NBA Playoff Reactions and Overreactions With Ryen Russillo

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Coming up, first two days of the NBA playoffs are in the books. We have a lot of subplots.

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Speaker 1 I have a new rewatch rewatchables coming for you on Monday night. We did Minority Report.
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So, you can check that out as well. Don't forget episode eight of Celtic City.

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Coming up, Brissel and I are going to rip through all of the NBA playoff subplots from Two Wild Days. We did this live on YouTube at nine o'clock.

Speaker 1 So you're about to listen to it. First, our friends from ProJ.

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Speaker 1 All right, 9.04 p.m., Russilla and I are going live on YouTube for the PS Podcast. Risillo, good to see you.

Speaker 1 We just watched eight games in two days, including the Warriors beating the Rockets in a rock fight. All right, so those eight games, Rosillo,

Speaker 1 did any of them change what you thought specifically heading into a series? And we'll talk about Warriors, Rockets in a second. But out of those eight, did anything flip your opinion?

Speaker 1 Because I'm ready to overreact.

Speaker 2 No. Now that I think about it, I don't know that there's anything that happened this weekend.
Yeah, nothing.

Speaker 1 Nothing. 0 for 8.

Speaker 2 I have one. I have a half one.

Speaker 2 It seems like you have one.

Speaker 1 What is it? I have a half one.

Speaker 1 I thought that Minnesota Laker game.

Speaker 1 was a worst case scenario for the Lakers in a lot of different ways. And I want to tackle it in a second.
But that was the only one because I thought Lakers in seven.

Speaker 1 I thought they'd have the history.

Speaker 1 But watching some of the matchups and some of the stuff Minnesota did and the fact that the Lakers didn't have a lot of options for a counter, it just kind of made me tilt my head a little bit.

Speaker 1 I still don't know what's going to happen. I'm really interested in game two, but we'll talk about that.
Let's talk about Warriors Rockets. So we had in the Warriors Rockets.

Speaker 1 My fear for the Warriors was they got 75 points in that Memphis game. from Curry and Butler.
And if these games go into the 110 to 120 range, where are they getting all those points from, right?

Speaker 1 Then the Rockets' fears are, well, what happens when we get to the playoffs and somebody turns defense up on them? How are they going to score?

Speaker 1 Well, that fear won out over the other fear because the Rockets couldn't score. And

Speaker 1 it was a karaoke greatest hits of all the terrible fourth quarters we've watched from the Rockets all year. It was really,

Speaker 1 really bad. What are the fixes? What did you see today?

Speaker 2 They get down 23, right? And at one point, you're going, this team only has 41 points in an NBA game. Like, what's going on here?

Speaker 2 But we knew that the offense was the more challenging part of it, despite the great regular season. And at least on paper, the different options they have.
But Jalen Green's terrible tonight.

Speaker 2 Van Vleek can't hit his shot. He hits that three.
He had started one for 10. So at that moment, it felt like kind of a big three.

Speaker 2 The question I would have for Yudoka after this is,

Speaker 2 you got back into this game being huge. And Golden State doesn't have a big lineup.
They can run Looney out there for a little bit if they want to. Clearly, they're not comfortable with that.

Speaker 2 Post is a stretch five, and he's just going to foul everybody. How about Post is just a stretch? It was a stretch to have him out there for 12 minutes.

Speaker 1 He was a stretch while you were out there. Anyway, go ahead.

Speaker 2 Draymond finished with a 4-6 and 3 stat line because he's tasked with...

Speaker 2 playing Shingoon and the way he was playing off of Shingoon, like it was the one thing that was actually working for Houston because I think Shingoon deserves a lot of credit for going, okay, if this is how you're going to play me, like I'm going to pull up, like I've got a little bit more touch.

Speaker 2 But that stretch of like the first six minutes of the fourth quarter when Houston got back into this, they got back into it being huge. Stephen Adams was a beast.

Speaker 2 And even if, you know, Golden State couldn't get a rebound to save their lives. And when they would contest anything, they were fouls.
And granted, Houston didn't make their free throw.

Speaker 2 So I guess I would just wonder, did Emay do Golden State a favor? by bringing in their best offensive player back into the game and getting away from the size that was just overwhelming Golden State.

Speaker 2 It wasn't pretty, but Golden State couldn't do anything with it. But then at 5.19, Adams is out.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'd love to ask Kerr, like in a moment of honesty, were you thrilled when they took Adams out of the game?

Speaker 1 Right. It was 66.47, five minutes left in the third.
And Shengun made that just ridiculous shot cock beating three in the buzzer that never should have gone in.

Speaker 1 Ryan's like, all right, I'm going to mark that one down. And then Adams kind of took over the game the rest of the third quarter and then into the fourth.
He was getting those offensive rebounds.

Speaker 1 Eason had a couple of big defensive plays.

Speaker 1 And it just felt like there was some sort of combination of guys that would be the right combination. It was like watching somebody work a safe in a Bankist movie.
It's like, you gotta get it.

Speaker 1 And he just kind of never unlocked it. And I think if I'm leaving that game and I'm watching the tape, I'm really interested in the double bigs.
I'm really interested in the double bigs with Jabari.

Speaker 1 I think I'd want to see Eason more because I just thought he was just a major issue the whole time.

Speaker 1 Thompson is the one. Thompson just looked like a guy who had been, had smoked up, blown up his ass all week that he should have been defensive player of the year.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden, he's in a playoff game guarding Steph Curry and Butler, and he just wasn't good. The Van Vleet thing, we've seen a bunch of times, though.
We've seen him have those games.

Speaker 1 And over and over again, it seems like when everything stalls, it's just him jacking up 24, 25 footers. And I don't know how he fixed that because that was the worst.

Speaker 1 of Jalen Green today when he's just like going to the basket as hard. He has like no gears.
He's either fifth gear or first gear.

Speaker 1 And he's just going to the basket flying in either trying to get fouled or whipping off the backboard they don't have that one settler and that's why like it was so interesting to talk about them in february i felt they were a year away so did you but it's like man if they could just get one guy who could i got you guys let me get a couple baskets here with a much the way butler was was doing it for the warriors down the stretch and tonight and they're missing it And yet, I don't think they're out of this series.

Speaker 1 This is not like an overreaction. Uh-oh, the Warriors have control because they only scored, you know, they scored less than 100 points too.

Speaker 1 I just think this is going to be a rock fight series, and Houston has a lot of wild card guys. So great win.
I think I still feel like this is going to be a long series.

Speaker 2 I agree with you on that one. I mean, there's going to be a night where,

Speaker 2 you know, Steph isn't going to be able to bail him out, probably because they put so much attention on him, especially like if it's a close game. In the step positions, two were staying with Steph.

Speaker 2 He had a turnover.

Speaker 2 He had another one where it should have been a turnover where he let himself get trapped at half court, but they didn't have a challenge because they already challenged the Pajemski drive. So

Speaker 2 there'll be times where the stuff off of Steph is a bit of a letdown. Like Moses Moody hitting that three tonight in the corner was probably the biggest three because it's like, all right, finally.

Speaker 2 Like, it's always the first time. It's an exhale shot.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's the third shot taker for this group because, you know, clearly there's nights where Curry can do what he did tonight and there's nothing you can do and he's just going to hit a bunch of ridiculous shots.

Speaker 2 That's not going to happen. You know, I don't know know that you can bank on that for four wins.
Maybe you can in a seven-game series, but

Speaker 2 I look at the Pajemski minutes and he looks confused. I almost don't like the ball in his hands right now.

Speaker 2 And if he misses a few, this is a guy who has a ton of confidence to even get to this point, but I think you can see it happening on the court where it's like, oh, he's hesitant now.

Speaker 2 He's a little shot. And then if you end up with like a Gary Payton, the second corner open look, like Houston will gladly take that.

Speaker 1 And then there's a post. Don't forget to throw in post in this conversation.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're going to go to pull wide open trees from him until he makes one.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 They're going to play off of Draymond a ton, and Draymond will have better offensive nights, but it's still like if he has another single-digit night, it's not going to be that big of a deal.

Speaker 2 And Butler even had like a stretch where I was like, where are you? Like, where are you?

Speaker 2 And then he was able to, you know, because even if he got Shingoon or Adams in a switch, he's not the kind of guy who's just going to like fly past them.

Speaker 2 He wants to dribble to a spot and pull up and try to get away with a clean look, like, you know, without much of a contest there.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I think there's going to be nights where Golden State against this Houston defense is going to look really lost.

Speaker 2 But I wonder internally if the Rockets coaching staff is going, did we let them off the hook a little bit by going with Shingoon, who was our best offensive player?

Speaker 2 Because it wasn't like they did anything great on offense. They just had multiple possessions and Golden State was just overwhelmed.

Speaker 2 Like you would see all this traffic at the Rockets hoop and you couldn't see the blue jerseys because they were so much smaller than the guys in red.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was like the scrappy,

Speaker 1 like the football team of like scrappy, smaller guys battling some massive offensive line.

Speaker 1 They were able to get away with some stuff tonight that I don't know if it's going to work in later rounds for the record. Like Butler played 42 minutes tonight, right? Curry played 39.

Speaker 1 Once you start going every other day, the way they were leaning on those guys, Curry also was really quiet and then all of a sudden got hot, which is usually a danger for the other team if he's slow first quarter.

Speaker 1 And it reminded me of that. What was the best game game he ever played? What was that, 2019, when he was quiet in the first half and then just

Speaker 1 completely annihilated Houston in the second half?

Speaker 2 It's my favorite Steph game of all time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it was your number one.

Speaker 1 Listen,

Speaker 1 if Golden State can play those five guys together and get away with it,

Speaker 1 I think they're delighted. If they can play Moody and Podzemski with the three.

Speaker 1 And they can rebound just enough and they can defend just enough, but then get what they want offensively. And Moody can step up like he did with that three.
That's where they want to be.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's going to work for four rounds. And I'm going to say it again.
And this is the most polarizing Warriors topic.

Speaker 1 I just find it hard to believe Kamiga can't play 12 minutes a game for this team. I find it hard to believe.

Speaker 2 And I do think it's...

Speaker 1 It seems like they're completely out. I just find it hard to believe he wouldn't have been better than those 12 Quentin postminutes.

Speaker 2 Don't you have to defer to Kerr on this one, though? Because he's had him a long time. I get it.

Speaker 1 That's why

Speaker 1 I tiptoe into it. I'm just hesitant, but I just like, man, because at least with Kaminga,

Speaker 1 he's unafraid. He's athletic, and he's going to fight.
And like, there's just, I don't know.

Speaker 1 There was that one Santos play when he just like lost the ball. Like, they just have dudes that are out there.

Speaker 2 We're like, man.

Speaker 1 What's this going to look like if you're playing OKC in a series? You have these guys out there against that OKC team we saw today? So I think they can match it together.

Speaker 2 They closed the third quarter of four minutes. The last four minutes, they didn't hit a shot.

Speaker 1 And they were bad shots. There was like shot clock violation.
You know, it was like bad, bad stuff. So look, they have to go 12 and 9 to make the finals.
Now they have to go 11 and 9.

Speaker 1 Could it happen? Sure. But, you know, it's, this is, they still feel like they're a guy short to me, Marcillo.

Speaker 1 I can't shake it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all the, there's, there's this collection of teams where you, you look at the Clippers' numbers numbers after a certain point and you go, oh my God, like, look at that.

Speaker 2 And I know we're going to talk about him. And then, you know, I swear to God, TNT and ESPN love to throw up the Jimmy Butler trade graphic like four times.
It's like a read.

Speaker 2 I don't know if it's sponsored or not, but they'll just say, hey, since the all-star break, like, and it's, it is really interesting.

Speaker 2 But you always have to remember, like, we're not the normal audience. So they're getting everybody up to date on like what the story has been.

Speaker 2 So you have this Golden State thing that feels entirely different, the Clippers thing that feels different. I think Minnesota, for whatever reason, has been completely overlooked.

Speaker 2 As we'll get to that game, because I can't wait to talk about that one.

Speaker 2 But I haven't really looked at Golden State even with that split post-the Butler trade because of some of the limitations and because of their preference to be small and not have any big option.

Speaker 2 Like, you're talking about them going, hey, you only have to win 11 more games to get to the final.

Speaker 2 I don't even,

Speaker 2 I don't know. I'm surprised you're even like mapping it out that way.
Do you really think they have a chance to win in the West? Did you think that

Speaker 1 I like the bracket they're in more,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 1 They play the winner of Lakers, Minnesota.

Speaker 1 And from what we saw last night in that game, you know, two flawed teams. Minnesota looked great last night.
The Lakers looked terrible.

Speaker 1 Both have some pluses and minuses, but I think they're in the right side of the bracket. I mean, then you think, OKC, maybe it doesn't matter the way OKC is just completely terrifying.

Speaker 1 I was thinking that Butler graphic you mentioned.

Speaker 1 Maybe they, maybe just they feel like the casual ESPN fans can't understand how Jimmy Butler ended up on the Warriors. It just doesn't make sense when you're watching one of these games.

Speaker 1 You're like, how did they get that? Would they give up? Wiggins, what? Wiggins, Schroeder, Kyle Anderson.

Speaker 2 Was there more in there?

Speaker 1 No, there wasn't.

Speaker 1 Houston going forward, because we have three days between games, which means we have a Monday and Tuesday of what's Houston going to do if they can't get this going and they'll be a trade machine team.

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 1 They're young. The biggest question they

Speaker 2 took us 12 minutes to say

Speaker 1 that the big question is this VMV player option thing, if you're talking trade machine stuff.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if I'm just, it's because what we do for a living, but when I watch them, I'm constantly thinking of what player I would add to make them a championship contender because it's clearly not the team they have now, which I still think is a very good team.

Speaker 1 But there's something that they need.

Speaker 1 And so when I watch it, I'm like, hmm, I wonder, would Booker, would you just like pay 200 cents on the dollar for Booker and just give Ishbia the ultimate life raft? Or what would you do?

Speaker 1 But anyway, that stuff's going to go the next two days.

Speaker 2 That'd be too early. This series, I think there's going to be a night where Houston looks so much better than Golden State.

Speaker 1 Do you think Houston's we look great when we're up 12 team?

Speaker 1 You know how we have those teams?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know. Who looks bad when they're up 20? Like, who looks like they're having a bad time? The Celtics.
Is there any team?

Speaker 1 The Celtics, it's always the most dangerous, but they're up 22. It's like, oh, no.

Speaker 1 Call timeout.

Speaker 1 Keep these guys in check.

Speaker 2 And look, they're down 23 to this group with this offense. And I cannot, I'll say it again.

Speaker 2 They didn't really even do anything that was that great on offense to get back into this. It wasn't like they got hot from three.

Speaker 2 It wasn't like, oh, okay, this guy's cooking or they can't guard this guy. They're hunting.

Speaker 2 They're hunting this dude. It's just, hey, we were big.
So that's something that they can go to. That's not shooting variants.

Speaker 2 That's something that they know when they watch this film, they can go, we might want to go to it earlier.

Speaker 2 You know, there's also something, too, when you're down 23, the effort that it takes you to come back and cut it to three points.

Speaker 2 And then you start timing it out, being like, can they sustain this for another five minutes? Yeah. Like that'll happen a lot too.
It's like you're right there.

Speaker 2 You're just about to get a game. What they gave him four at one point? It was three point four.
It was a four-point game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Never felt like it, but then all of a sudden it was close um when you did all the draft work for the jabari smith draft

Speaker 1 did you think he would be a better scorer than this

Speaker 2 well he had to develop more of a handle that was a major flag for him um and he had those guards from auburn who didn't want to get him the ball a ton but you looked at like the best version of him going if you can get a bit of a handle and get to his spot his shooting his defensive instincts the rebounding all that by the way i know he wasn't good tonight, but he's been better the last few months.

Speaker 2 I think it's the most comfortable he's ever looked offensively. You know, I don't know that you're ever going to be running like a side pick and roll for him.

Speaker 2 And then if he gets cut off, he's going to reset with the dribble probe and then go. Like, I don't know if he's ever going to be that guy, but like, that was the biggest difference is Paolo,

Speaker 2 he could get wherever he wanted to as a draft prospect at that size. And with Jabari, he felt a bit like a true dribble guy, even though I still really liked him a lot.

Speaker 1 I like him. The most, the Rockets, the offense was brutal to watch, but they, there was one time in the fourth quarter when they posted up Thompson on Curry

Speaker 1 and he kind of, and he kind of whirled into the paint, had this little jump hook. And I was like, hmm, that's something.

Speaker 1 Like, instead of just having these guys facing the basket and flying toward the basket and bouncing off dudes, whipping off the backboard, maybe,

Speaker 1 you know, try to use their athleticism, try to put them in different parts of the thing. So we'll see.
We'll see.

Speaker 1 We'll see what they do

Speaker 1 heading into game two.

Speaker 1 I still think it's going to be a long series. That's where I sit.
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Speaker 1 Workday movie business forever forward, which leads us to Minnesota and the Lakers. They make this towns trade right before the season.

Speaker 1 They get DeFincenzo and they get Randall, and it's controversial. And the trade was on full display yesterday.
And I thought Towns was excellent in that Pistons game.

Speaker 1 But Minnesota looked really good against the Lakers.

Speaker 1 And I think the thing that I saw last night re-watching that game, because I was at WrestleMania last night, but I was able to power through it this morning.

Speaker 2 What should we do with that?

Speaker 1 I have some Cena stuff for you at the end.

Speaker 2 Cool.

Speaker 1 Minnesota's just,

Speaker 2 I know,

Speaker 1 I'll give you a heads up.

Speaker 1 Minnesota's just really comfortable wherever they're playing. I think that's my favorite thing about them.

Speaker 1 They're just really comfortable. They don't care if they're in LA.
They don't care if they're playing against LeBron and Luca. They're an irrational confidence team personified.

Speaker 1 And you saw it last night. And granted, they shot the lights out, but I saw a team that walked in there and thought, we have the best team in this series and we're winning this series.

Speaker 1 And they carried themselves that way. Now, the Lakers, I don't know what happened to them the entire game.

Speaker 1 I don't know where the ball movement went. They had 15 assists.

Speaker 1 There was some stagnant offense and on defense, I just thought they looked slow.

Speaker 1 It'll be different in Tuesday, but I really liked what I saw from Minnesota. And that was the series that it didn't flip me because I had Lakers in seven, but it did make me go, fuck, I think I

Speaker 1 don't feel great about Lakers in seven. So what was your takeaway?

Speaker 2 I went last minute.

Speaker 2 Thank you to you. Yeah.
You're like a new Diane Cannon. You're there.

Speaker 1 You're there every game.

Speaker 2 I'm hoping to get my upgrade material this offseason. We'll see what they offer.
But

Speaker 2 I picked Minnesota and I'm, look, I'm not taking credit for it as if I saw all these things. It just felt a bit like a zag because there was, if you just

Speaker 2 felt like this overwhelming vibe decision by the general NBA public, right?

Speaker 2 Where it was, okay, the Lakers, another run with LeBron, the Lucas stuff, you know, that peak that they had, which we've talked about.

Speaker 2 I brought it up in my playoff preview on Thursday, where it's like, if you go on the season defensive numbers for the Lakers, it's 17th.

Speaker 2 And sometimes, like, the season's so long that that's a completely irrelevant number for a lot of different teams. And then they have that 18 and three stretch where we were talking

Speaker 2 with that awesome Denver win at Denver mixed in in there. And you're going, wait, they're the number one team on defense now for 21 games.
That's weird.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because when the Luca trade was made, it was almost a thought

Speaker 2 well, they're going to have to figure this out defensively.

Speaker 2 Those three guys in the perimeter, depending on what you get from LeBron, and then, you know, Reeves just gets hunted because of a size thing, probably more so than anything else, because I think he at least fights for position and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 So we just didn't think they were going to be good defensively, and then they're off the charts defensively.

Speaker 2 And then after that stretch, when I ran the numbers again, it was like, hey, they're back to like 17th.

Speaker 2 So I think the truth was, is that was a bit of an anomaly, even if it looked like they were doing a great job prepping guys based on the opposition. So

Speaker 2 you look at Minnesota on the other side of like these closing groups. They closed since March 2nd, 17 and 4.
They had the fourth best net of any team in the NBA. Okay.

Speaker 2 They're also the healthiest they've ever been. Do I love Randall as a number two for multiple playoff rounds? No, I do not.
But he's played great.

Speaker 2 I mean, he's played great at least for them in this whole thing. So when you're thinking about this matchup, like, is Rudy going to get exposed? Is

Speaker 2 something where Minnesota will want to go small? Is that actually doing the Lakers a favor?

Speaker 2 Because the Lakers do not want to play Jackson Hayes and I don't blame them for not wanting to play him, but they have no other move.

Speaker 2 They go with Rui at center, and in the beginning of the game, it was like, hey, he's hitting those threes that we talked about last week. And then that cooled off.

Speaker 2 Then they have this other small group where they'll go Finney Smith and Vanderbilt and then figure out what the rest of the perimeter guys. And JJ's talked about, like, hey, we're not small.

Speaker 2 We're big perimeter players, but we just don't have a traditional center. Well, in this game, they were small.
So the alarming part of it, when you think of it as a matchup, is

Speaker 2 what's the adjustment? The Lakers are going to grow.

Speaker 2 But then if I'm on the Lakers side of this, I'm going 48 points from Nas Reed and Jaden McDaniels, 48 points from those two guys.

Speaker 1 Like, that's not happening. 21 for 42 from three.

Speaker 1 It's pretty hard not to win any playoff game when you go 21 for 42.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 1 struggled with it because I thought Gobert offensively could be a problem for the Lakers heading into the series because of the lob stuff because they don't have rim protection.

Speaker 1 And that's like the one thing Gobert is good at. And I was trying to to figure out how much they passed to him.
Right.

Speaker 1 But he's still around the rim with his arms up. And if you're not playing a center at some point, so

Speaker 1 Hayes was minus 11 in eight minutes. They couldn't keep him on the floor, right? So you have that.
You have.

Speaker 2 They haven't been playing him at all, by the way. Like, this is pretty consistent.

Speaker 1 This is like, all right, we just had to find out.

Speaker 1 Minnesota did some interesting stuff with where they put Connolly. Were you following that? Where they put him on Rui for a little bit so that he wouldn't be on Reeves.

Speaker 1 And then the Lakers kind of figured that out. And then they started to move him around.
The second half, he was on Reeves again.

Speaker 1 And it seems like they were so aware that the Lakers were going to attack Connolly as a strategy that they just wanted to kind of move him around like a yo-yo, which I thought was smart.

Speaker 1 I don't really know what the move is for the Lakers.

Speaker 1 If that one lineup they have, which got killed last night with the Rui, LeBron, Luca,

Speaker 1 pick

Speaker 1 Reeves and pick a swing.

Speaker 1 If that that lineup is just going to get torched by Minnesota, I don't know what the next move is because the next move is basically playing LeBron at center and going super small with wings and shooting.

Speaker 1 And I just think Minnesota would be delighted if they did that. But the big takeaway for me last night is when McDaniels plays like that, Minnesota looks awesome.

Speaker 1 And he's their wild card. Every team has a wild card guy, right?

Speaker 1 McDaniels is awesome. Minnesota looks like the scariest team in the West other than OKC.
And he was awesome last night.

Speaker 2 I went through the three-point attempts because it just was,

Speaker 2 it was just out of control. Place is quiet.
People are just laughing, being like, when are these guys going to start missing?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I have it at 40 three-point attempts. It's 42 for the game.
I'm not counting the last two garbage ones.

Speaker 2 But of the 40 attempts that I would say, like, were in the time that we were still wondering, whatever, this isn't totally relevant, but I counted as 40 attempts.

Speaker 2 27 are absolutely wide open, like not debatable. 27.

Speaker 1 What is the fear with this Luca Luca-LeBron combo that it would just be open three frenzy.

Speaker 2 I'd say seven more were open, and then I'm going to give them, and I was being nice. I gave him six contests because some people will go through and sort all these different things.

Speaker 2 And, you know, there was one place that was trying to say there was like zero. And I was like, well, that's not true.
There's a few contests. But 27 of the 40 are like, nobody's even close.

Speaker 2 And there's a few things.

Speaker 2 One is they're packing it. because they're worried about Ant hunting Luca.
And so that means help.

Speaker 2 I think there's even a chance that Randall, even though he probably got a little emotional about it at some point, like if he gets LeBron, it seems like he wants to get real physical with him.

Speaker 2 And that's one of the few guys that, you know, with the ball in his hands, it's probably a really good showdown physically, which is not something we'd say about LeBron a lot.

Speaker 2 So you've packed it in and you're leaving these corner threes that are there.

Speaker 2 And Nas hit a ton. Jaden hit a ton.
But then there's just other stuff where. you know, LeBron has to be better.

Speaker 2 You know, if it was a second action where he was heading in one direction and then it's like, no, the ball's going over there. He just wasn't quick enough to go over and contest it.

Speaker 2 And then Luca, like if you run something to one side and then the guy Luca is assigned to away from the ball comes up, Luca just doesn't even pay attention to him off the ball.

Speaker 2 He lost, you know, numerous guys on those attempts. So you could think GAJ could just go through it and be like, hey, dickheads, like what?

Speaker 2 Do you guys, are you ready now? Are you ready to play? Because it was so overwhelming and it looked so bad for the Lakers.

Speaker 2 You're going, okay, so if they're only small, like, why is this going to actually get better?

Speaker 2 But I'm not going to fall for it. I'm not going to fall for like a game one thing here saying that LA can't get back.

Speaker 2 That would just seem irresponsible because we've seen so many game ones look like just be so misleading. But the size thing was alarming last night.

Speaker 2 And I think you're probably a little, it was probably a bit of a reminder to be like, wait, are they good? And are they too big?

Speaker 1 So Nico's still in this thing, you're saying,

Speaker 2 side note, do you think when Anthony Davis was going off against Sacramento, Nico had like an inner dialogue where he's like,

Speaker 2 I'm going to be right about this?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm still.

Speaker 1 He definitely, there's one person in his life that he's still like, just hold on. I'm still not out of this.
It's still going to happen.

Speaker 1 Can I read you the most critical thing I read about the Lakers last night?

Speaker 1 Coach J.J. Reddick did a great job all season, but he didn't do a good job for game one.

Speaker 1 The Lakers stood around on offense, played too much one-on-one basketball, and he didn't make any necessary adjustments.

Speaker 1 A tweet from Magic Johnson.

Speaker 1 That's when you know things are bad. Like, that's as critical as I think he's ever been on Twitter.
He was not happy. What did you see at the game? What was the vibe?

Speaker 1 Give us the feel in the arena because they're all excited for this game. Game one, Luca playoffs, little kids wearing the Luca jerseys, and then the T-Wolves hit threes for an hour straight.

Speaker 2 It was,

Speaker 2 you know, because it's game one, and I think that that fan base has an arrogance that's deserved. Like, yeah, they have a right to be arrogant.

Speaker 2 I think the more alarming thing, you know, as a Lakers guy, when the place was going nuts for Steph in the regular season, it was the Steph MVP chance, like big time. It was loud.
I was like, boy,

Speaker 2 you don't expect that.

Speaker 2 No, you know, I don't, afterwards, it wasn't like anybody, because I was milling around a little bit afterwards.

Speaker 2 It was just kind of a shrug and a, well, that was alarming, you know, but I still think like the same thing if you were in Boston.

Speaker 2 If Boston gets smoked, granted, if they're getting smoked by Orlando, that's worse than getting smoked by Minnesota. But it's just, all right, you know, they'll figure it out.
They'll come out.

Speaker 2 Let me ask you something, though, because this was a thought that crap that crept into my head.

Speaker 2 A little too much Luca trying to figure it out on his own on offense.

Speaker 1 It does feel like it's month month four of

Speaker 1 let's really give him a lot of latitude here, especially in the first quarter.

Speaker 2 Like a subletter that extends his lease. Like, this is how I really am.

Speaker 1 Like those Apple news stories you read where

Speaker 1 somebody won't leave somebody's cottage and they've been there two years.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I was wondering in the two days between games if we might get some sort of something from the LeBron camp. LeBron really wants Luca to get more involved, or some sort of something.

Speaker 1 It's a lot of time here, 72 hours.

Speaker 2 So, who knows?

Speaker 1 I'm on pins and needles waiting to find out. I will tell you.

Speaker 2 Just to add, though, if you were a Luca detractor,

Speaker 2 right,

Speaker 2 you would go, okay, well, he just runs his pick and roll until he gets the matchup that he wants. And it's a lot of staring around

Speaker 2 and the design of some of those Dallas teams were for that specific reason, right? But when he was with the other really good player, it didn't really work out.

Speaker 2 But Kyrie needed a place, and it worked out for Kyrie, even though I felt like during that playoff run last year, the ups were celebrated and the downs were never criticized because that's usually what happens in the number two anyway.

Speaker 2 But there were some moments throughout that run to the finals where you were like, you need more out of Kyrie here. And it's just not really that much of a topic.

Speaker 2 I felt like there were times watching where,

Speaker 2 like, Rudy only played 24 minutes, and I was like, all right, now I'm going to try to kill Rudy Gobert. And it's like, all right, but

Speaker 2 like, Austin Reeves is pretty good. LeBron's got a pretty decent resume.
I think that there's probably something to be said if you don't, if you don't get the switch that you want immediately,

Speaker 2 swing it.

Speaker 2 And I'm not like not. It's just not how he plays.

Speaker 1 He has seven years of habits. He's like a child actor who just learned on the set how to behave.
It is what it is.

Speaker 2 It crept into my head. Just a thought.

Speaker 2 I'm not, you know, we're also talking about one of the most efficient offensive players of all time, but, you know, there's also something to be said of like, everybody needs to touch the ball.

Speaker 2 I think they need to get going downhill too when Rudy's out, right? Like they need, if they're going to have Randall and Nas hanging around the rim,

Speaker 2 then you should just be like, I don't even care if you make it. I'm going.
I'm just going. I'm trying to finish over and over again.

Speaker 2 I like to see them be more aggressive during those non-rooty minutes.

Speaker 1 When we talk about the wild card guys, McDaniel's from Minnesota, no question. And I guess Nas too, but Nas is pretty consistent.

Speaker 2 You're so right. When Jaden's got a good game.
When McDaniel's good,

Speaker 2 did they win 70 games? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They look just amazing.
And Reeves is kind of the guy for L.A. in a lot of ways because when he's awesome, all of a sudden they seem like impossible to stop.

Speaker 1 But Minnesota, and this was, I had such a tough time with this series and finally ended up, I think I took Lakers in seven, but I really thought it was going to be a seven-game series where you have these two teams.

Speaker 1 The strengths and weaknesses are basically the same for the most part, except for the center spot. Like Minnesota's weak spot is point guard.

Speaker 1 I don't know how much, how many minutes Conley can play, but Conley's the guy every team targets, and he's the guy.

Speaker 2 It doesn't really matter for them. Right.
Because Ants playing point guard, basically.

Speaker 1 And then they can go bigger and really not have a point guard, but then you can pressure him. Like, there's, there's ways you can do it.
And the Lakers are similar.

Speaker 1 And Rui is basically there, Nas Reed, but Nas Reed's a better player.

Speaker 1 But they have this go-bear piece that the Lakers just don't have. They have this

Speaker 1 extra wrinkle they can bring in depending on the game. And the Lakers are kind of stuck with this roster, and it goes back to the Mark Williams trade.

Speaker 2 Can I give you a compliment? Yeah.

Speaker 2 You said years ago, we were talking about Carmelo in the playoffs. Yeah.
And you basically said, look, even though he isn't, he takes the floor with LeBron and Wade and these guys.

Speaker 1 And he feels like he's belongs.

Speaker 2 Right. Right.

Speaker 2 I'd say ant's a better player in comparison to like what ant's contemporaries are right now than maybe even like the gap between prime lebron and carmelo is wider than i think the gap between luca and ant say right now okay from 09 to 13 lebron was here and carmelo was there But Carmelo didn't take the floor going, oh my God, that guy's so much better than me, right?

Speaker 2 No. And Ant's never taking the floor thinking any of these guys are better than him.

Speaker 2 That has to be an incredible feeling now, like another year in with this group, with this team having a playoff run where it's like, even if things are going really bad, at least we know we can get it back to a guy that you can't really do anything with Ant.

Speaker 2 Seeing Ant in person, by the way, I would put him on the very short list of people that are worth to see in person. It is

Speaker 2 just another level of like impressive, not just because he can jump and do all these. There's just movement shit with him with the ball where you're like, what did he just do?

Speaker 2 And then, you know, you're not even watching. You're just waiting for the replay because you can't believe what you just saw.
So I think that is,

Speaker 2 I just thought it was a really valuable thing that you had said about that. It's valuable to a team.

Speaker 2 And I think Ant, it's not the same thing because I like Ant more than I like probably Carmelo, but it's important.

Speaker 1 He's certainly a better two-way boy.

Speaker 1 They have a bunch of guys like that. They're not irrational confidence because it's kind of rationally confident, but they have Nas Reed.
I think Dante's like that.

Speaker 1 Randall can have moments where he's like, if I could just get the ball more, I'd be a 35-point game guy.

Speaker 1 And I don't think it's a team that really cares if they're on the road or not. Here's what's interesting.
So in the Clippers series,

Speaker 1 the Clippers were minus 118 favorites on FanDuel when that series started. They lost game one, and now they're plus 118.
So it swung a little, but not that much.

Speaker 1 Minnesota was a pretty big underdog heading into the Lakers series. They were like, I think it was like plus 160, something like that.
They're now minus 153 favorites off of one game. That swung big.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think there was some matchup stuff there that the Sharps probably looked at and said, this is going to be long haul.

Speaker 1 Now, what they're forgetting is that literally everybody at Minnesota is going to foul out of game two. I'm just preparing America now.

Speaker 1 It could be a 60-foul game for them.

Speaker 2 Well, LA didn't get called for any fouls in game one is because they weren't near anybody.

Speaker 1 true.

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 1 that's our segment on Lakers, Timberwolves.

Speaker 2 And you can learn more at workday.com.

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Speaker 1 I'm excited to see if the Celtics can defend their title. I'm excited to see if Steph Curry and Jokic can keep going and going and going round after round.

Speaker 1 I'm excited for the potential of an LA versus LA playoff series.

Speaker 2 It's never happened.

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Speaker 2 Clippers nuggets.

Speaker 1 Game of the weekend?

Speaker 1 Has to be, right? Yeah. It was the best game we saw.
It was an awesome, awesome game.

Speaker 1 The Clippers curse is undefeated. I'm happy to talk about that later when I have to do that now.

Speaker 1 Here's my first question for you.

Speaker 1 If you're a Denver fan,

Speaker 1 are you more or less scared after that game?

Speaker 1 Do you feel better or worse? You won the game. Do you feel feel better?

Speaker 2 I don't feel better. Well, I feel better because I'm up a game.
So if we're just going with that, but if just what you watched and how it went down, I don't feel better. You?

Speaker 1 I think I feel worse.

Speaker 2 All right. So answer your own question.
I can't believe because you're right on this. So stay on it.

Speaker 1 No, I was curious on your take.

Speaker 1 If I'm a Denver fan, I can't believe I won that game. And I'm already fucking nervous as hell for the series.

Speaker 1 And I think that's why the line didn't really budge because you had Porter, who was a section eight, who basically got benched for Russell Westbrook, who was a big piece in the Coach GM drama where both guys ended up getting fired and who was just a complete roller coaster ride, possession of possession, and was a better option than Michael Porter, who makes $40 million a year.

Speaker 1 He's out there. And then you have Murray, who was seven for 20, and it felt worse.

Speaker 1 And the clips just have

Speaker 1 a bunch of fucking dudes to throw at him.

Speaker 1 What are you looking up?

Speaker 2 No, no, that's just to me. I'm listening to everything you're saying.
A bunch of dudes you can throw at him. I think you even swore in there.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I don't know what I'm getting out of Porter going forward.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I'm getting 50% shooting from Jamal Murray in any game with the way the Clippers were defending him. And I don't know if I'm ever getting a

Speaker 1 worse possession performance than the Clippers in big spots, where they just...

Speaker 1 Look, it's going to sound like I'm making excuses because I picked them to win the series. They just fucked the game up.
That was a, we fucked the game up.

Speaker 1 You leave that game and you're like, I can't believe we lost that game. And you're going through, there's 12 plays you're looking at.
Like, what are we doing here? We can't inbound the ball over here.

Speaker 1 We can't get a better shot here. We're sending Jokic a double team late here and leaving this guy 10 feet open.
Like, what are we doing?

Speaker 1 And I guarantee their coaches, and we, we both think they have one of the five best coaching staffs.

Speaker 1 I guarantee their coaches were fucking knocking tables over today, going, what the fuck were we doing in this? So, the question for me is

Speaker 1 bad game, or is this just like this is what this Clippers experience is going to be like between the fact that James Harden is involved. You have guys like Chris Dunn wide open,

Speaker 1 open for a reason, as Jalen Rose would say.

Speaker 1 And you also have Jokic, who's the best player in the series. But I still feel like the Clippers are going to win the series and I don't think it's crazy.

Speaker 2 We agree. I thought the Clippers with 20 turnovers, so many 20 turnovers were solo.
Bad turnovers, like getting ready to inbound the ball, you can't inbound the ball.

Speaker 2 You know, it's probably more on the pass than it is on Harden positioning himself. And Westbrook's energy was just off the charts because I want to get to his timeline of events here.

Speaker 2 But 20 turnovers, they took way more free throws. I think Jokic

Speaker 2 was as good as he was overall because we all expect that from him. He was atrocious on defense in the first half.

Speaker 2 So I don't know if that's like a halftime wake-up call and that he's just going to play at a better level. But when he got caught in any kind of like on-ball thing in the first half, it was a joke.

Speaker 2 There's a baseline drive on him where he was terrible. And then with Zoo,

Speaker 2 no matter what, and you can sort the numbers and say Zubach based on minimum number of possessions against Jokic, like you can make an argument that he's better against Jokic than anybody else.

Speaker 2 The very least that you're getting out of it, because you're never stopping Jokic, is that there's about four or five shots, I think, from game one. We're like, that's a tough shot.

Speaker 2 Like, he got even Jokic to have to take that shot. So, like, I, I feel really good about that.
I'm mad about the turnovers. I don't think it was just because of trapping.

Speaker 2 You know, every now and then, if there's a double team on the guy with the ball, like a cut would be nice from some of the other big name guys. But, you know, Hardin was really good.

Speaker 2 He hit those two floaters. He had the huge three.

Speaker 2 So there's not really like a thing you can point to there with Harden.

Speaker 2 I think it's this: whatever we want to do with this Westbrook topic, the fact that he took 17 shots in a playoff game, if I'm the Clippers, I'm like, good.

Speaker 2 If he takes that many shots, the rest of this series, including the biggest shot of the game.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Second. I'd say second.
The Brown three was the biggest shot of the game. Hold that thought.

Speaker 1 So Hardin was 32, 6, and 11 and played 42 minutes. Kawhi played 41 minutes.
At some point, they were like, we got to get this game. We can take this the way Porter was playing.

Speaker 2 It was overtime, too. Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 But I mean, with the way Porter is playing, I think they were like, we can steal this. We can steal this.
And it felt like they were going to win it.

Speaker 2 The Norm Powell,

Speaker 1 who I don't think has been the same guy since he came back from his injury. And I don't know if the stats completely back it up, but I think they do.

Speaker 2 The thing that he had a good march,

Speaker 2 he was slow, I think. A little up and down, right? I mean, he was, but I mean, he's playing less minutes too.

Speaker 1 I looked up the five-man numbers for all the, I didn't, I did it before the Golden State game for just game one.

Speaker 1 And you can see that these lineups play like 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 11 minutes. The Clippers played that one lineup 26 minutes with Dunn.

Speaker 1 26 of the 53. And they were like minus nine with that lineup.
And I wonder going forward, do we see a little less Dunn and a little more Derrick Jones or maybe a little more Batum?

Speaker 1 Do they go a little bit bigger, just play harden as a point guard? I think my point is they have moves to make, whereas Denver has no moves. If Porter's going to suck, then that's it.

Speaker 1 It's just Westbrook.

Speaker 2 Who else is playing?

Speaker 1 You have nobody else in your roster who can play in crunch time of a playoff game. So they're going to be at, you know, at the whim of this Russell Westbrook roller coaster.

Speaker 1 So take the floor because I know you have a timeline you want to do.

Speaker 2 I mean, we can keep going. LA's bench could outscored by the Denver bench, 23 to 13.

Speaker 2 That's weird. I mean, you want to start looking at how dumb plus minus can be.
I think sometimes it's telling. Sometimes it's totally misleading.
Zoo was minus eight in 39 minutes.

Speaker 2 Simmons, who doesn't want the ball in his fucking hands, was plus five on the game. So they're so desperate they have to play Simmons in those non-zoo center minutes.

Speaker 2 And even if you think, okay, at least he provides some kind of body that can move around a little bit, he doesn't, once he has the ball, like all he's doing is trying to figure out how he can get rid of it.

Speaker 2 And then he'll try to do like a pass that looks kind of cool or whatever.

Speaker 1 So I like when he gets a rebound and he takes off with the ball like it's going to be a fast break, Patrick Johnson style. But then he sees the half court logo and he's like, three, two, one.

Speaker 1 I have to get rid of this ball. I can't dribble within 35 feet of the basket.
I can't believe he's playing. The one thing I liked with him was I thought he was physical with Jokic.

Speaker 1 I guess that's if he can at least do that, he's probably playable in this series, but offensively, he's a zero.

Speaker 2 I can't believe he's a legitimate zero. I cannot believe he's playing real minutes right now, but it really speaks like they just don't want to go with Drew Eubanks over it.

Speaker 2 And I guess if you're being as nice as you possibly could, is that once you give him the outlet, he can cross half court with the ball. Right.
He looks good.

Speaker 2 heads up you're so right though when he takes off you're like oh my like this is gonna be on the vhs well remember

Speaker 1 pre-covered bench he would take those rebounds and he honestly looked like left-handed magics or lebron sometimes he really did i don't know what happened

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 we're we don't like

Speaker 2 there's just a lot from this game where the first half was playing out the way i thought it would play out i thought jokic is even worse defensively than you know whatever standards you have from he's in every action, they're hunting him constantly.

Speaker 2 And a lot of times, I think he doesn't get enough credit for how

Speaker 2 you know he's at least smart enough to know what position you're supposed to be in, which I think is more than half a defense.

Speaker 2 But at the rim, it's not like there's going to be a ton of contests or people are going to do U-turns, you know, like against the really good defensive guys, or you can see it's like, I don't really want to go in there.

Speaker 1 Well, it's a good one for Harden, too, because that floater he has, he just knows he's getting it against the

Speaker 2 against the Nuggets, nobody's blocking it. But

Speaker 2 I, I still was okay with the Clippers after this whole thing because

Speaker 2 let's go with that Westbrook timeline here. He hits the three.

Speaker 2 He hits the three.

Speaker 2 By the way, Denver's offensive rebounding the fourth quarter also won. They had seven offensive rebounds just in the fourth.
So Westbrook takes down a huge offensive rebound when they're down 96, 95.

Speaker 2 He hits the huge three,

Speaker 2 but then at the end of regulation, he gets it back again, has a chance to take a three, and then decides to jump in the air and throw it off another defender as the clock expires.

Speaker 2 Sure, like, okay, what's going on here?

Speaker 1 I actually felt like that got swept under the rug as one of the worst end-to-end gameplays in the history of basketball. Yeah, just even leading up.
I mean, he was put in a bad spot.

Speaker 1 There was three seconds left, but everything about it was a botch.

Speaker 2 Here's the other thing that'll be forgotten forever, and I'm going to forget it too.

Speaker 2 But up 108, 107, when they were trying to trap, Murray swings it to Westbrook to run clock.

Speaker 1 And then Westbrook.

Speaker 2 Yeah, 16 seconds left on the game clock, 13 left on the shot clock. He actually drives, and they said it was a pass to Aaron Gordon.

Speaker 2 I think Aaron Gordon just ended up with the ball, and it was almost a disastrous turnover when you factor in when all this Denver stuff started going south. The 16th.
And everybody was getting pissed.

Speaker 2 Right, right. Would you hear Bob Myers' reaction to that?

Speaker 1 The play settled it. I think they ended up getting free throws out of it somehow.
And Bob Myers, there's like a pause, and Bob Myers is like,

Speaker 1 well, I'm not sure Westbrook should have taken the bat. He was just like, I'm really not sure that should happen.
You kind of have to pull up there and maybe not do that.

Speaker 2 National broadcast default nice setting with that. I mean, there's another thing here that I wrote down.
Like, Jokic misses those two huge.

Speaker 2 Like, when do you expect Jokic in that spot to miss two free throws? So, right.

Speaker 2 Look, again, Ramona Shelburne had a really good note on ESPN.com on her piece today where where if you look at the spacing that L.A.

Speaker 2 gave Westbrook in this game, it averaged out to 9.6 feet on his three-point attempts, which is the most space he's ever had in a playoff game since they started tracking this stuff 11 years ago.

Speaker 2 Minimum five attempts. So nine feet is almost

Speaker 1 nine feet is

Speaker 2 two-thirds of the free throw line.

Speaker 1 That's like second and six.

Speaker 1 If you get four yards, three yards, maybe they spot it. See, they're second and seven or second and six, depending on how they spot it.
I really want to talk about the Westbrook spacing because,

Speaker 1 first of all, this was another thing we didn't properly kill the Clippers on.

Speaker 1 Whatever the fuck these staggered double teams they were sending at Jokic, it just felt like over and over again, it was the wrong timing of it. And he just had it figured out in the second half.

Speaker 1 And OT is they're going to do this. I'm going to just hit this open guy.
But that shot, Westbrook hit the three.

Speaker 1 I don't think I've ever seen anyone left more open at any level of basketball in any game I've ever watched in my my life including like girls high school basketball in the eighth grade he was open chris dunn just yokic got the ball and chris dunn was closest to westbrook but he was probably six feet away and he just said fuck it and he went to the top of the key to double jokic and westbrook had When I say nobody around him, if you just did a screenshot, it would look like he was by himself before the game, like taking threes and somebody else.

Speaker 2 Was there a fan on the court? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like he had time to line up. So then he made it and he's like, like, that's what I do.
That's what I do.

Speaker 2 He's doing that whole thing.

Speaker 1 It's like, dude, nobody's ever been left more open than you just were ever in a playoff game.

Speaker 2 Ever.

Speaker 1 It was amazing.

Speaker 2 I love that play

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 I wonder how many people would throw it to him in that spot. Now, the uncontested three shooting numbers for Westbrook this year are actually pretty good.
Well,

Speaker 1 by the way, for the whole Nuggets team, because if you look at their three-point shooting, it's kind of better than you think it would be.

Speaker 1 But the reason it's better than you think it would be because a lot of these threes are just wide open because of all the shots Jokic creates for everybody.

Speaker 1 So you're shooting 39%, but most of those shots are like wide open shots.

Speaker 2 I just would wonder if you could ever get a couple of beers in Jokic years from now and be like, did you have just a moment of hesitation of going, this is the right read, it's the right basketball play?

Speaker 2 Do I really want him taking this one?

Speaker 2 And I think that this is why you can't ever question this guy's motivations is because I think he just wants to play the game the perfect way and that he would make that pass again if Westbrook missed it.

Speaker 2 So that, that's my I think there's a lot of guys that don't pass it to him.

Speaker 1 I think he is just conditioned to do,

Speaker 1 he's the terminator, walking into the bar, making the calculations with all the math and just makes the decision. I think every decision is just whatever the best basketball play is.

Speaker 1 That's what he does. So even if it's Russell Westbrook, alone by 12 feet in the corner down to the biggest play of the game, I just think he's throwing it to him.
That's like, that's a wide open guy.

Speaker 1 I am conditioned to throw it to that guy. And that's it.

Speaker 2 You're right.

Speaker 1 I think it could have been, it could have been Saruti in the corner. Like, he doesn't care.
Whoever, that guy has a jersey on, I'm wearing the same jersey. He's open.
I throw him the ball.

Speaker 1 That's what I do.

Speaker 2 A criticism of Jokic, if you wouldn't mind.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 It's a great time.

Speaker 2 It's a great time.

Speaker 1 It's been

Speaker 1 a lot of Jokic love lately, especially on this podcast.

Speaker 2 Go ahead.

Speaker 2 So, the inbounding the ball thing that he does.

Speaker 2 All right, Denver fans, it's going to be okay. We'll get through this together.

Speaker 2 But this came up when it was the Ishbia thing. Remember when Ishbia had the ball and like Jokic went to grab it from him, and Ishbia was just like, whatever.

Speaker 2 I caught a ton of shit because I was like, I could totally see just Ishbia thinking,

Speaker 2 like, what are you doing? Even though if it were just a normal fan,

Speaker 2 you got to give the ball back. But

Speaker 2 the argument is,

Speaker 2 well, Jokic loves to check it with the ref so he can inbound the ball ahead of a defense getting things sorted out. All right.

Speaker 2 Because there's numerous times throughout a game where you can see that he's doing it.

Speaker 2 He's quick to get in a position to inbound, then get the ball back, and he's trying to catch the defense off guard. It's smart, right? He should keep doing it.

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 2 there are times where it doesn't matter how quickly Jokic wants to inbound the ball. The refs have to sort some shit out.
All right.

Speaker 2 And on that play where he and Van Gundy are battling for the basketball, there's no version of events where Jokic rips it from Van Gundy and then checks it and the ref just gives it back to him automatically, Advantage Denver.

Speaker 2 There seems to be these people that think that Jokic just gets to do whatever he wants on the inbounding, where like, what, what would happen? Like, the ref's like, oh, shit.

Speaker 1 He inbounded it, guys.

Speaker 2 Like, I know we have a review and I know we have all these different, but, you know, you know, he wanted to get it in. So I just let him.

Speaker 2 So there seems to be this misunderstanding of like who's in charge. Because there's plenty of times where it makes sense when the ref doesn't have anything that he has to sort out.

Speaker 2 There's nothing that they're worried about.

Speaker 2 There are other times where it's very clear, and it's not as many times, it's clear the refs have to like figure a couple things out before he gets to just start the game because he wants to start the game.

Speaker 2 I don't mind him doing it. I mind people defending the idea that he's supposed to be able to do it every single time.

Speaker 1 You know who used to do it once upon a time?

Speaker 2 Cedric Maxwell.

Speaker 1 50 minutes. Larry Joe Bird.

Speaker 1 He would get furious at the ref if they didn't throw him the ball in time.

Speaker 1 I think he saw it the same way as Jokic. It's almost like soccer, where the guy puts a free kick down really fast to

Speaker 1 try to get the advantage.

Speaker 2 Just

Speaker 2 like on the Ishbia. The Ishbia play specifically, there was other stuff they had to get through and figure out.
They weren't just going to go, well, we had some questions about what happened.

Speaker 2 You got the ball in.

Speaker 1 Ishbia. It's the most positive Ishbia reference in a while.

Speaker 2 The idea that he's on pace to be the worst owner in NBA history. Thank you.

Speaker 1 I was going to do this later, but let's do it now.

Speaker 1 Look, we both like Stephen A. I'm so tired of the historical high purpose.

Speaker 2 He's got my vote.

Speaker 1 There's been so many worst owners over the course of 80 years than Matt Ishbia just trading a couple too many things for Kevin Durant and throwing some swaps at a Bradley Beal trade.

Speaker 2 Sarver used to just sell picks.

Speaker 1 George Shin, they had to move the team to get him out of town because the town revolted against him owning a basketball team.

Speaker 1 Ted Steepian, they had to create a rule so that you couldn't trade draft pricks and could set it because he demolished the Cavaliers for the entire 1980s and basically helped the Magic Johnson 1980s Lakers dynasty with with stupid trades.

Speaker 1 Like, I could go through a million of these. He's not in the top 20 yet.

Speaker 2 Was Dan Snyder that long ago?

Speaker 1 Well, he was saying NBA, right?

Speaker 2 Oh, was it just NBA?

Speaker 1 But even if it's NBA, even if it's just NBA, I can come up with 20.

Speaker 2 We haven't even met him in four hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've had, but we've had a million of these. FYA, James Dolan wasn't exactly crushing it for 20 years there for the Knicks, right? HB is, I don't know, not to defend them, but Jesus.

Speaker 2 They had out.

Speaker 2 That's not defending him. That's just.

Speaker 1 It's ridiculous. Like this whole thing where everything has to be the greatest, the best.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's an ishbia pod. Let's pivot.
Let's get in front of that.

Speaker 1 Did that game make you feel better about voting for Jokic for MVP? Because it did for me.

Speaker 2 Did the OKC Memphis game make people feel worse voting for SGA? That seems totally unfair. So I retract that.
Sure.

Speaker 2 No, look, I was totally comfortable.

Speaker 1 i was totally don't 100 retract it because that game was a fucking two-hour um display of how awesome okc is

Speaker 1 like that team's awesome

Speaker 1 that was part of the case if you were kind of nudging a little toward jokic and a little away from sj it's like okc is awesome and okay was i mean they they beat memphis to the point that I almost wonder if like if you win game one by 60 points, should the series just end?

Speaker 1 Like, what would be the right number where it's like, look, if you lose by 60, we're not playing the other games.

Speaker 2 It's done. Well, I love the idea of this, but they're never giving up the television.

Speaker 1 No, I know they're not, but like, what would be a number that would be like, if you can't stay within 60 points of somebody in a game one, you can't play the rest of the games.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you get it to 60, does that mean you're up 2-0? We'll see a game three.

Speaker 1 It's a double win.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think if you get up 60 in an NBA playoff game, there should be some,

Speaker 2 like it shouldn't just be 1-0 on the graphic next time Memphis plays basketball. All right, so let's before we do any of that, though, because I don't know we're going to spend a ton of time on that.

Speaker 1 I have a Clippers thing, I don't want to leave Clippers' nuggets yet.

Speaker 2 I'm not done with it yet either, buddy. Great, go.
But the Jokic MVP, yes, I voted for him for MVP. Anybody listening to this podcast knew that I was going to do it.
I felt totally fine about it.

Speaker 2 I don't want to sit here and argue against SGA because he was awesome.

Speaker 1 SGA was awesome. He had an incredible candidacy.

Speaker 2 But you got there too, huh? I did.

Speaker 1 I did.

Speaker 1 You could tell it was coming like two, three weeks ago. The 60, 10, 10 game was probably the final thing for me, but I just, you know, I talked about it on my Thursday pod.
At some point,

Speaker 1 if somebody's having the best offensive season you've seen since Michael Jordan, you got to have to reconsider

Speaker 1 some of the standards you have for the award. I haven't seen that.

Speaker 2 But I think

Speaker 2 my point about you asking about,

Speaker 2 I wasn't on the fence and then like the third quarter. I went, okay, I got it.
I got it right.

Speaker 1 You're like, thank God.

Speaker 1 Clippers. I have some Clipper fans in my life.

Speaker 1 It's an underrated, oh my God, it's happening to us again team.

Speaker 1 Because we always think of like the typical, the big teams, like the Buffalo Bills, like these teams in the playoffs, where if something goes wrong, you start thinking about the history.

Speaker 1 And the Clippers are such sad sacks, you kind of forget how bad the history is. And that loss was a bad loss.
And yet, I still think the Clipper fans just feel like we can beat this team.

Speaker 1 We have a really good team.

Speaker 1 Kawhi being healthy and playing that many minutes and playing that many minutes just in general. It's one of those things you don't want to talk to on a no-hitter.

Speaker 1 But he looks really good.

Speaker 2 Like for

Speaker 1 whatever we thought he was going to be at this stage of his career at age 33, after all the time he's kind of missed and come and gone, like this is think like that.

Speaker 1 I think Hardin, I think his legs look really good for an older team.

Speaker 1 They look pretty good. I still think they're the second best team in the uh in the west.
Maybe Minnesota can steal that ceiling title for them, but I still think they're going to win the series.

Speaker 2 Um, you have to, if we're not done, are you done with the series? Because we haven't talked about Michael Porter Jr. We have to do a minute on that.
Go benched at the

Speaker 2 where do I have it here? 814 mark

Speaker 2 of the fourth quarter during my note-taking exercise to try to remember stuff of all these games. Yeah, I did have a first half, third quarter MPJ

Speaker 2 WTF question mark, just notation. That's code for, like, sometimes I'll just write down a guy's name and I'll go Andrew Wiggins, question mark.

Speaker 1 You know, Tobias Harris, three question marks?

Speaker 2 Hey, not in the first half. Not in game one.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The lack of urgency from that guy is,

Speaker 2 it's not new. This isn't breaking news, but it's like

Speaker 2 it's, it just blows your mind. Like, if you really try to like, okay, I'm gonna watch him, like, where's this guy been? Like, let me watch what he's doing out there.

Speaker 2 Doesn't fight for rebounds, doesn't fight for positioning. If it's an offensive rebound and he's on defense and then the guy's in front of him, he just kind of like is there.

Speaker 2 There's, there's no contest, there's no effort. So they bench him.

Speaker 2 And it's funny, too, because you're thinking about like, how's Westbrook going to play? Does this mean because Adelman's now coaching that we're going to see Pickett out there closing?

Speaker 2 Because that's the sample that we got in that Sacramento game where it was like, oh, wait a minute, Westbrook's going to be on the bench.

Speaker 1 That's how scary that is, though. They're going to put Pickett in that game, which is becoming a must-wing game.
Like, that would have been insane, but that was an actual option.

Speaker 2 But then it's, well, now it doesn't even matter because it's going to be Brown,

Speaker 2 Gordon, obviously, who would be one of the three main guys with Murray and Jokic. And then Brown's going to be out there with Westbrook because there's no Michael Michael Porter Jr.

Speaker 2 And so Adelman covered for him a bit, saying, hey, I didn't think it was fair, like to have him sit long stretches and then bring him back to him. It's tough to get back in.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 What does that tell you? That tells you that he cannot, Michael Porter Jr. is either somebody who does not respond to the criticism or responds poorly to it.

Speaker 2 Because I always think of like, if you're that bad, and this is not new for him, as I've said, like he's, he's a classic, like, hey, he hit a bunch of threes tonight, had 21 points, grabbed a few boards.

Speaker 2 Like he was really important for them, hit some awesome shots in the fourth quarter. Like, clearly, he's already done that in playoff games.

Speaker 2 But then, if he has zero, you know, like a lot of these guys that we talk about, you're not shocked. Hey, how do you end up with three points? Well, like, you got the other version of him.

Speaker 2 But Jokic's quote here was pretty incredible. Now, again, three points in 26 minutes.
And Jokic was asked about it.

Speaker 2 He said, If you're not going to be engaged right now, then you're not supposed to be playing this sport. So you had the coach

Speaker 2 probably knowing, like, I can't get on him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just got this job two weeks ago. I'm a 10th.

Speaker 2 We'll see. He's going to be back out there.
I'm sure he's going to be back out there with a closing group, and he's going to get another opportunity, but

Speaker 2 it'll always blow my mind.

Speaker 1 But here's why this matters, though.

Speaker 2 Not care. I don't know.

Speaker 1 In 23, when they won the title, he played 20 playoff games, 32.7 minutes a game.

Speaker 1 8.1 rebounds a game during that playoff stretch.

Speaker 1 And I thought he was good during that run. And we kind of hit

Speaker 1 whatever you had in your head of where his career was going to go. It was like, you know, it'd be cool if he had 40% of his threes and he tried on defense and he rebounded.

Speaker 1 If you just get those three things, we're good. And now he doesn't rebound.
And the effort isn't there in the same way. And I said, Zach and I, I was on Zach's pod last week.

Speaker 1 We were talking about OKC. And I asked how many guys on Denver would play for OKC.

Speaker 1 And we went and he's like, no, there'd be more. And I said, well, I don't think Porter would play for them.
I don't think he'd play over Wiggins. And Zach said, he'd play over Wiggins.

Speaker 1 And I don't know whether that's right or wrong. I genuinely don't think he would play over Wiggins.
I think Wiggins really gives a shit, plays defense, hits threes. He's athletic.
He gives a shit.

Speaker 1 I said that twice.

Speaker 1 I don't think Porter would get on the floor for them because he doesn't play hard enough. He wouldn't play.

Speaker 2 He wouldn't play over his version of him hard two years ago. He would have.
He would play over Chet. He wouldn't play over Dort.
He wouldn't play over Wallace. He wouldn't play over SGA.

Speaker 2 He wouldn't play over Jalen Williams 1.

Speaker 2 He wouldn't play over Caruso.

Speaker 1 It's basically the Wiggins spot.

Speaker 2 Is it Jeff Joe or Wiggins? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm playing both of those guys over Porter, this version of Porter.

Speaker 2 And knowing what they prioritize. Yeah.
He's the antithesis of what they're about.

Speaker 1 So here's the thing. This might have worked out for Denver, where Porter has some sort of come to Jesus moment, but he's also had a really, I think, difficult year.
And

Speaker 1 maybe that's affected the off-the-court stuff with his brother, which was, you know, pretty horrible.

Speaker 1 He's already won a title. So when you win a title, it's like, what am I? I don't have to sacrifice in the same way.
I'm already a champion.

Speaker 1 Um, and maybe you're in that mode of like, I'm tired of hearing about how great Jokic is.

Speaker 1 I'm good too. I'll never, nobody will ever appreciate me on this.
Like, who knows what's in his head, but whatever he did in game one was disgusting.

Speaker 2 It sucked.

Speaker 2 The problem is, Neov the Court stuff is significant, right? Because it's not just his brother. It's, it's, yeah, he's got a lot of shit going on.
Right. It's a lot of shit going on.

Speaker 2 But if this were

Speaker 2 abnormal for him

Speaker 2 in a game,

Speaker 2 I think those excuses

Speaker 2 would be more of like

Speaker 2 the conclusion that I've come to. The problem is, is this is kind of who he's been.

Speaker 2 This has always been, and it's just even crazier, too, like thinking back to all of the stories that worked their way out of like the divide between Calvin Booth and Mike Ballone and then Booth at one point saying, hey, we need to trade Michael Porter Jr.

Speaker 2 because there'd probably still be be some kind of fake attraction to the idea of him. He's still really young.
What he's 26, 27.

Speaker 1 He's two more years. Would you trade him for Levine?

Speaker 2 I think Levine is a bigger losing player than even Michael Porter Jr. is because he has the ball in his hands more.
So

Speaker 2 probably not. But that there was this Missouri connection, and you just think, like, what are you guys talking about? That can't be true.

Speaker 2 He was barely at Mizzou. He was barely there.
And so now it's like this guy that seems to be indifferent at the wrong times.

Speaker 1 I'm looking at our YouTube chat to see if anybody has Michael Porter Jr.

Speaker 1 Doesn't seem like he's very popular in the chat. But the thing is, they don't just need him.

Speaker 1 They actually need him to play like 32 to 35 minutes a game. It's not just like, oh, it'd be nice if he helped us out.
They actually need real minutes from him because the more minutes he plays,

Speaker 1 you know, the less other people play.

Speaker 2 But just to review, though, he played 53 minutes in college, 53 minutes. And we're supposed to believe because of the Missouri connection to ownership.

Speaker 2 That's like me being on Minneapolis Zillow because I've used the airport.

Speaker 2 Like, I like it here. Like, have you ever been outside of the airport? Like, I've been to that airport probably 40, 50 times.
I've never been to the town.

Speaker 1 I think I've been to the Atlanta airport like 30 times and I've been to Atlanta twice.

Speaker 2 Only that'd be an interesting, that would be an interesting one.

Speaker 1 Most airports you've been in versus times you've actually been in the city.

Speaker 2 Detroit's up there, but I've been to Detroit.

Speaker 1 Hartford, Detroit, Hartford, Detroit to somewhere else. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I used to just spend a lot of time in Detroit. Who wouldn't? I'd leave Hartford being like, if I can do this, I can do Detroit.
But when I

Speaker 2 Canada's right there, I've never been to Minneapolis.

Speaker 1 I didn't even go for the Super Bowl.

Speaker 2 I skipped that one. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats.

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Speaker 1 Head to BrooksRunning.com to learn more. Can we do OKC Grizz really quick?

Speaker 1 I think Memphis is not a good basketball team, and it made me mad that Dallas couldn't beat them. And I bet the sweep immediately, like immediately for this series.
Maybe I'll be wrong.

Speaker 2 What was the odds? What were the payouts on that?

Speaker 1 What would that be? The odds were,

Speaker 1 I have that here.

Speaker 1 Plus 140. That's what I got it at.

Speaker 1 That was as big of a first half ass kicking as I can probably ever remember watching in a play off game.

Speaker 1 And I know there were games where there were bigger blowouts, but it wasn't just that they were killing them. It was like they were just rebounding and getting three-on-ones.
And

Speaker 1 I thought Memphis gave up. It was a Jaron Jackson, trademark, your trademark, an all-time Hall of Fame Tobias Harris game.
I didn't realize he was out there for a half hour at one point.

Speaker 1 I thought he maybe left and was playing video games in the locker room, but it turned out he was still out there.

Speaker 1 It's just, it's just grim, and I don't see any chance.

Speaker 1 This is a team that is really built to defend Ja

Speaker 1 with as many options as you could possibly come up with, plus rim protection. And there's, you know, unless Desmond Bain's just going to hit 12 threes in a game, I don't see a case.
But

Speaker 1 I think Memphis, can we officially make them a team to watch this summer? Because I don't feel like this will be the same nucleus in a couple months.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know. Ownership loves Jaw, and Jaron had a great year this year.
He was terrible today.

Speaker 2 It's an awful matchup for them because it's Jaw going up against Dort and then Bane's going up against Jay Will. So then

Speaker 2 it's nine for 29 combined from your back court, who physically has no chance against that group.

Speaker 2 And then on top of everything else, Jaron Jackson's like, shit, so I get Chet or Harten Hartenstein against me here.

Speaker 1 Hartenstein was, I thought, incredible today.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Bain was a minus 11.

Speaker 2 Bain was a minus 51. JJ was two for 13.

Speaker 1 Minus 51?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you don't see that a lot. At one point, I was rooting.
110.55 was in play.

Speaker 2 I didn't get there. I watched the entire game.

Speaker 1 My mom was over for Easter, and I was like, hold on. Like,

Speaker 1 I was really, I like the double the size.

Speaker 2 That sounds like something I would say. Don't you think that's a little sad? You watched this whole game and your mother was in town? Well, I had it on.

Speaker 1 It was on the kitchen. I was focused on it.

Speaker 2 There are Bloody Marys. But here's the other part.
SGA started this game one of nine, and it was 63 to 32. SGA had 15 points.
It's his lowest total since Team Kenny and Team Shaq.

Speaker 2 If you don't count those games, it's the lowest. The lowest he had had was very early in the season when he had 18.

Speaker 2 So game one of the playoffs, they come out here and do this, and he only had 15 points, and he missed like all of his shots until he hits them or a little bit later. This was so gross.

Speaker 2 It's the biggest blowout in the playoffs in 10 years when the Bulls beat the Bucs back in 2015 by 54 points.

Speaker 2 And it's so easy to say, but yeah, but this felt worse. I think it's just because it's like, if I have to hear about the Grizzlies being a fucking two seed anymore, it's like, yeah, all right.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 The standings broke one way, and you were kind of a two seed. And you were two seeds in that other year.

Speaker 2 And you guys really are proud. Like, when are you guys raising the two seed banner? This started, like, we were a two-seed at one point.

Speaker 1 And it's that, what was that, Indy Colts banner?

Speaker 1 What was it? The

Speaker 1 AFC South Champs or whatever?

Speaker 2 Is that what it was? I don't know.

Speaker 1 They had a bad banner. I'm trying to, that would be a good website.
Worse banners.

Speaker 2 That would be. You start that if things don't work.

Speaker 1 I know for that after the pod.

Speaker 2 I guess, look, anybody that heard the Verno pod could tell I was kind of like running out of patience with this Memphis group. Oh, that was what Saruta said.

Speaker 1 2014 AFC finalists was the Colts banner.

Speaker 1 AFC championship finalists.

Speaker 2 It's pretty bad. It's a tough banner.
I just, you know, the buildup and like Jaws looking around and it's like, all right.

Speaker 2 And then Jalen Rose is even like his shoe comes out today and he wants to announce to the world that like, even though SGA is getting all this love, like I'm at this level.

Speaker 2 And then OKC is just looking at me like, what are you going to do? We're going to go under every screen. You're going to hit the first three.
You're going to miss the rest of them.

Speaker 2 And then you're going to do shit where you're getting to the paint. Sometimes it works.

Speaker 2 But against us, like if you wait around against OKC, as I've said all season long, if you dick around with the basketball, they're going to make you pay.

Speaker 2 And so breaking the paint and then just kind of dancing around, hoping you're going to get some angle against all these guys that are so much bigger than you.

Speaker 2 So there sounds like there's like real dislike. in my voice.

Speaker 2 I know when I talk about Memphis, and I'm, I actually feel bad about it a little bit because I think they do do a really good job and they've done like a really good job on the margins with all these players where I'm like, hey, nobody really liked this guy.

Speaker 2 They were smart about it. They've nailed all these draft picks.
Even Pippen Jr., like, that guy's going to play a really long time. I love his toughness.

Speaker 2 But to come out and just get stomped like that,

Speaker 2 it should be, however, the rest of the series goes, this should have been some kind of wake-up call of like,

Speaker 2 we might be lying to ourselves down here a little bit about what our ceiling actually is, but they probably won't do anything because Jaws easily the most famous guy.

Speaker 1 in sports. You could talk yourself into a, well, the coach thing was weird.
We don't have Brandon Clark. Jalen Wells got hurt.

Speaker 2 Let's take a look at this in the offseason.

Speaker 1 Edie turned out to be a great pick, feeling good there.

Speaker 2 Great pick? I think he's serviceable.

Speaker 1 Well, for number nine.

Speaker 2 For that. In a bad track,

Speaker 2 yeah. But

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to do the glass hat full Grizzlies case. The question for me is, if you're sitting in whatever office

Speaker 1 talking about let's make a big move, who's out there,

Speaker 1 whether Memphis would admit it or not, they're not hanging up if you're like, I have this really good offer for John Moran. Can we talk about it?

Speaker 2 They're not going to like, nope.

Speaker 2 I think John's the kind of guy owners love and will defend forever because he's their attraction. And if you're in Memphis, that's probably as important as, well, I guess they were a two-seat.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 Well, they have their three guys

Speaker 1 and they feel a million miles away from OKC. And OKC is still stacking up and they have three draft picks this draft.
And I mean, you're so far away. I don't know.

Speaker 1 It'd be a tough, tough exit interview for the, for the group. And we don't know if that coach is coming.
I'd heard that the,

Speaker 1 maybe they did that Jenkins move because they wanted to lock down that coach because they're afraid they're going to lose him. Um, so maybe he's the coach going forward.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 But anyway, I'm going to probably not watch a lot of that series going forward unless the score is like 150 and I can get excited that they might double a score.

Speaker 2 What would OKC, let me ask you this, what would OKC need to do, or is it irrelevant because it's Memphis for before people start to realize like how special this team is?

Speaker 1 It's not going to happen until they play Lakers.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's Clippers Denver.

Speaker 1 Probably that series, probably round two if they're just walloping whoever comes out of that Clippers Denver thing. That's when I think people would be like, holy shit.
But yeah, it's not.

Speaker 1 I just think people aren't going to believe it until they see it against real teams in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Nick's Pistons.

Speaker 1 What is your opinion for why Cade was so bad in that game? I have an opinion, but I'm interested in yours. Because Cade was bad.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was.

Speaker 2 I think OG makes you work a lot, and I think it kind of slows down the first thing that you're going to do.

Speaker 2 I thought they were doing a better job bringing him off the ball in some of the regular season games and then coming back to the ball. It seemed like they kind of abandoned a lot of that stuff.

Speaker 2 Hey, they were a mess. The five-second violation to start the fourth quarter.
Next possession, 24-second violation, turnover, turnover, turnover, campaign

Speaker 2 people going off. The missed dunk, although I'll say, got the ball back and scored.

Speaker 2 Made up for it.

Speaker 2 That was a disaster starter. That's 21-0 run the whole time.
You seem like you have something specific, though, to the Cade matchup here that you want to.

Speaker 1 No, you said the number one thing I would have said is:

Speaker 1 first of all, OG's been awesome for two months here, and I thought he was really good yesterday.

Speaker 1 No, I had a big picture point.

Speaker 1 I don't think home court matters anymore, really, that much, as we saw with how good the Celtics are on the road. And at home, they would just blow these games left and right.
And

Speaker 1 we've seen teams lose game sevens at home over and over again every playoffs.

Speaker 1 And in general, I just don't think it's not like it was in the 80s, you know, and even if you're like watching Celtic City, like some of those games that even I was lucky enough to be at.

Speaker 1 The crowds were different. The crowds were on top of you.
You had the people on the bench. They had people sitting in the rows behind them, just screaming at them the whole game.

Speaker 1 There was like an intimidation factor that I think is just not there anymore.

Speaker 1 I think it's just more benevolent to be on the road, just in general.

Speaker 1 It's easier to fly to a game. Your private jets, your standard nice hotels, there's just things that are more in your favor if you're the road team.

Speaker 1 I think the Knicks still have a home court advantage.

Speaker 1 I thought the pistons got rattled when that 21 to nothing, as that was happening, it was a thing that you don't really see that often anymore, a younger team.

Speaker 1 getting affected by the momentum of a game and how much the crowd was into it. Because I thought the crowd was great.

Speaker 1 And I knew a bunch of people that were there who said the same thing, but I thought the crowd and the energy of what they had and what some of the players had and Towns,

Speaker 1 which

Speaker 1 that was about as much fun as I've had watching Towns as a two-way guy, probably ever.

Speaker 1 OG, Brunson was, you know, Brunson, it seems like he's hurt, then he's not hurt, then he seems hurt again, then he's fine. But Brunson was gutting it out.

Speaker 1 And everybody won from that game except for Bridges because Bridges was bad and he was on bench basically the entire time they brought it back.

Speaker 1 But if you're Detroit, you're like, fuck, we got this incredible Harris game, right? Hit 22, what, at halftime?

Speaker 1 We were able to match their energy. Stewart gets hurt at the beginning of the fourth quarter and they get nothing from Cade, but they still hung around, hung around, hung around.

Speaker 1 And then the Knicks just made them look like the young team that wasn't ready to be in an atmosphere like that. That was my takeaway.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think all that's really fair. That place is awesome.

Speaker 2 That's not breaking news, but

Speaker 2 it really kind of went the way I thought. Like, I thought the third quarter was so impressive from Detroit.
Yeah, winning that one 36-26, I'm going, this is not what I expected.

Speaker 2 Like, I just figured Detroit's going to get reminded that there's levels to this, and that New York, even though they had the injuries last year, they're just going to be way more comfortable in these games than Detroit's going to be.

Speaker 2 And if I look at a Malik Beasley,

Speaker 2 who you know hit a ton of of shots I feel like

Speaker 2 do I want do I expect that those are going to go in in the fourth quarter like he's he's in that group for me right now where like he's feeling himself he's been awesome this entire season he's so important to what they do you know just the idea of actually having spacing around k this year as opposed to what they tried to do last year But I don't know that I expect those shots to go in in the fourth quarter.

Speaker 2 And then you have another play where there's a turnover. And it's, you know, look, this is a playoff game.
New York's running away with this thing. The place is going crazy.
Tons of momentum.

Speaker 2 Get back on defense. Tim Hardaway lets Brunson run away from him.
There was just so many bad plays, turnovers, looking like they're not,

Speaker 2 they just weren't up to the task at all of the emotion of what that game was to close it.

Speaker 2 And I think the cat part of it that's great for him in this series is even if Stewart's going to stretch the floor a little bit, it's not going to lose you the game.

Speaker 2 So Kat doesn't really have to worry about that. Cat has to figure out a way to just be in position on some of the Cade stuff that he was out of position on in the third quarter.

Speaker 2 But if Durin's in, as much as he's going to make you work, because he's a beast out there, you don't really have to defend him.

Speaker 2 You just, and Kat's big enough and he's rebounded like at a Hall of Fame level his entire career. So he's going to be able to fight for some of those rebounds.

Speaker 2 I'm sure Kat's looking at this being like, okay, I'm going to get hurt on some of these where I come up to meet the ball and I'm going to get burnt.

Speaker 2 But I'm also not worrying about like Porzingis as a stretch five, or I'm not worrying about some super dynamic guy who's going to get all of these options offensively at center.

Speaker 2 So that's going to be a bit of a relief for him. And, you know, campaign scoring 11 points in just a few minutes.
They didn't even bring back Mikhail to your point until like it was kind of over. So

Speaker 2 I don't know that there's a, if Detroit had done this, I just think they were completely overwhelmed, which the fourth quarter made way more sense to me than the third quarter did yesterday.

Speaker 1 The third quarter to the fourth quarter was hilarious from a tech standpoint because I think at this point, I was either at WrestleMania or we were going there, and

Speaker 1 I just decided it's too hard for me to watch this next game. I'm going to just bang it out when I get home.
I'll bang out like the second half.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I had these texts. I won't say who sent them, but one of them was:

Speaker 1 This is very disturbing to say the least. No ball movement.
Brunson dribbling away. They're a better team with Robinson.
And then 10 minutes later, I take it all back. That was one.

Speaker 1 There was

Speaker 1 another one.

Speaker 2 Hold on.

Speaker 1 The Dante Julius trade is such a disaster. Motherfuck.
And then right after, time stamp above is when we tie game, by the way, it doesn't matter. And then I was like, ha ha, you guys came back.

Speaker 1 It was a lot of those. The Knicks fans were freaking out in the third quarter.
And that was what was so funny when the energy shifted, watching on TV, knowing what had already happened.

Speaker 1 Look.

Speaker 1 It's a really good team. I don't think they're in the class of Boston.
Like, to me, they remind me of, oh, man, this is going to get clipped and probably come back to haunt me.

Speaker 1 They remind me of one of those NFL teams, like a Houston Texans season where they win the wild card game. And it's like, do you think they can win three more? And it's like, not really.

Speaker 1 I just think they're going to beat the teams that they're better than. And when they get to that next class, that higher class, I don't think they have enough.

Speaker 1 Even the campaign thing, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 He's going to do that once every three weeks, right? That's not going to be a recurring thing with with campaign. That's if he does that again, it'll be a miracle.

Speaker 2 It's campaign. I don't know how, what other conclusion is anyone supposed to come to? Okay.

Speaker 2 I mean, this becomes: is this what you think is going to happen based on your analysis, or is this what you hope happens because you have a poster at home? All right.

Speaker 2 And I can't, I can't argue with anybody like that. The only evidence we have is that they don't beat the elite teams because they didn't beat the elite teams.

Speaker 2 I mean, they basically won a fucking parade for losing in overtime to the Celtics. Like the reaction that I saw from that stuff was: hey, this is a turning point and proves that

Speaker 2 they can hang with this team.

Speaker 2 They should smoke Detroit. Detroit's not ready for this.

Speaker 2 And they proved it in the fourth quarter. But that third quarter was fun.
That third quarter, I was like, what's going on here?

Speaker 1 There's one thing with Detroit that I'm going to be really interested to see if they do it a little more. I thought Schroeder had a really interesting second half.

Speaker 1 And I've always liked Schroeder, as you know, like I probably like him more than most, but I think he's a pest. I always felt like he was the best guy in the league defending Steph.

Speaker 1 Out of anybody in the league, he would have been the number one guy I picked to just like bug Steph. And I feel like he can bug Brunson.

Speaker 1 And I do think there's some sort of lineup with two smaller guards with Beasley, with the center, and then with the shooter that they might be able to at least hang around in these games.

Speaker 1 If I'm the Pistons,

Speaker 1 I thought this is one of my favorite bets that this series would not go six games. I still don't think it's going to go six games.

Speaker 1 But if I'm the Pistons, you're at least talking yourself into: look, Cade's not going to be that bad again. He was really good all year.
Like, he has another, this will be a good motivating for them.

Speaker 2 That's that's there's also something with Bickerstaff in this one that I don't know if it's worth even mentioning, but I'm going to mention it because it's a podcast. Okay.

Speaker 2 Matching the Asara minutes with Brunson. Now, Asar should be plenty fresh.
He's young. He's literally more athletic than everybody else in the league, except for maybe his brother, an aunt, you know.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 they actually had him out there when Brunson wasn't in in the start of the fourth quarter. And I was just wondering.

Speaker 1 It should be like a cornerback coming in to just defend a specific receiver.

Speaker 2 Because even if you expect like no one with that profile and that age would ever actually get tired in a basketball game, I imagine the excitement and the adrenaline because of the stakes and the playoffs.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know if I'd want to waste a couple minutes of him being out there chasing other dudes around. And then Bickerstaff's clearly, too, you know, a bit like the Eme thing,

Speaker 2 he was trying to figure out what he thought was the best lineup because it's like, do I want to have a star out there without any kind of spacing?

Speaker 2 Because spacing is like the number one thing with Cade. I have to find a way to get spacing.
But then it means defensively, like, does that mean now we've got guys hunting Beasley?

Speaker 2 We have guys hunting Hardaway. And by the way, if the Pistons get down 2-0 here, or it's ugly, if it were ugly at the end of game two, I'm fully expecting like Avs Red Wings type of moment.

Speaker 2 Like somebody, Beasley is down for something. Schroeder's not afraid or screw around.
I don't know if it'd be a SAR.

Speaker 1 I thought it would happen during that 21-0 run.

Speaker 1 I was waiting for the clothesline or, you know, something like that. And by the way, that also should have been Memphis today.

Speaker 1 How many baskets can OKC before you somebody on the you just have to at least contest a layup for God's sakes? It's pretty brutal. I'm not doing the old guy.

Speaker 1 Back in my day, we would have clothesline, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 Well, the problem is,

Speaker 2 when Memphis, there was one miss on that Jalen Williams dunk, not the one where he dunked on everybody. I think that was a little later.

Speaker 2 There was one earlier one where outside of, I think it was Pippen or Bain missed the shot and he was deep in the paint.

Speaker 2 And then I looked at where everybody was in transition and all four other Memphis players were feet below the free throw line. Like a couple were on the baseline.
All four weren't on the baseline.

Speaker 2 So they didn't even have anybody positioned to do anything. Yeah, it was Jalen Williams was gone.

Speaker 1 I think you're right about game two. They're going to definitely muck it up.

Speaker 1 That would be my Detroit. That would be my guess.

Speaker 1 We are going to get a way more physical game. And we'll see the Bridges piece of it, which has been up and down all year, and we've talked about it a bunch of times.

Speaker 2 But he finished better. He definitely finished better, man.

Speaker 2 I felt great about him as the season went on.

Speaker 1 But it was a storyline is my point. It was discussed on and off during the season.
I just want to shout out one thing that Thompson does.

Speaker 1 I think he's the number one guy.

Speaker 1 If I'm inbounding the ball and I'm a point guard and I just have to dribble 50 feet to set up my offense, I think he's the number one guy I wouldn't want to see in front of me.

Speaker 1 There's something about what he does with cutting the angles off to the guy, like pushing them toward the sidelines, but being able to move his feet with his hands up. I've never seen anybody.

Speaker 1 I can't think of anybody who's been better.

Speaker 1 Like, maybe like,

Speaker 2 I don't remember that one.

Speaker 1 You even go way back for me. Pippen used to do that.
Remember when Pippen and Jordan would do this sometimes where they'd be like, hey, let's just go get the ball. And they would just like

Speaker 1 defend 94 feet and people like literally couldn't dribble the ball up to midcourt. He is so terrifying.

Speaker 1 But I think for the Pistons, like putting those miles on Brunson where he's just like actually working just to get the ball 60 feet. Like it's a real thing.
So I bet they do that more.

Speaker 2 Well, that play where Brunson freaked out and got mad and started clapping at the ref,

Speaker 2 Assar had position on him. He just rode him right out of bounds.
And maybe if I had said Alvin Robertson, you would have remembered.

Speaker 1 Alvin

Speaker 1 had a good fight with Shaq.

Speaker 1 Remember that one?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know why I used David Robinson's last name, but Spurs getting older.

Speaker 1 We're getting old.

Speaker 1 Cavs heat, is there anything you need to see from Cleveland this series?

Speaker 2 Man, Morty Jerome. 20 of 28 points.

Speaker 1 How many games has he done this? Like 20? Where he just completely takes over a game?

Speaker 2 Huh? Six. It's not 20.

Speaker 1 You think it's 20? No, where he just takes over like a four-minute stretch of a game.

Speaker 2 You're laying in a game.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 This felt like a lot. I mean, he just comes in.

Speaker 1 We spoke 17 points in five minutes.

Speaker 2 Mitchell and Garland are taking turns, so that's all working. So there was never like that lull.
And then

Speaker 2 if you're Miami and you're fighting, you're trying so hard. Like you have no chance in the playoffs with the construction of this team.

Speaker 2 And this is the best I've ever felt about Hero as a shot creator, right?

Speaker 2 Him being the one option, you get to see some of the stuff that he's capable of doing. And it's really, really impressive.

Speaker 2 It's also really hard when the number two is Andrew Wiggins, who has like three makes in the first quarter and then didn't have another make until like the fourth quarter.

Speaker 2 And I think he had like two more, but it was just one was like sort of in the game and the other one was completely irrelevant.

Speaker 2 So part of the Andrew Wiggins experience, as much as I love Bam, I love Bam.

Speaker 2 But offensively, there's going to be some limitations there. So that's your one-two if you're Miami trying to hang with Cleveland that feels like they have all of these offensive options.

Speaker 2 And Ty Jerome comes in to close the game, scoring 20 of 28 points of Cleveland.

Speaker 1 And making like a 30-footer. Right.
You left out with your Miami options.

Speaker 1 You left out the high screen with our guy, Davion.

Speaker 2 How about him at the Atlanta?

Speaker 2 Like, it's a little different with Trey Young is assigned to you, but Davion did have some more buckets because Davion feels like he probes a lot, and there's certain people that he doesn't want to challenge.

Speaker 2 So I've been kind of mixed on how much is he really giving you offensively? And he's been terrific for him.

Speaker 1 He's definitely a rotation guy. Oh, easily.
I think next year he's 100% could be on a good team playing 15 to 20 minutes a game.

Speaker 1 But the thing, I texted this to you. I still don't understand why they punted on Schroeder and what the thinking was with that.

Speaker 1 And I'm sure there was tax apron stuff, but I don't understand how the team we're watching in this game today didn't need Schroeder for 20 minutes, 25 minutes. Like they basically nudged him away.

Speaker 1 And I know there were some financial implications to it, but it's a weird one.

Speaker 2 For Hero to have to go up against this defense, knowing that even if you pull a rabbit out of your hat, because he is like, there are some shots that Hero gets into that are really high-level shots.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Just on my end.

Speaker 1 The runner-floater things he's doing is

Speaker 2 pretty nuts. You know, I can't believe Portland said no to him in that Liller trade because this guy's awesome.

Speaker 2 But the rest of the guys around him, like, and even Bam, like, there's only certain places he can start with the ball in his hands to be like, hey, we need a bucket now, Bam.

Speaker 2 So then Hero's coming out of there. That's why I just, you kept looking at the score, going, when is this thing going to be over? When is it going to be over?

Speaker 2 There's no way Cleveland's actually going to lose. There's no way this is going to be like a possession.

Speaker 1 Well, Miami's not Miami shouldn't be a playoff team. And honestly, neither should Memphis.
Like, there's 13 teams. There's Memphis and Miami.

Speaker 1 There's,

Speaker 1 there's, you know, I think Orlando at least can throw some punches and has two good scores. Like, they feel playoff teamy to me, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay, with them in the playoffs. They're obviously a guy short, but.

Speaker 2 The argument for the play-in is,

Speaker 2 you know, there's plenty of teams that have had injuries, and Memphis would say, hey, look, if we'd had Jaw the full year, but I don't know. The West is so packed.

Speaker 2 Does it guarantee that they're a top six? I don't think that guarantees it.

Speaker 1 I think the Kyrie thing was the biggest one of all of them. I think if Kyrie had never gotten hurt, I think Dallas would have been a really good eight seed.

Speaker 1 They would have lost, but at least they would have had defense and a score, and they would have been something of a team.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that would have been a fun team. I'm with you there.
But I just want to come full circle on this whole play-in thing. Yeah.
Because this was the reason I didn't like it.

Speaker 2 Because you were going to have these teams.

Speaker 2 There was, I would think, an eight-game win separation based on the 10 seed in the West.

Speaker 2 And then, what, the seven seed or eighth seed? I forget. So I guess I could pull it up right now.
But the point stands is that.

Speaker 2 Why are you giving these teams that stink another chance to get into this entire thing?

Speaker 2 Now, there still had to be eight teams, but it just was funny like when you had Lakers Warriors with the Steph LeBron showdown four years ago, and it's like, oh, I thought the play-in stunk.

Speaker 2 And it's like, no, it's the principle. It is what the play-in stands for.
If the games are good, then of course we're all going to enjoy good games. But guess what happened this year?

Speaker 2 Now everybody doesn't like the play-in simply because of the results of the games and whether or not they were entertaining.

Speaker 1 Don't tell Amazon because I think this is part of their package.

Speaker 1 Amazon was excited for the play-in, but how many goods?

Speaker 2 Well, it's not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 It doesn't matter. It's just we went two for six in the play-in this year.

Speaker 1 I'd love to know the batting average for the four years, but it's got to be about 30%.

Speaker 2 Miami, Atlanta was great.

Speaker 2 It was a fun one. I enjoyed it as well.

Speaker 1 It was a fun one.

Speaker 1 I wonder if it should just be

Speaker 1 8-9, winner of 8-9 plays the 7 for the 7-8 seeding or something like that. And we just get rid of the 10th seed.

Speaker 1 I think it's going to be hard to find a 10th seed that kind of deserves to get any sort of stage. You're going to end end up in like that weird Sacramento thing.

Speaker 1 I mean, we didn't even talk about the Sacramento.

Speaker 1 This is now a top three. What the hell is this organization going to do? Organization.
The Sabonis piece of it.

Speaker 1 You know.

Speaker 2 And I thought Monio War that did a good job.

Speaker 2 I guarantee you Vivek wanted Zach Levine.

Speaker 2 He seems like the kind of guy an owner would be like, but he scores a million points.

Speaker 1 Celtics, Orlando, anything before we go to Pacers Bucks?

Speaker 2 The last one? Come on. I thought we were going to lead with it.
That's what you had said in the text, the show rundown that I got.

Speaker 1 Which one?

Speaker 2 Go for it.

Speaker 2 Go for it. Come on.
Give us a couple minutes, Bill.

Speaker 1 The Celtics are really good. Orlando doesn't have enough good players, and Orlando needs some sort of guard who can create stuff for them because what they have is not enough.

Speaker 1 That's my analysis. The disparity between the two teams was significant.

Speaker 1 I never for a split second thought the Celtics were in danger of losing the game.

Speaker 1 And Tatum didn't even play well offensively. He's had a good rebounding game.
I liked how hard he played. I thought he was good defensively.
I thought he attacked the rim, but the guards won the game.

Speaker 1 And Drew clearly has multiple gears. Like the Drew that was in the game today, they were, Drew, he's doing the, Chad Finn called it the Dennis Johnson.

Speaker 1 Like, I'll turn it on when the games start mattering. And he's, you know, he's, he just looked great.

Speaker 1 Porzingis looks good. Team looks good feeling good jalen's knee looked okay

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 1 didn't see any red flags anywhere tatum wrist x-rays all

Speaker 1 good yeah oh yeah i had a couple celtic fans in my life who were mad about that foul i thought it was i thought it was a good play i thought they were trying to stop a dunk like it's playoff basketball your job is to

Speaker 1 try to stop somebody from dunking in traffic you know and they caught a flagrant one on it i did i could have gone either way on it but i didn't have a problem with that i didn't think it it was cheap, did you?

Speaker 2 No, I didn't even think it was a flagrant run. It all depends on how you land.

Speaker 2 Everybody's losing their mind. If you want to tell me, Wendell Carter had his hand in his back a little bit, okay, fine.
But I didn't think it was like an extended arm thing out.

Speaker 2 But the standard of what we all now think is flagrant, it's like concussion experts on Twitter on Thursday Night Football. Being like, I don't know, dude, you didn't look very good.

Speaker 2 Be like, you're not even on the sideline, dude. You're home.

Speaker 2 Look, I didn't think it was a flagrant foul, but you're right. I mean, Tatum's eight of 22, 1-8 from 3.
Jalen Brown, 6 of 14.

Speaker 2 And by the way, his foul at at the end of the third quarter, which then restarted the end of the third quarter, like he has got, I don't know what's going on over there at Harvard, but there needs to be a,

Speaker 2 hey, this would be a good time to foul. This would be a bad time to foul.
Maybe it's a one-card conference. Yeah, it doesn't, yeah, maybe we get a paper.

Speaker 2 Somebody put a paper together because he just has these moments, man, where I'm like, what the fuck are you doing?

Speaker 2 Anyway, six of 14 today. So that's what, 14

Speaker 2 for 36 from your two best players and you close a winner almost up yeah when their guards play like that they're yeah it's very hard for them to lose there'll be no palo slander also because you got to see that tonight and i thought drew on paolo at least making him have to work to get into his stuff uh but orlando has no chance we knew they had no chance and i also thought if we were doing a wendell carter maybe update he played today you may not have noticed

Speaker 2 i think he had like 12 rebounds Yeah. But to see his effort level against somebody like Al Horford's effort level when Al knew they needed to crank up the energy.

Speaker 2 And Al's fighting and he's grabbing loose balls and he's starting the fast break. And you're like, man, Carter was actually like when I did his draft year phrasing, I was like,

Speaker 2 he kind of has a little Horfordish stuff in there, if that's even a word. And then it's like, yep, there's no,

Speaker 2 there's no wonder look for for desire, Bill.

Speaker 1 I was trying to think of a scenario where Orlando could win a game because I still feel like Boston's not going to sweep. I think Boston will have a weird game where they just don't make threes.

Speaker 1 But I also think if they play defense, it would be impossible for Orlando to get to like 98 points.

Speaker 1 So it would have to be the combination of not making threes, not playing defense for like an hour and get Orlando up. But

Speaker 1 if Boston plays defense, I just don't see how Orlando is going to score. Even in the game today, they had 18 points in the first quarter, 18 in the third, 19 in the fourth.
Like, it's just

Speaker 2 going to be really hard.

Speaker 2 No, they're, they're so bad on offense at times.

Speaker 1 Just tough to watch.

Speaker 2 Right. So their third leading scorer with Jonathan, Jonathan Isaac, with, uh, you want to guess how many points?

Speaker 2 10? Seven. Oof.

Speaker 2 Okay.

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Speaker 1 iPhone 11 or later required. We'll end with Pacers Bucks.

Speaker 2 Best for last.

Speaker 1 I love the Pacers in the series. I thought the single best bet on FanDuel heading into the playoffs was Pacers win game one, Pacers win the series was, I think, plus 138, something like that.

Speaker 2 Look at you.

Speaker 1 The Bucs looked horrible.

Speaker 1 Dame didn't play. There was this weird

Speaker 1 Dame's going to, Dame's back. I think people thought he was going to be back for game one just because of the way the announcement came out.

Speaker 2 Well, they said he was off the medication. So

Speaker 1 even if he comes back, he's not going to be in game shape. The Pacers love to pressure the ball full court.
I just think there's so many things wrong.

Speaker 1 And then you move into, well, what has to happen for the Bucs to win the series? Well, Kevin Porter needs to really come through. It's like, well, he wasn't on the team two months ago.

Speaker 1 So if it's okay, I'm not going to count on that.

Speaker 1 And just like Pencil and Giannis for 38 and 20 every game, I still don't think they're winning the series. And I also think the Pacers are good.

Speaker 1 I think Pacers Cleveland is going to be a really, really good series. But the big question is,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 is the clock going to start on Giannis? That's going to be the ESPN topic tomorrow. Especially if they fall down to nothing.
What happens to Giannis? Where is he going to go?

Speaker 1 And this is, we said all this before the the playoffs.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but we can't do that to the Bucs. You can't do that to the Bucs after one game.
There can't be a Giannis. Where's he going to go after one fucking playoff game?

Speaker 1 It was starting on Saturday after that game.

Speaker 2 Where are you? It was bad.

Speaker 1 It was a bad loss. And you start going, okay, this is.

Speaker 2 But it sucks if you're Giannis.

Speaker 1 He's been 30, 12, and 6 for seven straight years, and he's never been in a bleaker situation with this roster.

Speaker 2 You know, it is what it is.

Speaker 2 I'd like to submit a weekly Nico Harrison award based on the quote that you're like, what? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I'd submit Bobby Portis had some pregame availability with Katie George, who did the sideline for this game for ESPN. And she was saying, Bobby, you know, he's been around here a long time.

Speaker 2 And he said that this Bucs team is the best version of any of the teams that he's been on. And I expected, like, except for the team.

Speaker 1 He's in the one in the title.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And no, no, no, no, no, Bill.

Speaker 2 Not so fast. He said, even that team.

Speaker 1 He did, and even that team for the team that won the title? Wow.

Speaker 2 The 22 team was better.

Speaker 2 The 22 team was really good. If Middleton had been healthy, who knows?

Speaker 1 Grant Williams, six threes.

Speaker 2 You know, Rushmore, start talking about it. Not the movie.
Best player. Giannis was fantastic.
Nobody else did anything else around him. I think at one point he had like 36 of the 50.

Speaker 1 I never liked the Kuzma trade at any point in 2025.

Speaker 2 It's Tony Snell off the hook.

Speaker 1 You think Snell is replaced by Kuzma?

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's just the meme.

Speaker 2 22 minutes, 0 for 5, 0 boards, 0 assists, 0 points. You want to guess how many blocks and steals he had? None.

Speaker 2 Zero and zero. Zero turnovers.

Speaker 1 Well, tomorrow we have Detroit, New York, and Clippers, Denver, which I think is a

Speaker 1 that Clippers Denver was a really hard game. Of all the games, I would have said it would be nice if those guys had one more day off.

Speaker 1 I probably would have picked that series, but somehow they're playing again.

Speaker 1 So we'll see with that. But those are two really good games tomorrow.

Speaker 1 I went from thinking Indiana would win in less than six

Speaker 1 to now wondering if this could potentially get ugly

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 if I'm Milwaukee,

Speaker 1 I need Dame to come back for the third game. And I also need him to be pretty good.

Speaker 1 And that just seems like I'm keeping my fingers crossed on both of those at that point. I continue to think Indiana is really good.
Like, I thought

Speaker 1 I put some of my favorite playoff bets on Friday.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 I thought the Indiana Indiana was 28 to 1 to win the East.

Speaker 1 I don't think they're going to win the East, but I thought those odds were pretty good because you'd have to take out Cleveland Cleveland and they know they can play with Boston.

Speaker 1 And just 28 to 1 is, those are crazy, crazy odds. It's at least if you're going to take a crazy flyer on someone, not a bad one.
I think Indiana is a good team.

Speaker 1 And sometimes they're their own worst enemies, but they are definitely better than Milwaukee. And I don't think it's going to matter what Giannis does.

Speaker 1 So we try not to overreact to game one, but that game confirmed everything I thought heading into the series: that Indiana just has a better basketball team.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no breaking news there. I I mean, you'd expect a little bit more out of Kuzma.

Speaker 2 Torian Prince also had zero.

Speaker 1 Kuzma versus Porter, who had a worse weekend?

Speaker 2 I mean, it was just an absolute doughnut from everybody, other than A.J. Green hitting a few threes and Kevin Porter Jr.
getting to the free throw line.

Speaker 2 It's, you know, Giannis owns any of the numbers that you would look at. It's like, hey, what has he done against Siakam? All right, he's done this.
What has he done against Turner?

Speaker 2 Okay, he's done this. He owns these dudes.
But, you know, he's playing point guard now. I mean, you want to talk about a dude out there by himself,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 this is

Speaker 2 some people were calling it the John Popper of the NBA, and I don't know if that's fair to the guys in Blues Traveler, but

Speaker 1 you say it a good run.

Speaker 1 It's tough when a basketball player hits the point where you can give them the best possible stat line for the game and also say their team's still going to lose.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like no chance.

Speaker 1 Like game two, Giannis, 42, 20,

Speaker 1 assists. Do they win? And I'd be like, eh, probably not.

Speaker 2 That's where it gets tough.

Speaker 2 I know how you were talking about just all the nonsense, but we have to be, because we're guilty of it too, but we don't do it, but we're guilty of referencing it. And I know I am.

Speaker 2 And sometimes I try to stop myself from doing it, but sometimes you can't, right? Because you just see so much of it. But just like there's a whole anti-curry camp, right? And they argue these points.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of anti-Tatum people.

Speaker 1 And it's a weird one.

Speaker 2 It's, it's very strange.

Speaker 2 And like today would be another example of like, oh, once again, Tatum needs to be bailed out of like a bad playoff for I heard from a Laker fan today who mailed me his boxer like, yo, your boy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Don't understand. 14 rebounds.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You gave up 40 open threes last night, buddy.

Speaker 2 So all of that exists. So all of the Giannis stuff.

Speaker 2 exists, but you know, until I would see like whether it was you thinking you've heard or a wind horse or Shams, like if somebody that really mattered, that kind of like brought it out on a radar where it was justifiable.

Speaker 2 I know that it's being talked about, but a lot of stuff that's talked about, it's just like, okay, but who, who are the people that are actually talking about this stuff, even if it's being discussed all of the time?

Speaker 2 Yeah. And there was a really funny one because I would put this in the category of like something that I've read.
And I forget who wrote it, but I was reading a bunch of the playoff previews.

Speaker 2 And the person made the argument that was like, I like the Bucs in this series if Dame doesn't come back. I'm like, God.

Speaker 1 And after this game.

Speaker 2 Good zag. Right.
After this game, I'm thinking, all right. Well,

Speaker 2 whatever you think the low end of the Dame experience is,

Speaker 2 at least there's another score out there that also balances out the court. And it's some outlet that's better than, you know, all the ways.

Speaker 1 It's all safety net if Kyle Kuzma does the 0-0-0 across the board.

Speaker 1 So I went to WrestleMania in and out yesterday.

Speaker 2 How'd that go? Do you drive car service?

Speaker 1 No, I was able to,

Speaker 1 somebody I knew was going in and out same day.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Very nice.

Speaker 1 And at

Speaker 1 one point was sitting with

Speaker 1 Dana White was like four seats down with his right-hand guy, very nice guy.

Speaker 1 And my son, big UFC fan and his buddy, kind of,

Speaker 1 my son has a way of doing this. All of a sudden, is in a conversation with the right-hand guy and

Speaker 1 got some info on International Fight Week.

Speaker 1 And there's a fight coming in that week that my son,

Speaker 1 he'll make this face three times a year that we always make fun of, where he's been making it since he was a little kid, where he's overwhelmed by something and he's kind of just dear, like legitimate deer in the headlights.

Speaker 1 And he found out one of the fights and made the deer in the headlights face. But I'm not going to say it because I don't want to betray the confidence.

Speaker 1 But let's just say my son is now demanding we go to International Fight Week.

Speaker 2 By the way, how does your son handle, I would say, over the years, the access of your friend group and you know, some celebrity? Yeah. You know, let's not pretend.
How does he handle himself? Is he

Speaker 1 great? I mean, he's always handshake, eye contact,

Speaker 1 kind of knows when to move in and out of the combo.

Speaker 2 Not annoying?

Speaker 1 No, not annoying.

Speaker 1 Low usage rate.

Speaker 1 He'll space the floor.

Speaker 1 If it's somebody he wants to engage with, he'll do it. If it's something like there's a common interest thing.

Speaker 2 Like a go there switch. Yeah, or he'll move back.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay. That's good.

Speaker 2 But yeah, we were there.

Speaker 1 It seems like we were there for the better WrestleMania day because I think today was a little bit worse. Although John Cena, I know you were focused on that.

Speaker 2 Another message

Speaker 2 title. Cena back in the title again.

Speaker 1 Bad guy, turn heel and he won the title with some help from your guy Travis Scott

Speaker 1 came in and helped him out that's cool

Speaker 1 but he came in surprise I think he did a really good job of the shoes my highlight though is behind behind like in the uh in the back room underneath um

Speaker 1 Stephen Mel was there who was starred in heels which is a show that I really liked that was on stars And this guy, Chris Bauer, was also on Heels.

Speaker 1 He played like the bad guy, but he's been in a bunch of movies. He was Sabaka and the wire,

Speaker 1 and he's been in a bunch of movies, but he was Machine in 8 Millermater, a movie that I love and Van Lathan loves. My friend Jeff Gowell loves, and I'm not sure anyone else loves, Nick Cage.

Speaker 1 So I was really excited to meet him. And I opened with, I'm a huge fan of 8 Millermater.
I love Machine. I don't think he gets it much.

Speaker 1 Seems genuinely surprised by it.

Speaker 2 So he's the main union guy, Sabaka. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Frank Sabaka.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He was great. I thought Sabaka, I know the storyline in season two, people don't really like it that much.
Season two is good.

Speaker 1 People got to give season two another chance. Plus, Pablo's in it.
Like, there's great actors in that season. Pablo Schreiber from Den of Thieves.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I like Sabaka. He's totally, totally believable in that role.
I thought he did a great job.

Speaker 1 He probably gets Sabaka the most, I would guess, from the interactions. I don't know if he got a lot of Machine.

Speaker 1 Machine was the killer in millimeter. He was the killer in the stuff film.
And he wore like a gimp leather mask. And there's a big fight scene at the end with him and Nick Hage.
So, yeah.

Speaker 1 Good one.

Speaker 2 Okay, but is there anything, is there any wrestling stuff that we need to know about? The world needs to know about?

Speaker 1 You know, I think Charlotte Flair is really great.

Speaker 1 I think she's the best woman's wrestler I've ever seen in person. Since China?

Speaker 1 No, just best in general.

Speaker 1 I don't think China's not a lot of conversations. I think

Speaker 1 China's a little more like,

Speaker 1 I don't know. Like, she had a brief apex.

Speaker 2 Who's the Irish one? Becky Tynch. Becky Lynch.

Speaker 1 She married Seth Rollins.

Speaker 1 She was the biggest star in the company for about a year, and then she married Seth Rollins, and they had a kid. So she kind of phased back a little bit.

Speaker 2 I found her Sports Center ad annoying.

Speaker 1 So did you notice in the Masters, they were rerunning some of the old Sports Center ads? I forgot how great those were. Like, they were rerunning the Tiger Woods ad, a couple of them.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 and I love those ads. Yeah, I love them too.

Speaker 1 It's not nostalgic for them.

Speaker 2 I remember, I think when they first started the whole This is Sports Center campaign, it was some

Speaker 2 ad agency in Portland, Oregon, I think. And I wrote them a letter.
I was like, oh, you know, I like sports.

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, this is just me doing my Douglas Copeland Shampoo Planet writing letter phase of my life.

Speaker 2 Wasn't it Wyatt and Kennedy?

Speaker 1 That's a denim, right?

Speaker 2 They were in Portland. You would know better than I would.
Yeah, that's what it was. It was just, they were so good.

Speaker 2 The funny thing was, is then once I started working there, they actually kind of like made sense because you could be in a situation where you're like, why is so-and-so in the salad bar line with me or something like that?

Speaker 2 But then there was like a real like, that guy's in one.

Speaker 1 Or I was going to say the funniest thing about Sports Center was the the fucking jacking to be in the Sports Center commercial. There were so many stories about that.

Speaker 1 People being mad that this person got in and they weren't. This person's been in three.
I haven't been in one yet. He's been in four.
I've only been in one. It was fantastic.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and then they just kind of fell off. I mean, they had a really good run for a really long time.

Speaker 2 I think there was always a little animosity that Van Pelt was in so many of them, but he was just really good at it. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I liked him.

Speaker 1 And I saw Sinners on Friday too, and I thought it was spectacular.

Speaker 2 I saw Warfare in the theater on Thursday, a couple of moviegoers.

Speaker 2 It is so fucking good. Okay.
It is that good.

Speaker 2 I love it for a bunch of different reasons, but I love that a studio let a couple guys make a movie on an experience that they knew firsthand, and they were like, here's the script.

Speaker 2 It's going to be just one location for like 90 minutes going through this one thing. And it's going to be really graphic.
It's going to be very stressful.

Speaker 2 It's going to cause anxiety and it's going to have all these different moments, but it's going to be like the most realistic approach to a war scene you can possibly have. There's no girlfriend.

Speaker 2 There's no, does this kid betray someone and there's a forbidden connection based on cultures. It's like, nope, these guys are in this room and they're fucked and they got to get them out of there.

Speaker 2 And we'll see what happens. And we're going to stay in this room with them for 90 minutes and seeing it.
And then they're back.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 The number of moments were like it was just the sound and you know it wasn't like a super complicated dynamic there's not some like momento like oh my god this is i can't believe christopher nolan did this i just love that they let them do that now sinners everybody's raving about that give us the quick pitch sell i just think coogler is on the short short short short list of the best directors um

Speaker 1 it's so original i went into it knowing nothing i intentionally read nothing i didn't want to to know anything. I just knew vampires were involved and Michael B.
Jordan was in. I knew nothing else.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's just so original and so cool.

Speaker 1 And it shifts a couple times and it has a couple of surprises in there. I thought it was the best Jordan performance ever.

Speaker 1 He's playing. I don't want to say, I don't want to spoil it.

Speaker 2 Better than the jazz finals?

Speaker 2 Michael B.

Speaker 1 Jordan, his best performance ever.

Speaker 1 I was just blown away. I thought it was great.
I'm going to see it again. It's a very short list.

Speaker 2 Wait, you're going twice?

Speaker 1 I'm going to go again.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a very short list of movies I've seen twice in like two weeks in the theater because I think it's a theater movie.

Speaker 1 You'll still have fun watching it in, you know, in your house or your apartment, wherever you are out there. But I think it's a crucial theater movie.
And I just thought it was really cool.

Speaker 1 And I'm still glad. I felt the same way.
I remember walking out of once upon a time in Hollywood, same way. You're just like, man, that was just so original and so cool and so well casted.

Speaker 1 And there was everybody was so good. And I just had a great time.

Speaker 1 So anyway, I loved it. And it seems like it's doing well,

Speaker 1 which is nice. So, movies, not dead yet.

Speaker 2 No, go to the theater, kids. And you're still in the office.

Speaker 2 What are you talking about? Right?

Speaker 1 You're still, not the office, the studio.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 There's a couple episodes. One episode I dipped a little.
Yeah, it's a little erratic. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 it's really well done. So I've enjoyed that part of it.

Speaker 1 I like your friends and neighbors, too. I've enjoyed that.
Friends and neighbors. I enjoyed 1923.
I thought it was another strong season. I really like the Sheridan universe.

Speaker 1 I have not watched Mobland yet.

Speaker 2 By the way, decent things. Yeah, I'm just about to start that one.
May even do it tonight as I wind down for the adrenaline rush of this podcast. But

Speaker 2 this YouTube live warfare. I think I forgot I was live like 45 minutes ago.
Warfare.

Speaker 2 Cosmo Jarvis, the lead in Shogun.

Speaker 2 When's the IPO and what is the limit? Because I think Cosmo Jarvis might be next, speaking of ESPN magazine covers.

Speaker 1 Cosmo Jarvis.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Make the case.

Speaker 2 You know, Shogun, I wasn't 100% sure. Like, he was great.
I love Shogun. It was awesome.
I was surprised even how much I loved it.

Speaker 2 Maybe I shouldn't have been, you know, history guy, ninjas, you know, pretty much

Speaker 2 everything I need.

Speaker 2 But he wasn't like just badass throughout that. He was.

Speaker 2 playful, he was funny, but then he was dealing with like the romance part of it.

Speaker 2 So he had to like do a bunch of different things because I think if he was just the punisher for 10 episodes, that lack of depth and storyline maybe gets a little bit old.

Speaker 2 He, for whatever reason, just in this,

Speaker 2 he's, he's mastering the, I don't have to do that much and owns the scene.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So are you excited for the Damon Affleck movie?

Speaker 2 Rip? Which one is it? It's called Rip. I think it's called Rip Torran?

Speaker 1 It's a heist movie.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course I am.

Speaker 1 Coming out in the fall.

Speaker 2 Where does it take place?

Speaker 1 Man, Accountant 2, Affluck, and Burntal. A lot lot of good stuff coming out.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 So we're going to wrap up. You have two more podcasts this week,

Speaker 1 Tuesday, Thursday.

Speaker 1 What's the number one thing you're most excited about for the playoffs?

Speaker 1 This week.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's Clippers. It's Clippers'

Speaker 2 game, too. I can't wait.

Speaker 2 Me too.

Speaker 1 You know what's sad?

Speaker 2 The magic to align tonight, by the way. God.
Nah, that happens sometimes.

Speaker 1 You know what's sad, though? The Magic weren't quite good enough today to pull Sarudi for like four minutes. That was like the bar.

Speaker 1 It's like, can the magic be good enough that it's like, hey, there's something to pull and it just wasn't there. And I think deep down, he knows it too.

Speaker 2 Anybody that's watched them, you know, post Suggs.

Speaker 2 I think the only thing that you do is you go, hey, you have a real chance, you know, years moving forward because of Paolo.

Speaker 2 That's what today was.

Speaker 2 It was a reminder to Magic fans that already know that. And it's, I think,

Speaker 2 a necessary reminder because I'm sure Paolo wasn't exactly a guy a ton of people were watching on League Pass.

Speaker 1 Paolo, Franz Suggs, some cap space potentially,

Speaker 1 some moves to

Speaker 1 make it.

Speaker 2 Franz is starting to feel like a recalibration nominee. Oh, no.
Adjusted ceilings.

Speaker 1 Man, he was so good for that three weeks before he got hurt

Speaker 1 before the Oblique Virus caught him.

Speaker 2 If we let Cerudi in right now, he would just start to say,

Speaker 2 we can't. Oh, really? There'll It'll be another 10 minutes.

Speaker 1 We got to wrap up. We got to wrap up.
The shot hitch is terrifying. It's terrifying.

Speaker 2 It is. Yeah.
It didn't happen in November. Saruti tells the truth, man.

Speaker 1 How fired up are you for the draft on a scale of 1 in 10?

Speaker 2 NFL draft? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm always pretty excited, but I'm getting selfish as I get a little bit older. There's just a lot of stuff going on.

Speaker 1 I'm an eight.

Speaker 1 In fact, I'm not going to Clippers game three.

Speaker 1 Gave away my ticket already.

Speaker 2 I would rather watch Denver Clippers than watch like with the draft.

Speaker 1 The Pats have the fourth pick. I'm not,

Speaker 1 I just not, I can't juggle it.

Speaker 1 Plus, they might trade back up into the, I'm not missing it.

Speaker 2 It's too important. Are you thrilled that Belichick doesn't have the pick just so he could not use it? And then

Speaker 2 he's like, we got a 28 from who? Cleveland?

Speaker 1 I'm kind of shocked how embedded I've been in the mock draft stuff. I even cold called McShay on Friday.
We finally crossed that line. I just called him on a Friday.
You just called him.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just called him.

Speaker 1 I wanted to talk with the Giants at three. I just was like, fuck it.
I'm calling McShay.

Speaker 2 McShay called me.

Speaker 1 7.30 Friday night.

Speaker 2 He's like, there's something in my contract. He's like, the number length.
hour shows. He's like, all this makes sense.
He's like, there's something.

Speaker 2 He said that Bill gets seven emergency phone calls per person.

Speaker 1 Can you just call me on a Friday night out of nowhere? Yeah, I just had some, I had some thoughts. He has good intel.
Fun person to talk to him. Glad you brought him into my life.
He's here in L.A.

Speaker 1 this week.

Speaker 2 We're going to be doing stuff with him here. Doing

Speaker 2 flew here.

Speaker 2 He has a lot. The number of, it gets different.
Again, he's not the reporter or whatever, but he talks to everyone.

Speaker 2 So those phone calls with him.

Speaker 2 are far more valuable than I think even he can provide on.

Speaker 1 I think he's been, I know I'm biased, but I think he's been absolutely lights out with the draft this year. I've loved the newsletter.
I've loved the podcast.

Speaker 1 The intel is good. I trust his mock draft stuff.
I like our ringer draft guys, too.

Speaker 1 Like, I just feel like, as you know, I don't watch a ton of college football and I'm diving into this and trying to grab all these opinions and get a feel for the tiers of the draft, all that stuff.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 1 it's a pretty interesting draft.

Speaker 1 This Genti

Speaker 1 could go to the right team, and it sounds like he could just be incredible right away, or he could be trapped behind some shit offensive line.

Speaker 1 But it really does, it is fun when these running backs can come in right away and be like one of the four or five best guys in the league coming out of the gate out of nowhere. There's, you know,

Speaker 1 my thing with the Pats, and I'll probably say this five more times on the pod this week, but like, if you have the fourth pick, I feel like you have to get a blue chipper. You just have to.

Speaker 1 It's too high of a pick.

Speaker 1 You can't be like, we like this left tackle. He has a chance to be the 17th best left tackle of the week.
Like, I need to get somebody who's like an impact fucking dude. And

Speaker 1 we'll see what happens. Need the Giants to make a mistake, basically.
Anyway, you'll be covering this on Tuesday on Thursday as well. I'm sure I will be talking about it as well, at least on Tuesday.

Speaker 2 Briscillo, great to see you.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're going to be here. You're on Friday.
Oh, after Round One. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 Good to see you on this YouTube live. Thanks to Saruti and Gahau as well.
Thanks to everybody who watched and threw some stuff in the chat.

Speaker 1 I kept going in there to try to grab some stuff, but it was like scrolling fast. It was hard to follow.
But

Speaker 1 we will see you in a couple of days. All right, that's it for the podcast.
Thanks to Chris Sutton. Thanks to Gahal.
Thanks to Saruti.

Speaker 1 And don't forget to rewatch what's coming on Monday night. We did minority report.
Don't forget Zach Lowe's first playoff podcast. He's going to be taping on Monday morning with Howard Beck.

Speaker 1 So it'd be a nice little bookend to this one. And we also have the group chat guys on Ringer NBA.
They're going on Sunday morning. So we try to stagger this.

Speaker 1 So we'll have something going every little bit. So pods aren't overlapping.
And then we have Ringer NBA show. We have

Speaker 1 Logan and Raja. We have that going as well.
We have the mismatch with Jacoby and Verno. We have Ringer Gambling Show.
We have stuff covered all different ways.

Speaker 1 JJ on New York, New York, Brian Barrett on Off the Pike.

Speaker 1 So we're here. NBA playoffs.
Favorite time of the year. NFL draft coming as well.
McShea show, Ringer NFL Draft Show. McShea is is in LA.
Bunch of great stuff. So great week for us.

Speaker 1 Hope you enjoy all the content. I will see you on this podcast on Tuesday.

Speaker 1 I don't have

Speaker 1 a feelings

Speaker 1 with him

Speaker 1 on the way side.

Speaker 1 Must be 21 plus in president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in president, DC. Gambling problem, call 100 gambler or visit rg-help.com.

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