The Invincible OKC, Knicks Nirvana, and Acceptable Giannis Trades With Zach Lowe, Ariel Helwani, Sean Fennessey, and Ben Thompson

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Coming up on this podcast, going to talk to Zach Lowe about game one, OKC Minnesota at the top.

Going to talk to Ario Hawani and Sean Fentasy, two long-suffering Knicks fans who always come on this podcast to talk about the Knicks when things are going bad.

So I thought it was only fair to bring them on when things are going good.

But we had to balance that out with a guy whose team is going bad, Ben Thompson, who is going to yell at me about my Giannis Mobley trade idea and tell me where Giannis should actually go.

So we got a lot going on in this podcast.

Wanted to say R.I.P.

to George Wendt, who played Norm Peterson on Cheers and did a whole bunch of other good stuff too.

He was a great SNL host.

He was in a bunch of movies.

But Norm became, I think, a a big part of his legacy.

Cheers was one of my favorite shows

ever.

I was almost ready to say it was my favorite show ever, but I don't even know.

Now that I'm older, it's really hard to have a favorite show ever.

But you definitely have that top, top list of most favorites, most shows you love the most.

And I love Cheers so much.

And I just thought Norm, when you talk about like the great supporting characters, which I think is a little different than than a star of a show.

You know, like you think Seinfeld, Seinfeld was the star of Seinfeld, but I think George and Elaine were also stars.

And then Kramer was like the, at least for the first few years, like the kind of supporting character sidekick.

And he was awesome.

But there's, it's so hard to pull that off to thread the needle when you're not like one of the biggest stars of the show, but you're still awesome.

And Norm is like, I think the number one example of it.

There's some other one.

Everybody has if you're, it's generational.

Um, You know, the shows you would, like for me, it's the shows that I grew up watching in the 70s and the 80s.

You're always going to lean toward those.

And if somebody's younger than me, maybe it's the 90s or 2000s.

If they're older than me, maybe it's the 50s, 60s.

But for me, it was like Norm and Stanley Roper and Vinny Barberino.

There was all these, all these supporting characters who just would crush it every time they came on television.

And Norm was the best.

And Norm was so good that there's long YouTube entrances of just all the times he would walk into the bar and have some joke off of Sam's thing.

And then I thought it was notable that in the final episode, which is still the most watched TV show, I think, of the last 40 years.

It was like 80 million people watched it.

The last two minutes of the show are Norm and Sam closing down the bar for that night.

And Norm has a poignant comment and he walks off.

And there's a reason they did it that way.

So when I think of the best

character guys in 30-minute shows, And it's him.

It's not a long list.

It really isn't.

Mr.

Roper from Three's Company, I always love people that just, every time they were in a scene, they owned it.

And that's happening less or less now.

When I know, like, everybody loves Raymond.

I wasn't a

religious watcher at that show, but Brad Garrett's character, I think, was always like that.

It's really, it's a hard needle to thread where you just come in and you kill it every time.

But I really thought he was just amazing.

So anyway, I was sad today.

He died at 76.

One

One of my favorite TV supporting actors and gave us one of the great characters we've ever had in a sitcom.

Anyway, RIP to him.

All right, coming up, we're going to talk to Zach Lowe, and let's bring in our friends from Pearl Jam.

It is 8.13 Pacific time.

Zach Lowe stayed up late tonight.

I was kind of deep down hoping we were going to get a really fun Timberwolves OKC game one.

And then for about a quarter and a half, it felt like we were heading that way.

And then OKC does the thing that they do from time to time where their defense just shifts.

It's shape-shifters.

They just turn it up a different way.

And then all of a sudden the game's over and you're like, what happened?

How is this an 18-point game?

It was just, they were just up by two a second ago.

And that was it.

So I don't know.

You take anything away from this or is it just typical game one?

Well, first of all,

the Wolves were ahead by four points halfway through the third quarter.

Mike Conley

had a little flurry, a little flurry.

Mike Conley hit a three.

It was 60 to 56 with 7.22 left.

But look, I said this before the series.

I picked Thunder in six.

Don't feel any better.

I guess I have to feel slightly better about that pick.

But the bottom line is this: the most consistent unit, let's call it, left in the playoffs is Oklahoma City's defense.

Every single night, they're going to be an absolute bear to score on them.

No one has really found an answer at any point of the season.

Denver did pretty well against them in the regular season.

Spoiler alert, that did not last into the playoffs, even with the best player in the world

trying every trick he has.

And they just reach a frenzy.

And, you know, like Julius Randall posting up, it's just like, watch out.

Like, where is it?

Where's the help?

Is there any help coming from?

Is Lou Dork going to pull the chair?

Where are the arms?

There are just arms everywhere.

And, you know, look,

17 turnovers doesn't sound that bad for Minnesota.

I mean, it's not great, but it doesn't sound that bad.

13 of those were steals.

And that plus a free throw margin that is even and or slightly an edge to

Gloom City is just the Wolves are dead on arrival against this defense if those stats trend that way.

Yeah, it felt like this was the game

about 30, 40 minutes in.

It's like, all right, they're going to get this one if they're going to get a game, right?

Everything's going well.

Rando's playing out of his ass.

And OKC looked nervous.

And OKC looked a little tired from maybe that seven gamer.

And it was interesting when Ken Rich Williams came in.

Love it.

Kenny Hustle, baby.

Unbelievable.

Like, would he have been the fifth best nugget?

Where do you have him ranked on nuggets?

Could he have played 35 minutes a game for the nuggets?

He was plus 19 in nine minutes.

Made every shot that he took.

Unbelievable.

So when he did that, I'm like, is this a tactical move or did he extend the bench today because he was worried his team was a little worn out?

Or what's going on?

And did he lose faith in Caruso all of a sudden?

And then Caruso came in and played

one of the great stretches he's had in the playoffs.

So that was, that answered that question.

Yeah.

caruso's making threes guarding randall as i think one i think everyone was reminded that oh yeah he's going to guard randall when he guarded jokic at the end of the series and ken rich williams he's like a beloved guy there you know for years they've been saying he's going to be nick collison 2.0 for us he's just going to be a lifer here we love him he's about all the right things

hadn't really done much in the playoffs in the real playoffs i'm not going to count the memphis series um it's a cool moment he may not do much from here on out but that's a big that was a big stretch of basketball for him it was a cool moment It was.

He had a big three, too.

So the things I was worried about heading into this game, what are we getting from Mike Conley, who's old, going against this gauntlet?

You called on Sunday's pod or Monday's pod.

You said you thought OKC's defense is now going way up there.

I want to see it for four rounds because

I'm still licking my wounds from jumping the gun with Minnesota last year when they look good in round two.

And all of a sudden I was comparing them to the 89 Pistons.

I'm just, I have the training wheels on for all defense takes in these playoffs.

But I, you know, the bones are there.

I think what makes them special is the different looks and how they can do the big and small, how they can put like, oh, we're just going to try to get a lot of steals lineup.

They have looks like a football team that I don't really remember seeing.

I guess the, the, you know, you go back to the 89 Pistons and teams of that ilk that could kind of change their look depending on what you had.

They're on pace, but what they did today is they do it over and over again.

They just go on these runs and they're defense-fueled, which is so unusual in the league, right?

The runs that we usually have in the league are threes

and/or somebody getting hot.

This team can have runs based on steals and pressure and picking up guys at half court.

That one sequence, I know you know what I'm about to say, when Edwards was bringing the ball up and Caruso kind of jumped on him and then he almost lost, he almost fell over for a back court just because of the pressure and then got it back and then just like launched a terrible three.

Nobody else is doing that in the league and I think that's what makes them special is they just throw things defensively there.

You're like, I've not seen that anywhere.

Yeah, they have they have a couple every game where it's just, oh, the guy just either fell over along the sideline under pressure bringing the ball up or dribbled the ball off his foot, or I don't quite know what happened.

I have to watch the replay to see what went haywire here.

But you mentioned different looks.

And, you know, I was talking about this before the series.

We saw, I said, it's going to be a safer series to play Chet as the only big guy on the floor.

They were afraid to do it against Denver very much.

And they did it a lot today.

Hartenstein only played 20 minutes.

And Chet was awesome.

I mean, it doesn't jump off the stat sheet, you know, 15, 7, 3.

I just thought he made.

the kind of plays he needs to make on offense for them to win the championship, for them to win 16 playoff games.

He's going to have to hit some threes.

He hit just one, but he was one of one some tough twos some good takes around the basket and just he's they have him guarding either mcdaniels or a little bit gobert never julius randall they're like we're just keeping you away from that matchup he's going to bulldoze you and we're saving your sternum and your ribs he's we're going to make you we're going to preserve you as a help defender a lot and he's just everywhere like there was that one play where he had he switched on to di vincenzo in the right corner because the Wolves kind of moved around their offense a little bit.

And DiVincenzo's like, cool, I'll just drive baseline and see what happens.

And what happens is Chet's like, you're just going to eat the basketball for dinner.

How's that feel?

He was awesome.

And then we saw them close the game.

I mean, the game was already kind of closed, but with no bigs on the floor, they went to their sort of all-wing, all-guard switch everything.

Good luck figuring this thing out lineup.

And, you know, they have a little bit more lineup flexibility, I think, in this series than they did against Denver.

And look, Minnesota had 88 points.

88 points.

And I think we, I guess we got to talk about the threes, right?

15 to 51.

53 is 88 points is is never a good ratio.

Hard to win in the NBA in 2025 when the other team takes 30 more threes than you, and yet they won running away.

And I'm the tracking data nerds are already flagging it.

They're already awaiting the second spectrum data tomorrow.

Did Minnesota underperform their expected shot variation?

By was this just a shot luck game?

And I'll be interested to see what that data actually says because they missed some good ones.

But man, they make you take, first of all, no defense is better at helping, making you think you're open, and then flying back at you while another guy stunts at you.

So at least there's like stuff happening in your line of sight.

And by the way, the guy flying at me has gigantic arms and he's really fast and he's like 23 years old and at the peak of his athleticism.

And a lot of them watching in real time, and we're doing this right after the game, I haven't gone back and re-watched them yet.

They felt like long threes and a lot like early in the shot clock threes.

And even the ones that are decent and 29 feet early in the shot clock are long and have the feel of like, well, I better shoot this one now because it's pretty good.

And we ain't getting anything better than this.

I'm letting it fly.

And, you know, I thought for the most part, a lot of those threes were like decently contested.

And for a lot of this game, it was Minnesota missing tough threes and Oklahoma City missing tough twos.

And I think what should scare Minnesota a little bit is Oklahoma City started getting easier twos and making more of the twos as the game went on.

Right.

Well, if you're Minnesota, the one thing you're going to come out of the game is we have to get a better whistle on these SGA calls.

Oh, they were furious the whole game.

I mean, they were furious.

They were furious going into the game, which is always kind of a bad sign.

If you're already like on edge about it,

it feels like you just got to chill out a little bit, except that it's going to be bad.

But yeah, Dill, I'm sure some clips will be sent to the league office between games one and two.

Deservedly.

Look, I, you know, I tweeted this in real time, and and I never tweet during games usually, but I just thought Shay, and I don't care.

I didn't bet on the game.

I didn't really care who won.

I just hope we have a long, fun series.

But I feel like Shay is getting this whistle that nobody else in the playoffs is getting, where there's little touch fouls or these bumps where you're not even sure who initiated the bumps and he's just getting it.

And I think with Minnesota, you can see this.

You saw it in the Lakers series.

You saw it in the last series.

McDaniels can just have four or five fouls immediately and you don't even know what happened.

And when

he has fouls, I think Minnesota is a different team because he's kind of, he's their swing guy.

Every team has a swing guy.

I feel like he's their swing guy.

And once you put foul trouble on him and he's not as not as aggressive,

then it comes down to like, is Aunt or, you know, are the threes going to go in or is Aunt going to go nuts?

The bench guys were also really bad.

And there's officially a Nas Reed storyline that's developed where he's been bad for three weeks now,

where he hasn't looked like this guy.

Like when they really got hot, when Randall was out, I think it was like February range, and he was like 20 to 25 a night and

seven, eight rebounds a game and was like really impactful.

I don't think he's figured out how to impact the team now that Randall is looking like Randall.

And today he was one for 11, obviously, is about as bad as it's going to get.

But you do that.

Alexander Walker's three for 11 and Dante was three for 14.

They're not really built to survive three shit bench games, right?

Yeah,

five of

28 on threes combined for those three guys.

First of all, 28 threes for three bench guys, that's almost an accomplishment in and of itself.

Like you're almost having three bench guys take 10 threes apiece.

And you said that about

even Missoula is like, I don't know, that's a lot.

I thought Missoula would be like in

the jungles of the Amazon by now.

Yeah, he probably is.

He doesn't have cable right now.

He has no cable, no streaming right now.

You know, you said that about Nas Reed, and it seemed like a little unfair to me because in my head, I mean, it's like been a while since the Wolves played in my head.

I'm like, he's had some pretty good games.

I'm looking back.

Last three games against Golden State, all single-digits.

First two, we had 30 combined, and then two single-digit games.

against the Lakers, a really good game one, which maybe is the one that's sticking in my head.

But since then, very quiet very quiet and it win or lose this series and whatever obviously minnesota and their new ownership is going to have some big financial decisions to make and he's a big one hmm i didn't realize we were going there already no we're not we're not i'm just saying you you probably have no free agents but there's also no cap space

and he's such a legend there and deservedly so like the just people just screaming nas reed in the streets and holding the nas reed towels i hope he stays there forever but look, I think Minnesota will work their way into this series, but this game was

not the start you were hoping for because you come out of this, like, oh, geez, man, this is going to be tough to score enough against these guys.

It exacerbated all the things I was worried about, which is ball handling, Conley's age, the fact that they don't really have a backup point guard, that it seems like Edwards is going to have to have the ball a lot.

And I think OKC was ready for that, especially in the second half.

You could see, like, oh, you're going to have Edwards bring it up.

We're going to actually make it really difficult for him.

And OKC, with the, especially at home, with the ability to snap this, snap the switch for four minutes.

I'm worried for Minnesota.

Um,

because I'm trying to think what's the roadmap for them to be awesome in this series.

When you think how bad OKC played for the first half of this game, basically, for them, and then they still win the game easily.

Um, I guess it starts with Edwards, who was only 18 points.

Um,

Typical, like weird feeling it out.

He does this sometimes.

He didn't.

There was a Laker game like this, too.

There was the first game of the Warriors series where it's like this.

It's almost like a feel-out game, but it lasts the whole game and then the game's over and they lost.

But I would assume he's going to come out way more aggressive.

I, you know, you do have to remind yourself all the time, don't overreact to game one, even if it, even and maybe especially if it confirms to your expectations about how the series would go, because then your tendency is to really overreact to it.

Roadmap number one is hit four more threes if you're going to take 50 and that that does a lot of the work for you.

But I will 1520.

Yeah, I'll continue to say this.

Like if they lose the turnover, if they lose the live ball turnover battle like that, because Oklahoma City had 12 turnovers, only five of those were steals.

So that's, what did I say, 13 steals to five steals.

If they lose that battle that badly and they don't win the free throw battle by a significant margin, they're just not going to win games.

There's just no math that's going to to help them win games.

But step one is the threes.

The Ant thing,

like grade the Ant.

What grade would you give Ant this game?

He does have games like this where like he has moments.

And first of all, I think

for him, D plus.

Wow.

For him.

Not D plus across the board.

For him.

What do you want more of?

What did you see that concerned you?

Swagger.

I want.

Yo, we're playing the best team in the league and I'm in their house and I'm stealing this game from them.

I didn't feel that at all in this game.

Now, he did get hurt in the first half, and I don't know if that tweaked whatever was going on at all.

And Randall also had a huge first half, so maybe you back off, but

he's got to win the swagger battle with this.

You beat OKC by...

It sounds stupid, and it's the opposite of second spectrum.

And I liked your second spectrum voice that you broke out, by the way, your nerdy second spectrum.

Well, it's like, you know, I always tell people, like, I said it about the Celtics after game one and game two against the Knicks.

Hang the shot quality championship banner.

Congratulations.

You had better shot quality.

You're down 2-0 in the series.

You get nothing for that.

Yeah.

I think for him, he's got to be talking shit.

He's got to feel like he's the alph on the court.

I didn't feel that at all in this game.

Randall, ironically, was the one that was starting to carry himself that way.

And it was interesting to watch OKC swing their everything they were doing defensively to try to just kind of take him out.

I mean, the Caruso piece of this,

I was thinking how, as you know, I always want more awards

because I think we need stuff to commemorate the season well after the fact and be like, oh, that was the season when this happened and this happened and this happened.

If we had a role player of the playoffs award, I feel like Caruso would be like minus 700 on FanDuel to take it at this point.

He to watch somebody guard Randall, Edwards, and Jokic

well

in a 48-hour span.

Who else is doing that who else is in the

does it have to be a bench guy like is josh hart in the conversation is andrew nemhart in the conversation those guys are are other leaders you have to think of it like it's it's a movie poster and it can't be somebody who would be one of the two or three faces in the movie poster or in the like the tnt

that when they're doing the commercial for the game, it would be weird if they were in the game.

Like Julius Randall is not eligible.

He's...

Aaron Gordon too good for that.

I think he is because if you're doing the Nuggets movie poster, it's the three guys, right?

So it'd be Christian Brown in that case.

The Nuggets movie poster is just Jokic sitting on the bench looking sad as the lead is like frittered away.

They always cut to him.

It was the first it was the Nico Harrison in the crowd cut when anything bad would happen.

And then it became the Jokic on the bench.

When he's looking up and it's like,

oh, there's 11 minutes and 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter.

I probably can't come back yet.

They told me they wanted me to get to nine minutes.

How did that?

Oh, God, Bruss just turned the ball over again.

Oh, now it's 10.50.

Let's talk.

Can we talk a little more about Ant?

Yeah.

So, like,

the simplest explanation for why Oklahoma City is very difficult to play against is if you're Ant and you have the ball at the top of the arc,

like what direction are you going against this defense?

There's no easy mark to go at.

I thought at the beginning of the game, he was starting to get traction in the Gobert pick and roll.

Just like, like,

not softest part of the defense, but just I can always get a big guy, like, get Hartenstein up the floor, and like, maybe I can get around him, or there's a pocket pass to Gobert or something.

And then Gobert only ends up playing 20 minutes.

They play Chet at center quite a bit.

When Isaiah Joe was on the floor, Ant really wanted to go at him, and they couldn't get that switch.

Like, the Thunder were really good at hedging, recovering, and like you take that out of it.

And it's like, I don't know where to go.

And you could try Shea, but Ant has not really developed like this sort of back-to-the-basket bully ball game that I think he'd like.

I mean, he and I talked about it three, four years ago in a phone interview.

He would like to do that.

And it just hasn't, it's just that there's just not a lot of places to pick at.

Whereas I thought the Thunder gradually were like, Shea was like, okay,

particularly when Gobert is off the floor, I can get some place against Randall.

I can attack Nas Reed's feet in the pick and roll.

Like, I got play, it's not great.

Like, this is a really good defensive team, too, but I got things I can do.

And Ant is still figuring out kind of where he wants to poke at.

And I think he's going to have a game where he finds the right, the right places and stuff starts to open up for him.

Maybe part of it is like, like, he likes to go one-on-one.

He's an incredible one-on-one player, and he can beat almost anybody one-on-one.

And he had a couple of those in this game.

But again, it's like, if it's Kaysen Wallace or somebody like that, like that's no picnic, and they're going to pick you a lot of the time too.

Yeah, Kason Wallace was in there for a little bit.

Okay, always has two guys you just completely forgot were on the team, and then they're just kicking ass for three straight minutes.

I think the thing that OKC seems like they love is if somebody is going straight up one-on-one,

almost like the old school one-forward, and it's like, I'm going to go one-on-one, beat a guy, and just try to get to the basket.

They're like, great, please try that.

We're ready in so many different ways.

It seems seems like you got to attack them on the sides with angles because I feel like the Celtics fell into the same kind of issues with Tatum when it would go bad, when it was always like him 40 feet from the basket, straight ahead, versus when they would put him on the left or the right and he could kind of veer toward the paint and decide like what to do off the dribble.

I always felt like he was better.

Maybe that's what they're gonna have to do with Edwards.

And I thought they found something the first half with the Gobert pick and rolls, and then they just stopped.

There was a play in the second half where I don't remember exactly, It was an Ant pick and roll maybe with Gobert.

And he got Kason Wallace on his hip and got him trapped kind of behind him and then snaked it.

So he changed directions and it looked like he was going to have a driving lane to the right.

And that if Gobert was the screener, let's just say Gobert was going to seal off everyone on the other side of the floor.

And Caruso just ran in from the right corner off Alexander Walker.

And Ant was like, oh my God, okay, I'll kick the ball to Alexander Walker.

And in real time, I thought they had switched.

And then I re-watched it.

And it was like, no, Caruso just ran all the way back to Alexander Walker, contested the three.

So Alexander Walker had to pump, put the ball on the floor for one dribble, rise up for a three.

And then here comes Kason Wallace coming at me.

And it was like a decent three, but it's an example of Ant just couldn't get an easy feel for there's a clear path to the rim and I'm taking it.

And then they're just flying at you and making you take like

some decent threes, some bad threes.

So

there's a great, I mean, look, it's not breaking news.

They're an awesome defensive team.

Yeah.

Well, the problem, if you're the other team that's playing whoever, the favorite,

you kind of have to win game one, I feel like, to pull off an upset.

The Thunder were 68 and 14 this season.

They're eight and three in the playoffs.

Now you have to beat them four out of six times, basically, to send them packing.

And that includes winning

at least one game on the road, right?

And I guess game seven on the road.

Just a tall task.

I thought this was the game they had to steal, especially OKC definitely seemed tired that first half.

Randall's playing great.

This is the game you probably take.

So I don't really know

in terms of tweaks.

I feel like it's going to be easier for OKC to tweak this and use the, you know, the last quarter and a half to their advantage.

Hey, we worked with FanDuel long hours trying to figure out a great idea for the NBA playoffs, and we stumbled into a really good one that we've we've been doing for the last couple weeks.

We've won two weeks in a row.

It's called Tail or Fade.

I make a prop that I like

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Are you ready to wrap your head around OKC actually winning the title?

I know they're the favorite all year.

I know we've talked about it, prepared for it.

They were an incredible regular season.

But they still seem so young to me when I'm watching it.

It just seems like they're going to win this, and it still feels like they have their future ahead of them, which is a really unusual place for a champion to be.

You know what I mean?

I mean,

you cautioned me to not, you know, we already talked about Nas Reed's free agency, and then you're like, are we talking about OKC has already won the title?

Seven wins away now, and it doesn't, I feel like Denver might have been the best chance to beat them.

Well, I think that's a good thing.

Even as limited as that team was.

When they beat Denver,

and it's always hard to go through a proven champion with the best player.

When they beat Denver, they were very clearly like the betting, the solid favorite to win the championship.

Tonight only reinforced that, but there are still seven wins to go, and three tough teams, and a lot of randomness, health stuff.

Who knows what could pop up?

But yeah, I mean, I picked them to make the finals this year.

I thought I picked Boston over Oklahoma City as my as my, so I'm not surprised, and it doesn't feel premature to me in part because

you know, they they had

people kind of like, like

sometimes talk as if last season's playoff run was so crushingly disappointing and so short.

That was a real, like new, the New Orleans series in the first round was a walkover, but Dallas was a team that ended up making the finals with two generationally elite ball handlers and a lot of sides and a lot of problems.

And like they had to problem solve at a high level.

They failed.

They lost the series, but it was a very close series.

Easily could have gone seven.

Easily could have gone the other way.

Like that was real playoff experience.

And then they completely, like the Hartenstein Caruso double dip completely changes their team in a lot of different ways.

And they're, they're, they're ready for this.

It sure feels like it.

They Denver thing really put some chest hair on them.

And

I was talking to some people yesterday about the Denver game.

I don't, obviously they didn't break Jokic.

He's incredible.

But it was interesting to watch him run out of solutions.

And I potted right afterwards with Versillo, but I was still thinking about the game after.

And

when they just weren't able to get him the ball, it's unbelievable.

For

long swaths of the game, you know, and finally, Jokic, like, he really didn't shoot that much.

I think he had 17 points at halftime.

He might have finished with 20.

I felt like they broke the nuggets a little bit in that game.

That's another team.

It's not just that you're, you know, you have a chance to win the title.

You're also leaving wreckage of teams behind.

I don't know what happens to that Denver team going forward or what the moves are or how you fix

kind of this nucleus that feels like it's just not going to be good enough anymore.

But that's, that's a piece of it.

And it goes back to what something I talked about on Sunday and you've talked about in your pod, too, is it feels, there feels like there's some sort of shift this season.

That we're moving into

the second half of the decade, literally.

And all the teams that mattered the first half of the decade, for the most part, are going by the wayside.

And now we have this new

kind of new crop of teams that are just going to be in our lives.

The question for me is whether Minnesota can stay there with the tax stuff, regardless of what happens in this series.

Are they going to be able to pay Nas Reed?

Do they have the pockets to do that?

How are they going to handle Randall if he opts out?

Which I think there's a chance he might.

I mean, if

that's all, well, it's all going to be, I mean, he'll know if he, if he opts out, he'll know he's opting out for something better than opting in.

I don't want, I still want to talk about Minnesota counters and what else they can do.

I don't want to be, I don't want to go this far.

This is too, this is too far for me.

This is why we're talking it out.

Offensive rebounding.

There was a moment where it felt like, oh, they're going to be able to kind of bully this team on the glass, and then it faded away.

I think we got to see more of that.

I was surprised.

I think they only played one possession of zone in the whole game and it felt like it was more to protect Jaden McDaniels or maybe Jaden McDaniels got taken out right before.

I thought that was going to be something they went to a little bit more, particularly after watching Denver kind of trouble them a little bit with the zone.

I wonder if they're just like, we don't want to play that card right away in game one.

We want to see what our man-to-man defense can do.

You know, those are a couple of things.

Gobert, Gobert, two points, three rebounds.

It's just got to be like 12 points, 14 rebounds.

Eight of those rebounds are offensive rebounds.

Like if he's going to play and they're going to win, it's got to be something like that.

They did something with him.

He did the drive down the middle where it seems like he's going to do a scoop shot and then he just whips it out to the side.

And I forget which OKC player was like, you're passing it to the corner and just stood there and took the ball in the pass.

Do you think Minnesota's, like the guys on the bench, have like had training sessions about, okay, guys, when Rudy starts to do that, you can't start laughing.

You can't like hide.

You've got to just like stare.

When he passes up a two-foot layup for a kick out to the corner.

All right.

So you think more gober?

Just more.

That three-point luck has to change.

Ant goes way more alpha-y.

Shea doesn't get the same calls.

McDaniels is able to actually stay in the court and be McDaniels.

I think that's the recipe.

I still don't know if it's enough.

I mean, I thought Thunder and six, uh, so I

don't think it's all going to be enough.

But that's what I had too.

I thought, I thought Minnesota would get two wins somehow.

Well, I don't know where they're coming from now.

Five just feels for a team that is what eight and two in the playoffs coming into this and made the conference finals last year.

Five just feels like they've earned a little bit more respect than that.

And seven felt too much.

Seven felt like that's that's too many.

I'm going six.

So quickly on Randall, I was looking up because I was bored once that game got out of hand.

I was looking at Randall's weird career.

You know, he's averaging for his career 19 and nine.

And I looked up,

how many guys have played 700 plus games and averaged 19 and nine?

What do you think the number is?

Number of players in the history of the NBA, 19 and 9.

19 points, 9 rebounds a game.

That's it.

700 games.

700 games?

Yeah.

62.

23.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

That's it.

Jokic, Bird, Giannis, Wilt, Elgin.

Pretty, pretty good start.

C.

Webb, Charles Barkley, Randall, Kareem, Carl Malone, Bob Lanier, Tim Duncan, Bob Pettit, Anthony Davis.

Nine's a lot.

Nine is a lot.

Shaq, David Robinson, Hakeem, Walt Bellamy, Bob McAdoo, Patrick Ewing, Elvin Hayes, Spencer Haywood, and Moses Malone.

That's like an incredible list.

Multiple Hall of Famers, guys, multiple guys who are in the top 20 all time.

And then if you go that same list where 3.5 assists a game,

then that list goes down to 10.

Are you making the history Luis Randall Hall of Fame case right now?

Is that what you're doing?

I got to say, I did not realize, I'd kind of given up on Randall as like a real asset.

But I've been so impressed with him in the playoffs that it's making me reevaluate.

Like, did I get something wrong?

Did he get better?

Was he this good the whole time?

I have Knicks fans in my life.

Some of them are like, couldn't stand watching him.

And then others are like, the guy was awesome for us.

24 and 10 every night, four assists, five assists.

Guy's a warrior.

And he's just, I don't know how it happened, but he's probably the most polarizing guy in the league, right?

For the discourse, how far it's gone in different directions.

Should we pitch a documentary on

the

kind of

post-Kobe, pre-LeBron Lakers, all of whom become like characters around one of my favorite topics.

Randall, D'Lo, Josh Hartz flying around.

I'm thinking of Brooke Lopez.

Well, I'm talking about like the young guys, Brandon Ingram, Jordan Clarkson.

There's like a Nick Young, D'Angelo Russell subplot in there.

Iggy Azalea is involved,

if I said her name right.

So you're saying the year before?

Larry Nance Jr., just like the youth movement that LeBron kind of came in and was like, yeah, I'm publicly like, Yeah, I'm curious.

Like, these guys are all interesting.

And then was like, Can we just trade all of them immediately?

Like one, but Kuzma, Kuzma is another one.

They're all like these characters scattered across the league now.

Lakers fans were so excited about that team.

Luke Walton was the coach.

And there was a moment, there were moments where it was like, maybe this could be a team.

Like, maybe this could grow into something like a, like, not a great team, but like a 49-win team one year or something fun and homegrown.

And now they're just like a bomb went off and they're just scattered everywhere.

They had the number two players.

Lonzo.

Lonzo's in there.

in there.

I know.

I'm about to give you that Lonzo is on there.

Thomas Bryant, he's in the playoffs right now.

KCP, Caruso, Jordan Clarkson, Channing Fry, Josh Hart, Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Brooke Lopez, Larry Nance,

Gary Payton,

and Zubats all had minutes on the 2018 Lakers.

Now, some of them left.

They're in the season with trades, but

yeah, the Caruso piece of it, first of all, that that he was in the G-League nine years ago.

That picture of him and Mark Dagdald was unbelievable, them in the G League together.

It's just like an unbelievable photo.

But the fact that it just took this long for him to be fully appreciated, like he's being in these playoffs, when it probably should have happened in 2020 with all the stuff he was doing then.

I still love that trade for both teams.

I think Giddy for Caruso is one of the most fun trades of the last

five, six years.

Perfect trade for both teams.

All the stuff Caruso is doing on OKC is wasted on a 41 and 41 Bulls team.

Like, this is where he should be.

Good trade.

If that, like, no, I, I, look, I, I didn't like it for the Bulls as much as you did, but I also thought the Bulls got too much flack for that trade.

But

Caruso is doing this on the highest level of professional basketball.

For the Bulls to end up in three years saying, hey, that trade worked out just as well for us.

Giddy is going to have to do some of this stuff on like a really high level of basketball.

And not like, it's cool that you average 28 and 8 in March and April when half the East is tanking.

And like, that's cool.

I'm not saying it's meaningless.

Like you shot the three well this year, but it's got to happen with some real stakes at some point.

Yeah, I agree with that.

And in the East, hey, Bill, like apologies to what, you know, the Boston thing, the Milwaukee thing, like, hey, it could be next year.

Bulls could be.

four or five series next year.

You know, who knows?

Well, that's the case.

Ben Thompson's coming up later because I had to bring him on to yell at me about my Giannis for Mobly trade.

What was your take on that trade, by the way?

Well, my first take was the same one that Bobby Marks had, which was, I'm pretty sure, like, this is way more complicated than that.

Just it was a theoretical.

And then my second trade was, I think Cleveland would just reflexively recoil from it because.

Mobley is seven years or eight years younger or whatever it is than Giannis,

six and a half.

And then my third thought was:

Should they just reflexively recoil?

Like, what is Mobley's?

And I love Mobley.

You and you and I both are super high on Mobley.

It's probably going to make second team all NBA and kind of deservedly, I think.

And defensive player of the year.

Yeah.

I just, I just, but Giannis is Giannis and Mitchell,

Mitchell, Garland, Giannis

makes more sense than Shengun,

Thompson, Giannis, or like,

but I just think in the end, I'm a little bit more risk-averse trading young for aging.

It's the same reason I never got so excited about Durant coming to Boston.

But

I think you, if their instinct, and I believe that it probably would be, is to just like recoil in horror at the idea of trading MMOBL, I think they need to at least sort of tamp that down and really think it through.

And what does it look like?

And what is the cost at least?

Boogie Cousins was on some show today saying that uh he thought dallas should trade the cooper flag pick for durant

which i thought was bold because he said they're dallas's windows right now

i feel like i feel like you're trying to bait me into i'm not trying to bait you i'm just passing along information i will respectfully disagree with

i i don't think i mean i don't disagree he's right about the window and what nico harrison is telling us

about the window

which is which is which is why you aim it at yannis and not kevin Durant, I think,

if you're going to do that.

And I don't think they should do it either way.

I'm keeping Flag.

Thanks anyway, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you for all your offers.

I'll be keeping Flag.

I guess,

yeah, even Mobley, I just, Flag's still 18, and he's going to come in.

By the way, you don't watch college basketball.

He's going to be your favorite player.

I've done my YouTube, and I've watched a couple Duke.

You're going to go far in the tournament.

I I enjoyed it.

It checks a lot of boxes on the Zach scale.

I'll tell you that.

I enjoyed Duke's final four collapse against.

Who did they collapse against?

Auburn, Houston, one of those.

Houston.

Houston.

Great time.

Great time.

Yeah.

For any red-blooded American.

Who did you have in Knicks Pacers?

Out of curiosity.

Nixon seven.

Nixon seven.

You have Pacers in four, I assume.

No, I have either Pacers in six or Nicks in seven.

I think it's one of those two outcomes.

I think any of that.

any other pick than that, or I guess Pacers and seven, if you think they can win on the road, any pick other, like, feels too short.

That feels like it should be just an awesome series.

I'm going to game one tomorrow at the garden.

I can't wait.

You're going.

I just want to soak it in.

I just want to feel it and hear it.

And

how early are you going to get there?

I mean, I'll get there if it's an eight o'clock tip.

I think they'll let us in at 5.30.

So I'll get there at 5.20.

Don't stand next to Wind Horse.

He's just try to be like

or defend Windhorse.

If anyone comes at him, like use some, use some karate.

That still made me mad.

Well, like, look, the Knicks, the Knicks fandom is awesome.

And I'm, I'm like, go off.

It's been 25 years.

You want to flood the streets.

It's my favorite city in the world.

I lived there for 18 years.

You want to go crazy.

But like

someone tweeted today, like, I don't know where the line is on this kind of stuff.

I think the line is like throwing stuff at people and shoving them and punching them.

It's pretty easy.

You can shout anything you want.

Like,

the stuff they did to the Pacers fan that Halliburton is flying out to Indiana.

It's like, that's a pretty, that's a pretty clear line.

Like, taunt, talk your shit, but like, you know, don't hit people or throw stuff at them.

We know where the lines are.

Well, we'll see.

We have some Knicks fans coming up after you.

There's a Jalen Brunson moment lurking right now that, you know, could take on Joe Namath winning the third Super Bowl ever proportions if he could actually pull it off.

He's eight months away.

Did you ever see any version of this with the Knicks where they could actually win the title?

They're pretty massive underdogs in that Celtic series.

Did you see it was like the fifth biggest upset of the 21st century in basketball?

That series?

I mean, I've always been higher on this Knicks team.

And even last season's Knicks team, I said, was the biggest threat to the Celtics in the East.

Even if Philly were healthy, even if Milwaukee had been healthy, I would have thought that.

I just thought Boston was a terrible matchup for them.

And I was shocked at how

I think, you know, you put Tibbs on the hot seat before the playoffs, and I understood why you did it.

I think he deserves a ton of credit for the job he's done this year on both ends of the floor.

And that series against Boston and the way that they stretched their scheme and their style into places that were not really familiar for them and part of their A-game.

I think it was an awesome performance top to bottom, but I was shocked how easily they solved their Boston problem.

There's been some pretty crazy Celtics losses during this Tatum Brown era.

You know, like game seven, Cleveland, 2018, when they missed, I think, every three they took, or it felt like it.

That was all gravy, though, wasn't it, for you?

I know, but it's just.

It was one, I think, I think it's still one of the four worst three-point shooting performances in the history of the playoffs.

That was back-to-back days with the Rockets missing 20.

That was another one of the worst ones ever.

The 2022, that game four when Steph just levitated above the game.

The game seven, 23 against Miami when Tatum gets hurt a minute into the game.

Explainable, though, right?

Explainable.

Yeah, but I'm just saying.

The earlier losses in that series were worse.

They were comparable to games one and two against New York this year.

Right.

And then game one and two.

And I don't even know those games are just going to be lumped together in Celtics history.

It's not like it'll be like, oh, game two.

It's like just those two together will be discussed.

Like, just how do you lose two games in a row at home to start a series down 20?

But I did feel, and I said this to you in the next segment.

I really did feel like the Knicks.

played the best I've seen them play all year in the second half of game four and then all game six.

Like that, that was like the full potential of whatever this team is.

Plus, they finally have a bench, even though it's two people.

Well, Bridges has become the player that they traded for in terms of just what he's doing.

McBride started making shots and Robinson being this healthy, mobile monster, like completely changes their team for 15 to 20 minutes a game.

It's those that, those three variables alone are a big, big deal.

The other stuff is pretty.

He was eye-openingly available for months during the season, Robinson.

I'm kind of surprised nobody tried to scoop him up, but I think he, from an injury standpoint,

I think he just had this thing to him.

It's like, what am I, it's almost like where Rob Williams was after a while with the injuries where you're like, I just, is he going to play?

It's going to, how many, how many games in the room am I getting?

And it's only gotten worse for Time Lord and the Blazers,

which is how those things typically go.

But yeah, long way to go.

Before we go, last question.

Because I'm already in trade mode and draft mode.

Because now we only have one game a day.

There's more stuff to think about.

Is there a team you feel like could be a holy shit trade team that we're not talking about enough yet?

It's funny because is there a team you're on watch with out of the 30?

One of my plans for my Thursday episode is I'm having another guest on.

We're each going to pick our three.

Have we discussed this team enough off-season teams?

So, this is like right up my okay.

So, we'll tee that up for Thursday.

No, no, but I want to pick a team now.

Um,

I

mean, I don't want to pick an obvious one like Milwaukee or even Memphis.

We've talked about it.

Yeah, I'm saying a little bit of a zag.

I've got my eyes on

Atlanta and Sacramento.

They just feel like teams that are just sizzling with

we both kind of like parts of where we're headed, and especially Atlanta, but also we're just like,

we just fired our, like, the Hawks just fired their GM, Landry Fields, and Sacramento at this turnover.

The DeRosans, I just, both of them feel just like ripe for,

wait, why'd they do that?

Okay,

maybe.

I don't know.

Those are just two.

You got one on the brain.

Give me, I know you got one on the brain.

So let me let me hear yours.

You're going to laugh.

It was Atlanta.

Really?

Yeah.

I had somebody

ask me because he's heard some of the Giannis content we've done on different pods.

Oh, boy.

And he was like, why isn't Atlanta in the Hannis combo?

And I was like, what do you mean?

And he's like, well, Jalen Johnson's awesome.

He's on their team.

He just got hurt.

Everyone forgets that he didn't play the second half of the year.

But as a centerpiece of a trade,

that's a really good centerpiece.

You know, they have, they don't have their next couple picks, but they have picks later.

And it would be pretty easy for them to put something together and basically turn it into Trey and Giannis and keep Giannis in the east.

And I look, I wasn't saying it was going to happen, but he was the question was,

why wouldn't Atlanta take a swing?

They don't have their picks anyway.

I'm looking at, I didn't hate it.

Um, I mean, I think if you're the Bucs, it's got to be, well, what else is there for us other than Jalen Johnson, who I love and I believe is from

the front?

He's the front front of it.

Yeah, but what's way more in the trade than Jalen Johnson?

So, what's the way more?

Uh, because they owe some picks, they have the Lakers pick and they have an extra pick from it's like the second best of New Orleans and Milwaukee and their own pick.

Um,

they're missing their next couple, right?

Yeah, they have

the next three drafts, this one and the next two are controlled by the Spurs.

But the next one's a swap with the Spurs, but they own 28, 29, 30, 31.

And then they have an extra Bucks, New Orleans pick.

And they also have Reese.

If you

wanted to get excited there, that feels like the rubber meets the road piece

in that discussion.

You've been getting like a little bit off the ground is Reese.

So if it's Jalen Johnson, Reese, all their remaining remaining picks.

I think Milwaukee has to sit down and think about it.

And

that's an offer that teams can beat, but it's an offer that's like, you got to beat.

It's not a nothing offer for sure.

I love Jalen Johnson.

But I thought the same thing with Atlanta, where it's they had some upheaval.

They're kind of in no man's land.

Why not if he's available?

They've done weird shit before, too.

I'll tell you what mitigates against that, though, is like how fucking bad the East is.

Like, it's really easy to talk yourself into a world where Atlanta just stands Pat re-signs Laverte does nothing all that interesting and is like why can't we go 52 and 30 next year and be the third seed in the East and like still have some stuff to do well that that's the case for Milwaukee

to not do it to do to do maybe we keep Giannis maybe we're just a 50-win team by default in the East

With Giannis.

The difference is Giannis has tasted the championship and understands that the window is shrinking, the time window is shrinking.

And Trey and the Hawks have tasted the conference finals and everyone kind of wrote that one off and has then has just been swimming in the play-in, just playing, playing.

They should name the play-in after the Hawks at this point.

Hawks in the heat.

It's like a guaranteed play-in game every year.

I wish Miami had one more guy because there's a bam in all your picks for Giannis type of framework that I think would work, but it just puts Giannis in the same situation as in now.

Exactly.

At least the Hawks one, at least you can say, well, he's going to another, whatever you want to call Trey, perennial all-star, semi-perennial all-star, couple-time all-star, and like he fits well with Giannis.

Hero's like a one-time all-star, and everyone is like, really?

I don't know, you know?

I don't think, I mean, San Antonio has a ton of picks,

but I don't think.

I said this to Ben later.

I'm sorry I'm stepping on a segment that's coming later, but I just don't, if I'm Giannis, I'm not getting traded unless I'm guaranteed I'm going to be one of the best sport teams, which is why going back to Cleveland, that's why the Mobile thing made sense to me.

So it's like, if he gets traded there and Mobly is the guy coming back, I now know I'm the favorite in the East.

And I'm okay approving that trade at that point.

But I guess we'll see.

All right.

Thursday, you're talking coming off the next game that you're going to go to and then doing some.

Some of this.

Some of this stuff.

Who's going to do some crazy stuff?

Let's go.

Maybe some end of the year Greenwich High School varsity sports wrap-up.

Oh, God.

Swim team wrap?

Nothing?

Nothing.

Nothing.

No.

How'd GHS do this year?

Swimming, we kicked butt.

The coach is pretty awesome.

Other sports,

no.

I don't follow.

I'm glad the swim team's still good.

All right.

Zach Lowe, good to see you as always.

Always fun.

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All right.

So listen, I've talked a lot about the Knicks on this podcast, really, since I've had it in 2007.

And I brought in a bunch of people on.

Two of them are here today, but I just wanted to say, you know, Sean Fantasy, Ariel Hawani, a lot of times when I brought you in, it's usually it's out of a moment of sadness or like there's faint hope, but it's not really going to work out the right way, but it's, it's usually somebody, one of you being sad.

And this is a very happy time for the Knicks.

Eastern Conference final starts tomorrow.

You've beaten the defending champion Boston Celtics.

And I thought it was only fair to invite you both on.

Sean's got like a golf tan sunburn thing going.

You've just like lost your mind.

Mission Impossible's coming out.

Ariel looks at the happiest I've ever seen him.

This is so, I don't know.

Sean, you go first.

Well, Ding Dong the Witch is dead.

R.I.P.

Boston, Bill.

I haven't said it to you one time in days.

I haven't said a damn thing.

And I'm happy to, well, one, thank you for having me.

Thank you for having Ariel.

Thank you for giving us this platform.

You've given me a lot of platforms over the years, and I'm grateful to you.

But honestly, we just kicked Boston's ass, man.

That was amazing.

That was genuinely beautiful.

Like,

I never in my wildest dreams thought they were going to win that series.

Ariel, I think you're a much more positive fan than I am.

I'm a cynic to the core.

I've been burned by this team dozens and dozens of times.

And

this series was magical.

And this week is extraordinary.

And I don't want to hear a damn word about guys over-celebrating a second-round victory because we haven't been there in a quarter century.

And that was an incredibly meaningful moment for the franchise, for the fan base, and for a team that had lacked a signature moment all season.

And this series was clearly, to this point, their signature moment.

So I'm just elated.

I'm thrilled, and I'm super excited about this year's The Pacers.

I'll just add amen to all of that.

And kudos to you, Bill, because I think a lot of people

would have said you wouldn't have two Knicks fans on.

And certainly some of my friends were like, is Bill going to have you on?

I'm like, look, you reached out to me.

I didn't reach out to you.

I don't like being that fan.

I don't like rubbing it in, but golly, I'm happy to be here.

I am delighted to be here.

That was one of the, so I went to game six.

I was teetering.

Obviously, the tickets, and I bought my tickets.

No comps here.

I'm not that kind of celebrity.

Certainly not on your level.

So I can't get in there with, you know, Chalamet and Bad Bunny.

But I remember exactly where I was in 1999 when

we clinched at home to go to the NBA Finals, when we beat the Indiana Pacers.

I know exactly where I was in 2000 when Ewing dunked over morning the last trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.

And I said to myself, that kid, that 17-year-old, would have done anything.

He would have walked from his house in Montreal to Madison Square Garden to be here.

I have to figure out a way to be there.

And I'm so happy I got to go with my two kids because it was the greatest sporting event that I've ever been to in my life.

And I've been lucky to be to some.

It was a three-hour party, Bill.

It was a three-hour freaking party.

It was unlike anything because there was no tension.

There was no stress.

We hadn't had one of those games yet in the playoffs.

lord knows we didn't have a lot of those wins throughout the season and from the jump you know at one point i think it was like 7-5 boston and that was it you know jalen hit a couple shots and that was it it was a party and and and just i was able to look at everything and i told my kids This hasn't happened in 25 years.

They're 13 and 11.

Oliver and Walter, I said, look at all of this.

Take this all in.

This doesn't happen.

Don't take this for granted.

And then we had to walk through the crowd, which, you know, I know everyone has their take on the crowd, but I thought everyone was well-behaved.

It was awesome.

We'll never forget it.

And I honestly wish that the Easter conference finals were starting on Saturday because I still need like five more days to revel in all the highlights, all the videos about that win over the Celtics because I don't want this feeling to go away.

Sean, you want the feeling to go away?

Are you ready to play some basketball?

I want to play.

We're not done.

I think this is a team that has a really good chance to move on.

And frankly, we have revenge come due after last series with the Pacers last year.

So I wanted Halliburton the the whole time.

I'm glad it worked out.

I'm glad the Cavs, once again, were a paper tiger.

That's three years in a row, they've been a paper tiger.

And I think this team, I don't know if they're a team of destiny.

I have heard that said a few times.

I think the guys on group chat called them a team of destiny the other day.

But there is something different.

I never would have guessed that a team that is highlighted by Carl Anthony Towns, a player I never understood or respected all the way up until last October.

But

there is some sort of juju going on with them right now that is just thrilling.

And I'm the only time I'll probably disagree with Ariel this entire time, this entire call is that I want the game to start tonight.

I wish they were playing right now.

I'm ready.

Well, I know, Sean, you've come on sometimes and you've just laid some bombs and laid some wood on some rivals because you turned into a sports fan, Sean.

I hate Carl Anthony Towns after that series, and it's going to be tough for me to refer him for a while.

No rational reason for it.

It's just he started playing well in game six and started puffing his chest out a little bit.

And the wheels have come off not just the Celtic series, but the season and probably the era.

And he became the target.

But Ariel,

where did you land on Towns?

Are you still trying to figure him out?

What UFC fighter is he?

No, he's the man.

He's the freaking man.

I hope they build a statue for him outside MSG.

Oh, my God.

Carl Towns is the man.

I mean, look.

Everyone has their take on him.

Second trip to the conference finals and back-to-back seasons.

He beat Jokic last year.

Western conference files.

Like, you need to start respecting him.

He didn't beat Jokic.

He was a big part of that, in my opinion.

I don't remember that as the town series.

Oh, he was fantastic in that series.

Come on, but he must drive you crazy because he would drive me crazy if he was the center of my team.

I would go, I know what you're trying to do here.

There is nothing you can say

to get me to say anything negative about the New York Knicks right now.

I freaking love all of them.

I wish Jericho Sims and Matt Ryan and

Jacob Toppin was back on the bench because I missed those guys as well.

That's how irrational all this is.

I cannot tell you what it's like walking around.

So right now we're near NYU and seeing everyone with their Knicks gear.

I was so tired of the LOL Knicks.

I was so tired of all the jokes, of all the media outlets, always cracking jokes.

I mean, they're still doing it.

TNT is still doing it.

It's ridiculous how they're treating this team, but I just love how the city, how everyone has rallied around them.

Jalen is the,

I'm so lucky to grow up in an era where Jalen Brunson and Josh Allen are my two guys.

I mean, they're, they are cut from the same cloth.

They're exactly the same, and that my kids can root for these guys.

The way he handled Friday, he didn't even celebrate.

Look at the look on his face.

He looked upset.

And I went back and looked at the post-game press conference after game seven when Tyrese Halliburton thought he was all so cute walking in there with the t-shirt and the choking.

I can't wait for them to get revenge for that one because we have not forgotten.

And I went back and looked at his media availability with the broken hand.

He had the broken hand in that game.

And someone said to him, is this season a success?

And it was his version of Job Not Finish.

And he's like, Did we make it far?

Did we win?

No, this wasn't a success.

We're not here for any sort of like, you know, moral victory.

I love his mentality.

I love everything about him.

And if you're still subscribing to the notion that he's too small or not the best guy on the court or all this nonsense, you know, you're missing the point and you're missing the fun.

This has been an unbelievable run.

This is a likable team.

This is a fun team.

Carl Towns completely dominated every big man that Boston threw his way, from Corzingus to Horford to everyone in between.

Dying of an illness.

Corford's 39.

Cornette was a real, I mean, we had Cornette before you guys had Cornette.

That was a great.

And what about Mitchell Robinson in that one sequence?

That was the boom, boom.

I mean,

I will say, Sean never gave up on Mitch Robb.

Good.

You were waiting for those 15 minutes in the playoffs.

That was the weirdest thing about the series was by the end of the series, all of a sudden the Knicks had the seven-man rotation that makes sense as like a four-round playoff team, which I was not expecting.

If they get good Deuce and they they get good Mitch, they're an incredibly formidable team.

They, that, that legitimately feels like a championship team to me.

If it's only six guys, I get really tight.

And if one of those guys who's missing from that seven is Kat, like he was in game five, then I'm really nervous.

That that was the best and the worst of this team that you saw in five and six when all cylinders were firing in six was the opposite of five.

So it's not, this is not,

you know, this is not the 93 Bulls.

Like that's not really what we're looking at here with these teams.

It's just their fears, feels like an opportunistic hole for them to slide into.

And like Ariel said, they have JB.

Like,

in my lifetime, never been an athlete who, in the final minutes of a game, I trusted more in my life.

Wow.

Not even close.

I mean, there's literally not close in my 43 years of watching sports.

Who is even, I mean, who's on the list?

I mean, you're a Bills fan, Ariel.

I'm a Jets fan, so obviously I don't have anybody to choose from there.

Well, I guess first three quarters, Josh Allen.

Wow.

I'm sorry.

I'm just lashing out.

That was just mean.

I don't know why I did that.

What's so great about this is like for the last 20 years, all the Boston teams have broken my heart.

You know, from the Bruins, Red Sox, Blue Jays now, I'm a Blue Jays fan because my ex-bo's left.

Let's not get into that.

Knicks, Celtics, obviously, and of course, Patriots and

Bill.

Everything's turning in my favor now, Bill.

This is incredible.

We smoke you guys every year.

In fact, we let you guys beat us at the end of the season.

So you want to get the first pick.

that was amazing favorite in 13 games this year the favorite dermit crew when we let you guys beat us was amazing and then what happened here oh you guys you guys were so cocky going into this second round series it was amazing we shouldn't have been we were minus 800 favorites why wouldn't we have been cocky you guys barely beat the pistons you rode

no we were up 3-1 and beat them in six every fourth quarter was like was either or

That's when they're at their most comfortable.

You know it now.

I know.

That's right.

By the way, Billy, you're not subscribing to the theory that we beat the Celtics because Tatum was injured, right?

Like we were winning that game.

We were winning game four.

Talk to my dad about six or seven.

We lost the series in the first two games.

And the fourth quarter, you played in game four, which was incredible basketball.

We would have been down 3-1 in the series with the Porzingis, who's like zombie Porzingis.

Hauser, the sprained ankle.

Jalen Brown, we find out after he had this torn meniscus that they were kind enough never to tell us about for two months.

I don't think we could have won three in a row, looking back.

I think it would have been a tall task.

You would have had one game where you at least played one awesome half,

and I just don't, I just don't think they would have won three straight with the team they had.

Now, before

March, I wouldn't have said that.

Yeah, game six would have been really tough for you guys, even if Tatum was healthy.

I think.

Game four was hard.

Tatum played one of the best games of his life, and we were down nine when he got hurt.

Can I work up some Indiana animosity for you guys?

oh please easy not that

you're already there it sounds like 10 out of 10 hatred annoying annoying him twerp yeah okay him um reggie miller doing the announcing annoying that means you have to see the the eight nine seconds and the threes and the spikely trash talk we're gonna be force fed that not looking forward to that aaron aaron niesmith as a as a quote-unquote Brunson stopper, just following him around every year and

doing agitator stuff.

Where do you stand on him?

Did you say Brunson Fowler?

Brunson Fowler, some people say.

That's his role in this series, I think.

Okay.

Well, Nisma's good.

Niesmith's good.

Nemhart's good as well.

My fellow Canadian hit that big shot in game three, which we would have won the series had that not happened.

They are a very good team, and they're a very deep team.

Dare I say, they're the best team that will play in the playoffs so far.

Sorry about, you know, the selfish.

You're right.

If you remove the Porzingis piece and Jalen on

as they're currently constructed, as they're playing right now, they are not against that argument.

They're athletic.

They're like the 1993 Arkansas Razorbacks.

They play

full court press the entire game.

They don't let up.

TJ McConnell is a pest.

He's annoying.

He's a gnat.

They've got a deep lineup.

Like I said, Siakam is really good, but we've got OG back.

Remember how OG played against Siakam in the first two games before he got hurt?

You know, Turner is fine, but we've got Kat now who can compete with him.

Everyone likes to talk, okay, Maturan's good.

He didn't play last year.

He was hurt.

That's a nice addition, but look how different our team is compared to last year, and look how much healthier we are compared to last year.

You have a healthy seven.

A healthy, strong seven.

And look, Campaign is there if we need him as well.

Our spark plug, all right?

Don't forget about him.

I don't know if Campaign.

I'm going to be counting on that one.

No, he's not going to be able to do that.

But you have more guys to hate, Sean.

You have

TJ McConnell.

Hate him.

I'm sure you'll work a healthy amount of animosity toward him.

Hate him.

Also a former sixer, which means I double despise him.

However, if T.J.

McConnell were a Nick, he would be an icon.

I just want to bring that out there.

And then Matherin, who

gets into it.

He's like those Detroit guys.

He'll get into it two, three times in a series.

He'll get some double techs.

He's fun to root against.

Rick Carlisle makes some annoying faces.

I feel like the animosity is going to be, plus like all the...

all the old 90s videos.

It just feels like this will be a really good old school, a lot of hate on both sides.

I also think Indiana is a really hard place to play with the arena they have.

They have great fans.

The one thing, did you notice Rick Carlisle in his pre-series comments was trying to give a lot of credit to Precious Achua, I think, to kind of Jedi mind trick Tom Thibodeau into playing Precious?

I was like, I love Precious.

Precious plays so hard.

But I was like, why are we talking about Precious Achua?

He really wants to go out there.

And Obi-Toppin, old Nick, coming back for, you know, he'll have one quarter or one game where he's just awesome.

And be like, oh, they Obi Toppin game.

I think Indiana has a slightly better team, but you have the Brunson piece.

And that's why I think this is the line has shifted.

So now it's like Pacers minus or Pacers plus 124.

Knicks are favored,

but you're the healthiest you've been all year.

And I really, I said this to Rasillo on Sunday.

I think second half of game four in game six.

were the best I've seen those five guys play together.

And you really haven't had all five together for long stretches.

So that would be the case combined with the energy in those uh Knicks games it's it's easy to hit those threes when you're playing Milwaukee without Dame when you're playing a Cleveland when everyone's terrified because they feel like the series is sliding

it's a little different to do the pull-up 25-footers in MSG when like Shalamay is stink eye on you You know, all the celebs.

Sean, was there a celeb that you were like, come on, you haven't been to a game in 25 years.

How are you dining on this right now?

Anyone you want to call out or no?

You know, I'm in a passionate one-sided affair with Ann Hathaway, and I love her to pieces.

And she's, you know, she's a big Knicks fan, but there's a little bit of confusion as to whether Philly or New York is the city's sports city of choice for her.

You know, she was at that Eagles Super Bowl.

A little bigamisty.

You know, her family's from Philly, but she roots for the Knicks.

But then there's a clip of her wearing Giants gear on Jimmy Fallon from eight years ago.

A little bit of confusion around Ann.

You know, I think she's a wonderful actress, but she's not really out here with like Tracy Morgan, Rock, you know, Stiller.

Sopranos, guys.

Yeah, Bobby Bach, a lot.

Like, those are really the icons.

Yeah, Edie Falco.

Chloe Seven, Ed Action Bronson.

Yeah, there's, I had some Sudakis questions out there.

Okay, okay.

You stole mine, Bill.

I was waiting.

That one, I don't want to be that fan.

I don't want to be that guy.

Where were you?

You know, when Lance Thomas was running up and down the corridor, Kyle O'Quinn, I don't want to be that guy.

But Sudakis, Sudakis is a Nets guy.

He's all Nets.

He's in Winnipeg.

He's Liberty's Barclays.

He's in that whole universe.

I saw him on Quidditch, and I was the one guy where I was like, nah,

this one felt a little bit weird.

But again, I welcome all.

This whole thing that we can't celebrate or where were you when, all this nonsense.

Screw all that.

Be happy.

Sean joy.

Sean's not like that at all.

Sean is not a welcome all.

He's like, where were you?

Where were you in round two when Ray Hibbert was killing Tyson Chandler?

I know where I was when that series was happening was I was in a bachelor party in Montreal off my tree and watching that game in tears.

I was so fucking mad.

And all the verticality, I remember that era very well.

Where's Roy Hibbert now?

Nowhere to be seen.

Where's that style of basketball?

Dead.

What are we playing now?

Mitchell Robinson ball, where we defend all five positions elegantly with grace and power until we break our ankle.

Ariel, where are you staying on Tibbs these days?

And what was your darkest moment with him the last couple of years?

Look, there have been...

Okay, so I'll tell you this.

Again, I know you're trying to get me to talk specifically.

That's amazing.

You're trying to get to create some dissension when the vibes are immaculate right now, all right?

At all.

This is dicey with us, though.

This is a little bit of a tricky thing, Tibbs.

You know, Ariel.

No, no, I'm cool with Tibbs.

Ever since he was assistant coach with Jeff Nicks and Jeff Van Gundy under the great Pat Riley, I'm okay with Tibbs.

Tibbs is my guy.

There was a game against.

This sounds like Sean says, okay.

Listen, we're different, different strokes for different folks.

There was a game in November, December at Chicago where it was very clear that Carl Towns was dealing with some sort of knee issue.

And at that point, it was the Derrick Rose game.

Derek Rose had his little ceremony, and so the Knicks were in town.

It was the second night of a back-to-back.

It was a Saturday.

And he kept Towns in.

And I thought Towns had a torn ACL.

And I'm like, why is he in?

We're down by 15 points.

Why is he in?

That was the one time where I was like, I don't know if I could deal with this anymore.

He's been phenomenal.

He's made the adjustments, made the adjustments from five to six

in the last series.

That's That's my guy.

I ride with him.

I love the fact.

I think it might have been on Yorkshire.

No, it was on New York, New York.

And I have to give a shout out to John.

He's been phenomenal.

His interview with Chris Childs that dropped, I think, this morning was so great and such a blast from the past to hear that unique voice of his.

I've loved his coverage.

So shout out to John.

He said that

his vision of Tibbs was like after game six, he went to the back, you know, opened a, you know, a Diet Coke and just watched 100 hours of pacers footage.

That's what I love about him.

He's not out to drink wine.

He's not out to go out for dinner.

He's not out to hobnob.

He is a true basketball lifer.

He has no wife.

He has no girlfriend.

He has no kids.

He has no nothing.

I don't even know where he lives, the poor guy.

He probably lives in Westchester.

And so that's our guy.

We're riding with him.

I love that he's still hanging on to the hair.

The beard is a good addition to the look as well.

You're not going to get me to say anything about Tibbs.

And what a story it would be for Tom Thibodeau to beat Minnesota.

People don't talk about that angle.

He was an assistant coach and then the head coach with Minnesota.

What a story that would be if he plays Minnesota

in the finals.

I'm getting ahead of myself here, but love Tibbs.

Can't wait for him to hold that trophy down the Canyon of Heroes in about a month and change.

Sean, who plays Tibbs in the movie?

Oh, I mean, it would have been Gandalfini.

I mean, what an extraordinary Gandalfini part that would have been.

You know, he's got the same bearing, burly guy, the deep voice, the thinning hair, you know, man on a man.

Gandalfini would have played his starters too much, I feel like.

Like, he played Paul A.

and Christopher a lot.

What about Paul Giamatti?

Oh, Giamatti would be good.

See if the size?

I guess they'd have to cheat it.

I mean, yeah, you could, you know, put a

you know, Giamatti would be a good Jeff Van Gundy, actually, now that I think about it.

Okay, yeah.

Wow.

I'm loving all of this.

Look how far we've come.

Now we're doing movies about the season.

I can't wait.

Can we still buy the DVD?

Like, do they still do that at the end of the year when your team wins a championship?

Can I still get that?

Yeah.

What a sad question.

I don't know.

I've never experienced this in my life.

Bill's away.

Well, that's the thing, wait, because you haven't.

What happens is you just spend a lot of money over the next 72 hours.

There's t-shirts and hats you need.

I can't wait.

There's mugs.

There's just, they, and they keep coming, and the hats keep changing.

And then the DVDs come out.

So you got to get those.

It's, it never ends.

But you had, I mean, Sean's, Sean's kid is young.

You have kids now that are actually at the right age to experience, to just basically go completely ape shit if they actually kept going.

Bill, this has been a gift from God, honestly, because I fell in love.

The first team that I really, really loved, 1992 Knicks.

91, I remember when they got swept by the Bulls in the first round, 3-0.

But the 92 Knicks, I remember vividly.

My brothers were Bulls fans.

So I'm in 92, I'm nine.

And I remember sitting there game seven, convincing myself that we were going to beat the Bulls on the road, the defending champions that we got blown out.

And I sat there.

We were in a hotel room in Boston, and I was crying.

It was Memorial Day weekend, actually, Victoria Day weekend because we had off Canadian holiday.

And my sons are the same age now, 11 and 13.

And to be able to experience this with them as a dad, like it's, and I know you and your dad have bonded over the Celtics.

Like there is, it is great for myself personally.

I'm 42.

I've lived and died with this team.

I adore them.

But to now see it through their eyes, and you know what's the best part?

They calm me down because as Sean said earlier, like we're cynics, we've been hurt.

They're completely positive.

And they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to beat these guys.

Like, this is

I have a video that I posted on my Instagram.

My son said before the game we're winning by 30.

I'm like, are you insane?

We don't win anything by 30.

We never win a clincher at home by 30.

And they're just sort of like, they have this sort of like blase attitude about it all.

They don't know any better.

They're idiot savants, for God's sakes.

And it's a beautiful thing to witness that and to experience that with them.

And also to not have the hurt that we have.

They don't have any of this.

And so it gives me hope that perhaps this is truly a new era, at least in my life.

My buddy Sully's kids, who were uh like early 2000s kids and that was kind of how they saw sports because they they didn't have any of the dna because like when they were little brady won the first super bowl and then the red side and they just kind of assumed that's how it was and they're surrounded by all these tortured older people who are just waiting for the other shoe and then then you have sean who's 40 how old are you now sean 43 43 in july yeah yeah oh

win a great sports run what this is

43 in july too we're like kindred spirits, you and I, Sean.

26th, Ariel.

What year?

What day?

2 a.m.

July 8th.

But anyway, stop being such a cynic.

Enjoy it, man.

Have a fun.

Thing with Sean, I've known Sean since 2012.

This is easily the best sports run he's been on.

Basoto, you got rid of Aaron Rodgers, your least favorite New York athlete ever.

And then the Knicks run.

This is kind of weirdly the peak.

Speaking of John Dostromsky, John and I were talking about this last week.

I feel like the franchises are in very good hands.

That's something that has been has defined my fandom is feeling like the franchises, you know, you mentioned Lowell Knicks, Lowell Mets is an ongoing, and Lowell Jets are ongoing bits for all the teams I care about.

They're often considered the laughingstocks of their respective leagues.

And somehow, you remember this, Bill.

When the Knicks missed out on Kyrie and KD and

they signed Randall, I was apoplectic.

I was so upset, so furious.

I felt like it was the culmination of 20 years of failure for the franchise franchise since that 2000 run that they made, that Ariel was referring to earlier.

And I just could not take it.

I was so sick of Dolan.

I didn't understand.

I thought the Tibbs hire was a retread.

And I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I was wrong about everything.

I was wrong about every move that they made in the aftermath.

I was, I actually liked the Brunson signing and did not have the like, I don't know about this contract attitude about it because I had just watched him mow down the jazz in that previous series in the Western Conference.

So I liked that.

And I liked that his dad was basically like, we're bringing this kid here in two years.

And they had a plan.

But

almost everything else that they did, I didn't really get it.

I didn't see it.

I didn't understand it.

I'm just a fan.

Like, I'm not an expert.

And to be proven wrong specifically in this way is the greatest feeling in the world because, like, even the Bridges trade, two months ago,

maybe even two weeks ago, people were saying, this is a terrible trade.

And then he did things in that Boston series that completely flipped the argument.

Completely.

Fuck them picks is a motto in New York now.

We don't care about that.

We are just delighted to have beaten the Celtics and to be going on to face the Pacers.

Yeah, you know, something you said, Ariel, was about

the Knicks gear being everywhere.

That was one of my favorite things about living in Boston when that would happen when there was some big series or some big game coming up and just the city would just assume the identity of the franchise, which is really hard to do in New York, but was always why you knew Brooklyn was never going to really make it as the second alternative NBA team.

Because the case was as soon as the Knicks get their shit together, this is how it's going to play out.

And it feels like it's played out even more than that, right?

Like I got to say, like

the outpouring has been just watching it from 3,000 miles away even feels bigger than I expected.

And I had high expectations.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

And man, that scene on Friday was absurd.

Like you walk out and there's a dude in flip-flops sitting on top of a billboard.

I still have no idea how he got there, but all of it was pretty well-behaved.

I know the one dude, look, the one guy in the Halliburton jersey, like, what did you expect, buddy?

What did you expect?

Like, he wanted that ball.

That wind horse stuff I didn't like at all.

Hated that.

Hated that.

It's his job to give opinions.

Leave him the fuck alone.

Couldn't agree more.

But there were no cars being burned or anything like that.

No fights, at least that I saw.

And, you know,

a lot of those fans aren't as old as Sean and I.

A lot of those fans, you know, grew up with those pretty crappy teams.

Their one kind of high moment was 2013.

Hibbert blocks Mello at the at the rim, Lynn Sanity, things like that.

And so I understand.

And then you have this mix, it's like this mixture of these like 25, 26-year-old kids who are all experiencing this for the first time.

And then it's the, you know, the Sean's and I of the world who are like, wow, this is just like the 90s.

And then I love meeting the old heads, right?

Like the dudes that were there in the 70s that were like, this is the second coming of Clyde.

It's so, I mean, I get chills just thinking about it.

It's those three chapters.

And obviously there was a lot of crap in between.

But to be in this city now, like when I was growing up, I used to say to myself, I need to make it to New York.

I need to live in New York.

I need to be able to go to work and be like one of those guys in the stands who's wearing the suit who just goes to the garden after work.

Like, what a life.

You get to go to the garden after work and watch Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley.

This is unbelievable.

They sucked for 20 years when I moved here.

So now finally we're here and experiencing the city, walking up and down the streets, seeing everyone wear their gear.

It's there's nothing like it.

I've been here when the Yankees won.

I've been here when the Mets made it to the World Series.

Nothing even close to it.

Sean used to be like that, and then I made a move to L.A.

Come back.

Sean's like, someday I'll just live here.

I'll just leave work.

I'll go to a Knicks game.

I did still screening after.

It would be great.

I did used to live that life of going to Knicks games.

I am trying to figure out.

I don't know if I can go back now since I haven't gone back already.

Now I'm like, I'm feeling a little bit superstitious.

I don't know.

Oh, maybe, okay, maybe, maybe that.

You know, do you have FOMO?

Do you feel like you need to be at one of these games?

Yeah.

Friday, I was in Oregon, about as at a, you know, at a golf resort, about as far from the New York Knicks celebration universe as you could possibly be.

And I'm the lone guy sitting in a bar watching the game near tears, just like gob smacked, gob smacked by what I was watching.

Same thing after game two.

I'm sitting in my house in Los Angeles alone, hoping my child does not bother me, stunned by what was happening in game two.

That was the most shocked I've been at a sporting event in 10 years.

So there's a part of me that thinks I just need to sit on on my freaking couch and watch this series and not go anywhere.

But

if they advance, though,

I don't know how you'll keep me away.

Like, I don't know how I could not go to the NBA Finals.

It's hard for me to dream of that, but that would be genuinely exciting.

It's going to be,

I think it's already one of the harder tickets in the history of basketball.

And then there's the combo of Dolan is hoarding all the tickets and not giving any to the league.

And so it's just like, hey, I'm taking care of my people.

Steve Schripp has been coming here the whole time.

He's going to stay in his seat.

Like, hey, he's weirdly loyal in a way that I love.

What was the darkest moment for you, Ariel?

Sean said it was when they signed Randall.

It was rock bottom for him.

What was rock bottom for you?

Well, there are two moments where I really started to question myself.

The first was the night that Oakley got dragged out of the building.

That was dark.

That was really dark.

I adore Charles Oakley, and I will to the day I die.

And he meant so much to those teams.

And I still believe that his number should be retired.

And I think Starks' Starks' number should be retired as well.

That was very, very dark.

And then the aftermath was a little weird.

You remember the interviews and the media tour and all that.

As far as like actual basketball,

the day they traded Porzingis, I felt like, what the hell are we doing?

Because I believed in my soul.

I actually feel this way about Brunson and Josh as well.

I could see Christaps Porzingis holding a trophy.

Like I could see that guy being a champion some way, somehow.

And it ended up coming true.

He was just wearing a green jersey when he did it.

And I didn't understand why they gave up on him.

Like, I would have much rather give up on Phil Jackson or anyone else.

And so to me, on that day, I was like, I don't know if I could do this.

When they didn't get KD and Kyrie, I was bummed.

But, you know, KD was coming off the Achilles.

I've never been a big Kyrie fan.

I was definitely bummed, but I didn't feel like this was the end.

I felt like it was a gamble, quite honestly.

And I didn't hate the Randall signing as well.

So those two were really, really dark because Oakley has meant meant so much to this team and to this city and he didn't deserve that.

And it's so great seeing all the legends.

I miss seeing him.

One of the great stories is seeing Ewing back in the fold here.

Like those videos of Ewing rocking up with the guys off the team bus into the locker room, wearing his gear, looking like he could give you a solid 20 minutes, you know, maybe 10 and 10.

Like he looks ready to go.

He's slimmed down.

I love that content.

I can't get enough of it.

So it's nice to see all the legends, but we're missing one big guy.

And I pray that they're able to figure it out.

a friend of mine pretty connected had good seats for one of the games game four game six and sitting next to him was one of the it was like starks one of those guys like oh my god and then he just happened to be in the area where like six of them were and it was like his young adult that came to life and he was just like ready almost having a seizure it is crazy how many I to me, like, look, I'm not a Knicks fan.

I'm obviously a giant basketball fan.

When we start moving into into the Marbury era, that gets a little where it's like, hey, look, there's Marlbury.

It's like, nothing good happened with Marlbury the entire time he was with the Knicks.

Like, there's some of those, but I think

he's a son of New York, though.

Like, there's a slightly different

complicated thing there.

Yeah.

I just think the

Celtics version of when we bring the greats back is a little, you usually have to have had a good thing happen.

18 to 2.

By the way, you know, it's my like totally irrational dark day.

When we traded Macek Lampe to the Suns for Spa Marbury, I was convinced that Lampe was going to be the guy.

He was our Polish prince.

I thought that he would be like our European stud.

And also,

there was something about him that I just love.

And also, Billy Hernan Gomez.

I thought that he was going to be something special for us as well.

Like, there were all these guys, and that's part of the fun, right?

Going through these stories and seeing all these Alexi Schmidt, like those guys.

Like, that's what makes all this worth it.

You remember him?

He had a great run.

Before we go, since I have both of you here,

there's a UFC movie coming out with The Rock

that The Rock is allegedly a real Oscars contender for.

So, and Sean follows this stuff obsessively, and then this is Ariel's domain.

Ariel, what have you heard?

Okay.

What have I heard about the film?

The film is called The Smashing Machine.

It's based on, in my opinion, one of, if not the best combat sports documentaries of all time.

It's about a guy named Mark Kerr who had a crazy life,

had a run in the UFC, but was really a star in Pride, which was an organization in Japan, when Pride was the number one MMA organization in the world in the early 2000s.

And HBO, it's 2000, 2001 that this film came out, put on this documentary when, you know, remember back then, 2000, 2001, like no one was airing anything about MMA.

It was as far away from mainstream as possible.

And there's drugs and there's all kinds of stuff involved.

And so the film is based on, you know, the rock movie is based on that documentary.

So my hopes are very, very high just given the subject matter.

And I think initially people thought, are they going to be able to pull it off?

Is it going to be, is it going to be too high?

Is The Rock the right guy for all of this?

But once that trailer came out, I mean, I can speak for the MMA community.

Everyone was like, holy crap, this looks A, legit.

It looks spot on.

And it looks like they were able to capture the essence of that time period.

So, you know, they got guys like Alexander Usik in there, Ryan Bader playing Mark Coleman.

Like, I saw some of the footage.

And

I mean, just from the three-minute clip, I think they kind of nailed it.

I can't wait for this.

And you know this as well as anyone, but like there haven't been a lot of great MMA movies.

You know, we got Here Comes the Boost

and Warriors.

Who was the best one, I think?

Not a lot of them for some bizarre reason.

Obviously, you know, not as old as boxing, but this could be it.

And perhaps this is the one that gets the Rocks movie career back on track, which I would love.

What's funny is

they've been cranking out boxing movies

pretty consistently for 100 years.

And just when you think like they've made enough boxing movies, then another one comes out, another one comes out.

I thought the one with the female boxer, Carissa Shields, thought that was actually good.

The fire inside, yeah.

The fire inside.

But you would have thought, you would have thought there would be more MMA, and there just hasn't.

All right.

So, Sean, we did, and we, you've talked about this on your pod a bunch.

We did a video on Ringer Movies about, um,

about is it ever going to happen for The Rock?

Why is is the movie star thing?

Has the ship sailed?

And then you see this trailer and it's like, okay, maybe we're back in.

To me, it's a, it's a,

it's, it was a mystery, and now it's just a frustration that it has taken this long for two reasons.

One, I know you both know this, never seen anybody better on the mic short of Ric Flair in pro wrestling.

I mean, he was just in the prime of the attitude era and even in the second half, moving into the Cena era, he was unbelievable at just selling anything.

And a huge part of being a movie star is selling the absurd, is selling the ridiculous setup.

So on that face, he should have been incredible.

And then, secondarily, I always tell this story.

I went to the premiere of Hobson Shaw, whatever that was, seven, eight years ago.

And it was at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood.

And someone's soda rolled down the aisle and smashed into

a chair, which then triggered a fuse explosion and the lights turned off in the theater.

So there was a delay before the film started.

And to stem the tide and keep the people in their seats, Dwayne came out and just riffed for 25 minutes, just talked, made tons of jokes at Jason Statham's expense, just sold, sold, sold for 25 minutes in front of 2,000 people waiting for this movie to start.

And he was magnetic.

And then I see the movies that he makes.

And I'm like, who told him to do this?

Why is he in Jungle Cruise?

Why did Black Adam happen?

I don't understand.

Because you see him communicate and you can tell just what a vibrant, fascinating, funny self-aware person he is.

And he just hasn't picked good collaborators.

And the end note on this conversation is the person who directed the Smashing Machine is Benny Safty, a Knicks fan and New Yorker, who understands the peculiarity of strange characters.

And Mark Kerr is an interesting guy.

And the Smashing Machine documentary is not a cookie-cutter portrait of a rise to greatness.

It's much more complex than that.

So, I think if you care about sports movies, if you care about The Rock, if you're interested in combat sports,

it feels like it's tailor-made for an incredible moment for him and for movies.

We'll see.

I care about all three of those things.

The problem is with UFC and MMA in general, it's such a passionate, loud audience.

But then I always wonder, like, how

big is the actual audience, right?

Like, I know Netflix is thinking about, do,

you know, it's been reported, do they want to get in and grab some pay-per-views?

Like, I wonder if Netflix got some pay-per-views, Ariel,

and it's just going to all these different countries, does that make MMA bigger or did we hit the ceiling already?

Like, is there new people to find?

Because I think this ties into the movie.

How much audience is left that's out there?

Oh, there's there's a ton left.

I mean, we're seeing a guy named Ilya Taporia who has just opened this whole Spanish region that was non-existent.

And they're saying that he can can headline the Bernabeu, which is where Real Madrid play.

And that's like 80,000 people.

That wasn't an option, you know, two, three years ago.

And so when guys start to pop up in these different countries, and then, you know, people will emerge here, and it's very cyclical.

There's high moments, there's down moments, there's stars.

You know, the whole Russian region, that wasn't really a thing five, six years ago.

And now you have all these guys who are.

France came on too.

That was another one.

Yes.

So, you know, Brazil, France has been incredible as far as MMA and pro wrestling.

So, no, they have not,

hit the ceiling.

As you know, combat sports, like I said, there are peaks and valleys.

And everyone likes to say, you know, I even said, I said the MMA business is in a recession, but I didn't say the UFC is in a recession.

I said the MMA business, meaning there's just really one dominant league.

There are no prides anymore.

And that's unfortunate.

We don't have, and I think we've talked about this in the past, like there is no AEW to UFC's WWE right now.

Not even close, like not even close.

So the UFC is doing just fine.

They're going to get a multi-billion dollar deal.

Whenever they sign their new deal, ESPN will probably still be involved in some way, shape, or form, and it will continue to get bigger.

But as you know, it only goes as far as like who the stars are, right?

The UFC always wants to position itself as the biggest star, the UFC.

That's the brand, and it's doing great.

But then when you get those superstars that come along, and they will continue to come along, it goes to a whole other level.

And they're experiencing that with Toporia, who's headlining on June 28th, and they'll experience it with others as well.

Yeah, he took the Pereira side.

I'm still bitter.

My guy, Pereira.

Yeah.

Yeah, because you think, Sean, with the MMA audience that's kind of dormant, for a movie to really hit for the rock, you've got to hit different countries.

He hits different countries anyway.

And if that audience is there, so this could be the rare combo of like an awards contender that actually makes real money.

That's not a franchise.

Yeah, it's coming out in the first week of April, which, or excuse me, the first week of October, which is historically a

kind of a circling the square for box office and awards consideration.

That's like the same weekend that a movie like The Star Was Born was released.

So I think they're looking for a kind of like commercial critically acclaimed movie, which is, as we know, like one of the hardest things to do in movies right now.

And

we'll see.

My advice to him would be don't over-promote it.

Don't feel like you need to be all over the place with it.

Like be a little discreet because I don't feel like the over-promotion stuff works with the awards.

And this is like his one chance.

But i hope i hope we get more mma stuff just in general i'm always amazed that that's not a lane for movies right now would seem like that would be even easier to do than boxing you know you you guys are the experts when it comes to this but actually just today on on my show i spoke to ryan bader who's playing Mark Coleman in the movie.

And Mark Coleman was Mark Kerr's best friend.

Looks just like him from the photos that I saw.

And I actually asked him, like, that was his first movie.

He's a former UFC title contender, Bellator champion.

What was it like, you know, just being on set, sitting around the multiple takes?

Did you drive yourself crazy?

And he said, and again, this is not my world, but he said, actually, Benny's philosophy is don't do too many takes, like three, four takes.

If the rocks mouthpiece came out, like keep it.

He wants it to be raw.

He kind of shot it like a documentary, which actually made me even more.

interested in seeing how it all looks.

So I don't know if that's unique.

I don't know if that's something different, if certain guys do that, but I thought that was interesting.

By the way, shout out to Bill for completely changing the subject and not maybe focusing on Miles McBride's huge block.

And that's, you remember that chase down in game six when he blocked and then they came back with the Anwange?

Like, I love the way you just transitioned away.

That was a big-time block, you have to admit.

I had to get 10 minutes at UFC with you when you're here.

I mean, I just thought we would talk more.

Like, do we want to talk about how Missoula was exposed?

Like, how he doesn't really

settle down.

We won the title of this year.

That was all Yudoka's doing.

That was, I mean, he just inherited inherited the team.

Can he be a little nicer to the media?

Like, the shtick of being like, you know, like grumpy is wearing a little thin.

Just my two cents.

But yeah, Lou Cornette.

Way in a Belichick's girlfriend now?

What other hits do you want to take?

Cornette had a great game five.

I mean, like, let's.

Thanks.

Are we raising a banner for the game five or what?

What's the one our grandkids about it?

We won the title last year.

I'm in a five-year grace period.

All right, guys.

Good luck against the Pacers in round three.

I'm happy.

You're still picking the Pacers.

Wait, I was going to say, you're picking against us or what?

I hear you and Rosillo, and you guys just spent all this time hyping the Pacers and kind of like not negging the Knicks, but just not addressing the Knicks.

I think it's either Pacers in six or Knicks in seven.

I don't think the Pacers can win a game seven against a healthy Knicks team with the way the arena will be.

But we'll see.

My fear for you guys:

there's a couple health guys I do not trust on your team who have stayed reasonably healthy so far.

Townsend Ananobi, not to mention Mitchell Robinson, who every game you get out of him is feels like a miracle.

So I just, you know, these playoff games are hard.

They're intense.

That's, I feel like the Pacers are probably a little more durable when this thing gets really physical than maybe the Knicks are, but who knows?

You might have the Team of Destiny thing.

And the Brunson thing is unbelievable.

When he rooting against that guy in a playoff series in the fourth quarters, I just felt like he he was going to score on us.

And we had, like, we had holiday on him.

We were throwing Tatum and Brown on him.

And I just felt like he was going to get when he shook Holiday on that

one shot.

I can't remember if it was game one or game two, coming off the inbounds with like 10 seconds left, just

shook him off and got the shot he wanted.

Like, that was crazy.

Nobody does that to Drew Holiday.

So, can I tell you something?

I watched the four-minute cut-down recap of game four 11 times in a row that night just to watch him absolutely cook white.

He cooked white

all day long.

That was astonishing to watch.

Whether he can do that to Aaron fucking Neesmith, we're about to find out.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'm so worried about Neesmith.

He just dealt with Thompson, Brown, Tatum, Derek White.

I like this, the cocky.

I'm so worried about Neesmith.

I'm so worried about him.

Just keep it in charge.

What about Neesmith?

What about TJ McConnell?

That's good.

Picking him up.

94 feet.

Oh, the horror.

There is going to be some 94 feet.

They're going to try to put some miles on your guy.

They're going to try to wear him down.

I'm cool with it.

Good luck.

Thanks for coming on.

I'm glad you were finally able to come on under happy circumstances.

It was a pleasure to see you both.

Thank you, Bill.

Thank you.

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All right.

He's been on this podcast many times.

You know him from the Stratecheri newsletter, one of the pioneers.

He's also a giant Bucks fan.

His name is Ben Thompson.

And if I'm going to make fake Giannis trades, really is that anyway?

No, atrocious fake fake Giannis trades.

I had to seriously consider, is it worth coming on a podcast with someone that apparently seriously proposed Giannis for Evan Mobley?

Are you joking?

Can I explain the thought process behind it?

And then you can tell me how offended you should be.

I mean, it's going to be hard to decrease the level, but sure, go ahead.

Well, first of all, I don't think you should trade Giannis, which I said in the pod.

I think you should keep Giannis, especially with the way the East is going.

Oh, it's so bad.

It's so bad.

It's embarrassing.

If you're going to trade them, you can't do the Kevin Duran, get a bunch of picks back and go for the future because you don't have any of your own picks.

That makes no sense.

So I need to get a good player back.

And I'm shopping on that Evan Mobile level looking at 80 cents in the dollar.

No, if I'm trading honest, that's what you have to do.

No, I get the overall thought process.

There's a few problems here.

So number one, this whole situation sucks, just to be clear.

You know,

there's a real trade-off.

What's good for the Bucs, what's good for Giannis.

I mean, the reality is, if I'm going to take all emotion out of it, it's probably best for both parties, you know, to move on.

I mean, the Bucs are,

it's really rough.

I mean, we were starting, the fan base was happy they were starting Kevin Porter Jr.

in the final game of the playoffs.

I mean,

you can't overstate.

how bad it was.

But you can't, the other thing, if you're a Giannis fan,

just to be honest, the fact you're proposing this seriously speaks to, in my opinion, how disrespected Giannis is.

I mean, this is a guy that it was one and only completely handled the Oklahoma City Thunder because he's a star who can initiate offense.

He can score in volume.

We know he's much better than, say, a Jokic at defense.

I think his capabilities on offense as an initiator are underrated as well.

And by the way, as long as I'm here,

as well.

And Baisemay is

at par or better than

If you include all defense, if you include Defensive Player of the Year, if you include the NBA Cup, which hilariously, no one does,

but it's like his resume is there and he's really good.

He initiates offense.

He has a mid-range game now, and

he's dramatically underrated.

As a Giannis fan, I want him to go somewhere and get his proper recognition.

As a Bucks fan, it breaks my heart.

And as someone who had to watch the Indiana Pacers, I'm lucky I still have my eyes that I didn't gouge them out.

And you're also, you're dealing with an organization also that just doesn't know what they're doing.

I know Doc's your friend.

Sorry, he was a disaster.

He's coaching from 25 years ago.

They also haven't adjusted to Giannis' capabilities as an off-offensive initiator.

They're still building the team like it's 2019 when the Toronto Raptors doubles kind of overwhelmed him a bit.

Although in that series, he was still the best player, had a positive plus, minus, didn't play enough minutes.

But he, he is,

the key is him at point center.

Like, that's how you win in the playoffs.

The Bucs, I thought, were building towards that with the Kuzma trade.

Doc never plays Kuzma at the four.

Probably wouldn't have mattered.

He's horrible.

But they never even got approaching the right approach with him.

So it's just been a disaster all around.

And at the same time, he's Giannis.

Like, he's loyal.

He likes Milwaukee.

He doesn't want to go somewhere.

There's a very good chance we're back whenever we get back.

We were supposed to be out a year ago, then the bus got flushed out.

It was very sad.

And nothing has happened.

So we'll see.

All right.

You gave me a lot to work with there.

So.

Sorry, I don't, I had to get that all out.

I was, I just had to make sure I got that in.

And, you know, express my disappointment with you, with your

Giannis assertions over the last few weeks.

Giannis better than Tatum.

Come on, get out of here.

Or Yetien better than Yannis, I should say.

Well, Tatum's hurt now, so he is better.

I know.

I can't even truly go in on him.

It's very sad.

Real disappointment.

Giannis being underrated.

That's just Bucks bullshit.

He's in, he's third, second, third, fourth, or first in the MVP voting every single year.

It's not like he falls to nine.

He's always in the top three or top four.

He's always first team on NBA.

He doesn't get cheap MVPs for finishing sixth in his conference because some players got hurt.

Like for some reason, it's always all his fault.

Oh, by the way, as long as I'm here, your what-if segment a few podcasts ago.

What What if segment?

Guess what if is Chris Middleton getting hurt in the 2022 playoffs?

Well, we had Robert Williams was hurt too.

Like, come on.

Get out of here.

That's even arguably more offensive than comparing Giannis and Evan Mobley, Robert Williams and prime Chris Middleton.

Wait a second.

So if you're keeping Giannis versus trading, if you're trading him, you have to trade him to a place that has a chance to win the title.

Right.

Right.

Can we agree on that?

That's the deal.

Yeah.

So you, and to your point, the Bucks need,

the problem is their picks are scattered.

There's like two swaps and a pick with Portland, which everyone forgets about, plus the swap/slash picks with the Pelicans.

So if you don't get someone good back, you have to get some of those picks back.

There's no hope for the franchise otherwise.

But that's a conundrum, though.

Portland doesn't want Giannis because they're on their own timeline and he's not going to want to go to New Orleans.

He's not getting those picks back.

Well, it's a three or four way deal if something like that happens.

In reality, there's two options and maybe one dark horse that makes sense for the Bucs.

Option number one is a package around Amen Thompson.

Amen.

Thompson, there's like, I personally think Ahmed might be a little overrated right now,

which means if I'm the Rockets, I should definitely want to trade him.

But that is that it has to be someone like that or the number two pick from the Spurs.

And both teams can throw in a lot of extra picks and assets.

Those are the only two that, from a Bucs perspective, make sense.

And

every Bucs fan is going to kill me.

There is a potential Philadelphia 76ers package as well.

What?

What is it?

Taxi, McCain, number three pick.

And, you know,

they have the Clippers pick.

They have a surprisingly high number of assets.

I don't think it works because they have a similar problem to the Bucs.

They have a $50 million or $60 million hole on their roster.

Our hole is named Damian Willard.

Their hole is named Joelle Embiid.

But they do have a shockingly high number of assets that augmented by getting the number three pick.

I'm Giannis, though.

I'm staying in Milwaukee over going to Philly and rolling the dice with them bead.

Why am I doing that?

Oh, me, yeah, me too.

I'm just putting that out there because no one's talking about it.

I think it's actually kind of interesting.

And if I was Giannis, I'd want to stay in the East.

Like, it is, it's unbelievable.

Who's who's your pick for the East next year?

Well, that's the thing.

It's New York and Indiana.

The Celtics are probably out of the mix.

Your team's in there, Detroit.

Yeah.

Orlando.

Detroit might be the one.

I mean, mean, here's my advice to you.

I have advice for the Celtics.

Wait, hold on.

I don't want your advice to the Celtics.

It ties to the Bucs, though.

The Celtics need to blow it up.

The Bucks, though.

The Bucs problem was trying to preserve the old model, which was built around.

holiday pressuring the ball handler, Lopez backing him up.

The moment you get dame, that whole thing needs to change.

You need to reorganize the team, get a bunch of wings.

Resigning Lopez was a mistake.

You know, not prioritizing the wrong people, even at the minimum level, was a mistake.

And to me, this sucks for Celtics, but they should trade everyone.

So you're saying the window, eight-year window, it's now closed, blow it up, rebuild around Tatum.

And you have a chance to rebuild it because Tatum, what just started his extension.

Like, this was the Bucks mistake.

It is the further you go down trading the future.

you're so pot committed and so in the hole that it's

i mean best case scenario people on Bucks Twitter are all about trade, like their late first-round pick this year to try to get two or trade their 2031 pick to get two picks this year, try to just sort of get enough people and like pray for like two years from now when you have a 35-year-old point guard coming off an Achilles industry.

Like, that's our best case scenario.

It's, it's very ugly.

It's not great.

Well, if you go through the contenders, Oklahoma City, if they lose one of the next two rounds, I guess would be a possibility.

But if I'm Oklahoma City and I'm taking the giant money Giannis is making combined with all the other money they're going to have to shell out, I'm not sure I'm doing that.

Yeah, the problem with Oklahoma City is you're shelling out money to guys who I don't think might not be worth that money.

I mean,

I understand what they're doing, keeping all these picks and having a few stars and just continually cycling everyone out around them.

I love Jalen Williams on my fantasy team.

I've had him the last two years.

The regular season is not the playoffs.

That has never been clear than ever.

The problem, though, is

any picks from a team Giannis goes to are worthless because Giannis is really good and will make those picks worthless.

So you need picks from other teams or a three.

I mean, they could maybe do a three-way sort of trade with the Pelicans or Portland or something like that, but very hard to pull off.

All right.

So I'm going to say OKC is a thumbs down.

Celtics are a thumbs up.

I'm in the conversation, but again, Presti probably wouldn't do it.

I mean, I think realistically, if not his team straight for Yann, if they get Giannis, they're going to win.

I mean, the problem is, I don't feel like Sam Presty really wants to win, which is why I'm cheering against Oklahoma City continuously.

I

feel like in the NBA, you should have to go.

I'm going to go for takes out tonight.

Sam Presti doesn't really want to win.

That's a take.

I would say he wants to win.

He's trying to buy a build a

decade-able project.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like it's the small market version of light years.

This idea that instead of going all in around what you have and doing everything possible to get one.

And by the way, the Bucks got one.

I am fundamentally,

I'm disappointed Giannis doesn't have more.

I'm disappointed the Bucks don't have more.

I am very grateful that they got one.

And we'll talk to Oklahoma City fans.

If they end up getting it, then congratulations.

I think that Minnesota is pretty good.

We'll see how it goes.

If they get one, congratulations.

If they don't, let's talk in a decade and see how you felt about the decade-long project to make the western conference finals i mean that's how i feel about the celtics from 2016 and now it's a nine-year run they won one title but at least we had the one title you had you had the yannis thing everyone is like oh my god yannis how is he in this situation well you made two massive trades where you gave up a shitload of assets and it paid off with the with the title Then it didn't pay off with Dame, but that's how you get in this situation.

Yeah.

And at the end of the day, like I, the last time I was on here was after the dame trade.

Um, I, I should probably not come on spitting takes.

I should come on eating some humble pie after how that was.

We argued about that for the entire summer.

Yeah,

you're right.

Um, so I will come out and admit that's the case.

But you know what?

I, they went for it and it didn't work out.

And I had a decade of Giannis.

The Bucs won a title, which I didn't think I'd ever see in my lifetime.

So at the end of the day, I'm good and I practice self-care.

I just don't watch too many Bucs games when I realize what's exactly what's going to happen.

Well, you talked about, so if you go through the contenders, Knicks,

I mean, I don't see.

No, this is the one that bugs me.

The Knicks blew their load, and that's where I wanted Giannis to go.

If this was going to go wrong, I wanted him in Madison Square Garden, when 100% would get the respect he deserves, would get the internet fighters he deserves,

and would just blow up that city.

And alas, I guess if you want Mikhail Bridges instead,

better win this year or else you're going to hear it from me for a while.

Well,

what if the Knicks fell short in one of the next two rounds and then there's some sort of towns with Bridges for Giannis?

And the problem is they don't have any picks to throw in.

Yeah, that's no good for the Bucs.

I mean, the Bucs need, it's a small market team.

Like, you're not going to get a bunch.

You're not going to think how the Knicks built their team is.

All things considered, pretty impressive.

I think the Bridges trade was probably the mistake just because of how much you gave.

Unless from that title.

Then it's not a mistake.

Exactly.

No, that's the thing.

It's a little humbling that they've made it this far because I dropped that take earlier in the playoffs on Twitter and Knicks fans have been throwing it in my face ever since.

And it's a fair point.

That's the other.

I'm actually curious if you do, you know, if you update the book of basketball again, which we all know, you know, now that you're a professional podcaster, I don't know if you've written anything in.

Sen above typing?

Yeah, exactly.

You can't do it on your phone, or maybe you can.

Okay.

But

how do you you evaluate players from this era?

I just compared Giannis and Jokic, right?

Like if Giannis and Jokic play in the 80s and 90s, both who have games that I think would scale very well to those eras.

Yeah.

In a world where

the illegal defense, player movement, all these sorts of things favor stars to such a massive extent.

Do they have more than one title?

Unquestionably, does the fact the NBA is going to have seven teams in seven years actually mean that both of them deserve a bit of a adjustment in their all-time rankings despite only having one title?

It's pretty interesting to think about historically.

Yeah, because 30 teams, a lot of talent.

It's way harder to keep a team together like we're seeing now with the Celtics and some other ones.

Yep.

I always compare the guys

in the era first.

You got to start there with who are you going against and how much did you stand out?

Both of those guys qualify.

I think think both of them are in that Shaq Moses

Hakeem kind of area.

Yeah, I really think Durant's probably in there too.

I think that's right.

Somewhere in that 11 to 16 range.

And I think what Jokic has done

year after year offensively might give him a little bit of a trump card.

Giannis is basically 30, 12, and 6 for seven straight years, right?

Go through and look at the resumes.

It would actually surprise you.

Jokic's one advantage is uh, is one more MVP, which I think was BS, but whatever.

Uh,

add in defensive impact, defensive player of the year, all defensive teams, and

Bill, the Emirates NBA Cup.

Come on, please.

Well, wait, so let's go back to the exercise of going through all the contenders because you mentioned Houston.

I want to come back to them: Knicks are out, Lakers are out, Denver's out,

Indiana.

I don't, I just can't imagine the right trade for that.

You start going down the list.

No, it's Minnesota.

Houston and San Antonio.

Houston's the one that team that should do it.

Is there a Golden State anything that interests you there?

Nothing?

No.

No, it's ridiculous.

The Golden State and their organization and the media and the fans have fully completed their transition to Lakerdom, like just delusionally overrating their their players,

assuming everyone will just end up on their team.

There's no world.

I mean, number one.

They did get Jimmy Butler somehow.

As long as we're insulting your tanks, Jonathan Kamingus stinks.

You know, athletic specimen, to be sure, doesn't know what he's doing anywhere in the court.

I would love to see Giannis and Curry together.

We thought we were getting that with Giannis and Dame.

Moving off the ball.

The Giannis and Dame problem is, and this is a classic NBA problem.

It's actually been really interesting to watch, which is one of my,

one of the most interesting players I watched in the Bucs was Christian Wood.

And Christian Wood was a very skilled player.

The problem was he could only play as the number one guy.

He was completely incapable of scaling down to another position.

And he wants to be the number one guy.

And so you can see what happens when he's the number one guy.

He goes to Detroit, scores a lot of points, and that team wins like 15 games.

Like that's the quality of his being a number one guy.

And he also played the same position as Giannis.

So some Bucs fans were upset when we shipped him out, but to me, it was obvious.

He was never, ever going to be sort of a useful player in that regard.

There's a little bit of a similar dynamic with Dame.

Dame's a great player.

I'm not comparing him to Christian Wood at all.

He carried those Portland teams for years and years, and he carried them mostly to the second round of the playoffs.

And he couldn't really scale to being a number two when Giannis is a top two number one guy.

And

that was really the core problem.

When Dame played by himself, it was great.

When Giannis played by himself, it was great.

And when Dame played with Giannis, it was this weird passiveness.

And like, it almost felt like it felt like he was being passive-aggressive about it.

But I don't think that was the case.

I just think he wasn't able to sort of scale in that way.

And so, from a basketball fan perspective, I love watching this with teams, right?

You see an up-and-coming team, and they have to figure out organically who's the number one guy, who's the number two guy, who's number three guy.

It's such, it's the human component of basketball that's so interesting.

And if I weren't a Buck fan suffering through it, watching the Giannis Dame experience

was experiencing in that way.

And that's the fundamental reason why I think it didn't work out.

Yeah, I noticed it.

Not really having a dog in the race.

Sometimes guys really have trouble figuring out when to slide in and out.

I think that's what's been so impressive over the years with Jalen Brown is.

He feels like it's Tatum's team, but he has a sense of when to come and go depending on the moment.

Well, at least

when we had those guys together.

It's easier when you have two number two guys.

well, the only other team

there was there was a Memphis one, too, for I'm ignoring you.

There was a Memphis,

like a Jaron Jackson one.

But the reason I thought of the Mobile was because you get a guy under contract for five years.

He's one of the 15 or 16 best guys in the league and still has some room to move up.

I think he is.

When I do Ringer 100, I have him in, I forget what I had him in the last one, but

he just won the Fens of Fourth year.

The problem with all this stuff is the playoffs are so different than the regular season.

It's a cliche, but it's more true than ever.

Yeah.

And the problem with Mobley and what you need in a guy like that is someone who imposes himself on the other team.

Someone that the other team.

It's not going to be Ahmed Thompson either.

I hate to break it to you.

I don't think so either, honestly, but I think there's at least the potential there.

I mean, I would say Mobley has as much potential for that.

I don't know.

He's been in the league five, six years.

When is he, what have you felt Mobley imposing himself on you?

Like, Thompson has done that on the defensive end

and

occasional flashes on offense.

Now, again, to be clear, I don't think so.

I don't think he's going to get there offensively, but the ceiling's young enough to bet.

The ceiling, if I'm the Bucs, I can see it.

To me,

the play is, again, the play is probably San Antonio, which is disgusting to me.

So you're saying number two, Devin Vessell to make the contracts work.

One other contracts.

A ton of picks.

They have a huge stash of picks

and interesting ones.

Like they have like an Atlanta pick.

They have

like the key thing is you need, ideally, you get picks from teams you're not trading Giannis to because Giannis is going to make those picks worthless.

And so you either need hope that the Bucs can tank into a good player, which means you need the Portland picks back and and the Falcons picks back, which is going to be really hard, or you need someone like Thompson.

That I would love to get a Thompson jersey.

That does, that does make me excited.

Or make me something like the number two pick.

That there,

you got your tanktastic pick right off the bat.

And you so, and then you're basically like, I don't care about our own picks, those are some costs.

Let's just try to figure this out.

You need at least one core piece,

either the chance at it with your own picks or the number two pick or Thompson.

And it's really hard to see anything else.

I mean, maybe the number three pick, but also it seems like Harper's the clear number two.

And I,

I'm still not sold on that.

So by the way, I looked at my Ringer 100 that I turned in for the last time we did it, which is a couple weeks ago.

I had Mobley 13th.

He's 23 years old.

You know in NBA history, even if you put him at 13th, the gap between

1.5 and 13, it's astronomical.

So yeah.

I'd rather the Bucks just tink.

Well, I guess they can't tank.

They have no fix.

Well, the real move is to keep Giannis

and take it into the season, say he's staying, see how it goes, and then he'll probably have just as much, if not more, value from December to February, I would think.

Yeah, it's just so hard to trade a contract of that size.

That's the other thing that makes this difficult is how many of these teams have

sufficient flotsome to trade to make up that the salary difference.

I mean, I personally am probably the most pro-Houston, even though I'm hesitant about Thompson.

I'm pro-Houston for Giannis' sake, in that

they are like an amazing team with no star.

That's their problem.

And Giannis, I think, putting Giannis,

they would have to build around him.

Yeah, but I'm not doing that trade if I'm Houston if I have to also give up Thompson because I need him to be one of my best three guys to actually try to win the title if I'm actually trading for Giannis.

Because Giannis, because you're, no, because you're getting one, one of the best or arguably the best player in the NBA.

I think Houston, with Giannis, with their assets, wins a title with Giannis.

Thompson was their best player in the playoffs, though.

Van Vliet, Dylan Brooks, like that.

I don't think that's it.

You need Thompson.

You need all the stuff he does.

I was going to make a joke about he was the best player in the playoffs that ended the first round, but as a Bucs fan, it's hard to

get to that.

Yeah.

No, so you're thinking, so you would do Thompson.

I think the Van Vliet contract probably has to be in it to make the Giannis thing work.

Yeah, I see And then a bunch of fake trades somewhere, a bunch of trades.

Yeah, I think ideally we would get someone like Jabari Smith too.

Jabari Smith might be bad.

His three-point percentages are disappointing.

I like him.

Yeah, he hasn't played with great guards.

So that's kind of the argument for it.

He's definitely just a supporting team.

Stick him in the corner and just throw them to jack up threes if they happen to pass him the ball.

And that's kind of what he does.

I mean, I am someone that's easy to get overly biased by summer league.

Jabari Smith was awesome at summer league last year.

He's like, oh, or a couple of years ago, the number two player making a a leap.

Ahmed Thompson, oh man, one of the best summer league debuts ever.

Just absolutely incredible.

But yeah,

it's probably Texas or bust.

Giannis, by the way, very cheap, no taxes.

He will like that a lot.

That literally might be what pushes him over the edge.

I know, but see, the problem is the reason I like the Cleveland trade for him.

Was because, all right, if I'm leaving Milwaukee, I have all these ties here.

I've been here since 2013.

I want to go to a place where I'm now the favorite to win the title.

That's not the case if he goes to Houston or San Antonio.

If you flip him in Mobly,

he is now the favorite to come out of the East, like unquestionably with the team they already have.

And that's what I thought was the appealing piece.

Yeah, well, I think

I get your point.

It's interesting.

Are you looking at it from the Giannis perspective or the Bucs perspective?

I think you have to look at it from the Giannis perspective because you're throwing him a solid by trading him because he's your guy.

And if you want to put him in a good situation, in the Bucs defense, I think they've made a lot of poor decisions.

I don't understand why John Horse got a contract extension.

I think he's done a terrible job.

But they did spend a lot of money.

They did win a title.

I think they've done right by Giannis, all things considered.

And you owe it to the organization to maximize the return.

But

what if he calls, he's like, I will go to these three spots.

And Houston's not one of them.

Then it gets a little,

I personally don't think going to San Antonio guarantees him anything i don't know if one banyama like do we even know he's going to be playing 60 games a year with his

his body makes me nervous he's already gone down once look here's the deal san antonio may have a disappointing supporting cast

that supporting cast is like 10x better than what the bucks were trying to get this year like like i but you're in the west i'm in the west instead of the east if i'm in if i'm on cleveland

i'm cruising i have to worry about the knicks and the celtics two years from now and

Detroit.

For Giannis, it'd be great.

I'm saying for the Bucs, it'd be a disaster.

You want to send him to the other conference if you're the Bucs.

Well, it's not even that.

I don't mind.

Actually, I would like Giannis to go to the East for Giannis' sake because I want him to win a bunch more titles, and it's definitely going to be much easier.

If you're the Bucs, though, and you're facing this one of the worst holes in NBA history, you need more than Evan Mobley.

That's just sort of the

long short of it.

I mean,

I actually, I know three-way and four-way trades are hard, but

I think if this happens, the only two, the direct trades that make sense are San Antonio and Houston.

If they're,

there are possibilities that are almost impossible for us to build.

And you see some of these trades come down and they actually get really quite complicated to slot.

So Giannis goes to Cleveland, Mobile goes somewhere else, a whole bunch of people.

Sorry, goes to some other middle, you know,

somewhat contender.

And then some of those picks start coming back um that that that would be that would be i think that that's probably a chance to happen

do you think cleveland what if milwaukee came back and said we'll do it if it's mobley and garland so what we can have the same playoff performance cleveland has had and we'll dump we'll dump we'll give you yannis and dump a contract on and you can have giannis and mitchell then i don't think that makes sense if i'm cleveland well i don't know if it i mean what are you more

than milwape yeah i mean if you want to be a sort of a middling team that has a second second-round ceiling, then just keep Giannis.

That's, you know, again, it's only, it's also up to Giannis.

I mean, he's not, he's, he didn't, he's not a U.S.

superstar.

He didn't grow up in that culture.

He, he's well-documented, his sort of background, where he came from.

He's very comfortable in Milwaukee.

He won the title.

You leave out the part that he has a ring already.

It's not like he has to go chase it.

That's right.

And, you know,

as my heart, my heart is split because it does kill me to listen to you, to listen to everyone else.

I think underappreciate how great he is because of how bad this situation is.

And I want better for him.

But

I, man, I love having him on my team.

So when I voted for him for third for MVP, should I put little stars next to it to show how much I cared?

Or what did you want from me?

Put a little chocolate on it?

I just,

I want, I don't want any comments about Tatum being better.

I don't want him.

Tatum was better the first 55, 60 games of the year.

And then Giannis came on like a freight train.

Yeah, Giannis, I don't know.

Giannis is pretty good all year.

I'll tell you one thing.

Can I do one Giannis critique?

He does get a free pass for

when his teammates don't play well when they're next to him.

It's always their fault.

It's a little bit of LeBron.

LeBron-ish.

Everybody.

Like Malik Beasley is really good on Detroit now.

How was Malik Beasley in the playoffs?

He was good with Milwaukee in the regular season also, and then stunk in the playoffs.

Grayson Allen was really good on Phoenix the year he left Milwaukee.

I don't know.

It's just we kids bubbled with Giannis a little bit.

Giannis fucked up on the Halliburton drives in that game that they blew.

Like, Halbert went down three times in a row.

I thought he was this octopus on defense.

Grayson Allen great in the regular season, stunk in the playoffs.

That's what happened to the Bucks, too.

You have a small guy with a slow release.

They don't, they don't.

Listen, Grayson Allen was the hero of the 2022 Celtics come back.

Jason Tatum at every one of those Coach K camps should be buying Grayson Allen caviar, like Donner Son, whoever.

I mean, it was, oh, I'm still mad at Bud about that.

I mean, oh, all right.

But we have to go.

It could always get worse.

That's the Bud lesson.

All right.

So, so we go.

You're in favor of keeping Giannis or Godfather offer from San Antonio or Houston.

Because the one other thing we didn't mention, when Davis went to the Lakers, the Lakers really wanted Davis because of LeBron and they had this window and were going to do whatever it took.

Ishbia, when he really wanted Durant, he's like, fine, I'll throw him Cam Johnson.

I'll do anything it takes.

I don't know who the, I'll do anything it takes to get Giannis team is yet.

I mean, that, that would only be because

it hasn't emerged.

Maybe it'll emerge over the next two rounds.

Yeah, I mean, we didn't see Minnesota emerge for Gobert until the trade actually happened, right?

And that package

was pretty significant.

And I think we can agree that Golbert is not even close to the level of player that Giannis is.

So,

and that, by the way, no one was putting in the Timberwolves as competitors.

I'm still not sure I like that trade, to be honest, a few years later, but you can't deny it.

They gave away way too much.

I mean,

it worked out.

Both things might be right.

I need a rankings prediction, Bill.

If Anthony Edwards wins this year,

at the age he won at, I mean,

we're

in like magic bird.

Magic bird under 25 territory.

It's pretty amazing.

I'm not sure it's fully appreciated the trajectory that he might be on.

It's pretty amazing.

Ben Thompson, you can follow or subscribe to the Strategy newsletter, which has been an essential piece of does not have

any NBA talk, which is probably best for everyone.

No, it's good.

Good to see you.

Thanks for getting up early for us.

Talk to you later.

All right.

That's it for the podcast.

Thanks to Fantasy and Ariel and Zach and Ben and Gahal and Eduardo for producing.

You can watch these as video podcasts on Spotify if you did not know that.

You can check out the Bill Simmons YouTube channel for all the clips and videos from this and new rewatchables episode, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

You can check that out as well because that's on the Ringer Moves YouTube channel or on the

Spotify as a video podcast or wherever you at your podcast.

So I'm going to be back on Thursday.

We'll have lots to discuss,

including a surprise guest.

So stay tuned.

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