Round 2 Begins! Plus, Reactions to a Pair of Game 7s With Howard Beck and an NBA-‘Severance’ Crossover With Zach Cherry.

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Ball over everything.

Coming up on the Zach Lowe show, Howard Beck and I react to everything that happened over the weekend in the NBA.

Warriors, Rockets, game seven.

Clippers, Nuggets, game seven.

Pacers, Cavs, game one.

We look ahead to everything coming up in round two of the NBA playoffs, which should be awesome.

Plus, a special guest from my favorite current television show.

I can't wait to talk hoops and severance with him coming up on the Zach Lowe Show.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show Monday.

We are live on YouTube, apparently.

I don't really know how any of this works, but I know this.

It is time to say the three most anticipated words in niche basketball podcasting and apparently live streaming.

What up, Beck?

What up, Zach?

We've never done this live before.

It's, I don't know.

I'm a little nervous.

There are people watching.

We can't edit.

We can't just stop and say, no, get rid of that.

I sounded like a moron.

If I sound like a moron in real time, I'm just going to sound like a moron for all time, apparently.

Hey, listen.

You talk into a microphone long enough and often enough, you're going to sound like a moron.

It's going to happen.

That's sadly the case.

Two game sevens over the weekend.

Warriors Rockets.

Your boy picked Warriors in seven and said the Warriors have done rude things on that floor in elimination games before, and they did it again, just like in 2018, all the missed threes.

2019, Steph has a million points in the second half after having no points in the first half.

And six years later, With Buddy Healed in the role of Clay Thompson, Draymond Green in the role of Draymond Green Green with a technical foul and limbs flailing everywhere and always connecting with sensitive body parts, and Steph Curry playing the part of Steph Curry.

And I saw some people online, Howard Beck, saying, ooh, the media really talking up, Steph.

Oh, big deal.

22 points.

22 points, 10 rebounds, 10 rebounds.

Big deal.

Seven assists, eight of 16, four of 10.

Every dagger that they needed.

He got them.

And the Warriors' entire defense was anybody but Steph.

We're trapping you on the pick and roll.

We're giving you absolutely no breathing room off the ball.

We're switching everything.

We're dialed in.

How are you going to score?

And for a while in the third quarter, the answer was, we may not be able to score.

And they would trap him.

And the other guys who are not great vertical finishers, who are sometimes not great shooters, were kind of like, I don't want to shoot it.

I don't want to shoot it.

Draymond, can you take another end of shot clock three?

Because those are going great.

And then Steph decided, you you know what?

I might have to take matters into my own hands.

And he got Jabari Smith Jr.

on him, bringing the ball up early in the fourth quarter and waved everyone away and said, I got it.

Blue by him, layup.

Next possession, Ahmed Thompson pulls up with the calf.

Steph crosses him over into an ISO three, and the game was kind of never really the same after that.

I thought he had a sensational game.

And the Rockets offense,

all their worst nightmares came true throughout the entire series, minus a couple of Van Vliet hot shooting games and one, one,

one Jalen Green hot shooting game out of seven.

And they are going home, and the Warriors are moving on to face the Wolves.

Fun game, tense game.

Felt like the Rockets were the classic young team that was walking down the old guys and the old guys were getting tired.

And then Steph got hot and they made enough plays late in the game.

It's fun.

I think I had Warriors in seven as well.

Like, much, much respect to the Rockets who are physical and athletic and feisty and obviously a lot younger than the Warriors and gave them everything they had.

And like, listen, when was the last time you and I saw Stephan just have to work this hard throughout the course of a series just to score?

And there were times where, like, game six, you know, after game six, we always overreact.

Game six, it was like, all right, there's no way.

The Warriors are just done.

They're cooked.

No, no, no.

Game six was legitimately alarming to give away game five and be like, you know, we're just going to save everything for game six and just come out with zero juice at home and get rolled at the end of the game.

It was legitimately like, oh, do they have enough left to finish this series?

There were a bunch of shots that Steph took in game six where it was like, these are absolute desperation shots that if anybody else were taking them, you would think this team is screwed and that guy shouldn't even be taking those shots.

But because they were Steph, it was like,

These are all shots he could make.

And these are all shots that when he's on one of his Steph heaters, he just does make.

And like, oh, you know, hey, maybe they close it out in six if Steph just makes really tough Steph shots that only Steph can make.

But still, it was the desperation that it felt like hung over every single one of those.

There was

a point where several times in this series, but especially in game six, Zach, I kept having flashes of.

You're obviously a Top Gun fan.

We're all Top Gun fans.

That's our generation.

I still haven't seen Maverick.

The quote unquote new one, I haven't seen it.

It's very good.

I disagree with people who think it's better than the original, but whatever.

I'm trapped in the 80s.

There's the moment in the original where Goose is back there going, do some of that pilot shit, Mav.

I felt like that was the Warriors the whole time in this series.

Like, do some of that pilot shit, Steph.

Like, just get, get us out of this.

Because he was the only thing that they could rely on until game seven, buddy healed.

Game seven, buddy healed.

Holy shit.

Nine threes.

Record, all-time record for a game seven.

He also had, where's my Justin Kubatko stat here?

Justin Kabatko says he's the second player to score 30 or more points on 80% field goal shooting in a game seven.

It's good.

It's good.

It's a good percentage.

Yeah, the other one, of course, is Will Chamberlain back in 1965.

Well, they needed it because they were running out of players.

Gary Payton II was sick, missed the game.

Quentin Post gradually rendered not playable in the series and played three minutes.

Kaminga,

I don't know if we're going to see Jonathan Kaminga again.

Although he's played a lot against Minnesota in the regular series.

He's in his uniform.

And his size is important potentially in that matchup.

It was a disaster.

And Looney was awesome off the bench.

Moody, who I think they're going to really need in this Minnesota series, looked a little overwhelmed by the moment.

And his misses were like bonk off the backboard, bonk, like not even close misses.

And without Buddy Hill, they don't win the game.

And Buddy Hill went bananas.

They lost him in the zone a few times, made a couple of contested twos, which were big shots.

Every basket felt like oxygen at times in this game for the Warriors when the Rockets were kind of walking them down and Shangoon was imposing his size.

He was only nine of 23.

I also want to shout out Draymond, by the way.

I made fun of the threes, and he made two and then he missed six.

Five of seven on twos.

That's a lot of two-point baskets for Draymond Green, and they were mostly not easy shots.

All of those were like oxygen.

I was trying to look up as we were talking because I forgot to look it up yesterday.

When's the last time Draymond Green took 15 shots in a game at all?

Actually, happened to me.

He had 20 in a game recently.

In this series, I think he had 20 in a game.

Yeah,

it's a lot.

And every time he shot, I just kept thinking, how, why, what?

There's got to be a better alternative than this.

But

they got away with it and he made enough of them.

But it just...

It's a statement about where the Warriors are right now, Zach, that so many times in this series.

And granted, a lot of this has to do with the Rockets, but the Wolves have a great defense too, and we'll get to them.

But the fact that the Warriors, even with Jimmy Butler, seems so steph-dependent.

And again, I know Buddy Hild went nuclear.

I don't know how many of those you can expect in the course of a postseason.

Draymond Green made a bunch of shots that we wouldn't normally expect him to even be taking.

But the Pajemsky, Moody, Kaminga, Post, whatever, like that whole young crew that has been grafted on that you're hoping for something, somebody to pop.

It doesn't have to be the the same guy every night.

We know how the playoffs goes.

Sometimes it's just a guy's night.

Okay, it was Buddy Hild's night.

But

in the next series,

I'm very curious to see where this goes because

Steph's getting, it's getting late for Steph to just be the do that pilot shit mav Steph.

Butler had such an interesting series and interesting game seven.

20 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, seven of 13 shooting, made a couple big jump shots late in the game.

He doesn't doesn't feel like Jimmy Butler to me yet.

And then you look at the numbers, and he's averaging 18, 6, and 4, still getting to the line seven times a game, making his twos.

It doesn't, he, and again, he's recovering from an injury that maybe he'd be sitting out right now if this were not the playoffs.

It didn't feel, despite the numbers, like he was imposing his will.

on the game the way we've seen him do in the playoffs before.

Now, granted, the Rockets are a very physical team.

They do not have a lot of guys you can bully.

Even Van Vliet is like a fire hydrant in the playoff.

Van Vliet really became like Kyle Lowry 2.0.

It's bizarre how similar they are as players on both ends of the floor after playing together, of course, in Toronto.

Van Vliet got him in the post once and took the ball away in the second half of the, or yeah, it was the second half of the game.

But it doesn't, like they're, to beat Minnesota, they're going to need the Jimmy Butler who can pop off for 35 on a moment's notice.

And it just didn't feel like he was that guy in the series, which is why they needed heal.

And Pajemsky and Moody are going to be up and down on threes.

That's just how it is.

And that's why they needed Buddy Healed, and they got Buddy Healed.

Can I tell you my favorite Steph play from the game, by the way?

Hit me.

The threes are cool.

We all know.

He hit the one from the logo in the first half on a pick and roll that the Rockets didn't see coming.

And by the time you see it coming, it's like, oh, it's in the net.

Okay.

Just a classic 35-footer from Steph.

If you go back, there's about a minute left in the third quarter.

And this is when the Warriors are starting to extend the lead back from three to like nine.

And boy, did a nine-point lead in this series feel like 20 at times.

And Steph sets an off-ball screen on Draymond's guy, and Draymond gets a layup in the lane.

And you're like, I've seen that a million times before.

Like Steph is the, you know, the greatest little guy screener of all time.

We all know the power of the best shooter of all time setting screens and what it does for the rest of his teammates.

The screen was on Steven Adams.

And if you go back and watch it, it is shoulder to shoulder.

Both of them are kind of accelerating into the screen and it rocks both like they both vibrate from the impact and you're like that's steph curry how much weight is he giving up there 80 pounds 100 pounds i don't even know what it is to being like i am gonna throw my body my little skinny body stronger than you think but still into a guy that is considered the toughest strongest least movable human playing basketball and by the way What a redemption season for Stephen Adams.

What a wonderful story, him coming back to health and blocking shots.

Like he and Nick Batum are blocking everything left and right, R.I.P.

Clippers.

Like, don't just overlook the sacrifice of a play like that.

Screening Stephen Adams that hard.

That fucking hurts.

And that's not easy.

Like, if I did that, I'm out for three weeks.

Just one screen on Stephen Adams when he hits me back.

I'm out for three weeks.

It's a big deal that he does stuff like that.

And if you go back and watch that play, it's a hard-ass screen.

And that's the kind of stuff that this guy's been doing for a decade and a half now.

And it just should be lauded.

And it got Draymond an easy bucket.

And again, oxygen, oxygen.

Draymond Green baskets, oxygen.

By the way, I looked it up while we were doing this on stat had.

Draymond Green, the last time in a playoff game, he had more than 15 field goal attempts, sack.

Care to guess?

Game seven, 2016.

It was 2018.

Yeah.

Against the Pelicans, but there's only been 10.

He's playing a lot of playoff games.

He's only had 10 games, counting yesterdays, where he had 15 or more field goal attempts.

So, um, like normally, I would have considered that to be very alarming.

And it was in real time, uh, for the Warriors on some level because it was just, it was sometimes the only shot they could get.

And sometimes it was just,

they got really weirdly indecisive at times.

And so, I think you, you noted this earlier, just like a lot of times it was Draymond taking those shots very late in the shot clock.

But I thought that when they were at their best yesterday, some of it was just the fact that with two guys always on steph with or without the ball, it seemed like he was making uh faster decisions with with that.

They were taking advantage of Draymond then cutting into the lane.

So

it felt like the Warriors adjusted in real time in this series and found a way to actually beat this just absolutely suffocating big physical athletic defense.

Not for nothing.

We should mention, of course, Ahmed Thompson

hurting his, was it his quad?

Hamstring?

What do they end up calling it?

I don't know.

He was caps during the game.

I didn't say that.

It was his leg.

It was a leg, something leg-oriented.

That was unfortunate.

The improbable mid-series playoff leap from Ahmed Thompson, who was a little skittish the first couple games and then was like, oh, no, here's the regular season version of me, but better for the last part of the series.

And Draymond,

he had a steal

in this game with like two and a half minutes left in the second quarter.

Just an absolutely classic Draymond play.

When I say that Draymond is a savant, these are the kind of plays I'm talking about.

Shengun had the ball at the nail on, I think Butler was guarding him.

Draymond was on Thompson in the dunker spot.

And Stephen Adams was at the opposite dunker spot.

And Shangoon's working on the nail, like getting, like carving out, getting closer.

It was very laborious for Shangun the whole series.

So much physicality.

He's already sort of an awkward player in a good way, but still awkward.

He's getting a little traction.

And Draymond makes a little stunt.

towards Stephen Adams, like across the lane, just a little stunt.

I don't know why he was doing it.

Maybe to help out on a potential box out, maybe to just trick Shangun.

And Shangun picks the ball up and begins a pass to Thompson.

Draymond's way.

He's like, oh, he's open.

I'm going to hit him.

Draymond is retreating to Ahmed Thompson in a blur before the ball is even out of Shangun's hands.

I've watched it multiple times.

He's already heading back to steal the pass before it's out of Shangun's hands.

And he just intercepts it like a defensive back.

And speaking of finding a way, don't forget, Steph had two baskets in the second half where he just sort of like wriggled his way under the basket and lots of traffic and just sort of kept wriggling and burrowing and just flipped shots off the backboard.

It's like, my God, great win for the Warriors.

And by the way,

an absolute home run for them to be here.

I wrote last year the sort of obit of the Warriors after they got eliminated in the play-in tournament when they had now missed the playoffs three at that point, three of the last previous five years.

They had missed the playoffs.

They had big decisions on clay and all that coming up.

And I wrote in there, like,

the fairy tale ending probably already happened.

It was the 2022 championship.

That might have been the fairy.

That was probably the fairytale ending because this is what happens to old championship teams, even ones that get shots at the top of the draft like the Warriors had, and they missed it with Wiseman, and they tried to trade that pick too, and they couldn't find anything great for it.

They get older, and the young guys who are coming up.

are not ready in time for the old guys who are coming out.

You get expensive.

You got to cut costs.

Everyone else is coming and rising up.

And the best case scenario was probably like striking gold on some trade.

And if it's a game changer, franchise changer, fine.

Is Jimmy Butler that?

I don't know if he's quite that, but he's very, very good.

But the most likely scenario was, and it's a positive one, that the Warriors are a good team in a stacked conference that is able to win a round, maybe win two rounds, play meaningful basketball late in Steph Curry's career, probably never win the title again, but go out with honor and competition.

And this is the A-plus best case scenario.

They're doing that, and they turned Wiggins in a minor draft asset and some other stuff into a great, great player.

Not quite like Giannis or the home.

You know, they flirted with Durant.

They tried to trade for Ananobi a couple years ago.

They flirted with everybody.

But a very, I mean, Butler's better than Ananobi, obviously.

It should be obvious.

And here they are.

And this is for Steph's Twilight, given the typical track record of aging championship teams, given that the young, the two timelines thing, which was an accident to begin with, like totally not planned and not intentional, hasn't really yielded much in terms of production from the young guys.

One of those two timeline guys is Poole, and he got punched right off the team.

This is just an it

may not win another game.

They may not win another round.

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

This is an A-plus Steph Twilight season, the best they could possibly have hoped for.

Yeah, all of that being true, I think the one thing I keep thinking about the last couple of years with Steph, with LeBron, those two in particular,

when dynasties crash or when superstars, all-timers, top 10 all-timer types eventually fade into,

I don't want to say irrelevance, but are

no longer a postseason threat, right?

It's usually because they themselves have eroded, right?

Like Kobe wasn't nearly the same his last couple years in the league.

bird magic kareem um anybody you can think of aside from michael and scotty you know michael and scotty go out at michael still looking sort of like peak of his powers and scotty still had good seasons left um with portland and houston after that but

steph is still awesome at 37 and lebron is still awesome at 40 and they're both put steph on first my first team all nba i think ballot i think i had him on my real ballot all nba first team and lebron i think made second team i can't remember off the top of my head but they both were on my ballot.

So in past decades of the NBA, literally the entirety of the NBA up until now, this is not possible.

And so the difference in this construction of, well, hey, this is just what happens with great teams.

You get to the end.

And yeah, it's nice if you could just make the second round.

The difference is that Steph and LeBron are both still playing at a level where if you can get the right guys around them, and yes, all the other stuff is true, especially in today's salary cap environment.

It's hard to keep a team together.

It's hard to keep building.

It's hard to find young talent when you're always drafting low or you've traded all your picks for help in the immediate term.

All of that's true, except that in the case of LeBron and Steph,

in possibly the first time in NBA history, you've got guys in their late 30s and in LeBron's case, 40, who are still viable as key members of a potential contender.

And that part's different.

And that part puts a different kind of urgency on their front offices, which we've seen.

That's why you go get Jimmy Butler.

Luca kind of, you know, I don't want to say fell in their lap, but he fell in their lap for the Lakers.

But it definitely changes the way you calibrate.

It's not just, oh, it'd be nice to just be competitive for his last couple of years.

It's no, you've got an imperative to still try to make deep runs and be a contender.

Let's talk about the Rockets because we're now going to enter a very important offseason for them as they are running out of time to have cap flexibility.

They, in fact, probably will not have...

much, if any, cap room this summer, depending on Van Vliet's $44 million team option.

And they need Fred Van Vliet.

I mean, that was was hammered home in this series they either need fred van vliet or the equivalent of a steady hand like fred van vlit

or else they're toast on offense um they're already kind of toast they're whatever is below toast crumbs crust unwanted crust i don't know um and obviously the speculation is going to focus on two guys and one is kevin durant the price point will be much lower for him than it will be for if and if if if Giannis Atentecumpo.

And the Giannis stuff is going to run wild, right?

We know this.

We know that Houston's got a bucket bucket of young players and a bucket of draft picks, including Phoenix's pick this year in the lottery, Phoenix's pick in 27, and two of Phoenix, Dallas, and their own pick, the best two in 2029, plus most of the, all their own picks, essentially, except for this year's and all the swaps.

So that's a lot of stuff.

And it's important for the Bucs to get picks from as many different teams as possible if they trade Giannis.

So they're betting against not the team Giannis is going to, but a little bit that team, but teams across the league like maybe Phoenix, whose future is uncertain.

And if I'm Milwaukee, here's the question I'm posing to you.

If I'm Milwaukee, I just watched this series.

Here are the seven

crown jewel young players that the Rockets have on their team.

Shen Gun,

I thought, I thought, didn't shoot well, but I thought he was up for the moment.

Tough, physical, strike.

Yeah.

He's a real dude.

Ahmed Thompson, untouchable.

You're just not getting him.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Cam Whitmore didn't play.

Reed Shepard didn't play.

Jalen Green played and played horribly.

Tari Eason and Jabari Smith are good players.

I am a Tari Eason fanboy.

What are they long term is somewhat unknown.

Well, Eason is frenetic with the ball, had some bad turnovers last night.

He's a great energy player.

He can shoot threes.

He rebounds the hell out of it.

Is he ever going to be steady enough with the ball in his hands to be more than, and this is not a bad outcome outcome for him, but like a really good role player?

Jabari Smith Jr., same thing.

Houston hasn't really developed him as a five or

like a ball-handling semi-wing.

He's sort of just been lost there as finding, and he's good at what he, like, I love Jabari Smith Jr.

He's about the right things.

He can make shots.

What is he long-term?

This is all leading me to: if I'm the Bucs or if I'm the Rockets, whatever, can I get this trade done

without including Shangoon?

I'm not including Thompson.

Can I get a Giannis trade done without including Shangun?

Are the remaining pieces and picks appealing to me enough as Milwaukee?

So I'm talking something like

Eason,

Smith, Green, and all the picks, the three Phoenix picks, Houston's picks.

Is that enough?

Because if I'm Houston, if I'm Milwaukee and I'm looking at, you know, okay, like Jalen Green, well, we just got through like a horrible playoff series.

Eason and Smith, I just went on.

If i don't get shangoon and thompson i'm really doing the trade mostly for the picks if not entirely for the picks is that enough for yannis and and conversely if i'm houston i really want to keep shangoon because i want to have a really good team around yannis when he gets here and if i don't have him and i don't have ahman thompson it's like Jalen Green and Van Vliet and all these dudes who haven't played, like Whitmore and Reed Shepard.

I think that's a really interesting conversation.

My prediction, and obviously there would be a bidding war for Giannis.

My prediction is I bet Houston could thread the, I don't know if they, you know, I actually don't know because another wild card here is if Giannis and Milwaukee decide it's time, I think Milwaukee will send him someplace where he wants to go.

And if Houston is on that list, that obviously helps Houston's leverage a little bit.

If I had to bet,

I don't feel great about it.

I would bet Houston could get it done while keeping Shangoon and Thompson just because the picks are so valuable coming from Phoenix and potentially Dallas and Houston's own picks.

Like if I get seven first-round picks and five swaps,

whatever it ends up being, and those picks are triangulated around the league, maybe I can trade some of those picks to get one of my own picks back so I can tank properly and I get some interesting young prospects.

It's palatable, but I think that the Shangoon piece to me is the very interesting.

It's it's not like he and Giannis are a great fit offensively.

You can nitpick that, but talent is talent.

Shangoon is really good.

He's on a good contract.

I want to keep him if I'm Houston.

And I am definitely keeping Ahmed Thompson.

So some of this is going to depend on

one, does Giannis ask out?

Because you're not going to proactively just trade him, probably, right?

It's the Damian Lillard conundrum where it's like, maybe we should have moved off of him sooner, but you can't trade Damian Lillard unless he has to be traded.

Oh, he has to be traded.

Cool.

All right.

Now let's move.

I think it's the same thing with Milwaukee.

Does Giannis ask out?

If he does, does he have a list?

I poked around a little bit a few days ago and the initial thing I got from one person was just like, you know, some rumblings that it's already just the big cities.

It's, you know, one of the LA teams or one of the New York teams, or maybe, you know, Miami, not big market, but glamour market, mid-sized market.

I think they threw Chicago in there.

I can't remember if Houston came up.

It should.

So first is like, where does Giannis want to go and do they honor that?

Because again, back to Dame, you're not obligated to honor it.

The second piece then is, yeah, so what does the bidding war look like?

You can say, well, Ahmed Thompson's untouchable.

Shangoud's untouchable.

Well, it depends on what other teams are offering that you might have to be bidding against, right?

But you're right.

I agree with you.

The picks alone, the Suns' picks alone, should put Houston in the lead because you can do those picks plus some very good, promising young players, even if it's not the two untouchables you listed.

I will just say, though.

I agree.

Ahmed Thompson, absolutely positively untouchable.

I don't think Shangun's untouchable.

No, I mean, I mean, we'll see.

And again, like, it sounds ridiculous to say Ahmed Thompson's untouchable for Giannis.

Well, if he's touchable, that means Shengun is also touchable because Ahmed Thompson is a more important trade asset right now than Shengun.

And you just get to the point where, as exciting as trading for Giannis, who's only 31, I think, is.

If you gut the entire present and future or like 75% of both to get him, you're going to be left with a team that may not be good enough, and you're going to have cost yourself a lot of future assets.

Like you have to maintain,

and this is a guy who has had injuries in like three of the last four playoffs, whose jump shot mid-ranger came along this year, but you know, that the aging curve of someone without a jump shot is not as great as someone with a great jump shot.

I'm just saying, like, you, it's tempting to throw the whole boat at all of these guys when they become available because the names are so exciting.

You got to hold on to what you can hold on to because you have to get them in the door in a place where you are at or close to the inner circle of championship contention.

And it's nice to say Giannis and Reed Shepard and Cam Whitmore and Shen Goon and whatever is there.

Like maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

And by the way, Reed Shepard should not just be glossed over as

just a sort of another guy that's been thrown in here.

Cam Whitmore's had two seasons to earn Emeo Doka's trust and hasn't.

Reed Shepard walked in as a rookie, undersized, gonna have some defensive challenges on a team that won 52 games.

He's still a really high-watt-edge prospect who was the number three pick.

And as much as teams talking to Houston, we're trying to be like, well, you know, how valuable is he?

He couldn't play for you guys.

He's valuable.

He's like a real legit trade asset, as is this Phoenix pick, which by the way, we don't even know where it's going to be until a week from today when the lottery happens.

And we're going to find out if that pick could be.

three, four, eight, 10, wherever it ends up falling is a big deal.

Yeah, if you're the Rockets, if you're any team trading for Giannis, to your point, you can't trade away so much that you're now scrambling to try to backfill around him, both for your own sake and the window that you have with him, but also for Giannis' sake.

Giannis is not going to want to go somewhere where they just gave up all of their best rotation players or half their starting, you know, or three-fourths of their starting, three-fifths of their starting lineup, which is why like the Nets, I'm still not sure I'm sold in the Nets as a destination for Giannis here in my backyard, because what do you have to trade for him other than they do have a boatload of picks, including their own.

And I think they still have at least a couple of those Phoenix picks and some other stuff.

I think there's a Philly pick in there somewhere.

Like the Nets have a lot of draft capital, but if you gave up, you know, Claxton and Cam Johnson, well, then who is Giannis playing with and why does he want to be there?

So, like, there is that issue.

The other thing that's interesting to just to consider here is like, how do the Bucks value some of what, in Houston's case, they have to offer?

Like, how are teams viewing Jalen Green right now?

Because, you know, what a number two overall pick a couple of years ago.

I was listening to Bill, Bill, and Ryan last night.

I haven't heard them yet, but like his, like, this was

posited, like,

Bill posited, is Jalen Green worth the top five pick in this draft?

I don't, he said, no, I don't think so.

I'm like, I was sitting there being like, what?

No, no, not even close.

Not even close.

Was that, by the way, was that Jalen Green with the towel on his head,

you know, toward the end?

Jabari, Jamari Smith was patting somebody on the head with the towel on his head on on the bench toward the last few minutes, like just kind of disconsolate.

I think that was Jalen Green.

I didn't see it.

I think.

I didn't see it.

Yeah.

No, I just, I like that he cares.

And

the kid's got a lot of personality and a lot of passion.

I don't know about his basketball judgment and his learning curve so far.

And, you know, there's results vary depending on who you talk to in the league on things like this.

But once you've been in the league for a couple of years, if you haven't quite popped, if it hasn't quite come together, it doesn't mean that it won't later.

Guys bloom at various times, but especially when you're a really high lottery pick and you're expected to have like the huge leap, if it hasn't happened, doubts start to creep in among analytics guys, among scouts about, well,

this for this guy, it's probably just not going to happen.

And so, do the Bucs look at him as still a blue chip-type prospect who may blossom here, or do they look at him as like,

great athlete, not a great player?

So, when I wrote about him last year, he was my most interesting player going into the season in the league.

And I don't pick superstars or rookies.

It was a targeted pick.

The most common comps to him, and this was among like mild optimists to tepid optimists for Jalen Green, were, well, is he just going to be not just, because you can't say just about guys who have made all-star teams, but is he like, does he top out as like Bradley Beal, Zach Levine, like a guy who scores a lot of points and doesn't, it's unclear how much they help you win.

high-level basketball games.

And I thought that was an interesting comp.

Look, this year was a disappointment.

I mean, mean, he was fine in the regular season.

It was, it wasn't the leap that I thought would happen.

It was, it was a mini, mini, mini leap, but the passing judgment was the same.

Defensively, I thought he improved a lot and was not out of place in this series.

I thought he was pretty good.

It's just the passing decision-making just isn't there.

And he's very young, still very young, and he's super athletic.

And finding your way on a team that's trying to win with the demanding coach is not easy.

There's also the alternative where you just say, hey, you know, it's easy to trick yourself into being like, well, we were the two seed.

We're very, very close.

Like, we really have to make an all-in move now.

You were the two seed, but the difference between two and seven, both in terms of wins and net rating, is not enormous.

What you really were was a middle-of-the-pack Western Conference playoff team who happened to win a few more regular season games than expected in a few more regular season games than some of your rivals.

And I think you need to look at it from that perspective rather than, well, we're the two seed.

Two seeds are contenders.

You were the two seed and you were very close to seven and not anywhere in the universe of one.

And there's so the alternative of just doing nothing and standing pat is, I think, a viable one for them.

It's not the one that I expect them to take, though.

It's an interesting

debate right now for the Rockets.

There's already been talk about what, oh, are the Pistons going to make an all-in-mo move?

Like, I think for Detroit, like, they're even earlier.

I know they just, both of them just made their playoff.

debuts with their respective Thompson twins.

But like with the Pistons, it's you already have your guy.

Kate is the guy.

And the Pistons have all these really interesting young players who have a lot of upside still.

They just broke through.

In the Pistons case, and I wrote about this on theringer.com last week, that Detroit should just chill.

Like, you don't need to make any all-in moves right now.

The Rockets, it's a little bit different.

You mentioned there's the cap coming cap issues and a bunch of young guys who all need extensions, but there's also just the fact that

they have these pieces to work with, right?

A plethora of interesting young rotation guys, all those picks, the Sun's picks.

A plethora of piñatas would you say i have a plethora

of piñatas you don't know you're older than me and you don't know that from the three amigos oh my god i've that's one of those movies i saw like exactly once whenever the hell that was probably

problematic now

probably almost certainly it might have been problematic in real time 10-year-old me did not understand why it was potentially a problem.

Maybe I haven't seen it since then, so maybe, maybe it's not.

Anyway, you have a plethora of something you were going to say.

I just want to know, do you think that, let me put it to you,

I do think that the Rockets, yes, there's a path there where they could just play it cool and be methodical about this and just see where this goes and let guys keep

ascending.

I think there is a case for,

you know, pedal to the medal.

I think there's a case for if you're the team that Giannis, if you're on his list.

For sure.

Yeah.

For sure there's a case.

There's an opportunity here.

For sure there's a case.

Okay.

Less interesting is the future of the Clippers, who, as we turn to the other game seven,

got embarrassed on the road in Denver by a thousand points.

I don't know what the final score ended up being.

It was a million points.

Lots.

Watched a game with my daughter because I was solo with her.

We got to watch it live together.

She had a lot of questions about a lot of different things.

It was great.

And is she worried about James Harden's postseason?

She likes James Harden because of the beard.

And I had to explain to her the history of James Harden in games like this, which has continued apace.

You wrote about it very well a couple of years back, and I've cited it many times in the last couple of days.

In fact, had to text it to somebody to note that the large overview of playoff Hardin to regular season Hardin does not do justice to just how bad he's been at critical times in the postseason, which you documented well.

You can caveat it all the way around.

Like, well, you know, he's had some great game ones and game threes that we just don't remember because they end up losing the series.

That's true.

Game three in 2019 against the Warriors stands out, a 41-point game in a series they end up losing in six.

He's had some other

great playoffs.

He had two big shots in game one of this series, which ends up being one of two incredibly regrettable losses for

the Clippers.

I almost said the Rockets, the Clippers.

He was great against Dallas in game four, clutch shot after clutch shot, and then melted down in games five and six.

I'm sorry that

going for 40 when you're down 3-0 to the Warriors is like cool and like potentially clutch if you come back, but you don't.

And I'm sorry that games six and game seven are more important than games one and game two.

I'm sorry that the fourth quarter is more important than the first quarter.

You can tell me every basket, every possession is equally important.

They're all very important.

Games can be decided in the first quarter and the second quarter, but when they're close, and time is finite, every possession does carry a heavier weight.

And the statistics are what they are.

And since I wrote that article, Howard Beck, that was 2020.

Gosh, Atlanta, that long ago.

2021, one of Hardin's great playoff moments, guts it out for the Nets against the Bucs on one leg and plays like the entirety of game six and game seven and plays as well as possible.

Awesome moment.

2022, Philly, Miami, the ball never found me.

Okay.

2023, Philly, Boston, three of 11 in game seven, four of 16 in game six.

The entire team no shows game seven.

Last season, I went through two of 12, game five, five.

I'm sorry that it's true.

And he was, yeah, he had 13 assists.

Awesome.

Like they were forcing him to pass away.

He's a great passer.

The whole team played with such a malaise in that game that I will say this.

Like

their future is like not interesting.

They're going to have to decide on Harden.

He's got a player option.

Do they bring him back?

They do not have a lot of maneuverability with this team.

We always thought this team was sort of a placeholder, like competitive, fun, into a dome until they get their picks back, which they don't control until 2031, and can really, or they get cap space and can lure a free agent the way they did Kawhi.

And it turned out for a while to be better than that.

It was an elite team for half the season once Kawhi came back

and

a 50-win team that, you know, people are going to shit on them, deservedly so for the way they played in game seven.

They ended up playing an awesome team in the first round of the playoffs with the best player in the world and lost in game seven.

Not a shameful outcome.

And Ty Lou said after the game, you know, look, I mean,

I'd love to have Harden and Kawhi for a full season.

Harden did a great job carrying the low without Kawaii that we got Kawhi back.

All these signings on the fringes, they nailed.

And I'm like, cool.

I'd love you to have Hardin and Kawhi together for a full season.

Like, there's really not much evidence to suggest that that's ever going to happen.

This could end up being the best case scenario for this, what I've called the placeholder Clippers team.

Really good season, really fun season, should be lauded.

However, I think it's actually okay to, quote, overreact to one game and say this taints the whole thing.

This taints my view of Hardin.

Again, this taints my view of Kawhi, who was like great early in the series and just okay the rest of the series.

I think it's okay

when a game is this important and you get outplayed that badly to say, you know what, that colors my view of your entire season and colors my view of, is this just going to be like what we thought it was, which is a fun, competitive placeholder as they likely bring back Hardin and wait for Kai flexibility down the line.

That was an awful, awful loss.

And it does color my perception of the Clipper season.

Sorry to be the guy overreacting to one game.

It's game seven and you sucked from top to bottom.

You sucked.

Yeah.

I will go back to October when

I said on the Real Ones podcast, when we were we were doing some raja and i were doing some predictions um for the season and uh

i i declared i don't remember exactly what i said but i basically had written off the clippers entirely i wasn't sure they were even making the play-in tournament like i or maybe they were a play-in team i i had written them off um pretty definitively just because

you know, letting Paul George walk proves to be the right smart thing for cap reasons, for competitive reasons, for all kinds of reasons.

But having been completely invested in Kawhi and an aging James Harden, and then, oh, I like, I like the offseason, but you know, Derek Jones Jr., nice, you know, Batum's coming back great.

Like, all that's fine, but it just, I didn't see enough upside there, especially given that we never know how many games Kawhi is going to play.

So, uh, confession, uh, I wrote them off way too soon.

I was incredibly wrong about the Clippers.

They were fantastic this season.

Um,

Harden did an incredible job.

Like you, I had him as an all-NBA uh player.

He's on my third team on my ballot, third team all-NBA.

Deserved it.

It came down to the wire, but I ended up putting him on.

Um,

So look, October view, I thought they're an afterthought.

April view, they might have, I think a lot of us thought they might be the biggest threat to the Thunder in the Western Conference.

And now

they're seven for the record.

Yeah.

So, but they had a lot.

There was a lot of clipper excitement over the last couple of months.

The way they played down the stretch of the season, the last six to eight weeks of the season, their defense was incredible.

And Kawaii looked like 2019.

Kawhi again, all of that.

I'm not going to allow game seven to taint what happened this season because I think this was, again,

my expectations this season.

I will.

You play like that in a decisive playoff game.

Sorry.

I think if it affects anything, it's how I look at them and for the future.

But I already had a kind of bleak look of their future, which is that.

Kawhi's under contract for two more years, but Kawhi is about to turn 34 next month.

Harden is turning 36 in August.

I don't know what he's going to be asking for.

Probably a lot.

He always asks for a lot.

How long are you signing him for?

Do you just match him up with Kawhi and then just say, this is it?

And just hope that each of them can play 70% of the games for the next few years.

I don't know, but you're like, there's nothing really like Zubach had a nice season.

Norm Powell and I, these guys have breakthrough seasons, but like there's no other upside on this team.

There's nobody else looking to.

Extension eligible too, by the way.

Norm Powell.

So I just,

it feels like the placeholder is still just a placeholder.

You could just run it back, be really competitive for as long as these guys stay healthy and on the court, and you'll be a fine, good, respectable team.

But you're not a, you know, you're not a threat to anybody.

You're not a contender.

And

I don't think you can count on

75 game seasons from Kawhi.

And we just lauded the Warriors for being a fine, respectable team who won a game seven on the road.

The difference is the Warriors haven't given up everything, draft-wise and young player-wise, to become a fine, respectable team.

The Clippers have, and they made the conference finals once.

Kawhi was injured in the middle of that playoff run.

They've had a nice run.

Yesterday was a disaster.

Denver, awesome performance.

Aaron Gordon, shout out.

Just tough.

Every game.

Never have to worry about him showing up on either end.

Christian Brown, ditto.

We will talk more about Denver as we move forward.

Greg, please.

Before we move off the clips.

Oh, sorry.

Before we move off the

just a thought exercise.

We don't have to get into it now, but just something to think about.

Is there a pivot here now?

Like, would you just, like, is there a market for Kawhi?

I've just been contemplating this the last couple of days.

Is there a market for Kawhi?

Could you offload him, not re-sign James Harden?

You know, just bring down the payroll, figure out what to do with, you know, Zubach Norpal.

I know you don't have picks.

I'm not saying this is a tank scenario.

I just wonder if there's a pivot coming here where you recognize everything you and I just discussed.

You've already gone as far as you're going going to go with

this team.

I built fake Kawhi trades for a pod like last summer or something, and I don't remember what any of them were.

It's not crazy, but teams just don't know

if and when he's ever going to play.

Greg Popovich retired.

We must address that.

I never got to know Greg Popovich personally.

I've interviewed him a few times here or there, including for a story I wrote on Genobly years and years ago.

So I will not.

wax poetic about his meaning to basketball or me or whatever.

I will say he's number one in wins of all time.

Maybe the greatest coach of all time.

There's a couple people who have an argument for that.

And what I will remember of Greg Popovich is how ahead of the curve he and the Spurs were every time the league evolved.

They rise as this defense first juggernaut, just impossible to score.

And Pop would have been the first one to tell you and was over and over again that everything for him, for the franchise, starts and ends with number 21 with Tim Duncan.

That's it.

They don't win that lottery.

He's probably been fired years and years ago.

Then the league lifts the handshake

out of the league, kind of bans the handshake.

They immediately pivot to spread, pick, and roll, Tony Parker unleashed, culminating in the beautiful game of 2013 and 2014.

Finals appearance championship.

Heartbreak to championship.

Heartbreak to pop consoling everyone at dinner the night of game six, the Ray Allen game.

And in the beginning of next season, making everybody re-watch the games again to prepare prepare for the run of revenge that happened.

And that team not only symbolized sort of how the Spurs had evolved, it symbolized how Pop really believed basketball should be played, which is unselfishly.

No one gets to dominate the ball.

It's not about you.

It can be about you when it's your turn for it to be about you.

It's not like you're never going to get to shoot or do cool moves.

Those have to come in the context of how the game flows.

And, you know, they were ahead of the curve on corner threes, along with the spread pick and roll like that's i i don't know pop personally i've heard all the stories i've talked to all the pop coaching tree people um that's how i will choose to remember his career and look obviously pop had a stroke my mom had a stroke three and a half years ago i know how debilitating that is their cases are not comparable at all from what i've heard pop is is is doing very very well uh but physically it's just super taxing and it's not surprising to anybody i think that this happened um i know you have gotten to know pop more than i have you had a famous lockout interaction with him in 2011, I believe, on the street.

I actually missed that one.

Oh, you missed that one?

Okay, but you knew, I just yield the floor to you.

Yeah,

um, I missed that pop interaction during the lockout.

There was a lockout, uh, pop walking down the street while the media was all doing the stakeout.

I missed it because I was working for the New York Times at the time and they had sent me to go cover a couple of Red Sox games out of the blue because the Red Sox were in some like awful death spiral that September.

And so I was away that day.

My most memorable pop interaction personally was they had hired Becky Hammond.

I got the opportunity to go out, sit down with Becky to do a big feature for Bleach Report at the time.

And I walk into the Spurs gym that day at practice in preseason, and Pop had just grown out the beard.

And it may have been, he may have done the beard before, but I remember this was like a big thing that...

that season oh pop's back with this this beard and i so i was going to get pop for for 15 minutes or so to talk about hiring Becky Hammond, what she's about, and what stuck, you know,

really stood out about her and his interactions and

in the hiring process or when he first met her on that plane ride back from the Olympics, whatever.

And

so, practice breaks, or Pop maybe finishes scrum.

So I'm walking up to him to go talk to him.

And as I said, hello, and I noted the beard and I said, you know, with that beard, you look even more intimidating than usual or something.

And he just waves his hand and he goes, ah, it's all just shtick.

I loved that because so much of how people view pop is through the prism of those sometimes tense and testy

in-game interviews, which listen are really tough on everybody, right?

Like no, no coach ever, very, very rarely does any coach ever say anything interesting anyway.

I don't blame the sideline reporters, many of whom are my friends, but like.

There's just not a lot to get out of that.

And I don't blame coaches who don't want to do it.

And, you know, could Pop have been a little more graceful at times?

Yes.

On that note, though, like, as much as he would like, like bust Craig Sager's balls all the time, like, he also, when Sager came back from his own health issues that one year, and as soon as Pop saw him, put his arm around him, man, it's just so great to see you back.

And was like, that was the, that was the essence of Pop, right?

He could be acerbic.

He could be crusty.

He could be dismissive.

He could be condescending.

But there was a genuine warmth to the man, too.

And that duality goes for the way he handled us at times in the media.

It is the way he handled players.

He's the guy who could bark at you and like, you know, get all over Tony Parker, like nearly break Tony Parker and then put his arm around him and say, like, no, now go out there and kick some ass.

And I love that about him.

Like there, there was a lot of depth to the man.

And I am wearing my Popovich Kerr 2020 t-shirt today in honor of Pop.

And, you know, listen, nobody has been more,

has been bolder.

And I think at times braver than Pop in speaking his mind about the issues facing our society, our country.

I admire all that.

It's among the things that I now miss with him being off the sidelines.

He doesn't have the podium that he had before, the stage that he had before to sometimes just say, you know what, guys, today I'm not talking about basketball.

Today we need to talk about fill in the blank.

There was a moment a couple of years back where he was at the garden pregame for Spurs Knicks.

Something big had happened that day, and I can't remember what.

It might have been one of the many Tommy Tubberbill things.

He loved to rip Tommy Tubberbill.

And

pregame access scrum was winding down with pop.

And there was that awkward silence that sometimes happened.

And he looked around and he goes, What?

No one's going to ask me about what, and whatever it was.

No one's going to ask me about, man, you guys.

He was expecting and hoping New York Media was going to do the New York Media thing and ask him about other stuff floating around, the things that he would normally gravitate to.

And that's the thing.

When Pop is dismissive of or shuts down a question, it's usually about like mundane, perfunctory basketball stuff that either it's a too general of a question,

which, by the way, quick aside to my aside, I appreciate appreciate this about him.

I don't always appreciate when coaches put us in a difficult spot where it feels awkward, but it keeps us on our toes.

We're supposed to ask precise questions.

We should ask more informed, intelligent, precise questions.

And I've had other people in the years I've been a reporter who have done this.

And it's like, in the moment, it sucks, but it makes you sharper.

And that day, he really wanted us to ask about whatever the political thing was.

And he was disappointed.

And I, like a year or two later, I saw him and I made a crack about it.

And I said, what was it about?

And I couldn't remember.

Anyway, the totality of Pop is awesome.

The last thought, and I said this on the Real Ones pod last week, he is as close as we're going to get to a red hourback type figure who not only encompasses all that the Spurs were about, we were talking about Spurs culture long before Heat culture.

In fact, in my memory,

The Spurs are the first team in the NBA we ever started using the word culture about on a consistent, like they made it a cliche before the Heat took it to all new cliche heights.

And the Spurs would tell you, Pop and RC would tell you, well, that's about Tim Duncan.

None of us do anything.

None of us, none of this means anything.

None of us, we're not winning.

We're not considered great or anything.

No one's praising us if not for Duncan.

All true.

And Duncan encompassed a lot of what was Spurs culture, but so did Pop.

And that Pop can connect all the way from the mid-90s to now the mid-2020s.

Hour back to the Celtics, especially when

with Grossbeck and Steve Paliuka brought him back,

Jerry West with the Lakers for so many decades, like that's pretty much end of list, isn't it?

Like, and there aren't that many teams where it would matter either, right?

You have to have multiple eras when you were great.

But to have somebody who embodies all that your franchise is about, all the great things about it, and can instill those values over and over again through multiple generations of players, that's pop.

So, like, he, there's all of it.

All of it should be praised.

All of it should be recognized.

I don't know how ceremonial or

detailed this job as president of basketball Ops, which is a title he's held for a long time anyway.

I hope he's still around the game.

I hope he's still around the Spurs.

I hope we get to still bump into him and have a snap at us for stupid questions and continue politics.

I suspect he will be.

Two other quick notes before we preview the second round.

NBC announced over the weekend that they are bringing back round ball lots

and that they are going to broadcast starting lineup introductions for games.

Oh, just I missed that part.

10 out of 10.

No notes.

Fantastic.

Welcome to the party, NBC.

Awesome news.

This episode is brought to you by Prime.

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This episode is brought to you by NBA 2K26, a favorite of my sons and me.

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Ball over everything.

Okay, rapid fire second round previews starting with Minnesota Golden State, Jimmy Butler back for vengeance against a Minnesota team where like nobody has left for money was there.

Draymond Green versus Rudy Gobert, round 17, chokeholds,

making fun of Rudy Gobert crying, all of that.

Warriors Wolves, the 6-7 matchup in the second round.

We're going to make...

We're going to talk about it and make predictions.

What's your first thought, Warriors-Wolves?

By the way, only the third time in NBA history that there's been a six versus seven matchup.

Not upsets, by the way.

You touched on it earlier.

Not really upsets, like it is on paper, but it kind of isn't.

Wolves defense,

not quite the same as the Rockets, but just as good as the Rockets.

So I don't know that the Warriors are going to have any easier time scoring now than they did in the first round.

And the Wolves offense is way better, especially in the half quarter, just in general.

They've got a lot more pop.

I mean, Anthony Edwards is better than Jalen Green, and Julius Randall at this point is better than Alprin Shangoon.

Tiaz, I mean,

as I start to think about who they have to reckon with, who you have to account for on the Warriors' defensive side of the court,

is that Kavan Looney starting on Randall so that Draymond messes with Gobert?

Is it Draymond on Randall?

Randall can score inside and out.

He's a much more, I think, confident and physical scorer than Shangun.

He's a better passer, I think, at this stage, too.

Maybe that's maybe that's close.

Shengun's a very good person.

Disagree, sir.

Disagree.

No, Shang-Gun's a very good passer.

Let me take that back.

Shang-Gun's a very good passer.

Randall has had teams play through him where he was effective in being that

inflection point where it's coming through me and I'm deciding whether to pass or score or sometimes deciding to shoot too often.

But he has played that role at a more confident level than Shangun.

Not a better passer, but has used it to better effect

in the past.

But he had playoff experience.

Draymond versus Gobert.

Draymond already had a really weird first round, not weird, just like one of those

series where, you know, at least two, three times in the series, it was like, is he going to get kicked out?

So all of these things

when he kicks Eason and he smacks Van Vliet

are all

like you could spin them as accidents.

Like he's doing basketball stuff and then his limbs go where they go.

I said this with Bill last week, and now I've figured out what it reminds me of.

There's a scene in The Simpsons where Bart and Lisa are fighting, and they both say, Lisa says, I'm just going to be kicking in my room.

And if, like, Bart, I'm just going to be kicking my feet constantly.

And if Bart happens to walk in to my legs, that's on him.

And Bart's like, well, I'm just going to be, I think he's punching.

I don't know what he's doing.

I'm just going to be punching my arms out like this.

And if you happen to walk walk into it, well, that's on you.

That's how Draymond is in these entanglements where a normal person,

most players, would sense a collision coming and try to be like, like, recoil back a little bit with your arms, like, not follow through the way you normally would.

He's just like, I'm doing what I'm doing.

Get out of the way.

My follow-through was coming.

We're going to have a collision.

Get ready.

It's happening.

Okay.

You inadvertently nailed the first question

that is on my mind for this series, which is who are the Warriors starting?

And can they start this small ball lineup that they've been starting

off and on against the Rockets of Curry, Healed, Pajemski, Butler Green against an enormous Minnesota team and an enormous Minnesota starting five?

And it boils down to this.

Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green can only guard two of Anthony Edwards, Julius Randall, and Rudy Gobert.

Now, you could find ways around that while keeping the same lineup.

Maybe Brandon Pojemski is fine guarding Anthony Edwards.

I don't really think so, but maybe he is.

Maybe Brandon Pojensky can guard Rudy Gobert, and you can toggle the matchups that way.

Teams have put smalls on Gobert plenty.

He just did destroy the Lakers in an elimination game doing that.

I think more likely the Warriors change the starting five again.

That could mean upsizing.

It could mean Gary Payton II starts for Buddy Healed because Gary Payton II has guarded Ant quite a bit.

And then you could have Butler on Randall, Randall, which I think is perfectly fine and tenable, and Draymond on Gobert or flip him how you want.

I think Moody could start for the same reason.

He's guarded Ant quite a bit.

He could guard Gobert credibly if you want to, semi-credibly, at least, if you want to finagle the matchups.

That way, either way, I think both of those guys,

particularly Moody, have a bigger role to play in this series.

But every time you do that,

you're sacrificing some shooting against a defense that is big and fast and mobile.

So that's where I'm sort of starting in the series is how do they match up?

Just who do they start and how do they match up?

You mentioned, you know, the Warriors offense, and we know how they're going to attack.

They're going to try to find Gobert, get him out in space, move the ball around.

And that's why I mentioned Butler earlier.

I think they're going to need a big Butler series to have a chance to beat Minnesota.

A better Butler, a more dominant, physically imposing butler, a Butler that's going to be like Mike Conley, you can't be on the floor.

I'm going to beat the hell out of you.

Dante DiVincenzo, you're bigger than Mike Conley.

I'm going to beat the hell out of you.

Nikhil Alexander Walker, you're even bigger and longer than DiVincenzo.

I'm going to beat the hell out of you.

I'm going to get to the line.

I'm going to play bully ball.

And if they don't see that, Jimmy, I think offense is going to be

not tough for them, but just it's maybe tough.

And,

you know, the other upside about starting small is who does Julius Randall guard

if the Warriors start small?

Because Gobert is probably going to guard Draymond.

And, well, does Julius Randall have to guard Jimmy Butler?

You know, on the other side of the floor,

again, the matchups, like how much physically larger is Minnesota going to be than the Warriors, depending on who plays where,

you know, and they're going to hunt Curry.

And the Warriors have switched Curry on to Ant quite a bit in previous matchups.

Wiggins, by the way, was the guy who guarded Ant most of all for them, and he's obviously now gone.

And Steph has stood up well against Ant in a lot of those matchups.

Ant really hasn't developed the back-to-the-basket game that I thought he would at this point.

And I think, you know, Randall,

Randall going at Curry is interesting to me.

Like Randall, whoever Curry is guarding pick and rolls, because that's a guy who can hurt you on switches.

Like to your point about Randall earlier, he can hurt you on Switches.

I just think the matchups, this is going to be a game one where I sort of sit back and soak up the matchups because I think everything is going to flow kind of from how teams attack are going to flow from there.

And to just pull back for a second, that game one that we are so eager to see is tomorrow night.

It's like, you know, 30 something hours from now as you and I record this.

And the Warriors, I imagine, either spent the night in Houston, we'll have a brief team meeting and then hop the plane to Minneapolis or might have, maybe they went straight there.

I don't know.

But they just had to play a grueling, physical, emotionally, physically, spiritually taxing seven-game series, and they're an older team.

And now they're like, this is the worst case scenario for the Warriors as a team advancing.

Obviously, worst case scenarios losing.

But if you're going to advance, the last thing you needed, especially when you were up 3-1 and could have closed out and gotten some rest, you're an older team.

Like, there is, there is, I'm sure, plenty of data out there about this, but like

the Timberwolves are young and spry and just sitting in wait and have had more time to rest since the first round.

It's going going to be a factor, and these are

every other day schedules now.

Games one through four are all every other day, no, through five.

And then if they're still going, there's a like three, four-day gap between five and six.

So there's not a lot of time to recover.

Jimmy Butler had that bad

hip back, whatever it was from the hard landing in the Rocket series.

Steph's still dealing with the hand, the finger, whatever.

I just, I do wonder how they will hold up overall, whether this series, all of the other matchups and strategy and everything else aside, how much this just comes down to whether the Warriors, the older core, have enough left against the Young Wolves team.

Rapid fire, a few other things to watch.

Minnesota can be turnover prone, and the Warriors have forced a lot of turnovers since acquiring Butler.

Got to take care of the ball.

Warriors take the second most threes in the NBA.

Minnesota's defense allows the seventh fewest.

That's a battleground there.

How many threes can the Warriors get up?

Jaden McDanos is going to guard Steph quite a bit and has done fairly well against him.

That's a really interesting matchup.

Nas Reed with smaller defenders on him, something I'm watching.

And just flag it, just flag this.

Because of matchups and injuries and other things,

Trace Jackson Davis has a lot of experience playing against the Timberwolves.

If you go back and watch games from the last two years, he's been on the floor for a lot of it.

Wouldn't shock me if he gets dusted off a little bit in the series.

Predictions.

I'll go first, Howard Vick.

Wolves in six.

Wolves in six.

Again, I'm picking a road team closeout.

I get it.

I should pick wolves in five.

Wolves in five feels disrespectful to the Warriors.

Seven feels too long.

Wolves in six.

For some of the reasons you mentioned in terms of fatigue, Wolves move on to the conference finals.

Against all logic, I'm going to say Wolves in seven.

Not all logic.

I think it's just out of an abundance of respect for the Warriors and who they are and what we just saw again.

And that if they're they're not completely fatigued and just, you know, just flat out exhausted by that series,

I think they're going to give the Wolves everything they can handle.

So

I'll say Wolves in seven.

I think there's a slight chance the Warriors pull this out.

Oh, no, there is.

The Warriors could absolutely win the series.

I'd be tempted to pick them, but it just feels foolish.

Well, look, the Wolves proved something to me against the Lakers, which is that they staved off the haywire factor, which I thought was going to work against them.

They were steady.

Ant was very steady making decisions when they put two on the ball.

And, you know, the Warriors have their own haywire factor, too, that Jimmy has really helped them tamp down with the crazy turnovers and all of that.

It should be a great series.

I can't wait.

Speaking of, I can't wait.

Oklahoma City, Denver.

This is the basketball fans' second round series.

This is

so much fun.

Oklahoma City hasn't played in what feels like a month.

And talk about a battle of a fresh team versus a a team that just went through a slug fest.

This is one.

We got the MVP frontrunners going against each other.

We have the Russell Westbrook vengeance tour, although there's no vengeance factor in this one really, like there was against Clippers.

By the way,

Russ,

look, I'm not a Russ guy.

I've been hard on Russ.

Sensational in that series.

Sensational.

And you want to say, oh, he's giving him his flowers now.

Yeah, you know why?

Because he averaged 14 points a game and made 42% of his threes and was a force of nature on the boards.

Last year, I believe he was 13 of 50 from the field in the playoffs and was completely on tilt against the Mavericks.

So yeah, he was way better.

He was sensational in this series.

And the intentional technical foul for hanging on the rim when he teed himself up in almost perfect concert with the referee making the te-up sign was glorious.

One of my favorite postseason moments of all time.

And now he gets to go to Oklahoma City where he'll always be beloved.

There's no tension, anything there.

He is a hero in Oklahoma City.

And

the Thunder, okay, here we go.

You get the best player in the world.

You get a team that won the championship two years ago.

This is the round you lost in last year.

You won a million, zillion games.

I can't wait for this series.

It starts tonight, so we're going to be a little quick.

And this is

this.

And we barely got to see it during the regular season when they matched up.

And we really barely got to see it with Aaron Gordon on the floor because he got injured in the middle at the start of one of the games and then missed the next one.

This is the Hartenstein-Holmgren series.

This is why you got this guy in free agency to emulate what Minnesota did against Jokic, which is put Hartenstein on Jokic and say,

we're going to shade toward you in the post.

We're going to send some help, but we're going to try not to double you.

And some of that help is going to come from the seven-foot shop blocker who's on Aaron Gordon or sometimes Christian Brown or sometimes Russell Westbrook, or sometimes one of many people that are going to be left open for the Denver Nuggets.

And he's going to be the one waiting for you at the rim.

Now, they won't play that way the whole game.

And the Holmgren only minutes are super interesting, and the Hartenstein-only minutes are super interesting.

I'm not sure there should be any big Jalen Williams-only minutes, although he's guarded Jokic some too.

To me, that's the first thing I'm going to be watching: is Oklahoma City, how they guard Jokic,

how much they can shrink the floor.

I mean, there is no better team.

Giving the most voracious, fastest, longest,

meanest defense in the NBA, a team that is short on shooting to the point that if they take out one of Murray, Michael Porter Jr., or Jokic, it feels like their shooting collapses into a sinkhole.

They can't even take out two of them at once now.

They've rendered that impossible.

You give that defense a team that's got some non-shooters that they can help off of and recover back to.

It feels like the toughest postseason test of Nikola Jokic's career.

One where he's going to have to make do in tight spaces, where he's going to have to find cutters in traffic, and those cutters are going to have to finish in traffic.

I just can't wait to see this defense, and particularly the two-headed big man monster, against the best player in the world.

You said the exact thing that I had in my notes here, right under my capitalized Thunder hyphen nuggets, first bullet point.

This is why you go get Isaiah Hartenstein.

And it's interesting, too, right?

That the Celtics are the defending champs, but the last Western Conference team to win the championship, of course, was the year before Denver.

And so, in a lot of ways, like I just love this, you know, thematically, this is the way that the NBA is supposed to go, right?

You're the scrappy young Thunder team that busts through 68-win season.

Everybody's talking about you as a finals favorite.

Shea's the MVP favorite, or Shea versus Jokic for MVP, all the other wonderful things being said and lobbed your way.

But you got to go through

the reigning power.

And in the West, that is Denver,

as far as I'm concerned.

Wait, isn't it Dallas still?

Is Dallas still the reigning power as defending Western Conference champions?

How are they doing?

Who are they playing in the next round?

I don't remember a Dallas team doing anything recently.

But this is why you go get Hartenstein.

And

this is, I love the fact that this is who you have to go through.

Like, this is the way it needed to be.

I was also just checking this because the nuggets, you know, to your point, Russ was great.

And I, too, have been, you know, critical of him for, for, for much of his career for various things.

I loved that moment.

I love the hanging on the rim.

It was the most intentional, obvious, just F you to everybody, including the Clippers who, you know, traded him away.

Benched him, traded him away.

Like, and I love.

anybody, and I'll say the same for Hardin, somebody else who I've sometimes been critical of.

We both have.

I love what a guy gets to that backstretch of their career and can kind of, you can't rewrite your history, but you can put to tack on a new chapter that puts you in a different light.

You contribute in a different way.

You settle into some, whether it's a mentor role or whether it's the six-man role, whatever.

And it's what you do with it.

That's that's our last memory of you, right?

It's the opposite of Dwight Howard, who like blew us all away the first half of his career, and the second half of his career just made us all wonder why we ever, you know, praised him in the first place.

I love what Russ has done for Denver.

We'll see what more he has in the next round.

But the Nuggets, that rotation, first round, they played six players 25 plus minutes, and some of them very, very far beyond 25,

plus Peyton Watson at 13 minutes a game.

That's it.

That was the Nuggets rotation.

The Thunder had seven guys playing 20 or more minutes in the first round on average, and two others in double digits, Isaiah Joe, and Andrew,

Aaron Wiggins, the other Wiggins.

The Thunder, their depth, you know, depth does not necessarily matter as much in the playoffs we know, but they can throw waves of very functional, very good players at you.

And if Shay or

J-Dub or anybody else needs a breather, they've got guys they can go to and not worry about falling off a cliff.

And the Nuggets do not.

And I know we talk about shortening rotations in the playoffs, and you really only need seven or eight guys.

The Nuggets barely have the seven or eight guys, and the Thunder have 12.

Yeah,

imagine being Jamal Murray.

Lou Dort's going to start on him.

Gonna get a little Caselyn Wallace.

That's no fun.

That's true.

Then Caruso comes in.

Caruso is going to guard everybody.

Caruso is going to guard Aaron Gordon.

He's guarded Jokic before, like on purpose in mixed-up schemes, just to switch it up.

I don't know how much, if ever, we'll see that.

And he's going to guard Murray.

And the Memphis series, if you can remember it, it's ancient history.

It's clear that they've saved Caruso for the playoffs.

It was clear during the regular season they were load managing Caruso for the playoffs.

And he has emerged as, you know, if there's a six-starter/slash closer in place of one of the big guys, it's going to be him.

And he was awesome against Memphis.

The matchups are going to be Dort on Murray.

SGA will guard Michael Porter Jr., J-Dub will guard

Christian Brown, and then the big guys on the big guys.

That's the starting, that's the starting matchups.

That's tough.

And by the way, Jamal Murray,

a lot of the Denver angst has been justifiably about the bench, which is thin.

A lot of it also was they've got two guys making max or maxish money who are not producing at max or maxish levels.

And like every team structure falls away if max guys don't perform at max levels.

Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr.

gutting out a shoulder injury.

Jamal Murray in the playoffs, 23 points a game, six rebounds, six assists, five rebounds, 48% shooting, 40% on threes.

That's on par shooting efficiency-wise with his championship run.

Now, the points per game are down by three because his usage is down, but he's playing awesome again.

And if he's playing awesome, Denver has a chance against anybody because they have the best guy.

And so, Denver has a chance in this series if Jamal Murray keeps playing like that.

Um, I just can't wait to see how Denver's offense responds to this challenge.

Um, I think uh something to watch is how closely Hartenstein and Jokic's minutes are matched.

Like, Jokic plays almost the whole game.

Hardenstein won't.

The other minutes are going to be really interesting because when Holmgren guards Jokic, they're just going to go right to the post every single time, and they should.

And because Holmgren, as big and long as he is, he'll get a block every now and then.

He can't, he cannot sustain against Jokic in the post.

And then you say, okay, we'll just help.

And like, okay, Christian Brown beat us with threes.

Aaron Gordon, you shot 45% from me.

The three.

We're still going to dare you.

It's still hard for Shed Holmgren, and it's still hard for the Thunder.

To wit, I was watching a film of Jokic's post-ups against the Thunder this year, and I was like, Man, this is a lot of post-ups.

And I looked it up.

For the season, he averaged 11 post-ups per 100 possessions.

Against the Thunder, that went up to 15 and a half.

So he posted up a lot and he posted up Holmgren a lot.

And maybe you have to have big Jalen Williams in there when Hardenstein is out.

And if you do, I think that's a win

for the Nuggets.

Thunder offense, let's switch sides of the floor.

Nuggets have matched up with Christian Brown on

Shay.

Good luck.

That's so fun.

Jokic on Hartenstein, Aaron Gordon on Jalen Williams,

Michael Porter Jr.

on Chet Holmgren.

That's a pivot point in this series.

Michael Porter Jr.

on Chet Holmgren.

Put him in pick and roll, hunt him down.

I didn't think the Clippers hunted Michael Porter Jr.

enough, particularly since he's playing with one shoulder.

I think the Thunder will.

How much can Holmgren punish him as a shooter?

How much punish him as a shooter, driver, whatever?

And does Holmgren make enough shots that on pick and pops, they start sending a third guy rotating at him?

Because if that happens, the series really begins to lean, or at least that little battle really begins to lean toward Oklahoma City.

I think this is a really fascinating matchup.

And the defensive matchups, by the way, obviously get a lot friendlier for the Nuggets when Russ comes in for Michael Porter Jr., you can slide everybody over, or Peyton Watson comes in, and you can slide everybody over.

I just think the shooting reaches a point where it's asking so much of Jokic to create with just a swarm of dudes around him.

A couple other notes.

The free throw differential needs to be huge.

for Denver.

Oklahoma City fouls a ton, and they're okay with that because they get all the benefits of it.

They're number one in turnover scores, et cetera.

And they also don't get to the line at offense.

Denver is the opposite.

They don't foul and they get to the line a lot.

I'm talking like plus eight to 10 attempts per game for Denver if they want to win this series.

And obviously, you know, Denver needs to protect the ball.

They're average at that.

Oklahoma City is incredible at it.

I can't wait for this tonight.

Do you want to, you have any thoughts and then we can do our predictions?

Nothing else major.

Just, you know, there's a lot of a, I don't know what the Nuggets get from game to game from,

you know, are we going to see, you know, Jamal, we've started to see play off Jamal Murray again.

Is he back to stay?

How much are they getting from him?

Because without that, I just don't think they have a shot.

And then,

you know,

Russ, Russ giveth and Russ taketh away, and you just never know, especially when they're, you know, they're obviously going to be playing off of him because everybody does.

Is he's going to make those shots or not?

What do the nuggets get from Watson, Pickett, Strother, who are just, you know, random dudes off the bench?

I'm just, I'm curious about all of, I'm curious about everything that is not Nikola Jokic, essentially, on the Nuggets side of this.

One last thing I forgot to, by the way, Pickett, Strother, obviously, you got essentially nothing in the last round, you know, who will give them something out of this general group.

Watson gave them stuff, and they needed every bit of it.

Interesting thing about the Thunder against Jokic and the Murray-Jokic pick and roll, they have been loath to switch, much less so than almost any team of film I've watched against the Nuggets.

We saw the Clippers would do that like late switch when Jokic would pop out.

They were scared enough of his three-pointer to switch on him, and then he'd go into the post.

They'd do it late, but they would do it.

The Thunder almost never do that.

They trust Hartenstein and Holmgren to like contain and get back to Jokic, and they are fine with Jokic shooting semi-open, semi-contested, however you want to characterize them, threes.

Which means another pivot point in this series, another must-lean Denver's way for them to win the series is Jokic is going to have to shoot well from three, and he's going to have to get a lot of momentum on pump, drive, and then create in tight spaces on that exact play.

If they're not going to switch and they're not going to send a third guy rotating to him, they're going to make him create like that and he can do it.

I am picking Thunder in six.

Wow.

In six.

Out of an appointment.

I have too much respect for Denver.

Yeah.

They don't lose in short series when Jokic is healthy and the team around him,

he's always healthy.

When Murray and Porter have been healthy, they do not lose in short series.

So I'm just, I have too much respect for Jokic.

I wanted to go five.

I'm like, you know what?

Six.

I'll go six again.

I'm going seven.

Thunder and seven.

It is maybe too much.

And maybe I'm being prisoner of the moment with the way the Nuggets closed out the clips.

It's an abundance of respect for Jokic and for the Nuggets and who they are, what they've done.

And maybe I have just a little bit.

I don't want to say I have doubts about the Thunder.

I picked them to make the finals.

I picked them to win the championship, in fact, all the way back in October.

But they still are a team that's had like a couple of playoff series under their belt, and none of them against this team and this superstar.

I guess this all-timer.

So

Thunder should win the series.

Yes, I'm saying seven out of respect for Denver and Jokic.

Knicks Celtics begins earlier tonight, so it'll be a little bit quicker.

Celtics getting healthier, it sounds like, on the Drew Holiday front.

The Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum fronts, wrist and knee, respectively, the other way around, actually.

And the Knicks just gutted out a tough one against the Pistons, highlighted by a crazy Jalen Brunson crossover and do a three to put them ahead and cap a big, big rally.

Everybody, just incredible Jalen Brunson stuff.

This has obviously been a nightmare matchup for the Knicks.

The Celtics won all four games.

They scored

130 points per 100 possessions against the Knicks defense, completely gashed the Knicks.

And they set the blueprint right away.

I mean, they didn't set it.

Other people have done it for defending the Knicks, which is they're going to put a wing on Carl Anthony Towns.

It'll usually be one of the J's.

And they're going to put Christophe Sporzingis on Josh Hart and have him be a Roamer.

And as we saw with the Pistons, the Knicks have just sort of...

Sometimes they hit it, sometimes they don't.

Sometimes they find counters, sometimes they don't.

It just sort of takes them out of the rhythm and flow that they just want to be in.

Drew Holiday Holiday has generally guarded Jalen Brunson.

That's no fun when Drew Holiday is guarding you.

They obviously have a plethora, to use your word, of guys who can switch on to anybody

on the Knicks.

And one sort of indication of how committed the Celtics are to putting a wing on towns and taking away his pick and pop game.

When they go too big against the Knicks, when they put like, let's say, Horford Cornette, Horford, Przingis, and the Knicks just have towns, they will sometimes put neither big on towns, even in that situation.

They'll put one on Hart and one on Ridges or Ananobi and just say, hey, deal with this.

How about these mind games?

We're still not putting a wing on you.

And one of the counters

for this scheme is to use Josh Hart as a screener.

It's like, you're going to put your centers on Josh Hart.

We're going to have to use Josh Hart as a screener.

Cat can space.

That makes a lot of sense.

Josh Hart set.

an enormous amount of screens against the Celtics in the four games this season.

According to Second Spectrum, two of his top four ball screen frequency games were against the Celtics, four of his top 19.

That feels like the Celtics directing the Knicks offense in places where it doesn't necessarily want to go, but can still work.

And, you know, on the other end, the Celtics' offense is awesome, and

we could, we could, we could talk about how the Knicks might defend it.

I think the Knicks are tough,

maybe a hair underrated.

They look a little bit scattered right now, and this is not a good team to be scattered against.

No, um, I went to all the home games uh, the Knicks played against the Pistons in the first round, and you know, look, uh, some of this is just you know, credit to Detroit, but some of this is, I think, just some concerns about the Knicks, too.

Like, the Pistons could have absolutely won that series, and with a little more polish, might have.

And aside from game one, or with Josh Hart getting called for the foul that he committed against Tim Hardaway Jr., yeah.

Um,

they, you know, they get blown off the court in the fourth quarter of game one with that 21-0 run.

Like, okay, that was legit, and that was just you, you know, getting your butts handed to you.

But every other game was either a Pistons win or a very close loss.

And I think the losses, the other three losses were decided by a total of six points.

The Pistons gave them everything they could handle, and the Pistons are not the Celtics.

I think the Knicks, there are times they feel very overdependent on Jalen Brunson.

And there's a lot of ISO and a lot of, our buddy Dan Devine had a great breakdown last week prior to game six about how often, how slow their pace is and how often they're getting down to like the last ticks of the shot clock.

Seth Partnow weighed in on that too on Blue Sky.

They were discussing this.

That it's, you know, I don't know, is that a Tibbs thing?

Is that a Brunson thing?

Is that a Tibbs and Brunson thing together?

I don't know who to pin that on exactly, but the Knicks end up with, I think, a lot of harder shots and a lot of Brunson late shot clock attempts.

And there's not a lot of dynamism to that offense.

When they got Mikhail Bridges last summer and they gave up a shit ton to get him, I thought, you know, the Bridges that we saw in Phoenix could,

you know, run the offense at times.

Was, you know, sure, he was the third wheel, but he was a very effective third wheel and with the ball in his hands.

And they came to Brooklyn.

And, you know, I never thought he was a true number one, but that's what they had to use him as for that first couple of months when they got him.

And he did so very respectably, not so much the second season with him.

I just think that like Bridges as

another conduit for the offense now somebody who could run the second unit perhaps but also just take some of the pressure off jalen brunson when they're out there together i thought would have been the best use of him and they don't they don't play through him as much as i thought they would and they don't you know and cat disappears at times partially because the offense goes away from him partially because cat is cat and he's a very frustrating postseason player throughout his career and then there's this

I just think that given all as reliant as they are on Jalen Brunson, going up against a team that can throw Drew Holiday, Derrick White, Jalen Brown, Jason Tatum,

Al Horford on switches, whatever.

Like the Celtics are always going to have a body or bodies in front of Jalen Brunson.

This is as difficult a task as he's going to have to navigate.

And they're all bigger than him.

Almost all of them are bigger than him as well.

I just,

this is a very, very bad matchup for the Knicks as seen in the regular season.

As you note, they got.

swept.

Well, look, we can talk all about how Boston matches up defensively and this and that.

If they score 130 points per 100 possessions, it doesn't matter.

And so the Knicks' defense has to be a lot better than they were against Boston in the regular season.

We know what Boston is going to do.

We know what they're going to do.

They're going to hunt Brunson relentlessly.

If there's one thing Boston is never guilty of, it's letting an opposing star who's maybe a little bit of a weak spot on defense off the hook.

They're going to go at him and they're going to go at Kat.

And it's cool.

You have these three interchangeable, huge wings in between them.

They're all really good.

We're not going to go at them.

We're going to go at the weak weak spots.

They're going to run Kat ragged.

They're going to try to.

Kat's going to start guarding Porzingus.

And let's take it creative.

Unless they get creative.

Not really a word you'd associate with a Tom Thivodeau defense, but there's a world in which they can move Kat around a little bit.

It's tempting to say, could he go guard Drew Holiday?

The problem with that is Jalen Brunson has to guard someone, and they don't want it to be Derek White.

They definitely don't want it to be one of the Jays.

It's kind of got to be Drew Holiday, too.

And so that limits your flexibility.

So they're going to run Kat in a bunch of Porzingus pick and pops.

They're going to run him through screens on the way to the pick and pop.

So he's even further behind the play.

They know that they can fake him the wrong way by kind of faking toward a screen or flipping the screen.

He's prone to guessing wrong.

And look, Porzingis hasn't shot the three well in the playoffs.

If he starts hitting enough of them, then you got to send that third rotator flying at him.

And then you're scrambling and then you're in big, big trouble.

It's just, it's been a tough matchup for the Knicks defensively.

The Celtics know exactly where they want to go at all times.

I will say the one benefit of Kat guarding Porzingis is, and this goes to your point about Brunson, and stubbornness and slowness.

Both of these teams play slow.

I think the Knicks have a greater urgency to play a little bit faster in this series, both to maximize heart as a passer and a distributor and just a one-man crazy fast break, but also

If Kat's guarding Porzingis, that means Porzingis is going to be stuck on Kat now and then after stops.

They have to, anytime the center is on Cat, abort the entire offensive plan, whatever it is, and go right into the Brunson cat pick and roll or the Bridges cat pick and roll, an empty side on the left side, whatever.

Use that against the Celtics because that is what you got Cat for.

And when you are gifted that, as you often were against the Pistons for various reasons, you must use it.

This is not the Pistons.

You cannot fritter away these possessions by doing other useless stuff here and there and then asking Brunson to create with five on the shot clock.

Use it when you have it.

I don't know.

I mean, what else do you want to say?

Like,

there's a lot of interesting little battles.

I mean, Boston takes the most threes.

The Knicks don't give up a lot of threes.

The Knicks also don't take threes.

And I think another fundamental problem that they're facing is just math.

Boston's offense is so good.

The Knicks were 27th and three-point rate.

It's just going to be hard to beat Boston four times when they're going to have two games in seven where they shoot 45% from three or whatever it is, and they just bury you.

And you're going to have one game where you don't take enough threes and you're cold and you shoot five for 26, and you're just mathed out of the game.

Assuming good health for the Celtics,

I'm going to go Celtics in five.

I have the same.

I have the same.

The Knicks will get a game there at some point.

I think their best hope is that Brown is still dinged up or Holiday is still dinged up or both of them or whatever.

I just, I don't think there's a world where both teams at full strength, the Knicks have a chance to really extend this thing.

I mean, this has been, you know, we're, we're both in the, you're in the New York area.

I'm in New York itself.

And I have a lot of friends who are Knicks fans and I check, do, do my pulse check with them occasionally.

It's been a very angsty season for Knicks fans in general.

Like this, you know,

like seeing Hartenstein thrive elsewhere and DiVincenzo for that matter, you know,

ideally, I think they would have never let those two guys go.

They couldn't do anything about it with Hartenstein, and then they needed DiVincenzo with Randall to get cat.

And, you know, they got better offensively, slipped a little defensively.

They don't quite have the same spirit or the same grit that was so much fun about last year's Knicks team in the playoffs.

And Knicks fans have felt

when they ran out of players.

When they ran out of players.

But that was part of the charm of that team, is like guys kept going down and they just kept

charm loses.

That's cool.

Charm's cute.

Charm's cue until you're playing four, you have four guys left and you lose.

Yeah, fair.

Okay, we both have Celtics in five.

This is going to be a chalk, chalk, chalk prediction round, I think, for everybody.

Quick reaction to Indiana Cleveland game one.

The Pacers storm into the series.

Good at basketball, the Indiana Pacers.

Win game one on the road.

Shoot the lights out from three.

Darius Garland still out.

I picked Cavs in five.

That's not going great.

That prediction is off to a flying start.

I thought Garland would be ready for game one.

I was wrong.

He obviously changes the entire series in multiple ways.

It's harder to hide Tyrese Halliburton defensively.

Now the non-Donovan Mitchell minutes have Darius Garland.

Now the Cavs are kind of searching for an offensive identity in those minutes.

If there is one thing that you want to take and digest and talk about from game one,

what is it?

I mean, I have mine.

I can go first, but what did you notice?

What did you find interesting?

The theme of the Cavs season

has been largely, I mean, one of the themes, a prominent one, was, hey, look at how great it's been to see Donovan Mitchell giving up more control of the offense and empowering Darius Garland.

And Kenny Atkinson's got this team moving in a different way.

The offense was just much more dynamic.

And

this is how they have this massive breakthrough and big leap in the win total, have the number one seed.

All about so much of it about Donovan Mitchell being able to kind of recalibrate.

And in this really important game without darius garland donovan mitchell takes three 30 shots and makes 13.

um barkley made the point on the broadcast right after which i i didn't the numbers hadn't hit me until he said it that mitchell and uh ty jerome combined for 50 50 shots 50 shots

not playing around out there howard is not out there to score okay he's out there to do his floater where he's like on the way down and leaning back it looks like it's going to have no chance and it goes in ty jerome is out there to score he's out there to flex he's out there to shoot logo threes he is not messing around the orlando magic and their cap stace are watching right now tie jerome baby i support tai jerome being tied jerome let tie be tie that's fine uh maybe not to the tune of of 20 attempts no 20 is not enough 20 darius garlands out i got to get minimum 25 shots from tai jerome um i looked this up so as a cavalier donovan mitchell had has nine games counting yesterdays where he took 30 or more field goal attempts.

Nine games.

You care to guess the counters.

Nine times nine times.

Okay, you're baiting me.

Four and five.

Three and six.

Okay, I was going to say.

And the two of those wins were in overtime.

One of those was Donovan Mitchell's 71-point game in January of 23 against Chicago.

You got to believe that if Darius Garland is healthy-ish and functioning and playing it on the court, that the offense balances out a little bit and we don't get this Donovan Mitchell Mitchell overload, which can sink the Cavs just as it sometimes sank the Jazz.

And

I don't want to boil this down to simply like, well, with Garland, they're great.

And without Garland, they're toast.

But

this was an ensemble builds around four stars or potential stars.

And a really, really important one is missing right now.

I don't know if you may have more intel than I do.

I don't know.

what the odds of seeing him back for game two and then what the rest of the series looks like, but it seems like a lot hinges on that now.

speaking of the, you said jazz, just said the word jazz.

We should mention Will Hardy got a contract extension this morning.

And you know what?

Good on the jazz.

This is how you treat a young coach, a rising young coach, who pretty much everyone in the league agrees is at least a good coach, potentially a great one.

And you put him through the ringer, no pun intended, of crap teams and bogus injuries to the point that the league finally finds you and rebuild and half tank and then full tank and half tank.

Oh, we're going to pull the rug out from under your team halfway through, halfway through again.

And this year, we're just not even going to have a rug.

The rug's gone.

You're going to be crap from the beginning.

We're going to handcuff you in every possible way.

This is what you do.

You give them years, you give them security, and you give them money.

Will Hardy, you earned that money.

You're a good coach.

Congratulations.

Cavs Pacers.

I don't know what the hell I was going to say.

First of all, I ain't worried.

I'm worried about my Cavs in five prediction, but I ain't worried about the Cavs yet.

The one thing I'm going to watch

is this, this, and we saw this with the Bucs, too, against the Pacers.

The Cavs switched a lot yesterday on defense.

They've now, they've really, to Kenny Atkinson's credit, been a pretty diverse defensive team this year.

They've done more switching than you would expect given their personnel.

They've experimented with zones.

They've done a lot of stuff.

It's not like they're doing something that's completely out of pocket for them.

And so thus, you're going to struggle at something you have no practice at.

They switched on 36 ball screens.

That's tied for the third most in any game this year.

Indiana scored 1.3 points per possession and about 1.2 points per possession directly out of those plays.

That's a lot.

It's too much.

The reason they are switching and the reason the Bucs switched, despite the Bucs not having personnel that could switch and stay in front of Tyrese Halliburton, is that these teams, these defenses have so much respect for Halliburton and such fear of Indiana's offense putting them in a blender where it's just catch and shoot three, catch and shoot three, catch and shoot three, that they are willing to switch and live with bad matchups.

Live with Pascal Siakam posting up Sam Merrill or Donovan Mitchell.

Live with Jared Allen, who started the game on Pascal Siakam and defended him for the most part, which I thought was interesting.

Live with Jared Allen on Tyrese Halliburton.

And you want to blow by him and get a floater?

Fine.

Pascal Siakam, you take fadeaway jumpers in the post.

Miles Turner, you take fadeaway jumpers in the post.

Guess what?

Those are twos.

They're not threes.

And some of those twos are going to be easy.

They're going to be wide open layups.

They're going to be dunks, whatever.

They're not threes.

And I think both the Bucs

and now the Cavs are overworrying about the Pacers offense and switching too much.

And

I expect the Cavs to keep switching.

I think they'll switch a little bit less.

And you saw in game one,

like, you can't switch and still give up catch and shoot threes.

And that happened too many times in game one.

A lot of that is fixable.

So what you'll see is they'll switch and a guard will be on Siakam or Turner in the post.

And someone will come from the wing, a bigger defender, and rescue those guys.

They call it a scram switch and say, you get out, go on the perimeter.

I'll take your guy.

And they were a train wreck on those scram switches in game one.

They totally were confused.

They weren't communicating well.

And so there'd be a mismatch in the post.

Neesmith hit a backbreaking three with like four and a half minutes to go in the game when Hunter tried to scram Donovan Mitchell out of the post on Miles Turner, I think.

And Donovan Mitchell was tangled up and could not get out and go guard Neesmith.

And Neesmith was just wide open and shot a three and made it.

That happened a bunch of times.

Eventually, Tyrese Halliburton, if you let him dance with Jared Allen over and over again, he's going to have a game where he makes five step back threes.

And when he doesn't make five step back threes, he's going to draw so much defense that it's going to be a dunk.

Pascal Siakam got an and one in the post on Donovan Mitchell.

That's a three-point play.

Your whole switching scheme is designed to not give up threes.

You're giving up threes anyway.

I just think teams like, can I see Miles Turner make some semi-contested pick and pop threes before I start contorting my entire defense?

to stop that shot from happening.

Siakam made a pick and pop three over, I believe, a Mobly closeout early in the game.

It was a good closeout.

It was a contested three.

He made it.

Cool.

Make it again four more times.

You can switch.

They switched 36 ball screens.

I'd like, can that number be 25?

If that number goes to 25, because I do think switching and holding them to twos has some value.

Can it go to 25?

So you still switch a lot and you clean up the scrams and you clean up, like, I thought they overhelped and down low a few times.

uh and and had open threes clean that up i think there's a better formula there and maybe they can switch just as much and clean up the scrams and the other mistakes, and it works just as well.

I just,

I would just dial it back a little, like make Miles Turner make some post-up baskets.

Now, to his credit, he's gotten much better at that, particularly against small players.

That's the that's what I'm watching in particular, uh, in addition rather to Garland's health.

I'm not worried about the calves yet.

I am, you know what I am worried about

their shirts.

The diff,

the diff is what you're going with

on the shirts.

The diff diff is so stupid.

For those who don't know, the diff is something they put on their scoreboard.

It stands for the difference, and it's literally the difference in the game.

So if the score is 29, 25, it'll say Cleveland 29, Indiana 25.

The diff plus four.

Like, thanks.

Really needed the diff column.

It was stupid enough on the scoreboard.

Now it's your shirt.

The diff versus yes, sirs is the greatest possible gap in shirt cleverness in the NBA playoffs ever.

And just like the Celtics deserve to start games down 5-0 when they wear their stupid black jerseys that nobody likes, the Cavs deserve to start yesterday's game down 5-0 for the stupid diff shirt.

And the basketball gods punished them with a lush.

Light those shirts on fire.

We're something else for game two.

The diff is on their broadcasts, too, by the way.

That's what I said.

That's what I mean.

It's on TV.

It's on like, thanks.

I'm watching the game.

I can do 29 minus 25.

I don't need the diff to do it for you.

It used to be just on their scoreboard, I believe.

Like you were in the arena.

The humongatron?

That's

all on the scoreboard.

Poor John Michael on Playabu has to be like, oh, they just showed the replay on the Humongatron because he's corporate mandates that he call it the Humongatron and not the Jumbotron.

Oh, my God.

The yes, sirs is killing me a little bit, though, Zach.

Just like

the soft C has to take on the S sound in this surs with pace sir.

I guess it's pace sirs, but like, ah, yes, sir.

You're taking it a little too far it doesn't look good on a shirt to have the sea there where the first thing you think is like i disagree i disagree and howard i think respectfully i'm more fashionable than you i think i'm a pretty i think i have a good eye for fashion all right uh howard there's a contest no one needs nobody needs that uh we covered a lot of ground thank you for soldiering on the youtube live i don't know how that went i haven't looked in the chat maybe everyone's making fun of this i have no idea i can't multitask i'm too old to multitask sorry chat people but it was fun and we will do this every other monday Monday on the Zach Lowe Show.

And so that means two Mondays from now.

Be ready.

Be ready, Howard Beck.

And thank you for your time.

We now have podcast listeners.

We'll get to listen to Zach Cherry from Severance talk about my favorite show in his NBA fandom.

Howard Beck, thank you, sir.

Thank you, Zach.

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All right.

This is a special treat.

Anytime somebody on a show or in a movie that I love also outs themselves as an NBA fan, I'm like a shark.

I jump on it.

I beg them.

I cajole them.

I ask them to come on the podcast.

We have Zach Cherry, who plays Dylan G on Severance.

And I am not cool, and I am not hip.

And I am always way behind on anything that is cool and hip.

Except for this show.

I was on the road in Los Angeles, up late, insomnia, nothing to do in my hotel room.

It's like, this concept sounds cool.

Let me watch the first episode.

I've been in from the beginning.

It's been awesome the whole way through.

And Zach Cherry as Dylan has been one of the shining stars of the show.

It is a joy to see you and meet you.

Nice to meet you, by the way.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, I can confirm you were an early adopter because I remember you reached out like really early during season one and said you were watching, which was very cool, very exciting for me.

Needless to say, anyone who has not watched Severance and would like to watch Severance, it's 2025.

Spoilers may occur in the next 25 minutes of conversation.

You have been forewarned.

You live in Bushwick in Brooklyn with your wife.

I suspect that in the blink, what feels like a blink of an eye for you, life went from No one ever recognizes me to I cannot leave my apartment without being recognized anymore and walk my dog in Bushwick and go to Prospect Park.

Like, how dramatic has it been?

Uh, yeah, it's been it's been somewhere in between both of those, where, like, even before the show, people would recognize me from occasional things, from Spider-Man.

I get a lot.

People tell me to do a flip, which is a thing I say in the Spider-Man movie.

But yeah, it's been wild, especially this season.

And we do have a little dog who's very, very anxious.

So she has had to get used to meeting a lot of new people.

Has it been fun for you?

Yeah, it's been amazing.

It's crazy how much people have, you know, like kind of connected to the show and especially the second season.

It's been like a real whirlwind.

How do you handle the lag time between shooting and airing with people in your life probably asking you lots and lots of questions that you cannot answer?

I either lie to them and say I don't know the answer

or I maybe genuinely don't know the answer.

But yeah, just take it one day at a time, get busy with other stuff.

It's like, you know, it's not, our show definitely did take a really long time.

There were reasons for that.

This season, we were interrupted by the strikes and that like put a big pause on it.

But it's not that unusual now to kind of

you know, shows used to come out every year and now they don't.

It's kind of just like how things work these days.

But this is a particularly sort of mystery box show.

And honestly, I have not had a mystery box show in my life since the X-Files.

That's how I like I miss Lost completely.

And I know there's been a lot of parallels.

I forgot how exciting it is to be like.

What the fuck is going on here?

And like, it's a sensation.

It's a sensation I really love.

My wife, who does not watch the show because it's just too dark and suspenseful for her, she does not like the sensation of not knowing what's going on.

And I'm like, that's the point.

And that's the thrill of it.

It's so much fun.

Yeah, it is.

And it's, I think it's been cool watching it like build.

You know, when the show first came out, it kind of came out in a vacuum and we didn't really know like what people would think of it.

And it's kind of a weird show that's hard to describe.

And it has been really fun watching.

you know, like the various online communities spring up that are kind of dedicated to unpacking everything that's going on in the show.

And regularly, they will catch things that I had not noticed, even though I'm part of it.

Now, we are going to talk about the NBA shortly, but I have to ask one more severance question before we go that way.

And then I'm going to annoy you with other severance questions.

I'm Dave.

How do you, how does the script rollout happen?

Like, do you get them episode by episode?

Like, I don't know how the shooting schedule works.

Do you get the whole season's worth of scripts at once?

Like, how much do you know in advance?

I mean, I've read that you only like to read your lines, and so you don't know like what else is going on in the show.

I don't know how true that is, but I'm just like, how fast does this go script by script by script?

So I do read the whole script.

That's from the Severance podcast I do a bit on where they have me like make predictions.

But because I've read the scripts, obviously I can't make real predictions.

So we kind of fudge it a little bit and pretend I don't really know what's going on.

But it worked a little different in season one and season two.

Season one, I think we had all the scripts when we started.

So So we like, you know, we knew the whole season.

Season two,

we were kind of like walked through the arc of the season for our characters.

And then we would get the scripts as they finished.

We were kind of like

shooting as we as we went for season two.

And we shoot it a little different, like...

We shoot it almost more like a movie where we block shoot where we'll kind of shoot a bunch of scenes in each location across multiple episodes.

So we don't quite shoot it in order just because it is such a big, complicated show.

I think that's just like the easiest way to do it.

Okay.

We're going to pivot to the NBA before I get annoying.

Explain to people.

You followed me on Network Is Now X.

I will always call it Twitter.

And I was like, ooh, I got a little like verified follower.

Okay, that's interesting.

Oh, look at this.

It's the guy on my favorite show.

But

you have a very modern approach to NBA fandom, apparently.

Please explain.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I have been reading and listening to you for a long time.

And I'm, oh, there's my dog.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

She's going to nuts.

I can't hear her.

It doesn't matter.

Okay, great.

All right.

Yeah.

So, you know, I don't have like necessarily a team that's my team.

Although I will say now that I've been in New York for...

10, 12 years, I have become more and more of a Knicks and Nets fan because it's like, especially the Knicks, it's really fun being in New York when the Knicks are good and when the Knicks are winning and people are excited and like everyone's talking about, did you catch the game last night?

That's, that is a lot of fun.

But yeah, I've kind of always just watched the league as a whole.

I have players that I love.

LeBron's always been one of my guys who I kind of follow and love.

He I grew up in New Jersey and we had this like high school basketball tournament in my hometown in Trenton.

And LeBron played in it a couple of years in a row.

So I like got to see him in high school.

So I've kind of always,

you know, been rooting for him.

And, but yeah, I don't, I don't have like a team that's my die-hard NBA team.

Okay, who are your other, who are your other guys?

Like, who are the guys that you have a soft spot for?

Stars, non-stars, like who just who just strikes your fancy?

I am a huge Brunson fan right now.

I love Ant.

I love Giannis.

I mean, he's basically just all the best players.

I'm like a little kid who's just like, that guy's good.

Lamello Ball.

I mean, if you like Lamello Ball, then you're really like a little kid.

All the little kids love Lamello Ball.

I do like LaMelo, but I'll be honest, I haven't watched as many Lamello games as I could have.

I can imagine a regular person with a regular job that's not in the NBA.

It's like, I'm not deep diving on the Lamello Ball, Musa Diabate pick and roll combination.

Yeah,

I'm not there yet.

Is Stiller going to hook you up at one of these Knicks games?

I mean, like, when is this going to happen?

Maybe you've been to Corn Sign and I missed.

I missed it.

Yeah, I've been to a couple with him.

I went to, during season one, we went to a playoff game together, and that was crazy.

Which game?

It was Nick's Heat,

I think.

And it was maybe game,

might have been game one, game two.

I do remember the Knicks lost, and I remember thinking, well, I might not be invited back because

I'm now, you know, bad,

bad vibes for that.

But then we also went to a game early this season,

And it was, I think it was

Nick's Wolves, which was very exciting.

But I think Kat wasn't playing maybe.

So it was, you know, a little bit of the

excitement was missing, but it was awesome.

It's awesome to go.

Sitting courtside is crazy.

It's like,

it honestly feels like...

There is so much happening that it's kind of hard to process for me still.

But yeah, it was very cool going with him to a couple of games.

I'm guessing a few players while sitting courtside have come and talked to Ben and also to you.

Have any talked, have any like noted you specifically from like, oh man, I love Dylan on severance.

What's the best player interaction on the courtside games?

Yeah.

So I actually, I also have been to,

so for some context, my wife and I are now massive New York Liberty fans.

There you go.

And so we've gotten to know some of the people there.

So we got to go to a couple of Nets games this year and sit at courtside and uh during one of those games rj barrett came over and he was like

i don't know exactly what he's doing but he was sort of like oh no i'm severed i'm severed and i think he was kind of doing his impression of the elevator transition like his eyes you know going from inny to outie um so that was pretty cool and uh garrett temple said hi at that point too so yeah that that has been wild it's been very very very cool and i've heard that cat is a big fan but i haven't haven't got to meet him yet.

Oh, well, that's going to happen.

Stiller is like,

he's intense during these games.

He is so locked in.

Like, I actually remember during season one, we were still shooting during the playoffs, and we were getting towards the end of the season.

So it was like some intense scenes.

And he would have his phone right next to his director's monitor.

And he would have the camera feed up on the monitor.

And he would have the Knicks game up on his phone and kind of be going back and forth because he's like, he's so plugged into what's happening with the Knicks.

You saw he and Chalamay were both in Detroit for at least one of the pizza.

I was like, God damn, they're like, they're really all in on this.

Yeah, it's he, he is, he's, he's like a super fan.

And that has made me more of a Knicks fan because it's like, partially, I'm just like, I just want them to win.

So he has a good day.

It's like my daughter and her swim coach.

Anyway,

you've mentioned also that you like to, when when you're in a new city and there's an NBA game, you like to sort of experiment.

Like, let's check out this arena.

Has there been any arena that you're like, man, I like the feel of this place or any game that ended up just randomly?

Like this Hornets game was super fun?

Yeah, I was in Toronto for work for like a month at one point and went to a couple of Raptors games.

And that was, I loved the vibe there.

This year, some friends and I, we went to, we went to Vegas to watch the tournament seminars, which was, which was fun.

It was like exciting to be there.

I will say, though, it was missing.

What I love about being in the new, the other arenas is like the home crowd and like experiencing that.

And so for the semis, because it was like a neutral site,

it was missing that kind of like intensity that you can get in certain places.

But yeah, I think the Raptors was like my favorite kind of road experience that I've had.

That's for Toronto.

People are going to like, you're going to be aggregated and you're going to be like an honorary Canadian.

They're so insane.

I will say, you know, I don't have like a team, but the rap, Vince Carter, when he was on the Raptors, was one of my guys growing up.

So like, I used to have Raptors shirts and stuff.

Like, I was, they were one of my kind of like honorary teams.

I, I, I always have a soft spot for the raptors.

Well, they brought back the purple dinosaurs this year on their throwback jerseys.

Yeah, I love it.

They looked awesome.

Okay, it's time for me to nerd out.

Unless you have other NBA commentary you want to get.

Do you have any hot takes, any MVP commentary?

Like, you just, this is the place to get it out.

Hottest

NBA takes.

Let's go.

I, I, well, it's not exactly a hot take, but I was talking to my friends about this, who I have to say, my friends, this is the most excited for anything I've done they've ever been.

Like, all my basketball watching friends, my high school buddies, are like freaking out.

I told them I was coming on the show, and they can't believe it.

So, this is major, uh, major credit for me.

Okay, so, so, the reverse is also true.

People who are like,

Zach Dylan, he's like the most funny part of Severance.

Oh my God.

So yes, this is, that's awesome to hear.

Perfect synergy for us.

And I was, I was taught, first of all, we were trying to figure out, I claim this is my idea.

They don't believe it was my idea.

They think that I must have heard this somewhere.

But

I have a pitch that I think would be fun, which is, I think, and obviously this will never happen, but it's, you know, you're, you're on the ringer.

You're, you're, in the world of sports pitches that don't, that aren't facing facing reality.

I would love if when NBA teams defeat a team in the playoffs, they got to select one player to add to their roster and just collect players as the playoffs go on.

I think that would be incredible.

This is insane because last week,

the very last episode I did, I said that the Cavs beat the Heat so badly in their sweep, like they beat it by 51 games, that they should actually get to pick a member of the Heat to join their team.

Like, if you get, if you beat a team that badly, yes, maybe, and I said maybe the Heat can protect like Bam Autobio and True Hero, like it's an expansion draft.

This is incredible.

I like it because I think it should only be for that run of the playoffs.

You don't get to keep them for the next season, but it would be so fun to like.

I was just thinking, I was watching Warriors Rockets last night, and I was like, if the Warriors could add a Men Thompson to like get in there with Draymond and just wreak havoc, it would be incredible.

So I'm putting that theory out there.

It's possible I heard it somewhere.

My friends don't believe that I made it up.

I don't remember hearing it somewhere else.

So I'm sure your listeners will have heard, if it's out there somewhere, they will know where it comes from.

So I have not heard it.

So I think you're, you get the credit is what I'm saying.

I'll try and popularize it, even if I didn't come up with it.

So let's get some momentum going.

Get Adam Silver on the phone.

If you have his number, we can maybe get get me in a meeting with him and i'll kind of pitch this uh the next when he comes on my podcast and i um this will happen i'm going to ask this question and just see what he says because now i have to okay severance i love severance i love everything about severance i actually re-watched the entire first season which i've never done before in preparation for season two i've never done that for any show The Long Gap had something to do with it.

Definitely.

And it really, and it really helped.

I had forgotten, like the whole PD subplot, I had kind of forgotten.

Okay, so I watched and listened to a bunch of your interviews.

You have said that if you could take one prop from the set, it would be the John Taturo watermelon head, which is one of the spookiest things I've ever seen.

Yeah.

Obviously, you don't have that prop.

What do you have from the set?

Have you actually taken anything from the set?

You know, I think I maybe have,

I think I have one of the caricature portraits somewhere.

that are sitting on my cubicle.

Like the,

it's like me surfing and stuff.

I think I have one of those somewhere, but I don't have a ton of stuff.

We have a couple of like little swag things they've given us.

They gave us all, after season one, they gave us all

crystal heads like Adam has on his desk of ourselves.

So I have that somewhere, which is pretty cool, but I have not, I haven't taken home much of the set.

By the way, Adam, you mentioned Adam, Adam Scott, if you're listening.

It's now famously known that Ben Stiller had to really fight for Adam Scott to get that role.

Just, Adam Scott, if you ever hear this, A plus performance.

I mean, it's A plus for all of you guys.

The acting is incredible, but like, good for Ben Stiller for fighting for it.

And Adam Scott has paid it off in spades.

Okay.

By the way, Tramel Tillman, who plays Milchik in that interview with you, said he would take the Keir Egan statue from the last episode, which is a great one.

And I did not know until listening to that interview that Ben Stiller was operating that statue.

But is it his, whose voice is it?

Do we know?

So on the day, I believe it was the actor whose face Kir is modeled off.

I believe he was there doing the voice.

And Ben just had a little,

yeah, it was like a remote control basically that he could kind of make it move around.

But I wasn't there that day, so I don't know.

I didn't see it.

That statue scene kicks off what I would describe and have described to my friends as the most insane 25 minutes of television I've ever seen.

And somehow all of it works.

The whole thing you're watching and you're like, there's a marching band and like, what in the world is even happening here?

And yet it works spectacularly.

Okay.

I'm going to ask you a couple, how did you keep a straight face questions?

How did you keep a straight face and particularly an angry face?

a building tension face when Milchik is bobbing and weaving and dancing right behind your chair during the famous music dance experience from season one and milchik's dancing tramel tollman's dancing obviously legendary at this point you just got to sit there and look angry as his face is like behind your shoulders and he's doing all like that that was a how'd you do that i would be laughing the whole time yeah well you know honestly it's funny because It was kind of everyone else got to be like having fun and dancing.

And I had to be like in my own little world.

So I was kind of angry.

I was like, everyone else is having fun.

Everyone is like, you know, that's, that's like become this, you know, kind of iconic scene from the show.

Everyone gets to show off their little moves and I just have to sit there stewing.

So it kind of it kind of worked.

I kind of was feeling a little left out.

So I just used that.

Okay.

Dylan G gets the waffle party, the waffle party, where you go into the Egan house and

you go in the Egan bed.

and the tempers masked as goats and whatever else they are are doing salacious dances in front of you again

how did what is that set actually like and how how in the hell do you not i mean either freak out or just start laughing at the absurdity of this so that you know i don't remember exactly where it was but we shot that like in some kind of museum somewhere and it was like

it was our last day there and it was like It had to be about 1 a.m.

or something because we,

you know, literally we couldn't shoot there anymore.

So we had to finish everything that day.

Um,

and there was a man upstairs just making hundreds of waffles.

They brought in like a, like a special like waffle chef.

So it was, I was so out of it that, like,

you know, I, I was just disconnected from reality.

There was, there, there was, I was on another planet during that scene.

Um,

okay.

You are famous for, and everybody has asked you about

your many and delightful uses of the F-word on the show.

Just, I mean, the timing, the variety, the setups.

Um, there's all, there's entire like videos devoted to like the top 20 Dylan F-bombs and top 20 Dylan lines.

My personal favorite line that you've ever said on the show, admittedly, it is a popular choice, but the deadpan nature in which you say it is so perfect.

I'm wondering if, can you guess what the line is?

Or, and then I'm going to ask you about it.

Uh, oh, I don't know.

I know this season, um,

when I first hear about my Audi and I ask if he's dumb is a popular

is a popular one.

What's the exact line on that?

I can't.

I think I just say, is he dumb?

But no, I don't know.

Season one,

the egg bar is coveted as fuck.

Ah, yes.

How many takes of that is there before you get like the timing of that and you're dead.

The best part is you're just you're eating and you're just dead serious.

It's quick.

It's serious.

It's dead band.

Yeah, the egg bar is is coveted as fuck.

Like, you don't know that the egg bar is this coveted.

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of, we shoot a lot of takes of most scenes, so there are probably a lot of takes to that.

Um, but I do think the character, he's obviously, you know, he's a funny character, but he is almost always dead serious.

Like, he's not joking.

He, he's that, I think that's kind of what's funny about him is he is so dead serious about

all of his opinions.

Um, but yes, that was a fun day.

Fun, fun little fact about that is

at the time I was vegan.

I was eating vegan.

So

they made these vegan

deviled eggs for me and they were not good.

I was like, I mean, they looked amazing and they were totally fine, but they were about to look.

And I was like, oh, I kind of wish you guys had asked me because I would have just eaten, I would have just eaten deviled eggs rather than this kind of

fancy scientific creation.

But yeah, those were not real eggs uh another how many takes are there seen from the most recent season uh

you your innie gets to meet your audience wife uh um

in a few scenes and they're very moving scenes they're very interesting how you play the innie and the audi dylan differently um

and and and how you approach her in those scenes and in the climactic scene of that exchange you you propose to her and you're you're almost

it's as the show is setting up that the innies and the outies are really different people and can have negative feelings toward each other and jealousy toward each other.

And you propose to Gretchen and she cries and leaves because this is an incredibly bizarre situation.

And no, she cannot actually marry a second version of Dylan.

And as she's walking out, you shriek.

this guttural shriek of Gretchen.

And it's like high pitched, much higher than you've ever talked on the show.

And the combination of the, it's one of those moments where the way you say it and the fact that it's a higher pitched thing and throatier is so moving.

It just hits you in the gut.

How many screams are there?

Were you like aiming for that kind of total?

I'm always so curious, like, how do moments like that happen?

Because it's perfect.

Yeah, you know, we definitely did that a few times.

You know,

it was a thing where it's it's such a strange moment for the character where, you know, he's kind of the innies we always talk about are kind of childlike.

And so, you know, he was like naive enough to believe that he might

that proposing was like a good decision.

Um, and this is like his first, it's kind of his first romance, you know, he hasn't experienced anything like this before.

So I think, I think in that moment, it is this really kind of like childish scream of frustration and despair and like you know all this stuff is kind of crashing down on him um so we definitely we definitely did it a few times and tried it a few different ways but um no i don't know that i was like uh specifically

uh

it just sort of that's what that's what came out you know it was just sort of this like childlike uh

explosion of of emotion kind of well you nailed it um season one you are the any responsible for triggering the overtime contingency.

You are the one who has to stay in and pull a whole bunch of levers.

And you're in this, what looks like a very uncomfortable stretch because the levers are on opposite sides from each other.

And in the show, you're in that pose for 30 minutes because that's

how long

the innies are on the outside world, the other three innies.

How long are you actually in that pose continuously while shooting?

And was it as uncomfortable as it looked?

Yeah,

it was pretty uncomfortable.

I was never in it for more than a few minutes at a time.

Just, you know,

we would, you know, shoot some takes and then move on.

But at the same time, it took us all day to shoot that sequence.

So I was in and out of it for like 14 hours.

The benefit I had was they actually built that set based on the length, the width of my arms.

So they

like one day like measured me.

You're wingspanned like an NBA player or draft prospect.

They got my, I actually didn't get the stats.

So I don't know what my wingspan is.

I'm sure it's embarrassingly low.

But they,

so it was like just at the edge of where I could reach.

But to make it feel more real, I was really kind of like yanking on it.

So it was, it was very uncomfortable.

It was, it was a tough day and I was sore the next day for sure.

Hey, look, like, if I have to maintain a catcher squat for more than 15 seconds, I'm like, I don't understand how anybody does this.

Like, yeah, forget posing like that.

Okay, one more nerd out question.

You mentioned on some pod I was listening to, somebody asked you, again, a classic question.

What have you learned from watching and working with these iconic veteran stars like Patricia Arquette and Christopher Walken and John Tutoro specifically?

And you mentioned like being in the trailer next to John Tutoro and all the voice warm-up exercises that he does to get ready for a scene.

And then whoever it was interviewing, I don't remember, moved on.

I'm curious about what other things you've picked up, or does it acting not really work this way?

Like, I'm picturing, we all pick,

when fans love shows, we all picture two things that are probably wrong.

Number one, all of you are best friends off the set and hang out all the time forever and ever and ever.

And number two,

you're all just like during breaks being like, hey, Patricia Arquette, I have this question for you about true romance or this like acting technique that I'm, and that probably doesn't happen either.

But are there any other like tricks you've not tricks, but you know, techniques you've learned from them?

Well, I will say on our show, I genuinely do love everyone.

John, I love, you know, John and I have gotten quite close.

We, we, I actually got him into, into the New York Liberty.

He's like now a Liberty guy.

Obviously, he famously is a big Knicks fan, but we went to a playoff game together with Britt, who plays Helly on the show and like had an incredible amount of fun.

And I, you know, I'm, there is some of that where people are asking questions.

Like Adam is actually, he he is like he loves to ask people questions about you know their work and stuff i tend to kind of sit and watch and i did learn a ton from john like he he did do those vocal warm-ups he also

he he would tell me kind of fun little tricks of like

he'd be like you know if if they're shooting a scene and you're kind of only going to be there in the background and you want to go home just like suggest that your character goes to the bathroom or something like little little tricks like that just about like saving your time and saving your energy.

But also,

I think from him, something that I really just his, he's such a great

presence on set and he makes everyone feel so comfortable and welcome and he's so like encouraging that just just like feeling that kind of like confidence from him.

totally allowed me to feel more comfortable, you know, just in the work at all, because he's a guy who I've watched my whole life, you know, like, so then you start to do scenes with him and you start to be like, oh, hey, we're doing this together, and he kind of believes in you.

It that just that adds so much to,

you know, your, your confidence and lets you kind of like do things that you maybe wouldn't have been able to do without that.

By the way, I would say the most popular Dylan line is,

I think it's your delts are looking sick as fuck, and my Audi definitely does muscle shows.

That might be the, that might be the number one most popular Dylan line.

That was, that was a fun, that was John and I.

They kind of just let us like riff in the background because I think Britt is like doing some, she's up to one of her schemes in season one and we're kind of just like blabbering about our muscles.

But yeah, that was that was a fun day.

All right, before you go, are you still doing stuff at UCB?

I know you've done a lot of UCB.

How often are you still doing that?

Yeah, I still do it occasionally.

They didn't have a space in New York for a while.

During COVID, their theater is closed, but now they're back up.

They're in the East Village.

And I do the show Ask Cat occasionally on Friday nights.

And then I do another show on Sunday nights called Rat Scraps, which is like a bunch of the people who used to do Ask Cat.

We do similar show on Sunday nights at this theater on the Lower East Side called Caveat.

But yeah, when I'm in town and not working, I try and do those shows as often as I can.

Anything else coming up that you would like to promote in the world of Zach Cherry other than season three of Severance, which I assume is coming out in six months?

I assume you guys have gotten right to it and my appetite will be satiated immediately.

Well, I don't have a timeline on that, but yes, certainly, certainly everyone be ready for season three because I'm excited to get to it.

Zach,

any last NBA thoughts?

We're going to have the MVP announced this week.

Nick's Celtics starts tonight in Boston.

Any other playoff thoughts or anything you want to get out before I let you go?

I mean, I guess

is it just going to be

Are we headed down an inevitable path of Thunder Celtics?

Can anyone beat the Celtics?

I think the Cavs would have a chance.

I mean, that was my preseason finals pick.

That was the chalk preseason finals pick.

The Cavs, the Darius Garland thing,

he was out again in game one, and Indiana won that game last night in rousing fashion.

I think the Cavs could put up a good fight against the Celtics.

I think the Knicks are in trouble.

I just made my prediction for that series with Howard Beck.

It was not the Knicks.

But, you know, look, and the Thunder, Thunder,

they get to play the best player in the world now.

We'll see how that goes.

But yeah, I have seen nothing to take me off that path yet.

Okay.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking.

So we'll see.

It'll be fun to see it play out.

Zach Cherry, this has been a real pleasure.

You're just tremendous on Severance.

Now I'm going to look for everything else you do.

Thanks for lending us some of your time.

You are now a busy and

coveted as fuck guest on these kind of shows.

Let's be in touch, and I'll see you soon, hopefully.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Truly, this was a blast.

What a treat Zach Cherry was.

Severance is amazing.

He's amazing.

Congratulations to him on his success.

And that's it for today's Zach Lowe Show.

We'll be back Thursday talking everything that happens in the NBA playoffs between now and then and looking ahead to the first real weekend of the second round.

Things are heating up.

The best teams are alive and battling each other.

It's going to be fun.

We'll be here on the Zach Lowe Show.

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