Playoff Comeback or Collapse?! NBA Breakdowns With Fred Katz and Adam Mares. Plus, a Draft Lottery Preview With J. Kyle Mann.

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All right, coming up on an absolutely loaded Zach Low Show.

Oh, my God.

Nick's Celtics, Steph's injured.

Cavs, collapse.

Indiana, comeback.

We got Fred Katz.

We got Adam Morris.

and we got Jay Kyle Man to preview the draft lottery, which, yes, is coming up on Monday.

That's all next on the Zach Lowe Show.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show, where the wildest second round in recent NBA playoff history rolled on last night.

Fred Katz from the Athletic, how are you?

I'm doing great.

I'm doing great.

I'm exhausted from apparently never, ever getting to cover a normal basketball game for probably the rest of my life at this point.

Well, I'll tell you this, Fred.

The great thing about the playoffs is it's stressful.

The other team is 100% focused.

They're scheming for you in ways that they would not do in the regular season.

All the attention's on you.

The environments are crazy.

If there's an issue with your team, If there's a weakness with your team, if there's something wrong with the inner fortitude of your team, it will get exposed in the playoffs.

The Boston Celtics last year, incredible season, incredible championship run, unimpeachable, unimpeachable.

No notes.

But the reality is this.

They did not face an opponent until maybe the finals that was good enough to push them to that point.

where whatever issues might have been there, and maybe there were none last year, came out into the open for the world to see.

This is a different year, and the Knicks are really good.

And

what has happened to the Boston Celtics in the first two games, blowing 20-point leads at home in both games, is absolutely astonishing.

First of all, credit to the Knicks.

Okay?

We got to get that out of the way before the fun part starts.

Josh Hart, just two amazing games.

You're going to put your centers on me like every team does.

I'm going to hurt you.

I'm going to get offensive rebounds.

I'm going to kick out the three-point shooters.

I'm going to play great defense.

I'm going to do all the annoying Josh Hart shit that I do that makes you mad.

Carl Anthony Towns.

How many threes did Carl Anthony Towns take last night, Fred?

Carl Anthony Towns, I feel like, is yet to take a three in the series.

He took one, and it was an end-of-quarter 70-foot heave.

One.

And he took one in, and he took one in game one also, and it was an end-of-shot clock three.

The Celtics have vaporized everything that is A

about Carl Anthony Town's game.

And what did he do last night?

21 points, 17 rebounds, beat the living hell out of Al Horford in the post.

Not some little shrimpy guard, not a skinny guy.

Al Horford beat him up and ones, offensive rebounds, putbacks, good defense when the Knicks switched him onto Jalen Brown or Jason Tatum, which they are doing and doing much more effectively than I envisioned they could do.

And I talked about, can anyone do to Boston what Orlando is doing and switching everything and trying to limit their three-point volume?

Now, that is not happening.

The Celtics are like, you're not going to limit our three-point volume.

We're going to keep taking them.

There's no one under the basket.

How about I take a three?

We'll get to that, Fred.

We'll get to that.

Carl Anthe de Towns, great job on switches.

Jalen Brunson.

Great job on switches.

Late in the game.

You're going to hunt me.

Yeah, I've been a pushover in some matchups against you.

Yeah, I want to to hedge out and not switch.

Late in the game, if you switch on, if I get switched on to Jalen Brown, I'm going to make you take a 12-footer or a 15-footer.

I'm going to let our defenders on your corner shooters who are sitting there salivating at the thought of yet another contested corner three.

They're not getting the ball.

We're staying home.

Knicks were awesome.

Mikhail Bridges, hello, hello.

Five first-round picks.

Hello.

I'm here.

Present.

Fourth quarter comeback.

Amazing by the Knicks.

Amazing mental

fortitude.

Amazing mental toughness to stick with the game.

All of that.

Tibbs, shouts to Tibbs.

Lambasted in a lot of corners is uncreative, afraid to make adjustments.

Scrapped the Knicks-based defense for this series and was like, we're going to try something else.

We're going to make it work.

We're going to see what happens.

Great job all around.

Any other Knicks notes, Fred, before

we really get revved up here?

No.

No, I'm ready to see what you have left.

What's amazing about the Knicks in particular with what they're doing right now is that

it almost felt like that unbelievably wonky and insanely ugly Detroit series changed their character and their personality as a team completely.

Having watched them the entire season, so much of what they struggled with was physicality and that sort of fortitude that you're talking about.

That was true, I think, across the roster for the most part.

And it was certainly true on the defensive end.

And that Detroit series was so wild.

I was, I was in the locker room after game one when they came back from 20 points the first time against Boston.

And Cameron Payne kind of kind of joked to me.

He was, he was in jest, but he says to me, thank God for Detroit.

And that Detroit series was so,

that was so physical and so much went wrong.

for both teams.

At any given point in that series, at least one team had completely and utterly forgotten how to play the sport.

And I think there was some truth in what Cam was saying.

He was joking around.

He was being funny, but he said it because it was kind of true.

The Knicks are playing very differently now than they did in the regular season, stylistically.

And I think they're playing very differently than they did in the regular season, even from a personality standpoint, in terms of how they're grinding.

You know, the reason that some of those switches are working, why Brunson is fighting against those switches?

I don't think I've ever seen him be this just,

it's not that he shies away from contact ever defensively, but I don't think i've ever seen him say you know what i am the tinier guy here they are not going to call anything against me i am just bumping my chest into jason tatum when i'm far away from the rim every time certainly mikael bridges has never been this physical all year i should say not never in his career but just this season navigating screens especially so much of this season where there was just discombobulation bridges would would have a ball screen up against him and and he'd pull up short or there'd be miscommunication on the from the back end or something like that.

And I do think the one guy who deserves to be mentioned, also, who I think you didn't mention, was Mitchell Robinson, who has been so big for them on the defensive end.

They are winning his minutes by a landslide in this series.

I don't think that's a coincidence.

He is so much better on switches than he used to be when he would foul like crazy.

And they didn't want to do that in game one.

They're like, you know what?

You're not a switch guy.

We're going to drop you back like traditional coverage.

That didn't work so well.

Anytime the Knicks have played, Cat has been okay in drop coverage in this series, but a lot of the stints when the Celtics offense finally gets a rhythm, it's when the Knicks revert to traditional pick and roll defense, and you get like Porzinga's hard roll dunk, Cornette hard roll layup, Tatum driving right by Cat with an in-and-out dribble.

Um, the Mitchell Robinson thing, and this is before I get to the meat and potatoes,

outstanding.

The big lineup has been working in limited doses all year, and yet I'm watching the game and I'm still like,

so they're fouling to get OG and Ananobi back into the game.

Like, they're fouling Mitchell Robinson to get him out of the game.

They're this scared of him that the guy who was the best player on the floor in game one, who's on the bench right now, is going to come back into the game.

And the Celtics are essentially choosing that.

I still thought that was some galaxy brain insanity by Joe Mizzulla, who did not.

Okay.

All right.

Enough with that.

the celtics offense was disgusting again and i thought it was even more disgusting in game two than it was in game one when they took 63s i don't know how many they took last night but it wasn't 60.

i don't even know where to start fred you know what i do know where to start i'm going to start a couple of places

it's as if they've lost

any layer below the first layer of their offense.

Like, I promise you that at some point, this was a team that could run multiple things on the same possession.

I promise you, it happened.

Here are just like three possessions from down the stretch last night.

I'm just going to narrate what happened.

Okay, Fred, you were there.

You saw it.

225 in the fourth quarter.

They run the Tatum staggered pick and roll with Towns' guy and Brunson's guy.

Hey, bring your weak links up to me.

One of them is going to switch on to me.

Nope.

OG Ananobi navigates fine.

Jason Tatum comes to the other end of that pick and roll.

OG Anobi's right in front of him.

Like, hey, I'm here.

Your play failed.

There's 13 seconds left on the shot clock.

Jason Tatum's like, you know what?

The best I can think of is I'm just going to dribble around a little bit and take a fadeaway jumper over OG Ananobi, the best defender on the other team on the baseline.

Miss.

Number of passes on the possession, Fred, zero.

Next possession, Jalen Brown.

Drew Holiday pick and roll.

Drew Holiday is being guarded by Jalen Brunson.

Hey, come up, come up.

By the way, Drew Holiday beat the hell out of Jalen Brunson in the first four minutes of the game, got the Knicks to switch Jalen Brunson onto Derrick White, which should be a huge win for Boston's offense.

And yet, we never saw it again, ever, ever.

They put him back on Drew Holiday at the end of the game.

And the Celtics players, coaches were like, did they even realize?

Did they remember what happened in the first four minutes of the game?

Anyway, 150 left in the fourth quarter.

Jalen Brown rejects the screen, gets the switch.

Jalen Brunson's on him.

Takes a leaning, falling, like eight to 10-footer from the dotted line, miss.

Not a terrible shot.

Number of passes on the possession, zero.

Switch again occurs with 13 on the shot clock.

Shot clock, for those who are unfamiliar, Fred, is 24 seconds.

So there are 13 seconds on it.

Not even half of it has elapsed.

I promise you, you're allowed to do something else.

You're allowed to run a second action.

115 in the fourth quarter.

Sideline out of bounce play.

Brown, holiday, pick and roll again.

Brunson, switch again.

Jalen Brown with, I don't know how many on the shot clock.

I didn't write it down.

Probably enough time.

Takes, I'm going to say the worst shot I've ever seen Jalen Brown take in a basketball game, leaning forward into Jalen Brunson's chin from the left elbow, I guess grifting for a foul.

By the way, you're the same guy who bullied Josh Hart seven times in the first half of the game, and you're taking this shot.

Number of passes on the possession, Fred, zero.

Zero.

I promise you, this is a team that used to have layers to its offense offense that used to be like, oh, that thing failed.

How about Derek White, who's being guarded a lot by Jalen Brunson?

Set a flare screen.

Run a split action with Jason Tatum.

See what happens.

Get the Knicks moving.

What the hell happened to your team?

It devolved into a puddle of nothing.

It's on the coaches.

It's on the players.

It was disgusting.

You're allowed to pass.

Like, it's, I sound like an old man.

It was gross.

And the Knicks were fully up for whatever shit Boston was throwing at them.

Credit Brunson and Kat for holding up and not being the Wheat Links.

By the way,

flashing back a year ago,

that Minnesota first-round series against Phoenix told us something about Kat, and it kind of got lost in the shuffle because the Minnesota-Denver series was so epic.

He guarded Durant in that series because he had to.

That was the only matchup that really made sense.

And he did okay.

Like, he didn't do great, but it wasn't embarrassing.

And he actually had some really good stretches.

That's been on my mind watching him switch into series.

That's just a stretch run, Fred.

What am I missing?

And then the Knicks are scoring.

Bridges are going crazy.

Hart's going crazy.

Brunson does what Brunson does: basket, foul at the end of the game.

Tatum, of course, doesn't even get a real shot off at the end.

Am I missing?

I need any other notes from the last four minutes of this grotesque shamockery of Boston crunch time offense.

So, Boston averaged 26 assists a game during the regular season.

They have 35 total over the fourth quarter.

They have nine baskets in the fourth quarter in two games.

They are nine of 45.

It's unbelievable.

And I do think we've mentioned the switching a bunch of times, and I do think a lot of it has to do with not even necessarily the quality of the Knicks switches, because I think the execution on the Knicks switches has kind of been up and down, depending on which guys we're talking about, but just the fact that it's actually happening.

I mean, look, Orlando switched so much against Boston, and this is not the first time that a team has just switched a bunch against Boston.

Boston saw more switching than pretty much any other team in the league during the regular season, but they are reacting to these switches completely differently.

And I think when the Celtics offense is going at its best over these last, however many years they've been really good, it's because of their side-to-side action.

Once the ball, they are, they are as good as any other offense in the league, if not the single best in the league.

To side, is that how you pronounce that?

Yeah, yeah, sea-day to sea day, or how do I say that?

It's when the ball is on one side of the court and goes goes to the other.

You're allowed to go to the side, like from one side.

That's allowed?

It's unbelievable.

And you could do it without dribbling as well.

And the Celtics,

when they go swing from right to the left side of the court,

they are deathly, when they can go side to side twice in the same possession, they are better at executing off of that than any other team in the NBA until three days ago.

And I think what's happening with the switching is it's not, we focus so much on

the individual matchups that are created from switching.

Okay, Jalen Brunson has switched on to Jason Tatum or Kat has switched on to Jason Tatum and now it's Tatum versus Brunson and that's a mismatch.

But there's the way you can fan out and there's the way that it affects the rest of the defense.

And what's happening here is the Knicks are able to stay at home on Boston's perimeter shooters a lot more.

And it's closing up passing lanes.

It's closing up the ability to take threes, even though Boston took 60 in the first game.

But a lot of those were, I mean, Jason Tatum took 14 threes off the dribble in game one.

Like a lot of those are not the Boston-esque threes that we're used to seeing, even though they're unquestionably missing good looks throughout this entire series.

And I think the way that the Celtics are responding to the Knicks' defensive strategy is something that

I've wondered if the Knicks have banked on this, because the Celtics, if they have a flaw,

it is that they know their identity and they know their strategy is to go out and get threes.

And I think at times it can slip their mind that as important as shooting threes is, creating threes is more important.

I think the Celtics have been really good at shooting threes in this series.

They've taken 100 over the first two games on the dot.

Do they get a trophy for that, by the way?

Do they get any awards for that?

Because I looked at the tracking data today.

Guess who has won the shot quality battle according to the algorithms on second spectrum through two games?

Boston.

Boston has a higher expected field goal percentage when you account for who is taking the shots.

And they have underperformed that field goal percentage by 16 percentage points.

When you account for, again, who's taking the shot, how much distance there is.

The Knicks are a little bit below them and have also underperformed by three points.

You know how many wins you get credited for for winning the shot quality battle, Fred?

Zero wins.

Congratulations.

You won the shot quality battle.

You are down 0-2.

Poor Zingis's absence, not absence.

He played 14 minutes and he played okay, but 14 minutes is like not what you brought him in for.

It's a big deal because when the Knicks do switch and make it a one-on-one or two versus two kind of game,

what they're betting on is, yeah, Tatum, you might beat whoever off the dribble and penetrate, we might beat Cat off the dribble or Mitchell Robinson off the dribble and penetrate into the lane.

If Cornette's there, we're going to have a defender there.

Even if Horford is there sometimes, because Horford's not always spaced the way Borzingus is, there's going to be a defender there, and it's going to be two-on-two.

And sometimes you're going to win, and sometimes we're going to win.

We're going to force you to take a tough shot at the rim, block, deflection, whatever, and everyone else can stay home.

If Porzingis is out there spotting up around the perimeter, that becomes a one-on-one battle and it becomes a dunk.

So that's a big, that's a big factor here.

And the fact that no one seems to know what the hell is going on with him is kind of a like, it's a crazy story that I don't know.

I haven't been able to get an answer.

It's crazy.

I want to go off more on the threes.

Can I do that?

Please.

It's your podcast.

You've been waiting.

We've been waiting all year, Zach, to hear about you go off on different topics.

Please be my guest.

It's not even just the threes.

Be my guest.

So I take notes, running notes during all these games to help me go re-watch them.

And I have a little shorthand that I use: remember this if.

And it's my way of saying, this was like a little interesting swing here.

Remember this if the Knicks come back to win the game.

73-53, Boston's up 20.

Derek White takes a three, misses.

Rebound comes right back to him.

He takes another three.

This one tightly contested.

It's a miss, and I think the Knicks got to run out of it and hit a three.

I just, I just hit that as a remember this if

because I'm watching.

There's like three minutes left in the third quarter or something like that.

15 minutes left in the game.

You're up by 20 points.

You're allowed.

allowed, you don't, there's a big gap between shooting an instantaneous three with a hand in your face and playing prevent offense.

Huge middle ground.

You're allowed to play time and score a little bit.

When you're up by 20 in a finite game, second half, ones and twos help you.

They're good.

The Knicks need you to get zeros.

You are doing a favor when you waste no time and get a shot up that is percentage-wise.

Yes, the expected points per possession on that is higher than a short two or a rim attack, whatever.

Great.

Expected points per possession gets you nothing.

It got you zero.

Another one, fourth quarter, nine minutes left.

They're still up 16.

Al Horford catches an air ball, puts it back in to put them up by 16.

There's like nine minutes left.

Steals the inbounds pass from Josh Hart.

He's like 12 to 15 feet from the rim on the left wing.

Dude, you're a 38.

It's cool.

It's a big moment.

It's a great play.

Again, time and score.

Instead of like kicking it out, resetting, he just wildly throws his body at Josh Hart and takes this like eight foot hook shot.

And I wrote down, remember this if, because it's just, why are you always going for the knockout punch?

You are ahead on every judge's scorecard in the 10th round of a 12-round fight.

Just hit some jabs, settle the hell down, and play the time and score.

And the example everyone highlighted was when Tatum up seven gets the ball in the right corner on a transition chance, and there is nobody between him and the basket.

It's just like you could not have more space.

Everyone's highlighted it.

Brunson's under the rim with Al Horford.

It's a dunk.

It's a drive and kick.

It's something other than an instantaneous up seven time and score.

Time and score.

Just drives me insane.

And the Knicks deserve credit, A, for executing all their stuff well on both ends of the floor because you can't have a comeback like this.

It's not a comeback only and it's not a collapse only.

It's both.

The Knicks deserve credit for executing on both sides of the floor and defending in a way that has clearly unnerved the Celtics.

I have never seen Tatum this out of sync.

He's driving into crowds that are obvious.

He's driving into Christophs.

Werzingis rolling to the rim.

He's driving at Al Horford and OG Ananobi.

He threw, I can't remember who he beat off the dribble, but he beat someone off the dribble, got in the lane, and it was one of those two-on-two battles at the rim.

And Kat was starting to rotate over to him.

He reacted like Kat was Victor Wembanyama and was like, oh my God, Kat's coming.

I got to get rid of this ball.

And threw a horrible, inaccurate lob pass to Luke Cornette that was behind him.

Like, it's Carl Anthony Towns, man.

It's not freaking Takempe Mutumbo.

Rest in peace.

Go at him.

They are, it's disgusting.

And the Knicks are the mentally tougher, stronger team right now.

I'm done.

And that was it.

That was all my, that was all my,

all my notes.

Don't be done.

Don't be done.

There's got to be, there's got to be something else in there.

Hey, man, look, you spent all last playoffs hearing people, you spent all last regular season hearing people talk about, well, you know, is this real?

66 wins.

Is this real?

All last playoffs and offseason, hearing people say, Miami, injured, Indiana, injured, cleveland injured dallas overmatched and you owned to your credit you owned it you were like we're going for the repeat this year joe missoula leaned right into it that answers every question the repeat answers all the questions and this is the effort you're putting forth in the first two games of your first real playoff series my god

we talk about the three ball as a high variance way to win all the time.

And I think sometimes we don't talk about it enough in the other direction too, which is what you're getting at right now, right?

Like we look at NCA tournament upsets and every time an 11 seed beats a three seed and goes to the final four or whatever, so often it's because some random dude who you've never heard of hit nine threes and that swung the game.

And we talk about it so much.

I've received so many texts from friends and people who don't work in basketball.

Why are all these comebacks happening?

in the NBA now.

And so much of that is because, well, the three ball changes things.

And you think about that as like a team can get hot.

They hit three threes on three straight possessions and all of a sudden a 12-point game is a three-point game and you're right back in it.

And a double-digit lead isn't what it used to be.

The opposite is true too, because the variance goes in the other direction.

And I totally agree with you.

I think sometimes when we look at the shot quality and we look at the shot profile and just to break down even more what you were saying, like the shot quality data on second spectrum, which accounts for the player who's actually taking the shots, like

they're vastly, like the Celtics are vastly undershooting what they're at.

Their effective field goal percentage is like according to those.

This is a hundred game series, right?

It'll leave an out by game.

Exactly.

Right.

The whole point of that stat, it is a, it's a projection of if you continue this process over a very large sample size, this is most likely where the numbers will regress to or improve to.

That is the point of that stat.

But at some point.

Like you got to actually make the shots.

And if you're not making the shots, you got to take ones that are lesser variance when you're up 20 because you don't want high variance when you're up 20.

You want high variance when you're down 20.

And if you're not the ones creating the high variance, which by the way, the Knicks often aren't.

The Knicks are a team that finished like bottom 10 in the league in free throw, right?

They were a team that finished 28th in the league in three-point attempt, right?

Like they aren't a very high-variance team.

They were fifth in the league in offensive rating, but after January 1st, they were 13th, 14th in points per possession.

Like this is a team that is good at what it's good at, but it does not play a high-variance form of basketball.

If you're down 20 and you're the Knicks,

you are glowing at the fact that the Celtics are the ones creating the high variance basketball for you, because that's the only way you're coming back from down 20 in the second half is to create some sort of element of that.

And it's just, in some ways, the Celtics are the ones who are doing themselves in with that sort of decision-making.

Well, look, hey, this is all fun and cool to talk about.

Jason Tatum is 12 of 42 for the series.

12 of 42.

Now, the wrist is...

Can I give you one?

Maybe the wrist is one.

We should say maybe the wrist is bothering him.

We don't know the extent to which that may or may not be true, but 12 of 42.

All this other stuff is cool.

Like, if he doesn't make shots,

give me the other one, then we'll finish up on this.

Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown have isolated 37 times in this series.

It's a second spectrum.

They've isolated 37 times in this series over the first two games.

Directly off of those isolations, the Celtics have scored 30 points.

That's an 81

offensive games.

I'm surprised that it's that high.

I thought you were going to be like 16.

And again, Jalen Brown did beat up Josh Hart a little bit earlier in the game.

Hey, look, look,

we're about to learn a lot about the Celtics.

We all know what's at stake for them, both

in semi-validating last year's title in the eyes of whatever group of fans you want to talk about and what's coming in the the offseason in terms of potential roster changes, financial crunch.

Like, it's a tight window, tight window.

This is a great road team.

It's one of the best road teams in recent NBA history.

Sure, they can bank on a game that's coming maybe where they make 23s.

That's one win, right?

They still got to get three more, and they're not going to get three more unless they play better.

They are fully capable of winning this series, they are fully capable of winning the next four games in a row in this series.

That's how good they are.

Now, they're probably not that that good.

Peak Celtics good because of whatever's going on with Porzingis.

Brown's a little banged up.

Tame's a little banged up.

Drew's a little banged up.

Everyone's a little banged up.

The Knicks guys have played like the equivalent of five seasons in one season, the way Tibbs plays them in minutes.

Are there things the Celtics could do?

Absolutely.

You know what I like last night, Fred?

When Jalen Brunson was on Derrick White, you got to reorient your whole offense around that because Derrick White's your most creative, unpredictable offensive player.

There was a sequence when they said, you know what, Jason Tatum, you having the ball is not going great.

Derek White's got Jalen Brunson on him.

We're going to run White Tatum pick and rules and use you as a screener.

Do more of that.

Get a little more creative.

If Mitchell Robinson's on Christoph's Porzingis, which I don't know why the Knicks are matching up that way when it's Horford Porzingis, I'd put him on Horford.

Spam Porzingis pick and pops.

See if you can get him going.

There's stuff they can do, but if they don't get out of their own way with these zero pass possessions and just crazy decision making, whether they're up 20, down 20, the Knicks are going to win this series because the Knicks are the steadier, steelier team right now.

And

I think the last time I was in this much shock at an ongoing playoff collapse was Nuggets Clippers in the bubble in 2020, when I just sat like, what is?

So the Clippers are just disintegrating game after game after game.

That's how bad this is.

And the Knicks are like, hey, let's keep playing.

You want to play a fifth quarter, sixth quarter?

Like, we're good.

Unbelievable.

Any parting thoughts before I move on to some other stuff?

No, let's let's do this.

Uh, we should briefly note, resuming tonight, the only games, one game tonight, Fred.

What am I going to do?

You're going to have to get a life sack.

Well, hang out.

You know what I'm doing today?

I'm driving the swim practice carpool, actually.

It's me and me and three 10-year-old girls.

It's a great time.

It sounds it.

Everybody, I'll tell you

everybody who told me the carpool is where you learn all all the real stuff, I really underestimated how true that is.

I just drive, and they are so unconcerned with adults.

Like, they just think every adult is lame and stupid and uncool that they just don't even realize you're there.

And they start having these conversations where it's like

you're all insane.

Like, all of your ideas.

They had one long conversation where one of the girls said, Oh my God, a white van pass.

Guys, I'm afraid of white vans.

And my daughter was like, Why are you afraid of a white van?

And the other person was like, Well, because that's where, like, people who drive white vans kidnap children.

And then the third girl was like, But what about blue vans?

Do people in blue vans kidnap children?

Why is it just white?

And it just went on for eight minutes.

So that's what I have in store for me.

This is the pregame locker room availability of swim practice.

This is what it is.

We go in the locker room pregame and we walk around and people think we're just interviewing people, but we're not.

We're just

they had a one conversation like six minutes long that was, what is diabetes?

Like, what I don't, someone had heard of diabetes, and they were like, it's when you have too much sugar.

No, it's when you don't have enough sugar.

And you need, and it was anyway.

Uh, we should mention

Warriors Wolves is that game tonight, and Steph Curry will not play in it.

Hamstring strain, he's going to be re-evaluated in a week, which, as you know, does not mean he's necessarily going to play in a week.

The earliest he would come back is game five under that timetable.

And look, injuries are part of it.

They've been a, they've been, uh, the Warriors have benefited from injuries and gotten slammed by injuries in playoff runs during this semi-dynastic period they've had.

And we don't need to go through all of them.

It's part of it.

It's, it still really sucks because they go to Minnesota, they steal game one.

Pat Spencer hits a sky hook at some point in the game.

And it's just such a delight watching this dude at 37, who's one of the most beloved teammates in the history of the NBA, obviously a one-of-one player, both in quality and style, still doing it at this level, still just breaking down the Keel Alexander off the dribble for eight dribbles and jab steps and drilling a three in his face.

Still improbably getting to play meaningful second-round basketball with a shot at going to the conference finals with the whole team other than Draymond Green and Steve Kerr essentially turned over around him from the glory years.

And now he's out a week.

And look, opportunity knocks for Minnesota.

You answered it with 9,000 missed three-pointers for the second game in a row in game one.

Opportunity knocks.

They should be able to beat the Warriors without Curry.

And the big question is, how are the Warriors going to score without Curry?

How are they going to score when Butler's on the bench?

But this is the Jimmy Butler time.

And he tried to summon it in game one late when it got close.

Ran a lot more pick and rolls than he's been running as a Warrior.

Had one of his trademark reject the screen.

with everything I got accelerated to the basket.

He's dealing with that glute injury, right?

Roasted Rudy Gobert on a switch one time, and he's guarding Rudy Gobert a lot on the other end, and so he'll have that cross match.

I just don't, I'm, I'm a little, I need to see it because the Jimmy Butler I've seen in the last two weeks does not have enough in the gas tank to do what he needs to do now.

Like he couldn't do really anything with Dante DiVincenzo,

who was guarding him as the primary guy, and guarded him a lot.

One of the benefits of Curry being out from Minnesota is they can shift the assignments so that Julius Randall doesn't have to guard Jimmy Butler and they can move everyone around.

And DiMon Schenzo is the smallest guy on the floor when they take Mike Conley out.

And when Mike Connolly is on the floor, they're just going to have to go at him every single possession and not waste any possessions.

That could be anything.

They just have to be calculated about what they do.

There are possessions where if a small guy's on Ant, run the Ant.

I assume Gary Payton II will start or Moses Moody will start.

Moses Moody is not playing well.

It's probably going to be GP2 to guard Ant.

Try some Ant Randall pick and rolls.

Try some Randall, whoever buddy healed is guarding pick and rolls.

Just like be calculated about it.

And if they're calculated about it, you know, Quentin Post is on the floor, play him off the floor.

Go at him.

They should be able to do it.

But Jimmy Butler, man,

he's, in my notes, I'm starting to call him the finagler.

He just finagles points.

Like you watch these games and he finishes with 20 points.

I'm like, how did he do that?

And they're like, well, there was an airball that he saw coming and nobody else saw coming and he rebounded and put it back in the basket.

There was a loose ball that squirted to him with DiVincenzo on him.

He catches it, realizes he's got momentum, elbows DiVincenzo out of the way, short jumper.

He seizes opportunities because he sees them before other people do.

And he just finagles these points.

But finagling by the finagler is not going to be enough.

He's going to have to be playoff Jimmy, I think, for the Warriors to do something here.

Yeah, I agree.

And he tried to take that over a little bit late late in that game, as you mentioned, more pick and rolls, more isolations against Steven Cenzo.

And I think he did a pretty good job getting switches onto him, too.

There's even a play earlier in that game where he's got Jaden McDaniels on him, and he runs

around a little pin down and ends up getting it at the top of the key.

And then he ends up going at kind of weaker defenders.

The thing is, with Minnesota, is

they just have an insane amount of strength on the perimeter defensively.

Nikhil Alexander Walker is as good.

I mean, people talk about McDaniels, who's awesome, and Ant who fights and DiVincenzo is feisty.

Nikhil Alexander Walker is, I love the way that he guards screens.

He gets in this insanely low defensive stance, and he's like a spider.

He just springs by.

a screener and he always executes the screen coverage properly.

He's been struggling with his shot as every single Timberwolf has, apparently.

You know, you talk want to talk about shot variants, Zach.

The worst

shot quality,

the most the team has underperformed its shot quality in a single game during the playoffs was Minnesota against the Lakers in that clincher when I think they went one for 100,000 from three.

And this is on three-point shot quality.

And

the second worst was a Memphis game against the Thunder.

And then the third worst performance was Minnesota game one when they shot five of 29 from three.

Eventually, some shots will go in.

Eventually, Anthony Edwards is not going to start a game 0 for 11 from the field or whatever he was.

Finish strong to his credit.

Finish strong to his credit.

I do think what Curry's absence

allows Minnesota to do is it allows them to make sure that those sorts of matchups with Butler, they can load up on him a little bit more.

And they have so many strong perimeter defenders there that

it's really going to have to open up Butler's ability to be able to create on the perimeter.

And they're already, they're not guarding Gary Payton the second.

And Moody is struggling.

And if they're going to have to guard, Peyton played the most minutes off the bench for Golden State during game one, but they're not guarding him.

And to his credit, he hit a huge three during crunch time, which kind of staved off like a sort of kind of fake comeback late in that game.

They are just sinking guys into the lane.

They are sinking Julius Randall into the lane.

And they are sinking Rudigobert into the lane.

And not even, it's not even that they're helping off of him.

It's like just nobody is guarding him.

And it's going to be very difficult for Jimmy Butler to create when he's got an awesome on-ball defender on him basically all the time.

And they've got guys packing the paint like crazy.

And other guys are going to have to hit shots.

And I do think like the Jimmy Butler finagling is going to have to happen to a degree because the finagling happens when he's on the ball too.

It's a good way to describe Jimmy Butler.

It happens when he's got the ball also because the Jimmy Butler, the Jimmy Butler free throws are finagling.

The way that Butler will

not grifted.

I think that's an important distinction.

Like he just has such a great sense of angles and timing and anticipation that when he doesn't have it, when he doesn't have his A-plus juice and legs, he just finds these little creases.

That's why he's a great cutter too.

He just senses these opportunities to get a tiny advantage.

And once he has that advantage, he's going to ring something out of it.

Yeah.

And look, he had 67 front court touches in game two.

He was averaging 40 front court touches a game during the playoffs going into that.

Like Steph went down, and they were like, you got to run things.

But on the other side, like Draymond Green might not hit a ton of threes during game two like he did in game one.

You might not have that sort of stuff.

And especially if you've got like Draymond and

Peyton on the court together, the spacing is going to be interesting.

and Butler is excellent in tight spaces.

He is going to have to figure out ways to be able to create out of those tight spaces, not just for himself, but he's going to have to figure out ways to do it.

And can I just add one more thing?

I know you love Jonathan Kuminga.

It's not going great.

He did make a three, and the lights flickered in Kaminga keys.

The lights flickered and then they went off again.

I want to credit a Jonathan Kuminga thing because he did something which I don't know.

I'm not at those games.

I've been on the Knicks games, but

I famously and proudly have no life at all.

So I will watch every single game that is in existence.

And

there was a moment with Kuminga where I'm like, I put myself into Steve Kerr's shoes.

And I'm like, Steve Kerr must be so thrilled.

There is a play where Kuminga's off the ball.

They help off of him.

He's on the left wing.

And he just, he notices his defender turns away from him.

The second he notices his defender turn his head.

He cuts the lane.

He ends up getting a dunk in a half court possession.

And that's the kind of thing.

It's almost like he's not a dope, Fred.

It's almost like he's not a dope.

And maybe you shouldn't have ruined his confidence for an entire half season, but here we are.

That's the kind of stuff that the Warriors want to see out of him.

That's the kind of stuff that like, okay, you're going to play this complex offense with a lot of cutting and a lot of recognition and a lot of just, you have to be able to improv properly.

I kind of on both ends, because that's what, how Draymond sets up the defense too.

And you have to be able to improv properly.

Like they're going to need that kind of stuff too.

The off-ball movement of just like, we notice, okay, you're helping off of me.

You're, you're packing the paint like crazy or you're locked in on Jimmy or whatever it is.

I'm not just going to cut because I think people think, okay, you're open.

cut.

There are so many times where, where players will say, where, oh, I'm open, cut.

And Kaminga does this sometimes, where it's like, all right, I'm open, cut, and they cut right into the driving lane.

And all of a sudden, now the driving lane is somehow even more crowded than it was before.

And what you want to do is you want to cut with pace, and you want to cut with playing with speeds, and you want to cut to the actual right spot.

That was a really good play by Kaminga.

The Warriors are generally really good with that, but all that stuff is going to be so much more important because all those crazy cuts that we see in Warriors games all the time, so many of them happen because a defense is having a nervous breakdown about the fact that Stephan Curry just exists and is there.

And now that Curry's not there,

they are going to have to find ways to be able to take advantage of those holes without those sorts of nervous breakdowns.

Because even when Buddy Healed is draining all of his threes, like nobody creates that sort of effect.

Nobody creates that kind of pull other than Curry.

And

the way Minnesota was matching up was going to unlock some Curry Green pick and rolls that were not really available to them or that effective against Houston because of where Shangun was guarding.

And now he's gone.

Somehow, amid all of this, we haven't addressed the most heartbreaking loss in a series of heartbreaking losses, which was Cavs, Pacers, game two.

That series actually resumes tomorrow.

It's Thursday morning right now.

We don't know the status of Evan Mobley and Darius Garland and DeAndre Hunter.

And it's kind of pointless to like deep dive into game three without knowing who the hell is going to play.

I will just say

I don't really understand what happened at the end of the game, still having watched it five times.

Lane violations, galore,

just botched inbounds plays, wasted timeouts, Halliburton heroics.

It was one of the more unbelievable collapses/slash comebacks I've ever seen.

And a total gut punch for the Cavs who looked as if they were going to get the spirited home game two win, just like the Celtics did.

By the way, Celtics Cavs being down, O2 is just unbelievable.

Are you ready for like a Knicks Pacers conference finals?

Like it's 1994.

I was going to say it's 1999.

We got to get Larry Johnson in the building and we'll be good to go.

Reggie Miller call in the game?

He would be in the building.

Reggie Miller seems to have developed a soft spot for the Knicks, which I kind of like is a good late career turn for him.

Anyway, like Strusko's bananas, Donovan Mitchell.

Honestly, I don't say this lightly.

His game two performance conjured the image of Michael Jordan in game seven of the 1998 conference finals between the Bulls and the Pacers, where the Bulls had nothing and the Pacers were winning the game.

And all Michael Jordan could do is like, I'm just going to get to the line over and over again.

I'm just going to throw myself at the rim, going to throw myself into contact and I'm going to will us over the finish line.

And Donovan and Mitchell, forget the absolutely nuclear dunk on Pascal Siakam, which was unbelievable.

He was willing them to victory and they still should have won the game.

Ty Jerome turned into a pumpkin.

No trash talking, no chest puffing.

Didn't even want to shoot the ball by the time he was benched.

He needs to be unpumpkined.

And can I just give you a stat?

You can.

Before we quickly exit here, Andrew Nemhard,

pull-up.

Pull-up three-pointers.

Okay.

Regular season, 12 of 44.

So made 12 pull-up threes in however many games he played.

Lots of games.

Last season, regular season, 8 of 36.

so that's 20 combined in probably something like 150 games 2025 playoffs eight of 15.

he's made as many pull-up threes in how many playoff games have they played now seven as he has in the entire regular season last year and almost as many as in the entire regular season this year and i just want to give the pacers a shout out because

People are going to remark again at the injury luck they have benefited from against Milwaukee last season,

against New York last season when the Knicks basically ran out of players by the end of the series, against Milwaukee again this season, and now against the Cavaliers with three of their top six players hurt, or at least hurt for game two.

We'll see who plays in game three.

You got to beat the team that's in front of you, and they beat the team that's in front of them.

And

they're just a really good, well-constructed team.

We have a long sample size now of this team being really good.

And if you go back and you just trace trace the tentacles of like the Paul George trade and on, their asset management has been like really underrated how pristine it is.

Like Ola Depot becomes Levert, becomes the draft picks to get them Nemhard and Shepard, I believe.

Ola Depot comes in the Paul George trade.

They get Neesmith.

And I am an original Neesmith Island resident to the point that when he was being benched, by Boston, I ran into the Celtics in the playoffs that year in Miami, and I ran into him and his agent.

I've told this story before, and I said, Look, man, I'm not kissing up to you because we just met and we're talking.

Like, I've been saying they should play you, and he's freaking good.

And by the way, remember this if, dot, dot, dot, remember this if end of third quarter, Cleveland in total control of the game, 10 six seconds left or something.

Carlisle brings Halliburton in for the last play of the quarter.

He runs like a fly pattern down the middle, inbounds pass to him, kick to Neesmith, corner three.

Just that's the stuff.

That's the stuff every possession matters that stuff so indiana has done an amazing job and it just is shitty that the calves have this absolutely magical season they actually kind of rest everyone and manage minutes and all of this and at the worst possible time it is being undone partially by injuries partially by self-imposed errors and partially by a very good pacers team and i just again it's it's we don't know who's playing i just want to see the healthy teams play.

I want to see Cleveland have a real honest chance at this because it's a bummer, but what a

freaking finish the other night.

I mean, that was one where it was like, I mean, when Neesmith got that dunk on a free throw, I was like, was he, was he fouled?

Did he commit a foul?

How many people committed lane violations?

Are we just not going to call that anymore?

Because I'm cool.

Like, if someone dunks and we're like, you know what, that's a cool dunk.

Like, I guess we're just cool with that.

Unbelievable.

Zach, Neesmith is, is so physical now and i remember when he came out in the preseason last year and he was just guarding dudes in the preseason i was like damn nismith got really good uh nemhard's very similar nemhard defensively is one of the most underrated players in the league you know what's interesting about that though fred is i agree with you and he's very good and everyone sings his praises and then once in a while hint hint he comes into a matchup and it's like oh he can't do that and one of those was jalen brunson in the playoffs last year.

He was like, we're going to have to put someone else on Jalen Brunson.

Just put a little pin in that.

And Nismith did a great job on him.

Neesmith did a great job on Brunson.

Like, I thought Neismith was one of the best Brunson defenders that I've seen since Brunson kind of hit elite status.

I mean, to your point on Nemhard's jump shooting,

I don't know, maybe playoff Nemhard's a thing.

Like last year, game seven on the road at MSG, he literally shot 100% in a game seven, in a game that

the Pacers literally broke the record for field goal percentage in any playoff game, not just the game seven.

And they did it on a road game seven in a crazy MSG environment.

The thing with the Pacers that I think a lot of people

forget, and obviously the fact that the Cavs are missing guys is the most important thing here.

I also find Darius Garland's importance to just be unbelievably underrated in terms of

success.

He's an all-star point card.

But it's even more than that.

Like, yes, he's an all-star, but people talk about the Cavs as if, like, this is Donovan Mitchell's team.

And I get it from a status standpoint.

It is.

And if you ask me who the best player on the Cavs is, I will tell you Donovan Mitchell.

However, who runs more pick and rolls than anybody else on that team?

Darius Garland.

Who's their leading facilitator?

Darius Garland.

Who's the one who creates the most threes for his teammates?

Darius Garland.

Who's the one who basically runs as many isolations as Donovan Mitchell?

Darius Garland.

Who's the one who gets into the paint and has those jump passes that create all these corner threes, which is like part of the strength of the Cleveland offense.

It's Darius Garland.

And not having that guy is kind of like not having your engine.

That being said, that being said, one thing that really intrigued me about this matchup, and I'm not going to sit here and say I thought Indiana was going to win, but one thing that really intrigued me about it is as much as Indiana's reputation is this high-powered, fast-paced offensive team, since they started out 10 and 15 to the year, they've been a really good defensive team.

They've been a really good defensive team.

And even when they weren't a very good defensive team last year, one thing that they have been really good at for the last two years is preventing three-point attempts.

They gave up, I think,

the lowest three-point attempt rate in the NBA last year.

They are schematically designed in order to not give up threes.

They don't really like helping.

They like staying on corner shooters.

And I think one of the stories of the Eastern Conference playoffs right now is we just talked about it with Boston and New York.

Cleveland and Boston are the two best three-point shooting teams in the NBA.

Cleveland was, I think, fourth in volume, second in percentage.

Boston took more threes, made more threes in a single season than any team ever has in a single season ever.

And right now, those two teams are down 2-0.

And

Cleveland is like 10 for 38

per game over these first two games.

And

that was after they just annihilated Miami from three, just destroyed Miami from beyond the arc.

And I think the Pacers have done a really excellent job at the point of attack, being able to keep guys away from being able to create threes.

And I think schematically, they've done a wonderful job in being able to help on drivers, but still being able to kind of scurry out to the three-point arc, run guys off the three-point arc, prevent attempts, and contest really well, which is something that I think the Knicks have done really well too, as well.

Like we talk about not all three-point attempts being created equal.

Like, the Knicks are doing an excellent job.

Well, they mentioned, I'm glad you mentioned that because to wrap up, like, I mentioned those switching two-on-two battles in the paint.

The three wings around Brunson and Kat are doing an unbelievable job just taking up space and sliding this way and sliding that way and making Boston's ball handlers think, wait, is that is that driving lane?

Oh, no, it's not.

Is that guy over there?

Oh, no, he's not.

And that's big.

Two pacers things.

Then we're wrapping up.

Number one, Tyrese Halliburton, most overrated player, was ridiculous.

The players are wrong.

I had him second team all NBA until the very end.

I flipped him for cat.

He was a no-brainer all-NBA player this year.

I'm very curious to see if he's going to make it.

To me, he was a must-have.

Number two, and this is my concluding thought, and I'm going to save most of it for another day.

There's a wonderful story to be written about Miles Turner, who

has been in trade rumors all the time, has been almost traded at least one time that I can think of,

is always somehow coming up short of the player everybody dreams him to be

and yet is just rock fucking solid more so on offense even than defense at this point but is just helping you in lots of different ways all the time and I kind of hope now that he's a career pacer after all the trade rumors he's like mr.

Pacer now that's for another day Fred Katz at the athletic does great work covering the entire NBA but he's on this wild Knicks Celtic series madison square garden is going to be rocking on uh Saturday sir.

Enjoy it.

Yes,

it's going to be crazy.

Those playoff games get wild.

Thanks for having me, Zach.

I appreciate it.

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All right, it's time for an interlude between playoff series talk because we are 72, 96 hours, something like that, from my favorite event of the NBA calendar and for sure the stupidest event of the NBA calendar, the NBA draft lottery, where

14

highly educated, uber competitive, top of their field, outthink everybody, search for every edge to get this player on a two-way contract because maybe he could become a whatever, sit in a room and watch ping pong balls fly around a 40-year-old lottery machine like you see on the local TV news and see whether their franchise gets Cooper Flag or whether their franchise gets somebody who's less exciting than Cooper Cooper Flag, but they're all geniuses and they're all great team building experts.

They're at the mercy of a stupid lottery machine.

Jay Kyle Mann, how are you, sir?

It's such a pleasure to have you on.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.

You know, it's a little weird for me.

I've had the privilege in my like basketball career coming to this later in life of just meeting a lot of people that I enjoyed over the years, like Bill.

And this one, you know, is,

yeah, just getting to talk to you is a little, it was a little surreal.

Not trying to weird you out, but I was like, oh, Zach Lowe's in my life now.

This is awesome.

And we start talking about The Simpsons immediately, of all things, right?

90 Simpsons.

I'll say it again.

It's the best thing that's ever been on television.

Don't at me if people at anymore.

Adam, I'll jump in.

It's fine.

I love the lottery so much.

I'm going to be in the room, the secret room again.

It's not a secret.

I'll be in the drawing room again as everyone sits there and watches the stupid machine.

And this is a good one because we have a legit, awesome number one pick.

And then, so here, I am not a draft guy.

You are.

I'm not a college basketball guy.

You are.

I do, however, talk to NBA front office people all the time who have been gearing up for this draft.

And I've talked to more of them in the last 72 hours to gear up for this podcast.

And I will say the general consensus, if there is one, is this.

And I want to see if you agree with this consensus.

One is locked in.

It's become as deep as the draft is, it's starting to become a one and gigantic gap to everybody else.

Two is probably locked in at Dylan Harper.

You get a little like,

but probably.

And then everyone's like three to 10 is just kind of like complete eye of the beholder.

Depends on how the lottery falls.

Wouldn't be shocked if this guy goes six spots higher than he's mocked.

I wouldn't be shocked if that guy goes six spots lower than he's mocked.

Do you agree with that?

Or do you think there's a clearer sort of like three, four, five pecking order just in terms of like talent than that?

I think the top four guys on the board, I mean, Cooper obviously has distinguished himself and he is, you know, over way over here.

And I've talked about him ad nauseum all over the place.

People are probably sick of it by now.

But I think you're right.

And I agree with, I agree with these NBA execs, and I'll validate their opinions.

I mean, Harper over the course of the year,

you did feel some resistance to people, you know, boxing out any kind of discussion about like, is he sort of unassailably there at that number two spot?

Because he does a lot of obvious things that translate to the way we watch the playoffs, which I always still Russillo's thing about painting a masterpiece.

It's like you can watch these guys and get excited about all these little quirky things they do, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it comes down to will they be a liability that can be ignored on offense?

And

are they going to be picked on on switches?

And those are the two things.

And if you check those two boxes, that's just how we have to look at it.

And Harper is a big guard at 6'6.

I made this argument in the mock draft that we're getting ready to put out to plug that.

He in the half court, court, he's a guard that doesn't depend on sort of the momentum of transition or just the momentum of game flow to get in the paint.

If the game slows down, he has incredible feet around the basket in the half court and he can score and continue to do the things that he does.

But if you look at these guys, Ace Bailey, profiles as a big shot maker, you know, Vijay Edgecombe, these are high-level athletes.

Overall, there are some guys that there are, to speak to what you're talking about, there are a few guys that have the talent to really, really jump up higher.

You know, one here is Trey Johnson.

I don't know if you've gotten to look into him at all.

Oh, oh, I did 10 minutes of YouTube film on a bunch of prospects, which means I am the most dangerous kind of person possible.

I have very little knowledge and a lot of takes.

And Trey Johnson, you know, look, seems pretty thirsty to me.

I get the Cam Thomas comp that everyone throws out, but again,

I don't know the context.

I don't know the context of the teams, right?

So I watch a lot.

I watch like a lot of Vijay Edgecombe because I'm like, I don't know anything about this guy.

Let me watch him.

And what I watched was like fairly unremarkable to me, other than the athleticism stands out.

He made a lot of threes in the highlight.

I really did not shoot the three that well in college.

And then I would talk to NBA people who are pretty high on him.

And they would be like, well, his floor should be like good three and D guy.

That's the floor.

Right off the bat, that's with insane athleticism.

That's a great floor.

And then they're like, but you see, if you watch Baylor, like their point guard was hurt.

They have no spacing.

It was like a very unfavorable environment for him to function in.

So, like, that's the stuff that I need to sort of have taught to me.

But, yeah, Trey Johnson was

a lot of shots.

A lot of shots were taken.

I, I, he is an interesting, you mentioned the context of college, and I think that is the thing that people you really have to dig into because even juxtaposing it against some of these high-level programs, like Liam McNeely is a guy that I don't know if you've gotten to, he's a little further down the list, but he played with Cooper at Mont Verde.

And Mont Verde last year could have beaten some like lower-level level D1 teams.

They were so talented.

They have like five guys that could have, that are first rounders, essentially.

But Trey, in particular, I'm always kind of on the lookout for these guys who,

in the process of their development and their growth,

once their first post-college year is the first time that they're on a team where they're not the best guy.

And, you know, like Gig Jackson had some pretty hilarious quotes where he was talking about, I've never stood in the corner.

It was like, for some of these guys, they've never done it.

So, Trey, i i think the the the just temptation of the fruit of i should shoot every single time led to some overeating on his part and some anxiousness i think to shoot the ball whereas if you put him into a situation and you just say this is your compartment this is your lane you're going to shoot movement threes you're going to be a gravity piece we'll worry about the other kind of stuff later if he gets picked by like the sixers say hypothetically that's something that's just going to work immediately because he hit threes in every which way every every type of action.

Um, and uh, yeah, but you just kind of have to watch out for guys like that.

We should I'm glad you mentioned the Sixers because obviously this is the most delicious subplot of the lottery.

I don't know who's going to be in the back room for the Sixers because it's been a while.

Um, I don't know who they're going to send.

I'm hoping it's Daryl Maury because I just want to see the guy with the most at stake, the top guy in the job, a guy who is an incredibly competitive and nervous game watcher in that environment, because as people may or may not know,

if the pick falls in the top six, they keep it.

If it falls out of the top six, they give it away.

It's like 65, 35, or 60, 40 or something like that.

I don't remember the odds.

Like, that's,

you can talk yourself in and out of 65, 35, 60, 40.

Like, oh, there's a 60% chance I'm going to win this game.

That sounds great.

Like, wait, 40%, there's a, there's a 40% chance I'm going to get struck by lightning if I go outside today.

That seems like a lot.

That seems like a big percentage.

I'm going to pick my seat in the room based on the best view of whoever the Sixers representative is.

And I'm just going to watch that person the entire time.

This is the best part of the you were talking about just the absurdity of all this preparation just coming down to, it reminds me of this feature somebody did one time about this one man who was on track to live to be 150 years old.

And they were showing him and he was like 70 years old.

And he looked, and I was like, what if that guy just steps outside after all that preparation and gets hit by a car?

That's kind of the equivalent of what we're talking about here.

Where

you sit there and watch some of these people.

One of my favorite clips of all time, and I know you've seen this one is Jerry West suppressing the death inside when he realizes he's not going to get to take LeBron.

I retweet this clip every year and put Needle in the Hay by Elliot Smith over it because you just watch these people die on national television.

So I agree with you.

And by the way, I don't want my GM to hold it in.

I don't care if if he's on national TV.

I don't care if he's in the secret drawing room.

I want to see the full on.

I want to see someone like flip the freaking Deus over when it doesn't go their way.

I want to see F-bombs.

I want to see

accidental unbleaped F-bombs.

Okay,

the latest mock draft I haven't seen, but you go in the one that's up now, Flag Harper, Edgecombe 3.

Ace Bailey 4, Trey Johnson 5, Derek Queen, who I saw play in the tournament.

So I actually saw him play a real basketball game.

And very predictably, it was like, oh, this guy's so fun.

I like this guy.

I don't know how it's going to translate to the NBA, but he's very fun.

Malawatch,

Maluwatch, I had not seen at all.

No clue.

He's absolutely gigantic.

Okay, let's go to Ace Bailey.

I watched 20 minutes of film on Ace Bailey.

That's really all I'm going to do.

The playoffs are going on.

I might do more if the playoffs slow down.

And I got instantly why he's this like mystery box of a player.

And I will tell you this.

I don't know if you've heard this.

Ace Bailey's measurement at the Combine, I think, is going to be one of the most anticipated measurements in recent prospect history.

Because

is he 6'10?

Or is he 6'8?

Or is he 6'7?

There are NBA people who are like, I'm not actually sure he's 6'10.

And if he's not 6'10, if he's 6'8, he's like, that matters a lot to me.

I have some intel from some, he's been measured before.

This is one of my favorite parts of the draft world is the, just the, the people trading.

Oh, where'd this measurement come from?

Is this credible?

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I've heard he's 6'8 and a quarter.

So we'll put a pin in that and we'll see if that's true.

I mean, if he comes in at 6'7 or 6'8,

I don't know what that does to the draft order, but there are definitely some team.

The name Cam Reddish was thrown at me if he comes in at 6'7 or 6'8, which I watch him and I'm like, this dude's making spinning one-legged like up and under.

Yeah, I didn't get that.

Yeah, he's, he's a way.

He's, he's an, he's one of those interesting, more shot maker than shooter types.

Um,

it's, it's an odd thing where he, he seems to like to rhythm is just an interesting thing with shooting for me.

It's like some guys just aren't comfortable without the dribble, without moving.

When they don't have that rhythm, it just seems like their whole flow into their shot is different or their comfort level is.

But yeah, I mean, he's, he also, I've heard, has a 6, 11 and a half wingspan.

He's, I don't worry so much about that.

I think he's, he's athletic.

Like his one-step jump is pretty good.

He's pretty explosive.

The main thing is that he just can't leverage it right now because he can't dribble.

I mean, and he's skinny.

So those are, those are kind of the outlier questions, outlying questions.

Okay.

Give me the elevator pitch on Jeremiah Fierce.

That's a good one.

This is one of the more polarizing subjects because you'll talk to scouts who will be like, I don't want to watch him anymore.

That's one of those.

They'll be like, I feel like I'm being waterboarded.

But then you'll,

no, I mean, but you can kind of see both sides of it.

The people who really value, you know, on ball juice is a jargony thing, people say.

I mean, he's, he has a really

connective and fast vocabulary with the ball in his hands.

Like he, he can, he can string together these kind of improvised.

And you'll, you'll watch younger guards sometimes who clearly have what I call trainer brain, where they get into a sequence and they've memorized this pattern.

And they're, And once that pattern gets disrupted, once they're off book, they're like an actor who can't go off script.

They're like, I don't, I can't, they can't improvise.

If you watch Fears, he's really good with the ball in his hands and he just, he just prints paint touches.

I mean, like, he threw some passes where I was like, ooh, that's an NBA pass right there.

Yeah.

The main thing is just, can he sort of, I compared it to he needs that bonding agent of being able to shoot the ball to kind of tie it all together because he can get in the pain at will.

I think he'll he'll be a creative enough finisher.

It's just you got to be able to shoot the ball or else you end up becoming one of these guys that you can't become a primary if you're not a threat at the point of attack with the ball.

There is somebody

mocked in the top 10 of your latest, of the one that's available now online, not the newest one.

There's one guy in your top 10

who Again, this is based on me doing the stupid thing, which is taking very little information and taking too much out of it.

I fully realize that.

And I'm almost tongue-in-cheek.

I like these, though.

I like these because you can get too close to the canvas and I'm like, I'm like staring at one tile and you'll be like, I see the picture.

You're too close.

I like this stuff.

Well, but I should like a lot of this is tongue-in-cheek.

Like I would never make actual decisions or like real predictions based on the limited information that I have consumed.

But it is, as you say, interesting.

There's one guy in your top 10 who's just like way different than I assumed he would be.

And I like him way better than I thought I would because of of the ways in which he is way different than I incorrectly and stupidly assumed him to be.

Can you guess who it is?

Is it Yakachonis?

Is it Casparis Yakachonis?

No, he's exactly what I assumed he would be.

A very clever tall pet.

Yes, Conkinipple.

Conkinipple,

wow, just didn't really expect the kind of, he's got a little physicality and nastiness to his game on offense.

Yeah.

I couldn't think of a comp for him, honestly, because I was going through and I was like, I can't remember a movement shooter like this who is built like him.

Can you think of any?

I was just pouring through basketball reference.

Well, look, I mean, and I, so I asked all a bunch of my scout friends, like, so I guess the book, the, the, the hit on him is just lateral speed defensively.

And is he going to be able to hold up?

And like, yeah, that's it.

But I'm like, I mean, he's got.

He's got a level of nasty and physicality and creativity on offense that I frankly did not expect.

And I was like, okay, that's interesting.

I even had a guy tell me

if he went top five, I wouldn't be shocked.

And I was like, okay, I might be a little shocked at that, but maybe not.

I don't know.

Like, there are some people who really like him and some people who are really skeptical.

Speaking of getting struck by lightning, I'm going to say something.

When I watch him, I watched him in EYBL.

That's, I usually try to kind of know who these guys are before to get an idea of how to contextualize what they do in college.

I'm not going to act like I'm a high school expert.

I'm not, but I saw him a lot.

And when he would play in the paint, he has that ability to sort of dole out punishment with that big frame and play at a pace off of two feet.

I'm not saying they're the same player.

I've invoked this guy before, but he has some Devin Bookery stuff when he gets to the elbow where he can hit somebody and then he has a gorgeous mid-range shot.

He can create it for himself.

I don't know that he's going to be getting downhill, but he's a pretty good connective passer.

I think he's going to be somebody.

It's just what you said.

If he can hold up defensively, he adds a lot of stuff.

I was like, Gordon Hayward,

I wasn't sure quite who to compare him to.

He's pretty unique, like you said.

You do run into the old Daryl Maury rule where, you know, it was like, you can't, you, you have to do cross-racial comparisons.

You can't compare white players to white players.

You run into some of it.

When you talk to scouts about Knipple, you get that like very clearly.

He's comped to all the people you think he's going to be comped to.

This is an unfair question because I'm springing this on you.

Who needs to win the lottery most urgently?

The Jazz or the Wizards?

Not that they're the only two who can win it.

Anyone can win it.

I'm just saying, up to two teams in that sort of bottom four,

who there's no deserve.

People are like, I deserve this.

This team deserves that.

Deserve's got nothing to do with it, as they said in the wire.

Utah or Washington, who has a more urgent need for the basketball gods to smile upon them?

I feel like the Jazz need to win this.

I brought this up because since Harper, if they do end up with the second pick,

if I were them, I would consider maybe moving it because of the dissonance that they're going to have among, not because they won't be able to figure it out, because I do think that Dylan Harper is going to be a better player than Isaiah Collier and Colin Sexton and Keontae George.

I just think that having him as the implied, and you might be able to play them all together.

Will Hardy is a brilliant guy.

He could figure it out.

I just think it would create some questions.

And in this era where questions are just more difficult to answer than ever in terms of moving people,

and I think that flag would just, they've been bad for a while now in this post-Mitchell Gobert era.

And I think that flag would just kind of set them off moving.

I think the Wizards will be okay.

If they end up with Dylan Harper, he fits with the guys that they have and it'll be great.

So I think it's the Jazz.

Yeah, the Jazz are really interesting because, you know, they've done this thing the last couple of years where they were overperforming expectations and then pulled the rug out from their own team halfway through the season.

And as a result, never ended up where they are right now in the lottery.

And you look at, they have a bunch of young players and you look at them.

Cody Williams, Williams, I mean, that did not go great.

One year, we'll see.

Keontae George,

you know, I thought about him watching Fears just because not that they're that similar, but that George will do stuff on an NBA floor where you're like, that's an NBA pass right there.

Like, that was a left-handed laser beam pass into the lane, but he's just been so bad defensively and hasn't been able to shoot it well enough that you're like, what is this amounting to?

And what it amounted to this year was he got he got demoted to the second unit halfway through the the season or whatever.

Filipowski's all right.

I had him second team all-rookie.

Not sure what he's going to become.

Kessler's pretty good.

Like, like, I don't know what he's going to be.

He's like pretty good.

Hendricks, I had really, was really intrigued by before the injury.

My point is, like, and Collier, Collier was good.

Collier trended the right way.

The start was so bad that it was alarming, but he trended the right way.

My point is, like,

just not sure what all this really amounts to.

All these bites at like the eighth, tenth, seventh pick in the draft.

It might amount to like not all that much so far.

I don't know.

You need a map.

This is what I always say.

These, these teams that are trying to get to crawl out of the nothingness to somethingness, they just need a map.

And a player, and a player like Cooper Flag, like when the when the magic got Paolo, it was like, we have a map to build our team.

When the Pistons got K'd, it was like, we have a clear plan.

We need these pieces.

And the great thing about Cooper is he checks that box in terms of, yes, he gives you an idea of who you can build around, but he's so versatile that you can go a number of different directions because he doesn't have any kind of implied, I have to play this way in his game, which I think is what makes him such a special prospect.

He could go a number of directions.

And for the Jazz, they need there's nothing on here that is a map to me forward.

It's like any, you could keep any of this or get rid of any of this.

I don't know which direction they're going.

It's fine, but it's just kind of middling.

And I think Cooper would be,

he would be just an explosion in the right direction.

I'll tell you, though,

I'm just saying Spurs are going to have two lottery picks and like a 7% chance or something at the number one pick.

I'm just like, I think on that one,

Spurs win the lottery.

I think I'm stepping in as commissioner and being like, do it again.

Draw it again.

It's just, that's not fair.

Do it again.

I know it's supposed to be luck and the lottery is a lottery.

And like, you know, the teams of the magic won it two years in a row, and the Cavs have won it a million times.

Just do it, do it again.

It's weaponyama and flag.

That's not fair.

Well, wait a minute, though.

I mean, does your I want to see this part of your brain kind of haven't played any part in this?

Because I'm curious for you, watching the NBA as intensely as you do, is there any team, regardless of Karma or whatever, that in the Zach Lowe, I just want to see this rankings.

Where, who would you like, who would, in the basketball sense, you would like to see Cooper Flag play with that's in the lottery?

lottery?

This is your show.

I did this to you.

That's good.

I mean, there are some obvious ones, right?

It's almost like boring to send him to the bad teams because he's just going to, like, you know, they're going to lose, but he's going to do.

I mean, the great thing about Cooper Flag is, and the thing that makes him so rare as a prospect, as you have said, is like the on-ball stuff is almost less advanced than like everything else about his game, including playing hard as fuck all the time, which is a very valuable thing.

So I don't know what he looks like on a bad, bad team, but like, you know, I mean, the Sixers would be interesting.

The Pelicans, just because I have no idea what they're doing or who's going to play for them, are interesting.

Spurs, you outlined it.

You put it with like Scoot and Shaden Sharp in Portland.

I don't know what that looks like.

Can we talk about this just for a second?

I saw the Blazers up close in person.

Just seeing them at eye level, I don't think people are tracking how defensively they are just a couple of tweaks, I feel like, away from being a mega pain in the ass as a defensive team.

And if they ended up getting flag,

I don't know.

I just, I don't know that that's being talked about as much, you know, as it probably deserves because the Rockets came along really quickly.

And it wouldn't shock me if the Blazers get the right piece, if they sort of accelerate their time line in a way where people are like, oh, yeah.

And because they're huge, dude, in person.

Well, and I thought, you know, it's easy to sort of wave away a late season surge as like, oh, that's like February or March basketball, you know, April, people start tanking, whatever.

And they did not make the sort of play and chase that was briefly flickering as a hope for them.

But I thought their surge was pretty real.

Like, I didn't think this was like a fake,

the team as a whole kind of made a little bit of a leap.

And so, yeah, I'd be curious.

Okay, there's one guy who, in all my phone conversations with front office, not all of them, some of them,

the conversations like shrunk to a whisper.

Like they were afraid someone, maybe, maybe Zach's on an Amtrak train.

He's someone's, someone, and there's an NBA scout on the Amtrak train who's going to overhear this conversation.

But Zach is a good guy.

Zach, there's a guy.

I'm just going to say a name.

Just keep an eye on him.

And I heard it from a bunch of people.

Say a name.

And they're all going to be mad that I say the name because they all think they're the only ones on it.

And they're not.

Because he's mocked in the first round of your mock draft.

Cedric Coward is,

if, if all of these scouts are on him like this, you have him mocked at 29th.

I think he's going to get picked higher than that just based on my conversations.

Yeah, we talked about this on the draft show last week.

It's come up.

Yeah, it's sort of the Leonard Malton secrets out kind of thing.

That's wow, where did that reference even come from in my brain?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's you talk to NBA people and you're right.

It's they're all kind of, they get serious and they get quiet.

Carter Bryan is similar in that way, and that people are like, don't, don't, don't go talking about that one.

Coward is, he's interesting because he, if you just watch him with like in like an just an idiot optics basketball, like this resembles this.

He has big, broad shoulders.

He has long arms.

He has a body that's pretty similar to Shea Gildis Alexander, just to put it quite frankly.

It wouldn't shock me.

He's 6'6.

It wouldn't shock me if he has a 7'1 or a 7'2 wingspan.

He has huge hands.

He has big, wide shoulders.

He's not a super explosive athlete, but he's one of those long, kind of methodical guys who, um, I'm not,

this is, I don't want to get struck by lightning again, but he has that Kawaii kind of thing where he's so big and long and strong that he imprisons you with his footwork rather than like exploding by you.

The big thing is he just can't dribble right now.

So

it's not a disaster, but he can really hit threes.

He's competitive as hell, makes out of area defensive plays.

Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't shock me if he, and he's young.

He, he's a young senior.

He's only 21 years old.

So he's, he's going to have a lot of room to get better.

All right.

You have,

I'm just, just, I've heard his his name a lot, uh, to the point where I watched some clips on him.

Uh, you have, uh, queen at six.

And again, you may change this now when the next one comes up, but you have queen at six, and you have a guy that enough people flag for me that I watched a little bit of him, uh, Colin Murray Boyles at 20.

Pick somebody, one or two guys in that range, six to twenty, and, and,

like, that I should dive in on.

Be like, you're going to like that guy, or that guy's super polarizing, or I really like that guy more than most people.

Just give me a couple names to flag.

Just from listening to your basketball preferences over the years, I'm not going to act like I'm an expert on this.

You seem pretty familiar with Jakachonis.

I'm lower on Rashir Fleming than our mock is,

but I kind of feel like he's going to get picked higher.

So I haven't dove in on him yet.

Tell me about him.

Pretty simple proposition.

I mean, he's a big, long forward who's pretty strong.

He's probably going to be able to guard two through four, and he can hit open threes.

That's it.

I mean, he's not going to do a whole lot much more than that, in my opinion.

But that's fine.

You know, that's worth having on your team.

I think that you're going to find, I said this to my buddy Ben Taylor too.

Danny Wolf is just an interesting specimen as a basketball player because he's probably 6'11, but he ran an incredible amount of pick and roll at Michigan.

He can really pass the ball.

He's one of those guys.

I said that he shows little flourishes of hedoness in his game where

he plays facing the basket.

He's a legit, you know, 4-5.

He's interesting.

And then another one, just looking in the range, you said, if I had to pick, I think Jagor Demon's really fascinating, but we'll see.

I think Neek Clifford is probably, I think the Neek Clifford,

Cedric Coward conversation is one that probably needs to be had, but I think Clifford's probably.

I don't know.

I don't know that conversation.

Because he's older.

Have the conversation.

He's

well, I just think Coward's a little bit younger.

He didn't get to develop

in the high major scene the way that Clifford has, and people are giving him the benefit of that.

But I think Clifford is somebody who's just going to be a good team defender.

He can hit threes.

It might be a little boring, but

he's going to hold the line, I think, and be able to plug into a team.

Because we've seen the Sixers try to do that with older, or not the Sixers, the Nuggets do that with older players with Jalen Pickett and these guys.

And you can kind of see, it's like, eh, it's nice in theory.

I don't think it's in theory really with Clifford.

I think he's going to be able to play.

But Wolf, I think you should check out.

All right.

Well, it's funny, you know, watching, you mentioned

the Fleming kid.

And I was watching Murray Boyles yesterday.

These like 6'8 to 6'10 big guys who are skilled and can switch,

but their shooting is eh to not good.

And they're too small to play center and protect the rim on defense.

Like they're, it's very easy to talk yourself into them because they do, they're very creative.

And I guess Queen would be like a high-level version of this.

They're very creative, clever passers.

They're switchy on defense.

And the inevitable sort of like Draymond Green archetype comes up for those players.

But like more often than not,

it unfolds.

Like the name that came to my head was Jonathan Mobo, who's like fine.

Like Jonathan Mobo is fine.

And, like, on the right night, you see him do stuff.

And it's like, wow, that guy's like really exciting.

Like, he can guard fives and fours and threes.

And he, like, made a three.

And then you just, like, five years later, it's, he's been traded three times and doesn't, and doesn't play because the size and the shooting are just not there.

It's just, it's a very tricky piece to draft, particularly high on the board.

Yeah, it's sort of the, I mean, Jared Vanderbilt is another one like that who people, everybody loves him, but there are just these problems that you can't escape eventually.

You know, I used to love Jordan Bell for similar reasons.

Murray Boyles.

Murray Boyles, I thought you might like him.

He, yeah,

he's a little more offensively challenged, I think, but he's going to be like an assignment guy.

I said that he's more of a dissuader than a disruptor.

Like he doesn't make those home run defensive plays where he flies in and does something incredible athletically.

He's just, he's a wall on defense.

He walls guys up.

He's just like, no, you're going up the lane.

You're not going towards the basket.

He just

mercilessly and cruelly just takes the ball away from people.

He's got huge hands.

He'll just palm the ball and take it.

He's just sort of,

I think that he's going to be an analytics darling.

I think people who really want, it's going to be subtle and quiet, but yeah.

And I would differentiate

Queen a little bit there.

Queen, Queen has great hands.

Queen has great hands, but he's more of a

sort of a lazy lion type of guy.

He doesn't really,

he's not high motored, but then he'll make a really, really smart play and you'll be like, are you just slower paced?

Are you just choosing to be slower?

What's going on with you?

That's been the war with me, with him, is I might just kind of have to accept that he's one of these slow moving, bring you into my world offensive players.

He just drives me a little nuts sometimes, but he's a very clever passer.

Well, this is great.

We might have to reconvene after the lottery is over and we see who's picking where.

And I'm going to watch more film on these guys and get more uninformed opinions and hot takes.

When's the next mock draft coming out?

Early next week, actually.

So we're going to be, it's going to respond to the, to the lottery.

So yeah.

It's such a pleasure to have you on and finally e-meet you and whatever term people use for that these days.

I'm going to lean on you for draft stuff and Danny as well.

Ringer mock draft is just, it looks beautiful.

It reads beautiful.

It should be your number one go-to resource for all things draft.

Jay, Kyle, man, thanks for joining us.

Thanks Thanks for having me.

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All right, let's wrap up with the one series we haven't talked about yet, which went from incredibly dramatic game one to whoa, game two.

That was boring and a blowout.

A brilliant basketball mind from DNVR Sports from the All NBA podcast and the all-city network.

Adam Morris, how are you, sir?

I'm doing fine today.

I was doing a little bit better before last night's blowout.

Yes, so let's talk Nuggets Thunder.

Not really that much to say about game two, which had all the makings of classic home team loses game one, comes out roaring in game two.

Road team is like, yeah, we got the split.

And oh my God, they're going to play this hard and the refs are going to let all this go and they're going to take the ball ball from us all the time all right what's the what time's the flight back to denver um but i just will ask you generally

did anything as you look ahead to game three did anything that happened in game two or even game one or changes from game one to game two strike you as okay i'm going to be watching for that or that's interesting the thunder did that and it worked what's the nuggets counter anything like that Well, I think the physicality part is meaningful because I think Oklahoma City will bring that physicality to every game.

They have to based on their front court size deficit.

But the biggest strategic adjustment, at least on Denver's end of the floor, which I think in the early go, Denver was not scoring.

And that's what opened up the game.

And Oklahoma City, you know, you get them in the half court.

I think Denver's going to be okay.

They got a lot of points in transition last night.

What I saw was that they were leaving Christian Brown open, Russell Westbrook, Aaron Gordon.

And I think they were.

Because they are so undersized in the front court, because it takes so much, and because they're vulnerable on the defensive glass, they said, listen, that's the thing we're not going to lose.

We're going to put everybody in there and stack it.

And Christian Brown's going to get three open threes in the first quarter and we'll live with it.

And last night he went 0 for three.

Yeah, the role players missed their shots before the game got out of hand and then some people got hot late in the game.

I think you make a great point because in general, I thought Oklahoma City went into game one thinking.

about their half-court offense and specifically thinking,

okay, we're going to put Chet on Jokic because Chet has had one good defensive game on Jokic last season when he got a bunch of blocks.

We like that sort of matchup.

And then maybe we'll get Jokic stuck on Chet on the other end and we can get into his pick and pop game and force Denver into rotation.

Played Chet at center quite a bit as the only big man on the floor.

And in game two, they flipped the matchups in a way that I frankly thought they would to open the series, which is Hartenstein on Jokic, Chet as the Gobert Rover on Aaron Gordon, sometimes Christian Brown.

I just think that makes a lot more sense.

Not only that, they paired other Jalen Williams with Chet a lot and had, I mean, talk about a guy who was physical with Jokic.

Big Jalen Williams is beating the hell out of him.

And if the refs are going to let go, do it.

Like both teams should do it.

And they sort of just were like, you know what?

We're not going to hunt this like Chet Jokic thing on offense.

We're going to trade that for size.

and rebounding.

And to your point, the similar open threes thing was allowing those open threes was the same trade-off.

They just decided we're going to get bigger.

we're going to get tougher.

And that meant a change in minutes patterns and a change in when, like even putting Chet

back into the rotation when Shay rests, which was the way they started the season was anytime Shay's on the bench, good jail, better Jalen Williams and Chet are going to be on the floor.

Then they gradually sort of shifted Chet out of that a lot and put Hartenstein back on the floor, which I didn't really get why they were doing that.

But in this series, doing that aligns the Chet at center minutes to when Jokic is on the bench.

I think they just sort of made a general trade-off that made sense for them and used matchups that made more sense for them.

And I would assume, I mean, I assume they were going to play that way to start the series.

I assume they will come out and play that way again in game three.

I think so too.

And I kind of like your point about them doing this in the regular season, kind of mixing it up, because one of my beliefs about success in the playoffs is you're going to need different rotations and different matchups and different things for different series.

And it was almost like preparation.

Okay, what happens if we get into this series?

They have a big front court.

We're going to have to match up.

So that's something I've just seen across the entire NBA is the teams that have sort of positioned themselves to play a couple different styles and being prepared for it.

So I agree with you.

The thing about leaving shooters open, you know, we saw this in Denver Clippers in the first series.

Chris Dunn was below the threshold where Denver would live with his hot quarters.

Makes three, four in a row.

They'll live with it.

Denver tried that in game one with Caruso and with Dort.

Those guys, I think, are above the threshold, especially Lou Dort.

They're above the threshold of how much you you can just leave a guy open.

I think Oklahoma City realizes they can make that bet with Denver shooters, and they might lose one of these next two games in Denver.

Denver gets hot, but I think they all feel comfortable knowing we'll lose every time on the offensive glass if we try to play this straight up, and we'll lose every battle in the paint in the half court if we try to play this straight up.

So that trade-off is worth it.

And you'll get games like last night where every time you get stops on Denver, you have a huge advantage in transition going the other way.

Well, and that's, I mean, baked into it is, you know, they were guarding and have been guarding Michael Porter Jr.

with Jalen Williams, perimeter Jalen Williams.

I really don't like doing this Jalen Williams thing.

It's very annoying.

And so there's a cross match on the other end when they get a stop.

And I still don't think they're hunting Porter Jr.

enough, although I liked very early in the game, they went to a Shea Chet pick and roll to poke at Michael Porter Jr.

and Chet rolled to the rim, which is, I think, smart, even if Hartenstein's on the floor.

And I think they hit him on the short roll and then he lobbed to Hartenstein for a dunk.

But yeah, I mean, that's a good way to get Jalen Williams going, who had a bad first game and a much better game last night.

Another thing Chet on the second or non-Shea

unit did is like DeAndre Jordan can't play against that lineup.

I mean, that was rendered very, very clear.

They put him on Kayen Wallace.

Kayen Wallace just feasted on open threes.

And that's what you just can't.

If Wallace and Wiggins and Joe are going to come off the bench and make shot, you have no chance, like just no chance to beat this team.

But yeah, I thought, I mean, mean, look, frankly, like,

I thought Oklahoma City overthought game one.

I thought they overthought the matchups by getting too cute and flipping the big man matchups the way they did.

And they definitely overthought the fouling up three on crunch time.

I have not had a podcast.

I went on Bill's podcast and talked about it.

I could not understand what they were doing.

I'm a foul up three guy.

My line of demarcation is like eight seconds.

Anything more than that?

And then they thought they put in their rebounders.

Like they think Jokic is going to miss the free throw on purpose.

Like, he's not going to miss it.

He's going to make it.

Then they have a chance to continue play with Jokic on the bench.

Like, Denver takes Jokic out, down one with, what, 13 seconds left or something?

Right.

And

because they have to foul, and Jokic has five fouls, and they don't even foul.

Shea just gets a dunk.

The game's going on.

Denver has no timeouts.

They can't bring Jokic back in the game.

And rather than make Denver figure out how to get a three

or foul them with four seconds left and no Jokic, they foul and let Jokic.

I just could not believe it.

And

Mark Dagnall mismanaged that game.

It was a bad game.

I think they should be up 2-0.

And if they lose this series, they're going to look back at game one and be like, man, and Chet misses the free throws and the dunks and everything.

That was a

credit to Nuggets.

They were awesome.

Aaron Gordon, you mentioned helping off Aaron Gordon.

He's like a knockdown shooter now.

It's not just like he's always good on open shots.

He is going to knock down open threes, period.

Like unbelievable development story.

Especially in transition, he's been really good.

I mean, I think one of the things you like about Aaron Gordon in Denver is that he seems to know where his touches are going to come in the rhythm of the offense, and he really hones in on those.

So he takes the ones that are good for him.

Transition is part of that.

You know, getting to the corners has been part of that.

But yeah, I mean, there's no question they mismanaged that one.

And I like the way you phrased it, that maybe they overthought this because Oklahoma City, especially coming after game one, but I thought this about them all year.

They're very strategically

minded.

They think a lot about how can we tilt things in our favor.

And I think that's important.

You want to build that, bake that into the DNA of your team.

But oftentimes, that's only half the battle.

The other part of it is just sort of the will and the physicality and the deliberateness to which you approach different things.

And I thought game one became a little bit of a chess match, so to speak.

And game two was just a street fight.

They came out and said, okay, we have to do these things.

We're going going to overwhelm them athletically.

And that's their real advantage.

I mean, Denver has a great tactician on the floor at all times, and Nikola Jokic.

You're not going to win that chess match.

You know, it's not, that's not necessarily the angle you have to go, but they are the more talented and certainly the more athletic team.

And the athleticism, I think, is one of the things that has popped in both games, but it really popped in game two.

Yeah, just how do you feel about the series?

Denver got the split, it's 1-1.

They're going home.

They've had a nice, very good playoff series, win over the Clippers,

won the opener on the road.

They have home court.

I zoom out, you know, I put my notes down.

I just like, how do I feel?

And every series has a certain feel to it.

This one, I'm like, I'm not sure who, I guess I should feel better about Denver because they got the split.

I picked Oklahoma City in six.

I don't know if you made a pick, I can't remember, but I don't really know how to feel about it after two games.

How do you feel about it?

Like, what's your gut saying?

I mean, I think Oklahoma City is a lot better than Denver.

And Denver, to me, this year reminds me more of the 2023 Miami Heat than anybody else.

In that, I think they can beat you with execution, they can beat you with toughness, but there are teams that are more talented than them.

And

there are teams, and you look at, we talked about DeAndre Jordan last night.

Denver doesn't have any levers to pull.

They have five, six guys, and one of them has one shoulder at the moment.

You know, Michael Porter can't really lift his left hand above his head.

So it's a big reason why I picked the Thunder.

I think the Thunder are better, but like

every other day,

I just worry about how long can you go just playing these guys this many minutes when one of them is already injured.

Yeah.

And it's not even the depth of it, which I think would be its own issue.

You know, Peyton Watson maybe gives him minutes.

I actually think he's been good lately.

So you can say six and a half guys.

But the problem is more the versatility.

In the playoffs, you have to solve problems.

You have to go to different lineups.

And you saw last night, I mean, DeAndre Jordan, it's tough to play him in any series because he can only really play that pick and roll drop coverage.

He can't really do anything else.

But against a team as versatile and as smart as Oklahoma City, you saw last night, he guards the pick and roll.

They get a wide open three.

They flip it.

They put him on, I think, Kayson Wallace saying, okay, well, we'll get ahead of the pick and roll.

They just use Kaysen Wallace as the screener and ran pick and like they know how.

to attack every type of coverage when you have a liability like that.

Denver's going to have to play somebody to give Jokic some kind of breath.

And I just don't know that Denver has any levers to pull there.

So Denver is at this disadvantage, I think, from a talent and a depth standpoint.

And then on top of that, you see last night night they make some adjustments and met them physically.

And this is why I think you asked me how I feel in the series.

I buy Denver's toughness.

I buy Jokic.

I buy their connection.

The way they've been playing connected over the last eight, you know, basically this playoff run is very impressive.

And that's a hallmark of what makes them great.

But you're still going to have to get open, make open shots from guys that I don't really trust to make them at a right volume.

You're going to have to find guys to defend in positions.

I don't trust them to defend at volume.

And that's why I was not very confident coming into the series.

Well, look, I mean, obviously, Jokic can score one-on-one against Holmgren.

You can just put him in the basket.

Holmgren will get a block with his length every once in a while.

He can score one-on-one on Hartenstein.

He can score one-on-one on everybody.

Hartenstein and Jalen Williams are at least strong.

And the Thunder are going to present the biggest challenge probably Jokic has ever faced in terms of mind games, space clogging, arms everywhere, guys digging down, then leaving.

And you've seen him have a couple of

flustered turnovers in the first couple of games.

He's the best player in the world.

If you show him the same look over and over again, he's going to figure it out immediately.

If you show him the same look three times, he's going to have it figured out.

They can show him lots of different looks with lots of different people.

And that's where Denver's lack of shooting is just a killer because.

you know, you take one of Murray or Porter off the floor and it's just, you reach a level of disaster.

Like, and Jokic has the ball.

So he's one of your shooters.

He's got the ball.

There's just not enough space for all the guys cutting into each other.

But look, Denver has proven its mettle and its toughness.

And Christian Brown is going to make four threes in a game.

And Aaron Gordon's a knockdown shooter.

And Russell Westbrook is shooting well.

Like, I don't know what's really happening, but he's shooting well.

He's always shot corner threes pretty well.

But you, you, and by the way, you mentioned Kaysen Wallace.

One thing I will, I will say that's

if there's a battleground that we haven't seen much of yet, and who knows if we'll see much of it based on how Oklahoma City adjusted, this is the best guard-guard screening role team in the NBA.

It's what elevated their offense last year.

And it's what's so interesting in those Chet as the only big man minutes versus Jokic minutes is the Nuggets have decided we're not even going to put Jokic on Chet.

We're going to put him on Dort or Caruso or Wallace or someone who we just don't deem a threat.

And that battle barely got off the ground in game one.

And the Nuggets were able to sort, or when he was on Chet, when he was stuck on Chet, he would drop back.

Someone else would rotate up to Chet on the pop and Jokic would figure out someone else to go guard down in the corner and Denver executed that well.

Another thing you could do is if he's on Caruso or Dort, just have those guys set the screen and see what happens.

That's a battle that no matter what Oklahoma City does rotation-wise, whether it's because of foul trouble or need or the way the game is flowing, we're going to see that over a more extended period, I think, at some point in these Denver games.

And I'm very curious to see how it's handled by the Nuggets and who kind of comes out ahead there.

The thing about Denver, if you get into a half court battle i think denver feels good about these things because they're so efficient in the half court you know when you can slow that game down like that but what you're talking about here with these guard to guard screens or putting jokic on dort getting dort an open shot is a good option But it's an uncomfortable one when you're going up against Denver in the half court because you know Denver's going to get great looks every single time.

And I think that's a gamble Denver's willing to play with.

A team is good.

You have to play with that gamble against Oklahoma City.

This is like your only path.

And you saw this against the Clippers too, by the way, where Denver Denver said, how comfortable are you giving the ball to Dunns four possessions in a row, wide open?

Because he might make them.

And even statistically speaking, a wide open Chris Dunn corner three is not that bad in the half court.

But teams don't want to do that.

Oklahoma City can beat you a lot of ways, but they don't necessarily want to just keep feeding Caruso open threes.

They'll do it.

They're a tough team, but that's not their comfort zone.

And I think Denver can make that gamble because of the pressure they put on you.

But last night became a transition game, especially early on.

And to your point, I think Denver Denver looked up and said, we're down 20 in the first quarter.

How much energy do we want to expend trying to come back in this one?

I honestly was surprised that they didn't pull the plug sooner in that game.

To your point about Dort and Caruso, one thing I will credit those guys on is they will keep taking the shot.

Like

Dort will miss five in a row and keep shooting, whereas Dunn, if he misses two in a row, is probably going to bag it.

And then your whole offense kind of stalls out.

Real quickly, before we get big picture, what do you think of Denver's zone?

Not overall in the playoffs and so far in this series?

Well, so far in this series is more interesting to me because that was another one of the takeaways.

Like, how much can you read into last night's game?

But one of the things was Oklahoma City was very prepared for that zone.

It's kind of a, it was lazy last night, but they would overload the side that Jokic was on.

You know, rather, it's not even a balance.

I think Denver can make adjustments to this, but it wasn't even a balanced attack.

It was just, we're going to send three guys over to the side and Jokic is not going to run out on the perimeter for it.

So it was, I don't know what the numbers said last night, but I would guess it was the Thunder were incredibly efficient in the zone possessions that Denver had.

I mean, it had no chance, and I thought that Oklahoma City spent, clearly, spent the last 48 hours kind of preparing for that exact defense.

Well, you got, you also got the

couple of offensive rebounds.

Hartenstein had a putback.

I think one of their guards snuck in

for a putback.

And I'm looking up the numbers right now.

And corner threes.

Wiggins got a couple wide open corner threes.

You give up above the break threes.

That's fine.

You start giving up wide open corner threes, and it doesn't go well.

And overloading Jokic's side, either he's not going to run out or you're taking your best defensive rebounder out of position now.

And I think that's the gamble they're willing to make: is even best case scenario, we're going to miss a shot and we have a good chance here at the second chance points.

Thunders scored

1.23 points per possession against Denver zone last night, which is pretty good.

It's not amazing, but it's good enough.

Big, bigger picture.

We have now lived in this reality for a few weeks of the post-Malone, no pun intended, post-Malone, post-booth world,

the sudden, but not quite that sudden if you've been in connection with the team firings, but still surprising because of the timing.

You were mentioning to me offline, like

it really sort of is a line of demarcation in their season.

Like, this is a strange season.

How much has changed?

And like, what has that been like up close?

I think it's a complete reset.

Culturally, emotionally, psychologically, the team is different since the

80th game of the season.

You almost have to throw out the first 79.

I mean, I always tell this story that I knew something was off with this team, you know, obviously the way it ended last year, but at the very first day, at media day, you could tell like, okay, things are not good here.

And,

you know, nobody showed up to pre-camp workouts.

Nobody was in the gym this summer.

It was like, nobody wanted to be in Denver until the last possible second.

And you saw and felt that as you watched this team the entire year was this is a team that get becomes connected through the course of the season.

They work because they get five guys kind of working in sync.

And you just never had that.

You had friction, you had tension, you had unhappiness, and you had bad play.

When you knew that that, I knew that that move was coming, I did not know it was coming with three games left.

That was a very bold move by Josh Cronky.

And to, according to him, that firing was, we don't want to waste this season.

This team is better than what we look.

Let's just see if this gives some juice.

And it did.

I think Adelman is very different than Malone.

Malone is an electronic.

Oh, by the way, people were skeptical that is that really, they really believe in the team and that's why they're doing this.

It was true.

That was legit.

There was a sense of this team is actually still a great team in there somewhere and we can't get it out unless we make these changes.

And I do think it was layered.

I think that was the fort facing, but really true reason, reason, but I'm sure there were other reasons as well.

What happens if you get a nice little conference finals run, somebody gets injured, and you make, now it's harder to make a firing in the offseason.

So I think it was a layered decision.

But I do believe that they looked at this and said, we can't waste a year of Jokic's prime.

And even though things aren't looking like they're going to break our way, why not give ourselves a chance?

And it worked because this team, I think David Adelman is a strategist.

He's a very smart coach.

And this is a veteran team.

I don't know that they need a ton of emotional coaching and inspiration.

I think they need a blueprint.

And also, there's been this vacancy.

I think Michael Malone takes up a lot of space as a leader in the locker room.

And I've actually thought this for a long time.

He'd always say, I want Jokic to be a leader.

I want him to be more.

I'm telling him to speak up.

And sometimes I think you can't order that.

Sometimes you have to read what's happening.

I think David Adelman is not that guy.

He's not an emotional, rah-rah speech guy.

And it's almost like he's opened up space for Jokic to become more vocal, to be, to really lead this team and direct them in certain ways.

So it was a shot in the arm.

I think it has has a lasting effect for this team

that they're playing differently.

Denver is good.

Even in their championship year, talent was pretty good.

They were one of the more talented teams, but they won because they were connected.

They became more than the sum of their parts with how they moved.

And I think over the last 12 games, whatever it's been, they've moved in that direction quite a bit, but they're still at a talent deficit and the fact that they have about six and a half rotation players.

They're at a talent deficit, but they have the best guy and they have home court advantage.

And you can throw the scoring margin out just like you did against the Clippers, who I believe had the positive scoring margin for the series.

Denver's just taking it game by game, and if it's close, you can give Jalen Brunson the Mr.

Clutch award.

He's been unbelievable.

Nikola Jokic is the best late game player in the NBA.

If it's close, they've got a chance.

Adam Morris, if you're not listening to the All City podcast with Adam and Tim Legler, boy, what a delight that is.

I can't say I listen to every episode because I just don't listen to daily podcasts that often, but anytime I get a chance, I pop it on.

Legs is the best.

You're the best.

Who knows?

Maybe I'll see you in Denver.

Adam Morris.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, enjoy the weekend.

If it's anything like the last week, it's going to be wild.

We'll be coming back on Monday from Chicago, Illinois, where I'll be for the lottery to recap everything that happens and look ahead to whatever is coming next.

Thank you to producers Jesse, Chris, Bobby, and on graphics, Oscar.

I will see everybody on Monday.

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