Cavs on the Ropes, Thunder and Nuggets Trade Blows, and Potential Giannis Trades With Rob Mahoney

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All right, coming up on a loaded Zach Lowe show, we got Rob Mahoney on the lottery.

The new Giannis News courtesy of ESPN.

Woo!

Thunder Nuggets developing into a classic Cavs Pacers.

Not so much.

All things playoffs.

Giannis lottery coming up with Rob Bahoney, the one and only on the Zach Lowe Show.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show.

It's Monday morning.

I'm in Chicago.

The lottery is tonight.

And the lottery got a whole lot interesting about 30 minutes ago when Sean Strania at ESPN dropped what really sounds like a Giannis trade request soft launch, reporting that he is open to considering a future that best fits him outside of Milwaukee.

Hasn't made any decisions yet.

Look, we've been down this road with Giannis before.

He's tiptoed to the edge twice at least and tiptoed right back when the Bucs made game-changing trades for Drew Holiday and then Damian Lillard.

The difference now, as we have talked about before, Rob Mahoney, is that I don't see

a game-changing trade that exists now that Dame has sadly torn his Achilles and is almost 35 years old.

Rob Mahoney, waking up early on the West Coast to join us.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

I'm just happy for you, Zach.

You know, really, whatever icebreakers you had planned for the lottery room, you can throw them in the trash.

You know, you get your easy material right here, asking anyone and everybody about Giannis and his future and what's going to happen here.

And I think what makes it exciting is that it's anybody's guest.

Yeah, it's going to be Giannis talk over turkey sandwiches and a little bit of pasta salad maybe they bring in there sometimes.

It's not a terrible spread.

There would be coffee.

If you want coffee at 6 p.m., you can have some coffee.

Then we'll all watch together as someone gets their heart broken on live television and someone is elated.

Look, we talked about this after the dame injury two weeks ago, exactly.

And

it's just a matter of Giannis and the Bucks, the Bucks and Giannis, whatever order it happens in,

just

both coming to grips with the fact that it's over.

He cannot win big,

big, big in the near to medium-term future with the Milwaukee Bucks.

And the only question that matters is: does he care?

If he cares, do the Bucks care?

They surely see the writing on the wall.

They surely know in some part of their soul what would be ideal for their long-term situation, even though it's going to be tricky to get any of their own picks back and thus tricky to tank in a time when they should tank.

Even if they trade Giannis, that's going to be tricky.

And then there's just a conversation to be had.

Do we care?

Do you care?

Are you okay with with this?

Am I okay with that?

Do I demand this?

Do I demand that?

This is a pretty big trickle out there that we are heading in that direction.

It's lottery day.

The lottery could, you know, it's going to be interesting.

Like, does Houston move in to the top four?

They have the Phoenix pick.

Do the Spurs move into the top four or just keep their two picks?

They have their own pick and Atlantis pick.

Would they dare dip their toe into the Giannis waters?

Who the hell knows what else could happen?

But the lottery could infringe on this as well.

I mean, I don't know.

I was going to ask you just first reaction.

I'm guessing your first reaction is like, okay, this is like totally tracks with the NBA offseason calendar.

Like big news event happening today, Cooper Flag lottery,

a really pretty strong top 5-6 in the draft.

Big news semi-scoop moving the football a little bit down the field.

And now we all talk about it.

None of it is shocking, right?

It's not shocking.

I will say this one does feel materially different from those last times that Giannis has sort of walked to the precipice a little bit and as you said, ultimately walked back.

Like this feels, because of the lack of alternatives for the Bucks, like Giannis ringing the bell for the opening of the market a little bit, of willingness to at least explore these other possibilities.

This isn't like fully Giannis and the Bucs mutually agree to part ways, but it's maybe as close to something like that as we're going to get.

And I think it is meaningful in that way, right?

This is an honest invitation to the rest of the league to say,

let's talk about this.

Let's think about what these best situations could be.

Because Giannis is one of these players who has the same conundrum many superstars do, which is, but by the time you can get enough stuff together to trade for him, what will be left of your team?

And what will be left of the championship contention that he's so clearly after?

And we have to give our salute to Inshams' report.

I'm just so glad that Thanassis's podcast, Thanalysis, could get the official Giannis quote.

for such an occasion.

It's just an incredible idea.

I missed this.

I skimmed the bottom half of it.

What is the quote?

Well, what happened?

The only quote from Giannis in the story is from Thanasis's podcast, basically saying from Giannis, I want to compete for championships, et cetera, et cetera.

It's pretty boilerplate stuff, but you got to go straight to the source for these things.

When did that happen?

Is that an old podcast or is that like out today?

Is this all coordinated?

This is not a full media front.

I think it may be a couple weeks old at this point.

Well, props to Thanassis, who

up until now has just been talking shit to everybody from the first row in Milwaukee and annoying everybody and

exchanging some fun banter.

Well, you'd hit the nail on the head.

I mean, this is the dilemma for every team, right?

That every time a superstar gets traded, we talked about it with Durant.

Yep.

Is you got to go.

This is a win-now situation.

Like, yeah, cool.

Charlotte gets the number one pick and trades LaMelo ball in a million picks for Giannis.

Like, what the good is that doing Giannis?

Nothing.

So,

lottery or no lottery, I think we can like outline the general landscape of teams.

And by the way, not only does the lottery matter, the playoffs matter.

And you and I both are like absolutely salivating to talk about this delicious Thunder Nuggets series that is now 2-2.

And when it looked like the Thunder were reeling in the third quarter of that game before their bench guys bailed them out with zone threes, huge game for those guys.

We'll talk about it.

Please.

I started kind of just thinking, you know, playing in the podcast, like, if they lose this series, what doors does that suddenly open up for them with the biggest trove of assets in the league?

Now we kind of table that for a day because they got an absolutely enormous gut check road win.

But okay, just here are the teams.

Houston, they're in the lottery today.

We know they just lost in the first round.

They can talk about continuity all they want.

Giannis is Giannis.

Brooklyn, like Houston, Brooklyn has a million picks and a million picks that are on other teams too.

So Milwaukee can bet against as many teams as it can, which is their best case scenario if they can't get back any of their own picks.

Miami, I've said before, I I don't know that Miami has enough to realistically compete with these teams if they all get into it.

New York has been mentioned.

Talk about the playoffs mattering.

They are currently up 2-1 against the Celtics, who remembered how to shoot and run a functional NBA offense in game three.

Game four is tonight.

We'll talk about it later.

The Towns thing has been mentioned.

Unless there's like a three or four team trade, I don't really understand what the point of that is for Milwaukee, but whatever.

We'll mention the Knicks, orange and blue skies, et cetera, Celebrities Galore, Timothy Chalamay, the whole thing.

Lottery relevant, relevant, the Spurs, just throwing it out there.

Yep.

Wemby and Giannis on the same team.

I don't really understand what would happen.

I don't like if the space-time continuum would like break in two.

I don't know.

Oklahoma City, I mentioned.

Toronto has been mentioned.

They've been linked to Giannis before.

They were actually my

sneaky favorite like Durant theoretical team when the Durant trade request first broke just because of the Scotty Barnes piece of like if I'm if I'm the Nets, that was the one asset I was going to go try to get because I, Toronto at that point, still had their veteran guys.

And you could say, like, if they get Giannis plus Ananobi plus Siak and whatever, like, that could be a real team.

Give me Scotty Barnes on all the pick.

Who knows?

Do any of these strike your fancy at all?

Who would be most Giannis ready?

I mean, you could, you could sit here and nitpick like Giannis and Shangun, is that a great fit?

Giannis and Wembanyana, is that a great fit?

At some point, it's like, well, it is Giannis, and he is a two-time MVP.

His aging curve is going to be a little bit more uncertain than superstars superstars of his level because of his shaky jump shot.

But it's Giannis.

And like, sometimes you just have to say, we'll figure those questions out later.

For sure.

I mean, many of those teams strike my fancy because Giannis with any team is going to be really exciting to see.

There's two teams I have not seen mentioned much, and I'm curious to get your take on them, if they have any place in this conversation at all.

One of them is a new entrant based on current events.

If you're the Cleveland Cavaliers, do you have to have a talk about

Darius Garland?

About, and I say this knowing that this is invoking a curse that I don't want in my life, but do you have to have a conversation about Evan Mobley?

Like if you're looking at the timeline of your team and saying, all right, we have Donovan Mitchell.

We feel really good about what he's bringing to the table.

Ultimately, this season, if it unravels in similar fashions we've seen over the last 24 hours, do you have to have a conversation about that?

And similarly, in reference to current events, does John Morant get you anywhere in this conversation if you're the Memphis Grizzlies?

Is he appealing at all if you're in Milwaukee?

I've thought about Memphis because they're clearly at a crossroads, right?

They're at a crossroads in multiple different ways.

You know, the Jaron Jackson Jr.

extension is coming up.

Ja had an ant season by his standards.

They had an ant finish to the season, drama, coach fired, coach hired, all that stuff.

I just don't, that doesn't feel like a thing to me.

Giannis going to the Memphis Grizzlies doesn't feel like a thing to me.

Yeah, it's probably not.

I think I would like it to be a thing.

Like

if you can get a Giannis, Jaron Jackson, Desmond Bain core and that's a feasible thing that's realistic, that would be unbelievable.

But I think there's a reason you're not hearing these whispers out there literally anywhere, despite the fact that Memphis does have lots of stuff to trade.

Yeah, Memphis has most, if not all, of its picks and swaps and other swaps.

They've got one of the Phoenix split-its soul and 19-pieces swaps of swaps, of swaps,

the Beale swaps.

I thought about it.

And again, they could put together a real package.

It's just, is that what Milwaukee wants?

Cleveland is a great call.

And

I had thought about them in general terms because we're going to talk about that series later.

And it's already time to start talking about, is there a pivot here if this goes this way?

Because you can chalk it up to Garland's clearly not right with the toe.

Mitchell doesn't play the second half after limping off the floor.

DeAndre Hunter had the thumb injury, missed a game, and then just, you know, WWE shoved Benedict Mather into the floor, somehow didn't get ejected.

Great.

And then pointed to his head.

Like,

the weakest and lamest, like, I've outsmarted.

Like, I've done the Draymond where I'm playing chess.

By the way, we're down, like, 20 and we're about to be down 50.

But you go off, DeAndre Hunter.

I don't know.

We'll talk about them later.

That's good.

I don't, look, we're going to have all, well, at least a couple of months to do this.

We don't need to do the eulogy for the Bucs.

It sucks if this is where it ends up, but they got a title.

Titles live forever.

Whatever.

It's look, the lottery is in like seven, eight hours.

I'm excited for the lottery.

We're going going to learn more about the trade landscape there.

But yeah, I mean, like, again, he's tiptoed around this before.

Um,

he's had a say in coaches they've hired and then that they've then fired.

Um, he's, he's had a say in everything.

And we'll see, we'll see what happens.

I, I, I had a poll question.

Well, first of all, do you have any further thoughts on this before I hit you with my crazy question?

I think, you know, the Oklahoma City one, we're going to continue to revisit.

if that series spins out of control for the thunder in any meaningful way.

And I don't suspect that it will, but we're sitting kind of at the precipice of something else with them in this 2-2 series.

And, you know, Sam Pressy is not a reactionary sort of executive by any stretch of the imagination, but like any information that you get shapes the way you think about your team and shapes the way you think about its future.

And so I think the rest of how this Thunder Nuggets series evolves, not just do they win or do they lose, but how they win or how they lose.

That stuff is going to be really important.

And they have so much draft capital at their disposal.

Like there's, there's plausible Thunder deals that could be made that don't involve J.W.

or Chet somehow, you know,

with Isaiah Hardenschein's contract in there as well to kind of make the mechanics of it work.

And another team that owns picks from across the league.

Completely.

And like, I think that ultimately is such a huge part of this.

You mentioned it too.

Like, are you divested enough in terms of the draft capital you have to make it so that the Bucks are not betting against Giannis?

Because it's just not a smart bet historically.

We know, we've seen in the regular season, like his teams are going to pile up wins.

And if you're sending him to a team to compete for a championship, it's going to be even worse.

Well, and you need to bet against other teams.

There's also a scenario that several front office people have floated to me: like, say it is Oklahoma.

I don't know if whoever it is.

Say you get nine first-round picks and swaps.

Can you trade some of those to get your own picks back?

And the downside of that is the teams that have your picks, which is a conglomeration of like New Orleans, Portland, and Washington are sharing one.

They're split all over the place.

Those teams are going to extort you because they know exactly what you're doing and they have the leverage of controlling your ability to rebuild.

Yeah, Oklahoma City, we'll get to it.

But for me,

that question:

what are we going to learn about Oklahoma City in the next two, hopefully three games of the series?

Because we need seven of these.

Those questions to me swirl around Chet Holmgren.

That to me is the pivot point of the series for me.

But we'll get to that.

Okay, here was my crazy question for you.

Today's lottery day.

We're going to do a little fun lottery stuff.

I said to you, is there any team in the lottery that would have to consider trading the number one pick if they win it for Giannis?

Trading Cooper Flag for Giannis.

I leave it to you.

I think you threw the Spurs.

You have to talk about it.

They were on my, I had a couple, I had only two teams and they were one.

So make the case because I agree with, I mean, I think you, yeah, you got to sit down.

You got to have a meeting.

You got to have the meeting.

I think it's two things.

One, yes, I understand conceptually when your franchise player is as young as Wemby is, the idea of passing up on someone like Cooper Flag to pair with him for the next, I don't know, 20 years potentially, if you can keep those guys together, seems a little crazy.

But I think Giannis is among the best case front court pairings for Webb and Yama in the sense that he is such a downhill force and ultimately like plays with such will, driving and going to the basket in a way that takes some of the pressure off of Wemby to do a lot of those things.

And so you have potentially an amazing defensive pairing between the two, roving and covering from each other from all conceivable angles opens up all sorts of schematic possibilities for how you want to run your defense, but ultimately gives you the sort of perimeter and downhill orientation that you were grasping at by trading for De'Aaron Fox in the first place, but really would hammer home in the most emphatic way possible by trading for Giannis.

And ultimately, the point is like Victor Wemonyama right now is a top 10-ish player in the league.

And if you have a top 10-ish player in the league, you're accelerating, like, right?

The time to move forward is now, ultimately.

So I think they would have every reason in the world to at least get in the room, think about it, and figure out if some combination of a couple of Hawks picks and swaps that they own, plus their own stuff.

And I think they would probably have to hit some lottery luck, plus Stefan Castle and Devin Vessel or whoever would be like necessary to get that deal done.

If that's a plausible thing, then Milwaukee would be into.

I think absent lottery luck.

I mean, I don't know.

This doesn't seem like a Spurs thing to do.

Like trading the farm for for a 31-year-old with a shaky jump shot,

even if he's the second or third best player in the league.

Let's say a shaky long-range jump shot.

Yeah, his mid-range jumper is good to see.

Have some respect for mid-range Giannis.

I will.

I need another season of it to have really deep, deep respect, but I was sorry.

Look, he's better than mid-range Zach.

So, like,

who am I to talk?

Although my jumper is looking good lately.

I'm

playing a lot with my daughter.

It's looking pretty good.

Yeah.

It doesn't seem like a Spursy thing to do.

My initial sort of nudges have been met with, like,

it seems pretty hasty.

But you're right to think about Castle because I think that's the name that ends up being the centerpiece of any theoretical.

And boy, is this like wildly five steps ahead theoretical?

But like Visal is bye-bye.

The picks are bye-bye.

Whatever other salary you need to put in is bye-bye.

You want to hang on to Fox.

You want to hang on, obviously, to Wimbyama.

And then it just becomes, is Castle, you know, semi-expendable, whatever.

And that would be like, if you got Cooper Flag and Stephon Castle and whatever else for Giannis, like

you're in a great spot.

If you put the Nerf gun to my head right now, I'm saying the Spurs don't do it and they play the long game, but who knows?

The other team, well, my other team was

your beloved former hometown.

Dallas Mavericks.

Sure.

If they win the lottery, don't they have to?

You know, like we're already sort of, we're already sort of, you know, down this Kyrie.

Like, Kyrie's injury messes everything up, though.

You know, but you've really, you know, gone all in for this short window.

Well,

I mean, I think they would be suicidal to do something like that.

But if you're following, I mean,

they've already done something that I would consider

not necessarily in their best interest in a massive way.

I don't know, just throwing it out there.

It seems dumb to me.

But, you know, look, once you trade Luca, it's like, I don't know what, like, anything's possible.

For one, it nukes the market as far as expectations for like what a Giannis deal looks like.

I don't know, man.

Luca just got traded for a bunch of peanuts and Anthony Davis.

Like, it's crazy times we live in, ultimately.

Uh, this would have been great to know if you're the Mavericks that Giannis was eventually going to potentially be on the market.

That might be something you may have wanted to hold off for if you were going to trade your franchise player at some point.

Uh, but given that you did, the Mavericks cannot win this lottery.

Like, I just don't think the basketball gods can allow it.

Like, if you get here

by

a franchise-spiting trade and ultimately falling into the lottery because you bet on two guys who get hurt a lot and one of them, or both of them, it brings me no joy to say, got hurt.

By the way, did I see that the mayor of Dallas chimed in with an op-ed over the weekend or something like that?

I believe it was the former mayor, but you know, politicians out of the wood where everyone has a take.

It's unbelievable.

And he had like,

I saw snippets of it somewhere.

He had like stuff about in the era of three-point shooting and offensive efficiency.

I was like, okay, mayor guy go on you're bringing it let's talk shot diet um

i just don't think the mavericks can win this lottery i don't think they should win this lottery i just don't think it would be right given the way that the last couple months have been unfolded i say that with all all due apologies and respect to the mavs fans who have suffered as a result of it it's just like it can't lead to this would mavs fans even i mean they would be happy but would there would also be a part of them that like really you're gonna bail out this team in this front office like this basketball gods like they we we're happy like we're getting Cooper flag and whatever.

But, like, anyway, so that brings me to my next fun question before we get to the actual basketball games with the hoops and the nets and the players

that actually matter.

Who is the, okay, we talked about basketball gods and lottery gods.

Dallas, maybe you've already made your case.

I asked you, who is the least deserving

if deserves got anything to do with it, which it doesn't, who would make you the maddest if they won the lottery?

Is it Dallas?

Did you already answer the question?

I think Dallas would be my answer.

answer.

If I need an answer that's not Dallas, it's complicated because it's a team that is probably one of my favorite destinations, but also just like unquestionably not deserving of it.

And that's the Charlotte Hornets, who I think would be super fun with Cooper Flag.

But have they covered themselves in glory getting here?

Have they done the things as a franchise that you would want?

Like, okay, you acclimated yourself well to these situations.

You managed these assets leading up to this point in time.

You're a well-run, well-functioning team.

You know, maybe they've taken some baby steps in that direction over the last year, but I not nearly far enough.

And so like, they don't deserve Cooper flag.

Would I like to see it?

I'm a sicko and I would.

I have to admit it.

My, my candidates for the, I didn't think about Charlotte because it just feels like, man, they haven't won a playoff series.

What is it?

Since 2003?

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, boy, oh, boy.

Give them something.

You say that and I agree, but like, Sometimes you get into business with Miles Bridges and you just deserve what you get.

You know, like things happen.

uh my teams on that list were chicago who just should not be rewarded for trying to be 41 and 41 every year no

and i just i can't i can't deal the two craziest scenarios are san antonio for obvious reasons i can't deal with philadelphia i just i can't do it i can't do it it's too crazy like what's in bed's health status Paul George Podcast P is going to shoot up the rankings.

The last time you had the number one pick, you chose Markel Foltz.

It was like, well, maybe not the last.

I can't remember the order of Foltz Simmons, whatever.

Your number one picks have not gone well.

I just, now they are obviously the best subplot of the lottery because if they don't get into the top six, they lose their pick to Oklahoma City, another asset potentially in the Thunder's quiver.

So those are my least deserving.

Do you have a most deserving?

I think most deserving.

Or like most, just like, I would feel like a nice warm feeling in my belly.

I think Houston would be one as a a team that like has built a lot and cultivated a lot and and kind of gone for it in an aggressive way where they're spending money they're participating in the process they're investing in their future but they have yet to make that like big swinging move

i think and like cooper would be such a fascinating piece for them because he doesn't actually solve their sort of like

inherent flaw, right?

Like he doesn't bring them the half-court killer that they need necessarily, but he amplifies everything that they are in a way that would force you to reconsider the future of that team and reconsider the shape of that team.

I would love to see Houston rewarded for the way it's steered into having a hyper-aggressive defense, being a more professional outfit, like spending on veterans and creating like a different sort of path forward for teams like that.

We didn't bring up Houston in our, would you trade the number one pick for Giannis?

Is that because in my mind, they just have enough other stuff where you don't have to do that.

But

was that your thought process as well?

I mean, between all their young guys and all their other picks, like I'm holding on to that and trying to have my cake and eat it too, and then have an ice cream Sunday and every afterwards.

It's the full dessert bar situation.

I think you should go for that if you can get it.

And look, Giannis on the Spurs is no like more, like, no more gluttonous than that, ultimately.

Like, I feel greedy even suggesting that possibility.

But I think it's twofold with the Rockets.

One, yes, they have a lot of irons in the fire already, a lot of mouths to feed in terms of like good young developmental players.

I don't want to mess with too much unless it is the exact perfect fit.

And I think Giannis is a really good one because he's Giannis, but not as clean as a shooting option would be.

And then that's the other part of it is you either give up Ahmed Thompson in a deal like that, or you're playing Ahmed Thompson and Giannis together for serious minutes for the foreseeable future.

And that's like a little clunkier than what my big son is.

We've already gone totally against the green and made this double center tag team thing, Bash Brothers, a thing.

Let's just go, let's go like Giannis.

Adams, Shangoon, Thompson, Tari Eason, and just beat the hell out of everybody and get 9 million offensive rebounds.

Let's go.

Jabari Smith was born to be a shooting guard.

Like, let's just get him out there.

Let's run him through some curls.

I think we got something.

He can't really dribble, but can he play point guard on a team of just all centers and mean, whatever Ahmed Thompson is, mean people.

Okay, my most fun

would be Portland, just because I like the friskiness of the last two, three months of the season.

I like it.

Let's, you know, they're a great fan base.

Yeah.

Love the uniforms.

Just,

you know.

And I do say, I have to say, and this is going to make Utah fans mad because they're going to say, why not us?

There's a big part of me that's like, can we save the Wizards?

Can we just give the Wizards a nice thing?

Because they don't.

Jordan Poole isn't a nice thing.

He's a thing.

I mean, SAR, I thought, was fine.

Like, I'm higher on, I think SAR is going to be good.

If that's the grand prize of the great post-Bradley Beal tanking extravaganza,

I don't think that's going to be enough to get you where you want to be without just like A

asset management.

And by the way, whatever years later,

they killed the Bradley Beal deal.

I mean, it was a good deal for them right away.

And it was all swap-based and stuff.

And it was all, and obviously CP,

it has aged so well.

Like to have gotten anything,

let alone swaps that look valuable now is such a home run.

So I just...

That said, though, they also waited a year or two too late.

I'm talking about this new front office, the new regime who inherited this situation,

made a chicken salad out of you know what.

I don't know.

Just give the wizards something.

I think it's fair.

Like, look, I like some of the pieces there, not just Sarah.

Like, I'm a Keyshawn George guy.

I'm a Bilal Kulabali guy.

I would like to not have to be the person, you know, standing on the parapet yelling down below, like, look out for Bilal Kulabali.

It's just much easier self.

I'm like, hey, Cooper flag's coming.

You know, ultimately, it's just a more straightforward basketball pitch.

And

like, Lord knows the Wizards just need some of those.

George was solid.

I think Bub Carrington is going to be something.

Yeah.

You know, I like his defense.

We'll see what he becomes on offense.

He's got, he's got, certainly got a lot of popped to his offensive game.

Kulabali got off to an awesome start and sort of tailed off, but he showed enough signs where I'm like, okay, he's very young.

I'm interested.

So those are my teams.

Okay, enough lottery.

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We have officially won, and we'll see what happens with New York, Boston tonight, maybe two, potentially epic second-round playoff series.

And Thunder Nuggets has lived up to the hype.

The Thunder, after,

you know, look, you could argue they gagged away game one and game three of this series.

And to come back on 36 hours' notice

from an overtime loss when they were up by three with the ball and 45 seconds left in regulation,

Get out to a lead in Denver and then kind of begin unraveling with just

aimless offensive possessions.

Looked a little confused against Denver's zone.

Denver played 60 possessions of zone yesterday, according to Second Spectrum.

Their previous high for the season was 27.

So they're all in on zone, which actually kind of bizarrely makes me a little bit optimistic about the Thunder's chances because it feels like Denver has cycled through a lot of answers on defense.

The Thunder have seen all of them now and are are beginning to adapt.

And in particular, I mean,

almost to a fault, whenever Denver's in man-to-man defense, Shay's eyes light up.

Like, bring me Jokic on a pick and roll.

And it almost cost them late in game four when he went late yesterday, where he went way too early, twice in a row, missed the three.

It's like, dude, settle down.

You're up seven, you're up five, whatever you are.

Missed the three.

Chet Holmgren bailed that out with an offensive rebound around Jamal Murray, who is able to guard Chet Holmgren in in crunch time of game three and game four with minimal punishment other than that, and then almost had a turnover with like a minute 15 left in the game driving.

Anyway,

to get build the lead, kind of melt down, miss threes, turnovers, fall down by what did they go down by seven, eight at the most, something like that in the third quarter,

and then come back behind eight combined threes from Caruso, Wallace, and just massive Aaron Wiggins minutes, who's kind of been an iffy so far in this series, and hold the fort down the stretch in a game in which Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren combined for, I think, 18 points and didn't bring much to the table.

Lou Dort played 19 minutes and took 10 threes.

It's kind of like you're a little thirsty.

Like you're not that good of a shooter, Lou Dort.

Dial it back a little bit.

To come back and rally and hold on, that is just a massive gut check.

We are here.

Offense isn't going great.

We got some imperfections on our team.

Our secondary stars have been up and down.

Jalen Williams is awesome in game three.

Not so much in game four.

Chet has been a little iffy the entire series.

But you know what?

There's something just throwback about people who want defense and, oh, nobody plays defense in the modern NBA.

It's all offensive efficiency in threes.

The Thunder are like, look, defense travels.

Defense is an everygame thing.

The threes may not fall.

We are going to lock your ass down every single game and make every possession difficult for you.

They have a smart game plan.

That was maybe the first game of the playoffs where I felt like it's go time now.

Like we're into serious NBA playoff time.

That was an awesome win.

Completely awesome win.

And I think it's exactly the sort of information we're talking about.

When we're talking about like, how do the Thunder think about their future?

Do they believe in this core?

Do they believe in its ability to navigate these sorts of moments?

This is one of those moments.

You have to be able to get your way through these nervous, haggard sorts of games.

As you said, quick turnaround, often overtime game in game three.

The stakes are what they are.

You're feeling the tensions rise.

And I think after the fact, we talk about a lot of playoff results as if everything was concrete and everything was self-evident.

And it's almost never the case.

Like usually in a run, in a run like the one the Thunder are trying to go on, like the one great teams have gone on before.

Those are built on precarity.

Those are built on moments where everyone's kind of looking around the room and it feels like it could go either way.

You know, you have like Golden State versus Memphis in 2015, I think that was, like Milwaukee against Brooklyn.

These heat pacers back in the big three days.

Absolutely.

And like, those could have like huge implications for the build of the team.

Like that's part of going through the paces.

It's part of what this is all about.

And what you want to see is some growth and some evolution.

And you want to see like who's built for these moments and who's ready to come up with the like the massive, massive plays required.

And I think Shay was such an interesting pull and pull it push and pull in that way because as you said he he made some weird decisions down the stretch and he also hit some huge shots like I think he is indisputably a big-time shot maker and he is in the process of figuring out what it means to be a big time decision maker because it you know he's hitting those shots but he's the dribbling off his foot he's gnashing through the lane and killing the entire shot clock he wants he wants the kill shot so badly at the end of these games those threes were really emblematic of that it's it's hard to know.

He was, to your point, he was one for eight in the fourth quarter of game three.

Yeah.

Didn't take a shot in overtime.

Uh, I think it looked like he took a shot.

It was recorded as like a steal or something when you got stripped on the way up.

And he was struggling in the fourth quarter of game four.

And then he had three baskets in like a two and a half minute span from like the five minute mark to the two minute mark before he kind of got a little overeager again.

But those three baskets, it's just, it's, those are the shots that he's been making all year.

He's not getting nearly as many of the, you know, some might call it grifting, leaning, flailing foul calls that, like many, many players, he won't get as many

in the playoffs as he does in regular season.

But he made those shots and he needed those shots.

They needed him to make those shots.

And it's look, it's every Denver has very clearly said zone, man, whatever.

And sometimes they've switched up.

What's also fun about this series, and I know you love love this too, these teams are digging deep into the X's and O's game plan.

They're doing stuff for one possession randomly.

Like, okay, we're going to put, you know, Lou Dort on Jokic for one possession and just sort of confuse them and then go back to your base defense.

They are, it's, it's so, they're like in the deep, deep depths of the playbook.

Um,

but I don't, I forgot what I was going to say about that.

But anyway, it was like he made some big shots.

They need, oh, they're just, they're very clearly like, they're just not going to let Shay get easy shots, whether it's man, whether it's zone, wherever he is on the floor.

And I like him better in the middle of the floor than on the wing.

They're just flooding everything toward him and saying, you're just not going to get comfortable one-on-one step back shots unless, and he's found some early in the shot clock before they can set their defense.

But, but, like, we're just going to make you pass to all these other dudes who we don't believe in their three-point shot.

And

enough of the bench dudes came through, admittedly, against the zone, but they're making it really hard for Shay.

They're making it super hard.

I'm with you, though, that I'm feeling more optimistic coming out of this game about Oklahoma City's execution against that zone.

It's still a little sloppy sometimes.

It's not as clean as you would want.

And we should say it's not just a zone, but there's a zone that's that are, they'll bring two to the ball on Shay while playing zone and force the ball out of his hands and into that restaurant.

What defense is this?

Is it zone that now you're just a straight trap with kind of a zone behind it?

It just, it morphs.

It morphs.

It's really aggressive.

And I thought they broke some stuff open using Alex Caruso as a screener for that zone, which was very like Andre Robertson coded to me.

Like, let's bring our non-shooting wing up and get him in the action.

But that was able to, they were able to get Shea into the lane that way.

And I also know this, this wasn't the best J-Dub game by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact that they're not hard doubling J-Dub at the top of that zone in the way they are Shea allowed him to get into the paint and I thought make some interesting plays.

And so there's enough stuff for the Thunder to work with and enough guys who can hit shots and you would trust on a given night.

Some of them will, some of them won't.

Some of them are going to load Doordit and shoot their way out of the game.

Some of them are going to be like Kaysen Wallace in this game, who I thought was just fucking nails down the stretch.

Really, really important minutes, huge shots for a guy who, admittedly, I'm a huge Kaysen Wallace supporter, is still kind of finding his way into games like this and figuring out like where he fits and what he needs to be doing.

But they have enough good role players to cycle through to figure out who can play in this moment, who can fit against this zone on this night.

And I thought like Shay and Jay Dub both are showing some evolution and how they're attacking it shay's averaging 27 and a half a game in the series um

47 from the field four of 19 on threes a 29 to 6 assisted turnover ratio that's that's oklahoma city they're they are plus 20 or i guess minus 20 in turnovers they have 20 fewer

than denver crazy j-dub is averaging 19 a game on 37 shooting five of 24 on threes had a great game three yeah almost saved their asses i give him some leeway.

Let's talk about Chet.

My first podcast for Spotify the Ringer, I was a guest on the Bill Simmons podcast.

You may have heard of him.

And we did a draft of the 25 most intriguing players for the last 20 games plus playoffs of the season.

And I cheated right on pick number one.

I picked Jalen Williams and Chet Holmbren as one player because

they were not ready.

for the moment against Dallas in the second round last year.

And they're going to have to be ready because this Denver team is as tough as it gets.

Christian Brown and Aaron Gordon, it's just like one balls to the wall play after another.

Kudos to, and Jokic is Jokic, and Murray is Murray.

There was a stretch in this game where Denver's best offense was just Christian Brown, run as hard as you can and transition.

And that's literally the only way we're scoring for like four minutes at a time.

That was the second quarter

where the, by the way, how about 17-8 after the first quarter?

Nuts.

But that was the second quarter.

And that's what I love about the playoffs.

Nothing's working.

You're facing the best defense in the NBA.

All your pretty stuff, not working.

Murray Jokic, two-man game, they have a strategy for that.

It's kind of taken a lot of what Jokic likes to do away.

Jokic post-ups, they're making it complicated.

He has a negative assist to turnover ratio in the series: 21 assists, 23 turnovers.

The pretty stuff ain't working.

How are you going to score?

And Christian Brown's like, I'm just going to throw myself at the rim really fast and get some free throws.

And like, that's what makes the playoffs awesome.

You got to dig deep and win ugly and win grimy.

Chet,

13 points a game in the series, 40% shooting, three of 15 on threes.

I mentioned that they were able to put Jamal Murray on him down the stretch of game three, which allowed Michael Porter Jr.

to hide on Lou Dort, which is a much more comfortable matchup for him.

And Chet couldn't punish Jamal Murray.

No.

Chet got benched at the beginning of overtime in game three for Alex Caruso.

Chet had another eh.

game yesterday.

For the series, they have a 108 offensive rating with Chet on the floor, 104 defensive rating plus five.

Obviously, skewed by the huge blowout.

All these numbers are skewed by the huge thunder blowout win.

Without Chet, 116 offensive rating, 94 defensive rating plus 32.

The Chet Hartenstein is minus 6 in 65 minutes.

And it's just been so interesting to watch Mark Dagnall try to figure out what do I care about in this series?

And so many of those decisions pivot around Chet Holmgren and what he can and can't do.

So he decided after game one, where I thought, frankly, the Thunder overthought a lot of stuff in game one, including matchups and fouling at the end of the game, much like I thought Cleveland overthought a lot in game one of their series.

They made a clear choice.

Like, we're just almost never going to play Chet as the only big man on the floor when Jokic is on the court.

We thought we might get an offensive benefit out of that.

And it turns out the drawbacks on defense and size and rebounding outweigh whatever offensive benefit he's able to provide.

And not only that, putting him on Aaron Gordon after game one, which is where I thought he belonged, allows them to sort of mimic the Timberwolf strategy of double big, put your best shot blocker, not on Jokic, but on the back line.

That becomes much harder to do when Denver has all its best shooters on the floor or whatever.

But when they take Chet out, they can't really mimic that strategy in any possible way.

And so you can see, but he's doing very little on offense.

Like

it's become kind of an offense-defense trade-off so far for the Thunder that is starker than I think they anticipated it would be, starker than I anticipated it would be.

And I'm not really sure what the answer is, other than he's just got to make some jump shots because you're only going to get so many of those Hartenstein to homegrown lobs against Denver's zone defense.

Like I, it's been a very strange series for Chet so far.

Defensively, he's awesome.

He's a beast.

Offensively, like he just hasn't provided that much.

I think a lot of that is that zone.

And to your point, you do have to bust out of it one way or another.

That big-to-big lob action, whichever way it's going, Chet to Hardenstein, Hardenstein to Chet, like that's really juicy stuff, but can really only work for them out of man.

It's just, I don't think there's enough space for them to get that kind of momentum going against the zone.

And so, yeah, Chet has to hit shots.

He's just such a clunky fit against the way Denver's playing zone right now.

I'll do credit to the Nuggets who have been playing with the defensive energy and have been jamming up the gaps in a really inspiring way, in a way that negates whatever athletic disadvantages they have in this series on balance, right?

Like this Thunder team should be looking really explosive and they look like they're stuck in the mud in a lot of these games.

And Chet in particular just has no space to do anything.

But a lot of that starts with, as you said, the fact that you can guard him in a, in a pinch with a guard, with a wing.

You can put a body on him and not be punished for it in the way that, just to flash forward a little bit, Let's say the Pacers Bigs are punishing the hell out of every single Cavalier small that tries to guard them.

Chet doesn't have that in his game yet, and and it's a bit of a problem.

And then, even on the other side, where you're getting the defensive benefits, and I love Chet as a rim protector, him roving in that style is not unrelated to Aaron Gordon getting seven offensive rebounds in this game.

And

ultimately, here's the thing: he can't do yet on defense what Hartenstein can, which is Hartenstein is bodying up Jokic, contesting the shot, and as soon as it goes up, spins around, sticks his ass into Jokic, boxing him out immediately from the jump to keep him off the offensive glass.

Chet hasn't, he doesn't quite have that transition from hard contest into hard rebound just yet.

And some of that is because he weighs like a buck fifty soaking wet.

So like the physical stakes are just a little bit different, but he's going to have to grow up in those ways.

He's going to have to grow up as a big if he's going to be a dominant postseason performer.

And

why so much pivots around him defensively is, you know, the Murray-Jokic two-man game has been the two-man game in the NBA for years now.

It's the championship two-man game.

And the Thunder have a very clear strategy for defending it, which I think is very smart, which is, Jamal Murray, go ahead and drive.

Like we're not help, unless it's an emergency, we are not helping off Jokic.

We're not, our guys, our big is just going to stay on Jokic.

We're going to let you drive because you play so many non-shooters around that play that people are going to be meeting you in and around the paint.

Russell Westbrook, from Christian Brown, who's knocked down enough shots, from Aaron Gordon, who is just a knockdown shooter at this point, I guess.

Like it's just, we've made the full transition to like, he's not even, he's a plus, plus, plus shooter, but we're just not giving Jokic the pocket pass.

We're just not doing it.

And I think that's the proper way to play it.

It's much,

that strategy does not hold up as well without Holmgren on Aaron Gordon on the back line.

Even when he's stuck on Michael Porter Jr., because that's a matchup on the other end, it doesn't really work.

It only works when they have that alignment in.

And so if he gets played, if he, his minutes dwindle, I'm just interested to see how that, does that Murray-Jokic two-man game begin to sort of puncture them a little more?

And you see, like Murray, to his credit, is driving hard at those backline help defenders and drawing fouls.

He tried to junk on Chet in game, dunk on Chet in game three.

He pulled up for a couple long twos like before the help could get there.

Like he knows what to do, but they are just selling out on like Jokic is not getting the ball in the middle of the floor with a rotating defense around him.

Right.

And you can see Jokic, like, I wouldn't say he's like frazzled in this series, but he's clearly off balance and in a way that the thunder defense this is what they do to you is they get in your head they make you think about every turn every corner and you can see okloma city's defensive consciousness in terms of when jokic does catch the ball at the elbow whenever he starts to make his turn whenever he starts to make his pivot they want him to see that second or third or fourth guy in his peripheral vision hovering in his space just i think just making him wait a fraction of a second ultimately before he has to like remap the floor That can be enough to buy you a little time.

It can be enough to buy you just like a little bit of Jokic's focus at a time when it's really crucial in the possession.

And I just don't think it's a coincidence that as you're taking away Jokic's momentum and his space and his ease of play, he's also shooting like 30-something percent on mid-range shots in this series.

Like he just seems a little bit off his base.

And that you do need Chet on the floor for that stuff.

You also need Alex Caruso on the floor for a lot of that stuff.

Oh my God.

Who is absolutely everywhere on defense?

And so here's the thing.

If we want to talk about like a chain reaction to this game, Lou Dort shoots his way off the floor.

Doesn't seem viable offensively, given the way things are going from him beyond the arc.

In comes Kason Wallace to defend that Jokic Murray pick and roll.

You can't switch that at all.

Kaysen Wallace cannot be on Jokic at any point in the possession.

And so he's chasing Murray.

But if there's any disconnect, and there honestly often was, because Jokic is a big-ass screener, what would happen was Caruso is flying in from the weak side off of like usually Russell Westbrook.

And all of a sudden, he's bodying Nicole Jokic in the middle of the paint.

He's throwing himself in front of this play in a way that I just don't think many wings in the world could possibly do.

And yet here he is turning up plays, not just like making possessions, but saving possessions in progress, ultimately, like saving the defensive shell from completely falling apart, buying time for rotations, buying time for all this stuff to work the way it's supposed to.

I don't know how he's putting duct tape over so many holes at once because because the Thunder gamble and they're a really aggressive defense like by design.

But holy hell is he plugging a lot of holes right now.

Yeah, you know,

Josh Giddy had a nice last 40 games for the Bulls.

Like, he's a very, he's a good basketball player, put up numbers, shot 38% from three this year, which was the big weakness that got him played off the court in the playoffs last year, which we were all talking about for like 18 months in advance.

And the Thunder would be like, no, it's fine.

We're all good.

It's going to be great.

Stop talking about Josh Giddy trades.

It's not going to happen.

And,

you know,

I said at the time of that trade, there are going to be weeks, months when Josh Giddy puts up like 20, 10, and 10.

And it's going to be like, wow, that was actually kind of a good trade for the Bulls.

This is why it was always also a good trade for the Thunder.

Maybe it ends up being a good trade for the Bulls, despite getting no draft picks back, etc.

Maybe who knows?

But like they, they traded a guy who could not play for them in the playoffs for a guy who is now essential and often closing games for them in the playoffs.

And his ability to guard up in size is like Giddy is a minus defender and Caruso is a plus, plus, plus.

I'm just going to be all up in New Jersey and you're not going to be able to dribble around me, defender.

Okay.

Game five back in Oklahoma City.

Crowd's going to be crazy.

Give me something you are anticipating, looking for, whatever, as we move to the pivotal.

game five.

Always pivotal.

I think the rotation changes more on the Oklahoma City side.

Denver's about maxed out.

They're essentially running six guys.

And you could even see like the no fucking around time with David Adelman in this game in terms of like trimming down the rotation so that the non-Jokic minutes are four starters and either Russell Westbrook or Peyton Watson.

Like that's basically all they're playing in those moments.

And rightly so, given the stakes and the margins of the series for Oklahoma City, they're playing 10 deep.

And I love the depth.

I love the camaraderie.

It might be time to trim out what's not working.

Well, Joe is getting marginalized already, right?

Well, this is kind of what I'm pointing at.

Like, Isaiah Joe is an excellent shooter in theory, but he is entering Isaiah Joe Harris territory at this point, where it's just like

nothing is cashing.

I'm sorry.

Nothing is cashing.

And he's not exactly out there for anything else.

And I get why it's tempting in a game where nobody can really shoot.

Let's ride with one of our best shooters and see how it goes.

I just don't know that you can get away with that for even as long as the Thunder have.

So I would not be surprised with Wiggins now playing better, with Kaysen Wallace showing up, with Lou Doord, who's going to have better shooting games than certainly he did in game four at some point.

And Crusoe, as we said, being so important to the rotation.

Like you just have other options.

I just think this is a grimy, ugly, you got to dig so deep in every possible way series.

It's awesome.

And like just a small example,

Jokic, pick and roll ball handling.

He ran 15 pick and rolls in games three and four each, each, which is the tied for the third most in any game this season.

And he ran the most Murray, Jokic Murray inverted pick and rolls Eddie did in any game this season, in each of the last two, same amount in each, five each, I think.

That's just like, they got to stretch the offense.

They have to access every nook and cranny of their offense and every nook and cranny of the most creative and maybe most diverse offensive player on planet Earth's game just to scrounge 89 points against the Thunder.

Um, who again, like, could have won game one, could have won game three.

Yeah, chance, it's it's kind of like they probably should have won one of those two games and

they'd be up 3-1, but they are not.

And we're getting to game five, and

I hope we get seven.

We should say that, too, about Jokic.

Like, if this series is going to be, we talked a lot about Oklahoma City's strengths and what buttons they can press and how they can leverage things.

If this series is going to be your MVP has to make stuff happen from the muck of the middle of the floor, that's a game that favors Denver and Nikola Jokic.

Like, Shay is obviously a great one-on-one creator, is going to make some hay in that situation, but you're right to point out like it's the variety of what Jokic can create from the ugliest possible situations.

It's just totally distinct.

And we've seen what this Thunder team is when they get out of flow and it turns real stale really quickly.

Jokic is so like

every time, like Shay or pretty much any player starts a game, a big playoff game, like one of eight from the field,

the chirping starts.

Like you can see, I can feel it coming out of my computer.

Like, oh, this is your MVP, one of eight.

He's choking again.

Jokic starts a game one of eight and like nobody cares.

He's just earned such a benefit of the doubt in terms of his all-around contributions.

And like, he'll get it back.

He's shooting 39% for the series.

He's only averaging five assists a game, which is attributed to their defense.

They're taking away the easiest stuff.

And by the way, I'm not saying that he gets held to a softer, less fair, whatever standard.

He has earned that benefit of the doubt.

When he's one for eight, everything is still orbiting him.

The team is dead without him.

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Ball over everything.

Okay, speaking of dead, Cleveland, Indiana.

I blacked out for like five minutes, and Miles Turner scored 9,000 points as Jared Allen was just kind of waving at him from a long distance away.

Hey, hey, you want to shoot again?

To be fair, he was in fucking Bloomington.

Like, Miles Turner was heat-checking in the second quarter of this game in a way that I deeply appreciate.

So I re-watched this morning all of Cleveland's Cleveland's first half turnovers.

It's like, I remember there's like a lot of ugly turnovers in the first half.

Like, again, Garland doesn't have his balance, his whatever.

Like, there are a couple like that.

And then there are just like Jared Allen throws the ball into the crowd.

There are eight, I'm just exaggerating, but I mean, how many interior passes can they throw at the feet of a seven-foot player and expect that guy to catch it in the coffin corner almost and do anything with it?

Illegal screens of all varieties.

A McConnell that the cameras didn't even catch, a McConnell backcourt steal that somehow happened.

Just a complete no-show by the Cavs, who are banged up and injured and whatever, but they went into a hostile environment after winning game three and just did not show up for the game.

I mean, they got completely punked from the beginning of the game by a Pacers team who is just really goddamn good, beautifully constructed and hard to guard, an incredibly high floor because of how good their offense is

and a high ceiling when they start hitting shots like this.

And by the way, kind of, you know, for fans who want like, you know, there's all this complaints sometimes about lack of stylistic diversity in the NBA.

It's all threes and dunks and blah, blah, blah.

This is the shot-making team.

They don't take a lot of threes and they don't take a lot of shots at the rim.

They take a crap ton of mid-range shots and floaters and long twos.

all year and last year, too, like they clean in the glass, our buddy Ben Falk, they have

expected field goal percentage based on where your shots come from, right?

Threes, you get extra stuff for the pacers in the regular season, 24th in that metric.

Actual effective field goal percentage, fifth.

They're just a great shot-making team across the board.

They run, they're incredibly unselfish.

And even when it seems like they're passing just for the sake of passing, that stuff just gets heads turning and bodies moving.

And that all flows from Halliburton.

That the Halliburton mindset has inculcated its way into the brain of every player on the team.

And the ball just flies.

Like if you're sick of Maury Ball or whatever you deem the stylistic homogeneity of the NBA, watch the pacers.

They're awesome.

And by the way, to your point earlier, Don't throw it to the big guys.

Don't throw it to the big guys on switches.

And Miles Turner, I had a little ode to him last week.

He had more post-ups against guards again in what was a non-competitive game for.

He has evolved into

this.

Is the best, this is, he could not have become a better offensive player than this.

This is the absolute ceiling of Miles Turner.

He's inside.

He's outside.

And because they have Halliburton and other good supplementary playmakers, he has to do almost no hard passing or playmaking of any kind, which has never been his strong suit.

He has just become an awesome awesome offensive player.

You got to just give it to the Pacers.

They've been awesome, but that was an alarming, disgusting no-show by the Cavs, who, if they lose this series, we talked about it earlier, like used to run it back with this group.

By the way, they're over $200 million in committed salaries for next season.

They're right at the first apron already.

So I don't even know what the pivot would be.

It has to be a win-now pivot.

Like, you can't just trade whoever for draft picks.

And by the way, Ty Jerome,

just anytime you want to just wake up in this series and make a freaking shot, he is shooting.

I wrote it down somewhere.

I don't know.

It's just a 12 of 45, 12 of 45, 10 of 32 on twos.

Ugh.

And that's where like him hitting tough ass shots all season long kind of comes home to roost a little bit, right?

Like those shots are even tougher now against this Pacers defense.

There's even less room to operate.

And all of a sudden, Ty Jerome is quiet as a church mouse in a way where they not only need his contributions, they need his verve a little bit.

Like they need his edge because they absolutely folded in this game in a way that was so stark.

Hey, man, when he's rolling, he will tell you all about it.

No doubt.

Tell you all about it.

And he's not talking about anything right now because he's not rolling.

And by the way, like, I think, I mean,

who really cares?

But I think he's costing himself some money.

And I think given the Cavs Cap situation, I just think if he doesn't rebound and play better in what remains of their season, like I think they just would say, it was a great experience.

You played great for us, got some six man of the year votes.

We can't bring you back.

I don't know.

They might well.

But I mean, the Cavs are in such a bad way, obviously.

They're down 41 at halftime.

They made eight shots in the entire first half.

It was a putrid half for them.

Ultimately, what this game and this series has sort of reiterated for me, I echo everything you said about Tyrese Halliburton, who to me is always going to be more than when he has like 11 points in a game like this, is always going to be creating and instilling more in the team and the flow and the style they play with than a box score could really tell you.

If your team is not right, and the Cavs are not right, but if you're not healthy and focused and playing your best lineups, whatever the best, most balanced version of your team is, Indiana's momentum is so tough to match.

And they will just be a wrecking ball.

And if you do not slow them down, they will tear through whatever it is you think you're doing.

And they're going to do that because they have all these offensive principles we talked about, because they do have so many good, varied players who are looking to share the ball, because they have sneakily three bigs who can shoot and pass and make some plays here and there, you know, like Nip and Tuck can actually do some things off the dribble if you really need them to.

But also, just on defense, this is a team that takes away so much of the low-hanging fruit.

And this is a shot-making team, and this is a shot-making series.

And it's very tempting, especially in a game like this, to look at the first half where Indy is hitting 67% of its threes.

Cleveland shot 26% on threes and say, that's a wild three-point three-point swing, not unlike we've seen from Boston, not unlike we've seen from other teams.

I think all of that's true, but they're also indicators of where the wind is blowing in this series.

And the wind is taking everything away from Cleveland's like patent offense.

And this is a team in the Cavs that was as buoyant a regular season team as we've seen in a long time.

Not regular season.

They like totally.

They made Miami look like a G-League team.

Absolutely.

And they did all that because they were so locked into their principles.

And now these guys are looking around at each other and they don't know what to do.

Like Indian has completely taken them out of their identity.

And that is power.

I can pinpoint exactly when it's like the Ralph Wiggum thing.

Like I can pinpoint exactly when his heart broke on snapped into on live TV.

In the second quarter, Miles Turner was at the free throw line, missed, like four and a half minutes left in the game or something, in the quarter.

And got his own rebound.

And it wasn't a lane violation.

The biggest surprise of the whole game, another free throw rebound rebound for the Pacers and it was actually legal.

And they ended up scoring.

I can't remember what.

Cleveland disintegrating calls timeout.

They come out of the timeout and they run something.

I don't know what it was supposed to be.

It was supposed to be like a Mitchell-Mobley handoff into something.

Mobley hands the ball to Mitchell, who's gutting it out and doing everything he can and throwing himself at the rim to get free throws and all that stuff.

He's been sensational until last night when no one was sensational.

And he comes off, he takes a couple dribbles and he's like, Hey, Evan Mobley, aren't you supposed to like come back up here and set a screen for me?

And Evan Mobley's like drifting over there, like, I don't know, maybe.

And then Max Struss is like, Well, maybe I'll come set a screen because nothing's happening.

Then they both came up and set a screen at the same time from different sides.

That's fine.

Sean McMitchell took one dribble, picked up his dribble, and was like, Oh, this is this is kind of going badly for an out-of-time outplay.

Who's around?

Oh, Isaac Icoro, you're around.

And let me tell you, Rob Mahoney, you know, an after-time outplay has not gone well when it results in an Isaac Okoro grenade drive into nothing and a layup off the backboard.

And at that point, I was like, they are so out of sorts and so out of whatever rhythm that they were in that,

like, they're just lost as a team.

And somehow not the worst post-timeout play of this game for the Cavs, who came out of a timeout and committed a five-second violation trying to get the ball in.

That's a good one.

That's always a good sign.

And they also, like, another, I don't know when that, I don't remember when this happened, but McConnell on, I think, a McConnell Turner pick and roll got the easiest layup you will ever see in a just stagnant half-court set in an NBA playoff game.

Like Dean Wade was on him and Jared Allen was guarding the screener, I think, and Jared Allen did nothing.

And Dean Wade did nothing.

And TJ McConnell just dribbled down the middle of the floor and no one did anything.

I think Sam Merrill kind of briefly looked in his direction and thought, am I supposed to rotate over this and decided against it?

It honestly looked like a practice where the coaches like blew a whistle to stop the drill halfway through, and the guy just kept going to lay the ball in for fun.

Like, just like, what is happening?

And by the way, I don't know what the answers are for Cleveland, but I mentioned this on Twitter last night.

Jared Allen sat for, and Jared Allen was bad last night.

He sat for like a million minutes as the game was getting out of hand.

And a persistent question I've had about the Cavs all year long is:

should they just play their starters more?

Like, are they over?

Like, this, all this minute.

And like, I've had a lot of people from around the league, coaches, whatever, reach out and be like, this is like Mike Budenholzer 2.0 of like your cute regular season rotations.

Like, you got to tighten it up a little bit in the playoffs.

And I don't know if that's Shad and Freud or whatever, but I have all year said, like, should they just play Mobley and Allen together more?

I know they want shooting and spacing, but like, they are two of their four or five best players.

They never play the lineup with Hunter at the three with the rest of their starters.

They almost never play it, partly because Struess is really good.

And I have been thinking a lot about that.

I'm not like, look, that doesn't change a gazillion point loss.

It doesn't change the injuries.

It doesn't change the whatever.

But I have been thinking about it all year and more so as Jerome craps the bed, Okoro craps the bed, Merrill either gets open and makes threes or doesn't and holds up okay on defense.

I don't know.

What are your thoughts on that?

I mean, I agree with you.

I think part of the issue is like as the offense, like basically as the game is getting away from the Cavs, it's so tempting to clutch at offense in particular, not just your Q regular season rotation, but like, oh, we have to take one of our bigs off the floor.

We have to get more shooting out there.

We have to try to equalize the balance of this game all of a sudden.

It got into desperation mode so quickly in game four that I can understand why some of the swerving is happening in the way it is, but it didn't feel like the Cavs were very confident in what they were doing.

It doesn't feel like they have a lot of resolve in even their rotation at this point.

And frankly, again, you flash to the other side of the ball.

Indiana's bench has been quite good.

And like TJ McConnell against a zone is not a given proposition.

Like TJ McConnell, as we like to say on group chat, McConnellizes every offense he touches.

Like it becomes about him getting into the lane.

It becomes, you know, kind of an uphill battle of him in space against all these bigs.

And yet that stuff was working.

Obi Toppin

has just been incredible in this series and really incredible as a pacer.

Like his development into just a fluid offensive force has given them something that the Catas don't have in anyone coming off their bench.

So yeah, if the options are trimming your rotation or potentially losing by this much or even more, I just don't see the downside other than the fact that Evan Mobley has a hurt ankle, Don Vin Mitchell has a hurt ankle, Darius Garland is out there limping around, fouling everything in sight because he can't actually move.

And Jared Allen had a tough game.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

It's going to be, if they lose at home and it's a 4-1, 4-2, whatever, if they lose the series

in any kind of dispiriting way, it's going to be very tempting to start building fake Darius Garland trades and fake Jared Allen trades.

And look, if I'm the Lakers, I'm calling about Jared Allen.

Sure.

Like, if I'm the Magic, I'm poking around Darius Garland.

I would, and the Cavs' payroll situation is what it is.

And I don't know sort of what any pivot would be in a win-now trade.

Do you break them into two pieces?

I don't know.

I would be very cautious if I were the Cavs about

overreacting too much much to give it, they only know the health injury.

They know the health stuff inside and out better than we do.

But

I would not do, I would be hesitant to do something really rash with a team that won 64 games and has a lot of good stuff going for it and has a lot of guys that are nicked up now.

But I would poke around at least because, you know, if they got punked last night, they got punked by the Knicks two years ago.

They had to gut out an uninspiring series against the Magic last year and then fought the Celtics okay when they had a bunch of injuries in the second round.

Uh, it has not been an inspiring three-year playoff run.

You could throw the previous two series away and say, well, we made a coaching change, everything's totally different now.

And this has been, you know, first round was great.

This round, not so good.

I, I just, it'd be interesting to see how they would respond to something like that.

McConnell, man, he's always got those bug eyes.

Like, he's so intense.

Yeah.

Does he walk around his house like that, like making coffee?

Like, here's a coffee.

Here's a coffee with his wife.

He's got a newborn kid.

Like, is he, you know, He's just like, he has always intense staring at the crowd, serious face.

Very fun to watch.

I thought they did a good job getting Siaka more involved early in the game

last night.

They were looking for him in all the bigs and transition.

Really, they were looking for ways, not unlike the Oklahoma City Denver series, to beat the zone down the floor to get around that 3-2 calf zone with Mobley at the top, which was tough for them.

And just the most predictable development in all of these playoffs are Rick Carlisle coach team not wetting the bed against the zone the way it did in game three and coming back with like every conceivable answer in order to attacking that zone defense.

How about Rick Carlisle like bringing back kind of a full court press in the NBA?

Not really like a crazy full court press, but like, yeah, we're just going to hound you every time up the court.

You're injured.

Like, have fun with this.

Have fun with this mean dude tracking you 94 feet up the floor.

Rick Carlisle is a Hall of Fame coach.

Like there's no, there is not a lot left.

to second guess or think about with his rotations, with his schematics.

Like he, you don't come out of any of these playoff series being like, well, they should have tried that.

They didn't try that.

They should have tried that.

Just a really, really good coach.

Any, oh,

the Matherin Hunter thing.

How would you describe what happened?

It was like a closed fist arm extension, but not a punch.

At least it didn't seem like a punch.

Well, he got a flagrant two, which I have to say watching, and maybe there's an angle that they didn't show that I didn't see.

I was like, that's a like, look, if Benedict Matherin hit me like that, I'd probably double over too.

So I don't want to, you know, cast aspersions in any direction.

It did not look to the naked eye like a flagrant two to me.

And DeAndre Hunter, just like the straight up high school shove into the locker, like, I was like, okay, he, okay, like, that dead ball, just boom, not ejected.

That whole thing was weird.

And Matherin's been an agitator the whole series, and he obviously had the chase down on Hunter that caused the injury.

So look, it was just a strange adjudication.

And by the way, not for nothing, lottery aside, the general managers have their annual meeting

today at the Combine, and they always talk about like the state of the league.

And I've been told that a big topic of discussion is going to be the increased physicality of the playoffs.

And, you know, I think one of the league's points would be like everyone is sort of talking about this, right?

Like the gap between regular season and playoff basketball is just, they're two different sports.

Are we letting too much go?

Is it dangerous?

I've talked about it.

And I think the league is aware of that.

They know that there are some obvious fouls that are not being called that probably need to be called, but they would also point out free throws are up.

Like there are more free throws in the playoffs than there were in the regular season.

Probably not by, they're not up by as much as the physicality is up.

And so, or as like the fouls are up, but free throws are up.

And you just come into this dilemma of like,

how long do we want the games to be?

Because game length is up significantly in the playoffs these games are taking two and a half two hours and 40 minutes and the nba has this stated goal of like we want our games to be shorter these games have been really long the league has definitely took notice of it that's just i don't know what the right answer is because

every lever you pull has a counter effect over here like call more fouls games are three hours long call less fouls people get hurt i don't know what the answer is maybe it's like call the right fouls and don't

don't not call obviously i don't know but like that's it's anyway that's what's happening today in chicago well especially because there are two different questions for the regular season and the playoffs, as you said, which are officiated completely differently.

But also, do we, are we sure we want playoff physicality over 82 games when guys are already getting worn down with the regular schedule?

When there's already, you know, the level of injury that there is, there's just going to be a couple more fluky physical plays as a result of that.

I'm okay with the playoffs being more physical.

I think some of these games have gotten a little out of control, as we talked about before.

And more importantly, some of them are just refereed inconsistently.

Like, you just need to let guys know what's going on and they'll kind of acclimate to it.

But I agree there's a weird line to walk and really two parallel lines that they're trying to walk simultaneously.

We don't want the 82 games

to be played like this because players would all be injured by the time the playoffs start.

However, the key word in your statement or hyphenated two words or whatever it is is 82.

That's obviously the overarching issue of, oh, it's just too many games.

We all know it's too many games.

Everybody knows it's too many games.

And yet no one will ever actually dare to propose a real, let's actually talk about this.

In fact, let's add more games.

By the way, congratulations to the Milwaukee Bucks again for winning the Emirates Cup.

Like really, you know, really exciting accomplishment that all their fans will remember forever in Las Vegas.

Okay, can I see this on that for like, I know there's no traction on shortening the season.

It's never really gotten off the ground for a variety of reasons.

If we're in like congressional wheeling and dealing mode and the time for expansion comes up and we have these big juicy expansion fees coming for Vegas and Seattle.

Is there a way to like tether in an amendment to shorten the season in conjunction with expanding the league so that the financial offsets are a little more concrete?

Well, and maybe.

And by the way, we shouldn't just make this like it's the league's fault and the teams are stubborn.

Like the players also, like everyone.

Everyone's caution about this is if you trim 82 to 68 or whatever, the pool of revenue that we split 50-50 shrinks.

And that shrinks for the players and it shrinks for everybody else too.

And I think the bet would just be like long-term with this new TV deal, with the expansion fees, with every regular season game meaning more.

And maybe ticket prices go up.

Like maybe you can kind of recoup that over time if you're patient.

But these guys just get to the end of the season and they're destroyed.

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Okay,

two series resumed tonight.

I don't want to overdo them because they are resuming soon.

I asked you for one overarching, not overarching, one thing, small, big, whatever, that you will be watching in these two games tonight.

And I'm going to start with with Boston, New York, which to me is the other most interesting series of the second round.

Boston rebounds from two absolutely horrendous losses at home to the Knicks to win and make some threes in game three and sort of maybe stabilize themselves.

They have taken

47 more threes than the Knicks through three games, which is the math problem.

Maybe this series will be long enough for it to tilt back to Boston's favor.

One thing Rob Mahoney is watching for tonight in a massive, like New York wins this game.

Boston's got home court.

Boston and seven is still sitting there as like a decent possibility outcome.

Winning three in a row against the Knicks is going to be tough.

Yeah.

I think the big variable for me is can the Knicks triangulate enough offense out of OG, Mikhail Bridges, and Josh Hart to make this thing actually feel viable?

Like they have scrapped their possessions.

Their defense is shown up.

Jalen Brunson is gutting out just hard shot creation, hard bulk shot creation for many of these games, and especially at the end of them.

Seven points from OG over two games is just not enough.

Mikhail sort of like floats in and out, and it feels like they kind of forget he's out there sometimes in terms of his offensive involvement.

And Josh Hart is always going to be more of a wild card as far as like scoring goes.

But if he's tilting more towards the like 15 he's averaging for the series versus the 10 that he had in game three, that's like a meaningful difference in a game like this.

And so I'm just wondering, like those guys are all giving, to be totally fair, amazing defensive play, next level hustle play.

Like they are, they're getting after it.

They're doing a lot of their job.

The problem is New York needs a little bit more than that.

And I don't know that they can win a series with Brunson playing the way that he's had to play.

Like they, they just need a little bit more from those three guys in particular.

And Brunson, obviously, you know, Boston is, for better or worse, making him work on every defense possession.

And I thought late in game four, the Knicks started just giving the Brunson switch instead of hedging it.

And he held up okay.

And I wonder if we see that a little bit more.

It's a dangerous game, but it does bait the Celtics into more one-on-one kind of play.

By the way, we didn't mention this.

Like Halliburton, he's a target all the time.

He's got good days and very bad days on defense.

He was decent in game four when they went at him, and he made big plays down the stretch of game one.

Like just holding your own and not being a pushover is a big, big deal for these kind of players.

also haliburn also closes out like crazy as do all the pacers like they want to run you off the line they're such a great contest team but haliburn's flying out at guys in a way that makes an actual difference in games like that my thing to watch is boston running actual offense early in the shot clock which i think they did they ran more variety of plays like they ran some split actions that got them good stuff um against the knicks and they ran

that i have charted like this pick and roll with 20 on the shot clock this pick and roll with with 20 on the shot clock, catches the Knicks backpedaling, catches them in rotation, gets a Pritchard three, a white three.

Just go a little faster, have a little more variety, be a little more unpredictable.

I thought they did that.

Just a little Josh Hart tidbit for you.

29 ball screens in game four, highest number of any game this season.

Shows you how much Boston, by putting their bigs on him, has kind of redirected New York's offense away from the cat pick and rolls and toward the hard pick and rolls.

It would also help if Porzingis could make a shot.

And obviously,

the virus mystery is continuing.

Okay.

Less exciting, just because of the mass unit that is the Warriors without Steph is Minnesota Golden State.

Minnesota grinds out game three on the road to take a 2-1 lead.

One thing Rob Mahoney is watching for tonight in a game the Warriors pretty much have to win.

Yeah.

I think it's, are we going to see Anton the Wolves make actual progression in the way they break down Golden State's defense, or are they just going to try to brute force it again, which is how they've had success in this series so far?

Like, I wouldn't say they've really cracked the code of an incredibly formidable defense, to be fair to the wolves.

They can probably win in either case, whether they make meaningful progress on that front or not.

Like, they can just overwhelm these guys at a certain point.

You saw Ant especially just do that, and Julius Randall, who's been Aces,

especially since game one in this series, really, really pulling it together.

Aces, I like that.

You sound like a 20 newspaper.

Today's issue is Aces.

It's my general vibe.

More of a week.

I just think like Minnesota's mistakes are bigger and louder than basically any team that's as good as them.

And you saw it in the fourth quarter with some of their turnovers.

I would love to see a version of the Wolves that isn't just like hitting its head against the wall for 40 minutes straight, that does have some actual growth in it as far as the playmaking and execution against a high-level defense goes.

We saw some of that from Anton in the first round with a very specific and very different kind of problem.

Golden State is a different beast.

They're much more challenging.

They're much more ferocious.

They're flying around.

They present a wider variety of defensive puzzles.

I wouldn't say he's done great with it so far.

And if anything, has kind of like had to really force his way through some of these games in terms of making himself like an impact creator and scorer against that defensive front.

But I would love to see a little bit of growth.

It's been a big few days on a couple of my NBA territories.

Yeah.

I have joked for years now about how for a while I was the only one on Julius Randall Hill trying to make fire with sticks.

Just me and like Nate Jones, the agent, big Julius Randle fan.

It was just two of us just trying to keep warm and forage for food.

Oh, it's booming.

That whole neighborhood's been gentrified now.

You know, there's just pop-ups, mixed-use space everywhere.

It's crazy.

A couple of Froyo stores just opened in.

No, a couple of Froyo stores just opened in Kaminga Keys over the weekend.

Hey, is maybe Jonathan Kaminga Kaminga not horrible?

Should maybe you have tried to nurture.

I know he's not a Warriors kind of player.

He's not.

He's not a beautiful game kind of player.

He's not.

He's not the most intuitive read and react guy.

Now you need him, and he's coming through for you.

Maybe you should have

not

crapped on him for like months and years.

Because it's kind of like the Warriors are kind of down to six guys.

that they trust.

Pajemsky healed Butler, Kaminga, Green, and GP2.

Moody is like lost in space.

Post gets played off the floor instantaneously.

They had a lineup in game three that was like Spencer, Looney, Moody, Peyton the Second.

It was like, what's happening right now?

And then like Guy Santos might have been involved.

And so it's basically just those six guys that are in your grand bag of centers like Jackson Davis and Looney.

And my big thing is like,

Does Jimmy have more games like game three in him?

Because Jimmy threw everything he had at game three, attacking mismatches, attacking Gobert, attacking DiVincenzo, running a lot of pick and roll, ended with 33 or 35, whatever he ended with.

And it just felt like the more he scored and the more he was clearly pouring everything into the game as it was close and nip and tucked, it just felt to me like a game the Warriors had to win because I don't know how many games like that he's got in him at his age and dealing with, you know, recovering from the injuries, recovering from and without Steph.

And, you know, like if it, if it's another game two where it's like Jimmy has 16 and and whatever, like, I just think they're drawing dead without a big, big Jim.

And they're trying like these healed off-ball actions and get switches.

And like, you know, there's just,

they need Jimmy to be huge, I think, every game.

They need him to be huge.

And even in that one, which, as you said, is kind of the ideal Jimmy Butler game under these circumstances.

He was pressing in a way.

He doesn't really like to press.

He's still coming up with all these random Jimmy Butler baskets as he has ought to do.

The finagler.

The finagler TM really coming through for you in that moment.

But he also ran out of steam down the stretch in that way, in like a one-on-one creation at the end of the fourth quarter sort of way.

And look, as I was saying, Minnesota was running sloppy offense too.

It's not like everything was perfect.

This game was up for grabs.

He just didn't quite have enough left, 33 points in.

And that's where they are.

And that's why I look.

I'm a little bit more of a Kaminga skeptic.

I think Froyo is a good call because it's like, I think Kaminga Island is good for tourism, but not necessarily for living there.

And so him popping up for an occasional 30-point game feels like a good way to have a good time.

Him being an instructive structural part of your offense may not be where you want to live every day of the year.

And so I'll do credit to him for performing in the way that he did.

Do I expect it to happen again?

I don't necessarily.

I'm expecting 40.

Let's go.

Let's double down from here.

But the problem is no one else on the Warriors can really do that.

Like really their only strength in terms of that kind of scoring and how they're going to survive without step has to be collective.

It has to be team play.

It has to be a game where you look up and six different Warriors have 14 points, including Jimmy kind of leading the charge.

And some of that is like Draymond has to find a way to be an actual scoring presence in this series.

Guys like Pods have to find ways to be more consistent and certainly present more of a threat in a way where they're driving offense.

But Minnesota's defense has been really good again, not unlike Oklahoma City's about shrinking the gaps, about like really challenging the team dynamics and the flow of the way that Golden State wants to play.

Minnesota is such a strange team.

You mentioned their propensity for loud mistakes.

Sometimes I'm like, in this matchup in particular, like, should they just clear the floor and get out of Anthony Edwards' way and just let him go one-on-one?

Because that seems to be kind of working for them, particularly when Gobert's not on the floor and the floor is a little clear.

Like, nobody on the Warriors can stay in front of him.

And he's obviously sent Kaban Looney into the Oblivion dunk zone with one of the just great Ant

dunks.

Three backdoor cut baskets for Ant in game three.

I love an Ant cut.

All off Randall, I think, too, as being like the trigger man, if I'm not mistaken.

That was a great combination.

And very good intuitive reads by Ant on like, give it up and go.

This is also the shot clock violation series, like just dueling shot clock violations or end of clock heaves.

And a guy we should shout out that we have not mentioned yet, what a playoffs for Jaden McDaniels.

Yes.

I mean, 16 a game, 58% shooting, 40% on threes.

And it just seems like every time he attacks a closeout and like doesn't even beat his guy off the dribble, but just kind of dribbles into him and decelerates and uses his height for a six-footer, it like goes in every time.

And the defense speaks for itself.

He guarded Curry.

Now he's guarding Butler.

Just he's giving you everything you want

living up to that.

This Jaden McDaniels is worth that contract.

He's been awesome.

And I think in particular, as far as like small things that ultimately are kind of representative of big things, him not settling for the corner three and trying to leverage his size in exactly the way you described and driving, putting the ball on the floor, going hard to the basket.

That decision and that skill set is what gets Draymond Greene his sixth foul in this game and bumps him out.

Like that doesn't happen.

Frankly, the Lakers series does not unfold the way it did.

If Jaden McDaniels has not only improved as a shooter in some of those games and hitting, but like a dynamic, fully functional, fluid offensive player.

in a way that I think would have been inconceivable to even look at the outline of who he was two years ago and anticipate this.

This has been incredible growth.

And I think he's done something that's really, really difficult to do, which is he was a guy who is playing smaller than his size in a lot of ways as a purely spot up, sometimes like flex transition option and has become a burly physical finish in the lane through contact kind of player.

And you just really don't see that that much.

Awesome stuff from him.

We'll see what happens tonight.

Rob Mahoney, we got group chat.

What are you writing this week?

We got anything we can promote?

What do we got?

I'm not writing currently.

Actually, my hand is currently broken.

So like literally broken.

What happened?

Pick up basketball.

It was a whole thing.

We'll not be playing anytime soon for that reason.

So the writing is currently tabled, but we're potting like crazy.

You know, we got group chat going on.

We got some prestige TV stuff going on.

Oh, yeah.

What are we covering on Prestige TV these days?

I mean, we got Last of Us.

We got The Last of Us.

We got your friends and neighbors on Apple TV.

You know,

we're figuring it out.

We got Poker Face starting up.

So there's some exciting stuff happening.

I don't know what poker phase is other than Natasha Leone, isn't it?

And it's apparently quite good.

People like it.

Quite good.

It's like a Colombo case of the week, like shiny guest star every single episode

kind of enterprise.

It's a great time.

I'm loving your friends and neighbors.

And it's giving me, as a resident of a suburb in Connecticut, not quite in those stratospheres, but it's giving me ideas if AI just takes over basketball media.

It's giving me a good

career backup plan.

Delightful show.

Art theft.

That's what you're thinking?

Just generally, like people just have stuff laying around.

There's too much money and too much wealth in the world.

Let me just take some and find a pawn shop and get on with it.

All right, Rob Mahoney, you're the best.

Thank you, sir.

All right.

Thanks for listening.

I'm off to schmooze with NBA executives in Chicago for six hours and then watch some ping-pong balls fly around to determine the fate of multiple NBA franchises.

My favorite night of the year.

And then two more big playoff games tonight.

We might be back tomorrow for a special lottery reaction, playoff reaction, mini episode tbd on that and definitely on thursday thank you for listening to the zach low show

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