NBA Playoff Reactions and Overreactions With Ryen Russillo

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We have a lot of subplots. We're going to talk about all of them with Ryan Russillo next.
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the NBA playoffs subplots from

Two Wild Days. We did this live

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at 9 o'clock.

You're about to listen to it. First, our friends from

Projet. at nine o'clock so you're about to listen to it first our friends from pro jet all right 9.04 p.m rusilla and i are going live on youtube for the bs podcast rusilla good to see you we just watched eight games in two days including the warriors beating the rockets in a rock fight.
All right. So those eight games,

Rosillo, 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?

Cause I'm ready to overreact. Uh, no, now that I think about it, I don't know that there's

anything that happened this weekend. Yeah.
oh for eight i have one i have a half is there it seems like you have one what is it i have a half one i thought that minnesota laker game was a worst case scenario for the lakers in a lot of different ways and i want to tackle it in a second but that was the only one because thought Lakers in seven, I thought they'd have the history. But watching some of the matchups and some of the stuff Minnesota did and the fact that the Lakers didn't have a lot of options for a counter, it just kind of made me tilt my head a little bit.
I still don't know what's going to happen. I'm really interested in game two, but we'll talk about that.
Let's talk about Warriors Rockets. So we had a Warriors Rockets.
My fear for the Warriors was they got 75 points in that Memphis game from Curry and Butler. And if these games go into the 110 to 120 range, where are they getting all those points from? Then the Rockets fears are, well, what happens when we get to the playoffs and somebody turns defense up on them? How are they going to score? Well, that fear went out over the other fear because the Rockets couldn't score.
And it was a karaoke greatest hits of all the terrible fourth quarters we've watched from the Rockets all year. It was really, really bad.
What are the fixes? What'd you see today? They get down 23, right?

And at one point you're going, this team only has 41 points in an NBA game. Like what's going on here? But we knew that the offense was the more challenging part of it, despite the great regular season.
And at least on paper, the different options they have. But Jalen Green's terrible tonight.
Van Vliet can't hit his shot. He hits that three.
He had started one for 10. So at that moment, it felt like kind of a big three.
the question I would have for Yudoka after this is

you got back into this game being huge. And Golden State doesn't have a big lineup.
They can run Looney out there for a little bit if they want to. Clearly, they're not comfortable with that.
Post is a stretch five, and he's just going to foul everybody. How about Post is just a stretch? It was a stretch to have him out there for 12 minutes.
He was stretch why are you out there anyway go ahead draymond finished with a four six and three stat line because he's tasked with 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 this is how you're gonna play play me, I'm going to pull up. I've got a little bit more touch.

But that stretch of the first six minutes of the fourth quarter, when Houston got back into this, they got back into it being huge. Steven Adams was a beast.
And even if Golden State couldn't get a rebound to save their lives, and when they would contest anything, there were fouls. And granted, Houston didn't make their free throws.
So I guess I would just just wonder did Emei do Golden State a favor by bringing in their best offensive player back into the game and getting away from the size that was just overwhelming Golden State it wasn't pretty but Golden State couldn't do anything with it but then at 519 Adams is out I mean I'd love to ask Kerr like in a moment of honesty were you thrilled when they took Adams out of the game? Right. It was 66-47, five minutes left in the third.
And Shengu made that just ridiculous shot clock beating three in the buzzer that never should have gone in, right? It'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. Eason had a couple of big defensive plays.
And it just felt like there was some sort of combination of guys that would be the right combination. It was like watching somebody work safe in a bank ice movie.
It's like, how did he get it? And he just kind of never unlocked it. And I think if I'm leaving that game and I'm watching the tape, I'm really interested in the double bigs.
I'm really interested in the double bigs with Jabari. I think I'd want to see Eason more because I just thought he was just a major issue the whole time.
Thompson is the one. Thompson just looked like a guy who had smoke up, blown up his ass all week, that he should have been defensive player of the year.
And all of a sudden, he's in a playoff game guarding Steph Curry and Butler, and he just wasn't good. The Van Vliet thing we've seen a bunch of times, though.
We've seen him have those games. And over and over again, it seems like when everything stalls, it's just him jacking up 24, 25 footers.
And I don't know how he fixed that, because that was the worst of Jalen Green today. When he's just going to the basket, he has no gears.
He's either fifth gear or first gear. And he's just going to the basket, flying in, either trying to get fouled or whipping off the backboard.
They don't have that one Siddler. 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 of baskets here. With much the way Butler 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. 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. I just think this is going to be a rock fight series and Houston has a lot of wildcard guys.
So great win. I think I I still feel like this is going to be a long series 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 i agree with you on that one i mean there's going to be a night where you know steph isn't going to be able to bail him out probably because they put so much attention on him especially like if it's a close game in the step positions two were staying with steph he had a turnover he had another one where it should have been a turnover where he let himself get trapped at half court but they didn't have a challenge because they already challenged the Pajemski drive so there'll be there'll be times where the stuff off of Steph is a bit of a letdown like Moses Moody hitting that three tonight in the corner it was probably the biggest three because it's like all right finally like it's always the third shot.
Yeah, it's the third shot taker for this group because clearly there's nights where Curry can do what he did tonight and there's nothing you can do and he's just going to hit a bunch of ridiculous shots. That's not going to happen.
I don't know that you can bank on that for four wins. Maybe you can in a seven-game series, but I look at the Pajemski minutes and he looks confused.
I almost don't like the ball in his hands right now and if he misses a few this is a guy who has a ton of confidence to even get to this point but i think you can see it happening on the court or it's like up he's hesitant now he's a little shot and then if you end up with like a gary payton second corner open look like houston will gladly take that same for post don't forget to throw in post in this conversation i think they're good with all wide open threes from him until he makes one right they're gonna 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 gonna be that big of a deal and butler even had like a stretch where i was like where are you like where are you and then he was able to you know because even if he got Shingun or Adams in a switch, he's not the kind of guy who's just going to like fly past them. He wants to dribble to a spot and pull up and try to get away with a clean look like, you know, without much of a contest there.
So yeah, I think there's going to be nights where Golden State against this Houston defense is going to look really lost. But I, I wonder internally if the Rockets coaching staff is going, did we let them off the hook a little bit by going with Shingun, who was our best offensive player? Because it wasn't like they did anything great on offense.
They just had multiple possessions and Golden State was just overwhelmed. Like you would see all this traffic at the Rockets hoop and you couldn't see the blue jerseys because they were so much smaller than the guys in red.
Yeah, it was like the scrappy, like the football team of like scrappy smaller guys battling some massive offensive line. They were able to get away with some stuff tonight that I don't know if it's going to work in later rounds for the record.
Like Butler played 42 minutes tonight, right? Curry played 39. 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.
It reminded me of that. What was the best game he ever played? What was that, 2019, when he was quiet in the first half and then just completely annihilated Houston in the second half.

It's my favorite Steph game of all time. Yeah, it's your number one.

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

I think they're delighted.

If they can play Moody and Podzemski with the three and they can rebound just enough

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

And it seems like they're completely out.

I just find it hard to believe he wouldn't have been better than those 12 Quentin Post minutes.

Don't you have to defer to Kerr on this one, though?

I do.

I mean, he's had him a long time.

I get it.

That's why I tiptoe into it.

I'm just hesitant.

But I just like, man.

Because at least with Kuminga, he's unafraid he's athletic and he's gonna fight and like there's just i don't know right there was that one santos play when he just like lost the ball like they just have dudes that are out there where you're like man what's this gonna look like if you're playing okc in a series you have these guys out there against that OKC team we saw today? So I think they can patch it together. They closed the third quarter for four minutes.
The last four minutes, they didn't hit a shot. And they were bad shots.
There was like shot clock violation. You know, it was like bad, bad stuff.
So look, they have to go 12-9 to make the finals. Now they have to go 11-9.
Could it happen? Sure. But, you know, they still feel like they're a guy short to me, Russillo.
I can't shake it. Yeah, there's this collection of teams where you look at the Clippers numbers after a certain point and you go, oh, my God.
Like, look at that. I know we're going to talk about them.
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.
I don't know if it's sponsored or not, but they'll just say, hey, since the all-star break, and it is really interesting. But you always have to remember, like, we're not the normal audience.
So they're getting everybody up to date on like what the story has been. So you have this Golden State thing that feels entirely different.
The Clippers thing that feels different. I think Minnesota minnesota for whatever reason has been completely overlooked is we'll get to that game because i can't wait to talk about that one but i haven't really looked at golden state even with that split post the butler trade because of some of the limitations and because of their preference to be small and not have any big option like you're talking about i'm going hey you only have to win 11 more games to get to the final final.
I don't even... I don't know.
I'm surprised you're even mapping it out that way. Do you really think they have a chance to win in the West? Did you think that...
Well, I like the bracket they're in more. They play the winner of Lakers-Minnesota.
And from what we saw last night in that game, two flawed teams. Minnesota looked great last night.
The Lakers looked terrible. Both have some pluses and minuses.
But I think they're on the right side of the bracket. And then you think, OKC, maybe it doesn't matter the way.
OKC is just completely terrifying. I was thinking that Butler graphic you mentioned.
Maybe they feel like the casual ESPN fans can't understand how Jimmy Butler ended up on the Warriors. It just doesn't make sense when you're watching one of these games.
You're like, how did they get that? Would they give up? Wiggins, what? Wiggins, Schroeder, Kyle Anderson. Was there more in there? No, there wasn't.
Houston going forward, because we have three days between games, which means we have a Monday and Tuesday of of what's Houston going to do if they can't get this going and there'll be a trade machine team I think they're young the biggest question they had took us 12 minutes to get to Houston the big question is this Van Vliet player option thing if you're talking trade machine stuff but I don't know if'm just, it's because what we do for a living. But when I watch them, I'm constantly thinking of what player I would add to make them a championship contender.
Because it's clearly not the team they have now, which I still think is a very good team. But there's something that they need.
And so when I watch it, I'm like, hmm, I wonder with Booker, would you just like pay 200 cents on the dollar for Booker and just give Vishpia the ultimate life raft or what would you do? But anyway, that stuff's going to go the next two days. That'd be too early.
This series, I think there's going to be a night where Houston looks so much better than Golden State. Do you think Houston's, we look great when we're up 12 team?

You know how we have those teams?

Yeah, I don't know. Who looks bad when they're up 20?

Like who looks like they're having a bad time?

The Celtics. Is there any team? The Celtics

it's always the most dangerous when they're up

22. It's like, I don't know.

Call timeout. Keep these guys

in check. And look, they're

down 23 to this group with this offense and I cannot, I'll say it again. They didn't really even do anything that was that great on offense to get back into this.
It wasn't like they got hot from three. It wasn't like, oh, okay, this guy's cooking or they can't guard this guy.
They're hunting this dude. It's just, hey, we were big.
So that's something that they can go to. That's not shooting variants.
That's something that they know when they watch this film. They go, we might want to go to it earlier.
There's also something, too. When you're down 23, the effort that it takes you to come back and cut it to three points, and then you start timing it out, being like, can they sustain this for another five minutes? like that'll happen a lot too is like you're right there you're right you're just about four at one point it was three point four point game yeah didn't 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 did you think he would be a better scorer than this? Well, he had to develop more of a handle.
That was a major flag for him. And he had those guards from Auburn who didn't want to 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.
I think it's the most comfortable he's ever looked offensively. I don't know that you're ever going to be running a side pick and roll for him.
And then if he gets cut off, he's going to reset with the dribble probe and then go. I don't know if he's ever going to be that guy but like that was the biggest difference is Paolo he could get wherever he wanted to as a draft prospect at that size and with Jabari he felt a bit like a true dribble guy even though I still really liked him a lot I like 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 and And he kind of whirled into the paint, had this little jump hook.
And I was like, hmm, that's something. Like instead of just having these guys facing the basket and flying toward the basket and bouncing off dudes, wimping off the backboard, maybe try to use their athleticism, try to put them in different parts of the thing.
So we'll see what they do heading into game two.

I still think it's going to be a long series.

That's where I sit.

Hey, Rosillo, are you a forward thinker?

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They make this Towns trade right before the season. They get DiVincenzo 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.
But Minnesota looked really good against the Lakers. And I think the thing that I saw last night, re-watching that game, because I was at WrestleMania last night, but I was able to power through it this morning.
What should we think of that? I have some Cena stuff for you at the end. Cool.
Minnesota's just... I know.
I'll give you a heads up. Minnesota's just really comfortable wherever they're playing.
I think that's my favorite thing about them. They're just really comfortable.
They don't care if they're in LA. They don't care if they're playing against LeBron and Luka.
They're an irrational confidence team personified. And you saw it last night.
And granted, they shot the lights out. But

I saw a team that walked in there and thought, we have the best team in this series and we're

winning this series. And they carried themselves that way.
Now, the Lakers, I don't know what

happened to them the entire game. I don't know where the ball moved.
They had 15 assists.

There was a stagnant offense.

And on defense, I just thought they looked slow.

It'll be different 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 don't feel great about Lakers in seven.

So what was your takeaway?

I went last minute. Oh was yeah yeah you're like the new Diane Cannon you're there you're there every game I'm hoping to get my upgrade material this offseason we'll see what they offer but I I picked Minnesota and I'm look I'm not taking credit for it as if I I saw all these things It just felt a bit like a zag because there's if you just felt like this overwhelming vibe decision by the general NBA public.

Right.

Where it was, OK, the Lakers, another run with LeBron, the Lucas stuff.

Yeah.

You know, that peak that they had, which we've talked about. I brought it up in my playoff preview on Thursday where it's like if you go on the season defensive numbers for the lakers at 17th and sometimes like the season'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 where with that awesome denver win at denver mixed in there and you're going wait they're the number one team on defense now for for 21 games that's weird like right because when the luka trade was made it was almost a thought of well they're gonna have to figure this out defensively those three guys in the perimeter depending on what you get from LeBron and then you know Reeves just gets hunted because of of a size thing probably more so than anything else because I think at least fights for position and that kind of stuff so like we just didn't think they were going to be good defensively and then they're off the charts defensively and, when I ran the numbers again, it was like, hey, they're back to like 17th.
So I think the truth was, is that was a bit of an anomaly, even if it looked like they were doing a great job prepping guys based on the opposition. So you look at Minnesota on the other side of like these closing groups, they closed since March 2nd, 17 and four.
They had the fourth best net of any team in the NBA. They're also the healthiest they've ever been.
Do I love Randall as the number two for multiple playoff rounds? No, I do not. But he's played great.
I mean, he's played great at least for them in this whole thing. So when you're thinking about this matchup, I feel like is Rudy going to get exposed? Is it something where Minnesota will want to go small? Is that actually doing the Lakers a favor? Because the Lakers do not want to play Jackson Hayes.
And I don't blame them for not wanting to play him. But they have no other move.
They go with Rui at center. And in the beginning of the game, it was like, hey, he's hitting those threes that we talked about last week.
And then that cooled off. Then they have this other small group where they'll go Finney Smith and Vanderbilt and then figure out what the rest of the perimeter guys and jj's talked about like hey we're not small we're big perimeter players but we just don't have a traditional center well in this game they were small so the alarming part of it when you think of it as a matchup is what's the adjustment the lakers are going to grow um but then if i'm on the lakers side of this i'm going 48 points from Nas Reed and Jaden McDaniels, 48 points from those two guys.
Like that's not happening.

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

And I was trying to figure out how much Jackson… If they pass to him.

Right.

But he's still around the rim with his arms up.

And if you're not playing a center at some point…

So Hayes was minus 11 in eight minutes.

They couldn't keep him on the floor.

Right?

So you have that.

You have…

They haven't been playing him at all, by the way.

This is pretty consistent.

This is like, all right. We just had to find out.
Minnesota did some interesting stuff with where they put Connelly. Were you following that? Where they put him on Rui for a little bit so that he wouldn't be on Reeves.
And then the Lakers kind of figured that out. And then they started moving around.
The second half, he was on Reeves again. And it seems like they were so aware that the Lakers were going to attack Connelly as a strategy that they just wanted to kind of move him around like a yo-yo which I thought was was smart um I don't really know what the move is for the Lakers if that if that one lineup they have which got killed last night with the with the Rui LeBron Luca pick Reeves and pick swing.
If that lineup's just going to get torched by Minnesota, I don't know what the next move is. Because the next move is basically playing LeBron at center and going super small with wings and shooting.
And I just think Minnesota would be delighted if they did that. But the big takeaway for me last night is when McDaniels plays like that, Minnesota looks awesome.
And he's their wild... team has a wild card guy right when he's good mcdaniels is awesome minnesota looks like the scariest team in the west other than okc and he was awesome last night i went through the three-point attempts because it just was because it was just out of control places quiet people are just laughing being like when are these guys going to start missing and i have it at 43 point attempts it's 42 for the game i'm not counting the last two garbage ones but of the 40 attempts that i would say like we're in the time that we were still wondering whatever this isn't totally relevant but i counted as 40 attempts 27 are absolutely wide open like not debatable 27 of the fear with this luca lebron combo that it would just be open three frenzy i'd say seven more were open and then i'm going to give them and i was being nice i gave him six contests because some people will go through and sort all these different things and you know so there was one place that was trying to say there was like zero and i was like well that's not true there's a few contests but 27 of the 40 are like nobody's even close and there's a few things uh one is they're packing it because they're worried about ant hunting Luca and so that means help uh I think there's even a chance that Randall even though he probably got a little emotional about at some point like if he gets LeBron it seems like he wants to get real physical with him and that's one of the few guys know, with the ball in his hands, it's probably a really good showdown physically, which is not something we'd say about LeBron a lot.
So you've packed it in and you're leaving these corner threes that are there. And Nas hit a ton, Jaden hit a ton.
But then there's just other stuff where LeBron has to be better. 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. And then Luka, if you run something to one side and then the guy Luka is assigned to away from the ball comes up, Luka just doesn't even pay attention to him off the ball.
He lost numerous guys on those attempts. So you could think G.A.J.
could just go through it and be like, hey, dickheads. What? Are you ready now? Are you ready to play? Because it was so overwhelming and it looked so bad for the Lakers.
You're going, okay, so if they're only small, why is this going to actually get better? But I'm not going to fall for it. I'm not going to fall for a game one thing here here saying that LA can't get back.
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.
And I think you're probably a little, it was probably a bit of a reminder. Like, wait, are they good? And are they too big? So Nico's still in this thing you're saying.
Side note, do you think when Anthony Davis was going off against Sacramento,

Nico had like an inner dialogue where he's like,

I'm going to be right about this.

Yeah, I'm still, he definitely, there's one person in his life that he's still like,

just hold on.

I'm still not out of this.

It's still going to happen.

Can I read you the most critical thing I read about the Lakers last night? Coach J.J. Redick did a great job all season, but he didn't do a good job for game one.
The Lakers stood around on offense, played too much one-on-one basketball, and he didn't make any necessary adjustments. A tweet from Magic Johnson.
That's when you know things are bad. That's as critical as I think he's ever been on Twitter.
He was not happy. What did you see at the game? What was the vibe? Give us the feel in the arena because they're all excited for this game.
Game one, Luka playoffs, little kids wearing the Luka jerseys, and then the T-Wolves hit threes

for an hour straight. It was, you know, because it's game one, and I think that that fan base has an arrogance that's deserved.
Like, they have a right to be arrogant. I think the more alarming thing, you know, as a Lakers guy, when the place was going nuts for Steph in the regular season it was the Steph MVP chance like big time it was loud I was like boy you don't expect that uh no you know I don't afterwards it wasn't like anybody because I was milling around a little bit afterwards it was just kind of a shrug in a well that was alarming you know but I still think like the same thing if you were in boston if boston gets smoked

granted if they get smoked by orlando that's worse than getting smoked by minnesota but it's just all right you know they'll figure it out they'll come out let me ask you something though because this was a thought that crap that crept into my head uh a little too much luca trying to figure it out on his own on offense?

It does feel like it's month

four of

what's really give him a lot of latitude here, especially in the first quarter. Like a sub letter that extends his lease.
Like this is how I really am. Like those Apple news stories you read where somebody's won't, so somebody won't leave somebody's cottage and they've been there two years.

Yeah, I was wondering in the two days between games if we might get some sort of something from the LeBron camp.

LeBron really wants Luka to get more involved

or some sort of something.

It's a lot of time here.

It's 72 hours.

So who knows?

I'm on pins and needles waiting to find out. I will tell you this, will tell you just to add though if if you were a luka detractor right you would go okay well he just runs his pick and roll until he gets the matchup that he wants and it's a lot of staring around and the design of some of those dallas teams were for that specific reason right but when he was with the other really good player, it didn't really work out, but Kyrie needed a place and it worked out for Kyrie even though I felt like during that playoff run last year, the ups were celebrated and the downs were never criticized because that's usually what happens in the number two anyway.
But there were some moments throughout that run to the finals where you were like, you need more out ofrie here and it's it's just not really that much of a topic I felt like there were times watching where like Rudy didn't play 24 minutes and I was like all right now I'm gonna try to kill Rudy Gobert and it's like all right but like Austin Reeves is pretty good LeBron's got a pretty decent resume I think that there's probably something to be said if you don't get the switch that you want immediately, swing it. And I'm not knocking the efficiency.
It's just not how he plays. He has seven years of habits.
He's like a child actor who just learned on the set how to behave. It is what it is.
It crept into my head. Just a thought.
I'm not, you know, we're also talking about one of the most efficient offensive players of all time. But, you know, there's also something to be said of like, everybody needs to touch the ball.
I think they need to get going downhill too when Rudy's out, right? Like they need, if they're going to have Randall and Nas hanging around the rim, then you should just be like, I don't even care if you make it. I'm going.
I'm just going. I'm trying to finish over and over again.
I like to see them be more aggressive during those non-roody minutes. When we talk about the wildcard guys, McDaniels from Minnesota, no question.
And I guess Nas too, but Nas is pretty consistent. But you're so right.
When Jaden's like that, you're like, did they win 70 games? Yeah. Yeah.
They look just amazing.

And Reeves is kind of the guy for LA in a lot of ways.

Because when he's awesome, all of a sudden they seem impossible to stop.

But Minnesota, and this was, I had such a tough time with this series and finally ended up,

I think I took Lakers in seven, but I really thought it was going to be a seven game series.

Where you have these two teams, the strengths and weaknesses are basically the same for the most part, except for the center spot. Like Minnesota's weak spot is point guard.
I don't know how much, how many minutes can Conley can play, but Conley's the guy, every team targets and he's the guy who doesn't matter because it doesn't really matter for them. Right.
Ant's playing point guard. And then they can go bigger and really not have a point guard, but then you can pressure them.

There's ways you can do it, and the Lakers are similar. And

Rui is basically their Nas Reed, but Nas Reed's

a better player.

But they have this Gobert piece that

the Lakers just don't have. They have this

extra wrinkle

they can bring in depending on the game.

And the Lakers are kind of stuck with this

roster, and it goes back to the

Mark Williams trade. Can I give you a compliment?

Yeah.

Thank you. they can bring in depending on the game.
And the Lakers are kind of stuck with this roster, and it goes back to the Mark Williams trade. Can I give you a compliment? Yeah.
You said years ago, we were talking about Carmelo in the playoffs. Yeah.
And you basically said, look, even though he isn't, he takes the floor with LeBron and Wade and these guys. And feels like he belongs.
right I'd say Ant's a better player in comparison to like what Ant's contemporaries are right now that maybe even like the gap between prime LeBron and Carmelo is wider than I think the gap between Luca and Ant say right now okay from 09 to 13 LeBBron 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.
And Ant's never taken the floor thinking any of these guys are better than him. That has to be an incredible feeling now, like another year in with this group, with this team having a playoff run where it's like, even if things are going really bad, at least we know we can get it back to a guy that you can't really do anything with Ant.
Seeing Ant in person, by the way, I would put him on the very short list of people that are worth to see in person. It is just another level of 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?

And then 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,

I just thought it was a really valuable thing

that you had said about that.

It's valuable to a team.

And I think Ant, it's not the same thing

because I like Ant more than I like probably Carmelo,

but it's important. He's certainly better to have player.
They have a bunch of guys like that. They're not a rational confidence because it's kind of rationally confident but they have Nas Reed.
I think Dante's like that. Randall can have moments where he's like if I could just get the ball more I'd be a 35 point a game guy.
And I don't think it's a team that really cares if they're on the road or not.

Here's what's interesting.

So in the Clippers series, the Clippers were minus 118 favorites on FanDuel

when that series started.

They lost game one, and now they're plus 118.

So it swung a little, but not that much.

Minnesota was a pretty big underdog heading into the Lakers series. They were like, I think it

was like plus 160, something like that. They're now minus 153 favorites off of one game.
That's

one big. So I think there was some matchup stuff there that the Sharps probably looked at and said,

this is going to be long haul. Now what they're forgetting is that literally everybody in Minnesota is going

to foul out a game too.

I'm just preparing America now.

It could be a 60 foul game for them.

Well,

LA didn't get called for any fouls in game one is because they weren't near

anybody.

True.

Anyway,

that's a,

that's our segment on Lakers,

Timberwolves,

and you can learn more at workday.com. Well, the NFL playoffs are here.
You knew this already. There's no better way to be in the action than with FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook.
So many fun things to do. We got profit boosts, future bets.
You can dive in, make your bet, activate your boost, go for even bigger winnings. Monday, I think we have Knicks Pistons and then we have Clippers Nuggets game two.
I still like all the Clippers series bets, the future bets. I think they're plus 118 for the series.
I like them to win outright in game two. So I would recommend that.
But don't be a spectator this postseason. Head to Fandle.com slash BS to download America's number one sportsbook and make every moment more.
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Visit rg-hope.com. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra.
Spring is here. My favorite time of the year.
That means the NBA playoffs are here too. What am I the most excited about? I'm excited to see if the Celtics can defend their title.
I'm excited to see if Steph Curry and Jokic can keep going And going and going round after round

I'm excited for the potential

Of an LA vs LA playoff series

It's never happened

Clippers Lakers never in my lifetime

Is OKC for real is Cleveland for real

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Basically

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We're prohibited. Clippers Nuggets.

Game of the

weekend? Has

to be, right? That was the best game we saw.

It was an awesome, awesome game.

The Clippers Curse

is undefeated. I'm happy to talk about that later

when I have to do that now.

Here's my first question for you.

If you're a Denver

fan,

Thank you. If you're a Denver fan, are you more or less scared after that game? Do you feel better or worse? You won the game.
Do you feel better or worse? I don't feel better. Well, I feel better because I'm up a game.
So if we're just going with that, but if just what you watched and how it went down i don't feel better you i think i feel worse all right so answer your own question because you're right on this so stay on it no i was curious on your take i if i'm a denver fan i can't believe i win that game and i'm already fucking nervous as hell for the series and i think that's why the line didn't really budge because you had Porter who was a section eight, who basically got benched for Russell Westbrook, who was a big piece in the coach GM drama where both guys ended up getting fired and who was just a complete rollercoaster ride, possession to possession, and was a better option than Michael Porter who makes $40 million a year. He's out there.
And then you have Murray who was seven for 20 and it felt worse and the clips just have a bunch of fucking dudes to throw at him what are you looking up no no i'm listening to everything you're saying a bunch of dudes you can throw at him i think you even swore in there yeah uh and i don't know what i'm getting out of Porter going forward.

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

And I don't know if I'm ever getting a worse possession performance

than the Clippers in big spots where they just –

look, it's going to sound like I'm making excuses

because I picked them to win the series.

They just fucked the game up. That was a we fucked the game up.
You leave that game and you're like, I can't believe we lost that game. You're going through, there's 12 plays you're looking at like, what are we doing here? We can't inbound the ball over here.
We can't get a better shot here. We're sending Jokic a double team late here and leaving this guy 10 feet open.
What are we? And I guarantee their coaches, and we both think they have

one of the five best coaching staffs.

I guarantee their coaches

were fucking knocking tables over today

going, what the fuck were we doing in this?

So the question for me is,

bad game or is this just like,

this is what this Clippers experience

is going to be like

between the fact that James Harden is involved.

You have guys like Chris Dunn,

wide open, open for a reason reason as Jalen Rose would say. And you also have Jokic who's the best player in the series.
But I still feel like the Clippers are going to win the series. And I don't think it's crazy.
We agree. I thought the Clippers with 20 turnovers so so many of them were just bad turnovers.

You're getting ready to inbound the ball.

You can't inbound the ball.

It's probably more on the pass than it is on Harden positioning himself.

And Westbrook's energy was just off the charts because I want to get to his timeline of events here.

But 20 turnovers.

They took way more free throws. I think Okic was as good as he was overall because we all expect that from him he was atrocious on defense in the first half yeah so i don't know if that's like a half time 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 there's a baseline drive on him where he was terrible and then with zoo no matter what and you can sort the numbers and say zoo watch based on minimum number of possessions against yokich like you can make an argument that he's better against yokich than anybody else the very least that you're getting out of it because you're never stopping yokich is that there's about four or five shots i think from game one we're like that's a tough shot like he got even yokich to have to take that shot tough so like i i feel about that.
I'm mad about the turnovers. I don't think it was just because of trapping.
Every now and then, if there's a double team on the guy with the ball, a cut would be nice from some of the other big-name guys. But Harden was really good.
He hit those two floaters. He had a huge three.
So there's not really a thing you can point to there with Harden. I think it's this is whatever we want to do with this westbrook topic the fact that he took 17 shots in a playoff game if i'm the clippers i'm like good if he takes that many shots the rest of this series including the biggest shot of the game yeah um second i'd say second the brown three was the biggest shot of the game.
Hold that thought.

So Harden was 32-6-11 and played 42 minutes. Kawhi played 41 minutes.
At some point, they were like, we got to get this game. We can take this.
The way Porter's playing. Well, it's overtime too.
Well, yeah. But I mean, with the way Porter is playing, I think they were like, we can steal this.
We can steal this. And it felt like they were going to win it.
The Norm Powell, who I don't think has been the same guy

since he came back from his injury.

And I don't know if the stats completely back it up,

but I think they do.

The thing that was interesting with-

He had a good march.

He was slow, I think.

A little up and down, right?

Yeah, right.

But I mean, he's playing less minutes too.

I looked up the five-man numbers for all the,

I did it before the Golden State game,

for just game one.

And you can see that,

and these lineups play like 10 minutes,

12 minutes, 11 minutes.

The Clippers played that one lineup,

26 minutes with Dunn.

26 of the 53.

And they were like minus nine with that lineup.

And I wonder going forward, do we see a little less done and a little more Derek Jones or maybe a little more Batum? Do they go a little bit bigger, just play Harden as a point guard? I think my point is they have moves to make, whereas Denver has no moves. If Porter's going to suck, then it's it.
It's just Westbrook. Who else is playing? Nobody else in your roster who can play in crunch time of a playoff game.
So they're going to be at the whim of this Russell Westbrook roller coaster. So take the floor because I know you have a timeline you want to do.
I mean, we can keep going. LA's bench got outscored by the Denver bench 23 to 13.
It was terrible. That's weird.
I mean, you want to start looking at how dumb plus minus can be. I think sometimes it's telling.
Sometimes it's totally misleading. Zoo was minus eight and 39 minutes.
Simmons, who doesn't want the ball in his fucking hands, was plus five on the game. So they're so desperate.
They have to play Simmons in those non-Zoo center minutes. And even if you think, okay, at least he provides some kind of body that can move around a little bit.
He doesn't, once he has has the ball like all he's doing is trying to figure out how he can get rid of it and then i'll try to do like a pass that looks kind of cool or whatever so i like when he gets a rebound and he takes off with the ball like it's going to be a fast break yeah johnson style but then he sees the half court logo and he's like three two one i have to get rid of this ball i can't dribble with it 35 feet of the basket. I can't believe he's playing.
The one thing I liked with him was I thought he was physical with Jokic. I guess if he can at least do that, he's probably playable in this series.
But offensively, he's a zero. I can't believe he's playing.
It's a legitimate zero. I cannot believe he's playing real minutes right now.
But it really speaks like they just don't want to go with drew eubanks over it and i guess if you're if you're being as nice as you possibly could is that once you give him the outlet he can he can cross half court with the right he looks good heads up you're so right though when he takes off you're like oh my this is gonna be on the vhs well remember him remember pre-covid ben sure he would take those rebounds and he honestly looked like left-handed magics uh lebron sometimes he really did i don't know what happened so we're we don't like there's just a lot from this game where the first half was playing out the way i thought it would play i thought yokich is even worse defensive even worse defensively than whatever standards you have for him. He's in every action.
They're hunting him constantly. And a lot of times I think he doesn't get enough credit for how he's at least smart enough to know what position you're supposed to be in, which I think is more than half a defense.
But at the rim, it's not like there's going to be a ton of contests or people are going to do U-turns. Against the really good defensive guys, you can see it's like, I don't really want to go in there.
It's a good one for Harden too. Cause that floater he has, he just knows he's getting it against the, against the nuggets.
Nobody's blocking it. But I, I still was, was okay with the Clippers after this whole thing, because like, let's, let's go with that Westbrook timeline here.
He hits the three. He hits the three.
By the way, Denver's offensive rebounding in the fourth quarter also won. They had seven offensive rebounds just in the fourth.
So Westbrook takes down a huge offensive rebound when they're down 96-95. He hits the huge three.
But then at the end of regulation, he gets it back back again has a chance to take a three and then decides to jump in the air and throw it off another defender as the clock expires sure like okay what's going on here i actually felt like that got swept under the rug is one of the worst course in the game plays in the history of basketball yeah just even leading up i mean he was put in a bad spot there's three seconds left but about it was a botch. Here's the other thing that'll be forgotten forever, and I'm going to forget it too.
But up 108, 107, when they were trying to trap, Murray swings it to Westbrook to run clock. And then Westbrook was 16 games.
Oh, he goes for the layup. Yeah.
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. 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 60-10 game.
And everybody was getting pissed. Right, right.
Would you hear Bob Myers' reaction to that? The play settled. I think they ended up getting free throws out of it somehow.
There's like a pause, and Bob Myers is like, well, I'm not sure Westbrook should have taken the bet. He was just like, I'm really not sure that should have happened.
You kind of have to pull up there and maybe not do that. National broadcast, default, nice sitting with that.
I mean, there's another thing here that I wrote down, like Jokic misses those two huge, like when do you expect Jokic in that spot to miss two free throws? So, look again, Ramona Shelburne had a really good note on ESPN.com on her piece today where if you look at the spacing that LA gave Westbrook in this game, it averaged out to 9.6 feet on his three-point attempts, which is the most space he's ever had in a playoff game since they started tracking this stuff 11 years ago. Minimum five attempts.
So nine feet is almost... Nine feet is...
That's like two-thirds of the free throw line. That's like second and six.
If you get four yards, three yards, maybe they spot it.

It's either second and seven or second and six,

depending on how they spot it.

I really want to talk about the Westbrook spacing

because, first of all, this was another thing

we didn't properly kill the Clippers on.

Whatever the fuck these staggered double teams

they were sending at Jokic,

it just felt like over and over again

it was the wrong timing of it,

and he just had it figured out in the second half in OT. They're going to do this.
I'm going to just hit this open guy. But that shot, Westbrook hit the three.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone left more open at any level of basketball in any game I've ever watched in my life, including girls' high school basketball in the eighth grade. He was open.
Chris Dunn just, Jokic got the ball. 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's a fan on the court yeah like he had time to line up so then he made it and he's like that's what i do that's what i do he's doing that whole thing it's like dude nobody's ever been left more open than you just were ever in a playoff game ever it was amazing i love that play because i wonder how many people would throw it to him in that spot now the uncontested three shooting numbers for Westbrook this year are actually pretty good.
By the way, for the whole Nuggets team, because if you look at their three-point shooting, it's kind of better than you think it would be. But the reason it's better than you think it would be because a lot of these threes are just wide open because of all the shots Jokic creates for everybody.
So you're shooting 39%, but most of those shots are like wide open shots. I just would wonder if you could ever get a couple 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, but do I really want him taking this one? And I think that this is why you can't ever question this guy's motivations is because I think he just wants to play the game the perfect way and that he would make that pass again if Westbrook missed it.
I think there's a lot of guys that don't pass it to him. I think he is just conditioned to do, he's the Terminator walking into the bar, making the calculations with all the math and just makes the decision.
I think every decision is just whatever the best basketball play is, that's what he does. So even if it's Russell Westbrook alone by 12 feet in the corner down to the biggest play of the game, I just think he's throwing it to him.
That's a wide open guy. I am conditioned to throw it to that guy.
And that's it. I think 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 that's what i do a criticism of yokich if you wouldn't mind sure it's a great it's a great time it's it's been it's been uh a lot of yokich's love lately especially in especially in this podcast go ahead so the inbounding the ball thing that he does all right denver fans it's gonna be okay we'll get through this together but this came up when it was the ishbia thing remember when ishbia had the ball and like yokage went to grab it from him and ishbia was just like whatever i caught a ton of shit because I was like I could totally see just Ishbia thinking like what are you doing even though if it were just a normal fan.
Yeah. You got to give the ball back.
But the argument is well Jokic loves to check it with the ref so he can inbound the ball ahead of a defense getting things sorted out. All right? Because there's numerous times throughout a game where you can see that he's doing it.
He's quick to get in a position to inbound, then get the ball back, and he's trying to catch the defense off guard. It's smart, right? He should keep doing it.
However, there are times where it doesn't matter how quickly Jokic wants to inbound the ball, the refs have to sort some shit out.

And on that play where he and Van Gundy are battling for the basketball,

there's no version of events where Jokic rips it from Van Gundy

and then checks it and the ref just gives it back to him

automatically advantage Denver.

There seems to be these people that think that Jokic just gets to do

whatever he wants on the inbounding.

What would happen? The refs are like, oh, shit. He inbounded it, guys.
I know we have a review and I know we have all these different, but he wanted to get it in. So I just let him.
So there seems to be this misunderstanding of who's in charge. Because there's plenty of times where it makes sense when the ref doesn't have anything that he has to sort out there's nothing that they're worried about there are

other times where it's very clear and it's not as many times it's clear the refs have to like

figure a couple things out before he gets to just start the game because he wants to start the game

i don't mind him doing it i mind people defending the idea that he's supposed to be able to do it

every single time you know who used to do it every single time.

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

Cedric Maxwell.

50 minutes?

Larry Joe Bird.

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

I think he saw it the same way as Jokic.

It's almost like soccer, where the guy

puts the free kick down really fast to try to

get the advantage. But on the Ishmapia play specifically, there was other stuff they had to get through and figure out.
They weren't just going to go, well, we had some questions about what happened. But now you have the ball, so let's go.
He got the ball in. Ishpia.
It's the most positive Ishpia reference in a a while the idea that he's on pace to be the worst owner in nba history thank you i was gonna do this later but let's do it now uh look we both like steven a i'm so tired of the historical hyper he's got my vote there's been so many worst owners over the course of 80 years than matt ishbia just trading a couple too many things for Kevin Durant and throwing some swaps at a Bradley Beal trade. Sarver used to just sell picks.
George Shin, they had to move the team to get him out of town because the town revolted against him owning a basketball team. Ted Stipian, they had to create a rule so that you couldn't trade draft picks and consider it because he demolished the Cavaliers for the entire 1980s and basically helped the Magic Johnson 1980s Lakers dynasty with stupid trades.
Like, I could go through a million of these. He's not in the top 20 yet.
Was Dan Snyder that long ago? Well, he was saying NBA, right? Oh, was it just NBA? Oh, right. But even if it's NBA, I can come up with 20.
We haven't even mentioned Donald Strauss. Give me four hours.
Yeah, but we've had a million of these. FYI, James Dolan wasn't exactly crushing it for 20 years there for the Knicks, right? I don't know, not to defend him, but Jesus.
That's not defending him. That's just...
It's ridiculous. This whole thing where everything has to be the greatest, the best.
Maybe it's an Ishbiapod. Let's pivot.
Let's get in front of that. Did that game make you feel better about voting for Jokic for MVP? Because it did for me.
Did the OKC Memphis game make people feel worse voting for SGA? That seems totally unfair. So I retract that.
Cheers. No, look, I was totally comfortable.
I was totally. Don't 100% retract it because that game was a fucking two hour display of how awesome OK OKC is.
That team's awesome. That was part of the case if you were kind of nudging a little toward Jokic and a little way from SJ.
It's like OKC is awesome. And OKC was – I mean, they beat Memphis to the point that I almost wonder if you if you win game one by 60 points should the series

just end like what would be

the right number where it's like look if you lose

by 60 we're not playing the other games

it's done well I love

the idea of this but they're never giving up the television

no I know they're not but what would be a

number that would be like if you can't stay within

60 points of somebody in a game one you can't

play the rest of the games yeah if you get it to

60 does that mean you're up 2-0 we We'll see you game three. It's a double win.
Yeah. I think if you get up 60 in an NBA playoff game, there should be some, 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.
I have a Clippers thing. I don't want to leave Clippers nuggets yet.
I'm not done with it yet either

buddy. Great.
Go. But the Jokic

MVP, yes I voted him for

MVP. Anybody listening to this podcast

knew that I was going to do it. I felt totally fine

about it. I don't want to sit here and argue against

SGA because he was awesome.

He was awesome. He had an incredible candidacy.

But you got there too, huh?

I did.

I did. You could tell

it was coming like two, three weeks ago.

The 60-10-10 game was

Let's go. but you got there too huh i did i did you you could tell it was coming like two three weeks ago the 60 10 10 game was probably the final thing for me but i just you know i talked about it on my thursday pod at some point if somebody's having the best offensive season you've seen since michael jordan you gotta have to reconsider some of the uh some of the standards you have for the award.
I have a Clippers thing. My point about you asking, but I wasn't on the fence and then like the third quarter, I went, okay, I got it.
I got it right. Thank God.
Clippers. I have some Clipper fans in my life.
It's an underrated, oh my God,

it's happening to us again team.

Because we always think of like the typical,

the big teams,

like the Buffalo Bills,

like these teams in the playoffs where if something goes wrong,

you start thinking about the history.

And the Quippers 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 Quipper fans

just feel like we can beat this team. We have a really good team.
Kawhi being healthy and playing that many minutes and playing that many minutes just in general, it's one of those things you don't want to talk to earn a no-hitter. But he looks really good.
Like for whatever we thought he was going to be at this stage of his career at age 33 after all the time he's kind of missed and come and gone like this is think like that i think harden i think his legs look really good for an older team they look pretty good i 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 i still think they're going win the series um we have to if we if we're not done are you done with the series because we haven't talked about Michael Porter jr we have to do a minute on that go benched at the where do I have it here 814 mark of the fourth quarter during my note-taking exercise to try to remember stuff of all these games yeah i did have a first half third quarter mpj wtf question mark just notation that's code for like sometimes i'll just write down a guy's name and i'll go andrew wiggins question mark mark. Tobias Harris, three question marks.

Hey, not in the first half.

Not in game one.

Yeah.

The lack of urgency from that guy is, it's not new.

This isn't breaking news, but it's like, it just blows your mind.

Like if you really try to like, hey, I'm going to watch some, like where's this guy been? Like, let me watch what he's doing out there. Doesn't fight for rebounds, doesn't fight for positioning.
If it's an offensive rebound and he's on defense and then the guys in front of him, he just kind of like is there. There's no contest, there's no effort.
So they bench him. And it's funny too, because you're thinking about like,'s westbrook gonna play does this mean because adelman's now coaching that we're gonna see pick it out there closing because that's the sample that we got in that sacramento game or it was like oh wait a minute westbrook's gonna be on the bench that is though they're gonna put picket in that game which is becoming a must-win game like that it would have been insane but that that was an actual option but then it's well now it doesn't even matter because it's going to be brown gordon obviously who would be one of the three main guys with murray and yokich and then brown's going to be out there westbrook because there's no michael porter jr and so adelman covered for him a bit saying hey i didn't think it was fair like to have him sit long stretches and then It's tough to get back in.
yeah I haven't played for a while what does that tell you that tells you that he cannot Michael Porter Jr. is either somebody who does not respond to the criticism or responds poorly to it because I always think of like if you're that bad and this is not new for him as I've said like he's he's a classic like hey he hit a bunch of threes and I had 21 points grabbed a few boards like he was really important for them hit some awesome shots in the fourth quarter like clearly he's already done that in playoff games but then if he has zero you know like a lot of these guys that we talk about you're not shocked like hey how do you end up with three points well like you got the other version of him but yokich's quote here was pretty incredible now again three points in 26 minutes asked about it.
He said, quote, if you're not going to be engaged right now,

then you're not supposed to be playing this sport.

So you had the coach probably knowing, like, I can't get on him.

Yeah, I just got this job two weeks ago.

I'm a temp.

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 it'll always blow my mind watching guys.

I'm sure he's going to be back out there with the closing group, and he's going to get another opportunity. But it'll always blow my mind watching guys not care.
I don't know. In 23, when they won the title, we played 20 playoff games, 32.7 minutes a game, 8.1 rebounds a game during that playoff stretch.
And I thought he was good during that run.

And we kind of hit whatever you had in your head

of where his career was going to go.

It would be cool if he had 40% of his threes

and he tried on defense

and he rebounded. If you just get those three

things, we're good. 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. We were talking about OKC.
And I asked how many guys on Denver would play for OKC. And we went and he's like, no, there'd be more.
And I said, well, I don't think Porter would play for them. I don't think he'd play over Wiggins.
And Zach said, he'd play over Wiggins. And I don't know whether that's right or wrong.
I genuinely don't think he would play over Wiggins. I think Wiggins gives a shit plays defense hits threes he's athletic he gives a shit i said that twice um i don't think porter would get on the floor for them because he doesn't play hard enough he wouldn't play he wouldn't play this version of heart two years ago he would play over chat he wouldn't play over door he wouldn't play over wallace he wouldn't play over sga he wouldn't play over jalen williams one um he wouldn't play over caruso it's basically the wiggins spot isaiah joe or wiggins yeah i'm playing both of those guys over porter this version of porter and knowing what they prioritize yeah he's the antithesis of what they're about so here's the thing this might have worked out for denver where porter has some sort of come to Jesus moment, but he's also had a really, I think, difficult year.
And I, and I, maybe that's affected the off the court stuff with his brother, which was, you know, pretty horrible. Um, he's already won a title.
So when you win a title, it's like, what am I don't have to sacrifice in the same way I'm already a champion. Um, and maybe you're in that mode of like, I'm tired of about how great yokage is i'm good too i'll never nobody will ever appreciate me on this like who knows what's in his head but whatever he did in game one was disgusting it sucked the problem is the off 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 right it's a lot of shit going on but if this were abnormal for him in a game i think those excuses would be more of of like the conclusion that i've come to the problem is is this is kind of who he's been this has always been it's just even crazier too like thinking back to all of the stories that work their way out of like the divide between calvin booth and mike balone and then booth at one point saying hey we need to trade michael porter jr because there probably still be some kind of fake attraction to the idea of him he's still really young when he's 26 27 he two more years.
Would you trade him for Levine?

I think Levine is a bigger losing player than even Michael Porter Jr. is

because he has the ball in his hands more.

So probably not.

But there was this Missouri connection

and you just think,

what are you guys talking about?

That can't be true.

He was barely at Mizzou.

He was barely there. And so now it's like this guy that seems to be indifferent at the wrong times.
I'm looking at our YouTube chat to see if anybody has Michael Porter Jr. Yeah, doesn't seem like he's very popular in the chat.
But the thing is, they don't just need him. They actually need him to play like 32 to 35 minutes a game.
It's not just like, oh, it'd be nice if he helped us out.

They actually need real minutes from him because the more minutes he plays, the less other

people play.

But just to review though, he played 53 minutes in college, 53 minutes.

And we're supposed to believe because the Missouri connection to ownership, that's like

me being on Minneapolis Zillow because I've used the airport.

Like, I like it here.

Like, have you ever been outside of the airport?

Like, I've been to that airport probably 40, 50 times.

I've never been to the town.

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

Only twice.

That would be an interesting one.

Most airports you've been in versus times you've actually been in the city it'd be good to try it's up there but i've been to detroit uh minneapolis detroit hartford detroit to somewhere else yeah well i used to just spend a lot of time in detroit who wouldn't i'd leave hartford being like i can do this i can do detroit but when i canada's right there i've never been to Minneapolis I didn't even go for the for the Super Bowl I skipped that one this episode is brought to you by LinkedIn during the season every baseball team plays 162 games it's a true test of endurance it's not enough to have a hot month or two you need sustained dominance throughout well the same is true for your small, it's not enough to have a great Q2 or even a great year. You want year over year growth that starts with better hires that'll be there for the long haul.
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Can we do OKC Grizz really quick? I think Memphis is not a good basketball team and it made me mad that Dallas couldn't beat them. And I bet the sweep immediately, like immediately for this series.
Maybe I'll be wrong. What were the payouts on that? The odds were I have that here um plus 140 that's what i got it at um that was as big of a first half ass kicking as i can probably ever remember watching in a play off game and i know there was there were games where there were bigger blowouts but wasn't just that they were killing them.
It was like they were just rebounding and getting three-on-ones. And I thought Memphis gave up.
It was 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.
I thought he maybe left and was playing video games in the locker room, but it turned out he was still out there.

It's just

grim, and I don't see any

chance. This is

a team that is really built to

defend Ja

with as many options as

you could possibly come up with, plus rim protection.

And there's, you know, unless

Desmond Baines just can hit 12 threes

in a game, I don't see a case but uh i think memphis can we officially make them a team to watch this summer because i don't feel like this will be the same nucleus in a couple months yeah i don't know ownership loves jaw and jaron had a great year this year he was terrible today it's an awful matchup for them because it's Ja going up against Doar and then Bane's going up against J-Will.

So then it's nine for 29 combined from your backcourt

who physically has no chance against that group.

And then on top of everything else,

Jaren Jackson's like,

so I get Chet or Hardenstein against me here.

Hardenstein was, I thought, incredible today.

Yeah.

Bane was a minus 51. JJ was two for 13 minus 51 yeah you don't see that a lot at one point i was rooting 110 55 was in play i didn't get there i watched the entire game my mom was over for easter and i was like hold on like i i i was really i like to double the score that sounds like something i would say don't you think that's a little sad you watched this whole game and your mother was in town well, hold on.
I was really... I like to double the score.
That sounds like something I would say. Don't you think that's a little sad? You watched this whole game and your mother was in town? Well, I had it on.
It was on the kitchen. I was focused on it.
But here's the other part. SGA started this game one of nine and it was 63 to 32.
SGA had 15 points. It's his lowest total since Team Kenny and Team Shaq.
If you don't count those games, it's the lowest. The lowest he had had was very early in the season when he had 18.
So game one of the playoffs, they come out here and do this. And he only had 15 points, and he missed all of his shots until he hit some more a little bit later.
This was so gross gross it's the biggest blowout in the playoffs

in 10 years when the bulls beat the bucks back in 2015 by 54 points 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 the standings broke one way and you were kind of a two seed and you were two seeds in that other year. And you guys really are proud.
Like, when are you guys raising the two seed banner that started? Like we were a two seed at one point and it just, what was that Indy Colts banner? What was it? The, uh, the, uh, the AFC South champs or whatever. Is that what it was? I don't know.'t know they had a bad banner i'm trying to that would be a good website worst banners that would be you start that if things don't work on that after the pod 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's what saruta said 2014 afc finalists was the colts banner afc championship finalists it's pretty bad it's a tough banner i just you know the build up and like jaws looking around and it's like all right and then jaylen rose is even like a shoe comes out today and he's wants to announce to the world that like even though sga is getting all this love like i'm at this level and then okc's just looking at me like what are you going to do you're going to go under every screen you're going to hit the first three you're going to miss the rest of them and then you're going to do shit where you get into the paint sometimes it works but against us like if you wait around against OKC as I've said all season long if you dick around with the basketball they were going to make you pay and so breaking the paint and then just kind of dancing around hoping you going to get some angle against all these guys that are so much bigger than you.
So there sounds like there's like real dislike in my voice. I know when I talk about Memphis and I actually feel bad about it a little bit because I think they do do a really good job.
And they've done like a really good job on the margins with all these players. I'm like, hey, nobody really liked this guy.
They were smart about it. They've nailed all these draft picks.
Even Pippen Jr., like that guy's going to play a really long time. I love his toughness.
But to come out and just get stomped like that, it should be, however the rest of the series goes, this should have been some kind of wake-up call of like, we might be lying to ourselves down here a little bit about what our ceiling actually is. But they probably won't do anything because J the most famous guy in sports you could talk yourself into a well the coach thing was weird we don't have brandon clark jaylen wells got hurt let's take a let's take a look at this in the offseason edie was turned out to be a great pick feeling good there great pick i think he's serviceable for number nine in a bad draft fine yeah just trying to do the glass half full Grizzlies case the question for me is if you're sitting in whatever office talking about let's make a big move who's out there whether Memphis would admit it or not they're not hanging up you're like, I have this really good offer for John Moran.

Can we talk about it?

They're not going to like,

Nope.

I think John's the kind of guy owners love and will defend forever because

he's their attraction.

And if you're in Memphis,

that's probably as important as,

well,

I guess they were a two seat.

So,

all right,

well they have,

they're three guys and they feel a million miles away from OKC and and OKC is still stacking up, and they have three draft picks in this draft. And I mean, you're so far away.
I don't know. It'd be a tough exit interview for the group, and we don't know if that coach is coming.
I'd heard that maybe they did that Jenkins move because they wanted to lock down that coach because they're afraid they're going to lose him.

So maybe he's the coach going forward.

I don't know.

But anyway, I'm going to probably not watch a lot of that series going forward

unless the score is like 150.

And I can get excited that they might double a score.

Let me ask you this.

What would OKC need to do?

Or is it irrelevant because it's Memphis before people start to realize

how special this team is?

It's not going to happen until they play Lakers. Oh, it's Clippers-Denver.
Probably that series. Probably round two if they're just walloping whoever comes out of that Clippers-Denver thing.
That's when I think people will be like, holy shit, I just think people aren't going to believe it until they see it against real teams in the playoffs. Knicks Pistons.
What is your opinion for why Cade was so bad in that game? I have an opinion, but I'm interested in yours because Cade was bad. Yeah, he was.
I think OG makes you work a lot and I think it kind of slows down the first thing that you're going going to do i thought they were doing a better job bringing him off the ball in some of the regular season games and then coming back to the ball it seemed like they kind of abandoned a lot of that stuff hey they were a mess the five second violation to start the fourth quarter next possession 24 second violation turnover turnover turnover campaign of all people going off the missed dunk although i saw they got the ball back and scored made made up for it um that was a disaster start of that 21 nothing run the whole time you seem like you have something specific though to the cade matchup here that you want you said the number one thing i would have said is i first of all og's been awesome for uh two months here and i thought he was really good yesterday no No, I had a big picture point. 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 we've seen teams lose game sevens at home over and over again, every playoffs. And in general, I just don't think, it's not like it was in the eighties, 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, the crowds were different.
The crowds are on top of you. You had the people on the bench, they had people sitting in the rows behind them, just screaming at them the whole game.
There was like an intimidation factor that I think is just not there anymore. I think it's, I benevolent to be on the road just in general.
It's easier to fly to a game, your private jets, your stay in nice hotels. There's just things that are more in your favor if you're the road team.
I think the Knicks still have a home court advantage. I thought the Pistons got rattled when that 21 to nothing, as that was happening, it was a thing that you don't really see that often anymore.
A younger team getting affected by the momentum of a game and how much the crowd was into it. Cause I thought the crowd was great.
And I knew a bunch of people that were there who said the same thing, but I thought the crowd and the energy of, of what they had and what some of the players had and towns, which that was about as much fun as I've had watching Towns as a two-way

guy probably ever.

OG, Brunson was, you know, Brunson, it seems like he's hurt.

Then he's not hurt.

Then he seems hurt again.

Then he's fine.

But Brunson was gutting it out.

And everybody won from that game except for Bridges because Bridges was bad and he was

on the bench basically the entire time

they brought it back. But

if you're Detroit, you're like, fuck.

We got this incredible Harris game

at 22, what,

at halftime? We were able

to match their energy. Stewart gets hurt at the beginning

of the fourth quarter.

And they get nothing from Cade, but they still

hung around, hung around, hung around. And then

the Knicks just made them look like the young team that wasn't ready to be in an atmosphere like that. That was my takeaway.
Yeah, I think all that's really fair. That place is awesome.
That's not breaking news. But it really kind of went the way I thought.
I thought the third quarter was so impressive from Detroit. Yeah.
Winning that one, 36-26.

I'm going, this is not what I expected. I just figured Detroit's going to get reminded that there's levels to this and that New York, even though they had the injuries last year, they're just going to be way more comfortable in these games than Detroit's going to be.
And if I look at a Malik Beasley who hit a ton of shots, I feel like do I 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 try to do last year but I don't know that I expect those shots to go in in the fourth quarter. And then you have another play where there's a turnover.
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.
Get back on defense. Tim Hardaway lets Brunson run away from him.
There was just so many bad plays, turnovers, looking like they're not – they just weren't up to the task at all of the emotion of what that game was to close it.

And I think the 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.

So Cat doesn't really have to worry about that.

Cat has to figure out a way to just be in position on some of the Cade stuff

that he was out of position on in the third quarter.

But if Duren's in, as much as he's going to make you work

because he's a beast out there,

Thank you. has to figure out a way to just be in position on some of the Cade stuff that he was out of position on in the third quarter.
But if 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. And Cat's big enough and he's rebounded at a Hall of Fame level his entire career, so he's going to be able to fight for some of those rebounds.
I'm sure Cat's looking at this being like, okay, I'm going to get hurt on some of these where I come up to meet the ball and I'm going to get burnt. But I'm also not worrying about like Porzingis as a stretch five or I'm not worrying about some super dynamic guy who's going to get all of these options offensively at center.
So that's going to be a bit of a relief for him. And, you know, campaign scoring 11 points in just a few minutes.
They didn't even bring back Mikhail to your point until like it was kind of over. So don't know that there's a a of detroit had done this i just think they were completely overwhelmed which the fourth quarter made way more sense to me than the the third quarter did yesterday the third quarter of the fourth quarter was hilarious from a tech standpoint because i think at this point i was was either at WrestleMania or we were going there and I just decided

it's too hard for me to watch this next game.

I'm going to just, I'll bang it out when I

get home. I'll bang out like the second half.

And

I had these texts. I won't say

who sent them, but one of them was

this is very disturbing to say the least.

No ball movement. Brunson dribbling

away. They're a better team with Robinson.
And then 10 minutes later, I take it all back. That was one.
There was another one. The Dante Julius trade is such a disaster.
Motherfuck. And then right after.
Timestamp above is when we tied game, by the way. It doesn't matter.
And then I was like, ha ha, you guys came back. It was a lot of those.
The Knicks fans were freaking out in the third quarter. And that was what was so funny when the energy shifted, watching it on TV, knowing what had already happened.
Look, it's a really good team. I don't think they're in the class of Boston.
To me, they remind me of, oh man, this is going to get clipped and probably come back to haunt me. They remind me of one of those NFL teams, like a Houston Texans season where they win the wildcard game.
And it's like, do you think they can win three more? It's like, not really. I just think they're going to beat the teams that they're better than.
And when they get to that next class, class i don't think they have enough even in the campaign thing that's ridiculous he's not he's going to do that once every three weeks right that's not going to be a recurring thing with campaign that's if he does that again it'll be a miracle it's campaign i don't know how what what other conclusion is anyone supposed to come, I mean, this becomes this is what you think is going to happen based on your analysis.

Is this what you hope happens because you have a poster home? All right.

And I can't I can't argue with anybody like that.

The only evidence we have is that they don't beat the elite teams because they didn't beat the elite teams.

I mean, they basically want a fucking parade for losing an overtime to the Celtics.

Like the reaction that I saw from that stuff was, hey, this is a turning point and proves that they can they can hang with with this team uh they should smoke detroit detroit's not ready for this and they they proved it in the fourth quarter but that third quarter was fun that third quarter i was like what's going on here there's one thing with detroit that i'm going to be really interested to see if they do it a little more. I thought Schroeder had a really interesting second half.
And I've always liked Schroeder, as you know. I probably like him more than most, but I think he's a pest.
I always felt like he was the best guy in the league defending Steph. Out of anybody in the league, he would have been the number one guy I picked to just bug Steph.
And I feel like he can bug Brunson. 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.
If I'm the Pistons, I thought this was one of my favorite bets that the series would not go six games. I still don't think it's going to go six games.
But if I'm the Pistons, you're at least talking yourself into,

look, Cade's not going to be that bad again.

He was really good all year.

He has another.

This will be a good motivating for them.

That's what I'm saying.

There's also something with Bickerstaff in this one

that I don't know if it's worth even mentioning,

but I'm going to mention it because it's a podcast.

Matching the Asar minutes with Brunson.

Now, Asar should be

plenty fresh.

He's young. He's literally more

athletic than everybody else

in the league, except for maybe his brother

and aunt.

But

they actually had him out there when Brunson

wasn't in in the start of the fourth quarter.

I was just wondering.

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

Because even if you expect 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.

I don't know if I'd want to waste a couple minutes of him

being out there chasing other dudes around. And then bigger staffs clearly, too, a bit like the Emei thing.
He was trying to figure out what he thought was the best lineup. Because it's like, do I want to have a star out there without any kind of spacing? Because spacing is like the number one thing with Cade.
I have to find a way to get spacing. But then it means defensively.
Like, does that mean now we've got guys hunting Beasley? We guys hunting hard away and by the way if the pistons get down to oh here or it's ugly if it were ugly at the end of game two i'm fully expecting like abs red wings type of moment like somebody beasley is down for something shooter's not afraid to screw around i don't know if it'd be a i thought it thought it would happen during that 21-0 run. I was waiting for the clothesline or something like that.
And by the way, that also should have been Memphis today. How many baskets can OKC before you just have to at least contest a layup, for God's sakes? It's pretty brutal.
I'm not doing the old guy. Back in day we would have clothesline bubble the problem is when memphis when memphis there was one miss on that jaylen williams dunk not the one where he dunked on everybody i think that was a little later there was one earlier one where outside of i think it was pippen or bane missed the shot and he was deep in the paint and then i looked at where everybody was in transition and all four other Memphis players were feet below the free throw line.
Like a couple were on the baseline, all four were on the baseline. So they didn't even have anybody positioned to do anything.
Yeah. It was, Jayla Williams was gone.
I think you're right about game two. They're going to definitely muck it up.
That would be my Detroit. That would would be my guess.
We are going to get a way more physical game. And we'll see.
The Bridges piece of it, which has been up and down all year, and we've talked about it a bunch of times. But he finished better.
He definitely finished better, man. He did.
No, during the season. I felt great about him as the season went on.
But it was a storyline, is my point. It was discussed on and off during the season.
I just want to shout out one thing that Thompson does. I think he's the number one guy.
If I'm inbounding the ball and I'm a point guard, I just have to dribble 50 feet to set up my offense. I think he's the number one guy I would want to see in front of me.
There's something about what he does with cutting the angles off to the guy,

like pushing them toward the sidelines,

but being able to move his feet with his hands up.

I've never seen anybody.

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

Maybe like,

I don't remember that one.

You even go way back for me.

Pippen used to do that. Remember when Pippen and Jordan would do this sometimes? So they'd be like, hey, let's just go get the ball.
And they would just defend 94 feet, and people literally couldn't dribble the ball up to midcourt. He is so terrifying.
But I think for the Pistons, putting those miles on Brunson where he's just actually working just to get the ball 60 feet. It's a real thing.

I bet they do that more. Well, that play where Brunson freaked out and got mad and started clapping

at the ref, Asar had

position on him. He just rode him right

out of bounds. Maybe

if I had said Alvin Robertson, you would have remembered.

Alvin had a good fight with

Shaq.

Remember that one?

Yeah, I don't know why I used David Robinson's last name,

but Spurs getting older.

It's fine.

We're getting old.

Cavs heat.

Is there anything you need to see from Cleveland this series?

Man, more Ty Jerome.

20 of 28 points.

How many games has he done this?

Like 20?

Where he just completely takes over a game? Huh? Six. It's not 20.
You think it's 20? No, where he just takes over like a four-minute stretch of a game. The Orlando game is off the charts.
This felt like a lot. I mean, he just comes in.
First of all, 17 points in five minutes. Mitchell and Garland are taking turns, so that's all working.
So there was never that lull. And then, if you're Miami and you're fighting, you're trying so hard.
You have no chance in the playoffs with the construction of this team. And this is the best I've ever felt about Hero as a shot creator, right? Him being the one option, you get to see some of the stuff that he's capable of doing.
And it's really, really impressive. It's also really hard when the number two is Andrew Wiggins, who has like three makes in the first quarter and then didn't have another make until like the fourth quarter.
I think he had like two more, but it was just one was like sort of in the game. The other one was completely irrelevant.
So part of the Andrew Wiggins experience, as much as I love Bam, I love Bam, but offensively, there's going to be some limitations there. So that's your one, two.
If you're Miami trying to hang with Cleveland, that feels like they have all of these offensive options. And Ty Jerome comes in to close the game scoring 20 of 28 points of Cleveland.
Like it's just making like a 30 footer, right? You left out with your Miami options. You left that.
You left out the high screen with our guy Davion. How about him in the Atlanta? Like it's a little difference with Trey Young is assigned to you, but Davion did have some more buckets because Davion feels like he probes a lot and there's certain people that he doesn't want to challenge.
So I've been kind of mixed on like, how much is he really giving you offensively? And he's been terrific for him. So he's definitely a rotation guy.
Oh, easily. I think next year, he's a hundred percent could be on a good team playing 15 to 20 minutes a game.
But the thing, I texted this to you. I still don't understand why they punted on Schroeder and what the, what the thinking was with that.
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. They basically nudged him away.
And I know there were some financial implications to it, but it's a weird one. For Hero to have to go up against this defense, knowing that even if you pull a rabbit out of your hat because he is like there are some shots that hero gets into that are really high level shots yeah just on my own runner floater thinks he's doing is yeah pretty nuts you know i can't believe portland said no to him in that littler trade because this guy's awesome but the the rest of the guys around him like even bam, like there's only certain places he can start with the ball in his hands to be like, Hey, we need a bucket now, bam.
So then heroes coming out of there. That's why I just, you kept looking at the score going, when is this thing going to be over? When is it going to be over? There's no way Cleveland's actually going to lose.
There's no way this is going to be like a possession. Miami's not, Miami shouldn't be a playoff team.
And honestly, neither should Memphis. There's 13 teams.
There's Memphis and Miami. I think Orlando at least can throw some punches and has two good scores.
They feel playoff team-y to me. I'm okay with them in the playoffs.

They're obviously a guy short.

The argument for the play-in is there's plenty of

teams that have had injuries and Memphis would say,

hey, look, if we'd had Ja the full year,

but I don't know. The West is so

packed. Does it guarantee that they're a top six?

I don't think that guarantees it. I think the Kyrie

thing was the biggest one of all of them.

If Kyrie had never gotten hurt, I think

Dallas would have been a really good eight seed.

They would have lost, but at least

Thank you. I don't think that guarantees it.
I think the Kyrie thing was the biggest one of all of them. I think if Kyrie had never gotten hurt, I think Dallas would have been a really good eight seed.
They would have lost, but at least they would have defense and a score, and they would have been something of a team. Yeah, that would have been a fun team.
I'm with you there. But I just want to come full circle on this whole playing thing.
Yeah. Because this was the reason I didn't like it.
Because you're going to have these teams like there was, I would think, an eight game win separation based on the 10 seed in the West and then what the seven seed or eight seed, I forget. So I guess I pull it up right now.
But the point stands is that why are you giving these teams that stink another chance to get into this entire thing? Now, there still had to be eight teams, but it just was funny when you had Lakers-Warriors with the Steph LeBron showdown four years ago and it's like, oh, I thought the play-in stunk. 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? Now, everybody doesn't like the play-in simply because of the results of the games and whether or not they were entertaining.
Don't tell Amazon because I think this is part of their package. Amazon was excited for the play-in, but how many good play-in games were there? It doesn't matter.
We went two for six in the play-in this year. I'd love to know the batting average for the four years, but it's got to be about 30%.
Miami-Atlanta was great. It was a fun game.
I enjoyed it as well.

It was a fun one.

I wonder if it should just be 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 10 seed.

I think it's going to be hard to find a 10 seed

that kind of deserves to get any sort of stage.

You're going to end up in that weird Sacramento thing. I i mean we didn't talk about the sacramento this this is this is now a top three what the hell is this organization gonna do organization the sabonis piece of it um you know and i thought bonnie mcmahon did a good job i'm I'm guaranteed you Vivek wanted

Zach Levine

he seems like the kind of guy

an owner would be like

but he scores a million points

Celtics Orlando anything before we go to Pacers Bucks

the last one

I thought we were going to lead with it

that's what you said in the text

the show rundown that I got

which one

go for it

give us a couple minutes Bill

the Celtics are really good

Thank you. The show rundown that I got.
Which one? Go for it. Go for it.

Come on.

Give us a couple minutes, Bill.

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.

That's my analysis.

The disparity between the two teams was significant.

I never for a split second thought the Celtics were in danger of losing the game. analysis.
The disparity between the two teams was significant.

I never for a split second thought the Celtics were in danger

of losing the game.

And Tatum didn't even play well offensively.

He's had a good rebounding game.

I liked how hard he played. I thought he was good defensively.

I thought he attacked the rim.

But the guards won the game. And Drew clearly

has multiple gears.

The Drew that was in the game today,

Drew, he's doing that. Chad Finn called it the Dennisson like i'll turn it on when the games start mattering and he's you know he's he just looked great um poor zingas looks good team looks good feeling good jalen's knee looked okay um didn't see any red flags anywhere tatum wrist x-rays all good yeah oh yeah no 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're trying to stop a dunk like it's fucking playoff basketball your job is to try to stop somebody from dunking in traffic you know and they called a flag or one on it i could have gone either way on it but i didn't have a problem with that i didn't think it was cheap did you no i didn't think it was a flagrant run it's all depends on how you land everybody's everybody's in 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 but the standard of what we all now think is flagrant it's like concussion experts on twitter on thursday night football you're like oh dude it didn't good.
You're like, you're not even on the sideline, dude. You're home.

Look,

I didn't think it was a flagrant foul,

but you're right.

I mean,

Tatum's 8 of 22,

1 of 8 from 3.

Jalen Brown's 6 of 14.

And by the way,

his foul at the end of the third quarter,

which then restarted the end of the third quarter,

like he has got,

I don't know what's going on over there at Harvard,

but there needs to be a,

hey,

this would be a good time to foul. This would be a bad time to foul.
Maybe it's a one credit course. Yeah, maybe we get a paper.
Somebody put a paper together. Because he just, he has these moments, man, where I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Anyway, six of 14 today.
So that's what, 14 for 36 from your two best players. And you close one out almost 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 get to see that tonight and i thought drew on palo at least making him have to work to get into his stuff but orlando has no chance we knew they had no chance and i also thought if we're doing a wendell carter maybe update he played today you may not have noticed he had like 12 rebounds yeah but yeah to see his effort level against somebody like al horford's effort level when al knew they needed to crank up the energy and al's fighting and he's grabbing loose balls, and he's starting the fast break.
And you're like, man, Carter was actually, when I did his draft year phrasing, I was like, he kind of has a little wharfedish stuff in there. That's even a word.
And then it's like, yep, there's no wonder look for desire, Bill. I was trying to think of a scenario where Orlando could win a game because I still feel like Boston's not going to sweep.
I think Boston will have a weird game where they just don't make threes. But I also think if they play defense, it would be impossible for Orlando to get to like 98 points.
So it would have to be the combination of not making threes, not playing defense for like an hour and get Orlando up.

But if Boston plays defense,

I just don't see how Orlando is going to score.

Even in the game today,

they had 18 points in the first quarter,

18 in the third,

19 in the fourth.

Like it's just,

it's going to be really hard.

They're so bad on offense at times.

It's just tough to watch. Right.
So their third

leading scorer with Jonathan Isaac

with, you want to guess how many points?

Ten? Seven.

Oof. Okay.

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Simmons 20. We'll end with Pacers Bucks.
That's for last. 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.
Look at you The Bucs looked horrible. Dame didn't play.
There was this weird, Dame's back. I think people thought he was going to be back for game one just because of the way the announcement came out.
Well, they said he was off the medication. Yeah.
Because he was off. But even if he comes back, he's not going to be in game shape.
The Pacers love to pressure the ball full court. I just think there's so many things wrong.
And then you move into, well, what has to happen for the Bucs to win the series? Well, Kevin Porter needs to really come through. It's like, well, he wasn't on the team two months ago.
So if it's okay, I'm not going to count on that. And just like penciling Giannis for 38 and 20 every game, I still don't think they're winning the series.
And I also think the Pacers are good. I think Pacers-Cleveland is going to be a really, really good series, but the big question is is the clock going to start on Giannis? That's going to be the ESPN topic tomorrow, especially if they fall down 2-0.
What happens to Giannis? Where is he going to go? We said all this before the playoffs. Yeah, but you 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 is he going to go after one fucking playoff game?

It was starting on Saturday after that game.

Where, though?

It was bad.

It was a bad loss.

And you start going, okay, this kind of sucks if you're Giannis.

He's been 30, 12, and 6 for seven straight years.

And he's never been in a bleaker situation with this roster you know it is what it is i'd like to submit like a weekly nico harrison award based on the quote that you're like what yeah and i'd submit body bobby portis had some pre-game uh availability with katie george who did the sideline for this game pre-s. And she was saying, Bobby, you know, he's been around here a long time.
And he said that this Bucks team is the best version of any of the teams that he's been on. And then I expected like, except for the team that won the title.
Yeah. And it, no, no, no, no, no, Bill, not so fast.
He said, even that team, he did an, even that team for the team that won the title wow the 22 team was better the 22 team was really good if middleton had been healthy who knows grant williams six threes 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 i mean i never liked the kuzma trade at any point oh my god 2025 it's tony snell off the hook you think snell is replaced by kuzma yeah i just the meme 22 minutes oh for five zero board zero assists zero points you want to I guess how. Just a meme.
22 minutes, 0 for 5, 0 boards, 0 assists, 0 points. You want to guess how many blocks and steals he had? None.
Zero and zero. Zero turnovers.
Well, tomorrow we have Detroit, New York, and Clippers, Denver, which I think is a – that Clippers, Denver, that was a really hard game. Of all the games, I would have said it would be nice if those guys had one more day off I probably would have picked that series but somehow they're playing again so we'll see with that but those are two really good games tomorrow I went from thinking Indiana would win in less than six to now wondering if this could potentially get ugly.

Because if I'm Milwaukee,

I need Dame to come back for the third game.

And I also need him to be pretty good.

And that just seems like I'm keeping my fingers crossed

on both of those at that point.

I continue to think Indiana is really good.

I put some of my favorite playoff bets on Friday,

and I thought the Indiana was 28-1 to win the East.

I don't think they're going to win the East,

but I thought those odds were pretty good

because you'd have to take out Cleveland,

and they know they could play with Boston,

and just 28-1, those are crazy, crazy odds.

It's at least if you're going to take a crazy flyer on someone,

not a bad one.

I think Indiana is a good team.

And sometimes they're their own worst enemies,

but they are definitely better than Milwaukee.

And I don't think it's going to matter what Giannis does.

So,

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.

Thank you. Um, so we try not to overreact to game one, but that game confirmed everything I thought heading into the series that Indiana just has a better basketball team.
Yeah. No breaking news there.
I mean, you expect a little bit more of Kuzma. Um, Torian Prince also had zero Kuzma versus Porter who had a worst weekend.
I mean, it was just an absolute donut from everybody other than AJ green hitting a few threes and Kevin Porter-Judan getting to the free throw line. 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? Okay, he's done this.
He owns these dudes. But he's playing point guard now.
I mean, you want to talk about a dude out there by himself. You know? This is...
Some people were calling it the John Popper of the NBA, and I don't know if that's fair to the guys in Blues Traveler, but... He's had a good run.
It's tough when a basketball player hits the point where you can give them the best possible stat line for the game and also say their team's still going to lose yeah like no chance like game two janice 42 27 assists do they win and i'd be like probably not that's where it gets tough i know how you were talking about just all the the nonsense but but we have to be because we're guilty of it too but we don't do it but we're guilty of referencing it and i know i am and sometimes i try to stop myself from doing it but i just 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 they argue these points there's a lot of anti-tatum people and it's a weird one it's it's very strange like today would be another example of like oh once again tatum needs to be bailed out of like a bad playoff performance i heard from a laker fan today who mailed me his box who were like yo your boy yeah don't understand 14 rebounds yeah you gave up 40 open threes last night buddy uh so all of that exists so all of the yana stuff exists but you know until i would see like whether it was you thinking you've heard something or a wind horse or shams like there's somebody that really mattered that kind of like brought it out on a radar where it was justifiable i know that it's being talked about but a lot of stuff that's you're just like, okay, but who are the people that are actually talking about this stuff?

Even if it's being discussed all of the time.

And there was a really funny one

because I would put this in the category

of something that I've read,

and I forget who wrote it,

but I was reading a bunch of the playoff previews,

and the person made the argument that was like,

I like the Bucks in this series

if Dame doesn't come back.

I'm like, God.

And after this game... Good zag.
Right.

After this game I'm thinking

alright well

whatever you think

the low end of the Dame experience

is

at least there's another score out

there that also balances out the court

and it's some outlet that's better than

you know all of

these dudes does the zero zero zero across the board um so i went to wrestlemania in and out yesterday how'd that go do you drive car service no i was i was able to uh somebody i knew was going in and out same day. Yeah.
Very nice. And at one point was sitting with Dana White was like four seats down with his right hand guy.
Very nice guy. And my son, big UFC fan and his buddy kind of my son has a way of doing this.
All of a sudden is in a conversation with the right hand guy and uh got some info on international fight week and uh there's a fight coming in that week that my son he'll he'll make this face three times a year that we always make fun of where he's been making it since he's a little kid where he's overwhelmed by something and he's kind of just deer like legitimate deer deer in the headlights. And he found out one of the fights that made the deer in the headlights face.
But I'm not going to say it because I don't want to betray the confidence. But let's just say my son is now demanding we go to International Fight Week.
By the way, how does your son handle, I would say over the years, the access of your friend group and some celebrity? Yeah. Let's not not pretend how does he handle himself is he he's great handshake eye contact um kind of knows when to move in and out of the combo not annoying no not annoying low usage rate he'll space the floor um if it's somebody he wants to engage with he'll do it if it's something like there's a common interest thing like a go-bear switch yeah or he'll move back yeah that's good 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 know you were focused on that.
Another Massachusetts title. Cena won the title again.
Bad guy. Turn heel.
But he won. Won the title with some help from your guy, Travis Scott.
Came in and helped him out. That's cool.
But he came in. Surprise.
I think he did a really good job of the shoes. My highlight, though, was behind in the back room underneath, Stephen Mell was there who starred in Heels, which is a show that I really like that was on Starz.
And this guy, Chris Bauer, was also on Heels. He played the bad guy.
But he's been in a bunch of movies. He was Sabaka and The Wire, and he's been in a bunch of movies, but he was

Machine, an 8mm, a movie that I love and Van Lathan loves, and my friend Jeff Gowell loves, and I'm not sure anyone else loves, Nick Cage. So I was really excited to meet him, and I opened with, I'm a huge fan of 8mm, and I love Machine.
I don't think he gets it much. Seems genuinely surprised but so he's the main union guy, Sabatka.
Oh yeah, Frank Sabatka. Yeah.
He was great. I thought Sabatka, I know the storyline in season two, people don't really like it that much.
Season two is good. People gotta give season two another chance.
Plus Pablo's in it. There's great actors in that season.
Pablo Schreiber and Den of Thieves. Yeah, I like Sabaka.
He's totally, totally believable in that role. I thought he did a great job.
He probably gets Sabaka the most I would guess from the interactions. I don't know if he got a lot of Machine.
Machine was the killer in 8mm. He was the killer in the stuff film.
He wore a gimp leather mask and there's a big fight scene at the end with him and Nick Cage. Good one.
Is there any wrestling stuff that we need to know about, the world needs to know about? I think Charlotte Flair is really great. I think she's the best woman's wrestler I've ever seen in person.
Since China? No, just best in general. I don't think China's not a lot of conversations.
I think China's a little more like, I don't know, like she had a brief apex. Who's the Irish one? Becky Lynch.
Becky Lynch. She married Seth Rollins.
She was the biggest star in the company for about a year.

And then she married Seth Rollins.

They had a kid.

So she kind of phased back a little bit.

I found her SportsCenter ad annoying.

So did you notice in the Masters,

they were rerunning some of the old SportsCenter ads?

I forgot how great those were.

They were rerunning the Tiger Woods ad, a couple of them. I love those ads.
Yeah, I love them too. I was kind of nostalgic for them.
I remember, I think when they first started the whole This is SportsCenter campaign, it was some ad agency in Portland, Oregon, I think, and I wrote them a letter. I was like, oh know i like sports i mean you know this is me doing my douglas copeland yeah shampoo planet writing letter phase of my life but uh isn't it wyden kennedy that's a denim right they're in portland you would know better than i would yeah yeah that's what it was just they were so good the funny thing was is then once i started working there they actually kind of like made sense because you could be in a situation where you're like, why is so-and-so in the salad bar line with me or something like that.
But then there was like a real like that guy's in one or. I was going to say the funniest thing about SportsCenter was the fucking jockeying to be in the SportsCenter commercial.
There were so many stories about that. 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. Yeah, and then they just kind of fell off.
I mean, they had a really good run for a really long time. I think there was always a little animosity that Van Pelt was in so many of them, but was just really good at it yeah i liked him uh and i saw sinners on friday too and i thought it was spectacular i saw warfare in the theater on thursday a couple moviegoers it is so fucking good okay it is that good i love it for a bunch of different reasons but I love that a studio let a couple guys make a movie on an experience that they knew firsthand.
And they were like, here's the script. It's going to be just one location for like 90 minutes going through this one thing.
And it's going to be really graphic. It's going to be very stressful.
It's going to cause anxiety and it's going to have all these different moments, but it's going to be like the most realistic

approach to a war

scene you can possibly have. There's no

girlfriend. There's no, does this

kid betray someone and there's

a forbidden

connection based on cultures.

It's like, nope, these guys are

in this room and they're fucked and

they got to get them out of there and we'll see what happens. And we're going to stay in this room with them for 90 minutes and seeing it back yeah the 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 memento like oh my god this is i can't believe christopher nolan did this i just love that they let them do that now sinners everybody's raving about that give us the quick pitch sell i just think kugler's on the short short short short list of the best directors um it's so original i went into it knowing nothing i intentionally read nothing i didn't want to know anything i just knew vampires are involved that michael b jordan was that i knew nothing else.
And't want to know anything. I just knew Vampires were involved that Michael B.
Jordan was in. I knew nothing else.

It's just so original

and so cool.

It shifts a couple times.

It has a couple surprises in there.

That was the best Jordan performance ever.

He's playing...

I don't want to spoil it.

In the Jazz Finals?

Michael B. Jordan.
His best performance ever. I was just blown away.
I thought it was great. I'm going to see it again.
It's a very short list. Wait, you're going twice? I'm going to go again.
Yeah. 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. 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.
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. And there was was so good and i just had a great time um so anyway i loved it and it seems like it's doing well which is nice so movies not dead yet no go to the theater kids and you're still in the office what are you talking about right you're still not the office the studio yeah there's a couple episodes one episode I dipped a little yeah it's a little erratic yeah but it's really well done so I've enjoyed that part of it I like your friends and neighbors too I've enjoyed that I really enjoyed 1923 i thought it was another strong season i really like the sheridan universe um i have not watched mob land yet by the way decent things yeah i'm just about to start that one may even do it tonight as i wind down for the adrenaline rush of this podcast but it's this youtube live warfare i think i forgot i was live like 45 minutes ago warfare cosmo jarvis the lead in shogun when's the ipo and what is the limit because i think cosmo jarvis might be next speaking to espn magazine covers Cosmo Jarvis yeah make the case um you know Shogun I wasn't 100% sure like he was great I love Shogun it was awesome I was surprised even how much I loved it maybe I shouldn't have been you know history guy ninjas you know pretty much that's everything I need uh but he wasn't like just badass throughout that he was playful he was funny but then he was dealing with like the romance part of it so he had to like do a bunch of different things because i think if he was just the punisher for 10 episodes that lack of depth and storyline maybe gets a little bit old um he for whatever reason just in this he's he's mastering the i don't have to do that much and owns the scene yeah so are you excited for the damon aflac movie rip which one is it it's called rip i think it's a rip torn it's a heist movie yeah of course i am coming out in the fall where's it take place then accountant two i fucking burnt though a lot of good stuff coming out um all right so we're gonna wrap up you have two more podcasts this week tuesday tuesday thursday what's the number one thing you're most excited about for the playoffs this week.
Oh, it's Clippers. It's Clippers Nuggets game too.

I can't i can't wait me too you know what's sad we were far too aligned tonight by the way god that happens sometimes you know what's sad though the magic weren't quite good enough today to pull also rudy for like four minutes that was like the bar'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.
Anybody that's watched him post Suggs, I think the only thing that you do is you go, hey, you have a real chance, years moving forward because of Paolo. That's what today was.

It was a reminder to Magic fans

that already know that.

And it's, I think, a necessary reminder

because I'm sure Paolo wasn't exactly a guy

a ton of people were watching on League Pass.

Paolo, Franz, Suggs, some cap space potentially,

some moves to make.

I don't know, man.

Franz is starting to feel like a recalibration

nominee. Oh, no.

Adjusted ceilings?

Man, he

was so good for that three weeks before he got

hurt, for the

oblique virus caught him.

If we let Cerruti in right now, he would just

start to say, oh, okay. We can't.
It'll be another

10 minutes. We got to wrap up.

We got to wrap up. The shot hitch is terrifying, he said.
It It is. He didn't have it in November.
Cerruti tells the truth, man. How fired up are you for the draft on a scale of 1-10? NFL draft? Yeah.
I'm always pretty excited, but I'm getting selfish as I get a little bit older.

That's just a lot of stuff going on.

I'm an eight.

In fact, I'm not going to Clippers game three.

Gave away my ticket already.

I would rather watch Denver Clippers

than watch with the draft.

The Pats have the fourth pick.

I'm not...

I just not...

I can't juggle it.

Plus, they might trade back up. I'm not missing it.
It's too important. Are you thrilled that Belichick doesn't have the pick just so he could not use it? And then he's like, we got a 28 from who? Cleveland? I'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 night. You just called him? Yeah.
Just called him. I wanted to talk about the Giants at three.
I just was like, fuck it. I'm calling McShay.
McShay called me. 7.30 Friday night.
He's like, there's something in my contract. He's like, the number length hour shows.
He's like, all this makes sense. He's like, there's something he said that Bill gets seven emergency phone calls per 12 months.
Call me on a Friday night out of nowhere. Yeah, I just had some thoughts.
He has good intel. Fun person to talk to him.
Glad you brought him into my life. He's here in LA this week.
We'll be doing stuff for them here. He already draft stuff.
He has a lot. The number of...
It gets different. Again, he's not the reporter or whatever, but he talks to everyone.
Those phone calls with him are far more valuable than I think even he can provide. I think he's been...
I know I'm biased, but I think he's been absolutely lights out with the draft this year. I've loved the newsletter.
I've loved the podcast. The Intel's good.
I trust his mock draft stuff. I like our ringer draft guys too.
Like, I just feel like, as you know, I don't watch a ton of college football and I'm diving into this and trying to grab all these opinions and get a feel for the tears of the draft, all that stuff. But it's a pretty interesting draft.
This gente could go to the right team and it sounds like he could just be incredible right away or he could be trapped behind some shit offensive line. But it really does.
It is fun when these running backs can come in right away and be like one of the four or five best guys in the league coming out of the gate out of nowhere. there thing with the Pats, and I'll probably say this five more times in the pod this week, but if you have the fourth pick, I feel like you have to get a blue chipper.
You just have to. It's too high of a pick.
You can't be like, we like this left tackle. He has a chance to be the 17th best left tackle in the league.
I need to get somebody who's an impact fucking dude dude. And 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. Rusillo, great to see you on this.
Yeah, we're going to do a big recap. Oh, after a round one.
Okay. 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.
I kept going in there to try to grab some stuff, but it was like scrolling fast. It was hard to follow.
But we will see you in a couple days. All right.
That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chris Sutton.
Thanks to Gahau. Thanks to Saruti.
And don't forget, new Rewatchables coming on Monday night. We did

Minority Report. Don't forget Zach Lowe's

first playoff podcast.

He's going to be taping on Monday morning

with Howard Beck.

So it'll be a nice little bookend

to this one. And we also have the group chat guys

on Ringer NBA. They're going on Sunday morning.

So we try to stagger this so we'll have

something going every little

bit so pods aren't overlapping.

And then we have Ringer NBA show. We have

Thank you. Ringer NBA, they're going on Sunday morning.
So we try to stagger this so we'll have something going every little bit so pods aren't overlapping. And then we have Ringer NBA show.
We have Logan and Raja. We have that going as well.
We have the mismatch with Jacoby Inverno. We have Ringer gambling show.
We have stuff covered all different ways. JJ on New York, New York.
Brian Barrett on Off the Pike. So we're here.
NBA playoffs.

Favorite time of the year.

NFL Draft coming as well.

McShay Show.

Ringer NFL Draft Show.

McShay is in LA.

Bunch of great stuff.

So great week for us.

Hope you enjoy all the content.

I will see you on this podcast on Tuesday. I don't see them.

I don't have feelings with them. On the wayside.
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