Thunder Dominate Game 7, and the Conference Finals Are Set. Full Previews, Plus a Look at Uncertain Offseasons With Howard Beck.

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Okay, coming up for those of you who did not catch the YouTube live, shame on you.

Just kidding.

We got Howard Beck.

As always, every other Monday, Howard Beck talking conference finals, Fallout in Denver, Fallout in Boston, much more.

Can't wait for these conference finals.

We got some new blood in the NBA.

Final four coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show, a podcast.

It's live on YouTube.

It's time to say for the millions and millions of people watching on YouTube, the three most anticipated words in niche basketball podcasting on the morning.

After a bummer of a game seven, the Alex Caruso game, the Aaron Gordon gutting it out game, and the morning where we get to think about two delicious conference finals matchup.

A seventh NBA champion will be crowned, a seventh different champion in the last seven years.

What up, Beck?

Good morning, Zach.

You failed to mention it was also the Jalen Williams game, the J-Dub game, lest we get confused.

We need a rule in the NBA that you can no longer have two guys with the exact same name on the same roster.

It's too confusing.

No, it's the Caruso game

because one of the great things about that series was

a little tactical shift in every game.

New things tried, old things scrapped, this worked, this didn't.

And you had seen glimpses of Caruso guarding Jokic in the previous six games, just glimpses.

And that was the card that Mark Dagnall had saved for this game and this moment.

And it was a card that allowed him to play more lineups with Chet Holmgren as the only big man on the floor, which they had feared because Jokic can just beat the hell out of him.

And Jokic can't beat the hell out of him if Alex freaking Caruso is guarding Nicola Jokic instead of Chet Holmgren.

And it was such an interesting game because OKC gets off to a very skittish start.

Everyone's missing threes.

Jalen Williams has a bad turnover, dribbling under the basket, getting caught with nowhere to go, kicks it out to nobody.

Kayson Wallace short arms a floater, wide open floater, short arms it almost an airball.

And you're like, oh boy,

the moment's here.

And the experienced, tested veteran team looks ready.

And Aaron Gordon, I mean, just, I guess, all, not, I guess, all the props in the world to Aaron Gordon.

I was legitimately worried about his health and the consequences of playing a game like that with a grade two hamstring.

You would have guessed that he was limited, but you would not have guessed that he was playing with an injury like that.

He was moving pretty well.

He hit the boards.

He made threes.

Just

an all-time gutsy performance by a guy who has emerged as one of the few good stories in the NBA and the clutch player of these playoffs.

And no one should forget, despite the margin, what he went through to play in that game.

And then

OKC comes back, gets it within five at the end of the first.

Second quarter starts David Adelman, with I think the first real blunder of his brief and mostly very good

head coaching stint with the Nuggets.

And I think he will and should get this job on a non-interim basis after this playoff run.

Sits Murray and Jokic at the same time to start the second quarter.

I couldn't believe it.

I understand trying to maximize their minutes together and steal some rest when you can.

I thought it was a bad decision.

I put it in my notes right away.

Like, oh my God, wheels fall off.

Oklahoma City takes the lead.

And there's a moment there with like seven, eight minutes left where it felt like the game was there to grab for Oklahoma City.

And they didn't.

Denver sort of stealed themselves, got back in the game.

I think it was 41-40.

And then the Thunder grabbed the game and they grabbed the ball over and over and over again.

Caruso grabbed every inch of Jokic's body now and then.

And hey, look, physicality is here.

Refs all season, all decade, have let little guys get away with murder against big guys in the post.

It's a very smart strategy by the Thunder, who, by the way, they lose the free throw battle all the time.

And so you had this...

uh this sort of twitter referendum yesterday well how can denver be complaining about the officiating when they take way more free throws in this game and in this series in Oklahoma City?

That's all baked into how to thunder play.

They know they're going to lose the free throw battle.

Their whole construction is: we're going to lose the free throw battle because we're going to try to steal the ball every single time.

And we're going to get a lot of steals.

And those steals and the value of those live ball turnovers are going to outweigh the free throw differential, which, by the way, will never be as big as it maybe should be because the refs can't call everything.

And we know that.

And then the game just spiraled out of control.

And that was it.

And now we are left to contemplate lots of different things.

The MVP, still not announced.

I hope the league didn't forget that they have to award the MVP at some point.

The future of the Denver Nuggets, who are out first-round picks this year, 2027, 2029, and have

not a lot of tradable pieces that could easily reorient their team around the best player in the world.

And a conference finals between the Thunder and the Wolves.

Anthony Edwards against Shea.

Gildis Alexander, two of the best young guards, two of the best guards, period, in the league.

USA versus Canada.

How you like that?

Neighbors to the north.

Love Canada.

Sorry, Maple Leafs.

Just

a downer for them.

Where do you want to start with this game?

I mean, it was a blowout and it was garbage time and all that, but it's the Caruso game for me.

It's the Caruso game.

Yeah.

I mean, that's fair.

Like you, I got lulled into the possibility in the early minutes of, ooh, ooh, thunder, maybe a little tight.

Ooh, the youth showing.

Here we go.

And probably a foolish notion

to have.

You're right, obviously, that the tenor of things changed with Adelman leaving his two best players on the bench to start the second,

start the second, right?

And, but I also just thought like, it was almost like Oklahoma was just kind of feeling their way into this, or maybe they were a little tight and they just needed to loosen up.

Whatever it was, when they just started to crank up the defensive intensity and just started to really get after it, and whether jumping passing lanes and grabbing everybody and poking the ball away, and then it's just run out after run out.

And

to me,

it was just so much about

their aggression, which is who they are.

And they come at you in waves, and the Nuggets have no waves.

They have, you know, four and a half guys, three and a half guys with the way that Aaron Gordon was limited.

I didn't think Aaron Gordon was going to play.

From everything I had heard in the preceding couple of days, it sounded really bleak.

And then Shams had the report that this is going to be weeks.

And I think his report was basically like, he's not playing.

He's just out.

And then suddenly, as the game got closer, it was, no, he's starting.

He's going to give it a go.

And like you, I...

I was really worried that we were going to see something terrible.

Like,

you and I aren't doctors or trainers, but like a guy goes out with a grade two hamstring strain trying to play through it and you could see a couple of times where

you know he came down and immediately rubbed it or it you could just see how much it was limiting him and how awkwardly he was moving

there was the possession where as the game was spinning out of control a little bit he's bringing the ball up which i i it's it's like i can't believe he was bringing the ball and dork put pressure on him and there was a little contact but i didn't see any egregious foul or anything and he just kind of fell over on the sideline you're like he just doesn't i mean predictably there's certain things he can't really do yeah um

and just you know all but all the respect and all the credit in the world to aaron gordon for even trying a lot of guys would have just said well that's it and i can't take a chance of like you know ripping my hamstring to shreds i'm just done uh but like i think we know this about aaron gordon by now like that guy is like a true pro a lot of a lot of pride nobody would have blamed him if he didn't play like i'm not saying like you know that that would put him in a bad light at all But the fact that he gutted it out, tried to give them whatever he could, I think, is amazing.

I mean, the guy's been through like what a year.

Obviously, you know,

he lost his brother in the offseason last year.

That was awful.

He was playing with a heavy heart all season.

He had just an incredible playoff run with

the dunk with 0.0001, whatever.

Is there a name for that play yet?

Like, Vali Oop got coined instantaneously.

That play needs a name because it is unlike, literally unlike any play in the history of the nba and as i've said before i still don't really understand what happened and and and the degree of like millisecond breaking down we had to go through to make sure that the basket was good and like his hands are in the i just don't really understand what happened it needs a it needs a name whatever i don't have a suggestion i i'm too dumb for that but it needs a name it does need a name shaming all of us collectively for not coming up with one sooner i don't understand what happened either and i don't i don't think i need to understand it zach like i'm i'm content with as somebody who has kind of become very anti-replay.

I'm tired of all the replay.

I don't think the goal of the game is to get everything 100% correct all the time.

We are chasing a perfection that does not exist.

Adam Silver, just get over it.

Human error exists.

Reel back the replays.

I don't even like having all the coaches' challenges.

But on that play, like, I'm fine with whatever happened, happened.

It's just like with point four with Derek Fisher, which I was there for.

And there was a lot of after-the-fact, oh, and this was in San Antonio.

Did the scorekeeper hit the button in time?

Or was there a lull?

Or did somebody else create a lull from when they hit the button?

And then it was all this stuff.

I don't care.

Like the shot happened.

It existed.

The game was won, whether it was Fish or Aaron Gordon.

But for his season to have to go to end that way, for the Nuggets season to have to end that way,

really a shame.

And perhaps not unexpected.

You know, we've all been talking about for, I mean, all season and for the last two years, the just slow erosion of the Denver Nuggets rotation since the championship, right?

You lose Bruce Brown and Jeff Green, then you lose KCP, which is one that, like, the first two, you couldn't help because of cap issues.

The KCP one, you could help.

You chose to let him walk away.

We had Calvin Booth talking about, you know, how much he loved the youth they had drafted and how much they needed to play them.

That's the source of a lot of the tension between him and Michael Malone.

They're both gone.

I mean, the Nuggets have just gone through almost everything you could imagine.

But since the championship, it's just been this slow erosion to the point where when you are the veteran team with championship experience, but with so few capable bodies left against one of the deepest young teams we've ever seen at this stage of the playoffs in the Thunder,

this felt sort of inevitable.

And it's incredible that it got to a game seven at all.

And I hope the takeaway.

I don't think it will be, but I would hope the takeaway in Denver, whether it's fans for an ops or anybody else is not going to be, well, you know, hey, we got to a game seven.

Therefore, we're still that close.

Like,

I don't think anybody would think that way, but you definitely can't.

I don't think that's a crazy take.

They got to game seven against a team that is now, I think, the clear favorite to win the NBA championship.

They earned that way to game seven.

I think the Thunders should have one and six.

Game one was a game they let get away.

Game three was a game that they had control of late.

I'm not going to say they let it get away because Denver made some great plays to take it to overtime and then destroyed them in overtime.

But this is a second straight year of the Nuggets lost in game seven in this same round, one at home, one on the road now.

But I mean,

and when you consider Aaron Gordon limited at the end, Michael Porter Jr., a total non-factor for six of the seven games of the series, basically playing with one arm.

You know, we're going to talk about the future of the Nuggets.

The roster has issues, but I don't think it's unreasonable for them to say that the core three to four guys are so good together that we are this close, but we're going to talk about that.

Thunder,

just you mentioned J-Dubb.

Great bounce.

What a bounce back game.

I mean, you want to have the cliche of the young team growing up in the hot house of the playoffs, responding to the stress that hits them in the face first and getting back off the mat and all that.

This was it.

This Jalen Williams game was it.

Chet had a decent finish to the series after some shaky games, too.

And Caruso,

I mean, Caruso and Hardenstein, it's going to go down as an all-time offseason for Sam Presti.

Those guys, and we've all been saying it since the moment it happened, they were totally additive to this team.

Hartenstein, especially, filled voids that were pre-existing.

He took nothing away and rounded out the team and filled holes in their sort of schematic and strategic resume.

And Caruso just, I mean, I'm watching this game, looking to the next round, being like,

Caruso on Randall is going to to be a thing.

And I don't know that they're ever going to be a point where they start Caruso over Hartenstein as they did in the second half of this game for this particular reason.

But

I don't know how often Alex Caruso can just play a game like that where he's going toe-to-toe against a giant person and a very physical person.

But we're going to see that in the next round.

And Julius Randle better get ready because Alex Caruso is going to try to

knock away the ball on every dribble, on every catch.

He's got all the tricks of the trade.

Like there was one turnover late in the second quarter where the Nuggets wanted a foul, and it's just really subtle.

Like the ball comes in, Caruso has his hand on Jokic's hip and just kind of just pulls him back a little bit enough, very hard to see, knocks him off balance, steals the ball.

They're off to the races.

It was an awesome performance by the Thunder.

And their offense has been just okay.

Was just okay in this series.

I just love that they have leaned all the way into our offense, it can be just okay, and we can still win even against elite competition because our defense is that good.

We are banking on our defense every single night.

This is one of the greatest defensive teams in the entire history of the NBA.

They've been on another planet from everyone in the regular season.

They have moved into their own universe in the playoffs.

You look at their numbers in the playoffs.

Obviously, the Grizzlies series was a walkover, whatever.

They're just outrageous.

And

I said before the series, this was the biggest challenge that Nicole Jokic had ever faced.

A team with so many swiping arms and schematic options and guys in passing lanes and just different things they could do to him and cloud his post-ups.

And

the Thunder kind of won that battle.

Like Jokic had a good series, but not a great one.

And that's the margin for Denver.

They can't win when Jokic is good by his standards and not great by his standards.

And this defense is like, no one's really had an answer yet.

Denver had some answers in the regular season.

They didn't carry over into the playoffs.

What they did to Jokic and the Nuggets for the bulk of the, I mean, like, he couldn't get the ball yesterday.

They literally could not get him the ball.

And for the series,

he posted up

12 post-touches per 100 possessions, which was below his average against the Thunder in the regular season.

He was at like 0.9 points per possession on those post-ups.

If you like, that should be impossible to hold Jokic to fewer post-ups and knock his efficiency to that level.

And you saw how they did it.

They're just going to, they're going to have swarming guys from every direction to help Caruso.

They're going to give up threes to basically everybody, and they're going to confuse him and not be in a passing lane.

And then suddenly they are in a passing lane.

Oh my God, there's a dunk the other direction.

It was a masterful performance by the best defense in the NBA.

And the bottom line is going forward,

no one has found a way to score on them consistently enough to beat them four and seven.

And I don't know that any team left in the playoffs can do that.

I'm going to pick them over Minnesota in the next round.

I would pick them over New York and Indiana.

I think Minnesota has a chance to beat them.

Minnesota is a legit, really good team with a lot of sides and a lot of answers.

I think this is going to be a super competitive series.

I just got to see a team score on them consistently enough to win four and seven.

And I'm not sure anybody can do it.

I'm not either.

It was watching them yesterday.

I swear there were moments, Zach, where I was like, you know, we all love, we love teams that really rely on the pass a lot, ball movement, player movement, right?

A beautiful offense, all this.

And there were moments yesterday where I'm like, don't stop passing, just stop passing the ball.

Because every time the ball was in flight, it just looked like it was a turnover waiting to happen.

They're that quick to it.

They're that long.

They're that

just

that swarming nature of the Thunder defense.

It just didn't look like there was any winning.

Like, was Jokic supposed to just, I suppose he could just turn around and keep shooting over Alex Caruso because he's taller than him um that's not where the nuggets are at their best is just jokic shooting time and time again he only had one field goal attempt in the third quarter i don't think i realized that till long after the fact uh i don't know exactly what to make of that i'd have to go back and look and and and was that him not getting the ball just being able to get it at all or was that just him not uh being aggressive okay so let's just do this now because apparently after the game there was this entire i i guess we're still doing doing this in 2025, like 20 years, 15 years after zone defense was essentially allowed in the NBA and the illegal defense rules went away.

I guess there was this whole like, well, they couldn't have done that against Shaq or Hakeem and Shaq's going to put little Alex Crusoe in the basket.

And yeah, Shaq would put some people in the freaking basket.

I am a Shaq is underrated guy.

Shaq is historically underrated.

Shaq was an all-time, like, there was nothing you could do against that guy except foul him.

But any dis Hakeem, Ewing, whatever, any discussion like this has to start with the rules are completely different than they were when the Rockets could just be like, hey, Hakeem, go post up.

It's either going to be a double team from all the way across the court or single coverage.

And that's it.

Now, Caruso can front Jokic.

There can be dudes forming a triangle all around Jokic, blocking every passing angle possible, and they can't get him the ball.

Jokic for the series, 28 points, 14 rebounds, six assists, 48% shooting, which is low for him, 54% on twos, 32% on threes.

That's mortal.

That's mortal great.

Mortal great was not going to get it done for a Nuggets team that is paying Dario Sarich a lot of money to do nothing, that is paying Zeke Najee a lot of money to do nothing, that is paying Russ the veterans minimum to just go completely haywire.

And this is the Russ experience.

Like it's good till it's not.

And it was not in the first round last year.

And it was good in the first round this year.

And the Clippers have to be like, I can't even believe that happened.

And it was not again in the second round this year.

And it's just not getting anything from the young guys, except for Christian Brown.

It feels like Christian Brown has graduated out of that conversation.

He likes not included with the young guys that Calvin Booth took a shot on.

He is one of the young guys that Calvin Booth took a shot on.

And that shot has hit so dramatically that we don't lump him in with Pickett and Tyson and Najee and Strother, who had one game.

Strother, the Strother Straits were hopping.

Grand opening, grand closing in record time for every bar on Strother Straits and all those guys.

But

it's a good series, but I'm just so tired of this like big man X from 1992 would have put this guy in the basket.

Like, we're really going to go at Jokic like this, who's already a three-time MVP, already established himself as one of the greatest players of all time, without even having a discussion about like how the rules are different, how little guys, and this is across every team.

If you're an undersized guy and you have the guts to guard a center like that, the refs are going to let you get away with stuff that they don't let big guys get away with.

And that's complete, that's just normal.

And I just like, this debate is so dumb.

And Jokic is so far above that and had a good enough series, a good series, not a great one, but a good series.

And it's amazing that he's so good that 28, 14, and 6 is just like, whoa, you know, what else could he have done?

The story of the series for Denver is that the rest of the team wasn't good enough and wasn't healthy enough.

Not Jokic failing to put Alex Caruso in the basket.

If Jokic could have put Alex Caruso in the basket without running into 17 arms and risking offensive fouls and all that, he would have.

It's like he could put Chet Holmgren in the basket.

He puts all these dudes in the basket.

There's, you know, we would be remiss if we didn't mention, we've only alluded to it, that despite everything.

There's a world where if Michael Porter Jr.'s shoulder isn't wrapped in like, you know, 50 yards worth of medical tape and Aaron Aaron Gordon doesn't strain his hamstring.

Who knows?

I mean, maybe game seven goes differently.

Maybe the series doesn't get to a game seven.

Maybe the Nuggets wins.

I think there's no question that, as we've said, the Nuggets rotation, not deep enough, not enough talent.

They have had too many misfires.

They have had this battle of attrition of just losing guys since the championship.

And

look, I will say in Calvin Booth's sort of defense,

nobody goes 100% on their draft picks.

And when you, take a group of Watson, Strother, Brown, whoever, and Brown hits and the others don't, and there's a TBD on some of those guys that we can't write them off yet.

Your hit rate is not usually like the Thunder's hit rate is ridiculous on everybody that they draft, wherever they draft them or sign them off the scrap heap or whatever.

They just hit on everything, it seems like.

But Sam Pressy's had his misses too.

Hitting on Brown was huge.

But I think that there's a world here where

if Porter and Gordon aren't limited by their injuries, is this a little bit different?

I don't know.

I still think the Thunder win because the Thunder were just better.

But I also think that this just underscores in the brightest possible ink, the fact that

the Nuggets have allowed the roster to wither a bit.

And the answer is not Russell Westbrook.

It's definitely not Dario Sarich, as you mentioned.

They didn't have a great offseason.

And the last two have just been tough.

And Jokic is finally sort of saying it out loud.

This is not the kind of superstar who's going to start, you know, pounding the table and demanding trades or changes, or I'm going to walk, or I'm going to demand a trade.

I don't think that's the way he's wired.

They're fortunate for that, but they also shouldn't take him or that dynamic for granted.

So, you know, this is a huge offseason for them.

And I don't think they did.

Bruce Brown was an un there was no answer for the Indiana offshore.

There was nothing they could do.

No.

Jeff Green is kind of like an assistant coach now.

It's not like Jeff Green is going to come in and even give this depleted Denver Nuggets team 18 minutes of good play.

Yeah.

KCP had a bad year in Orlando.

You could argue that he would have had a better year surrounded by the greatest passing big man and one of the greatest passers of all time in Denver, and that even bad KCP is better than everything else the Nuggets were throwing at the wall in this series.

But

look, to me, it boils down to three problems.

Problem number one is Calvin Booth made two separate trades where he traded away future picks.

The Thunder benefited from both of them.

Future picks for immediate picks.

The bet being we just need to give

in what became the apron era.

And I think a big difference between the Denver Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder is that the Nuggets were built.

and their contracts were signed, they're big ones, before it was clear what the apron was going to be.

The Thunder, because of their youth and their foresight, a little bit of both, are really well positioned, as well positioned as any team could possibly be to navigate the apron era.

But Calvin Booth traded like 27 first rounder, 29 first rounder.

Leah, we'll kick those.

We don't care about those.

You can bet against us, Thunder.

Those bets are looking a little better today than they were then.

We need bites at the Apple now.

Give us first round picks now.

And those picks netted, you know, Watson.

Watson was one of them.

I can't remember.

Tyson was another.

Pickett, Strother,

Dayron Holmes, I don't think was one of them.

I think that was their own pick.

Those guys, and I think the Nuggets, some of those guys were like veteran college players, and the idea was they're going to be more ready to win today than the typical young player, typical first-round draft pick.

I think the Nuggets probably overestimated how quickly those young guys could be ready for moments like a game seven in Oklahoma City.

And that overestimation was very predictable.

That's problem number one.

And some of those guys will get better, and maybe some of those guys will be part of the next core down the line.

Who knows?

Problem number two,

and linked to that is while you're taking shots at the draft, you have these cap-ups exceptions and other little cap tools that give you shots at mid-tier salary guys.

And the Nuggets used two of those bullets on Sarich and Najee and got zero from any of it.

And you just, now you can go and look at playoff rosters and say how many guys are getting anything out of a mid-level exception level player, and it's going to be hard to find.

But they could have, I mean, obviously they could have gotten, though you can't whiff on those while you are simultaneously taking a lot of shots in the draft that are unlikely to pay off in time for Jokic's peak, peak, peak.

And then number three,

and I think this probably even trumps all of the roster building stuff that we're talking about.

And it goes back to my point about the apron and how they built the team before the apron.

They have two guys making max or near max money who are not producing at max or near max levels.

Jamal Murray in this series, 20 points a game on 40% shooting, 30% from three, largely did not have a good enough season, except for a couple months in the middle where he got hot.

And Michael Porter Jr.

was not healthy, made a game attempt to play with one arm, averaged seven points a game, was kind of a non-entity.

But even like healthy Michael Porter Jr.

needs to play better, more consistently to live up to his monster contract.

And by the way, these guys are under contract.

Jamal Murray's extension starts next season and runs through 2029.

Michael Porter Jr.'s contract runs through only two more seasons, 2027.

Zeke Najee's contract runs through 2028.

If the max guys produce at max levels, I think that papers over a lot of the other problems and gives those problems time to solve themselves.

And they didn't.

And the question for Denver is like, I don't even know what they're supposed to do.

You think like people are like, oh, they should trade for Durant.

Trade what?

Everyone just watched Michael Porter Jr.

They know what his contract status is.

Jamal Murray is a good player.

He's also attached at the hip to Jokic.

He's also making $57.5 million

in four years in 2029.

I don't know what trade value he has, and I don't know how you trade him.

You have to bring back another elite ball handler because you're trying to win the championship immediately.

Where is that deal?

And they have, they could in theory trade one first-round pick if they like unprotect all the other picks that they owe.

Right now, they really can't do that.

And so, like, I don't know what ammo they have.

I don't know what options they have other than bring the whole thing back.

Hope the young guys are more ready.

Hope the max guys play more like max guys.

And I do think that team has a chance to win the title again next year and make a deep run.

But I just, I'm out of ideas.

I got no ideas for them.

That's the thing is, and so much of this, of course, has to do with the new system with the second apron and first apron and all the limitations.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that, yes, they're out of picks picks because of all the deals you already mentioned.

There just isn't a lot you can do.

There's just not a lot of flexibility.

And a lot of it has to do with decisions already made.

And look, Jamal Murray is a great player and you always have to overpay your own guys to keep them happy when they're stars.

Even if he's never made an all-star team or all NBA, we know he's an all-star caliber player.

And this is what teams do.

Like, this is what you do.

And Jamal Murray was sulking up until the point that they actually gave him the extension and it was an issue.

Overpaying Michael Porter Jr., maybe you could have avoided that one.

But once you've made those commitments, you know, pre-apron, post-apron, whatever, you make those kinds of extreme commitments because you're trying to keep together the core of your championship team.

When it doesn't work out, if guys don't continue to get better or if they erode or if they get hurt, you just get stuck.

And

without picks to

move, without much,

without much move to operate within the the whole system.

It's not even just the nuggets cap.

It's the whole 30-team system where, well, if you want to loosen up your cap, find a team that's under the cap, give away a guy, and then you can trade for no returning salary or very minimal returning salary.

There aren't that many teams who are under the cap to do that with in the first place, right?

So even if you're just trying to like balance the books, just reshuffle things a little bit, give yourself some more room to operate, to sign guys.

I don't even know how they get there.

And yeah, Michael Porter Jr., I don't know what the market is for him.

That's a negative contract.

Jamal Murray is a great player, but with a contract that outstrips his play.

Aaron Gordon is essential.

You don't want to lose him.

And you probably don't want to lose Murray either, as you noted.

So

I don't know where they go from here either.

I know you can't just stand Pat.

That's easy to say.

You can't just run it back and expect to go deeper next season.

What you have to step one is whatever cap exception you have, you need to nail it this time.

And you're not going to get a star at whether it's whatever.

And

they're aprons, they may not even have any, but whatever, they've got to get a ring chaser in there who can actually play minutes for them and not be a total zero like some of the other guys they have on the team.

Look,

Porter is not everyone's cup of tea.

And I get that.

He is a minus on defense.

can be a little spacey, can have games where you're like, hey,

can you just like play a little harder?

It's the playoffs.

And then the next game, he'll get 13 rebounds.

And you're like, okay, you realize it's the playoffs, right?

Like, that should be every game.

His ball handling has developed a little bit.

I thought he was much better this year attacking closeouts and stuff like that, but it's we're long past the like this guy can run pick and rolls and post up and be that kind of offensive player.

But I will say that people can, the critics, and the critics have a lot of meat to pick at with Michael Porter Jr.

I think they underestimate 6'10 A

shooter on the move against contests.

That is a very rare thing.

It fits very well with Jokic, and you have almost no three-point shooting on the entire team other than him and your two best players who are running pick and roll together a lot.

Like, if you'd move that dude, you better get a guy who can freaking shoot.

Because I wrote about it at the beginning of the season.

Their three-point shooting was already at DEF CON one critical levels when they let KCP walked and essentially replaced him with Russell Westbrook.

And they were already at a threshold where it was like, I'm not, I just am not sure even with the best guy in the league, even with the best floater team in the league, even with all that, that you can beat four different playoff opponents four times in seven games with such a math problem on your hands.

And whatever they do, the math problem cannot get more severe.

And the ask of Jokic to make up for the math problem with his gen all-around brilliance cannot get any bigger.

Quick point on KCP, by the way, before I forget it again.

It might have been an overpay to keep him.

And this is a team that hates paying the tax.

They're generally a frugal-ish franchise.

That's certainly been the case with front office hires and others.

Yes, Christian Brown popped.

Christian Brown had a better season and maybe a better player now than KCP.

But the point isn't

13 of 46 46 from three in this series.

But

even if Christian Brown is now the better player, the point isn't that

you had a guy ready to move into his role.

The problem is the backfill issue.

Christian Brown replaces KCP.

Well, who replaced Christian Brown?

Nobody.

So if you had kept KCP, and again, there are consequences potentially for that too.

We just talked about all the cap issues and it would have complicated them further potentially.

But the point is that when you lose a guy for nothing and the bets that you're now making in free agency are on lesser players, you have lost depth just by definition.

If Brown's the better player, great.

Would have been great to have this version of Christian Brown and KCP still there.

Like that is, that is something that is conceptually possible in this league.

So it's the ripple effect of letting a really, what had been a very valuable player walk, even if he's not quite the guy he was a couple of years ago.

So

anyway, I just wanted to note that before I lost that particular train of thought, because I think there's been a lot of like, well, you know, they were vindicated by Brown's emergence, sort of, but

you still did not have enough capable bodies.

One more guy.

Yeah,

maybe that was KCP.

SGA for the series, plus 69,

Thunder without FGA, minus five.

It was almost a relief how little the series became a public referendum on the MVP.

I think everyone kind of agrees both guys were very deserving.

And although both had uneven moments in this series, I feel no different about either of them than I did coming into the playoffs, coming into this heavyweight clash.

And

I don't like, I leaned at the very end toward SGA, just, and I said, because I just think 68 wins has to be respected.

And there was no real evidence that the Thunder had a sustainable offense to win anywhere near 68 games with like a replacement B-plus-level point guard in Shea Gildrich Alexander's place.

And I think that's still the case now.

Their best offense in this series, other than Shea, was their defense.

And the second and third guys were rickety at times

for most of the series, frankly.

I have no further MVP thoughts.

I don't care who wins.

Gilkich is the best player in the world.

SGA would be a deserving MVP.

End of story.

I think we'll be hearing it soon, by the way.

I imagine that up.

Maybe at the award show.

Remember the NBA awards show?

That was a great run.

Great run.

Among the bigger misfires of the Adam Silver era, the award show.

Although I did attend one and I had a nice time.

I do like how

you mentioned, anyway, never mind.

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Pick a conference finals.

Which one do you want to preview?

We might as well just stick West as long as we're just, you know, nice, smooth segue from, you know, Thunder Nuggets to Wolves Thunder.

Minnesota, Oklahoma City.

Awesome matchup.

Lots to talk about.

Very little useful regular season tape on these teams.

They played four times.

Three of them were in like an eight-day span in which tons of guys missed games.

Lots of interesting matchups, lots of interesting statistical oddities to this series.

It begins.

What, Tuesday?

Wednesday, Tuesday, Tuesday in Oklahoma City.

They will obviously have home court advantage.

Where would you like to start with this series?

I'm fascinated by

Julius Randall.

We're getting the ultimate referendum on both ends of that trade, right?

Both teams are in the conference finals, the Knicks and the Wolves.

The Wolves made the conference finals last year with Carl Anthony Towns as essentially their second best player and then traded him.

mostly for financial reasons, maybe 99% for financial reasons.

Has a team Zach ever traded away a guy

for any reason, especially financial reasons, and been just as good or maybe better immediately?

I'm fascinated by this and by Randall's place in this series because

living in New York, as you and I both do, or you're nearby in any case.

Yeah, thanks.

So rub it in that I'm a suburban loser dad now.

I took the garbage out of last night.

I got to march it back in later this morning.

Do you not see the ad campaigns all the time in the subway?

It says, never become a former New Yorker.

I can't remember whose.

It's one of the reasons.

Okay,

let's make a couple of things clear.

I lived in New York for 18 years.

I didn't put in some token stint in New York City.

I know the subway by heart.

I'm always a New Yorker.

Number two, I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday to get my steps in because I'm an old suburban loser now.

And I saw one friend.

a woman gardening in her yard and across the street was her other friend and my other friend gardening in her yard.

And they were like talking to each other across the street in their yards with their gardening gloves and their spades, digging things up and weeding.

And I was like, I, this is

too much.

This is too suburban.

I have to turn around and get away from you all immediately because I can't stomach that this is now my life.

So, but to your point, I am a lapsed New Yorker.

Didn't mean to hit a sore spot there on a Monday morning.

You and I have seen a lot of Julius Randall the last few years in New York, and Knicks fans had a really real love-hate relationship with him.

He made all NBA a couple of times.

He was part of their rebirth, their reemergence.

He was super, super frustrating at times and a black hole on offense at times and a ball-dominant,

you know, good Lord Julius, please pass player type

sometimes.

He also had like, was one of their,

you know, leading assist guys for a couple of those seasons.

So like when he was at his best, he was a really good passer playmaker.

And his playoff performances were

not great.

He's having his best postseason right now and he's doing it on lower usage as he should.

And

I think he had a rough start with the Wolves or at least a bumpy start, an awkward start.

this season.

And part of the Wolves turning things around when somebody, when people were like, wait a minute, where's this Minnesota thing coming from as they started to come on down the stretch of the season and into the playoffs?

I think a lot of that was Julius Randall kind of finding his place with them in a comfort zone.

And so, look,

I don't want to stipulate that we know what we'll get from Ant Edwards because as a young star, he is still a little bit up and down too.

But if you just assume that Ant Edwards as

their North Star is going to

be the one thing that you more or less count on, it becomes a matter of like, all right, who else is joining the party?

And there's nobody else who you look at on that roster as a go-to scorer other than Julius Randall.

And I think a lot's going to be on him.

You mentioned the possibility of them putting Caruso on him.

Or is it Hartenstein?

Is it like, I assume he'll get all kinds of different looks.

All that's going to be incredibly interesting.

But I feel like to the extent that the Knicks and Wolves made a bet, whether it was financial reasons, whether it's competitive reasons, whether it was just opportunity, you swapped these two all-star caliber power forwards.

And

in this series,

in both of the series, those guys are going to take on incredibly important roles.

And we're going to sit here in the peanut gallery doing what we do and calling everything a referendum on something.

Let's talk about Minnesota's offense and vis-a-vis Randall, because obviously question number one for the series is, can Minnesota score enough points on the Thunder?

And one way they, they, what's non-negotiable for Minnesota are two things.

Number one, they have to win the free throw battle by a lot.

We mentioned earlier that Oklahoma City fouls a lot.

Minnesota is decent at getting to the line and

decent at avoiding fouls.

They need to be like a pretty like plus eight attempts per game kind of margin to win four games.

Number two, and what really worries me for Minnesota is they have to take care of the ball better than they have for years now and so far in the playoffs.

If this is a high turnover series, they are dead on arrival.

If this is an average turnover series, they have some minority chance to pull an upset.

If this is a low turnover series for them, which is extremely difficult against the handsiest team in the league, they have a chance to win the series.

But if it's a high turnover series, they're dead.

They were 19th in turnover rate in the regular season, and their turnover rate has been higher in the playoffs than it was in the regular season.

That is death.

If that sustains, they are not going to win.

Okay, Randall.

There are two ways the Thunder can match up, and I think both are interesting, and I think we'll see both of them.

And I'm talking starters versus starters now.

Okay, we can get into the other lineups later, the Nas Reed lineups and all that.

The safest version, version number one, is Hartenstein starts on Randall.

Chet Holmgren starts on Gobert, so he can man the back line and be the rim protector.

And

Jay Dubb guards Jaden McDaniels

and sort of he can help and he can rove and all that.

I think that may be how they start.

We'll see some of that.

Dort is going going to guard Ant, by the way, which is just like,

I don't even know what that's like.

It's like Mike Singletary trying to tackle John Riggins or something.

Like, I don't even know what is going to happen.

It's like, we're going to hear that through the television screens.

We're going to, it's like, there's going to be holes in the floor.

Wood is going to get warped.

I don't know how that's going to go.

Dort all the millennials scrambling to nfl.com or

footballreference.com or something for that.

I'm sure there's a more modern, you know.

I appreciated it.

Who's the Ravens running back?

Derrick Henry?

Is that his name?

He's a big giant guy.

Him running into somebody like Mike Singletary.

Version number two is you shift Hartenstein to go bear.

You put Jay Dubb on Randall.

And J.

Dubb has guarded Randall a fair bit.

He's given up some size, but he's very tough and very physical and very pokey.

Pokey.

Pokey against a guy who can get loose with the ball.

And Chet Holmgren gets the Rover role on Jaden McDaniels instead.

I think we'll see a little bit of both of of those things.

I will say

Jaden McDaniels has been playing so well as to render that kind of strategy, like we're just going to hide a big man on you strategy, much more dangerous than it was two months ago, six months ago, a year ago.

And if the Thunder dare that,

Jaden McDaniels has to make a lot of threes and Jaden McDaniels has to attack closeouts and do something with them.

And he has done both of those things so far in the playoffs.

And if he plays like that, Minnesota has a chance.

Putting J-Dubb on Randall also allows them to switch any Ant Randall pick and rolls between J-Dubb and Dort.

That's an interesting wrinkle.

And then you have, you know, when it's Nas Reed and one of Randall or Gobert, obviously they're going to put a wing on Nas Reed and put whatever big man is on the floor on Randall.

And I do think we will see some Caruso on Randall as evidenced by what we just saw.

And more broadly, I think with Jokic in the rearview mirror, and Julius Randle is a good post player.

He's not Jokic.

I think this is a safer series for the Thunder to play Holmgren as the only big man on the floor than it was against Denver when they did that only because they had put Caruso on the floor late in the series and they didn't do it for a lot of series.

I think that's, and we'll see how effective that is.

I mean,

that's supposedly.

their best offensive lineup, their offensive kill shot, like five out spacing, Holmgren pick and pop threes, Holgren pump and go drives.

He hasn't played well enough offensively in that role.

And I I think it's also safe for them to maybe dabble a little bit more than they did in playing five guards and wings together in their super small ball lineup.

So I think the matchups when Minnesota has the ball are going to be really interesting.

I think the variety of defenses they throw at Ant on the pick and roll is going to be really interesting.

They're going to blitz him every now and then just to test his playmaking.

And boy, is he passed that test so far in the playoffs.

Just make the calm, simple play.

You don't need to hit the home run.

You don't need to dribble it to the sideline and string it out every time.

If someone's open, give them the ball.

Trust the machine.

Trust the process.

The ball will find the right player.

It might even find you all the way around the horn.

He's been up to that so far.

There's also just kind of like, unless Isaiah Joe's on the floor, it's the obvious thing about the Thunder.

There's no easy place for Ant to like hunt.

He's liked to go after Holmgren a little bit, and the Thunder will sometimes late switch Hart and Send and Homegren on him, and he's done well in those, but they're going to try to avoid those switches, I think.

Like Kaysen Wallace is fine guarding him.

Shea has switched onto him, and Shea is a good defender and has done fine guarding him.

I'm just interested to see how the Wolves try to solve the puzzle of the Thunder defense.

And I think you were smart to pinpoint Randall because I think a lot of how the Thunder navigate this series and how the Wolves navigate the Thunder is going to start with who is on Julius Randall and how do they scheme for that.

The Wolves have a lot more shooting, obviously, than the Nuggets.

So they at least have the luxury of decent spacing and of guys that

you're taking a chance, if you're the thunder, of leaving, right?

Like they will...

And in both of their offensive hubs, Anthony Edwards and Julius Randall,

not elite playmakers,

not Jokic level.

Nobody is.

But these are both guys who I think are very capable of making good, smart passes,

intuitive passes.

Again,

this was the roller coaster of Randall of the last couple of years

in New York.

At his best, guy's flirting with triple doubles.

At his worst, he's barreling into double teams or triple teams.

And Anthony Edwards has had to go through the typical evolution of a young, dominant, ball-handling scorer who his best attribute is just putting the ball in the hole and mostly getting to the rack.

And obviously, his three-point game has opened up a lot of everything else this season, too.

But yeah, Anthony Edwards

and Randall too, in different ways, sometimes prone to bouts of impatience or indulgence.

And this series is going to test them to the nth degree.

And I think so much of this is just about

your patience and intuitiveness in reading the defense

because you will get yourself in a lot of trouble if you're trying to force the issue.

So

every time we see Anthony Edwards have a great game, a great series, it's okay.

Look, Look, there's another step on the way.

He's on his way.

He's on his way to superstardom.

He's, you know, and then occasionally, as young players do, there's a little bit of backslide.

So

I feel like this is, by, I think, every definition, his biggest test.

And we'll see if he can solve it.

If you are playing the Thunders defense in 2025, it's a very good chance this is going to be your biggest test as an offensive player.

And I do think the key for Ant is make the simple play.

When you attack the Thunder Bigs, and I think that's like the only place you can consistently go to get easy traction.

And they're going to mix up coverages.

Sometimes they'll do the thing where he'll call up Hartenstein's guy or Holmgren's guy to set a screen, and they'll yank, the Thunder will yank the big guy out of the screening action, replace him with a guard, and send the big guy somewhere else and say, hey,

can you make a play in that window where we're kind of in rotation in this triangular rotation?

We don't think you are.

as good a passer as that.

You're not Tyrese Halliburton, who can see that coming before it happens, memo to the Knicks, and make the right pass.

It's just, it's an enormous test.

And when he attacks those big guys, sometimes they're going to blitz them.

Sometimes they're going to drop back.

Sometimes they're going to switch.

They're never going to let him get comfortable with one defense for more than two or three possessions.

And it's just going to be tough sledding.

And it's a superstar.

And the Wolves, as you said, have a lot of shooting to wit, Mr.

Beck.

Only five teams took more threes than the Wolves this year as a portion of their shot attempts.

So they were sixth in three-point rate.

More More succinct way of saying that.

The Thunder were 28th in three-point rate against only two teams allowed more threes than the Thunder.

They will let you let they will try to clog the paint and try to fly out to you and bet that A, we're going to make the right guy shoot more than not.

And B, if you think that's a myth, and maybe it is,

we are going to be flying at you with such a velocity that our contests are going to be better than your average contests on like semi-open, semi-contested threes.

I think it's a fascinating series.

Thunder offense versus Wolves defense is going to be really fun too.

I don't know where you want to start there.

Anything strike you?

Good Shea.

You know, we're going to see J.D.

McDaniels on Shea a lot, maybe full-time.

We'll see some Ant on Shea and some McDaniels on J.

Dub.

And I think...

I mentioned this last week.

Minnesota barely played zone in the regular season.

I think they had 141 possessions of zone in the regular season.

52 of them came against the thunder.

Now, the matchups were all funky.

There was like a lot of Jalen Clark in these matchups for the Wolves

to point out how funky they were.

I don't think that's an accident.

It takes Shay's pick and roll rhythm and throws it out of whack a little bit.

Takes J-Dubb's pick and roll rhythm and throws it out of whack a little bit.

And I'm sure they watched Denver, who is not a good defensive team, kind of get under the Thunder skin a little bit with the zone.

And I'm going to be shocked if we don't see the Wolves throw a lot of zone at the Thunder early in the series and see, can you beat this consistently or not?

And if not, you know, we have

a team with Gobert should not have to resort to his own.

And I don't think Minnesota would ever go full-time.

But I think that's a card they're going to play in the series.

Yeah, I was wondering, too, I was kicking this around yesterday, is, you know, obviously you want Gobert down in the paint.

Are you cross-matching or is he having to, you you don't want him sitting out there with Chet at the three-point line?

So I assume they're switching up a lot of the

assignments there and cross-matching.

Yeah, you know,

I'm also wondering, like, after we saw what I would term the J-Dub game yesterday, you turned it the Alice Caruso game, like Jalen Williams has not been a consistent number two threat

next to Shea in this this postseason.

He's a great player, and we saw the full capabilities of him yesterday, and especially when we could get out and run and kind of get in a rhythm.

I think they're going to need that.

Like, obviously, the Thunder have a lot of guys who can do something,

but they are very, I think, Shea-centric when it comes to the offense, and then a lot of shooting.

Jalen Williams is the other guy who can do a lot with the ball in his hands.

And I think the time is going to come at some point in this series where they're going to need that consistent second threat.

And again, like it, these guys are really young.

They've never been on this stage before.

It's going to be learned as you go.

And,

you know, but I am very, I think this is a big series for J-Dubb in the same sense that it is for Randall with Minnesota.

Shay, here's how I suspect Minnesota will match up to start the series.

I could be wrong.

Gobert on Hartenstein, if they play man, when they play man,

gobert on Hartenstein, Randall on Holmgren, McDaniels on Shea, Ant on J-Dub, which is a whole, that's a blast.

And Conley hides on Dort.

Now, I think we'll see, as I mentioned, some Ant on Shea a little bit, and J-Dub will move,

McDaniels will move around.

Shea has some places, again, in man-to-man, that he can poke at in this series.

They're going to hunt Conley relentlessly, as everybody does.

And one of my favorite things about Chris Finch's performance so far in the playoffs is

it feels like he's gotten exactly the right dose of Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert in every single game.

When they're rolling, or it feels like Conley's sort of calm and pick and roll orchestrator-ness is essential to like keeping their team away from haywire gear because Minnesota is a haywire team.

He plays a little bit more.

And when he's getting picked at on defense or looks old or whatever, we see a lot more DiVincenzo, more Alexander Walker.

And similarly with Gobert.

Gobert is going to drop back on the pick and roll.

If Shea starts getting easy, mid-rangers shift to man or shift to zone, maybe a little less Gobert, a little more Randall Reed, maybe even a little more Jaden McDaniels at the four and only one big man on the floor.

He's pressed all the right buttons so far in the playoffs, but that's going to be a pain point.

Conley, Shea hunting down Conley.

I think Shea can,

hunt is a strong word.

I think he can get Randall on switches and do damage.

I think he can definitely get Nas Reed on switches and do damage.

I think Shea's got places to go in man-to-man defense in this series, and I think that's interesting.

And yeah, I mean,

I think this is a fascinating series.

Minnesota is a great defensive team.

They have a lot of answers, too.

They have a lot of good wing defenders.

This is a monster defensive series for Ant.

I think there's going to be a fun chess match in this series.

Any other thoughts before we make a pick and move on to 90s throwback East Finals?

You're going to make me pick again, Zach.

I'm going to pick.

You don't have to pick.

You can do whatever you want.

I'll pick.

I'll pick.

It's fine.

I'm all right.

All right.

I'll pick first.

Thunder and six.

Thunder make the finals.

I had the thunder coming out of the west since last summer.

That was not a unique or

dicey pick at all.

So yeah, I expect the thunder to win this.

I have enough respect for the Timberwolves that I will say Thunder and seven.

Not saying you're disrespectful.

That's a lot of respect.

Thunder and seven.

I think there's just enough.

There's just enough

volatility is the wrong word.

Maybe it's just

the youth factor.

There's just something about the Thunder where

the Utes, I don't think they're just going to come out and blow the Wolves away.

I think the Timberwolves are more than solid at both ends.

And I just,

yeah, I think they're going to give them a handful.

And

as should be the case in the conference finals, this will also be the Thunders' biggest test to date.

So

I think this could go the distance.

No?

They just passed a pretty, I know, but

a semi-broken Nuggets team.

I know that Jokic is like, you know, Jokic is the best player of the world.

Jokic is Jokic.

And the falloff from him to everybody else is what it is.

And also what made that a big, big test, even bigger than an experienced champion Nuggets core and the best player in the world is what happened in game one.

The Thunder should have won game one.

They should have been up 1-0, and they weren't, and they blew the game.

They overthought the game.

And then from that moment on, it was gut check time, and they rose to the occasion.

Jokic is the best player that the Thunder have faced, yes.

But the Wolves are a better three-point shooting team, a better defensive team, and a deeper team by far than the Nuggets.

So just before you get Nuggets fans all mad at me

for

not properly respecting them.

I do think this is a bigger test across the board, holistically.

So to your point,

on paper, you know, see their season-long numbers.

The Thunder's net rating, Thunder were third in offense, first in defense, plus 12.7, first in the league.

Minnesota, eighth in offense, sixth in defense,

plus 5.0, fourth.

Big difference in net rating.

Since Randall came back and they've been just on fire, they are plus 11 net rating in that span since Randall came back from injury.

So this is a legit, very good team.

They have a lot of answers.

They have a lot of size.

They have a lot of physicality and toughness.

They have a chance to really hurt the Thunder on the offensive glass.

Another area I think they have to win.

They have Randall playing the best ball of his life, and they have an ascendant superstar who can get buckets against anybody anytime.

I think they have a chance to win the series.

I just think the Thunder are, if there's the thing that I trust most in the NBA playoffs is Oklahoma City's defense.

It's just this baseline thing.

I trust it completely in every game.

I just think the defense is so good.

They've been the better team all year.

And I just worry that Minnesota is going to have like two games.

where they have 20 turnovers like the Nuggets did yesterday.

And those games are just automatic wins for the Thunder.

And so I'm going

Thunder

in

six.

I'll go six.

I don't care about home road, Howard.

Home Court Advantage is overrated in the NBA.

No.

For sure.

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I think we're past that, Charlie.

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AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Okay.

Teenage me.

Teenage me.

Teenage me hated the Knicks.

I grew up in Knicks country, and teenage me is, I'm born in 1977.

So mid-90s, Knicks is my coming of age as a sports fan.

Basketball is my favorite sport.

And boy, did I hate those teams.

And part of it was I liked being a contrarian.

I think all my friends were Knicks fans.

I live in Knicks country.

This is like Knicks Rangers 1994.

Like, I could, I could still hear Let's Go, Knicks, Let's Go Rangers being chanted in the hallways during passing time in June 1994 when both teams are in the finals.

And I was just stupid, like a stupid teenager.

I brought into every stupid narrative: oh, the Knicks are bullies.

They're violating the rules.

They're playing football.

This is what is this stuff.

And I remember

when Ewing missed the finger roll in game seven of the second round in 1995, down one, game-winning finger roll.

The C's parted, game-winning finger roll.

Bounce, bounce, clank, Knicks lose, Pacers move on to the conference finals where they lose to Orlando.

I remember coming in and like a little asshole, little just snot asshole, miming the Ewing finger roll to all my Knicks fans.

Oh, here comes Ewing for the win.

Oh,

here comes Ewing for the win.

Oh,

that's also the first time.

Did you get the shit kicked out of you that year?

No, because all my friends were nerds like me.

No one knows how to fight.

You think anyone of my friends knew how to fight?

I mean,

you might have said it to the wrong guy at some point.

You might have.

No, I knew who.

And look,

it was all in good, in good fun.

And they had, I mean, just the Mets Yankees shit talk that was flying back and forth all the time.

It was just part of our DNA as nerd sports fans.

That was also the eight points, nine seconds series, one of the greatest moments in the history of NBA basketball.

That's 1995.

1994, Knicks won in the conference finals.

1995, Pacers win in the conference semifinals.

1999 is LJ, four-point play.

Knicks without Ewing, eighth seed, win the Eastern Conference Finals, four games to two, break the Pacers' hearts, make the finals lose to the Spurs.

And in 2000, the Pacers win the Eastern Conference Finals.

Obviously, they played last year.

This is an awesome rivalry and an awesome, super interesting matchup.

And I'm going to say right now, Howard Beck, it's 10.31 a.m.

I still haven't made my pick yet.

I'm just going to make it spur of the moment when we get to the end of this segment.

I cannot wait for this series.

It's also,

they were identical.

Indiana and New York finished with identical ratings in defensive efficiency, tied for 13th in the NBA.

Their defensive shot profile is like identical.

Both teams allow very very few threes and allow a decent to an alarming number of shots at the basket.

Their effective field goal percentage, both expected and actually allowed, is like identical.

Their paths to the playoffs are interesting.

Indiana gets the Bucs essentially without Damian Lillard.

I mean he comes back and he plays three games.

I think he was six for 27 in the whole series.

And then they get Cleveland, which, by the way, we haven't talked a lot about Cleveland.

And they win 4-1 4-1 against Cleveland.

And the last game is like an, or the game two is the one that swings it, is the game that Mobley, Hunter, and Garland all sit.

And the Cavs should have won.

And it's an incredible miracle comeback by the Pacers, culminating in Halliburton missing a free throw, getting a rebound on a lane violation, and then hitting a three.

You know,

Garland clearly was limited, could barely dribble without falling over or couldn't change directions as easily.

Sometimes looked okay, sometimes not so much.

Other than that one game, everybody played for the Cavs.

They were banged up, but everybody, it's not, I think there was like this, and I was guilty of it too.

People digested that series as like, well, you know, you just got to move on to next year, like

blah, blah, blah.

Everybody was injured.

It's like everybody played.

That was a shit series by the Cavs.

It was another soft exit by the Cavs.

And the Pacers roll along.

The Knicks.

get a healthy and tough Pistons team and then a Celtics team that was healthy right until they weren't, but that was going going to be 3-1 Boston or 3-1 New York rather.

So it's sort of eye of the beholder how you look at which team has had the quote tougher path here or how to evaluate Indiana's path.

I think this is a really fascinating series and I cannot decide who to pick.

I think it's going to be a super even series.

At one point, to your point of how even it is and how tough it is to pick.

At one point, I was just like, you know, just a stream of consciousness typing down notes.

And I'm like, well, if you want to beat the Knicks, just do not let it be close in the fourth quarter because Brunson's going to tear you apart.

And then I thought, but wait a minute, it's close to the fourth quarter.

Tyrese Halliburton might tear you apart.

Like, yeah, don't either end of this, don't let it be close.

I think if you want to win any game in this series, you're best served by being up by 20 or 30 points because these are two of the best clutch players in the league right now.

Jalen Brunson, literally the clutch player of the year.

I think he was top of my ballot.

And Halliburton has just had some incredible moments.

And they've both, both these teams got here in part by like just, you know, shaking off 20-point deficits, just wiping them out.

And

they both are great on the road.

The Pacers won game four at Milwaukee to take the three-to-one lead in that series.

They won games one and two, of course, in Cleveland,

and then five to close them out.

They were always,

I looked up last year's series.

Last year's series, Pacers-Knicks is not very helpful considering how many Knicks were not playing and also the Knicks having since swapped out a few guys.

But the Pacers were 0-3 at the garden last year in that series.

And then, of course, won game seven there when the Knicks, of course, also had no bodies left.

But the Pacers are just, the point being, Pacers are not daunted by anything or anywhere or anyone.

I love that about them.

They've got a swagger that seems to go just far, far, far outstrip their

resumes.

They strut around like a team that's won three championships.

Tyrese did the Cassell dance.

He did the Tyrese did the dance.

And my favorite thing about that was the NBA just quietly deciding, okay,

we're just going to warn you on this one.

Didn't they find him?

Didn't they find him?

I thought they weren't.

They did find him.

No fines for that dance.

I'm looking it up now.

I'm convinced that secretly, sometime over the years, the NBA named their deputy commissioner

the church lady from Saturday Night Life.

Every time they're like cracking down on profanity, every time they're cracking down on the big balls dance,

in my head, it's the church lady.

Tyrese Halliburton did the dance.

He will not pay a fine.

Damn right, he won't pay a fine.

Do it again, and you might pay a fine, young man.

Dare to do it again.

Do it again if you have a moment.

Do it again.

Anyway, continue.

Sorry.

The rivalry part of this is real.

Like, it doesn't matter that none of these players had anything to do with all of the wonderful moments in the 90s that you just took us down memory lane on.

It's memory banked.

It's in the DNA of New Yorkers and of Indianapolis.

No coast versus no coast.

City versus Midwest.

Hicks versus Nicks.

Was that the...

Everybody, by the way, as preparation for this series, your homework, everybody, is to go watch Dan Clores'

film.

God, what was the the documentary?

I can't remember the name now.

That was Reggie and Knicks.

It was on Reggie and Spike.

Yes.

Incredible.

That should be everybody's preparation, including mine, because it's been too long since I've seen it and I've forgotten too much of it.

It was awesome.

That was me for the non-YouTube people, it's me doing Reggie doing the choke sign at Spike League.

Tyrese Halliburton, I looked up my story from the elimination game last year.

Tyrese Halliburton Burton wore that on a t-shirt to his post-game interview after the Pacers Pacers eliminated the Knicks last spring.

So that was phenomenal.

You got to give it to Tyrese Halliburton.

He's a big pro wrestling fan, and he brings that to the NBA, and he does not care.

Like he wears that shirt, and now he's going to see this again.

There was the whole, was it Zerbiak?

Who went at him and called him a fake all-star on NBA?

MS Joseph.

Nick's employee, Wally Zerbiak, called him a fake all-star, which he later apologized for.

I think that was

apologized.

No, don't apologize.

He turned it Wally Zerbiak.

You said what you said.

And then we've got the athletic poll that called him overrated.

Although our friend Rachel Nichols did a nice job of breaking down the math there, I think she determined that it was like nine players determined that he was the most overrated.

Because if you took the number of players they actually got for the poll and then use the percentages that they listed,

it's a really small number that actually called it that, but he ends up a headline.

He did the dame time in Damian Lillard's face.

Which is a lot on himself.

If there's a player that I'm not super pumped to antagonize in big moments, it's Damian Lillard, the guy who's made two walk-off series-winning shots.

But the cool thing about it is he does it.

And if it gets blown back in his face, he's completely fine with that.

He knows the risks.

He knows the embarrassment factor.

And he does it anyway because it lights a fire under him, under his teammates, and it's awesome theater.

And he doesn't get testy about it when he's then asked about it or when he's called out on it, right?

Like that's the thing.

He definitely will just own it.

He's having fun with it.

Uh, are we going to see him hit a big three and then like do this?

Is he going to taunt Brunson?

I don't know.

I don't.

I hope he taunts everyone.

I hope he taunts freaking Chalamay.

I hope he goes after the whole, like, the whole thing.

I hope he taunts all of them.

Tracy Morgan is there a good Tracy Morgan taunt?

I mean, I don't want to taunt Tracy Morgan.

He's a beloved NYC institution.

But, you know, Stiller, get Stiller.

Oh, no, leave Stiller out of it.

Do not go after my guy Ben Stiller.

That's I that's where I draw the line.

The

friend of the real ones, Ben Stiller.

This is New York.

Fat Joe is fair game.

Like, go at him.

Jerry Ferrara, Turtle?

They're also like the Knicks over the last couple of years have done this thing where they're bringing back like everybody, like Marberry's at every game, Spray Rolls at every game, Tim Thomas at every game, Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson.

Like, if

you spent five, when's Chris Dudley coming back?

Like, they've brought back just about everybody.

Okay.

I love everything about this series.

I love that we saw it last year.

And one of the things I think we learned from last year

is,

and now, again, you can spin this any way you want.

Jalen Brunson did not seem bothered by Andrew Nemhart's defense.

And Andrew Nemhardt is an elite defensive player, but he's kind of profiled the guy that Brunson is not bothered by.

Brunson's stronger than he is and can move him around.

And mid-series, they shifted Aaron Neesmith onto Jalen Brunson and putting Nemhard somewhere else.

I expect that to be the de facto matchup, Neesmith on Brunson.

To me, what's really interesting about this series is we have two

very good, one the best in the whole league, pick-and-pop centers, Towns and Miles Turner.

And neither of these teams has of yet

really

in any sustained way experimented with the kind of inverting of the matchups that the Celtics just did to Carl Anthony Towns, where you put your big center on, if you're the Pacers, you put Miles Turner on Josh Hart and you put someone else on Towns.

Now, if that's Neesmith, that means someone else has to guard Brunson, and that someone else is going to be Nemhard, and we've seen how that's gone.

If it's Siakam, that means someone else has to guard OG Ananobi, which you're probably okay with putting a smaller guy on OG Ananobi.

We have not seen the Pacers do that almost hardly at all.

And on the flip side,

We have not seen the Knicks do that with Towns at all.

They have guarded Miles Turner with Towns, and they have done done so semi-traditional pick and roll coverage.

Sometimes drop and risk a Miles Turner open three.

Sometimes come up to touch and like up to the level of the screen and pray that Carl Anthony Towns doesn't trip over his own feet and can help and recover without a crisis.

And while you do that, if Miles Turner is open, well, someone's got to fly off of Josh Hart.

Carl Towns is open, rather.

Someone has to fly.

No, Miles Turner is open.

Someone has to fly off, you know, Josh Hart and cloud Miles Turner's line of vision.

And then Tyrese Halliburton can pick that apart.

We've seen all kinds of defenses.

I suspect in this series, that is going to change.

That one of these teams, if not both of them, are going to sell out to stop Towns shooting threes and Turner shooting threes.

That the Pacers will, at times, much more than they have, mimic what the Celtics and many other teams have done and put Miles Turner on Josh Hart and put someone else on Carl Anthony Towns.

And I suspect that even the Knicks, the stodgy, stubborn, Fibsy Knicks who adapted last round by switching a ton more than ever, more than anyone could have expected against Boston, are going to do either that, their version of that.

And I don't know what their version of that is because one edge the Pacers have in this series is I think it's easier for them to move Turner around onto heart than it is for the Knicks to move Towns around.

Like, who's Towns guarding?

Aaron Niesmith?

You want to risk Aaron Niesmith picking pop threes?

Maybe.

Siakam, that might be the easy answer.

But then I'm going right to the Halliburton-Siakam two-man game, which might be just as dangerous as the Halliburton-Turner two-man game and seeing how you do that.

Or they will actually try to switch towns a little bit more than you would expect onto Halliburton and see if Halliburton, if and when Halliburton can punish him with step back threes, try to make Halliburton a driver.

The Knicks have...

have really kind of wanted to make him drive, prod into the lane, make him take floaters, make him go all the way to the rim.

He wants to pass.

He wants to shoot threes.

Something is going to give on both sides of the ball where I think both teams are going to be dragged out of their defensive comfort zones,

if not very quickly, then at some point in the middle of the series.

And that's pivot point number one.

And everything else kind of flows from there.

You know, the Knicks weren't the greatest defensive team for most of the season, the regular season, and they have found another gear in the playoffs.

And some of that, I think, has just been, you know, the teams that they have faced, right?

Obviously, the Celtics are elite.

The Pistons,

not so much.

But I think, you know, as I was going over things

yesterday, something that struck me with regard to the matchups so far, I don't think the Knicks defense has truly been tested to the limit.

You would think they would have been by the Celtics, but the Celtics really got bogged down in their three-point shooting and ISO ball and stalled themselves out to an extent.

I give the Knicks plenty of credit for creating the dynamics for that.

But the Celtics, not a big ball movement team.

Pistons, certainly not.

Pacers,

Pacers are averaging 337 passes a game in the playoffs.

That's number one.

in the league, in the playoffs.

They're averaging nearly 30 assists per game in the playoffs.

That's number one.

The Pistons and Celtics were two of the lowest in the league in the postseason in passes per game.

The Knicks, by the way, also among the lowest, 253 passes per game.

And the Pacers also lead the playoffs, as you would expect, in points off of assists.

They're generating over 76 points a game off of assists.

The Pacers, one of the things I love about them over the last couple of years is, you know,

They don't profile like a big powerhouse team in part because like Halliburton's numbers don't just pop off the the page.

And Siakam's always been like a really good, you know, second wheel in Toronto and Indianapolis.

But these aren't your prototypical superstars or, you know, perennial All NBA.

I think Halliburton's probably going to, I assume we're going to hear all NBA this week too.

MVP and all NBA are the things we're still waiting on, right?

All rookie teams, maybe.

So I think Halliburton will make all NBA for the first time, but these guys do not strike you as your prototypical, dominant, crush-you superstars who are just going to go out and drop 30, 35 35 on your head every night.

I think part of that's the way that those two guys are wired.

And I think part of that is just by design.

This Pacers team is just a really selfless, fun ball movement kind of team.

And I think that's going to test the Knicks defense in ways that they haven't been yet over the last six, seven weeks.

Has it been six, seven weeks?

Whatever it's been, a month?

They're going to get tested.

They're going to have to defend more actions.

They're going to have to adjust more on the fly.

Maybe not the highest individual offensive threats that they'll have faced, but collectively, I think this is a bigger challenge for them.

What's happened with the Pacers is this kind of basketball magic where,

and I don't want to give all the credit to Halliburton because this is a team full of selfless, smart,

just kinetic players, guys who like to pass and move and cut.

But it all starts with Halliburton.

It doesn't matter if you like to pass and move and cut if your alpha dog does not play a style that meshes with that.

If you switch on the pacers, Halliburton is not just going to sit there and dilly-dally with the ball.

Sometimes he will because he wants to get Kat off balance and jack a step back three.

And he did that to Jared Allen a few times when Cleveland switched.

But he's just as liable to give it up immediately and cut somewhere else, give and go, force Kat to move around.

And then everyone else, that style has sort of been imbued throughout the roster.

And there's just an unpredictability to them that is the antithesis of how the Celtics played against New York switching defense.

And it's really hard to guard.

I mentioned before that if they have Kat on Miles Turner and they run that Halliburton-Turner pick and pop, which is just lethal, and Turner's open on the pop and they send a third guy.

a third rotator over to sort of contest Miles Turner on the catch, Tyrese Halliburton, I think, is the best guy in the league, the best, period,

at seeing that rotation, baiting it, anticipating it before it even happens, and skipping the ball to the guy who becomes open when you make that rotation of Miles Turner.

He's just so smart and so selfless that the simple stuff he will pick apart.

And I think that's an edge for the Pacers.

And they're also very deep and very healthy.

The Knicks are healthy, not as deep.

And you wonder, at some point, does the bill come due for all the minutes that these guys have played?

Brunson's had a couple of ankle things flare up in the playoffs.

I think that chess match offensively with the pick and pop centers

is super interesting.

And also, just like on a fundamental level,

a lot of this will be the Pacers are going to hunt Brunson when they have the ball.

And the Knicks are going to hunt Halliburton when they have the ball.

And there are all sorts of creative ways where they can do that.

And, you know, Halliburton has made some big defensive plays in the playoffs in both series and kind of stood up a little better than he typically has when teams have gone at him that way.

And Brunson stood up to the Celtics for the most part when the Knicks finally were like, hey, you know what?

We're just going to switch you on to Tatum and Brown and see what happens.

And nothing much bad really happened.

And so I think that...

is an interesting little chess match.

And just there's the Mitchell Robinson factor.

Mitchell Robinson has completely changed the playoffs playoffs for the Knicks.

And if there is a

weakness is too strong of a word, the Pacers are not a good rebounding team.

Some of that is by choice.

They don't get offensive rebounds.

They want to get back on defense at all costs.

But they can be out-physicaled by a mean, nasty team.

And Mitchell Robinson is mean and nasty.

And Carl Towns.

I think he can get some post-up momentum against Turner.

And I think if you put a smaller guy on him, he's proven that he can get a little traction there too.

I think the physicality element with Mitchell Robinson is a big, big one.

And I guess we got to watch for a hack of Mitch.

The Pacers are deep enough where they can do that.

Do you risk getting in the bonus?

We saw all this, but like, if he continues to not make free throws, we're going to see this, I think.

Oh, for sure.

I think

I'm very curious to see.

both the matchups against Towns and then how Towns responds.

I mean, he did, there were moments where it looked like Towns couldn't handle like the, you know, Tobias Harris on him, you know, smaller-ish

matchup in the first round.

Um,

Towns' shooting efficiency, both from three and from two, are down markedly from the regular season.

His assists are down.

I think Towns has quietly had like just a solid, but not spectacular.

And to your point, he lit the Pacers up in the regular season precisely because the Pacers played traditional defense against him.

And I don't know, we'll see some of that, but I think we'll see less of it in this series.

Yeah.

I mean, this is his moment, right?

Like, this is the point of the exercise

for the Knicks.

You like, there were a lot of things that went into the deal for Towns, not least of which is that they had lost Hartenstein.

They just, and Mitchell Robinson, they knew they were going to be without for months, as they were, and they didn't know what he'd be like when he came back.

They needed

a center.

They needed somebody to fill in the gap.

The opportunity was there.

And Towns is a more skilled player than Julius Randle.

Like all of that, fine.

It doesn't really matter what the rationale was.

Now is the moment.

And this time last year, we were talking a lot about like, okay, like Towns is on this stage for the first time in Minnesota.

Well,

different stage in New York.

I think

he's really had a nice season.

Knicks fans are behind him.

This series is going to

test him again.

I don't want to keep going back to the referendum word, but like

this is the point of the exercise this is why you went out and got him to be a little bit more dynamic to give uh

um jalen brunson um

and an outlet a co-star somebody else who can who can carry the load at times there's nobody else really i think there's nobody else on this roster who's really going to initiate offense and you mentioned it like you know tibbs's rotation is is uh you know barely six more than enough to win

more than the game will tell you what to do

He actually smiled the other night after they finished off the Celtics.

He actually made a joke.

Dude, he's a man about town now.

He's a freaking legend.

The Knicks are in the conference finals for the first time in 25 years.

Tibbs is a legend now.

He's a made man.

He's a man about town.

Build the statue now.

Build the statue now.

No, I mean, listen, like, the Tibbs era, no matter what happens next, is already an incredible success.

Despite the fact that at any given moment, there's about like a 40%,

50% even faction of Knicks fans that are ready to throw Tibbs overboard for, like, I mean, you could hear the hand ringing from a mile away the other night where they're up by 30 or whatever in the fourth quarter, and the starters are all still in.

It drives Knicks fans crazy, but I mean, you can't argue with the results.

I do, I agree with you in the large principle here, which is that we know at some point, physics and physiology do matter.

Minutes overall do matter.

Fatigue is a thing.

Fatigue can lead to soft tissue injuries.

Like

you use the phrases of Bill, come, do

this.

Is a series where,

you know, that's, I think that's looming.

Jalen Brunson has turned that same ankle, I think, 15 times just since the playoffs began, by the way.

And it never seems to affect him.

It's always this moment where it's like, oh my gosh, is he okay?

Is he going to be able to,

he disappears.

He comes back with like a different pair of shoes on and then like, you know, makes his next seven shots in a row.

But

I do think this is

that moment where you wonder about their resilience or their physical ability to continue.

I want to talk about Siakam real fast because

I feel like he gets glossed over a lot in talking about the Pacers, in part because there are games where he

really feels like a fill-in-the-blanks guy, where he just kind of finds offense.

He finds spots to seal smaller guys under the basket randomly and transition.

He fills every gap on defense, all that.

I think he's got to be a major player, and intentionality has to be put into making him a massive part of their offense for the Pacers to win this series.

I suspect Ananobi will be guarding him a lot, and that's a good matchup for the Knicks.

He's not going to be able to hurt Ananobi much in the post, even as crafty as he is.

But if Towns is on him, that unlocks a lot of stuff for their pick and roll attack.

Even when Ananobi is on him, Mikhail Bridges is going to guard Halliburton.

He'll get the primary assignment on Halliburton.

Can you dabble in a little bit of still

inverted pick and rolls?

Halliburton, Siakam, Siakam, Halliburton, and see: can Pascal hurt Bridges on switches a little bit?

If Brunson is stuck on Halliburton, if there's some random cross match where that happens, Halliburton can ISO Brunson, or you can bring Siakam into the play and have him sort of be a switch guy and attack Brunson on switches.

I just think he's got to be a major intentional part of their offense.

And that, and part of that is like the more confusing you can make the pick and roll for towns, the better chance you have of nudging him into a mistake.

Screen the screener, staggered screens.

And Tyrese is a master at like faking toward a pick and rejecting it and going the other way.

And like Kat takes the bait on a lot of that stuff and lurches like totally off kilter, way out of the play.

I think this is an

awesome series.

It's time for me to make a pick.

Well, do you want to make a pick first or no?

I am so on the fence on this one.

This is a true toss-up series.

I absolutely could see the Pacers winning this series.

As we established earlier, they are not afraid of any venue, any stage.

They can win on the road.

They can beat the Knicks at the garden.

The Knicks are in such a great groove right now, and they just knocked out the defending champions for God's sake.

Like,

it's hard to bet against them.

This series should go seven

by everything that is right in the world, it should go seven.

And if it goes down to the final seconds of game seven or even an overtime game seven,

it would be absolutely

appropriate.

Like that's they're that close.

Knicks seven,

I think

I could see the Pacers winning it, but I just, I, you gotta, if you got, if I have to, if I have to pick, I'll just lean toward the team with the home court advantage.

I'm going with the Knicks.

Nicks and seven.

Is this to make it up to your

grade school chums who you were taunting about Ewing missing the finger?

Forget that.

Forget that.

Is this just decades of pent-up guilt, Zach?

I think this is what's happening.

I don't live glory days like Bruce Springsteen and his friends.

I've moved on in my life.

Okay.

I don't know what any of those people are doing.

Yo, Bruce has caught enough strays in the last few days.

I don't think you need to be bringing him into this.

Okay.

I made the case for the Pacers.

It's easy to make the case for the Pacers.

Yep.

They're awesome.

They've been better than the Knicks in the playoffs.

Period.

Maybe against not quite as good competition, but even that is arguable, given, again, that Cleveland had all their guys available for all but one game.

64-win team.

They got a lot of answers.

Miles Turner has become just such a splendid all-around player that he's been able to hurt every kind of defense they throw at him, put small guys on him.

He posts up and he's efficient there.

They're just really hard to play against, and they're really hard to guard.

They've been better than the Knicks in the playoffs, they're deeper than the Knicks, they're healthier than the Knicks, they're faster than the Knicks.

There's just something about the physicality and toughness of New York with Robinson back in particular that I just in my gut keep coming back to.

I could just,

I could see them sneaking this series out in seven on pure physicality, toughness, relentlessness.

They're just a bigger, stronger team than the Pacers, and I don't necessarily think that's going to win out, but that plus home court, plus, I think, a friendlier environment for towns in this series.

Obviously, we talked about all the schematic adjustments that can be made and all that.

I think,

like, New York's offense has not been very good in the playoffs, and that's worrisome to me.

And that's a reason to pick Indiana.

I think that's a lot about the opposition that they've faced.

And I think they will be able to score more efficiently against the Pacers than they have against the Celtics or the Pistons.

I'm going Knicks and seven.

Something about their physicality and ability to just sort of wear you down at every position appeals to me in this series.

And the glass is a factor there too.

I have no clue.

I told you I was going to make a pick on the spot.

My gut keeps saying Nixon 7, Nixon 7, Nixon 7.

And so I'm going to say Nixon 7.

Okay.

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Boston, we've had now a week to digest the Jason Tatum injury.

and the Celtic subsequent elimination at the hands of the Knicks and just a total bullet race in game six and MSG.

You wanted to talk about this topic, so I'll just cede the floor to you.

What's interesting to you?

I'm just utterly fascinated, Zach, by this.

We're going to talk ad nauseum for the next several weeks about seven champions in seven years and this age of parody in the NBA.

All right, cool, fine.

There's all kinds of things that have happened to all these champions, but nobody's been in this position.

The Celtics have the most fascinating situation in the entire league right now, and maybe the most complex set of decisions and just big picture than certainly any other of the defending champs in recent years, right?

Like the Warriors in 2019, like you're, there's no decisions to make.

Durant is leaving and he tore his Achilles and Klay is out, and you're just, you just got to like weather the storm for a little bit and hope to get it back.

The Lakers in 2020

decided to turn over their entire supporting cast for reasons we'll never understand.

They never recovered.

The Bucs in 2021.

Well, they did recover.

They have Luca now.

Okay, fair.

Didn't recover up until now.

Maybe they'll recover.

Unbelievable.

Still unbelievable.

The Bucs win it in 2021.

Supporting cast around Giannis just erodes.

They've never recovered.

It's hard to.

The sun's done since that finals.

Warriors in 2022, Outlier Championship haven't come close since, but amazing that they got back.

Nuggets in 2023, we talked about undone by free agency, by new rules, everything else.

And now the Celtics,

they might not have gotten back anyway.

Whether Tatum goes down or not, they were probably losing that game.

Who knows?

Maybe they would have come back in the series.

But

they already were facing this $500 million

bill, this combination of payroll and luxury taxes, and then all the second apron shit that comes with it, and an ownership change, and questions about whether or not the new owners would be as committed as what Grossbeck's Group has been.

And he'll still be in charge for a bit.

But how committed were they?

Well, now, you know, you win a championship.

You go back to back.

Fuck it.

We're keeping everybody.

You lose in the second round and your best player is now almost certainly missing all of next season.

It's a different set of variables, of decision points, of considerations than you could possibly have imagined in your worst nightmares.

And

I think long-term, you want Tatum and Brown to be together, right?

Whenever Tatum comes back, you want Jalen Brown there, almost certainly.

And Jalen Brown was awesome in extending this series and not so awesome in the elimination game.

And I can see by the look on your face, you're already questioning whether or not.

But yeah,

what are they next season?

If you brought back just, you know, the key is, is Derek White, awesome third guy, fourth guy, whatever.

Can Derek White be your co-star to Jalen Brown for a season?

We've got this weird mystery illness thing with poor Zingis, who just,

he's,

he, like, it was it was interesting listening to him post-game the other night.

Like he just he's absolutely like baffled and troubled by this and he just didn't have any energy.

Um

what are they?

What are and not what are they next season?

What are they a year and a half from now?

And the decisions they have to make both financially and in terms of personnel and then trying to create something sustainable, presumably around Tatum, presumably around Tatum and Brown.

But question mark, I just think it's absolutely fascinating.

I don't like Zach, I do not think we've we've ever seen a situation quite like this.

It's unique

in a lot of awful ways,

but not only because of Tatum.

It is the financial pressures that they're facing as well.

People will comp it to

the Spurs in the Duncan year and the Warriors in the Wiseman year.

And those are not, those are

like interesting comps, but the Celtics have knowledge going in that next year is going to be, in terms of championship contention, a totally lost season.

Knowledge that those teams did not have at this time in the calendar.

The question is, and to your point, Tatum knowing that now

gives them, in a bizarre sense, a certain freedom that they would not have had had they made the finals or won the championship.

And the question they just have to ask themselves is very simple: like

in 2026, 2027, and 2027, 2028, is Jason Tatum coming off an Achilles injury?

And I have no reason not to be optimistic that he's going to be Jason Tatum again.

Is Jason Tatum at 28, whatever,

Jalen Brown at 30, Derek White at 32,

Peyton Pritchard,

and whatever else is here?

Is that nucleus two years from now

with good management around it good enough to win an NBA championship?

If you think it is, your path is very, very simple.

It's keep all those guys, see what you can get for Drew Holiday, who has $32, $35, and $37 million left on his deal and is 34 years old.

And Christoph's Porzingis on an expiring contract.

Maybe you get something.

Maybe you don't get much.

Like, do you like Porzingis?

I don't even know if, like, do I have to attach something to get off Porzingis, even on an expiring?

Do I have to take back long-term salary?

And if so, it better damn well be linked to someone or some ones

that I think are good.

And at least one of the some ones, if it's two or three players, can help my team in 2027, 2028.

If you don't think the answer to that question is yes,

I think it opens a lot of doors.

And

door number one is you trade those guys and you get what you can get.

I don't think you're going to get much.

I certainly don't think you're going to get much that changes your long-term outlook.

Maybe Drew has more trade value than I think.

He's still a winning player, but the aging curve is hit hard now.

The question then becomes like, if you trade one of Derrick White and Jalen Brown,

does that get you enough stuff?

Okay, let me go back.

If the answer is no, you don't think that's a championship level nucleus in two years, or you're dubious that it is, how do you get one?

And one way to get one is

trade one or both of Derrick White and Jalen Brown for a bonanza.

All the picks you can get and salary relief that sort of resets your repeater tax clock, resets your cap sheet, resets everything.

And I'm talking like, if I can get four firsts,

I think Jalen Brown would have a market, maybe a little more limited than Derrick White's because of his contract.

And Derrick White is just usable on every team, but he would have, there would be strong offers for Jalen Brown

from a few places.

Derrick White, there would be strong offers from like all over the league.

Yes.

You combine those two, you get

seven first-round picks, four swaps, one or two good young players, and you go to Tatum and you say, Hey, look, we can pull up a Ray Allen KG 2.0.

We'll have the most cap flexibility in the league.

We'll have a ton of assets.

By that point, Houston will have maybe cashed in on some of its assets.

Maybe Brooklyn has two.

Maybe those cash-in deals, other players shake loose from that, and we sit in the cat bird seat.

Maybe Jason Tatum says, I don't want to do that.

I love these guys.

Don't trade them.

Maybe he understands.

Maybe his opinion isn't material to you.

That scenario is there.

It's sitting there.

And it's a scenario where, like, people say gap year and they think tank, right?

And tanking would be a part of that.

But the key point to get in this scenario is that you are not doing any of this with an eye on the number one pick in the 2026 draft.

Like we have just seen that you cannot plan your franchise's future on getting the number one or number two pick in any draft.

You're doing it to accumulate the assets and reset your cap sheet.

And if you get a great pick in doing so, that's a nice happy bonus.

Then you have to hit on the other end of that and you have to hit immediately the way the Celtics Celtics hit with Allen and KG.

And that's very hard to do, but doable.

And maybe worth the risk if you think the answer to my overarching question is no, that's not going to be a championship nucleus anymore in two or three years without major luck and improvement.

Then the question becomes.

Can you trade one and keep one and try to thread the needle of getting a lot of assets for one and still having either white or brown?

Let's posit, I don't know, I don't even want to posit which one on board for when Tatum comes back.

Or does that scenario just leave you short on both ends of the path?

Is it straddling two paths and really being on neither?

Does it leave you,

yeah, we got a few more assets, but not enough for a game-changing move?

And yeah, we got a lot of talent still on the roster, but not enough proven talent still on the roster.

I don't know the answers to those questions, but if I'm the Celtics,

all of those things have to be discussed, all of them.

I can't be precious about Jalen Brown.

I can't be precious about Derek White.

I can't be precious about any of it because, as you said, this is a borderline, unprecedented scenario.

That

I'm not suggesting either path.

I actually think the status quo is the most likely path, given Brad Stevens' general mindset, given that a new owner, I don't think, wants to walk in there and be like, hey, your beloved players are going out the door.

Sorry, Jason Tatum.

Sorry, fans.

But I think you have to have all of these discussions, including like Jalen Brown.

What's the the market?

Where do we go?

Is there a path?

I think nothing should be off limits.

Nothing.

No, you, at a moment like this,

in part, you have the luxury of being able to have these conversations.

And even the luxury, I would say, I know, like, it always looks terrible, new owner, old owner, anybody, when you blow up or start picking apart a championship roster, a recent championship.

But you have

the benefit now, if I can even call it that, of everybody knows next season is basically lost, right?

Like, I don't know.

Like, you run it back with everybody but Jason Tatum, who's hurt.

I don't even know what the Celtics are next season.

Like, they're a playoff team, but how good of a playoff team is that?

People say that.

People say that, and I'm like, are you sure that they're a playoff team?

Yeah, they looked great in winning a game.

Yeah, they were plus 8.7 with Tatum.

But that plus 8.7 number that's going around, that's your number with your full roster.

Not having them.

But I'm just saying, like, so by playoff team, okay, Cleveland's still here, Knicks still here, Pacers still here, Pistons rising, Magic rising, Hawks and Bulls are throwing a freaking party that the East has gotten even worse around their mediocre asses.

Philly, who the hell knows?

Milwaukee, who the hell knows?

I'm just saying, it's like

they could be a play-in team for sure.

And once you're a play-in team, I don't know that you just pencil in like, well, they're tough.

They're veterans, you know, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not penciling them as a top five, but somewhere in that six, seven, eight range, maybe through the play-in,

sure.

Given good health and some luck, they're at least that.

I'll give them that much respect.

But to your point, and I think the way you framed it is the right way.

You have to look out a couple years.

What are their ages then?

What are their salaries then?

What's the cap sheet look like then?

Because nothing matters.

Next season,

at best, you're a playoff team.

and not going very far.

So it's not about next season.

It is about the following season and beyond.

Once Tatum is back and fully healthy and recovered from his Achilles, what do you want to be then?

What is your potential then?

What does your cap sheet look like then?

And

I think that that means everything is on the table, including Jalen Brown, for sure.

Like those conversations have to happen.

And Brad Stevens, Mike Zero, and that whole front office, super smart.

They've made great moves in Brad's time as GM or president or whatever title he's got.

I think

they will make smart decisions here, but these are going to be incredibly difficult and complex decisions because again, you are not moving on a year-to-year basis right now.

You are trying to figure out what is the best version of this team that we could have around Jason Tatum starting in the fall of 2026, most likely, and beyond.

And I just think that that's fascinating and difficult and emotionally wrought because if you do decide that our best way forward is to just like completely tear this all down around him so that we've got the best possible version a year and a half from now.

And that might actually be the smartest way forward.

But that's not an easy thing to do.

It also depends what your goals are, right?

If you think that the most likely outcome of the status quo is you have a very good team, but maybe not a championship upside and you're okay with that, that's fine.

Right, but you still have the financial element, which you still have to deal with regardless, right?

You don't want to be a $500 million payroll, even a $400 million payroll with taxes, if you've concluded we're just good and not championship caliber, right?

Sorry to interrupt.

No, it's just, it just sucks because Tatum is just an awesome player who plays all the time and is a beloved teammate.

He works his ass off.

He's an awesome all-around player.

And you don't want to be having this conversation and you don't want to be in this position, but it is like a thought exercise come to life now

in Boston.

I have no parting thoughts on this.

I'm just, I'm stoked for the conference finals.

I'm stoked that

we got some old school 90s rivalry and some new school, whatever, 2020s rivalry.

Any concluding thoughts, Mr.

Howard Beck?

No, loved your regaling us with all the lottery room stories from last week when you were on with Bill.

That was fantastic.

So glad you were there.

No,

I still, speaking of like, things I still can't believe happened.

I still can't believe that happened.

The Mavs trained to Luka Donchenson at the number one pick in the draft.

It's like unbelievable.

You can't make any of this up.

What a stupid, stupid league.

And I mean that in a borderline affectionate sense.

Of course.

It's all preposterous.

I guess my only other parting thought is

if the Knicks win this series and make it to the finals, I hope all of your grade school chums call to taunt you.

I hope they do too.

And if they do, whoever wants to come over from the Spotify Ringer family, the low house is open.

We got a swing set.

We got a grill.

We got alcohol in the fridge.

Like a lot of off nights in the finals.

Come out to the burbs.

You can walk around and talk to the gardening ladies and help me take the garbage out,

spot some deer, all of it.

Teach me about the suburbs, Zach.

I'll be there.

Howard Beck, thank you, sir.

Thanks to Jesse, Jonathan, and Mike producing the show today.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in on YouTube Live.

And we will see you on Thursday for our usual Thursday morning show.

talking about conference finals and God only knows what the hell will happen in the NBA between now and then.

So thank you, Howard.

See you everybody Thursday.

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