Killer Kawhi and Early Playoff Impressions

Aaron starts out by immediately pissing off Boston fans with his take on Payton Pritchard winning Sixth Man of the Year (2:53). Then the guys have a conversation about the Magic's lack of offensive trickery and the return of Franz's woeful long-range shooting (23:46). Aaron then cooks some Greek food (54:33), followed by some awe-induced gushing about Kawhi Leonard's Game 2 performance (1:17:28), before he and Evan upset Knicks fans--again--with even more animus-inspiring takes on Jalen Brunson's foul-baiting (1:29:48). 

As always, you can find Evan and Aaron on NBA Threads

Also, don't forget to subscribe to Live. Breathe. Ball. and Basketball Intelligence to get even more basketball insight.

Chapters

• 2:53 Payton Pritchard's Sixth Man of the Year Award
• 23:46 Franz needs to abandon the threeball
• 54:33 Aaron cooks up some Greek food
• 1:17:28 Killer Kawhi
• 1:29:48 Jalen Brunson is the Costco of the Game

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the No Gimmies podcast. My name is Evan Cook. I am joined as always by Aaron Bullwinkle. Aaron, how you doing, buddy? I am good. For the listeners out there, I'm going to apologize ahead of time if I sound a little sniffly or anything. Some people noticed on last week's I was sounding like I was starting to get sick. I, in fact, did. And whatever's been going around, my wife and I have been volleying back and forth. So I'll do my best to edit out the sniffles and the rest. But for you out there, I apologize if you catch a few of those. I love that we have listeners who can diagnose you based on the way your voice sounds. That's really great. One of them was my mother. So that helps. I would say that, you know, in lieu of health insurance, that's about the next best thing that you can get. So thank you to Aaron's mom. I actually got a really nice compliment from a friend of mine who does not watch basketball at all. She said that she put our podcast on. And even though she had no idea what she was talking about, she found my voice to be super I told her that she should go see an ear specialist. I was like, I sound like somebody who eats gravel daily, but you know, me and Tom Thibodeau, we go to the same speech therapist, a joke that you've made several times that I still very much enjoy. But yeah. I appreciate when people listen to this podcast and they're just like, I don't even know what you're talking about, but that was fun. Look, every, everybody's got their own things. Gravelly and smoky is, is the, the, the soothing sound for some. And I doubt most people are going to sleep to my loud booming ass, but you know, Hey, I like to think that I'm more Rod Stewart, but I'm, you know, Like I said, a little bit more Tom Thibodeau. Well, when we start live streaming, hopefully next week, as we talked about off air, I want to see some Rod Stewart pants. I don't think I got those in my closet, but I will do my best for you, buddy. Rush already got the shirt. So we already got the look up top. We need, we need to, it can't just be shirt cocking. You got to do the full thing. Well, we have plenty to cover Aaron, you and I, but the first thing we're going to get to the tip off and I should make more comments. You know, mentions of these different segments that you and I do. The tip off is how we start our show. The tip off is what we're going to talk about to start off. We have plenty of playoff to to cover, no doubt. But I did want to get to something real quick. It was announced tonight before Oklahoma City and Memphis's game that Peyton Pritchard. has won the NBA Sixth Man of the Year, and Aaron is already making a face. He has some thoughts, which is why I wanted to give him the floor to talk about the fact that Peyton Pritchard seemingly had this award locked up since the 10th or 12th game of the season. It was just kind of felt like it was decided that he was the Sixth Man of the Year, and it was never the most interesting race as far as NBA awards go. So Aaron, you've already made a face. What are your thoughts? Peyton Pritchard is your sixth man of the year. How do you feel about it? Well, you kind of already put word to expression just because my issue with it is not that Peyton Pritchard... isn't deserving of the recognition for his performance this year as a Sixth Man of the Year performer, but it feels like this award really was given to him sometime in November or December. You know, he started out of the gate so ridiculously hot and awesome, and it tailed off, not in a bad way. I mean, I think he finished the year at 14.6 points per game, something like that. He shot right around 40, 41% from the three. He had a really good year, and it was a career year for him in a My problem with this is this just reeks of either laziness or the media bias in terms of how we're doing this. One, because we know Boston is covered from all angles. But... I don't understand how looking substantively for performance or even doing it from a narrative standpoint, how Peyton Pritchard wins out over Malik Beasley. For those out there that aren't aware, when we did our awards, like coming right out of the All-Star break, both Evan and myself had picked Malik Beasley as sixth man of the year. Nothing that happened from that point led me to feel any differently. Beasley averaged, I believe, two more points per game. He made 69 more threes and shot a better percentage from the three-point line for a team in Detroit that so much more needed his product I was thinking about this, like how to frame it in a way for the podcast, just in terms of my thing, because I don't want people thinking I'm just hating on Peyton Pritchard. But if we were just to take away both of those players and replace them with a, you know, replacement level player or the exact same player on those teams, Detroit's record is so much worse without Beasley than Boston is without Pritchard. And I think that's just representative of the weight and the importance of those guys as bench performers for each team. Yeah. No, I agree with the sentiment. I understand why you feel the way that you feel. I feel similarly, like you said, you and I picked Malik Beasley both to win this award because of the contributions to his team and how important he was. So this kind of speaks to the point kind of tangentially about the way that we talk about MVP. It's about like, if you were to remove this guy from that team, what does the team look like without him? And I just think that Beasley's role with this Pistons team, given their personnel, is so much more important to Detroit than Peyton Pritchard's role maybe is to Boston, which is not to negate the contributions that Peyton Pritchard has made to this team. I just want to go through it real quick. Pritchard averaged 14.3 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 3.5 assists. He shot 47% from the field and 41% from three. He had the most bench poise in the NBA this season. Now, that is a very compelling case. Beasley, you already made the case for him. The funny thing to me is that this vote wasn't even particularly close. Pritchard got 82 of 100 first-place votes. That makes no sense. Beasley was second with 13 first-place votes. It wasn't even a contest. And who got the one other vote? Oh. There was Ty Jerome, De'Aaron Hunter. De'Aaron Hunter, yeah. I'm sorry, Nas Reed got one. So Nas Reed got the other first place vote, right? Or did I do my math wrong there? Yeah, so there's 82 for Pritchard, 13 for Beasley. Oh, I did my math wrong, I'm sorry. Jerome, two for Hunter, and one for Reed. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that was split on the 100 votes. So there were, I mean... Beasley was the only other one in double figures. But again, I mean, he received 69 more votes than Beasley did. So it's just kind of one of those things where it felt like it was decided a long time ago and we just didn't really consider the impact of anybody else. I know it's not the most important award. I still think that it should be measured differently. with the same amount of gravity. I think people should put the same amount of work in. It's like how the Oscars recently just came out with a rule that said that everyone who votes on the best picture should probably watch all the movies nominated for best picture. How absurd is it, first of all? I mean, obviously, it was already out there. Everybody knew where the Oscars were concerned, that there were a lot of people that weren't seeing all of them. But the fact that that wasn't being codified and enforced up to this point, it's so absurd to sit there and go, well, I didn't see everybody, but I'm going to go ahead and vote for the few things. And this is much to that. It's funny that you drew that comparison, because I was going to do the exact same. You actually made the better point, I think, because I'm not even so upset that Pritchard won it. I'm upset that Pritchard won it in a runaway. Like, that's just absurd. That feels like it bothers me. Yeah, it just, you know, it reeks again of people that just weren't watching the second half of the season. Or maybe people were waiting the second half different. But that doesn't even make sense for a Pistons team that went on such a significant run in the second half of the year to get into the seating that was so important for them from a playoff standpoint. Yeah, I mean, and the fact that Beasley is like the only other– he's the only guy to ever hit 300 threes off the bench because no one else has ever done that before. So if you want to talk about a guy whose impact really matters to a team, where Detroit, we saw it last year, what they look like without shooting. So I guess what you could do is you could make the argument that Pritchard is very important to Boston because they really do– Without his contract, without him being on the ridiculously cheap contract that the Celtics got him on. Shout out Brad Stevens. Yes, shout out to Brad Stevens. They have to work the fringes. They have to kind of work because of how much money they have committed to the five guys that are in their starting lineup. So he's very important to a team like Boston who can't really afford to go out and get guys who could be high-level contributors in the playoffs.

UNKNOWN: 9:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

But yeah, I think the big point that you and I both really finalized on is that it shouldn't have been such a blowout. And that's a little bit of a bummer. I hope the rest of awards season does not go like this. I hope that these awards are thoughtfully weighed out and considered with the kind of the kind of attention to detail that you would expect from people who are voting on these kinds of things. But we, you know, we know that unfortunately the reality is that some of these people are not bothering to watch the games. Like it's just the truth of it. And we're going to see it in more of these awards. Unfortunately, it, it concerns me because to me, this augurs the reality that the most improved player is going to be Kate by, you know, Cade by an absolute, you know, landslide. And unfortunately, We've already had the conversation about whether or not Cade deserves it. That's a whole other story there. But there's not a single award this year separate of if Wemby had stayed healthy that should have been a landslide award. Defensive Player of the Year is the only award that I can think of as of right now that is a clearly defined, and it's no longer that, but it could have been. The rest of these should be close. There should be nuance to them. There's enough storylines and enough people that competed in a way that should have put them more into those conversations, and it's probably not going to play out. Hey, shout out to Alex Caruso for receiving one third place vote. That's just fun. Somebody in the Thunder media just handed him a sympathy third place vote for six man of the year. That man missed like 30 games. I don't even know. I was getting ready to, like, there's no way he missed a lot of games off and on throughout the season. So, anyway, weird stuff. It's funny when you look at the breakdown of these votings. I just like to look at them and see where the votes went. So, yeah, DeAndre Hunter being the fourth on the list. I mean, I didn't think it was a two-person race, but it's just weird. You know, seven, eight players deep. It's funny. You and I talked about it a little bit. The unfortunate thing is Hunter and Jerome end up cannibalizing each other in that voting, both in terms of like how they're perceived and their importance on the roster. But just then people are going, well, I'm, you know, I'm only going to give one Cleveland guy the vote, which probably isn't fair. But also the reality is, is you can't really be a sixth man if you're the seventh man. And math tells me that if you had two guys coming off the bench, one of them isn't your sixth guy. So there is that. Yeah, didn't the Clippers go through something similar whenever they had Jordan Clarkson and Jordan Crawford? Oh, Jamal Crawford and Jordan Clarkson, yes. They were both nominated? How can they both be six men of the year when there's two guys coming off the bench? That makes no sense. Yeah. But anyway, since you brought up Cleveland and you brought up Ty Jerome, we should talk about the series that we did not get to in our playoff prediction, our playoff breakdown podcast. There were the number one– seeds and the number two seeds from both conference who had not yet finalized their opponents and since you brought up cleveland cleveland and miami have already played their first game and ty jerome was sensational by the way i just like whenever we talk about statistics and how they can be misleading in that game one cleveland had 34 bench points 28 of them were tied

SPEAKER_01: 12:49

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 12:50

yeah So if you look at that, if you just look at the team box score, you're just like, wow, nice bench production from the Cavaliers. It was 28 from Jerome and six from Sam Morrell. Nobody else contributed from a point standpoint. But we do want to talk about these, the top three seeds in the NBA. That's the Orlando, I'm sorry, the Boston Celtics, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Three series that Let's be nice about this. Let's be very nice. Lack compelling elements to the series. Storylines. Lacks a question mark about how these series are going to particularly end. Yeah, yeah. If any of those three series go six games, I would be gobsmacked. I would be absolutely shocked. But we are a podcast that covers the entire NBA. So let's talk about what you saw in game one. It was a 121-100 win by the Cleveland Cavaliers over the 37-45 Miami Heat, who fought their way into the eighth seed. Any thoughts off the rip? We can kind of go through these a little fast, because there are some very compelling series that I do want to talk about. But is there anything that you noticed in that first game? Yeah, I mean... talk about. We'll talk about it, like you said, quickly because, look, if I'm going to give you 30 minutes on the jabs, we might as well at least be able to talk about this for a few minutes. But nothing in this series told us anything different about Cleveland. And we had talked a while ago, Cleveland's Performance really doesn't matter until we get to the second round. That being said, they came out aggressive. They played the brand of basketball they should have. Miami deserves credit for being plucky. And Davion Mitchell, we need to all thank the basketball gods for the fact that he found his way into a Miami Heat uniform. Because for as cheesy and obnoxious and as annoying as Heat culture is, everything about that dude just stitches perfectly into the fabric of that entire kind of ecosystem. And the way he's played the last couple of games has been so much fun to watch. Also, just quickly, Tyler Hero's comfort as a primary option in these games really needs to be acknowledged. That being said, and this is it, and then we're done with this for me, Tyler Hero can't be your best player because when it comes nut-cutting time and it's clutch, Tyler Hero's actually really bad. Like, Really bad. So I went down and looked through this. For the season, Tyler Hero in clutch situations shot 31% on 104 attempts. That 104 attempts was third amongst all players. The shooting percentage was 96th for players with 25 or more attempts. So Miami just, the thing is, even if they can make these games tight based on their defense, I don't trust them to be able to close it late. Who are you going to? Who's your scoring? Who is it? Good story, Miami. They don't have Caleb Martin to have his crazy Game 2 first-round series performance that we've seen every year out of him. Barry Miami, it's a gentleman's sweep because I think Cleveland is nice to them in one of these games. Yeah, I don't have a ton about this. I just don't think that Miami has the firepower to keep up with this Cleveland offense. I think it's just going to be a runaway– portion of the game, there's going to be a six or seven minute stretch where Cleveland can just dominate. They can just run away with it a little bit. They, you know, in this game, I never really saw that, that full stretch, but they just won every quarter of They won every quarter except for the third where they tied. And they put the exclamation on it late in the fourth, and they were able to just kind of go to their bench and rest their guys. I think it's just going to be that kind of series for them because they just have so much offensive firepower, and they can match whatever style of ball that Miami wants to play. They can match it. If Miami wants to go super small and you want to keep Bam– off the floor and you want to go with Ware as your five or Jovich, there's nothing that they can do that the Cleveland Cavaliers can't match. So this one to me feels like a four-game sweep. Everyone keeps trying to do the beware of Miami in the playoffs. Jimmy Butler's not walking through that door, guys. This isn't the same team. It's Andrew Wiggins in place of Jimmy Butler. The drop-off from that is enough for me to just call this a clean sweep and move on from it. Miami's got a lot of questions to answer in the offseason, and they've also got to answer the question about whether or not they are the type of place that can still command a superstar free agent to force their way to be with Eric Spolstra and his system to play for Pat Riley and to make sense on this team. A large, you know, small forward or power forward who, you know, can score and defend on both ends. That's the kind of player that they need. They need Durant six years ago. I think you meant they need Giannis. And if Giannis is on the block, of course, that is going to be probably number one with the bullet the the place that is the most talked about but like honest bam backcourt would just or a front court i mean it would just be insane imagine if they decide to get real plucky and just go yannis khalil wearing bam although you gotta imagine khalil where would probably have to be in that deal just because he's their best asset yeah yeah um to be fair bam bam out of bio though did you know 79 threes this year he extended he took five in game one he extended his average shot distance by three feet just in this season because of those threes and I may have brought that up on the last one you touched on something then let's be done with it what is interesting with this is Miami is culture in terms of how they treat their superstars under Pat Riley that's got to be a deterrent for certain players and being excited to go there right like People didn't feel comfortable with what happened with Dwayne Wade when he first left. LeBron obviously was pissed off about stuff. We know what happened with Jimmy. Players have these conversations. These things are very important to guys. And when you look at somebody who, like Kevin Durant, and we're in the setting sun of his career, no pun intended. Is that how you want to finish if you don't feel like the organization, because he's got a new contract that's going to be coming up, they just kind of cheaped out on Jimmy, even though I agreed with it. Are you going to be comfortable going to that organization knowing those things? That's just, you know, look, Pat Riley's going to figure it out. They always do. I guess it's a question of whether or not they intend on contending next year. Because if you want to be a title contender next season, I don't even think that this move does it, but you go for Durant now. If that's not your plan, if you're okay with waiting for the next guy, then maybe next season, do you kind of punt on the next season and just kind of roll with what you got? I don't know what Miami wants. to me. But if he still is, there's nothing to lead me to believe that at 79, I think is his age, he's going to go, well, let's go ahead and see if we can develop some young players and figure this out in three seasons. That just doesn't seem to fit. I know that's his timeline, but somebody at some point is going to start thinking about the future of the team and not what Pat Riley wants. But I mean, they owe him a lot, no doubt about it. But you have to start thinking in terms of like what's possible versus what you desire to happen. But anyway, let's stay in the East and let's talk about the Boston Celtics and the Orlando magic game one in the books, one Oh three to 86. Not surprising that the Orlando magic and offensively stunted team could not score more than 90 points in game one against a very tremendous Boston defense. You know, it's, I was actually surprised that they shot 37% from three as a team. That's, about as good as as orlando can expect to shoot how many attempts 27 oh that's

SPEAKER_01: 21:36

that's a little surprising yeah

SPEAKER_00: 21:37

10 of 27 uh four of them were banquero who's only a 32 three-point shooter this year he was four of seven from three uh banquero and wagner uh wagner did not have the most efficient game he was 10 of 24 had 23 points banquero though was a revelation he shot 27 shots he made 14 of them he scored 36 he had 11 rebounds four assists a block a steal as far as just like the whole team goes he was the best as far as plus minus he was only a minus four when he was on the floor it's just that it's another one of those problems where where does a team like Orlando find the firepower to keep up with a team like the Boston Celtics who are have championship metal, who have been in tight situations before, and they have a ton of guys who can score. Derek White was the leading scorer for this team. He scored 30. He had 7 of 12 from 3. I mean, this guy, whenever it's playoff time, he comes up huge. Any thoughts that you have about Orlando? Not about the offseason, but about just, we can get to the offseason stuff after this, but about this game in particular. Yeah, well, we were talking off air when I was talking about the offseason. I don't want to go into their offseason. It's just this playoff series and kind of the stretch down just continues to show the issues they have in terms of how they generate offense. The They have to figure out on their coaching staff who is going to be the person that provides some offensive ingenuity. Because one of the other problems with them is they're just so offensively predictable. And I know that part of that is because of the limitations from a personnel standpoint. But you have to get some better variety. It just can't always be Paolo and Franz trying to break down and kick out or finish. This is crazy. So for our listeners, we're recording Tuesday night. This will come out Wednesday. So some of these stats will change a little bit. But through the first series of games, including people that have played two games, The two players that were leading all playoff performers in usage were Franz at 39% and Paolo at 37%. So you've got the first and second player on your own roster. So separate of the fact that you're struggling to generate offense, you're also exhausting your players. The Franz issue in terms of the shooting thing really is starting to become alarming because we had thought in the beginning of the season that he had figured out his three-point shooting and maybe last year was an outlier. His His shooting since he came back from his injury, that was January 23rd. He's 54 of 199 from the three-point line in the regular season and playoffs combined since then. It's the worst percentage in the league for anybody with 150 attempts. Shout out to D'Angelo Russell second and oddly Malik Monk third. They just... It's, it's, if Franz can't figure out how to be a threat as a perimeter shooter and whatever, he's like worked a hitch back into a shot that I thought he got rid of. I was, I was just about to bring that up. I don't know when he started shooting like that again. How was he not? We thought we, that he had worked that out. And it's weird because off the dribble, the hitch isn't there. And on the shot, he misses everything short and bad. But how do you play those two guys together if Franz is such a liability from a spacing standpoint? And especially because you just have no other shooters. And then the other problem. Yeah, I mean, if you look at this team, if you look at just like simply look at the box score, Bankero and Wagner had 59. The rest of the team had 27. Yeah. It's a series where Cole Anthony, who gave them really good punch, Yeah, the play in can't because the Celtics know exactly how to to exploit how poor of a defender he is. You can't keep him on the floor on the other side, even if he is going offensively. And he's such a feast or famine player. He's going to shoot you in and out of games. Well, this also isn't this isn't Atlanta. Yeah, exactly. Because, like, look at the people who are going to be guarding somebody, like, off the bench, like Cole Anthony. Because you're going to be getting Drew Holiday, and you're going to be getting Derek White, and you're going to get Peyton Pritchard, who is not a pushover. Yeah, and Drew Holiday, I mean, we need to– we talk about playoff Rondo and playoff Jimmy. Playoff Drew is now a thing. That dude's intensity in that first game, the way he was playing and just ripping the ball from people, I mean– Boston ends up killing them fast break 26 to four. Boston's not even a fast breaking team. This series is a mess for Orlando and it's unfortunate. It's Boston in four. It's, it's incredibly unfortunate. And like, I just don't really know where they're supposed to like get office because they, they, they are a team that like relies on their defense and they like to get out and run. And like you said, when they only get four fast break points, like how exactly are you supposed to get out and run if you're not going to like, You can't force turnovers on a team that's as disciplined as Boston. Although Boston, you know, does have those weird stretches where all of a sudden they'll have like four crazy turnovers. Simmons made a funny joke about how Boston's like the one team when they're up 20, you're more freaked out than when they're up by like two, which is completely fair. Yeah. In this series, like you said, Orlando just doesn't have the dogs or the firepower. Jalen Suggs and Mo Wagner wouldn't change this series enough for this to really matter. And that's why Orlando... It would be nice to have their shooting. I mean, at least Suggs' shooting and Wagner's physicality. But yeah, it would be... That wouldn't... I agree. I don't think it would change anything. I mean... Boston had 13 steals. Orlando's five. If you can't turn the Celtics over, there's no way you're going to get on a fast break and there's no way you're going to get easy buckets. We've seen what this team looks like in the half court. Yeah. Orlando doesn't have the offensive IQ to make that work. So this series, unfortunately, again, kudos to Orlando for fighting their way in. Considering the injuries they had this year, They fought like hell to get here into a seventh seed. But the reward that you get is that you get to face the defending champions in round one. Boston in four. I agree. I do want to say to put a button on it. Going into next season... There are going to start to be rumblings and concerns about Jamal Mosley as an offensive coach if what we're seeing doesn't change. And I think Jamal Mosley, generally speaking, has done a great job. And obviously, he's a person that is really good at galvanizing them to play a certain way. But this offense is gross. Yeah, but I also, I think that's a personnel problem. And I would also argue that like, no, I understand. No, I understand. If you watch what they're doing, it's not just like, I completely agree, but I would have made this exact same complaint in November when they were healthy, just in terms of like, they don't have a dynamic attack. They don't attack you from enough different points to make the defense have to struggle to figure out what they're doing. And that has been problematic before the injuries. That was an issue to me last season with them. I think there will be a assistant coaching change. Yeah. I think that they will bring in an offensive minded coach to kind of rework the their offensive system, because I think they believe in Mosley as the leader of the team, as a leader of men, as a defensive minded coach. I don't think that his job is in jeopardy at all, but I think they're going to be like, Hey, look, the offense isn't working. We're going to try and bring in some guys, but we also need you to bring in some guys. So they might hire a coach or two. What's Dan Tony doing? Offensive side of the ball. I'm sorry. What's what's Dan Tony doing? I was just laughing so hard about that. Do you remember like the game of zones, the game? Oh yeah. Oh

SPEAKER_01: 29:10

yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:11

My favorite one, one of my favorite ones was the D'Antoni one, whatever. They brought James Harden to him and he was like a maester. He's like, zero defense, double the offense. And they were just like, oh, what a brilliant idea. But anyway, sorry to bring up a very niche joke that I thought was funny. At least five listeners got that joke and that was for them. Yeah, that was for you guys. If you guys know Game of Zones, you're welcome. The last series that we should talk about Just to get through it real quick, Oklahoma City versus Memphis. Fight the blowout in game one, a 51-point loss for the Grizzlies. So I was bartending that morning. And the game comes on, and I'm like, okay, good. This is how I'll keep myself busy. It was Easter, so it's not. And a guest sits down like three minutes into the game and asks me to turn Formula 1 and then proceeds to watch the entire race. At the time, I was upset. And then I saw the score at halftime, and I wanted to thank the guy. I have no notes for this. I watched the highlights and decided I was done. I don't think I'm going to spend any time watching this series. It's not going to tell me anything. Memphis... Are we going to see like roster upheaval that is significant with them in the summer? Because it kind of feels like that's where we're tracking. I truly can't think that you can run this team back. You've got the John Moran problem. You've got Desmond Bain on his max extension. And now you've got Triple J, who is– and he's got an extension available to him, because he's probably going to make an all-NBA team, it would be five years,$345 million. I don't think he's going to end up making one now. I think the way they finished, he's going to– I'm not positive, but Evita Zubac and Evan Mobley jumped ahead of him, I think, in most of the voters' eyes. Zubac, maybe. Maybe. I still think that triple J had enough of a case throughout the entire season, but also Zubach finished the season very strong. So you're entirely right. But yeah, that would be much to the Grizzlies benefit if he does not make all NBA team because they could kind of try and keep his, but what if he wins defensive player of the year? I don't know if that affects his contract, but it's certainly something that's possible. He needs to spend the summer. He needs to spend the summer rebounding. Like it's now starting to be a problem. What do you have three rebounds? Like he can't be that guy and just not rebound at all. It kills them. He tends to float a little bit. He's got a little bit of that Paul George in him where whenever he's on, he's one of the most impactful players on the floor. And whenever he's kind of listless, sometimes you forget he's out there. So that's a problem for a guy that you're going to, you know, that could potentially command max money. Yeah. I don't really need to spend a ton of time talking about this series. I mean, this isn't the, this isn't the plan point differential does not matter. If Memphis and Oklahoma city who are playing right now, if Memphis were to win game two by one point, guess what? The series is one to one. Yeah. It doesn't matter, but like 51 points. Yes. It's an emphatic way to start winning. your playoffs. It's a way of letting people know that you are a serious contender that, you know, you think of yourself as, as championship material. It's a nice statement game by the thunder. I don't think that they're over there doing a victory lap about it. I think they, you know, they're, like I said, they are playing Memphis right now. Last I checked, they were up 18. So, you know, this isn't like the kind of thing where Oklahoma city is like, well, we beat them in game one. We did everything we're supposed to do. they know that they have to, you can't skip steps on these things and you have to play these series out. And, you know, I don't think that that Memphis is a complete pushover. I just think that that game was, it was everything that the Oklahoma city thunder is about. And it's the kind of thing where even like the coaching change wouldn't have made a difference. If Taylor Jenkins was standing on that sideline and, It doesn't matter. Bill Jackson could have been standing on that sideline and it wouldn't have mattered. Yeah, I just think that this Oklahoma City team, with their defense, it is so overwhelming. Whenever they're hitting shots at the clip that they were hitting them at, they were forcing turnovers, they were getting out in transition. That's what Oklahoma City does. Their defense generates a lot of their offense. And then when they get in the half court, they have a half court maestro in Shea Gildas Alexander. Which, by the way, It should be something that we mentioned that he had his worst game of the season. He had 15 points. He shot like four of 13 or something like that. But it was so, I mean, you know, it's also contextually, it's like he was irrelevant by the halfway through the second quarter. Yeah. Their leading scorer was Aaron Wiggins, right? Oh, was it Aaron Wiggins? I think Wiggins had like, well, he ended up with like 25. Oh, okay. Jalen Williams had like 20, 21, five and six, I think something. Yeah. Something like that. So, I mean, again, it wasn't like somebody had a 50 point game and, you know, dominated. It was a team effort and that's Oklahoma city to a T. Absolutely. Memphis has a lot of questions that they're going to have to answer in the off season, but we do have one more series that we didn't get to touch on, which is a far more fascinating series. And I would like to talk a little bit more in depth about it. And that would be the Houston rockets and the golden state warriors. I watched, I watched all of this game. It was what you would kindly describe as a rock fight. It was so ugly, only a mother would love it. Yes. But, you know, let's talk about the good parts for Golden State. Let's start there. Jimmy Butler, I thought, got to his spots. I thought he was a very controlling, decisive force whenever... Houston made that run. I think they were down 19 at one point. They cut it to four. Had a nice little run there in the third quarter. Jimmy Butler tends to have this, I know that I need to score and just settle the team down. And basically his go-to move is to kind of go to the right wing and just kind of find his way into the paint. He does that little jump push shot. just over the top of a defender after he creates contact. It's very effective. He very rarely misses that shot. About 100% of the time, I'm expecting it to go in. So Jimmy Butler, 25 points, seven rebounds, six assists, five steals. Incredible game for Jimmy Butler against a team that is known for its defense, but doesn't really have a lot of offensive firepower either. Aaron, give me your thoughts. What did you see in this game? What did you like? What did you not like? Well, okay, so if we're going to start from the Golden State side in terms of things you like, of course, Butler and Curry's performance. I mean, the guys combined to go 22-38 from the field. Curry goes for 31. Butler goes for 25. And Curry makes three shots that just– you feel so bad for the defensive player. That shot with Jalen Green where he's fading, going out of bounds, off his hip to beat the buzzer, like– That is such a demoralizing play for a defense in Houston that locks in, plays the entire possession perfectly. Jalen Green, who was clearly ass offensively, but he deserves a lot of credit for how engaged he stayed in the game. Jalen Green defended hard. He had nine rebounds. Look, you can have conversations about whether or not he was hurting them because of how bad he was offensively. It's not really much of a conversation, but between him and Van Vliet, they were terrible. The reality is that's been the problem for them. Those two guys are feast or famine players. And if you have both of them going as poorly as they were at the exact same time, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. They combined for seven of 29 from the floor. They were one of six in the fourth quarter, respectively. And the only one was Van Vliet hit that big shot that I think actually actually, was when Houston pulled it within four with under three minutes. I mean, I was going to group all three of those guys together. Brooks, Van Vliet, and Green were 10 of 43. Wow. I mean, if you're going to shoot 20%, that's coming from your starters. I mean, Amin Thompson is not the kind of– he doesn't have the offensive bag yet. He doesn't have range. He doesn't shoot threes. he's not the kind of guy that can lead your team. The only bright spot offensively was Shingu. Yeah, Shingu was a monster. Shingu was a monster. I love the way that he attacked Draymond Green. I love the way that he forced the ball to the spots that he was trying to get to. He was very decisive. Well, you know what he did? He had a bucket. He had 26 points. He had nine rebounds. I thought he was great. He was. You know what he did that was really smart? And it was more in the first half than the second half. But Golden State, particularly with Draymond Green, loves to cheat so heavily into the paint to try to kind of... Draymond loves to fade everything towards the on-ball action. And Shang-Goon is so good in that mid-post space that he just kept finding that range and hitting those shots or functioning from there. And it was really smart. And I'll be interested to see how Green adjusts because the reality of this entire game and I don't think enough people are saying that, is we can have all the conversations about how bad Houston was offensively in the game and how bad they've been offensively in general. You don't expect a team to be that terrible and still make it a four-point game. What happens in this series if Houston actually looks good offensively for stretches? Because the offensive rebounding dynamic that we had talked about before the series started clearly played itself out. Steven Adams changed the entire energy of the game when he came in at the end of the first and when he came in at the third those runs were Stephen Adams mashing on the offensive rebounds I told a friend watching Shingun and Adams was like watching two older brothers keep the ball away from a younger sibling like they are just bouncing it around and everything Golden State doesn't have an answer on their roster particularly if Quentin Post is going to be as bad as he was in this game because he has to shoot those guys off the floor otherwise you can't play Looney and Post together against that Houston found something there they need to fixate on that Nadoka hurt himself and let Kerr and the Warriors off the hook by taking Steven Adams out in the fourth. I agree with you I was going to bring up the Adams part because I know single game plus minus and I've said this a million times and I will continue to say it it's not a real stat that I put a lot of focus on on a game you know a single game plus minus doesn't mean anything really but Stephen Adams was the only one who was who was a plus in this game for Houston it was because of the giant run that they made with him on the floor he grabbed 12 rebounds five of them were offensive he had six points he had a This is the reason that Edie was so effective for Memphis against Golden State. They have no size. And this is another reason why I think that Golden State's going to be flustered with other teams in the West who do have size. So I think they're really hoping that they end up with this Lakers team because that Memphis team would give them fits. Memphis, Minnesota. Minnesota. No, it's Minnesota. I'm sorry. That's who I meant. I think they're hoping for the Lakers because the Lakers don't have a center. Yeah, because Minnesota just runs big across their front line and it's over. Yeah, they can run Nas Reed and Jaden McDaniels as their 4-5. It's still bigger than anything that Golden State could roll out. They rely on a lot of guys that I do not have a ton of faith in. I mean, you know, Santos, Post, Heald. I like, these are not guys that I trust at all. Steve, Steve Kerr plays these guys because he has to. I don't think that if you're playing in any other series, these guys are, you get punished for playing guys like this. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, but so it's, it's look, we, We don't need to belabor it, but the Kaminga absence in this series is so crazy because two of his top five scoring games this season were against Houston. His athleticism and size should put him in this series. That being said, there's some other stuff in this matchup that I thought, again, favors Houston as we keep going. Golden State crushed them in fast break points. That is not normally going to happen against a Houston team that typically uses their defense to turn into offense as a fast breaking unit. And their defense was good in turning over, particularly like Tari Eason. I don't know if enough people out there watch him, but if you watch Tari Eason do stuff, just watch him defensively, he's going to make two or three plays every game that make your eyes bug out. Like the stuff he does, he swallowed a pass in the passing lane just as the nearside defender on one of those where it was like it looked like he apparated into the space. And so that part of it, and then obviously the other side is the dominance in points in the paint, and I thought Houston still left money on the table with that. To that point, Houston won the rebounding battle by 16, and they won the points in the paint by 20. By 20, yeah, 54 and 34. I mean, you have to find, against a team like this, with championship aspirations and championship experience, if you have to find the thing that they don't do and exploit it, the thing that they don't do well, and that's the one thing that Houston can do, do we see more of that in game two? I hope that we do. I hope so. And one, the last thing, and then we can kind of go wherever you want to with this. I was really bothered and it was funny because I posted something. And of course you get all the, the, the non photo profile pics coming after you. Cause I said something about the warriors and Curry. I don't understand at all why they weren't working Amin Thompson more. I don't even care if the reality is you're just having Amin Thompson bring up the ball, but Steph Curry was guarding Amin Thompson. Steph Curry was killing them offensively and they weren't making him work nearly enough defensively. Amin Thompson had one post up the entire game. You know what he did? He finished right up over the top of Steph Curry. Why didn't we go to that quick post two or three more times just to make Curry have to work? Why didn't Thompson bring up the ball and involve Steph Curry? Look, Thompson's been there probably primary ball handler plenty. Why wasn't he doing that in the fourth? So then Steph has to guard. A lot of people were annoyed with me. I feel like if I'm Eme Adoka and I watched that film, you have to, in your next walkthrough, figure out a way to make sure you're getting Curry involved more on the defensive end to do whatever you can to exhaust him. I know people are like, he's the best condition athlete ever. Great. Everybody still just has so much energy. They get to expand. I don't give a shit who you are. You know, it was like, you can't let him the worst offensive player on the floor. Off the hook. You have to involve him in every action that you can because of what you're saying. The physicality is going to bother him. He's 37. He's been through. He's got a lot of miles on that body. He's been running. He's always banged up this time of year. He's got a brace on his thumb. So this isn't like it's just smart basketball to put an injured, smaller guy into action with your bigger, more physical. team. It just makes sense. I think we will see a lot more of that with Houston. I'm hoping that we do. So, okay. We did touch on the series that we didn't get to cover before. Do we want to talk about what we, what we think the outcome is for this Houston golden state series individually? Cause it's another one we haven't, we didn't give our predictions on it. Sure. Yeah. If you want to go real quick, go ahead. I have golden state in six. If it goes to seven, I think it's, it's Houston, but I think it's golden state in six. I believe, and I'd have to look back at this whenever I made my picks on the NBA website, but I think I have Rockets in seven. Okay. Ooh, I like it. Game one, I guess this is the question that I usually like to ask whenever we're just talking about the first couple of returns on playoff games. Did you see anything in that game that would have changed your mind? Did you have Golden State in six before and Rockets in seven before? Or did you change it because of what you saw? I saw some things that made me feel a little bit differently in terms of Houston's ability to win this series. I thought Golden State was going to win this series and I thought just it was going to be based upon their experience. And that's still why I think that if it goes to a deciding game in Golden State, that's a marketed advantage for them just because this is going to be Houston's first time going into that. The flip side of that, I saw stuff. What's that? It wouldn't be Van Vliet's first time going into Golden State. No, that's fair. But on the Houston side, the only other thing on the Golden State side that did surprise me a little bit was how easily Jimmy Butler was able to get to his spots against the team defensively. He really didn't have much obstruction. No, and those wings you would think between, they just have so many long physical wings that are athletic, you would think that would be the exact guys that would be a little bit more of a deterrent. And Jimmy was not bothered at all. Going right, going left. Like you said, getting to the push shot, getting to his step back on the right side, he hit that three or four times. They have to at least make Jimmy work a little bit harder. Maybe not. Look, I don't know if it's fair to say work a little bit harder. Jimmy was just doing Jimmy stuff, but they have to find a way to make him feel more comfortable. I was going to say they have to find a way to make him feel less comfortable. That's exactly what I was going to say. He really didn't get even knocked off his spot. He was kind of dictating the physicality. He created the contact whenever he wanted to get separation to put up his shot. It wasn't that... Houston was, you know, being physical with him. He was being physical with his primary defender and just getting wherever he wanted to go. I found that to be odd because I feel like Houston was not the kind of team that would let people do that. But Jimmy Butler's also got a little bit too on that. He kind of intimidates guys, especially younger guys. To that end, knowing what we know about Ime Adoka, knowing what we know about Dylan Brooks, I would be completely unsurprised if we see a play, whether it's Dylan Brooks or maybe all of a sudden they dust off Ja'Sean Tate, somebody gives Jimmy just a hard shot. You know, like they'd start roughing him up a little bit more, especially because the way that series was officiated, they were letting everything go. Yeah, I would be completely unsurprised if Ime Adoka decides to go deeper in his bench and they start just kind of getting more into him and roughing it up and mucking it up even more and seeing what they can get away with. Because we all know the axiom, they can't call them all. Jerry Sloan would be proud. Yeah, I love the Jerry Sloan reference. Okay, so we did talk about those series. I've got the Rockets in seven. You've got Golden State in six. Let's just keep that in mind as we move forward. I did want to talk about two series that kind of mirrored each other in game one, and both of which are playing their game two tonight. We are recording this on Tuesday night. The Bucks and the Pacers are playing each other currently, unless that game has already ended, which they might have. Give me one second. No, I got you. Indiana won by eight. 123-115. Okay. Interesting. Welcome back to Dame Willard in game two. But I did want to talk about how these two series strangely mirrored each other in game one. Not having any information before this podcast, before we started it, about how game two was going to go. But Minnesota and L.A., and Indiana and Milwaukee. These two games strangely mirrored each other, and I just want to point a few things out. So in Minnesota versus LA, obviously Minnesota shot the best they've ever shot. It was a franchise record. They made 21 threes. They shot 50% from three. They actually shot 51, 50, 80 as a team. That was their shooting splits. That's just wild considering what Minnesota's offense was kind of projected to be going into this playoffs. And all the conversations we had about how problematic their shooting was outside of Ant just three months ago. Yeah. I mean, McDaniels, you're getting 25 points and nine rebounds from Jay McDaniels. He's a team high plus 27. You get Nas Reed hitting six of nine from three. It's very hard to replicate that kind of production. But we said before that Nas Reed is a nightmare matchup for the Lakers because of his ability to go inside, outside. And look, if the Lakers are going to give up 26 open threes, keep going. No, you're totally fine. But the only other part I was going to bring up is that the other part we talked about with LA and Minnesota was how much Jackson Hayes were we going to see because of the matchup. Jackson Hayes played eight minutes, but Rudy Gobert played 24. And I found that to be interesting because they just had him guard Rui Hachimura. They had him guard Jared Vanderbilt, and he was able to stay on the floor. He wasn't the most productive, but just his mere presence in the paint is enough to deter a lot of guys from trying to get to the rim because he is such a deterrent there. He did have three blocks in this game, despite not having the most impactful defensive game I've ever seen Rudy Gobert have. But here's the weird parallel. Not just the score. Minnesota won by 22. Indiana won by 19. They both scored 117 points in the game. But it was the way that they allowed the other team's best player to score. Luka Doncic had 37 points and eight rebounds. He had one assist. Five turnovers. Giannis had 36 points and 12 rebounds. He was 14 to 23 from the floor. He had one assist, five turnovers. It seems like, obviously without communicating in any way, these teams decided we're fine if their best player wants to get however many points he wants because he can't beat us one on five. And the obvious difference between the Bucs and the Lakers is that Giannis is doesn't have a secondary playmaker that he can, you know. Well, he didn't in game

SPEAKER_01: 51:33

one.

SPEAKER_00: 51:34

Yeah, in game one. I mean, you're still bringing in a guy like Damian Lillard in game two who hasn't exactly had a ton of run in recent, in the recent couple of weeks. He's been out with injury for this whole time. I am going to look at this. Yeah, but he played 37 minutes, but he only, he was 14, he had 14 points, seven assists, but he was just four and 13 from the field. Yeah, I mean, it's going to take him a little bit of time to get back up. But I wanted to point this out. The Bucs, other starters, other than Giannis having 36. 14 combined points. 14 points on 5 of 20 shooting. And they got 41 points off their bench from Green, Trent Jr., and Porter Jr. It's the only other guys that contributed. Indiana, we talked about this when we were talking about our playoff preview. They had six players in double figures. They have a deeper team. And I was going to bring this question up to you, and I just wanted to see what your answer was. Whenever you're ranking players in this series, Giannis number one, I would say Halliburton number two, Dame number three. I don't know how you have them. I'd actually personally have Pascal Siakam ahead of Dame. Okay. Okay. So you got Dame at four.

UNKNOWN: 52:44

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00: 52:45

When's the next time you're going to name in the list of the best players in that series another Bucs player? Well, I mean, it's a little tough because Brooke Lopez does still get to be somewhere in that conversation. But no matter what, and I think we may have actually, maybe it wasn't this series. I felt like we made this point about this series, though, where it was just there's such a discrepancy in terms of the level of talent one through eight on one team versus the other. And you're making that point completely. Like, if you sat there and looked at this Bucs team and you said, how many players on this Bucs team could go over to it? versus doing it the other way around. Like Indiana probably has six or seven guys that could be in the rotation for the Bucs. The Bucs, I mean, Bobby Portis went for 28 tonight and him coming back is important for them. But the problem- They need the help. Yeah, but that's kind of the issue with Milwaukee is like, they need the help. For Indiana, it's like, okay, Jairus Walker, come in, give us a good minute. It's Benedict Matherin, come in and do what you do. They just have enough guys. Yeah, and some of it too is because they have a system that is much more egalitarian and the ball moves and it functions in a way that keeps all these guys active and engaged and it doesn't rely on them being so top heavy. Whereas Milwaukee, that's always been the problem. They have the highest scoring duo in the NBA. We know Giannis has this incredible workload, but part of it is Giannis also loves having this incredible workload. I do want to say one thing because it also kind of goes to your point. Giannis only had one assist. He had eight potential assists. So it talks again about his teammates also aren't making the shots. They let him down. And that's the thing. They seemed fine letting Giannis kind of just do whatever he wanted, being physical. He worked for the buckets that he got. He got to the free throw line 15 times. Yeah. Can I just real quick? I'm not going to cook. I'm not even going to simmer. So Giannis is the player I think I've seen most live of any current NBA player. I've been fortunate enough to see him both in the playoffs and I saw him in a cup game last year and this year. We don't talk enough about the absurd playoff whistle that Giannis gets. I hate, like with a passion, watching him lower the boom over and over again on guys and either he's getting the call, which is insane because it's not just like, you know, sort of contact. He literally drops his shoulder and pushes through a guy and either he gets the call or he loses his shit when he doesn't get the call. And he's the initiator of the action every time, every single time. Yeah, but okay. This is like the way that people used to say that you can't officiate Shaq. It's weird whenever, like, the biggest, most physical guy on the floor. Like, how do you officiate somebody whose entire game is predicated on creating that kind of contact? But there's a big difference. Get someone with a shoulder that's a normal shoulder for everybody else. But it's not a normal shoulder. Like, if I literally did, like, a super cut of the edit, the guy goes like a fullback and drops down. There is literally rules that say that that is an offensive— penalty it's not in the natural motion of him getting to the rim and Bucs fans love to say that there are multiple times a game where Giannis goes in a crouch and drops into the guy and knocks him over that is not a natural basketball move he's not making a natural basketball play it's not the same as Shaq drop stepping and he's meeting a guy under the rim at the point and I there's times where Shaq didn't drop those shoulders though look I'm saying that there were also but we're also we're talking about a different time in the league and there I think that Host play versus on a drive when you're talking about how you move into a player is very different because Giannis is intentionally searching out that contact on the drive. You can see it. Shaq turns and there's somebody immediately there because he's fucking massive and everybody's trying to prevent him from getting in the paint. You watch Giannis on a fast break. He'll look at a guy and drive straight at him to go into him. That is not supposed to, by the rule of the game, be a defender's fault. That is just my problem. And I've seen it too many times. times live where like seeing it live i don't enjoy what like i love watching how the absurdity of what he can do at his size is great watching him in the half court live sucks i hate it i can't stand it like i'm i'm blown away by his skill i hate you're telling me this isn't cooking you're telling me you're not cooking right now because it feels like my bad you know everyone's i'll let you hang on to your this is like a coach's challenge i'll let you hang on to it But you were this close, buddy. That's fair. You were this close to losing that. All right. You still have your cook chip if you want to. Oh, well, I did tell you I had something else I wanted to cook about. That's why I'm letting it slide. I respect it. I do also want to point out one more thing about this Indiana series because I'm looking at the box score from tonight since I didn't get to watch that game. So far in two games, combined, 80 fouls. There's 38 in this one. I thought you were going to give your boys Kuzma stat line for two games. Well, we already know what he was in game one. You sent it to me. Jopially. Tony Snell walked. So Kyle Kuzma could run that dude played 22 minutes and didn't put a single stat on the board. Okay. So tonight he went five of 10 from the field. He had 12 points, three rebounds and an assist. So he's a world beater performance. He's averaging six points and half an assist per game so far in the series. Oh, yes. You need more from Kyle Kuzma, but that's not, he's not essential to what they're doing. Release valve, but you did, you did send me the stat lines while doing a bit of a victory dance. And I did tell you victory dances after game one, almost always in well. So I'm glad that you got scored. I still feel good. I mean, he had 12 points in game two. He didn't exactly put egg on my face. You're exactly right, but considering he was the third guy in the lineup as far as scoring goes, he only had two less points than Dame. I know. It wasn't a great Dame game. It's not great. I guess I did want to bring up, and then we can put a button on this one. Dame being back in the lineup kind of brings new problems for the Bucs as far as defensive stuff goes. Yes, he can probably click it together offensively. Him getting into it with Halliburton while he was on the bench and then coming back and having this kind of performance when he was like, we going to see, we going to see. And then he comes back and doesn't really do anything. If he's not going to be an offensive plus, everything is a minus because he can't defend. He's going to be putting every action there is. Well, he has to be a plus, plus, plus offensively, you know? Yeah. Yeah. He has to be though, because there's no other reason to keep him out on the floor. If he's not scoring in bunches and you don't want to, I mean, they only lost by eight tonight. They scored 115 points. You do not want to get into a firefight with the Pacers. Also, they were down 18 in the fourth, so it did require a comeback, but Indiana had a comfortable lead. The Dame thing, you made the point. It's not to your benefit because what Tyrese Halliburton does best in terms of shooting the three ball and getting to the rim is what Dame defends worse. So, Halliburton today, who... Real quickly, I don't know who saw the players poll, but the idea that Tyrese Halliburton is the most overrated player in the NBA tells me everything I need to know about the inability for players to evaluate other players. Like, I don't care what you think about Tyrese Halliburton, but how is he way above Bradley Beal? You know, like just... Well, I think it's probably because of how he's rated. The perception, but still, like he's... Bradley Beal. He was so far ahead of everybody else. What are we doing? Tyrese Halliburton's a top 25 player in the NBA. Like... What are we doing here? And he's been eating Dame lately. Overall, it's only 8-6 in the head-to-head, and Dame owns the scoring. But Halliburton, you know, this started last year when Halliburton hit the shot and they did the Dame time, and they've been going back and forth. But Dame hasn't had the game that all of a sudden makes us go, this is a rivalry between the two, I mean. Fair enough. I do want to point out, since people might not have heard that poll, I think it was 14% of 90 players that were polled named Halliburton. Number two was Rudy Gobert. Number three was Trey Young. Other players mentioned. Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green, and John Morant. Yeah. What are we doing? I'm saying that there's reasonable arguments. But, you know, as long as you've got a podcast that can toot your own horn, I guess... Draymond, I mean, as good as Draymond Green is, he definitely just turns the media on his own. He's got his own personal dial to the media, and he turns it up whenever he wants to talk about himself. If he wins defensive player of the year, it's because of his own grandstanding for himself, which, like, credit to him, but also, like, why are you letting him tell you he's defensive player of the year? Watch the goddamn games, like we said. And look, if you want to talk about a guy with a podcast who should have been really high on that list, why is Paul George not number one on that list? Why is Joel Embiid not number one on that list? Maybe these players are just, they have a really ready assessment of some of these other guys are like Paul George is trash. And we don't rate him as a guy who deserved to get the contract. That's just me speculating. Okay. We're done with Milwaukee. We're done. We kind of jumped tracks anyways because we started Minnesota-LA and ended up Milwaukee-Indiana. Well, I just said that there were some interesting parallels the way that the game was defended, and I would like to get to that a little bit. I've already kind of touched on the Minnesota-LA. Do you have anything that you would like to add? Because they are about to, tonight, play game two, and I'm very excited to see it because I think I'm excited to see J.J. Redick's adjustments from game one. But if you really look at the numbers, the difference really was the three-pointers. Yeah. Well, that was the difference in the score. But you made the point, Luka's got to, you have to get your teammates involved. Absolutely. You know, one of the issues with Luka's game is just the heliocentricity of it all. And it's the reality of like, Luka slows everything down to hunt out matchups. And with Rudy Gobert on the floor, the offense is going to stagnate while he tries to spend all this time hunting out the stuff and getting his. It's amazing when it's working. It's all those things. But there's two, Austin Reeves and LeBron James have to be activated players in this series for the Lakers to be dynamic enough offensively. The three-point shooting is, look, nobody expects Minnesota to shoot like that, but also the Lakers' defensive effort was garbage in this game. Like I said, they had 26 threes that were of the wide open variety, which means a guy had six feet of space from the nearest defender on 26 of their attempts. That is unacceptable. by any measure. It was fun to watch. It was not surprising. The most enjoyable part of this game to me was once Nas Reed and Dorian Finney-Smith came in at center at the bottom of the first quarter. I don't know why I said that like it was a baseball game. And one of the other things, we've talked so much about Anthony Edwards recently. The maturity of Anthony Edwards' game in real time in terms of how he handles the double team and the extra attention is so important in this series. And he was so damn good about getting off the ball and making the right read because we know that Los Angeles wants to double. They want to bring the second thing and get in rotation. That's part of why they were getting so many open shots is he was making the smart right play. I think he finished with seven assists or was it nine? Anthony Edwards? Yeah. Yeah, nine. He had nine assists. I mean, that tells you. 22-8-1. Yeah. Look, if Anthony Edwards is playing that game, Minnesota's going to win this series. I would argue that Jaden McDaniels having this kind of game. Whenever Jaden McDaniels is this good, it makes the rest of the team make so much more sense. Yeah, but is it sustainable? Yeah. Yeah, he's a 6'10 guy. He's supposed to have range. They tell him all the time to shoot, to shoot the hell out of it. He made all three of his threes. He was 11 of 13 from the field. Like, if Jaden McDaniels is this kind of scoring threat, his defense is already pretty awesome. Though, I will say exactly what we said on our previous podcast about when Jaden McDaniels defended Luka last year. Luka does not... He puts the shoulder into him. He's physical with him. He creates separation and shoots over the top of him. It does not matter to Luka Doncic when Jay McDaniels guards him. He's a great defender. There's just certain guys that he doesn't quite work on. But whenever he's cooking this way offensively, I really don't know. Like Minnesota is a matchup nightmare for a lot of teams, but yes, you need the scoring punch to back that up because you don't want to be too reliant on Julius Randall because that, I mean, Randall had seven turnovers. Well, that's not how you want to run your offense through. No, but you know what? I will say Randall's energy was good. I thought, I'm not saying he's a bad player. No, but I mean, no, but particularly in this series, in this game, because we had talked about Randall's importance, the turnovers were problematic, but when you watch that game, he brought Brought a lot of intensity and energy and controlled it enough to where, because sometimes he just gets, and this is why his playoff performances have been so bad. He wants so much to impress. Like he's trying too hard. And I actually thought, generally speaking, he did a pretty good job of corralling that into a relatively sustainable model of play for him in this series where he can be a positive player. I liked where he picked his spots. I liked that he like didn't try to force things. He was team and shot attempts.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:38

Like,

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:39

even though, like you said, he was, you know, he's the kind of guy that wants to try to show out. He had five assists. He was looking to pass the ball. I mean, but I think sometimes he gets a little bit too, you know, he pounds the rock a little bit too much. Yeah. You know, that's always been the knock on him, is that it's a little one-dimensional in the way that he tries to, like, pound the ball, then look for a kick or look for a cutter. It's a little bit predictable. But they also, they need him size-wise because they need, you know, he's another body that's going to have to guard LeBron James. And he was doing a good job of bodying him. I thought he did, too. I thought he was very physical. You know, him and James were, you know, if you look at their production, they were pretty much awash. I mean, Randall shot 11 times. James shot 15. James had 19 points. Randall had 16. I mean, if you can try and negate his presence and, you know, get the ball to make it a little bit more standstill, if you can– the Lakers, when they're moving the ball, that's when their offense is dangerous because they can play a five-out lineup that is very difficult to guard. Their ball movement is sensational because they've got two– mind-bogglingly great passers and then a bunch of guys who know their role and Austin Reeves is yeah he's I mean he's such a good playmaker he's he's a great playmaker in his own right and I think that you know that's the big difference here is that I think you're going to get more from Reeves and I think you're going to get more from LeBron tonight and I think they're going to try and make the offense a little bit more balanced instead of so Lucas centric I think that's the way that they're going to find uh ways to score offensively defensively I have some concerns about the Lakers matching up with this Wolves team. Do you share the same concerns? I just need more data. If Minnesota's not shooting like that, does the rest of what was happening kind of feel that same way? I just need to... Because the Lakers looked... They looked outmanned both athletically and just kind of from a physicality standpoint. Minnesota has that ability, but the game was so awkward. They brought Jared Vanderbilt in, and Vando was very much the guy that was the bad version of him, where he's just causing all the worst versions of havoc. A lot of the stuff that they go to that normally helps them, Gabe Vincent was kind of a non-factor player. Those things have been important to them enough in the last couple of months that I need to know whether or not what we saw in game one is actually how it's going to play out or if that was the outlier of the game. The other part, too, even though it didn't feel this way, is LeBron's always bad in game ones. Normally it's because he's doing the whole feeling it out thing. It didn't feel like he had 19 points in this game. LeBron didn't really feel like he was much a part of this game at all, and we don't say that very often, but it happens in first games. What's his second game response? I think there was that one, I think it was in the third quarter. He got that cut down the middle of the lane, maybe off an offensive rebound or something. But he was like, he was wide open and he had this monster dunk. And I was like, ooh, LeBron's awake. And I think that, I think right after that, that's when Edwards came back into the game. Because he had that, what appeared to be a cramp in his calf. I don't know if they said anything more about that. I haven't read anything about what it was. He was pulling on the top of his foot. Are you sure it wasn't a cramp in his groin? Well, I mean, because his meat's so big. Yeah, exactly. That's a$50,000 hog. He told that fan he had$300 million and it was worth$50,000 for him to get fined for it. So... I respect it. But yeah. One other thing, the Wolves do need, while you're talking about Ant, that stretch where he went down and the fact that the Wolves extended the lead, if you're LA, that just can't happen. That can't happen. You have to take advantage of those minutes. And they have their trio out, Ant's off the floor. Nas Reed just, like, Nas Reed made a huge shot. I think Conley made one. And then I want to say that McDaniels also made, like, as the Lakers, they kept trying to, you know, build up this run. They cut it to, like, six. And then someone would knock down a shot that extended the lead back up to eight or nine points. And, you know, the Lakers just couldn't really close the gap. And then when Ant came back in, he really helped seal it. That step, you know, that little– it wasn't really a step back. It was like a give– He gave the ball away when he had Luka on him, asked for it right back, and then hit that three in Luka's face and then did the Spider-Man. Yeah. And, like, showed him his hand. And I was like, that was a hell of a shot. And that really was just, like, kind of put the icing on it for Minnesota. Like I said, if they're not making these, like, 50% of their threes shooting 21 of 42, the Lakers– are definitely going to be more in this game, but they need a lot more from their bench. They only got 13 points from their bench, and five of those were from Connect, and that was garbage time. I mean, they only got eight points from Vincent, Vanderbilt. I mean, Vanderbilt's not going to give you any scoring. Yeah, but Vincent and DFS need to give you about 15, whatever it looks like. It was just very clear that one team looked a lot deeper than the other. Yeah, I think I would absolutely agree with that. We have two more series we want to cover, and I'm going to let you choose which one we do first. Because both of these teams have played two games, and they're tied at one apiece. Is there one that you prefer to start with, Detroit and the Knicks? Let's close with Detroit and the Knicks because we'll give more time until I cook again. So let's talk about Denver and the Clippers. All right, let's talk about it. The Clippers should be 2-0 in this series. Let's be clear about that. Game one, they let slip away. I still have the Clippers winning this series, but game two, I mean, these games have been decided by four total points in two games. Been to overtime already. Where do you want to start with this series? Yes, LA should have won game one, but if you really break down what happened in the fourth quarter, Denver should have won game two. Denver executed everything. terribly late and Nikola Jokic maybe played the worst nine minutes of important basketball I've ever seen in his career okay he had uh three of his seven turnovers in that game seven turnovers first of all for Nikola Jokic we just don't see that and part of that was the Clippers did such a great job of Zubac playing him up as soon as Jokic goes into that spin move to then try to find that opposite pass the way they were back diving on the opposite side to intercept that Chris Dunn especially who holy shit is I don't know how Chris– Chris Dunn was so good. The fact– he only had three steals in this game, but that dude wasn't– he was like a defensive tackle, like a Buckner, where he was just blowing up. everything like the way he was reading plays and just the amount of destruction he caused it as a defensive player in that game was absolutely insane but Jokic was so bad down the stretch he didn't have a field goal in the last nine minutes he missed he he had that weird play where he glitched out on the offensive rebound and didn't realize what the time was and then just forced the shot up and I know you didn't get to see it unfortunately but like yeah I didn't get to see it in real time I I had the game on I fell asleep I mean the it was afternoon midnight I did my best but look I was falling asleep and it was nine for me so I totally I get it I was like literally like I'm gonna go to fucking overtime I had to watch it the next morning when I woke up because I checked the first thing I did this morning when I woke up was look at the score because I realized I had passed out. And then I saw that they had won by three and I was like, damn it, I missed a good one. So I had to go back and watch it. Jokic was bad. Gordon misses the game tying dunk. Denver made a lot of mistakes that you don't expect them to make. And again, Jokic had two turnovers in the last five minutes. He didn't have a field goal. He only got his stuff going at the free throw line. Murray was pretty good in the game, but Denver just got stuck in the mud. While we're on Denver really quickly, I do want to give Michael Porter Jr. some credit yeah and also it it hurt them so Michael Porter Jr. responded really well I think he had 12 or 14 rebounds in this game he had 15 actually he had 15 rebounds excuse me he was playing hard and playing tough and then he had that shoulder injury he had to go out Russ has to come back in Russ wasn't the reason they lost that game in fact Russ made some big shots but it's very obvious how much Russ being on the floor hurts Denver spacing because guess who has the most clutch shots so far through two games and it's not even close it's Russ because they're just leaving him wide open all the time. And so even if Russ makes one out of two of those, He's not going to make one out of two of those. If you're Denver, it just stymies too much of everything else you're trying to do. And that's very obvious. And for as good as Russ kind of was in those points, Adelman wanted to close with MPJ and couldn't because of that injury. And that's why, even though we're going to have like the LA, you know, the Clippers should be up. There's a lot that Denver left on the table in that game. I agree. I would agree with that. I'm just saying that like, With the Kawhi winner performance that you got in game two, it's not surprising that they won that one. No, you have to. In one performance, you could have just, I'm saying that the game was right there for them to take, and they didn't. I want to give you just something real quick because I wanted to go into the Kawhi performance and look at it historically. Before you do that, do you mind if I just do a quick thing on Michael Porter Jr.? Well, sure, but I just wanted to piggyback what you were saying about you should win because what he did statistically should augur that. Oh, sure. I just wanted to, since we were on MPJ, I had to say one thing I was going to say was, I think that the best version of what he is, is being Andrew Wiggins on the 2022 Golden State Warriors. A guy who rebounds, hits shots whenever he's open, and, you know, tries defensively. Yeah, but Wiggins is so much better of a defender. Yeah, yes, I agree with that. But I would say that also Porter's a hell of a lot better shooter than Wiggins has ever been. But, I would just say that this was the version of him that looked most like he was the third banana on a championship level team that he was two years ago. Anyway, back to you, back to your point about the Kawhi. No, I think your point is fair. I still had issues with Porter Jr., just in general, you don't feel him enough on the offensive end. He's not a player that I enjoy. Guys love going to their opposite side hand to get into their, to rise up. Kawhi has no problem driving hard right and then just getting straight up over guys. And it doesn't matter how well it's defended. He's too big. He gets too much lifting. The ball is up too high. And then the fact that he can control the ball the way he can because of his hands, there's never a bad shot. He had two different looks where you're like, how did that even get to the fucking rim? Like it was insane. So in the history of the NBA, Six players have scored 35-plus points while shooting 75% or more from the field with four or more threes. Four or more threes. Okay, I was going to say, I think these guys are sinners. Four plus threes. Devin Booker, Anthony Davis, Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Mullen, and Terry Porter. Those teams are 6-0 in those games. Like none of those teams lost that game. So it, you know, and I only, cause you were saying you should win. Yeah. Literally every time somebody who does what Kawhi did, they have won. It was, it was a masterful performance. It was like, and like the way that he controlled it in the first half, I think he didn't miss until late in the second quarter. I mean, I think he was like nine of 10 at halftime. He finished the game 15 of 19 and, So he shot six of 10. He shot 60% in the second half, and it was worse. What a loser. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. When people bring up these lists about the greatest what-ifs in NBA history, and they talk about the normal ones that you would think of, like Len Bias and- Bill Walton. Yeah, Petrovich. Reggie Lewis. Reggie Lewis, yes. All the- Kawhi Leonard, if healthy, is one of the biggest what-ifs in NBA history because the body of work we've seen when he is healthy is that he is one of the greatest two-way players to have ever played the game. And I know that there's a lot of people who do the hyperbole thing. They want to put things in a historical context and everything's got to be the greatest. Everything's got to be the worst. Everything's got to be the best. His resume is insane. The championships, the finals MVPs, the defensive player of the year stuff, his ability to score and control. You know how they talk about game managers in football? But what if you're a game manager, but you're also just like Patrick Mahomes in terms of skill? That's what he is. He can be Alex Smith and Patrick Mahomes at the same time. He can control the game, but also turn it on its head by just his sheer gravity. There's just not enough words for me to describe. I love Kawhi Leonard's game. Everything about it. I don't find myself, generally speaking, to be a person that I think is... particularly fond of hyperbole. And at my age, I'd like to put up my kind of credentials in terms of understanding the game historically up against pretty much anybody my age. And I have no issue saying that Kawhi performing at his absolute best is pretty much as good as any player we've ever seen. Because of what you said. He had a block in that game yesterday, and I was sitting there thinking about this. As a perimeter player, Kawhi Leonard is the greatest player ever at what I call the grounded block, where he tracks the ball and he doesn't even jump, and then he just takes it off the guy like he's a little kid. Like it's a little kid and he's the parent playing basketball in the pool. I can't remember who it was on the drive, but he literally just grabbed it and did a jump ball. Kawhi never moved. He just– Oh, God. I think it– did it cause a jump ball? It caused a jump ball, yeah, because it is a jump ball. I'm trying to remember who that was too because that was the play that I was thinking of. I was like, he didn't even get off the ground. And he does that all the time. He's so strong. His hands are so big, and he's like, mine. Yeah. Oh, my God. That was so good. He's just– it's– It's such a shame that, I mean, one, it's not because this isn't like Bill Walton. You know, this isn't Lin Bias. We have gotten to see Kawhi at least perform on multiple seasons at a high level. But playoff Kawhi is a, like we talked, we did all the statistical breakdowns before this. I had prepped myself for what he might do. I was ready for this. And then I watched yesterday's slack jawed, like just in complete awe by that performance. There's no preparing for what he can do. Because he can single-handedly be the anchor for a championship defense. You don't see that from people who aren't centers, who quarterback the entire defense. Zubac does a great job, but he's also taking direction a lot of the time. The other thing that's amazing for this roster, too, is We talked about this when Jimmy Butler joined the Warriors. Kawhi joining the Clippers slots everybody else into their right role. The team was built around him in mind. Not Jimmy, but Kawhi. It takes all the pressure off James Harden, who we know gets tight late in games. James Harden was 4-5 in the clutch so far in this series. He's actually played very well, and outside of some long threes I don't love, but that's part of his game. I thought he's looked really good. Norman Powell got going. He's But all of that happens. I was actually going to bring up Nolan. He was 10 of 26 in the first two games. If he starts picking it up, I think that's– He was a monster in the fourth quarter, though. He hit the three to put him up. There was that weird play where somehow Jamal Murray causes all of that commotion, and then he ends up the guy who gets the standard foul on the free throw, and everybody is like– He laid the weight to the dynamite stick and then just walked away while it all blew up. It was like, well, okay, that's cool now. I'll just put it back in. I definitely thought that Jamal and Christian Brown were going to get technicals and Powell was going to get technicals. Because Brown came in and gave like a shove. Yeah. But then he put his hands up and acted like he was trying to be peacemaker. I was like, no, you were coming over to start some shit. Yeah. And then he didn't want the smoke. But yeah, that was such a bizarre play. Very much so. Yeah. I would also like to see a little bit more Bogdanovich. He was– no, but he's been so bad for them offensively. He was good defensively in a couple– but I think he's like– He hasn't scored a buck in this series. He hasn't had a point. He's 0 for 10, 0 for 12. He's 0 for 8. 0 for 8 for the series? Yeah, he– 0 for 3 in the first game, 0 for 5 in the second. They need scoring off the bench because you can't be relying on guys like Ben Simmons. And you're asking way too much of Nicholas Batum. Yeah, although he was– I mean, he hit a massive– Although he was great. No, he was great. He hit a massive three. And you may rely on that for four straight playoff rounds. Maybe not, but the thing that's really smart about how they use Batum is, like, he's only doing the stuff that– he's standing out and hitting a couple threes, and he's playing smart defense. Did you see– The three that he didn't drop down? Oh, yeah, of course. Everybody tells me that. Oh, yeah, the corner wing pass. That's the corner one that put them up. Yeah, and it was– That was such a beautiful shot. Yeah, and somebody was talking about he has their favorite no-dip three in the league until Kawhi– or, excuse me, until Klay retires. Oh, yeah. Klay has the championship belt. But Batum definitely gets to be in that conversation because Batum's is– But tubes is just crazy. It's like, as soon as the ball touches him, it's already out of his hands. It just happened so fast with no, it's not even, there's like, it's not even like there's no dip. There's like no flex in the arm. It's just kind of resting. We're done. Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, I just, I just have to marvel at the idea that we get bit playoff. Ben Simmons is back in our lives in the year of our Lord, 2025. Can we talk about the fact that that man is allergic to the basketball? That he literally had a chance to score a layup and he turned his back and looked for anyone to throw the ball. He was looking at the other team like, I'll throw it to you if you get this ball out of my hands. Yeah, yeah, seriously. Like, I'll take the turnover. Just somebody make sure I don't have to make this decision. It's wild that he's even playing in this series. And I heard somebody, oh, it was Simmons and Rosillo again, talk about, oh, well, I loved how physical he was with Jokic first. of all he's fouling Jokic every time down and it's pretty ridiculous what he's getting away with because he's getting Jokic is at the top of the key and he's getting up underneath him and pushing under and Jokic is like what the hell and the officials aren't calling it but also like why am I supposed to be excited about a 6-9 non-shooting non-ball handling non-rebounding non-passing center like what about like I don't know what he does other than be big Yeah, and he's not an unintelligent defender, but he's not even like the guy that makes defensive plays anymore. Yeah, but the only thing I see him do is force the ball up in transition. Like, oh, hey, look at that go-ahead pass. He sits on the floor to Norm Powell. That's the only thing I see him do. He doesn't read it. For his size, I don't know what he does. There was a play yesterday. I think it was Harden, but I can't remember who it was. But it was on the near side. They got a rebound, and Simmons was out in front, and he called for the ball. And I was like, oh, is he going to get the ball in the fast break? He put his hands down immediately and then just turned to set a screen. And I was like, oh, my God. Like, this dude wanted out of this play so fast. And it wasn't that he was making the wrong play. He set the screen while the defender wasn't looking. But it's just– it's sad on one end. At the other side, like– Whatever, this is sports and a profession and I don't feel that bad. I just kind of like, why is Ben Simmons playing basketball? Why do I care? Yeah. I do want to bring up one more play and then we can move on to our last series. But I texted you about this. Christian Brown is on a one-on-two fast break. Batum and Harden are back. Batum points at Harden and points at Christian Brown and says, take him because there's somebody racing to the corner. And Batum was like, I'm not going to leave this guy open for three. James Harden, like you just did, he almost opened the door for him. He's like, sir, may I assist you to the basket? May I help you score that? He did nothing to stop Christian Brown. So you'll appreciate this reference because you watch AEW. He treated that play like Samoa Joe treats selling. Does the note? Yeah, like, no, I'm out. I'm not giving you a job on this one. We're good. He tried to do a cross body and he's just like doing the jerk off move. Yeah, it makes me laugh. That platoon pointed at Harden and was like, get him! And Harden was like, who do you think I am? I have never been that guy. Do you know my body of work, sir? Have you talked to the maester? He didn't give me any defense on my slider. Did you think... I've never seen James Harden take a charge. I've seen him flop, but I've never seen him take a charge on purpose. You know what's funny? But that is a damn good point. Meanwhile, Jokic's flop yesterday. Jokic is flopping around there like a fish. Did you see Jokic's flop on the Harden shoulder? Oh, God. Where he acted like he was shot, and then he laid down, and he was looking like he pulled the Sanford and Son, like, I'm coming. Like, it was so ridiculous. Jokic did the same thing whenever he did this hook on Zubac or on whoever was guarding him. He did a full hook with his elbow and then looked at the refs as if they were crazy for calling it. And I was like, Jokic, much like who we're about to talk about, is doing everything he can for a team that's a little undermanned.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:44

Because... As much as Jokic was flopping around, there is nobody who is flopping right now more than Jalen Brunson. You already know. I have never in my life seen a guy hit the deck that many times since... like Dwayne Wade, but like Dwayne Wade. We're talking about Manu Ginobili levels of flopping. He is a fish in a boat just trying to find water. Like I said on threads, like if you're going to accuse Shea of being a foul merchant, which I don't believe in, Jalen Brunson is the Costco of the game. Like he is selling fouls wholesale. Like watching yesterday. I was crazy. Well, the craziest thing about yesterday too, was that game was officiated so unevenly. And I don't mean team to team. I just mean in terms of what they were constituting as contact and what they weren't. Josh Hart gets hit on that dunk. OG Ananobi on three separate plays, I watched him blow through a screener as a defensive player where he literally just ran through the guy. The guy hit the ground and the official swallowed their whistle. That is a foul. Those guys weren't flopping. Ananobi was doing it intentionally. He cleared Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, again, I don't know what an unnatural shot motion is. So I can't remember the defender that was on Brunson. He jumped, but he was still somewhat vertical, but he was kind of leaning toward Brunson. Brunson throws his entire body into him and shoots the ball straight up into the air. And then as he's walking backwards, he's holding up three fingers for the free throws. He's not trying to score. I think that might have been the one on Tobias Harris late. Yes, I think he had two of the three and I agree I was like Harris got vertical like Brunson jumped vertical and he was standing in front of him with his arm up yeah he was leaning but like what is not an unnatural shot motion about throwing your shoulder your shooting arm into the defender who's in front of you and shooting the ball 30 feet into the air and then as you're walking away you're holding up your hand asking for the free throws that the refs just gifted you it's an unnatural shot but I still don't understand how the pump fake throw yourself into the defender is not unnatural That's not a real shot. If the defender stays up and down, it's not fair. If he's jumping into your face, I completely agree. I just don't understand. I guess I don't understand what an unnatural shot motion is. The other one that drives me crazy is Jalen Brunson is as guilty of hooking on his drives as anybody, right? Like he's been great about it. He gets his ass around the guy and then he uses his off arm to hook the guy. He doesn't. maybe more than anybody in the league. He flopped on one of those. Well, and then Dennis Schroeder has that play where he did the exact same thing. Brunson flopped as the defender and flailed. Schroeder, like, if you're calling that, fine, by the rule of the law, but then you have to call on a Brunson the other way, and they never did. Brunson's getting a superstar call on that one. Yeah, that was real– there was– Look, I love Jalen Brunson. This series has been awesome. It's been a lot of fun. I don't even want to make this the entire focus of it because that's not, this is not the important thing of the series. Let's get into the substance of it. But it is worth mentioning, like if we're going to talk about guys being blatant about how they're flopping and flailing and all the rest of it, he is at the top of the pyramid right now. Like he's the apex predator in this conversation. Yep. So let's just, let's talk about the series itself since we don't want to keep talking about the flopping stuff game one motor city meltdown 21-0 run by the knicks great cat game game two very similar type of game pistons enter the fourth quarter with the lead they seem like there are a couple of stretches where the knicks were going to make their run

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:59

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:00

particularly this one bad cat game is that the only difference if you get another 23 from cat versus the 10 on the, on the cat was in a lot of foul trouble. He got his fourth foul, I think pretty early. Well, let me, let's, let's go ahead and do the bad cat stats really quickly. I dropped on threads earlier. Cause Oh my God. Yeah. Do you have this on threads earlier? You and I've had this conversation enough about cat, but this, at this point, like cat is not a playoff performer. Like we need to bury this idea. He had 10 and six. Okay. 14 of the 34 playoff games that he's played, which is 42%, basically, he's scored 15 points or fewer. 47% of those four, he shot 47% or worse from the field, including 10 games below 40% in 17 of those 34 games, he's committed five plus fouls and or four plus turnovers in 17 of those 34 games. So we can have the conversation of, was it a bad cat game? The reality is the Knicks have to find a way to function around bad cat games, because if they're going to dictate their success, you have to just count on it. Half of his playoff games, he's going to be dog shit, but That wasn't to me actually the complete story of it. What it was, and you and I had touched on this when we did the preview, everything's being dictated by who's winning in the paint. In the first game, the Knicks had a significant advantage in points in the paint, or at least enough to make the difference. In the second game... Oh, yeah. I think it was 22-19, but I think the... Oh, I'm sorry. I did that wrong. It was 62-46. Thank you. I knew it was significant. In game two, the Pistons scored more in the paint, and more importantly, dominated on the boards, particularly on the offensive glass. It was 48-34 in terms of the rebounding, and outside of the statistics, watch the game, Detroit had no issues getting into the restricted area and were completely comfortable finishing over and around both Kat and Mitchell Robinson. Like there was no deterrent for them. And what they figured out they can do is like, we're just going to bring Kat and Brunson up in every action, every time down and make these guys have to defend because they can't keep us out of our spots. And it, I don't know what the solution is. New York went to the two big lineup that made no sense with what they were doing because they go to their two big lineup. And defensively, it didn't do much because Detroit has enough mobility with their guys. Offensively, they put Mitchell Robinson standing out in the corner while they ran five wide and just had Brunson run one V one. Like if you're trying to counter what Detroit's doing, counter it. Like, don't just make like, oh, look, aesthetically, we're as big as they are, but we're not going to do anything with it. This series is going to be dictated by who wins in the restricted area. We said it before. It's played itself out so far. We got the Cade game that we knew we were going to get. It was a rough game one for Cade, for sure. Yeah, but 33-10. Yeah, OG and Inobi were just rough on him. He was physical, and I'm not sure if K was ready for that. But again, this is another series that I feel like the road team could have been up 2-0. It was entirely possible before that 21-0 run that Detroit had been running away with the game. I was literally kind of– I was talking to a friend while we were watching it, and I was feeling myself about calling Detroit in seven.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:31

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:31

Then they blow the game, and I was like, ooh, lights may be a little bit too bright in MSG. Game two, very similar structure to the game. It's just Detroit seemed more composed. Cade seemed more in control. He obviously had a more efficient game offensively. Can we talk about a conspicuous absence for Detroit that may have actually played a part in them seeing a little bit more in control? Go for it. Beef Stew, who had five fouls in the first game, didn't play in game two. I mean, just saying. I don't think that he's necessary in the series for what they're trying to do. No, but also because of how physical this game, this series has been in the emotional pitch to it. He may not be a benefit to you. Like, let's just be real. Yeah, I was actually really impressed with Jalen Duren and the way that he handled himself that game. I know he got into some foul trouble late, but I thought he was very much in control. I thought he was very physical. He had a really good presence on towns. We weren't sure if we were going to see a lot of Duren on towns. I think he's still been his primary defender through two games because I think they're comfortable with it. But there might be– there's always the lingering doubt that Cat's going to have one of those just like– extremely efficient cat offensive games it's never really a fully complete game because cat will do something weird on the defensive end or turn the ball over six times or you know pick up three fouls whenever it's unnecessary early in the second quarter it's always something with him the guy that i want to talk about for detroit is not the addition by subtraction that isaiah stewart is i did want to talk about tobias harris oh he's awesome the the tobias here is 20 and a half 9.5 rebounds, and defensively, he was all over the place. He was on Brunson and did a good job when he had to switch out on him. He used his size really well. He's playing that veteran role who's doing all the right things for this team in the way that he should. You go on him because I want to talk about another Piston who was big in this game too. Well, you know, game one, he has 22 in the second half. I mean, in the first half, you know, 25 for the game obviously disappeared a little bit down the stretch. And I was wondering if that was a little bit of an aberration because that just feels like free money for Detroit when you're getting that kind of production from Tobias Harris, who's consistently been like a 17 and seven guy. But like 25, you know, it's a bit of an outlier. Game two, I was really impressed with him on the boards. He grabbed three offensive rebounds. He had 13 rebounds total. He had 15 points, scored. When was this? By the way, he played 43 minutes. He was trusted by J.B. Bickerstaff to not exit the game. He outplayed. He played more minutes than Cade. Cade played 42 minutes. They were the only guys playing in the 40s. Look, as long as Detroit doesn't have to count on him in a game seven. I mean, maybe he got that Philly stink off of him. Maybe that was just a Joel Embiid by extension. I think much like we talked about last week, that is skunk stink that needs a tomato paste bath, some smudging. I need a couple years before I feel like he's completely rid himself of that. But your point about Tobias and how well he's played for them and how important he's been as just a stabilizing force. They're better in presence. And in that fourth quarter, there was a lot of frustration with Detroit with the whistles, especially Asar Thompson and Dennis Schroeder and some guys getting rid of him. Dennis Schroeder was pissed. Yes, and rightfully so. A couple of those calls. There was one call on a drive where Brunson, Thompson's in retreat. And Brunson goes through him and they call the block. And it's like, as a defensive player, what are you doing that? He didn't stop. Like he is doing everything. Hands in the prayer emoji. Yeah. Someone please challenge this. I did not fail. Yeah. He was, he was, he was the guy from he's Tommy. Why? So on the roof in the room, he's just like, I did not hit him. Not now. Let's go back to shooter because this guy on his 15th team this season is was massive. He had 20 points in the game. He drew the defensive assignment on Brunson in the fourth quarter, and then hits the game winning, basically, because he puts them up with that three off of that pick and roll on the near corner at the elbow extended, where that's a huge shot. I love how calm he was in that situation. It felt like he'd been there a million times. You beat me to it. I was about to say, this was Euro basketball Schroeder. You know, it's the guy that's just the– and good– look, I've had– I've gone so many different directions about how I feel about Dennis Schroeder. Good for him. You know, like, this guy's having a moment after being discarded and all those other things all these times in an important series where he was big. And congratulations. Like, awesome. I find it interesting, like, just his arc as a player because he came into this league as kind of like a defensive– that was the reputation that he had with that. He was defensive minded. And then when he, when he was with Atlanta, everyone was like, he's too small. He's not guarding anybody. He's getting pushed around, but he gets sent to Oklahoma city. He gets put into a three guard lineup with Shay, Chris Paul and Schroeder. He, you know, finds something there. He ends up in LA. He's not the same player. I mean, there are some guys that, who just don't work well with LeBron. They don't work well standing off ball. They don't work well whenever their ass is just standing in the corner and wait for the ball. He's not a spot-up shooter. He's not really ever been that guy. No, but he was good for the Lakers in the championship run. The second go-round with them, he was actually really good with them, and that was still with LeBron. You know, LeBron wanted to bring him back this year, and there was talk about him coming back when he was leaving Brooklyn. There was some of that. But your point, like, you want to talk about the odyssey of this guy. He turns down that contract to bet on himself. He turned down the extension in summer, plays the season out, and then nobody wants him. And it looks like he's not even going to be back in the league next year. He starts the season, was it last year or two years ago, as a free agent. He gets traded three times this year. The documentary on Dennis Schroeder's basketball career and his entire life, because he's got a very interesting life because he's a black German guy who's of African origin and all that. I'm excited to see it. We can skip over the stupid patch, even though there was actually- Bring the patch back, you coward. In fairness, it had something to do with his mom, so I probably shouldn't say that because it was important to him and I'm kind of being an asshole, but you know. I just appreciate the fact that he was traded to four different teams in four different time zones this year. I mean, he didn't play minutes for all of them, but he was in Brooklyn, Golden State, Miami, Utah, and now he's in Detroit. The guy's been everywhere. That's crazy. Yeah, technically he's been on five teams this season. Somebody else brought this up. Why couldn't Miami find a place for him? Do they not need a secondary offensive creator? And he's a very good defensive player now. I don't know. It's funny why it didn't work out in Golden State. It's just great. That was just like... The moment that trade was made, I was completely out because the problem is the way that Golden State's offense functions is the exact antithesis of what Dennis Schroeder does best. Everything is about quick reads and spot-up shooting and movement, and he needs to get downhill and pound the ball and all that. There was never going to be a way for them to bridge that gap. Well, I just want to bring up one thing that I've always loved. When we talk about like weak moves in the league, like LeBron's little stare at the dad who does the three thing. So Dennis Schroeder has one of those. And I don't understand how no one in the league has figured this out. He goes to the left side. usually gets a switch of some kind coming off the screen. He sets a screen, he gets a mismatch. So he's got someone usually bigger and slower on him. He's on the left wing by himself. He right hand dribbles three times, four times back toward the top of the key. And then he does one crossover runs to the basket and does a layup and that's it. That's the whole move. He does a crossover in front of himself, and he's just fast enough to get around all these other defenders. And I watched that move, and I can see it in his eyes when he's about to do it. I'm like, dude, please do not fall for the fact that he's about to cross over to his left hand. That's it. That's all it is. It's like a Michael Jordan in the 80s move that would have everyone losing their minds. They're like, I can't believe what he just did. He crossed from his right hand to his left hand. Was that your Marv Albers move? huh was that your marv albert i was just trying to figure out what what announcer we were even there i could do a little marv uh i was mostly doing like old-timey announcer but probably a little marv i can do some impressions um but yeah it's as far as like weak ass move hall of fame dennis schroeder's little crossover to get to the basket is up there but it's it's effective because that motherfucker is very good wait One thing for you, you were supposed to cook. What were you supposed to cook about? I'm not done with this yet, so let's go ahead and do it now. Let's go. Get to it now. So the Knicks are down three with the ball with 12 seconds left, right? You're at home against a team that, generally speaking, is a young team, even though the players they had on the floor with Beasley and Schroeder are at least veteran players. Stop playing for the fucking three. I am so every level of basketball. And now that I'm coaching basketball, my dad and I have been talking about this for several years, but like, if you have time and particularly if you're the home team. Why the fuck are you not getting the quick two and making them make their free throws? Make it, optimize the number of opportunities you have. Everybody's, I don't even care if it's a wide open three in that situation. You can get to the rim. We've seen this a million times. Everybody's going to overextend and play for that. I don't want that three from Mikael Bridges. Make them beat you. They're the fucking young team. You have the advantage in the series and you're at home. Why is Mikael Bridges taking that three? Why literally does every team do this? It's so rare to watch it. team play for elongating the thing so everybody dribbles out the ball wants to shoot the don't shoot the fucking three you don't need the three and I'm cursing a lot because this one has been driving me crazy forever and if the Knicks lose this series they deserved it on that play because I am over it I don't understand it just it's I think players have become so obsessed with wanting to hit that big shot that have that moment it's not the smart basketball play and especially once again like this is a very different thing if it's game seven and you're on the road and you're concerned about how you're going to be able to compose yourself in overtime or you're exhausted or any of the rest of those things none of those circumstances are in play stop doing that you just like you you you if you make the two you have so many more avenues for winning you miss the three the game is over i'm done i know ladies and gentlemen that is how you cook by the way Uh, no, I respect that. I actually thought the same thing because when, when, uh, Brunson was bringing the ball up the floor, they were definitely pressing up for the three and all Jalen Brunson had to do was do one of those little, you know, those little hesitations, like you're gonna pull up and then you just blitz right by him. He had the lane. No one was going to stop him from getting the layup and they were good enough. They have enough like rangy wings to force a turnover down the stretch, or at least, you know, maybe, you know, make things hard before you have to foul. So you can potentially come up with a turnover and it's a one point game. And you have enough time on the clock. You can get the second call. You just said there's so many more. And what's pissed, what pisses me off the most about this Evan is you and I are going to record next week and we will have seen at least one or two more instances where somebody does this. It'll be a tight game and somebody's just... Everybody plays for the three. What are you doing? Unless there is five seconds or less, don't play for the three. Give yourself as many opportunities as you can. Quick one other thing. Talking about Denver, I forgot to even mention this. Denver had a timeout when Nikola Jokic got the offensive rebound and didn't call a timeout, and they just threw something up crazy, too. I don't know what the hell they were doing. They glitched that. Like, why are all these teams not– do you not work on this stuff at the end? Like, I know that it's pressure and all the rest of it, but what are they doing? Well, it might be the fact that they have a guy who's coaching his fifth NBA game. You know, it turns out that having somebody like Michael Malone, who's got 10 years of head coaching experience, he might have been useful in that situation. I have no response. I don't know what to do. And the same thing, like I'm not blaming Adelman and I'm not blaming the Grizzlies coach. It's very hard for an announcer. They call him TI. I was going to butcher it because there's something to be said about having a coach with a little bit of experience. Yeah, it's weird. It's almost like if you've been there before, you know what to do. Yeah, strange, strange, strange stuff. I was going to ask... Since we're not recording for at least a couple more days. Tomorrow, we get game two of Orlando and Boston, the Cavaliers and the Heat, and you get the Warriors and the Rockets. Do you want to make some predictions before we exit the podcast? Boston wins, Cleveland wins, Houston wins. I was going to say the exact same thing. Great. I know we agree a lot, but I've been trying to find the parts where you and I disagree. We don't have the same opinion on Zach Eady. You know, I'm searching. I'm searching for more things. We got to keep force-feeding divisiveness into the pod. I'm not trying to be like Troy Aikman with Joe Buck, where he's just like, you're exactly right, Joe. And he says it 17 times in a football broadcast. Like, dude, he's always agreeing with Joe Buck. I've never heard him be like, I'm going to push back on that a little bit, Joe. I don't believe that as a quarterback. Let me tell you what I believe. I've never heard him say that. And they've been calling games together for 20 years. I think it's written into the contract at this point. Hey, Jory Eggman agreeing with Joe Buck. Those guys, they've got the chemistry down. I mean, you don't want Joe Buck to lose his shit and say what you're doing is disgusting. So, well, you know, you might get that no matter what. My favorite thing that he's ever had to do is all those. There's a YouTube compilation out there for anyone who's interested in Joe Buck. putting uh doing ads for future fox shows that didn't make it they all got canceled by within like a couple of episodes or even one season it's one of the funniest things you'll ever watch you'll even try to remember like when was that a show oh yeah i'll have to check that out i love it's like 20 minutes long it's incredible he's been doing it for years anyway boston cleveland Houston. Book it. Make that into your parlay. Do whatever you got to do. That's who you should be picking tomorrow night to win some basketball games. Aaron, anything else before we end this podcast? I know that we already said that we were going to go watch some of this Lakers-Minnesota game. The Lakers are up 40-21. Oh, okay. Well, good response by the Lakers. Good response by the Lakers. Yeah, up 45-23 now. I guess I had it on a... And LeBron's got 11. Luca is doing Luca's stuff, 16 and four. Yeah, let's go. Let's go finish this and we'll reconvene sometime soon. Yeah, well, I will say, please subscribe to the Basketball Intelligence Network. Please like, rate, and subscribe to this podcast. We are on the Basketball Intelligence Network along with many other talented writers, talented podcasters, people who contribute to your basketball knowledge, and it's there for you to absorb and to show off to all your friends. What a ball knower you are. Actually, before we end this, can I do a quick cook? Yeah, let's go. I mean, Lord knows I made two meals today. People on threads need to stop trying to tell me that they watch basketball every day. As if that is supposed to mean that they know more about the game than I do. I can watch the Kardashians every day. That doesn't make me a member of the family. Okay. I don't understand why, like, that's the argument that people come to me with. I watch ball every day. As if that is like, I'm a tape eater. I love the bullshit. Just because you watch ball doesn't mean you're not affected by your inherited biases. Doesn't mean you're not a slave to your fandom. Doesn't mean that you don't have preconceived notions or opinions that have been spoon fed to you by the media or by other people you follow like house of hoops and you just steal all of their content and you try and pass it off as your own i'm tired of it that is the worst argument i've ever heard stop telling me you watch ball get a profile picture and get more than 16 followers before you start trying to talk shit to me that's it i'm done that was my last thing I don't know why I ended this so angrily. Everything you said, I second that emotion. Look, I'll take a second round of that as far as I'm concerned. Can we get another order of that sent to the table? I have never once told somebody– I watch basketball every day as if that's supposed to make me– People watched Breaking Bad and still missed the point of that show. Yeah, yeah, right. Like, what do you mean? But those are the same people that their very first thing when you make a statement is you don't know anything about basketball. And I'm like, okay, so what? Because you disagree with what I said, now I don't know anything about basketball? Like, all right, you know, James1567 who has two fucking posts and like you're sitting here trying to tell me how Jonathan Kaminga is worthy of like a$250 million contract or whatever dumb shit it is. Like, look- You and I both love having conversations on threads. It's not that we're sitting here trying to be sports elitists. Like, whatever we are, we're not nearly to the level we want to be. But we also don't go on to other people's things just sitting there tearing them down for no reason. I think, like, most of the time when I make a reply, it's to provide a statistical rebuttal to a broad statement. Where they're like, just something like, Shea Gildasov is going to fold in the playoffs. Because he won't get the same whistle. And then I show them the statistics from last year that shows that he played 10 games. He averaged slightly less free throws and he was still just as efficient as he was in the regular season. I was like, so the position that you're positing is incorrect. And then the guy comes back to me and I believe he said something like, you're just a stat watcher. You're not a ball watcher. And my head almost exploded. And I was just like, good Lord. I was like, I looked up the numbers based on the games that I watched last year. I watched it. And then the numbers supported the argument in which I'm currently making. And you're just yelling at me with your emotions because you're in your feelings because I... disagreed with you how dare you bring substantive facts to go ahead and buttress your conversation and argument like this is just supposed to be an impassioned plea that has no substantiation to it and that's it this is the world we live in sorry to the listeners for we just gave you like five minutes of us railing against basically what all of us have to deal with on social media but it's good again this could have been an off-air conversation but hopefully hopefully the people out there are going yeah this pisses me off too because we're all dealing with it in It's like, let's have good substantive basketball discourse. Like if I was wrong and somebody brought me the numbers that showed me that I was like, you know, I don't think that Rudy Gobert has been that impactful this game. And then somebody brings me the numbers and they're like, look at me shots. He affected at the rim. Look how many blocks he had. Look how many shots in the paint weren't taken as compared to the minutes he was off the floor. I would have been like, damn, you're right. I was wrong. These numbers back up what you're saying. It just didn't feel that way to me. It was an observation, but maybe didn't have the statistical backing. Anyway, I hope that's not a reason that people don't like, rate, and subscribe to this podcast. It might be. It might be. We try not to shout into the void that often, but I like, hey, look, I love when you cook, and I thought it was phenomenal. Sometimes I get a little frustrated, so that's my mistake. Got to vent that steam. Should have kept that. A little closer to the back. Let's be honest. Don't you feel a little better for getting it off your chest? I do. Relaxed. Hey, catharsis is important. Thank you guys so much again for listening to this podcast. We will try and record two times a week during the playoffs. We both have other jobs. We both have busy lives. But we are going to do our best because we want to talk about the game with you all. We want to give you as much of our analysis as you can handle. And playoffs are the best time for basketball. It's really hard to cover everything that happens over a week of time. This podcast is probably running two plus hours and we're just covering games from the last four days. So we are going to do our best to record twice a week. But if we do not Please join us every Monday or Tuesday whenever we do drop new episodes. We're here for you guys and we love you. We end this podcast the same way that we always do by saying adios.