The Cinderella Pacers Do It Again, Plus Trade Buzz From Indiana With Zach Lowe

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Speaker 1 It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find Zach Lowe's podcast. Whoa.

Speaker 1 Big free agent edition in the beginning of April. Now we're in a hotel room in Indiana.
We just watched a stunning NBA Finals game three. We have a very fancy tech setup.
We're in my hotel room.

Speaker 1 I have my camera facing me. I have Zach's iPad facing him.
They said we would have needed a video crew, right? We'd have people here. We'd have mics.
We don't need that.

Speaker 1 We have cups with strings, if need be, attached to each other. You know what? We belong to the people.
We can just put this together. We can just do this like the common man.

Speaker 1 We just watched an incredible game. Ringer Podcast Network.
Check out the Rewatchables. We put up Working Girl.
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Speaker 1 No one asked me. People ask me this question.
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I like it. I love Los Angeles.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Well, you're going to be in the Rewatchables at some point. Anyway, coming up, we're going to talk about an incredible game three that we both went to.
It's all next.

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Speaker 1 All right, Zach Lowe. It is 1143 Eastern Time.
We are in Indianapolis, Indiana, a wonderful place. I had a great time today.
Everybody's super friendly. People love this Pacers team.

Speaker 1 There was a sense of, boy, it would be adorable if they could just get a couple punches in. We kind of know where this series is going.

Speaker 1 Around the third quarter, I started to get flashbacks to the 2011 finals when I was in Dallas.

Speaker 1 A Dallas team that did not make a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 And they're playing Miami, first year of LeBron, Wade, Bosch, just waiting for Miami to finish them off.

Speaker 1 And there's a point with the crowd and the energy and shots are going in and defensive plays where you kind of go, huh, what's going on here? And Indiana wins, and they're up two games to one.

Speaker 1 They're two games away from the 2025 NBA titles, Eclaw. I'll tell you this right now.
I was at Pacers Practice yesterday. I've been around the Pacers a lot in the last three weeks.

Speaker 1 The whole like, we're playing with house money thing. It'd be nice if we got a punch or two in.

Speaker 1 None of that is filtered into them. They're like, oh yeah, we can win.
Like we're, we're as good as this team. We can beat this team.
Like none of that is applying to them. And I, you know,

Speaker 1 the whole discussion in the last

Speaker 1 48, 72 hours has been, I've seen like a million stories. You've talked about with Ryan.
Where does this team rank?

Speaker 1 And like, it's the most unusual potential champion, the most unusual finalist, you know, blah, blah, blah, preseason odds.

Speaker 1 It's time to start just shifting the discussion to something happened, and this is now a championship level team.

Speaker 1 Because, regardless of what happens from here on out, they are up 2-1 in the NBA Finals over a 68-win team. And that game tonight didn't feel fluky.

Speaker 1 It felt like two teams trading punches, a little ugly, a little grimy. People got tired.
Some bad shots were taken. Some tough defensive possessions were inflicted by both teams.

Speaker 1 And they made enough big plays. The bench was unbelievable.
But like the most unusual thing, like, that's cool. It's going to be good trivia, whether they win or lose.

Speaker 1 But like something happened to this team, and they're just this good.

Speaker 1 First half, the basketball was about as high level as you're going to get for a game three of the finals. Usually it takes a couple games.
That was like a game four, game five level.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, they're going toe-to-toe. They're doing all the benches, they're coming in and actually making an impact.

Speaker 1 They're running really smart offense, they're attacking the other side like they've seen them for a bunch of games.

Speaker 1 I was halftime, I was just really impressed, like talking to the people in my section. Tommy came over, we were just like, That was just a good basketball game.

Speaker 1 Tommy Alter, Tommy Alter stopped just ubiquitous, wearing a roots of fight jacket, just super happy to be in Indiana. Um, third quarter starts

Speaker 1 6-0 run, thunder, boom. And OKC comes out with some real physicality

Speaker 1 and some swagger. And it was like, all right, that was cute.

Speaker 1 That was a fun run by Inanna. And just felt like it was going to go the way of all these other OKC games.
And once again, they climbed out of the hole.

Speaker 1 Halliburton was great.

Speaker 1 I don't want to do the Halliburton stepped up thing because I thought that was the worst storyline of the week.

Speaker 1 And I thought it was a fundamental misunderstanding of who Halliburton is as a player, a guy who takes 13 to 14 shots a game, who averages 19 to 9 during the season and 19 to 9 in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 He is who he is. This is Steve Nash in the mid-2000s was like this.
Chris Paul in the late 2000s and 2010s were like this. These guys are not built to score 20, take 20, 22 shots a game.

Speaker 1 They're not 30-point scorers. They make everyone else better.
That's the whole point of having them. They set the tone.
They drive the car.

Speaker 1 You want to put them in an awesome car and let them do their thing. With that said, I thought he was a little more aggressive in the the first half.
No question.

Speaker 1 He clearly was like, I can't let whatever happened last game happen again.

Speaker 1 So he took a couple shots that weren't even great shots, but it was just, he was trying to get in the paint and he was trying to take

Speaker 1 more stuff. But I thought he wasn't just awesome on offense.
His hands were everywhere on defense. I don't know how many balls he touched, deflected, stole, but it felt like he was all over the place.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he had a pick six against Shea. Shea had a couple bad pass turnovers that went the other way.
Six turnovers for Shea.

Speaker 1 Indiana wins the turnover battle. That's step one to having any chance of beating the thunder is like not just not lose it by too much.
They won it.

Speaker 1 Like Halliburton, I remember a long two he took over at SGA in the first half. That was clearly just like an ISO.
Like, they want me to move more aggressive. This is like, I got to take this shot.

Speaker 1 He took a couple threes where he just kind of pulled up like in, like. before using a screen or in between a switch.
Like, I got a little window. I got to take it.

Speaker 1 Like, I can't afford not to not to take it. But the other stat is he was great.
Halliburton was awesome. Police sirens, I wonder if people could hear the police sirens.

Speaker 1 It's quite a scene walking from the arena to your hotel.

Speaker 1 I would describe it as somewhere between joyous and euphoric. It was like you, it was the kind of scene I've seen when it's 3-1 and your team's on the verge of winning.

Speaker 1 Like there was a kid hanging out of a moving car. There was a guy in a Larry Bird Indiana State jersey just running around yelling.
Police were high-fiving people. It was great.

Speaker 1 Anyway, Halliburton was awesome. 22-11 and 9.
If you cared more about his stats, got to chase that 10th rebound.

Speaker 1 Come on, get the battle. Tyrice Halliburton, you got to step up.
You have to get the triple-double. 10 rebounds and step up.
Steal a rebound from somebody. Halliburton was brilliant.

Speaker 1 Still, even so, stat of the game, Halliburton. In a game, they win by nine, just, and I'd be, I'm being facetious, but just plus one.

Speaker 1 And they had been getting destroyed in the non-Halliburton minutes, which are also the non-SGA minutes in the first two games. And they won those minutes decisively tonight.
We know why.

Speaker 1 The bench guys, Matherin, McConnell, Toppin, big fourth quarter for him. Those guys were plus 16, plus 12, plus 18.

Speaker 1 Two, by the way, two guys in Toppin and Matherin that have been the subject of, well, if the Pacers ever need to duck the luxury tax or cut their tax bills, I think just dump those guys.

Speaker 1 Dump those guys. They just won you an NBA Finals game against a 68-win team.
There's no dumping, no dumps will be taken with those guys.

Speaker 1 Well, the Pacers bench, what was it, 32-24?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they come in. TJ starts doing the TJ thing.
They start pressing. He gets a steal, whatever, goes out of bounds.
He does the thing where he goes to the side of the floor,

Speaker 1 Hulk's up in front of everybody. And it was another supercharge thing for the crowd because they know they need the energy from those guys.

Speaker 1 I said to you on Thursday, even though Mathurin was terrible,

Speaker 1 I said, there's something

Speaker 1 comfortable. to me out there.
There was something athletically comfortable for him.

Speaker 1 And I was thinking today about just in general, watching the game, they have all these Canadians out there who have all known each other forever.

Speaker 1 You know, and it's one of the reasons Nemhard, I don't think anyone can really guard SGA, but he's probably looked the best doing it because he's been playing against him since what, they were 12?

Speaker 1 He's just not afraid of him. And he knows all his moves.
He doesn't fall for his herky jerky thing. He's just kind of.
always there. And then, you know, Matherin isn't afraid of anybody.

Speaker 1 He's the most irrational, confidence guy you get. And then you flip it on the other side when we're talking about,

Speaker 1 you know, OKC looking a little young. They don't have that one guy.
And again, we're nitpicking. I think that team's great.
They don't have that one like crazy Mather and He Check.

Speaker 1 Let me carry us for four minutes guy. Well, it's the MVP.
That's who it is. Well, that's the thing.

Speaker 1 It's SGA and Jalen, but they don't have the random eighth guy that comes off the bench and does whatever.

Speaker 1 But so I'm trying to think like, if I'm Indiana, what am I taking away from that game big picture? Because

Speaker 1 OKC looked young. We covered that piece.

Speaker 1 And they know that they can pressure them. They know that they can at least stay in the vicinity of guarding SGA.

Speaker 1 What are the other big takeaways for you?

Speaker 1 I think they can take away number one that Halliburton found the right balance in how he needs to play and is growing comfortable more in this series to the point that I wonder if we see some adjustments from the Thunder defensively on him.

Speaker 1 I thought Indiana's defense minus their bigs are still having issues in the pick and roll against Shea.

Speaker 1 I thought they amped up the pressure in the second half. They started blitzing them a little bit more and like just mixed in different stuff.

Speaker 1 But minus those kind of breakdowns where Shea would fake toward a screen and go the other way, and Miles Turner would be like, Where do you go? Where do you go?

Speaker 1 And there'd be a layup where Jay dubbed, same thing, got him a couple of times. Their defense was really good.

Speaker 1 And actually, one of the reasons I'm interested to go back and watch this game is an insanely low three-point volume game for both teams in 2025.

Speaker 1 27 threes for the Pacers, only 22 threes for the Thunder. Like, you don't see games anymore where neither team gets 33.

Speaker 1 So they were able to take away, not take away, but limit SGA a little bit, make it tough for him without giving up. Like,

Speaker 1 can you,

Speaker 1 Wallace may have had one in the corner that was an awful miss. Like a lot of their threes were contested, tough threes.

Speaker 1 Like it was a, for a team whose defense is it's a like slight limitation, they've played a pretty good defensive series, like minus minus those breakdowns, and just that, just that the bench is

Speaker 1 the bench is ready for even Ben Shepard. Those 18 minutes from Ben Shepard are big, like competent minutes.

Speaker 1 Right. Really? Yeah,

Speaker 1 he was at least staying with SJ. It wasn't like he was shutting him down.

Speaker 1 There's no,

Speaker 1 like, we could not possibly say enough about McConnell and Matherin. Like, they deserve like 10 minutes of this podcast.
They were so good.

Speaker 1 Well, so when I said to you, the, I think I said I could see him having 27 and 20 minutes. How many minutes did he play? Probably 22 minutes.

Speaker 1 And he had 27 points. Exactly.
And the only one that I felt like he couldn't really do anything against because nobody can is Dort.

Speaker 1 And he was, he would try to get switches to get away from Dort so he could attack, but it felt like he was comfortable against everybody else.

Speaker 1 So I wrote down, it was OKC 90 to 84 right after that Jalen Williams hit that big three at the end of the third quarter. Ooh, that was a killer.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I wrote down that was an uh-oh for the rest of the decade moment because that was one of those, I got it, guys.

Speaker 1 And, you know, so I wrote down a bunch of stats because there was three minutes there. Indy had five turnovers in that quarter.

Speaker 1 They had seven in the first quarter, none in the second quarter when they played well. Indy was six for 22 from three after three quarters.
And Turner was two for 10 and minus 15.

Speaker 1 And OKC was plus nine in rebounds. So every single stat was looking good for OKC.
Indy wasn't playing well except for Halliburn and the bench guys when they came in. And then they swung it.

Speaker 1 And I'm like you, I want to watch that tape again. It felt like the big things that swung were

Speaker 1 Halbert made a couple of big plays.

Speaker 1 SGA looked,

Speaker 1 what's the word you would use?

Speaker 1 I thought frazzled?

Speaker 1 I just thought their offense, and this is if the Thunder have, there is no weakness, but if the Thunder have a weakness that we've seen or a limitation that we've seen in a few of these games, is that their offense can just sort of default into, like, okay, we're just not going to pass.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm just going to do everything by myself. And J-Dub and Shea both had a lot of those down the stretch, some successful, some not.
I think they had 16 assists on, what, 37 baskets or something

Speaker 1 today? I mean, that's a somewhat alarming number.

Speaker 1 And it's telling to me that after every timeout, if you go chart their out-of-timeout plays in this game, almost every one was some kind of like really heavily scripted set, like set piece where SGA would set a backscreen for Homegran or SGA would set it like almost like Warriors-y off-ball stuff.

Speaker 1 And it's Dagnalt trying to be like, Let's get some stuff going here.

Speaker 1 But then, when the going gets tough and the game gets into the muck and it's at the end, and the Pacers contested those shots pretty well, even Nem Hart, like they SGA would shove him off a little bit, and Nem Hart would just be like, I got shoved, I'm not going to give up on the play, and they didn't panic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, did you notice how KC was doing that? They're into Niecemith, too.

Speaker 1 They were really physical drives.

Speaker 1 I mean, J-Dub is a tank, man. I felt like the first quarter and the third quarter, especially, OKC came out with a little bit of a physical swagger.
Like, we're a stronger team than this team.

Speaker 1 Let's punish these guys. I just wonder if they thought

Speaker 1 the whole series for Indiana rides on this game. If we can come in here and take this game and go up 2-1 and win, you know, win two straight in the series, take back home court advantage.

Speaker 1 We're going to smell blood in the water. They're going to be worried.
We're going to reassert our sort of primacy in the series.

Speaker 1 I wonder if they just came out and like, this is the series for Indiana, because this feels obviously way different if it's OKC two, Indiana one. And now it's like, now game four is

Speaker 1 just a perfect, awesome game for us to go to. Well, and game four is also the way they do this final schedule.

Speaker 1 It's the most interesting game because it's the one game where you only have the one day rest. And by the way, isn't that awesome?

Speaker 1 Because the two days of rest between games one and two, and it's nice they space the finals out. You don't want to overstress the players, but it did feel like

Speaker 1 some of the momentum from that crazy first game was sort of dissipated over 48 hours. Now where it's like one day off, practices tomorrow, everyone's going to talk.
We go right back at it.

Speaker 1 I was probably 10 rows behind the OKC bench, and I was watching them before the game. And I was watching them.
They took a big lead the first four or five minutes. They were up like 13, six.

Speaker 1 Was there a double-digit lead in the game at any time? I don't think there was.

Speaker 1 I thought, yeah, they got to 15.6. I think that was the biggest lead.
And

Speaker 1 Ched had eight. Halburton hadn't gotten going in any way yet.
And we were actually wondering if he was hurt because that was a big topic the last day. Is he hiding some certain injury? He wasn't.

Speaker 1 He was obviously fine. But in the timeout, they're laughing.

Speaker 1 All their chests are out. They're like doing,

Speaker 1 like, you can kind of tell with benches sometimes how confident a team is. Now I sound like body language guy, but I, but in this case,

Speaker 1 you made the trip. And it was really funny to watch that kind of demeanor shift over the course of the game.

Speaker 1 And by the fourth quarter, there was none, obviously none of that because they're behind, but it was kind of like almost a little shell shock. Nobody was talking.

Speaker 1 There was like Caruso coming in and doing like the come on guys. But for the most part, that swagger like got just pulled out of them over the course of two hours.

Speaker 1 And this was like one of those great finals games where it swung back and forth a bunch of times. It was like, oh, this team's up for momentum.
And immediately the other team would answer.

Speaker 1 Like they just,

Speaker 1 both teams had answers and answers and answers until just the Pacers had a few more answers. And then they

Speaker 1 ran out of clock. OKC missed the free throws it needed to make to have any chance.
Caruso didn't get the flagrant call.

Speaker 1 What did you think of that foul from like your perspective? I think you get that call in OKC.

Speaker 1 I think you get that call in the regular season. Oh, you 100% get it.
If it's a Friday night ESPN game, you get that call.

Speaker 1 I didn't mind it not being called because I thought he pulled his hand up right after the right after he hit him. Like, he didn't follow through.

Speaker 1 Well, so that's why I like, I mean, I don't want to belabor it because the game didn't end up mattering that much, but I do think there's some skill in not being so out of control that you just decapitate someone.

Speaker 1 And Neesmith, like, he missed his head, he missed his neck, he hit his shoulders, his arms, and didn't like wind up crazily.

Speaker 1 Like, that, that, he took some precaution to not just kill Alex Caruso in midair. The problem is, he had no chance on that play.
He was directly behind him.

Speaker 1 And usually they give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who's ahead because they don't want those guys to get hurt in those. But I was fine with it.
Can we talk about McConnell and Matherin more?

Speaker 1 So, yeah, we have a bunch of stuff. McConnell had three McConnells in one NBA Finals.

Speaker 1 He caught an inbounds pass. That's a McConnell.

Speaker 1 A McConnell is an inbound steal. He got three of them in one game.
I'm like, well, so what's an official McConnell? Because he jumped up like a defensive end on the football line.

Speaker 1 A McConnell stole like a screen pass. You know, that's actually interesting.

Speaker 1 A McConnell. It's a full McConnell,

Speaker 1 if he grabs the inbounds pass out of the air. That's right.
A full McConnell is if he's the first person to touch an inbounds pass from the other team and he steals the ball.

Speaker 1 A semi-McConnell is they inbound it to another player who catches it and then he just takes the ball away. That's all sets up.

Speaker 1 He had three full McConnells in one game, including 95-91 in the fourth quarter. Thunder have the ball in there ahead by four.

Speaker 1 Jalen Williams brings the ball over half court, gets pressed a little bit,

Speaker 1 picks up his dribble inexplicably, and then like throws a pass to nobody. McConnell gets it, goes down the court, misses, offensive rebound.
Nemhart hits a short two. It's 95-93.

Speaker 1 Instantaneous McConnell put back layup, 95-95. It's

Speaker 1 crowded. What just happened?

Speaker 1 It could have been a six-point game, and it's tied in five seconds in a McConnell. Crowd goes crazy, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there was a few few times like they up a few fast breaks mcconnell had one where he just was like tearing down it was like a one-on-four and he just whipped it into the corner they reviewed it it was it was just a bad play but where it felt like indiana was about to go up by eight and every time it felt that way they would do something dumb uh mcconnell was you know i we've seen him do this at home like if you actually watch the pacers the last couple years this is a big part of who they are it's him coming in these home games and swinging the game matherin hit or miss he knew he was going to have a game like this at some point.

Speaker 1 Toppin was the revelation for me because there's been times in the playoffs where he looks unplayable.

Speaker 1 And then there's other times in the playoffs where you go, wow, I can't believe the Knicks just gave him away because they did. I mean, they needed the seller cap, but they literally gave him away.

Speaker 1 That follow-up dunk he had, which I was lucky because it was on my basket. And you could see there was a miss, and you could see him timing it from the foul line and coming up.

Speaker 1 And all of a sudden, he was 12 feet. by the way, that was one of the big Carlisle moves of the game.
He sat Siakam until, I think, like three and a half minutes left.

Speaker 1 He rode the top and turner combination. The big man rotation was.
But sitting Siakam was pretty bold. Like, I don't.
Well,

Speaker 1 and it's fitting for the kind of player Pascal Siakam is that the first time we mention him X minutes into this podcast is about how he wasn't in the game for a lot of the fourth quarter.

Speaker 1 And all he did was finish with 21, 6, and 4 on 8 of 14 shooting. And just like he just, I've said this to you before, he's like the electric current pulsing through the game.

Speaker 1 You don't notice it all the time, but it's powering them constantly. And like, yes, he was on the bench for some of the fourth quarter.
He still had a great game.

Speaker 1 Defensively, I thought he was awesome, made a lot of plays on defense. He should have been on the bench for that long.
Well, I thought it was really risky because I didn't think Turner was good.

Speaker 1 And ironically, Turner in the last couple of minutes had three straight awesome defensive plays that kind of clinched the game. So that's why he was out there, but he was bad for most of the game.

Speaker 1 Well, Toppin, you know, he has

Speaker 1 it's 105.100. 100 i just i'm not doing this from straight memory but i just looked at the play by play 105 100 dort misses a wide open corner three to bring it to within two what

Speaker 1 i thought that was going in

Speaker 1 i i didn't i mean anything blew dort touched for the first three quarters of the game where i think every shot he's taking is going in top and got what will go as an unheralded really good contested defensive rebound yep so defensive rebound by top and immediate offensive putback putback dunk by Toppin on a Halliburton miss.

Speaker 1 And then Toppin switches onto J-Dub on the next possession and blocks him at the rim. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Three incredible Toppin plays in 45 seconds to swing the game from like really in the balance if that door three goes in or they get an offensive rebound or something to Indiana is now in full control of the game going down the stretch.

Speaker 1 He's a classic, nice guy to have in a playoff home game with an awesome crowd. I mean, that put back dunk.

Speaker 1 You know, it was like that for the for the Seltz. Robert Williams was like that.
There's certain guys who are just like great playoff home game guys.

Speaker 1 I actually thought about Robert Williams today for some reason during a meeting I had with somebody.

Speaker 1 And we were, I was talking about a center that I was thinking about centers that can rim run and pass and how rare that combination is and how it looked like Tuberlord was going to be one of those guys.

Speaker 1 And now it's like.

Speaker 1 Where is he? What's happening? Anyway.

Speaker 1 I allowed myself to think of the Celtics today as I was walking to the whatever the Indiana Arena is called, which, by the way, has been around since Cambridge Field House. 1999.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It might be my favorite arena. Same year as Staples Center.
The place is awesome. And the Staples Center

Speaker 1 should be fumigated.

Speaker 1 But I was thinking as I was walking there a year ago, I went to the two Dallas Celtic games in Dallas, which were super fun.

Speaker 1 It was like, really felt like the Celtics were going to win the title. And this was, hopefully this finals could be.
And now the Celtics era is completely over.

Speaker 1 Everybody's being traded. Wasn't game three the seminal

Speaker 1 who go winds at the refs and fouls out? That was the Jalen Brown Duncan Traffic game. That was the Jalen Brown won the finals MVP that game.
That was a crazy game to be at.

Speaker 1 And that was the Luca just found out, oh my God, this is full circle Kyrie.

Speaker 1 Kyrie is going to beat the Celtics in this game. I can't believe this is lined up.
And then he actually missed some shots. We're going to take a break and a lot more to discuss about this game.

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Speaker 1 Let's talk about Indiana, the basketball city, because we're both here, which is a really special place. And obviously, I've talked about it a million times.
It's the place of Hoosiers and Larry Bird.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, it's 49 states. And then there's Indiana, whatever the saying is.
They show Oscar Robertson,

Speaker 1 courtside, you know, legend in high school in the 1950s.

Speaker 1 It's weird. Oscar doesn't really have a team in the NBA because

Speaker 1 he played for the Cincinnati Royals that don't exist anymore. And then he was in the Bucs for a few years, but Indiana is kind of weirdly his team.
Then they go back, they show Reggie Miller.

Speaker 1 They show Edger and James. That was a great one.
That was sweet. That was like

Speaker 1 please show Larry Legend. Where is he?

Speaker 1 But the crowd was just, you know, everyone's wearing jerseys. Everyone is like super optimistic.
And a bunch of people were talking to me or yelling at me, like, what do you think? What do you think?

Speaker 1 We got a chance. Like, just like the happiest basketball place.
So much fun to come here. And you made the key point.
The arena is probably the best. It's a great arena.

Speaker 1 I think it's number one for me. Every seat is good.
Even the corners are good.

Speaker 1 The crowd feels like they're on top of the game. When you have a game like today,

Speaker 1 I do think it affects the game. Because I think if you're the visiting team, it's just, it feels like the fans are on top of you in a slightly different way.
And those fans are fantastic.

Speaker 1 And boy, game four. I mean, look, Oklahoma City's had gut check moments and the Denver Series down 2-1.
That was a big test. Minnesota, I mean, up 2-1 in Minnesota for game four.

Speaker 1 Semi-gut check, a little bit of a gut check. This is the ultimate.

Speaker 1 If you want to become a championship team, this is about as big of a game and as big of a test as you're going to face, down 2-1 in the finals on the road against a team.

Speaker 1 that has proven itself championship caliber and that absolutely thinks we can do the whole thing. Like, there's no doubt it.

Speaker 1 There's no, if there were any doubt, and I don't really think there was, there is no doubt anymore that like we can do the whole thing. So the 2015 Warriors, I think they win the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Well, I think they fell behind 2-1 in Memphis and hit that similar point and they had to win game four in Memphis. In the second round, it wasn't like.

Speaker 1 No, this is way bigger stakes, but it was the same kind of with the younger teams, you have the chess tear game. I thought they already had the chess tear game when the Denver series.

Speaker 1 you know, they had three of them, well, yeah, the uh four of them, if you include a game six lost, was it game four? All these games blend together, one of those game

Speaker 1 game four, game five, game four and game five.

Speaker 1 They both won uh game four game four in Denver, uh, game four in Denver in a game where in game five, they were behind and teetering, and then Wiggins, that was the Wiggins wars making shots against the zone, and Jalen Williams hit the three in game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was that stretch, I thought that's when they got through it, but now you're right this is uh

Speaker 1 because i watched this happen the reason i mentioned that dallas miami series at the top you can think you're the better team and okc is has a better team they have a better team

Speaker 1 but you still have to beat the other team four times indiana doesn't think okc is better than them they showed it today and at some point they're going to have to go and take it and when you're at these games when you're in the room

Speaker 1 and you feel it slipping away, there's nothing, there's no other sport like it. Like football, baseball, none of these hockey, none of these other sports have

Speaker 1 where you're watching it going, I can't believe this is how it's playing out.

Speaker 1 I remember in the Dallas-Miami series, and Jason Terry hit that crazy 30-foot three against Miami to quench, I think it was game five, hit the hand in the, with LeBron's hand in his face.

Speaker 1 Even when he was taking it, I was like, I can't believe Dallas is going to win game five. This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
And then they won it. They went in six.

Speaker 1 So there's going to be a moment in game four when OKC is going to have to decide,

Speaker 1 is this really how our season's going to end? This is what's going to happen?

Speaker 1 First of all, just for the record, the Cavs were up 2-1 over the Warriors in the 2015 final. So the Warriors did have a game four on the road, and that's when they went small.
And

Speaker 1 did you ever think the Cavs without Kyrie?

Speaker 1 Starting Mozgov and Amon Shaw.

Speaker 1 I never felt the Warriors pop the Warriors Brian Winhorse. Yeah, I never felt like the Warriors were in major danger.
It was weird.

Speaker 1 Memphis, I felt like they were more dangerous for them because Memphis was so weird. So here's the thing about like, you just said Oklahoma City is a better team.

Speaker 1 I think we all think Oklahoma City is a better team. Doesn't mean they're going to win the series.
No, but, and I can hear Indiana fans saying, hold on now.

Speaker 1 Like, you erase our first 30 games when Halliburton is just finding his rhythm after a tough start and we get our defense together, Nam Hard and Neesmith get healthy and back in the lineup.

Speaker 1 We can go toe-to-toe with anybody. And they were much better.
I'm just looking up the numbers now from February 1st till end of season. So half the season, basically.

Speaker 1 Oklahoma City, 31 and 5, net rating, 13.7. Indiana, 24 and 12, net rating 3.7.
So getting, getting there, but like still kind of a big gap. From March 1st on,

Speaker 1 it gets narrower. Oklahoma City, 20 and 3 plus 12.9.
Indiana 17 and 7 plus 5.3.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, the gap narrowed, but like, this is still surprising that Indiana has gotten this good this fast and kept trending up and kept narrowing that gap.

Speaker 1 And now they're just, they're just this good. I mean, we got to, we didn't talk enough about Matherin, your guy.

Speaker 1 So he's the one guy in the team who feels like he can create his own shot against really good defense, no matter who's guarding him, except for Ludort, who's

Speaker 1 what was impressive to me was

Speaker 1 how calm he looked, just how easy those mid-range jumpers look for him. Like, I'm just, I'm just walking right into him, just strolling into it.
And maybe you got to pressure him more or whatever.

Speaker 1 There was a lot of commentary on Twitter about, you know, Oklahoma City's bigs are too far back on somebody.

Speaker 1 I thought it was mostly good defense. Like, you just got to make guys make shots.
But he scored on jumpers. He scored on pull-up threes.
He scored on catch and shoot threes.

Speaker 1 He had a bunch of cuts in the first half, off and off of McConnell actions and stuff, where it's like he just had a very mature,

Speaker 1 all-around floor game that you don't necessarily associate with a guy that was kind of known as a chucker. And he did a little bit of everything.

Speaker 1 He got transition points, like a little bit of every part of his offensive game came out. And it was just, and you know, he did 14 in the second quarter.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he's like, you know, there's this whole thing of Indiana never tanks and they build from the middle. And that's largely true.

Speaker 1 He is

Speaker 1 the, he is the product of like they're really only close to bottoming out out season when they got the six pick, and Jairus Walker is the other one, and he's not playing, he's been injured, and whatever.

Speaker 1 But, like, they're now getting something from him. They're getting a lot from him.
They're just like, they just have a lot of really good players.

Speaker 1 I actually think Walker would have played in this series. I do too.
Yeah, I like Walker.

Speaker 1 14 in the second quarter for him.

Speaker 1 It's a weird one because it feels like he's been on the trade block for about a year in some ways. Like he does feel, he has felt available, and he's always the person that

Speaker 1 gets brought up first. You said that earlier when they talk about if they change the team, is he in it? If they try to upgrade, like if they try to get like Cam Johnson or whoever, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 I like the vibe that he brings to them, this hit or miss.

Speaker 1 He can carry you for a quarter. Like, I really value guys like that.
So there's this whole debate.

Speaker 1 Keep Pritchard was like that for the Celtics where he could just carry them for eight minutes out of nowhere. And you never knew when it was going to happen.

Speaker 1 And when it happened, it was like a fucking, you felt like you found money in your pocket. There's this whole debate with Matherin

Speaker 1 about,

Speaker 1 you know, he doesn't really play the pacer style. Like the ball sticks with him a little bit more.

Speaker 1 He's not as intuitive, a quick twitch, quick pass, quick cut decision maker as everybody else on the team.

Speaker 1 And I think I said this to you last time we podcasted. Like initially, I think that was thought of as like, he's not that great of a fit.
He doesn't play the way we feel.

Speaker 1 And the more I watch him, the more I'm like, every team kind of needs a curveball that's that like even the Warriors, like Steve Kerr, like

Speaker 1 it's a little bit of a weird example to bring up now, but he would always be like, the reason I like Wiggins on our team is he can break away from our beautiful game cuts and just like get us a few buckets one-on-one when nothing else is working.

Speaker 1 We need that kind of guy on our team.

Speaker 1 I think he's like the curveball that to be a championship team, you kind of need.

Speaker 1 If you play, if Indiana, if you play a style that's like Indiana, I think you need a guy who can be like, yeah, that style is cool, but I'm just going to do some like traditional guy stuff. Right.

Speaker 1 Be the guy. I don't feel like he's as ball stoppy as he used to be.
No, he's gotten much better. And defensively, he's gotten better too.

Speaker 1 One thing I noticed, I wanted to talk to you because it's about as basketball nerdy as I'm going to get with you.

Speaker 1 You can go seven levels higher than me with some of the super nerd stuff and talk pin downs and double pin downs and reverse pin downs, upside down pin downs. How many pin downs are there?

Speaker 1 I had a lot of pin downs. A lot of the pacers are breaking down.

Speaker 1 You can do a full pin down podcast.

Speaker 1 One thing I've noticed that these two teams specifically do, and I don't know if it's a trend, and I don't know if it's something teams will copy when they watch this and see what's successful.

Speaker 1 They do it with Shay with the

Speaker 1 OKC, and they do it with Haliburn, but then weirdly also with Matherin, where it's like the guy has the ball, set him pick up top.

Speaker 1 He's moving around, he's moving back, he dumps it off, the ball immediately comes back to him, and it's like this constant.

Speaker 1 It's almost like watching a hockey power play where they keep giving it back to the defenseman so he can reset whatever they attack on the net. And the ball just kind of keeps moving around.

Speaker 1 It's these little hockey passes versus like how the Celtics play where it's like, we dribble up. I'm going to hunt this matchup.
Come set me a pick. You three guys stay in there.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to keep dribbling until I get the look I want. Then I'm going to shoot.

Speaker 1 Indy's doing a version of that in OKCS2 where the ball is still moving around all the time, but they're doing the same thing and i think it's way harder to stop and i wonder if it's going to be something that's replicated next season does that was that coherent do you know what i mean somewhat coherent yeah it's i mean it's 12 12 20 a.m yeah i'm a little groggy you flew cross-country i did you're doing great um i mean indiana definitely plays a more random unpredictable style than oklahoma city and i just think But do you think that they deliberately don't want anybody to have the ball for more than like three, three and a half seconds?

Speaker 1 For sure. It seems like that's that's a real thing for them.

Speaker 1 It can't be a hard and fast rule because sometimes Siakam has a mismatch. You just got to give him the ball and let him go.
Well, that's the first one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So he'll back down. That's like the one time they'll mess around with it.
And Matherin, you know, will do his stuff.

Speaker 1 But I mean, it's, you can only play that way if your best player, your offensive number one option, is a guy who wants to get off the ball fast, who lives to get other people involved.

Speaker 1 And often, you know, Anthony Edwards is learning this in in Minnesota. Like, if you get off the ball, you will often get it back.

Speaker 1 It will go all the way around to you because you will have compromised the defense with that first pass and they'll be in rotation and you'll be the guy who the ball should get back to in rotation.

Speaker 1 And Halliburton just plays that way. You can't play that way if your best player doesn't have that kind of basketball ethos to him and he does.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because in person, you can watch, it's much easier to watch the people who don't have the ball.

Speaker 1 So I was watching some of the stuff Neesmith was doing in the second half as they're doing all the stuff on the top. And How Burton is dipping off, he's getting back, and they're moving around.

Speaker 1 They're trying to create mismatches.

Speaker 1 And he's in the corner, but then sometimes he would kind of creep in if the defender was falling asleep on him and see if he could get a little back cut or he would dart in or he would try to get an offensive rebound.

Speaker 1 Everybody in that team is up to something. It's not a team where the guys are just like, I'll just be here in the corner.
I hope it works out for you. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 So they are very, I've talked about this on my much, my nerdier podcast before on the pin down, but up on the pin down with Zach Lowe.

Speaker 1 Um, that would be a good title, but but we're gonna get deep now, deep in Indiana Pacers lore right now.

Speaker 1 They are extremely proud of Neesmith for exactly what you just described, for learning how to move without the ball, to screen, to be random, to cut, to always be on his toes.

Speaker 1 Well, remember on the Celtics, he just stood there. Well, that was one of the reasons, I mean, he was, it wasn't his fault.

Speaker 1 They just told him, go in the corner, you're not going to have the ball. And you know what the deep cut is?

Speaker 1 The guy they give a lot of credit, not only for that, but for his partnership with Halliburton and Halliburton really leaning into a crazy motion, get off-the-ball offense, is a guy who's no longer on the Pacers.

Speaker 1 It's Buddy Hield.

Speaker 1 The coaches of the Pacers talk about Buddy Hield's lasting impact on Neesmith, on Halliburton, and just how they play.

Speaker 1 Like it, it comes up.

Speaker 1 And first of all, everybody loves Buddy Hild. He's

Speaker 1 the most gregarious personality. He's an extremely hard worker.
He's a beloved teammate. Everybody loves Buddy Healed.

Speaker 1 But they talk about his impact in particular on exactly what you just described with Neesmith more than anyone else on the team.

Speaker 1 I wonder if it's replicable, or I wonder if they just have been doing it for so long.

Speaker 1 Because OKC will have, they have their version of it, but then they also do what you talked about earlier, where it's just a lot of dribbling, and the ball stops moving around in the same way.

Speaker 1 And look, they made tough shots.

Speaker 1 Like, if you tell you, if you said before the game, Chet, J-Dub, and Shea are going to combine for 70 points on, like, not great shooting, but let me see if I can do the math.

Speaker 1 24 of 53 with a lot of free throws between them too. Like, it's not like they

Speaker 1 off their offensive rating for the game is bad, but it didn't feel like, I mean, they got nothing from the bench. Hartenstein's first bad game of the series.

Speaker 1 Wiggins disappeared, got zero. The Hartenstein thing is an issue.

Speaker 1 That'll be one of the topics tomorrow about

Speaker 1 maybe this is why they were so afraid to play the double bigs. Maybe this is, maybe they anticipated this.
Maybe there was stuff during the season that they saw with this matchup with him. Because

Speaker 1 I thought

Speaker 1 he looked a little gamey.

Speaker 1 I'm also like, if I'm Indiana, I'm delighted when, and I think Isaiah Joe's a good player, but every time somebody like Isaiah Joe or even Wiggins is in the game, I'm so happy that the fucking gauntlet of all those defenders aren't out there at the same same time.

Speaker 1 And conversely, I mean, watching what Nemhard was trying to do to SGA, and I thought that he got called for a couple chintzy fouls.

Speaker 1 Watching how different SGA was the moment Nemhard would come out of the game versus when Nemhard in, I thought it was pretty interesting. It was like the straight jacket came off, basically.

Speaker 1 Nemhard is just awesome.

Speaker 1 Pick 31. Pick 31.
We're just never going to be good at the draft. That's what we learn over and over again.
Pick 31. 30 30 guys over him.

Speaker 1 Pick 31, and they got him and the pick that became Ben Shepard in the same little just random trade. I think it was one of the Karis Lavert trades.

Speaker 1 And Nemhart, eight points, nothing jumps off the stat sheet. He's just an awesome basketball player.
Like, I remember when he signed that contract, which is like $18, $19 million a year.

Speaker 1 If you go back and read some of the reviews, I don't know, that's like a little too much for a team that's going to be up against the tax. I remember just thinking, like, the guy's good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like a good player making $20 million.

Speaker 1 That's just what, that's just fine like he's just a really good player are you ever unhappy when andrew nemhard is on the floor no matter what he's doing it's like i'm always happy to have that guy around even if he's floating around on offense or not guarding the best guy or he's switched on to that guy it's like he's going to do the right thing every single time even if the right thing is not something that you really notice he's also a dick and i mean this as a compliment he's he's got a dick side that's like very very underground but it'll come out once or twice a game there was a moment in the game where SJA got fouled and then he tried, was going for a continuation.

Speaker 1 Nemhard came in and basically did the second foul on him. And SJA didn't like it.
He went to the ref to complain about the foul.

Speaker 1 And Nemhard just walked over right next to him and was just like being a dick and was like, really? You're going to bitch about that?

Speaker 1 And was just kind of just trying to get under his skin a little bit, which he's been doing in every series. And he loves it.
And it's like a Canadian thing.

Speaker 1 He's doing like the Canadian playoff hockey thing. He's like the guys, basically, he'd be on Florida, just like hitting somebody with his stick right after the win.
I love it.

Speaker 1 I've listened to you and Ryan talk about the Stanley Cup finals a little bit. It made me want to get into the Stanley Cup finals.
You would love it. Florida apparently has got a lot of

Speaker 1 hatable guys. Oh, Nemhard wouldn't even crack the top five for

Speaker 1 who's winning that sir? Do they play

Speaker 1 Florida's up? Do they all do they alternate? So at least we can go NBA Finals or anything like that. Yeah, they do.
They try to steer clear from NBA.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, that game three was the classic where Florida took a big lead and then we just had to have fights.

Speaker 1 Each team has to lay down their

Speaker 1 masculinity on the other team. I will never get over that fighting is just allowed in hockey.
I just, I, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 The one that's really crazy is professional, there's professional lacrosse stuff where they can fight, but they in hockey, you have skates, like you only can get so much leverage.

Speaker 1 If you're in lacrosse, you can really like you know, plant and sock somebody. I'm kind of surprised at lacrosse fights.
Um,

Speaker 1 all right, more stuff from this game, yeah, go

Speaker 1 OKC starting five

Speaker 1 with Wallace. Do we see anything different in game four, which I think we both agree is a backs to the wall game for OKC?

Speaker 1 Because if you go down 3-1 with game six looming, I don't care how good you are.

Speaker 1 That's a place that only a few teams in the history of the league has come back from.

Speaker 1 I think the only move,

Speaker 1 I'm going to guess no.

Speaker 1 I think the only reasonable move, unless it's something out of left field, like we're going to just start Kendrick Williams and see what happens in the case of Wallace spot, I think the only move is to start Caruso over Wallace.

Speaker 1 That's what I had as well. And I don't really know that

Speaker 1 anything that happened today screams for that being necessary. But

Speaker 1 I'm just the plus minus that, but did you see the plus minus that? Crusoe, well, Caruso is minus 15 today, and Wallace was minus 10. So take whichever you like.

Speaker 1 But I mean, caruso's i mean and cruso played 32 minutes and i i don't know how much more than that he's going to play even if you start him or not but he is better than kaysen wallace and well i do wonder like you see these coaches

Speaker 1 further you get in the playoffs that rotation starts to tighten right and okc is an unusual team because like even today they played 11 minutes like legitimately i mean 11 guys played

Speaker 1 Kendrick Williams only played two minutes, but they still they played 11 minutes. He played the one shot Kendrick Williams took.
Do you remember the shot that he took? It wasn't great.

Speaker 1 You just got the ball at the three-point arc, jab step, like 28 feet from the room. Like, I guess I'm just going to shoot now.

Speaker 1 It's like one of those possessions where it's like, hey, I'm in the finals. I get, I'm going to take a three.

Speaker 1 I just feel like you're probably good with nine guys, maybe 10 max. But if you're down,

Speaker 1 usually what we see teams short in the rotation, go to eight, maybe seven, play in big minutes. I had the same thought.
I wonder if Caruso just starts and maybe they do it that way.

Speaker 1 The only other one I was thinking was,

Speaker 1 would they start Isaiah Joe

Speaker 1 for some just a weird three-point look out of nowhere for seven minutes?

Speaker 1 That's another out of the left field one. I don't see it.
The other thing that's interesting is in the last two games, we've seen zero of the no big man lineup. And I thought

Speaker 1 that lineup did not. I think the plus minus was not good in game one, but I still thought it was something I would try.

Speaker 1 If I were the Thunder, I'm a little surprised that they've gone like completely away from it. I would like to see that as a four-minute

Speaker 1 just blitz them with switching and swiping and steals and see if that can just like muck up the game a little bit with even more speed than we normally have.

Speaker 1 Well, neither of us work for ASPN anymore, but I think we have to. I don't.
We have to do

Speaker 1 whatever that we're both going.

Speaker 1 We have to do a segment called Step Up. Okay.

Speaker 1 Who's got to step up?

Speaker 1 I'm looking at the box score right now. And

Speaker 1 K-Sai Wallace, I don't know if you need to step up.

Speaker 1 Isaiah Hartenstein, you need to step up.

Speaker 1 Miles Turner maybe needs to step up. Isaiah Hartenstein, the $30 million man.

Speaker 1 You were the big page edition? Yeah, four and three.

Speaker 1 No, that's the thing is, like, I think that was just a really nice, competitive fucking basketball. Maybe ASGA? Slight step up? Well, let's talk about it.
10% step up.

Speaker 1 24 points, 6 turnovers, four assists. 20 shots, 24 points.

Speaker 1 42 minutes. It took us too long to get here.
Yeah. He did not play a good enough game.
He didn't.

Speaker 1 He didn't. He

Speaker 1 took us too long to get to SGA. We're so in love with the McConnells and the Matherins and the Toppins.
Took us too long to get to SGA. Because he didn't play.
He was like good. Or like.

Speaker 1 It's a B-minus SGA game, probably. I would go C ⁇ .
C-plus. So here's what, here's, here was the vibe I got from him in this game.
It reminded me of FIBA.

Speaker 1 As you know, I'm one of the only people that loves all the FIBA games in the Olympics.

Speaker 1 When the rules are different and we send the guys over there and they think they're going to get a call and they don't get it.

Speaker 1 And then they do another and they don't get the call and they're just kind of. Are you going free throw merchant?

Speaker 1 I'm not going merchant.

Speaker 1 It just felt like he was getting defended. in a way that

Speaker 1 he didn't really adjust to as well that well.

Speaker 1 He was trying to bounce off guys. There was one time where, you know, he did get the hook arm.
He did that a couple of times. But for the most part, I thought the refs called him really fairly.

Speaker 1 I thought they called both sides. Like the Indiana crowd was probably madder than maybe they should have been, but, you know, they're a home crowd they're doing.

Speaker 1 But I thought for the most part, they allowed a lot of physicality on both sides. And I don't know if that's great for him.

Speaker 1 And I also thought, again, like with the exception of their, their big man point of attack defense on some pick and rolls, like Miles Turner, Thomas Bryant, I thought their defense was pretty good.

Speaker 1 And I thought their off-ball defense, again, I'll go back and watch it tomorrow.

Speaker 1 But just like they're stunting back and forth on his pick and rolls, they're trying to make him a decision maker and cloud his decision making. And I thought they did a good job of that tonight.

Speaker 1 Like a lot of a few of his turnovers were bad pass turnovers on the pick and roll where he was kind of caught in between reads a little bit and didn't quite know what to do with it.

Speaker 1 I thought their defense, and they started doubling him.

Speaker 1 He loves to do the thing where he drives to like the deadest dead spot on the floor, the spot that nobody ever wants the ball in, which is like 18 feet from the rim on the baseline because he just thinks no one is going to come help here.

Speaker 1 It's just going to be me because who's going to double here? And the Pacers, as the Wolves did a little bit in the last series, started springing doubles on him.

Speaker 1 Top and kept coming over.

Speaker 1 We're just not going to give you this shot. We're going to force you to pass it.

Speaker 1 And once they gave up,

Speaker 1 their rotations were bad. Isaiah Joe hit a wide open three, like the one guy you absolutely cannot leave open on Oklahoma City.
But other than that, their rotations were pretty good.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I just think, you know, again, Rick Carlisle is very good at not overdoing anything.

Speaker 1 Like just because they did that a few times today and it worked, they may not do it the first couple of times Shea goes to that spot in game four. They did a nice job.

Speaker 1 It didn't feel like he was going downhill as much as he normally does in playoff games when he's just scoring 36 to 38 points. My guess would be he's going to be awesome in game four.

Speaker 1 I mean, game two was

Speaker 1 just a spectacular. Yeah.
That was an A plus. Today was a C plus.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And when maybe they stumbled on something.
I was an easy teacher, so I'd give him a B minus. But when the MVP has a B minus, C plus, like,

Speaker 1 you're vulnerable. My grades for today, the Indiana crowd was an A plus.

Speaker 1 The A plus. Superb job by them.
I have no notes. Just keep doing what you're doing, Indiana.

Speaker 1 And I loved having Oscar Robertson and Reggie Miller there. And Larry Legend should be here for game four if they really want to bring the roof down.
Fucking private. Mark Jackson was here.

Speaker 1 Mark Jackson was there? Mark Jackson was up in a suite. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I thought Hal Burton

Speaker 1 was probably an A.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think he was the A plus would have been the game four Knicks series.
I really liked some of the stuff he was doing on defense.

Speaker 1 I thought he was active and problematic for OKC, but I thought he was fantastic. Toppin gets an A- for me.
Matherin gets an A.

Speaker 1 TJ McConnell, probably a B plus. I didn't like a couple of the turnovers.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 And then for OKC, I really liked what Jalen Williams did in that game.

Speaker 1 I thought they relied on him in kind of a shocking way offensively, where it almost felt like they were 1A, 1B, little Jalen Brown, Jason Tatemish. It does feel...

Speaker 1 Like the more stress they get put under and the fewer easy transition baskets they get when that's when they get rolling, right?

Speaker 1 Like, and that's when their passing gets gets unleashed and they get alley oops and all that.

Speaker 1 It does feel like, for not all the time, not even for the majority of the time, but for segments of each of these games, high-pressure games, that there's not as much synergy between Shay and J-Dub as you would like there to be for dueling banjo best.

Speaker 1 A little bit of like, like, they'll be like, wow, there's been a lot of Jalen Williams going on right now. And Shay's kind of standing in the corner.
Like, okay, now there's a lot of Shea going on.

Speaker 1 And you would just like a little bit more possessions when there's like a lot of both going on. That's all.

Speaker 1 We're going to take a break, and then I have a really important subject to bring up about this series that's that's I could see getting cut out in a social media video.

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Social media segment time. Okay.

Speaker 1 You want to say it? I'll let you do it. Kyle, turn the TikTok camera on.

Speaker 1 If OKC loses this series. Oh, boy, here we go.
You can't resist going to the end. We're in the middle.
Let's enjoy the middle.

Speaker 1 I wasn't allowing myself or even considering it was a possibility until I was in that arena tonight when realizing that OKC has to figure out how to win in that arena either Friday night or next week, or they're not going to win the title.

Speaker 1 That's good, math. Your math is right.

Speaker 1 If they don't win the title,

Speaker 1 this would be an absolute historic basketball calamity because they had one of the greatest seasons of all time.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 start to finish, I'm not saying they're one of the greatest teams of all time, but they had one of the seven, eight, nine, 10, whatever list you want to do, from net ratings to actual record to dominance to 15, 20 point wins.

Speaker 1 It was one of the best seasons anyone's ever had. And to then go to the finals and lose.

Speaker 1 You're in rare ground.

Speaker 1 You're in 2016 Warriors, Draymond punching LeBron the balls and Steph playing on an injured ankle, and Festus Zazili being trapped on an island against LeBron for two straight threes, and all of a sudden we've lost.

Speaker 1 What the hell happened?

Speaker 1 This does not happen a lot in basketball. Usually the right team,

Speaker 1 usually the better team, usually the team that has the best season wins the title. But then occasionally, that's not what happens.
And this is one of those times.

Speaker 1 It would be interesting to look back at most dominant teams

Speaker 1 that didn't win.

Speaker 1 It's the shortest listing. It's a very short listing.
I remember doing this last year

Speaker 1 when Boston was on the verge of winning the title because of their number, what did they win? 66 games last year or something?

Speaker 1 Yeah, when you get into the 80 win territory as a team, when you're 80, 18, 82, and 20, like, but I remember

Speaker 1 going through basketball reference and doing the

Speaker 1 wins, regular season wins, regular season net rating, playoff net rating, and how many teams checked every box at a certain level of eliteness or whatever, like just narrowing it down or finagling the numbers in different ways.

Speaker 1 And let's just say when the Thunder were up 2-0 against Minnesota, I reread that the piece that I ended up writing about Boston and where that Boston team's place in history should be and would be compared to those.

Speaker 1 Which was a pure math case. And just, well, no, just like, but it wasn't a pure mathematical case.
No, just like record stats.

Speaker 1 The ultimate conclusion, which I think was right, and a lot of people made it, was the math says that Celtics' team is like way up here.

Speaker 1 I think they're probably a little bit like a really great team, but with some of the other just like really great teams, not as up here as the math says.

Speaker 1 But anyway, I just cut and pasted that and put it in an email to myself to have it fresh in preparation for what looked like, I mean, when they were up 2-0 against Minnesota, it was like, are they just going to win?

Speaker 1 Are they not losing for the rest of the season? That guy led my podcast that night that way. Like, did they just

Speaker 1 arrive? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, are they just going to go 6-0 and the playoffs are going to be over before we know it? And now, and again, like, the net rating can be what it is.

Speaker 1 Like, and again, the Pacers became a very good team.

Speaker 1 The signs were all there, but there was still a difference between what Oklahoma City was resume-wise and what the Pacers were last 40 games, even resume-wise.

Speaker 1 Calamity, I mean, I just think you have to give the credit to the Pacers. Something magical has happened here, and they're still a long way from finishing it off.

Speaker 1 Like, this is going to be very hard to do against a great team that's still probably favored. I would like to look back at the best.

Speaker 1 That's a good segment. Magical or Calamity?

Speaker 1 Magical? Calamity. Calamical.

Speaker 1 I think you're right in that the story leans more toward this is one of the most incredible stories in the history of the NBA that

Speaker 1 something happened here.

Speaker 1 But I also think another piece would be, holy shit, OKC checked every box we ever thought we'd have to check for a team that was going to win the title, and they didn't win the title.

Speaker 1 Except for one box that you've already brought up. Youth.
Age. Yeah.
Veteran, whatever.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the scare.

Speaker 1 That's the scariest thing with them is that if they, you know, if they end up winning the title, I don't feel like they're close to being the team they're probably going to be two years from now if everyone's healthy.

Speaker 1 They're just going to be better. They're going to be better.
And like the poster guy for that to me is Chet.

Speaker 1 Right. I was talking to Drew Hanlon before the game.
He works with Chet among many other people.

Speaker 1 And I was just saying to him, like, I watched Chet in these games and he's missed so much time in his brief NBA career.

Speaker 1 And he'll do three or four things every game where I'm like, is he just kind of scratching the surface of what he's going to do offensively?

Speaker 1 Like, is he even doing 50% of what he's going to be able to do? offensively.

Speaker 1 Drew's response was enthusiastic.

Speaker 1 Yes. Like there's a lot more there.
And I won't go into the conversation anymore, but he's the guy. So you're saying Drew Hanlon talked about one of the players he was training?

Speaker 1 Well, we just, I talked about it, and he like not. I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 but, like, I, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 Well, I think he's right because

Speaker 1 it's funny.

Speaker 1 Van texted me a couple of days ago. I was like, how good is chat?

Speaker 1 I'm like, what do you mean? It's like, is it like, is there more here? Is this it? And I was like, I actually think there's way, way, way more.

Speaker 1 Because even in college, the way they used him at Gonzaga, he'd be at the top of the key and he would almost like a little like how Duke used Cooper Flag last year, where he'd like, he was a little point-forward-y sometimes.

Speaker 1 But I think there's this whole other level where you could run offense through him at the top of the key, and he could either fake threes or go, you know, kick out.

Speaker 1 There's a post-up game that'll probably have, what, four years from now?

Speaker 1 I mean, in the first quarter of that game, he had a coast-to-coast take around Miles Turner, and then he had a little short roll where Miles Turner was there, like on the catch, and he just took like one dribble, pivot, step back, like 12-footer or 15-footer.

Speaker 1 It's like, God damn, that's a tough shot.

Speaker 1 This seems pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 They're down 2-1 in the finals to the Indiana Pacers.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go on Fando right now. What do you think the line is?

Speaker 1 Oklahoma City minus 110.

Speaker 1 I have no, to be clear to the listeners, I have no idea how any of this works. OKC minus 235.
That's wow.

Speaker 1 Wow. That's a thing.
Wasn't it minus 350 or something coming into this game? So, this win, I guess it's a home win. No, it jumped up to the 500s again after they won game two.

Speaker 1 Everyone and their brother had OKC in five as their finals pick. Did you have it? I had it.
We're wrong. We're officially wrong three games into the season.
Everyone was wrong.

Speaker 1 And I didn't want to do it because

Speaker 1 everyone had it. I wanted to zag, and I just couldn't figure out how Indiana was going to win two games.

Speaker 1 And now we know that game one game, that comeback and Halliburton, the shotty hits, and that's how you

Speaker 1 could that be how the entire series swings? I don't know.

Speaker 1 All right, predictions for game four. And then I have some trade stuff to ask you about.
Oh, good. I like a 1245

Speaker 1 super crack.

Speaker 1 Well, you had one thing on your pod I really want to dive into. Okay, predictions for game four.
I'm just going to say Oklahoma City wins a very close game. But Oklahoma City, 118, Indiana 114.

Speaker 1 Well, can we talk with maybe neither team because they're both pretty young, who has an advantage from that game today that we just went to was like a playoff game and a half. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Incredibly physical, up and down,

Speaker 1 intense, emotional. And now they got to play on Friday.
And I can't decide who that's more of a detriment to. My guess is the home crowd probably helps Indiana more.

Speaker 1 OKC, I have my eye on Chet because I really thought he looked wiped out in the fourth quarter. He was the one out of all the OKC guys that I thought looked like

Speaker 1 he was spent.

Speaker 1 SGA, maybe, I don't know, maybe that's, but on the other side, Hal Burton, I don't know. My guess is it's going to be kind of an ugly, dramatic game, and it would be decided by somebody weird.

Speaker 1 I like it.

Speaker 1 I would pick. I'm going Oklahoma City by four.
I would pick OKC as well. OKC is favored by six.
I would not do that. It's a lot.
It's a lot of points.

Speaker 1 But I bet for Thunder, even Thunder playoff games, that's not very many points. I love this series, and I don't care what the ratings are.

Speaker 1 And if casual fans don't care because famous people that they knew or famous franchises aren't in it, you know what? Why do we need them? The NBA just signed an 11-year media deal. I'm fine.

Speaker 1 I love basketball. That game was awesome.
I like that we have two new teams that are now in the fray. And I think this finals is a win.
And guess what?

Speaker 1 Indiana is a really small city, and so is Oklahoma City. Shit happens.
Well, the MVP is in this, in the series, right? That should be a very famous player.

Speaker 1 You've taught, you and Ryan talked about how he's maybe not one of the 10 most famous players. He's a little Mike Troutish.

Speaker 1 Okay. But he is the MVP.
And no matter who the teams are,

Speaker 1 if it's a long series, the ratings will go up as the series goes on. So I,

Speaker 1 yeah. but I'll speak of.
Well, what was the last great

Speaker 1 finals?

Speaker 1 Great.

Speaker 1 The last great finals,

Speaker 1 2013. No, 2016 has to be the base.
Oh, 2016. Everything after that is

Speaker 1 the Warriors, Raptors, Bubble,

Speaker 1 Bucks. Bucks Sons was a great finals.
It was just weird because the crowd, weren't we still in like half finals? Yeah, it it was a little like half coach.

Speaker 1 That's an underrated finals. That was a really good finals.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good call. All right, so Buck Suns, 16 Warriors, Cavs,

Speaker 1 13 Spurs, Heat, I think is the best finals. Oh, those last 15 years.
Back-to-back. They're almost like Rocky 1 and Rocky 2.
Like, they should all be one movie.

Speaker 1 But they've Miami broke in the second finals. Yeah, but that's part of why it's like all one movie.
And then

Speaker 1 11 finals, Mabs versus Heat. Great one.
Tremendous. 2010 Lakers-Celtics, dramatic, but the basketball, I don't think was that great.
Ugly.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think what else.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think those are probably the best ones of the century. 05 Piston Spurs, the game seven was kind of a dud for game seven.
Ugly and ratings were nobody wanted nobody would want to.

Speaker 1 You know, it was a good one was the 2000 Pacers Lakers series. That's a really fun series.
If you go back and look through those,

Speaker 1 that's a great Kobe game. Game four when Shaq fouls out.

Speaker 1 all right quickly so you had you were talking about durant and you said watch out for the quippers which i kind of heard rumblings of myself and i think durant's going to the spurs i'm just gonna slap it down a second time i think that's how it plays out i would the for sure the two teams that there's the most buzz about are the spurs and the wolves right

Speaker 1 so the wolves gets more complicated because

Speaker 1 the wolves one just breaks my brain i don't know how it's going julius rando and nasreed have to be involved somehow you could do

Speaker 1 gobert one. You can do Gobert plus DiVincenzo one.
Why did the Suns want Gobert?

Speaker 1 I mean, Booker Gobert is something.

Speaker 1 Something. If you want to stay competitive because you don't have any control of your draft picks, because you've ishbied all of them away.

Speaker 1 Would you take Vissell 14,

Speaker 1 Harrison Barnes expiring, and a good first

Speaker 1 for Durant? I would.

Speaker 1 I don't even think this.

Speaker 1 I don't know how the biggest mystery in the league right now is how aggressive the Spurs are actually going to get. And I think that's code for

Speaker 1 they're going to start with no number two, no Castle, no Vassel, and negotiate from there. I think that's what I would guess that they're going to do.
Like two and Castle are just out.

Speaker 1 They should try to keep it. Katie's 37 and

Speaker 1 250 a year and he's got one year left on his deal. He's been in the league for 18 years.
There's the subplot I forgot to get into on my podcast: the two-year $112 million extension he could sign with.

Speaker 1 AKA the Jimmy Butler? Do you do the one extra or the two extra?

Speaker 1 Do the Suns,

Speaker 1 A, is there a team that will trade for him, not caring whether he signs it or not? Not even wanting him to sign it, maybe.

Speaker 1 B,

Speaker 1 will the Suns just the Suns, I assume, and I'm thinking, will just trade him wherever. Like, if this team's not on your list, too bad.
We're trading you to whoever gives us the best package.

Speaker 1 There's no list anymore. I don't, I think after how they handled February, it seems like they're working with Rich Klein, Katie's guy.
It seems like they're being

Speaker 1 cooperative because the way they handled it in February was not the way things usually go in the NBA.

Speaker 1 What if the Toronto Raptors are just like, you know what, we're going to try for a Kawhi 2.0 moonshot. Here's the best package you're going to get.
Katie doesn't want to go there.

Speaker 1 We don't even care if you sign the extension. You know who I don't want to deal with is a semi or unhappy Kevin Durant.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm just not not messing with that. So, but like, what?

Speaker 1 He should go to the Spurs. That's that's how it's going to play out.
Is he going to be happy with the Spurs just because he decides he wants to be a family? Here's the case for the Spurs.

Speaker 1 He went to the University of Texas. He loves Texas.
He talks about it all the time. He's always respected the Spurs.
He'll be like the respected veteran of that team. People in Texas like him.

Speaker 1 Like the only two places he's ever really fit in in a way where he loved the city was Texas and Seattle.

Speaker 1 He picked the Nets.

Speaker 1 He picked the Nets, but he picked the team that was like the black sheep of the New York basketball season. And he picked the Suns.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And he was 0 for 2 in happiness levels.
And he was unhappy in Golden State at the end, too.

Speaker 1 He was unhappy the last year and a half of Golden State. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think he would be happy on the Spurs. I hope so.
I mean,

Speaker 1 Kevin Durand is an awesome, awesome basketball player. I love everything.
If you're the Spurs and you can keep enough stuff left to also make a Giannis run, you're doing it.

Speaker 1 And by the way, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah.
Whoa, whoa, what?

Speaker 1 Can they, is that even like sure? They've given away. They gave some of their picks away, including the Minnesota pick and the Fox deal.

Speaker 1 People forget, like, Dear and Fox is like a for, it's like they've, he's like a, we barely got to see it, right? I didn't forget because it's weird because they end up with number two pick.

Speaker 1 And guess what? I'm not sure they would have done the Dear and Fox trade if they knew that had happened.

Speaker 1 Well, I think they, because Dylan, Dylan Harper and Darren Fox, even though they're completely different players, neither of them are great shooters.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 They have to take Harper, it sounds like, but it's a little bit of a weird mix. And then he's throwing Castle, too.
I don't.

Speaker 1 I think they're, it would be so fascinating to be in their meetings right now because,

Speaker 1 you know, Fox is late 20s, right? Wemba Nyama's super young. The rest of the team is super young.
Durant's 37.

Speaker 1 How much of our Wemby timeline are we actually willing to sacrifice for a guy who's

Speaker 1 closer to 40 than he is to 30?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 how good in the West are we actually? That's what you have to look in the mirror and say, if we have like Fox, Durant, Wembanyama, let's say they even keep Vasili

Speaker 1 Castle,

Speaker 1 who's left on our bench? Like Sohan is maybe going out in that trade. Barnes is going out in that trade.
Is Keldon Johnson going out in that trade? Do we, are we actually a championship contender?

Speaker 1 Is Wembanyama already that good do we know enough about the fox when banyama fit that in

Speaker 1 our number two pick play real minutes for us and help us right away in the west are we are we actually can we win three playoff series in the west well that's why if you do the durant thing you're signing him for

Speaker 1 what you know it's for at least two years would be my guess

Speaker 1 i you i mean i don't understand the minute do you want durant on a two-year 112 million dollar extension takes care of his body would you but would you go to him and be like, hey. No,

Speaker 1 I would want him to take less. Because there was two options, right? He could take 124 as well.

Speaker 1 The 124 made me blink.

Speaker 1 He's got to wait, I think, a certain amount of time. He's got to wait six months and he could

Speaker 1 get that one.

Speaker 1 You know, I remember hearing stuff like, you know, as he, as he and his people and the sons sort of negotiate his post-Phoenix landing spot, which might be the, this might be the last thing.

Speaker 1 Like, this might be the last chapter of Kevin Durant's basketball career. Comes home to Texas.
He should really want to get it right.

Speaker 1 Would he ever be like, you know, in this second apron era,

Speaker 1 team X, you're, you know, you're going to be coming up against it. Like, I'll do two years 60.
I'll do like.

Speaker 1 Or maybe he just wants the one year because he wants to play in this goofy rival league that I talked about with Chuck Holsterman the other day.

Speaker 1 This, this F1 international basketball league that is, I think, a little closer to actually being real than a lot of people have

Speaker 1 to give it credit for. It's a big curveball.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's not a real thing. I did the, I like doing the double knots now.
Is it harder to aggregate me? I mean, let's just imagine. No, I'm not even going to do it.
I'm not going to imagine.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to walk that all the way back before I say it. I'm just saying Durant taking less is a conversation I would want to have with him.

Speaker 1 Like, are you actually willing to do this to help us build out this team?

Speaker 1 Not saying you should. I brought this up because I'm saying that I think it's an idea that he's probably thought about himself.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, and also these guys have made staggering amounts of money on the court and off the court.

Speaker 1 And at some point, this is what Tom Brady did on the Patriots for the last 10 years he was there, and he made the money back off the court. This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head.

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Speaker 1 You mentioned the Clippers for him.

Speaker 1 And that's how this whole thing started because I had heard there was a little Cooper's buzz.

Speaker 1 I can't figure out how it works. There'd have to be a third team.
That third team would have to be really excited about acquiring James Harden or Norm Powell and Bogdanovich together.

Speaker 1 I think he goes there to play with Harden, Durant. Okay.
I think that's part of why the Clippers have at least. All right, so if I'm the sense, like, I'm not, is Zubats in the deal? He's not?

Speaker 1 Okay, fuck off. And I think that's why the, as I said, I think that's why the Clippers will not.
end up with Kevin Durant. Yeah.
So can we just shut that down?

Speaker 1 Because Zubats isn't going to be in the deal.

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm sure the Clippers would love to have Kevin Durant. Shut it down if you want.

Speaker 1 We can actually trade something for him because you're not getting it for Norm Powell and Batum and Chris Dunn and Bogdanovich and a shitty pick. You have to fuck off.

Speaker 1 You have to really think that the Suns

Speaker 1 would value the Clippers' unprotected 2030 pick, a Clippers' unprotected 2031 swap, and a Clippers' unprotected 2032 pick.

Speaker 1 Like, really, just as the Thunder have profited by betting against the Clippers' long-term future, the Suns think well, you're saying the Suns, the stupidest team in the 21st century since the mid-2000s, Knicks with draft picks.

Speaker 1 Like, nobody has been more reckless and stupid with the concept of future picks,

Speaker 1 maybe since Ted Steepean in the 80s. That Bradley Beal trade and all the swaps and shit they did is some of the stupidest shit in the recent history of the league.

Speaker 1 So you're saying now that they would care about getting swaps swaps with the Clippers? I think that there's no way.

Speaker 1 I just don't think

Speaker 1 they value draft picks. The Suns are going to have to look in the mirror and think,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 like we traded

Speaker 1 present talent, really good present-day talent, and really good every pick we had to get Kevin Durant.

Speaker 1 Now we're trading Kevin Durant, and we're not going to be able to have the buffet of everything that we traded for him.

Speaker 1 We're going to have to choose on a sliding scale of salary relief which is very important to us draft picks and win now talent because devin booker is still on our team and we're just not

Speaker 1 we're not going to check all those boxes to the degree that we want no they basically they spent 10 million dollars on a house that was worth seven and now they have to sell it for five

Speaker 1 and that's it and it was like whoa i should get 10 i paid 10 it's like you're getting five and look that's how this is playing out i'm i have no idea what's gonna happen with with Devin Booker.

Speaker 1 I really do believe there is that from what I've heard, that Devin Booker really likes the idea of being a one-team player, like a Kobe for Phoenix.

Speaker 1 He's talked a lot about Kobe Bryan, what he means to him, and all that. But if they

Speaker 1 come out of this trade with something that doesn't excite me for the next two or three years, like a player that I can be like, oh, that guy's fun to play with.

Speaker 1 And we know the Beal thing is not going anywhere. You know, he won't be on, he's not a long-term part of the Phoenix Suns future.
I'm looking around if I'm Dev McBooker, like,

Speaker 1 is there a, is there a plan here of any, like, what is happening? Like, and he's already talked about, you know, we were so close in the finals not that long ago, and now what's happened to our team.

Speaker 1 And if you're Matt Ishbia, you have to look in the mirror and you wonder, wait, that's Isaiah Thomas standing right behind me. Doesn't even work for me.
Oh, wait, he does.

Speaker 1 He's my conciliary for some reason, but we're all pretending he's not.

Speaker 1 Boy, there's some good stories about that one. It's not great in Phoenix.
Have you heard the stories about how he FaceTimes in the meetings? No. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Might have been a coach interview

Speaker 1 or two

Speaker 1 or more when he was on FaceTime in the meeting. Everybody say Nick rocks.
One, two, three. Nick Rocks.
One, two, three. Jordan Ott rocks.

Speaker 1 Jordan Ott does rock, by the way. He's going to be a good coach.

Speaker 1 I'm putting the odds. I'm putting the odds on Giannis getting traded this summer at minus,

Speaker 1 not getting traded at like minus 400.

Speaker 1 I think he stays. That's a lot.
I think he stays in Milwaukee and I think he wants to stay. They definitely want him to stay.

Speaker 1 I think there's going to be less action than people think because then Garland got the toe surgery, so cross him out. I wouldn't have traded Garland anyway.

Speaker 1 Probably.

Speaker 1 I would if you gave me something incredible back for him. So Giannis is he's also had a couple tweets about getting back to the finals.
I hope we get back to the finals the last couple of days.

Speaker 1 He had the interview where he talked about the Bucks getting back to the finals.

Speaker 1 I would still go not minus 400. I would go like minus 200 or something.
Okay. Did you see his I miss Woach tweet? I thought that was weird.
Yeah, that didn't really

Speaker 1 get where.

Speaker 1 Does he feel like things are being misreported? I mean, I miss Woach, but I... I don't know.

Speaker 1 The insinuation from a tweet like that is things are getting misreported, which i actually agree with because

Speaker 1 he's never

Speaker 1 said anything other than he's going to be back in milwaukee and even when shams did that weird media thing on that monday where it's like he's open to the possibility it's like

Speaker 1 did he ask for a trade he didn't so he's open to thinking about the future okay cool who doesn't think about the future

Speaker 1 It's not a story. I don't know.
It's a story if he says, Giannis went to the Bucs today and said, I think I'm ready to be traded. But by all accounts, he hasn't said that.

Speaker 1 And by the way, if you're Giannis, I'm watching this Pacers team that is now two wins from the finals and has won 14 playoff games. And I'm like, we were right there with those dudes in round one.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 They lost in five, but they lost two of the stupidest games of the playoffs to them. Yeah, the only problem.
In that game,

Speaker 1 I'm just saying they weren't far away. Round two, round three, and round four.

Speaker 1 I get it. But I'm saying if I'm Giannis talking myself into Milwaukee, whether it's salvageable, I'd be like, Well, Eric, Eric Neem has

Speaker 1 talked about the gap year concept at the athletic. And, you know, it's an interesting concept.
I just don't know, is it a gap year?

Speaker 1 Like, how do you make it just one year when you have very little draft equity at all and not that many? You're saying no, if Dame's out for the year, yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, like, but how do you make it just one year?

Speaker 1 Like, how do you say, well, by 2026, 2026 27 we're gonna be ready to ready to rock again like so you don't think kevin porter and yannis can be the new big two and koos

Speaker 1 rejuvenated coose

Speaker 1 taking the summer seriously

Speaker 1 didn't oh i have a question for you can i ask you a question yeah a 1 a.m question yeah i didn't listen to the whole pod with ryan yet but someone told me today that you you you were and i don't know if this is right that's why i'm asking you you were very uh confident that Philly is going to try to trade the number three pick.

Speaker 1 Is that person summarizing you inaccurately? Or

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 am confident that they're exploring all options with the pick. Well, yeah.
Whether they actually find a trade they like,

Speaker 1 but I think

Speaker 1 I'm pretty confident that they're at least, I just think that's how Daryl has operated his entire career. They should.
He's going to look at every possible option.

Speaker 1 And then if it makes the most sense to do three and Paul George for something or however they want to do it,

Speaker 1 I think there's some really good dudes in this top five, though. And when they start working out and talking to them, they're going to.

Speaker 1 My guess would be they'll fall in love with one of the guys, and that'll be that.

Speaker 1 There's a guy,

Speaker 1 I've started to do my work. There's two guys that I think you're really going to dig.

Speaker 1 This Edgecombe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've watched him. I've watched

Speaker 1 played in the game we watched today and at least just athletically hung in. And then

Speaker 1 this Trey Johnson

Speaker 1 could be pretty exciting as an offensive. He's 6'4.

Speaker 1 They have to decide Maxie McCain.

Speaker 1 If you're adding a third, like 6'3 to 6'5 guy to that, then what does that mean? Is McCain your six man?

Speaker 1 I mean, you could look at it. You gotta Grimes, too.
Like Grimes is something. Right.
But I mean, you look at the Indiana model, it's like the more guards, the better, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 Just the way basketball is going. But Indiana's guards are big and tough.
Other than, you know, Halliburton is not, is not like Halliburton's skinny, but like he's still tall. Nemhart's tough.

Speaker 1 Matherin's tough.

Speaker 1 Have you changed your who's in the best situation for the next five years in the East Dancer?

Speaker 1 Now that we've gotten further along in the finals, because you did a thing with Woz after I talked to Ryan about it. I had Indiana.
And I said Indiana week one. You had Cleveland one.

Speaker 1 Ryan had Cleveland one. I think Woz had Cleveland one.

Speaker 1 Look, if they win the championship, it's just you just win. Like you win all the polls.
So yes, if they win, I guess I would have to. I guess I would have to.

Speaker 1 They won in the finals. They're a championship calendar.

Speaker 1 I thought Ryan made a good case. I think Woz made a good, or you and Waz both made.
The Cleveland case, I think, is the right answer because

Speaker 1 you have the most options with Moby, Garland, and Mitchell.

Speaker 1 Even if it's not working out with those as your best three and Allen, they still have a lot of different things they could do.

Speaker 1 That would be why. But if Indiana wins the title.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you win the title, you just win all the polls for a little while. That's That's all.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 even if they don't win the title, if Oklahoma City wins the next three games, Indiana has proven itself a championship caliber team.

Speaker 1 And then you have Boston a year ago.

Speaker 1 It's a Dallas.

Speaker 1 Wondering if this would be the first of a couple titles. Now

Speaker 1 Jalen Brown shaving his meniscus.

Speaker 1 Jason Tatum, day 27 of Achilles rehab.

Speaker 1 Drew Holiday, Porzingis trade rumors. I don't know what happened.

Speaker 1 I mean, do we know what happened with him? I'm in a hotel room in Indiana with you at one in the morning, talking about Kevin Durant, if he likes Texas or not. What happened to my Celtics life?

Speaker 1 I mean, we don't even know what happened to Porzingis.

Speaker 1 Still don't know. We'd love an answer on that at some point.

Speaker 1 Some sort of medical verdict.

Speaker 1 It's, yeah.

Speaker 1 Did anything happen?

Speaker 1 The ultimate team,

Speaker 1 look, we're getting a little groggy now, but the ultimate team, when you say, like, what happened? What happened to us?

Speaker 1 We're just like looking around, like, what? How did we get here? Is Sacramento? Just looking around, like,

Speaker 1 how did we become the Bulls?

Speaker 1 Like, the mediocre bull? That's who we are now. And, like, but with Sabonis,

Speaker 1 we, how is this our team? Like, Zach Levine makes how much DeMar, DeMar DeRosen's, like, around doing stuff.

Speaker 1 Malik Monk's our point guard. How about happened? How about we had Halliburton? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Like, how did we get here? The Beam team was so fun.

Speaker 1 God, I hated that trade for them. How did what happened? I think I went, I haven't heard the pot edit about it, but I think I said,

Speaker 1 I think I went all in on that one. That I thought it was a massive mistake by them.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, when we are, we talk about stuff after a thing, I'm like, I think this, I think that. And then occasionally it's like, I feel so strongly about this.

Speaker 1 I want to put some, can you put this down in pen?

Speaker 1 I just couldn't believe they traded him. So let's go back to, let's just, now we're really.

Speaker 1 And by the way, the Sabonis thing, they got good value, and it turned out it was a good trade for both sides. I get it, but I just

Speaker 1 never, ever would have traded him. Not a win-win.
The ultimate one, though, you put, and many people put their flag down most aggressively on, was Gobert. And so it's interesting to think now, like.

Speaker 1 I still have no regrets on that one. I don't think you should.

Speaker 1 It is undeniable that they have gotten further as a franchise than they have ever gotten before two years in a row. Um,

Speaker 1 and yet it still feels like how, like, they gave up so much

Speaker 1 to get him.

Speaker 1 But, like, I will say this: the one thing I was definitely wrong about, and I remember saying this as a critique of the trade, was you do that trade when Anthony Edwards is like 24, 25, and he's close to hitting his prime.

Speaker 1 I think the

Speaker 1 thing they saw that I guess none of us saw was that he was way closer to

Speaker 1 a top seven guy than I think we thought.

Speaker 1 And these really interesting thing about it was part of the reason reason that a lot of us didn't like that trade at first blush and even at second and third blush was,

Speaker 1 well, it's just you're just inevitably going to have to trade towns because the salary crunch is just, you're just not going to be able to have these guys. And he's the obvious guy.

Speaker 1 Like you're not, obviously, you're not going to trade Ant.

Speaker 1 Oh, man, we didn't talk about the real topic of

Speaker 1 the finals, the Knicks coaching search. Oh, my God.
The fact that the Knicks are back.

Speaker 1 Quinn Snyder.

Speaker 1 This whole thing where you just asked for permission for people under contract, I've never heard of it. Let's go through it.
It's quite

Speaker 1 everybody but Steve Kernstroke. Quinn Snyder, Billy Donovan,

Speaker 1 Eme Odoka, Chris Finch. I think we're even missing one.
Jason Kidd. Jason Kidd.
That's the one I was missing. At this point, if you're a coach and they haven't, it's like, boy, do I suck?

Speaker 1 Like, why are the Knicks calling? Yeah, it has hit that point where you start to

Speaker 1 wonder, is it you?

Speaker 1 I don't don't know what they do.

Speaker 1 If I were them, I would just hire Taylor Jenkins. I thought he was a really good coach.

Speaker 1 And I think you could explain his lack of success in Memphis. I mean, he was successful, but can you just take Control Z on the Tibbs thing? It's like, hey,

Speaker 1 the papers

Speaker 1 aren't handed in. I saw the ad in the Times that you placed the message letter in the Times, really touching.

Speaker 1 Really, really tugged on my heartstrings.

Speaker 1 Is Taylor Jenkins?

Speaker 1 What was wrong with him? Nothing. I just think that if you're the New York Knicks and you've made the conference finals, you fired your coach, who's this 67-year-old veteran, whatever he is, coach,

Speaker 1 with a mandate to win the championship. I just don't think you're going to the guy who is in the like little small market over here.
Like, I don't think James Dolan even knows who Taylor Jenkins is.

Speaker 1 I think Taylor Jenkins is an awesome coach, and he would be toward the top of my list, if not at the top of it, too. Even he has the ready-made explanation of, yeah, things were going really well.

Speaker 1 And then crazy shit started happening with my star player. Oh, and Brandon Clark was my glue guy, and he just kept getting season-ending injuries.

Speaker 1 I can't believe the name that I'm surprised hasn't come up is Vogel, just because veteran coach,

Speaker 1 likable personality, New York area ties. And I was talking to some people about that today,

Speaker 1 and the word retread came up, like too much of a retread. I'm i'm like well okay

Speaker 1 i i think that's a little unfair to him because like phoenix is just i just think everyone gets a pass for getting fired in phoenix it's almost like a badge of honor it's like the zoo caper in a zoo where the where the bear where the bears attacked a lion and it's like well it was the zookeeper's fault well and also they at least like made the playoffs and the lakers he wins a championship gets fired at amid the rust disaster and like you know you know i think vocal's a good coach yeah i mean like i just i'm surprised that name hasn't come up.

Speaker 1 A lot of the dots make sense of just like veteran coaches. How funny is it going to be when they hire Mike Woodson?

Speaker 1 I can't, you can't.

Speaker 1 You could

Speaker 1 not that funny to Knicks fans. I don't know.
Would you bet your life that they wouldn't hire Mike Woodson? I wouldn't bet my life on anything Knicks-related.

Speaker 1 They just called six coaches in 24 hours just for fun. Hey, Atlanta.
Hey, Atlanta.

Speaker 1 No, they were so competent. Also, like, whoever gets the job has to keep the best player's dad on the team as an assistant coach.
Not exactly like enticing.

Speaker 1 So, I get to coach in the New York Fishbowl. I'm expected to win a title.
There's a weird coaching staff situation that, by the way, a lot of people are talking about underneath in the undergrounds.

Speaker 1 It's not great. Would you, here's the question.
If you were Leon Ross or whoever's making the calls, let's just say Leon Rose. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Would you even have the guts, the gall, the audacity to call Pat Riley? Would just to do it? Like, hey, we got to check the Spo box. Like, we've got to see.
Like, don't we have to see?

Speaker 1 Given Riley's history with the,

Speaker 1 would you even do it just to, just to do it? I house throughout Spo initially with the first time. I know

Speaker 1 you screenshotted his text.

Speaker 1 I thought he seemed miserable last season. That was the only

Speaker 1 only thing about it that made me pause for a second. See,

Speaker 1 I disagree with you on one level. When they were losing, what did they have, like an eight or nine-game losing streak at some point when it was all coming apart for them?

Speaker 1 And he, in one of the press conferences, said, you know, like, actually, I just love this. Like, I love that we have to get together as a group and dig out of this.

Speaker 1 He's not, that's not like spo speak. He really loves like well, not only did they not solve this problem, not only did that dig out, they had like an embarrassing exit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it wasn't great. The Cavs just traipsing all over Miami and Max Struss.

Speaker 1 So, if I was Miami, I would all-time blow it up.

Speaker 1 I would trade Bam.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't do the Hero extension. I would trade Spo to the Knicks.
I would just completely blow it up. Spo's getting, Spo's getting up.
Yeah, I just completely blow it up.

Speaker 1 It seems like they're going to go the other way and they're kicking the tires on Durant, too.

Speaker 1 I was just imagining the most preposterous phone call possible is Leon Rose calling Pat Riley about Eric Spolshaw. That's the most preposterous thing.
I'm really rooting for that to come out.

Speaker 1 Well, considering they've called everybody else,

Speaker 1 like, would you be shocked?

Speaker 1 I would be a little shocked. We have to go because now my head's starting to hurt.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So we're going to come back on Friday night on your podcast. Yeah.
The Zach Lowe Show. We're not going to be live, but we're going to come after game four.
We're going to do the exact same setup.

Speaker 1 Hopefully we figure out, we'll learn from the kinks. We only had one stop and start this time around.

Speaker 1 But we're going to do that and it'll be up on your YouTube channel as well.

Speaker 1 This will be on my YouTube channel. This will be a video podcast on Spotify as well.
Hopefully, hopefully, that everything worked. Yeah, hopefully, everything worked.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well for producing for us. And thanks to Zach Lowe.
I'll see you. I'll sing you in Indy tomorrow.
But yeah, we're here. Game four.
Real stakes. Love a great game.

Speaker 1 What did we say? Magical or calamity or magical with it?

Speaker 1 Calamity or magical. Got to work on that.
That's every Pacers game.

Speaker 1 They've had five Calamity or Magical games in one playoff run. Was game one against the Knicks a Calamity or Magical? Magical.
I'm going Magical across the board. What a great place this is.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 I'll see you tomorrow in Indiana. Boom.

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