cook the way that they were through much of that Minnesota series. I'm very glad you brought up the drop defense thing.

Because the alleged benefit of playing a drop defense is you don't give up kick out threes because you're playing the pick and roll two on two. Well, Luca decided that, Luca has long decided, but even against Minnesota decided that that didn't apply to him and he was going to make every tough mid-range shot that you took and just destroy you with lobs and beat every coverage that you think you had based around the idea of dropping back.

Boston is a drop our bigs all the time, drop them even further back. They do not like to bring their bigs out. Now, if you pick on someone else in a pick and roll, it's a different story, but they like to drop Horford and they like to drop Porzingis.

And they do not like to double team at all. They might be the most double team adverse team defense in the NBA. Maybe Tibbs could give them a run for their money. And they don't like to blitz. And that will be tested very early by Luka. And if you look at some of the regular season matchups, you will see

occasional stuff that's very out of character for Boston. You'll see Porzingis just spring a blitz out of nowhere on Luka. You'll see the Celtics switch Horford onto Luka and then send a double team right away. Sometimes, sometimes you won't. But that's the greatness of Luka. He gets you out of character and he gets you out of character fast. You come into these games with an idea of how you're going to play defense. This is what we do. This is how we do it. And within six minutes, you're like, okay, we just got to throw all that off the table.

I want to just before we move on, I do. I want to go back to Boston's offense because I feel like we're not talking about that end of the floor enough. So much scrutiny of their offense, given that it was the number one offense in the league and the number one offense in NBA history. So much hand-wringing about

Can they score enough late in games, late in close games? Can they, can they kick their turnover habit that undid them against the Warriors two years ago? And by the way, Tatum was 24 and Jalen Brown was 25. They were early to be that good. Um, they've been early from the second they got into the league. This is their sixth conference finals in eight years and second finals in three years. Um,

And have they answered? I mean, were those questions unfair given how potent this offense has been like, oh, we just we don't pay attention when they score a 140 and winning blowouts. Have they answered those questions to you or do you still have this lingering like I guess I would put it like this.

Dallas's offense is objectively worse than Boston's and I feel like most fans would consider it more reliable and I wouldn't even have like a huge problem with that with that conception of it I don't and I don't know if that's fair to the Celtics and how that impacts their attack on Dallas this series.

I think it is somewhat fair because of the fact that if you consider the floor to be what you can do when you do bog down into isolations without a lot of movement, Dallas is going to be better in those situations than Boston is because they have the better individual talent. Are those questions fair? I mean, the thing about moving goalposts is they never stop moving. So unless they win this series and maybe win some close games in the process and win a championship...

then that's always going to linger out there against Boston because there was only so much that they could prove in the regular season when they posted the second best net rating since we started tracking possessions. And there was only so much, even maybe less, that they could prove in going 12-2 against the Eastern Conference playoffs because of who they played and because of who didn't play in those series. I will say I'm optimistic about it from the standpoint of even if those didn't definitively answer the question,

All the indicators we have from that is that this Boston offense is better. They were good in clutch situations during the regular season. They did go 4-0 in clutch games in the playoffs so far. So we're not going to know for sure until, you know...

mid-June, late June. But I think the evidence suggests that we should not expect that to be the same issue for Boston that it was in the 22 finals when they were bad in clutch situations all season and worse throughout the playoffs or even last year when they were not good in the playoffs.

And I think they know, too. I mean, internally, there's obviously some tug of war between the two stars and every sort of stylistic preference that everyone else might have. I mean, those guys are going to take a certain number of very tough shots. That's what stars get to do. But I think they know. I think they've thrown in some wrinkles here and there that are new-ish.

to them, and I think they probably have more in the bag. And the ultimate litmus test is, Tim Legler put it better than I ever will, the shot clock isn't over at 10. Like, you still can run something at 10. And just as a little, like, in the last game, I think it was the last game against the Pacers, they ran this play a couple of times...

I haven't seen them run that much, and it's possible that I missed it, but it's like there's a million possessions every game. They would run a Derek White, Jalen Brown pick and roll on the right side of the floor. And it looked like, well, that's the play. That's what it's intended to do. And it wasn't the play. It was a decoy. What it was intended to do was to bend the defense toward those two players. And all of a sudden...

White or Jalen Brown, whoever was the ball handler, would whip the ball to Jason Tatum at the top of the arc, almost on the other side of the floor, the other wing. And Al Horford would be sprinting up to set a screen for Jason Tatum. And it would be like this surprise second pick and roll that the defense didn't see coming and had tilted all the way the other way. Now he's got to scramble back the other way. And if Tatum attacks fast, he's got to back

pedaling scrambling defense just stuff like that they know how to do it they know how to turn their defense up to a gear that almost no team can access and they did it over and over in the playoffs and they were tested and

Which was rare. And now they're going to be tested. And they do not have the luxury of flipping that switch when they're down by six in the fourth quarter. It's like, oh my God, we got to win the game. They got to flip it and keep it flipped for 48 minutes of every game because the Mavericks demand nothing less than that. And I do think the Celtics are under more pressure in this series than Dallas. That's just the pressure of continually coming close and close and close. And I think you wrote about this about the Celtics this week.

They are already essentially in an unprecedented or borderline unprecedented position in that in the terms of like if they don't win this series, has any team ever won this much and advanced this far so many times in this time span of eight years and not won the ultimate prize? And we might be getting into unprecedented territory with them already, let alone if they lose this series.

Yeah, the time span I focused on in that piece was the last five years because that really feels like Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum are the guys throughout that entire period. Obviously, they were very central to the 2018 and 2019 runs as well. But Kyrie was the guy even earlier.

in absentia in 2018 and then in 2019 leading into his free agency. And since then, you know, four conference finals, two finals in a five year span, the most games that any team has played without winning a championship over a five year span before the Celtics was the same number they've now played.

And that one even comes with a pretty big asterisk because it was the 2005 through 2009 Pistons who had won the title in 2004. So if you want to talk about teams that didn't win the championship at all on the runs, you have to go back to the 97-98 Jazz had played in the high 70s over those five-year spans without winning a title. So yeah, I mean, that's...

And I think it is going to be, you know, an interesting contrast the way that Dallas and Boston made the finals. It's no secret. But, you know, when the Mavericks won this blowout in game five against Minnesota to close them out, it was their second win all postseason by more than 13 points. They have almost exclusively been playing these top back and forth games that could have gone either way. Boston had a handful of those, you know, obviously in the Indiana series with the comebacks, you know,

in three of those four games. But that was largely it. They have not played a lot of super close games and that's going to be a change for them. But to go back to your original point, this is not something that they disagreed about or that has snuck up on them. The Kristaps Porzingis trade was in part to give them another option in late game situations. And Joe Mazzulla, he was on the podcast of our ESPN colleague, JJ Redick before the season. And he

I probably said a dozen times, uh, curve ball in that podcast about the need to have that and, you know, other things to go to in those situations. So they've been thinking about it. They've been planning and they've been planning for this moment all since last June. I, I'm not going to make an official pick yet. I need to know more about Porzingis' health and whatever, but, um,

I will pick Boston in the end unless we learn that he's somehow out for the finals or unlikely to play in the first two games or whatever it is.

But it's going to be six or seven. And I think it's going to be a long series. But I feel obligated to pick Boston, having picked them to win the title at the start of the year. I do think they're the better team, but I don't think the gap between them is nearly as big as their records, even after the trade deadline or net ratings, whatever would indicate. I think this is a very good and very fun matchup. Leaning Celtics in six or seven. You don't have to say a lean right now, but that's where I'd lean.

I'm on Boston as well. But then again, I've picked against Dallas the last two rounds. So why should I start being correct on that, I guess? Me too. Let's talk about... Do you have any other thoughts on this matchup? I think we covered them. We covered them and we got a little... Now we got real time to dig in. I can go watch some 80s Celtics Mavericks games. Who knows what I could do? Let's give the losing team a little bit of a post-mortem. Very quick. We'll have more time to do this. But the Wolves are out.

making their first conference finals since 2004. A very nice run unseated the champs in a classic seven game series, a gutsy seven game series in which they came back from three, two down and one game seven on the road. Ant's a superstar, maybe not the superstar. Everybody kind of wanted him to be from the wire to wire in the playoffs after he stormed out of the gate and particularly stormed out of the gate in the early part of the Denver series. But he's here and,

The Gobert trade looks better today than it did a year ago. That's not to say it looks great or good. Cat just, it's a lot. It's just a lot. It's a lot of good. It's a lot of bad. It's a lot of crazy. It's a lot of collisions. It's a lot of everything. Jada McDaniels made a little bit of a leap and looked good in the playoffs. We know the team has this financial crunch coming.

And the question they're going to have to ask themselves, and it inevitably is going to center around Carl Anthony Towns because there's just nowhere else for it to realistically center, is has this team with Towns and not with like Nas Reed taking a lot of the Towns role and then redistributing whatever salary is left from trading Towns to whoever you trade him for or whatever, theoretically, theoretically, theoretically, is this team as currently constructed...

Has it proven enough to keep together? And I thought the Denver series definitively answered that question as a yes. You've got to let it ride for another year, despite the fact that you've put so much money into the center position and are now playing cat at the four, which is an underrated big change for him. His offense is entirely different as a power forward. His defense is entirely different as a power forward, but a lot of the things that make him such a dynamic offensive player are

a little bit as a four versus a five. But is it, I thought the Denver series had definitively answered a yes. It's not my money, however. It's unclear whose money it's going to be at go time. But was the question definitively answered for you? And did this series change it at all? Or is it still like you'd sniff around on cat trades if you were the Wolves? So I think it's less that my opinion changed based on this series and more that

The reason you would consider a Carl Anthony Towns trade is because the financial reality is you're probably not going to be able to keep this exact group together with his salary on the books.

because of the other players who are becoming free agents. So you've got Nas Reed has a player option summer of 25. Nikhil Alexander Walker will be unrestricted at that point coming off this amazing steal of a contract where he's making less money next year. He's making 4.3 million after making 4.7 million next year. You know, those two guys off the bench were so critical to this run. If you're talking about paying both of those guys raises, you know, in a way

when the, is the cap is starting to go up at the same time that you're already starting out in the second apron and you've got to figure out kind of what's the succession plan for Mike Conley at point guard. Like all of those questions start to lead you to, if you're going to shed some payroll to be able to resign those guys or redistribute your payroll differently, it's

It's easier to do that this summer because now I can take back a contract that's got one year left on it as an expiring deal as part of that trade. And I'm saving that money in the summer of 2025 to give those guys. Whereas if I'm trying to make that kind of money move to save money in the summer of 2025, it's going to be a lot more limited in terms of my options. Now, that being said, I went around looking for trades like that, and I'm not sure any of them really exist on paper.

Julius Randall has one year left on his contract, right? Is it a player option? I think it's a player option. Yeah, okay. I mean, he wouldn't necessarily be the place I'd want to save money in that deal with New York. And it's an interesting discussion point how much money New York is willing to add if that's picking up the...

But I guess what we're really saying is if your primary, if at least equal parts of this theoretical discussion, because I still would lean to, I think they proved enough to keep it together. But again, it's not my money.

You make the first conference finals in 20 years. You win a playoff series for the first time in 20 years. It's going to be a hard sell to that fan base. Not that they adore Towns, but he is the homegrown guy, whatever. It's going to be a hard sell. Like, yeah, but the tax. You know, the tax. And Glenn and A-Rod are fighting. The tax. So I would still lean to that. But I guess the flip side of the question is...

If it's partially about money more than talent, can this team withstand a raw talent downgrade from Cat to Nas Reed playing more minutes and whatever flotsam you end up getting for Cat over the next two or three seasons? Is the team, like with Mike Conley getting older and Ant rising, can it really withstand a West that is just going to be hellacious for a long, long time?

I mean, for all Katz's flaws and foibles, he is a very good NBA player, an all-star player, a two-time All-NBA player, who just happens to make, starting next year, $49 million, $53 million, $57 million, and $60 million over the following four seasons.

I mean, I think that's why Randall is an interesting target here because of the fact that this is someone who's an all-star player and brings a slightly different skill set that you could say is potentially more complimentary. But then I got to pay him. I guess I got to pay him less than I'm paying Towns. But if I'm trading for him for a year, like whoop-dee-doo, then I'm just going to let him walk to save money?

Right. I mean, you probably need an understanding of what kind of thing, you know, what he's looking for in an extension, if you're going to think about that. I mean, the counter argument that I would raise is, look, the reality, the financial reality is you're going to be bleeding off talent. You're going to have a talent drain financially if you don't do anything like just keeping the talent as it is would require a stratospheric luxury tax bill that I don't think you can justify in Minneapolis. Right.

So you didn't find any great cat deals that you liked outside the theoretical Knicks deal that is going to be bandied about with all the CIA connections between everybody involved?

Part of the issue is that Minnesota, if you're trying to save money in this deal, like a lot of the other teams you'd be looking to trade with, can't afford to add money. Golden State is, to me, an intriguing spot for Carl Anthony Towns to land, but it's mostly because I'd be curious to see him play next to Draymond Green in the frontcourt. Draymond Green kind of has to be the matchmaking salary in this deal. If the Warriors aren't going to be paying...

Billions of dollars in luxury tax. Wiggins back to Minnesota? I think he would definitely be a centerpiece of that deal. That was the other question I thought about. What player type are you looking to get in this deal? I envisioned it ideally as a combo 3-4, maybe a little more on the 4 side than the 3 side. So Wiggins sort of fits that, but isn't as big as the player you'd like.

So I'm just going to read. Did you find any other ones you liked before I read you all my crazy ideas? I mean, I contemplated New Orleans for something built around Brandon Ingram. I mean, that's another like, but again, financially, I don't think it really makes sense from the Pelican standpoint to not be, you know, paying exorbitant amounts of money themselves. It probably has to be like CJ McCollum is the matching salary.

B.I. is eligible for an extension this summer. That's going to get spicy, I think, in New Orleans. I think what we're really saying is that cat contract, if you have another max level player, you're in jail instantly upon acquiring that contract. The cap is going to up. The contract will not be as quote unquote big proportionally in three years as it is today. It is a huge contract. And if you have another guy making $50 million a year, you're going to have to pay a lot of money.

which any good team is going to have someone in that range. It just is you're going to be in not quite in jail, but like the cell door is going to be closing. New Orleans is a good place to look at. Cat and Zion is just OK. I mean, I guess we're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing like what works. His offense is so malleable. It would be interesting. I'm just going to read teams and just like the level of crazy is going to escalate as I go.

I tried to find a good Atlanta deal for a guard, one of the guards, some other stuff. You could make one if you wanted. I don't really know why or how, but you could. I also tried to find a good Cleveland deal. There's a lot of moving parts there. Like maybe Darius Garland can be involved. But then you just like, what's the salary coming with him? Jared Allen. That doesn't make sense. I couldn't find. I couldn't build one.

Philly into the cap space for whatever they can trade. It's not enough for Minnesota. I also don't buy Joel Embiid playing with Carl Anthony Towns. Oh, yeah. They've had some social media words. Does anybody like Carl Anthony Towns? Is Carl Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert just, is it just the most hated, just mocked, whatever front court in the league? Just Gobert alone, it would have to be. You don't even need anybody else.

I don't think that's fair, by the way. I'm just saying Tim McMahon wrote an entire story that basically everybody hates Rudy Gobert. Hate is strong. I realize hate is strong. My mom told me don't say the word hate. It's not a nice word. And I tell that to my daughter, too. Reading a book, by the way, one of the main characters says hate a lot. And I have to keep telling her, like, it's not nice that he says that. But I said mother in this podcast, quoting somebody.

Quoting, it's now 12.03, Kevin. We're going to go off the rails. Houston, I think, will be aggressive this summer looking around for win now pieces that may or may not, that would fit ideally. Feels too rushed for them. Feels too uncertain with Shingun. I don't like it. Miami? Miami?

Send General Soreness back to Minnesota. Don't see it. Don't see it. There's too much. Or if not General Soreness, then the same Dame poo-poo platter kind of thing. They've got Bam and Cat, the two Kentucky Bears. I don't know. I thought about Charlotte. The new owners aren't doing that. I just thought it would be funny if they did something crazy. All right, here are some teams that I liked. I thought about Brooklyn. Like if I threw you Cam Johnson, Dorian Finney-Smith,

If there's another little salary that I can throw in and like some of the Phoenix picks that I've got, not all of them, maybe a couple of them. I don't know what the value would be. And I can get cat and McHale bridges. And I give you some players that make sense.

I don't think that's terrible. I don't think the Nets would do it because the Nets are very obviously loading up this cap space for the summer of 2025. And I think they would say, we think we hope we can get a player that fits better with McHale bridges than Towns does. But I kind of like that one. It's definitely getting in the realm of plausible. If I were Brooklyn, the guy I like for them is Darius Garland. Ooh.

That's a good one. Someone's going to rescue, should rescue Darius Garland. I still believe. I don't think it's an island yet, but whatever landmass it is, I'm there. Okay, so here's the craziest one. I don't even know if this is legal or when they can do it because it's 1203 and God knows I'm not going on the CBA right now. So the Clippers are in the second apron, which means every trade's got to be like dollar for dollar. I believe if I'm reading the salary data right,

Cat and Kawhi Leonard will make exactly the same salary next season. Now, both of those are determined by the cap. So I think that is the case. And as long as it doesn't raise by. Yeah, no, I think I have. Well, I have no idea what any of this accomplishes. I could be wrong because they were signed in different years, I think. And so I don't know if the dollar amount is actually going to be the same on sports track. They were listed as the same, but it could have been an estimate based on the percentage of whatever.

If they were the same and it was actually legal, I don't know what it accomplishes for either team other than Kawhi's contract is shorter than Towns' from Minnesota's perspective. And the Clippers could just be like, really? I'm just going to run this back again. All these dudes are going to be a year older, a year more injury prone. Kawhi's been injured every playoff since for the past four, whatever, since 2020.

Let's just shake it up. Let's have some fun. Let's shake it up. Carl Towns in here with Paul George and James Harden. Just like see what the hell happens. It's insane. It's insane. But if the dollar figures are actually the same and it's legal, I just thought it was fun. I just don't know that I'm using cat as my lure at the Intuit. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, I think I don't know what. What are the Clippers supposed to do? Is their plan really just like we're bringing these old dudes back again?

Just maybe they'll be healthy this time. That 26 and five stretch was, I thought it was real, looked real, didn't prove sustainable. I guess there are worse ideas than being like, that's the best version of our team. We proved it. It was a provable thing. It didn't last because of health and malaise and whatever else. Let's roll the dice again. What else are we supposed to do?

I mean, that actually stood out on the rewatch of the Celtics Mavericks game from, you know, March 2nd or whatever day it was, was there was a lot of talk about there during that, about the Clippers as potentially the strongest threats to the Nuggets as the Western conference, as the Mavericks were out there playing on the court and hindsight is always 2020. Yeah, I know. I did. I did hear that. I was watching the same game and heard the same thing, Oklahoma city. I couldn't find one. It's too complicated. It's too, there's too much going on. Um,

Too much going on. Sam Presley did the two-hour postseason press availability, which just includes one gem after another. Leon Rose could be the general manager of the Knicks until he dies, and he will not speak for two hours combined to the media. Boy, the Knicks. Might not speak for two minutes combined. Uh...

I tried to build the Lakers one just because I'm contractually obligated to do so, and I couldn't do it. And if you have AD, LeBron, and Cat, you are in financial jail. And then I had New Orleans too. I don't know what you're supposed to do if you're Minnesota. I just don't know. I don't know. It seems like a lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, and you just worry as great as Ant is becoming –

Are we entirely dependent now on him actually becoming like a top three NBA player to ever get back to where we just were? Because again, the West is going nowhere. I mean, some, some of the, some of the older teams are going to get older. And so Clippers, Lakers, whatever, Warriors, whatever. But like some of these other teams, Memphis is coming back next year, fully loaded. And, and, you know, Wemby's coming, Houston's coming on and on and on. Like it's not going to get any easier. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't recall seeing any of those older teams in the Final Four this year. And people do habitually refer to Minnesota as a young team because Anthony Edwards is so young. But, you know, the fact is the team as a whole is not exceptionally young. And Dallas has, you know, the younger core on.

Well, if you want to win, you generally have to at some point make your team older, which is what Milwaukee has done for five or six years around Giannis. And they're starting to pay the piper on that. And it's quietly kind of like what Boston has done around Tatum and Brown. Those guys are 25 and 27. All of a sudden, it's Drew Holiday, Al Horford, Chris Depp, Sporzinga. That's just how it works. Any parting thoughts, Mr. Pelton, before we go to bed or I go to bed?

I'm going to have a drink, actually. I'm a little hyped up right now. I got seven days. I might crack a white claw since I live in the suburbs now. One white claw? Cherry berry. One white claw. I made fun of Scott Brooks for drinking a white claw. Now I got like 12 of them in the fridge. This feels like a white claw night. Any parting thoughts? Love comes at you fast.

Yeah, I mean, look, we talked about kind of how fragile the success is potentially for Minnesota. This is why you have to cherish these opportunities. Like whatever happens in the finals, nothing is going to take away from what's been an incredible run for Dallas.

You know, certainly I was I was lower than almost anyone on their moves at the trade deadline. I don't think anyone, though, was predicting that you're going to add two starters midseason and ended up in the NBA finals. That is not the history. That is not the usual recipe for this. And kudos to them for putting this together on the fly in this way that there's not a lot of precedent for in NBA history.

Next week, we'll have to do a deep dive on DeAndre and Marvin Bagley III. Luka Doncic is in the finals at age 25. Dallas Mavericks destroy Minnesota on the road in game five. And we are set up for a titanically fun NBA finals. It starts next week in Boston. I will be there.

It's going to be awesome. Kevin Pelton, thank you for staying up with us. Your insights are second to none. Read his piece on Boston from a couple of days ago. It's now a nice final setup piece. And read his piece from, I think it was last week, that you referenced with looking at how the final four teams in the NBA built themselves, which is a good guide to how these two teams got here. KP, you're the man. Thank you, sir. Thanks as always for having me.

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