Zach’s Mega-Playoff Preview! Reaction to Breaking News, Plus All the Action Out West With Bill Simmons, and Eastern Previews With Mo Dakhil.

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Ball over everything.

Coming up on the Zach Lowe Show, we got a massive play-in and playoff preview.

Mo Takil's coming on to talk about the East, and a guy you might know, Bill Simmons, is coming on to talk about the West.

Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show, because that's what we're calling it now.

And we got the podfather on the line to preview the Western Conference playoffs and play.

And that's what we were supposed to do.

But we got some breaking news.

I know you're excited to get to.

Bill Simmons, live from the man cave with the Boston stuff in the background.

How you doing?

It's like half-hearted breaking news.

I don't think it was breaking news that made any of us go, oh my God, and drop the coffee cup, you know, Kaiser Soze style.

These were two we expected.

My question is, is there going to be more after this?

Two coach fires, Buntenhauser, New Orleans, Queen's House.

Is there another one we're not expecting?

Oh, there's always something we're not expecting.

Okay, quick take on Bud getting fired after one of the three disaster seasons from hell in this year's NBA.

Remarkably, one of them, the Maverick season, is still going.

The others are long over as the Suns trudge sadly to loss after loss after loss with Bradley Beal's no-trade clause hanging over their head or attached to them like the stone cutter's stone on Homer Simpson,

the stone of shame.

Bud's out.

I mean, look, did he do a great job?

No.

Did he annoy Devin Booker according to the athletic and Chris Haynes apparently by telling him to tone down?

It wasn't great.

You know,

is it embarrassing that we're now on a fourth head coach in three years for the roster that 26 other teams would trade for?

It's a little embarrassing.

The Suns are officially embarrassing.

Who's fixing this team?

That, I mean, like, did Bud do great?

No, I think Bud's still a good coach.

What did he do?

So I don't know.

Just like, look, it didn't work.

The locker room was bad.

It's always bad.

I don't know what else.

What else are we supposed to say?

If the coach is a bad fit for the team and you're stuck with the team, the only thing you can really do is change the coach again.

But you made the key point.

They've had four in three years.

Ishbia.

I don't know if I'm officially ready to name new owner Syndrome after him because that's a concept that I had been writing about going back to like pre-Grantland.

What else does he have?

What else does he have to do?

I don't know what else he has to do.

When you think the combination of irrational trades, irrational moves, the Bradley Beal, when you look back at all the swaps they gave up in that trade, it's just staggering now.

So

I'm going to take the L.

I understood the trade for them.

I was like, Chris Paul's almost 40.

He's probably not the future of the team.

Obviously not the future of the team.

He's probably probably on the decline.

And, you know, he's a single-digit scorer this year.

I get it.

Like, you're all pot committed with Durant, which is the original sin of the whole thing, is the Durant trade going bust, right?

You're pot committed to that.

But we both liked the Durant trade when it happened.

We thought I didn't know why Cam Johnson was in it, but I understood why they did the trade.

I was lukewarm at best.

But look, once you're pot committed, you're pot committed.

Let's get younger.

The upside's there.

Maybe he'll get healthier.

His agent, his agent's son, works for the sun.

So maybe there's some good intel here.

And it just, I got it.

The swaps, you can like wish in the moment, you can kind of wish away the swap.

They're just swaps.

You still have picks.

They're just swaps.

And now they look like, oh, my God.

And I've taken the L.

The trade is a complete disaster.

They can't extricate themselves from it.

And they're stuck.

And they have to trade KD.

It's the least, it's the least,

the most anticlimactic superstar, apex superstar trade in the NBA, maybe ever, is going to be when the Suns trade Kevin Durant this summer.

Well, you're forgetting a lot of 70s, 1970s trades.

We had some great,

I'm talking like a guy who's like a top 12 to 15

at worst all-time NBA player.

Oh, all-time.

Yeah, yeah.

I'd never liked the Beal trade.

I have learned, as I know you have too, to really trust people that I trust are basketball when they're watching somebody day in and day out and they're saying whether the guy is truly a winning player or not.

And for what they gave up, I thought they're doing the Wizards a favor.

It was one of those.

It was a great deal for the Wizards right away.

They were delighted.

They were like, really?

We get to get out of this Bradley Beal thing.

Look at what happened with Zach Levine, you know, recently with the Bulls, where the Bulls had to like take on contracts back just to kind of get out of that deal that they had.

So I, you know, I think the big sin was that summer with the Chris Paul expiring.

with Aten when they basically tried to make a title team and they went all in.

And I remember saying at the time, like, I just never like moves where there's no way out.

Once you're past a certain point, if you don't have any outs, that's the most dangerous place you can be in basketball.

We've seen these teams just get paralyzed for years and years.

The Sixers with the Embiid and George contracts, they left themselves no outs, and yet somehow they got an out because now they have a chance to have a top six pick and they have some collateral.

They might be able to move out.

There's no way out for the Suns.

And that's, you know,

I talked about this on my iPod.

I went to see them in that Austin game against the Spurs.

You were alarmed.

Yeah, it was a 10 out of 10 for the body language doctor.

I just couldn't believe it.

So, you know, Bud clearly didn't connect the team at all.

I was, couldn't have been more wrong.

I love their over.

Their over was 47 and a half.

I thought they were going to be like one of the better offensive teams of the last 10 years.

And it was just off from the get-go.

There's bigger questions with them, though, because I just don't think that Durant Trade is going to solve a lot of the stuff that's going on here.

I don't know what his value is heading into his 19th season with the surgeries he's had

and just the aging curve of the league where basically only LeBron has been able to stay at a top 15 level past a certain season.

So I don't know.

I don't know what they get for him.

I don't know who's trading for that $55 million contract.

When what?

Sorry.

Everybody seems terrified about second apron being locked into numbers.

They have contracts that are, you know, going up on their own team.

And then you're just adding this and just people don't have the salary to move.

And then the Suns are handicapped by all these things where they can only take one contract back for Durant unless there's like these other side trades.

And I think it's going to be really hard to trade them.

That was one of my favorite bits of spin from the Suns offseason a year ago was when they were like, yeah, second apron, you know, we were going to go in it anyway.

So we figured, like, why don't we just go all the way in it and do X, Y, and Z?

And everyone got Galaxy Brain Brain tricked into being like, that sounds smart.

Like, that's really smart front officing.

And it's like, no, we're just in jail now.

I don't think the Durant, the tough thing with the Durant trade is you kind of have to aim for a win-now mood with Booker.

And by the way, I thought the most eye-opening quotes coming off their end of season loss or their official elimination was Booker saying something to the effect of, I don't have it in front of me, but

What really hurts is that three years ago, we were so close.

And now this is where we are.

And I read that and i'm like oh my god this guy is very much in tune with the trajectory of this franchise and how all these moves have gone bust and

he wants to be a son for life i've heard nothing but that from his camp over the years i just don't know what the wit what the durant trade is that satisfies his i'm in my prime i need to win now and durant durant's camp can look at these other teams and say yeah it's 51 million next year for me but look you're you got aping problems like i'll take a discount going forward i'll do this.

It's still 51 million next year, and the rules still are what they are.

And the son's level offer of picks and stuff for him is just not, it's not going to be there this summer.

I thought they should have traded him in February when they had the chance before he found out about the trade.

And it felt like there was a Miami possibility.

He squashed Golden State.

But I, from what I understand, and the second apron, first apron, all of it's so confusing.

I think it's funny that you mentioned the Ishbia part where he's like, everybody's zigging.

I'm zagging.

People are afraid of the second apron.

What if you're not afraid?

And then you just go off a cliff.

Is there a third apron?

Right.

What if we went over the seventh apron?

I don't, from what I understand,

it's impossible to trade Durant for multiple players for them.

They can't take multiple guys back in a trade, correct?

It's hard, but I don't think they can.

Players would have to go to third teams.

We've seen it before, obviously.

Right.

So I think what they would have to do is you have a team that's under the cap.

They trade Durant.

They get a guy coming back who's making like 27 million, but the team so far under the camp, they can absorb.

So that's probably like a Miami.

But I don't know.

If you're Miami, like, what does trading for Kevin Durant do for you?

If you're able to keep Bam and Tyler Harrow and Kevin Durant, are you a top four team in the East?

Are you a title contender?

Like, that's where I really lose the narrative with this.

And the only team that really seems like they have a chance if that can talk themselves into it depending on how these first round goes and that's i think the biggest piece of this is houston if houston it goes badly right and they're like oh we're not as close as we thought we what we really need is a veteran scorer like then all of a sudden durant's looking pretty sexy for them but that's the thing i i don't think we know who the team is yet because we still have to see how disappointed teams are going to be over how the next three weeks go right golden state could lose the playing game to memphis and play oklahoma city city and just get swept and we're gonna be like what's golden state gonna do like who knows yeah i mean he he shut that window pretty hard but windows tend to get reopened when situations are are narrow and the money is where it where it might be um houston is going to be fascinating to watch in the playoffs and if they do decide to make a big move in the offseason is that even is that even the move um And there will be other teams.

I think there are three other guys we can think of for Houston that would be more interesting and younger than Durant.

Stein and I talked about Dallas.

You know, I saw, I think Perk went on and said, you know, the only way Nico Harrison can save his job is getting Durant.

And that buzz has been out there.

And I've heard that like it's, again, like Dallas, it's three $50 million contracts and you've got to aggregate a million players to get to it.

Like, I'm not really sure.

We'll see.

Anything's possible, you know.

It's not like Dallas has a ton of picks either.

So in that one, you're almost looking at Kyrie, who's not playing next year anyway.

Maybe he's in the trade and you give an asset or two, but that's just not enough for Kevin Duran.

I'd rather keep him at that point.

They have three they can trade because they got that Lakers pick in the Luca trade.

Well, it's so clutch to get that Lakers pick, man.

They really wrung a lot.

Yeah, he's only about to hit his prime.

It'd be great to have that one.

All right, I don't want to spend too much time on the also ransoms.

We should just talk about the Pelicans who fired David Griffin today.

I said last week, this is the toughest riddle in the NBA that now a new person will have to solve is like what the hell are you supposed to do as the gm of the pelicans now the lottery may just answer that riddle for you and boy would that be a dose of good luck for a team that already got a dose of good luck getting zion all those years ago now zion doesn't play enough obviously we know that um you have like he plays 30 games a year that's great you have the cj mccollum who just doesn't fit this timeline is just here for some reason earning 35 to 40 million dollars and getting mad at you for putting him in fake trades Sorry, CJ.

You've got DeJounte Murray, who is going to miss a huge part of next season, presumably, you know, after his injury.

Yeah, that's a year and a half in.

And that's a veteran win-now player.

You have Trey Murphy, who made a huge leap this year.

He's awesome.

And Herb Jones on the wing, who are just perfect complimentary players for whatever direction you go to.

And Jason Daniels, they got him.

Ooh, no.

You got an inn is prime superstar who doesn't play, so I don't know what he is.

And your other sort of timetable matching star that you had, you offloaded to the Raptors for what's going to amount to one crappy Pacers first-round pick.

Every part of this roster is pointing in different team-building directions.

And the one part that's pointing squarely in a win-now team building direction is the most unreliable health risk outside of Philadelphia in the NBA.

I just don't even know.

Other than, oh my God, we got a top three pick in the draft.

Oh my God, we got Cooper Flag, whoever it ends up being.

I don't even know what you're, whoever takes this job, what are you even supposed to do?

I don't even know what the answers are anymore.

Yeah, it's weird when I remember when we were at Grantland, Denver was like this, but Denver was more successful than New Orleans.

But Denver had all these assets, but the roster didn't totally make sense together.

And there was no real trade for them to make because they're basically just slightly upgrading every position they had where they had solid guys, but you also knew it wasn't a title team.

And New Orleans was a version of that, but they just, you know, they got decimated by injuries.

The Daniels Daniels trade is really, really rough.

You know,

and maybe it made sense because they had Herb Jones and they had

Trey Murphy.

But

they're in this weird spot that happens sometimes where you have a lot of assets, but the assets don't make sense together.

Right.

And what do you do at that point?

Well, you keep your fingers crossed that Zion's going to play.

Well, there's no more unreliable playing risk in the league other than Joelle and Bede.

And they kind of tied themselves to him.

And combined with the Danos trade, that was it for Griffin.

But you go back, Brissel has always talked about this.

You go back and look at all the drafts they've made, the drafts, they've drafted probably as well as any team in the league.

Misi is going to be a good pick.

They've had like seven of them.

So, you know, but the team collectively doesn't make sense.

I didn't understand the McCollum extension.

I just didn't.

And they, well, and again, they, from a value perspective, they did well in the AD trades and the Drew Holiday trades.

Those are easy kind of trades to do, easier kind of trades to really nail because you're selling and someone is very hungry to buy and you have a lever, you have some leverage.

The other one that didn't work out was as part of that AD trade, they got the Lakers pick that.

You remember was DeAndre Hunter at four, and they flipped that one for Alexander Walker and Hayes, who are now contributing to other teams, but not them.

It's just a strange situation.

I think.

And then Daniels, they got at nine.

That came from the Lakers trade.

But

the big one, the big carrot in that trade was like, we're going to be able to have this pick in 24 or 25.

LeBron will be gone by then.

Nobody's played that long.

The Lakers are going to be irrelevant.

So then they have the choice last year to keep it or not.

They roll it over, which I think was the right move.

It's like, I thought the Lakers, I didn't think they were going to be a playoff team this year.

And if David, if they hadn't made that Luka trade and Davis had gotten hurt like he did midway through the season, I don't think they would have been a playoff team.

But I think the bets were right.

And it just didn't didn't work out and then the lakers get luka doncich and now you know they're the third seed so you have this pick that you're like this will be one of the best parts of the davis trade

what's it gonna be like 23rd that's bad luck i don't know who you blame for all the injuries that are constantly befalling that team because they've changed out members of the training staff like multiple times now under griffin's leadership and so like i don't know like i don't know what to do with it but just everyone's hurt all the time and by the way desente murray wasn't even very good for them this year when he was healthy he never really found his sea legs with them.

I think if you're going to be critical, like really legitimately critical about them, about big picture, how are they handled?

Why are so many guys on the team getting hurt?

But then also you look at something like the Trey Murphy extension last year, where they don't do it when they should have done it.

So then this happens over and over again with any NBA player who's eligible for an extension.

Dame Leward openly talked about it because he was worried he was going to get traded.

He didn't want any hurt.

So he didn't work out during the summer.

If you don't take care of these guys, then they don't work out over the summer.

And then they come in and something will happen, right?

Murphy got hurt in the first part of the season because he wasn't working out over the summer.

It's just, it's little stuff like that that you wonder who's in charge of this team.

The owner is an absentee owner, and it's a franchise.

The bigger question to me is:

Does basketball work in New Orleans, which is a whole separate topic?

Like,

has this been enough of a sample size at this point to say maybe professional basketball doesn't work in this city?

We have no wins in New Orleans, really, ever.

And, you know, from from

a money standpoint, from the money they pull in compared to some other cities, and the fact that they're so Saints heavy and the owner owns the Saints and saved the Pelicans just because.

The family felt bad and didn't want them to leave, but it's clearly not a big priority for them.

And, you know, big picture, it's like, does basketball work in this city?

And if it doesn't work, why?

The arena is bad.

I went to a couple games there this year, and

it reminded me, like, oh, boy.

And the players feel, it's like, I know, I've heard from agents, I've heard from players, like, they feel

that they are not, let's say, in a premier NBA organization in terms of all the bells and whistles.

And I just don't know what the hell they're supposed to do.

All right, let's talk about.

Well, you're in an organization, probably a D minus or below.

City,

one of the least five appealing small market cities for people wanting to stay there as free agents, for being able to spend money, for the money you're getting from the arena, all that stuff.

And then you're in the West where over and over again, all the good players are, you know, and it's just, it's a tough one.

This is a team.

I hate saying like, man, it would be nice if New Orleans won the lottery because they've had a lot of luck with this stuff and they won the Zion one.

But this is one where flag, they need like a culture changer and Zion is not the culture changer.

We've at least learned that.

Let's talk about the play-in and the playoffs real quick.

Go rapid fire through these games.

You've got to start with Warriors, Grizzlies, and just the fallout of the Warriors losing a Spurs game to Harrison Barnes, of all people, the revenge of Harrison Barnes, which ends up costing them the tiebreak with Minnesota, which was.

What was your favorite game in 2015, that Spurs game?

When they blew it, and then all of a sudden they were playing the Clippers in round one.

one.

Somebody got hot or something stupid happened.

It was a the Pelicans were involved on the last day of the season.

Like 14 crazy things happened on the same day.

And all of a sudden, the Spurs and the Clippers had to play each other.

And what did they do?

Yeah, we were still working together at that point.

Yeah, I remember just like it felt like, oh, shit, this is significant.

And then they were out in round one.

It costs them, ends up costing them a top six seed because they lose at home in the finale.

And an absolute thriller to the LA Clippers who go into the game.

What's your thoughts?

I talked about that last night in my pod.

What were your thoughts watching that game?

Like for from a matchup standpoint, did you feel like the Clippers were better?

The Clippers have been an elite team for 35 games now.

They are loaded offensively when they have their four best guys on the court.

Their net rating is incredible with Kawhi, Norm, Harden, and Zubats.

And that game and his strong end to the season culminating in that game, Hardin is an all-NBA player for me now.

I think he has to be on the all-NBA team.

His shooting numbers aren't great, but I got seduced by

the raw shooting numbers and the and the so-so mark on twos.

And like he takes so many threes and still gets to the line so much that his true shooting, his advanced shooting is like above a lot of the other borderline all-NBA candidates.

I just think he has to be in it.

And Kawhi has been Kawhi.

And

look, I mean, I don't know.

We're going to talk about Clippers Denver, which I'm just like irrationally excited for that series.

It has so many of like players that I've loved and loathed and loved again in the last 15 years of the NBA.

Like, if you everyone's waiting for Kawhi to get hurt, because that's just what happens all the time.

And he played 47 minutes in that game yesterday, and he had a 42-minute game leading up to it.

Like, he's clearly confident, and the team is clearly confident.

And, like, let it fly.

Like, we're here.

If you need to play 45 minutes, you can play 45 minutes.

Yeah, I was thinking last night,

it's one of the great injury comebacks i can remember because it's not just like he's he's back he actually

looks like an older version of san antonio kawaii again which is the part i wasn't going on defense

too yeah his side-to-side stuff on defense now is stuff that i just don't feel like he could do a month ago i listen the the odds makers agreed with you because when we taped last night and we did guest alliance because the odds had just came out and I think Denver was like minus 170 or minus 160, something like that.

And now it's like basically a pick'em for the series.

So I think everybody's on the Clippers.

That's a Denver in seven or Clippers in six or even Clippers in seven series.

Those are the only outcomes, the only picks I will accept in that series.

I think it's going to be a war, but I want to talk about it yet.

The other thing that happened with the Warriors is Benching Kaminga is an all-time like, whoa.

Okay.

In the biggest game of the year, the coaching staff, and I look, you and I both have a good relationship with Steve Kerr.

I disagree with him heartily on the way that he has handled Kaminga for years now.

To do that, in that game, in that spot, and essentially say, all of our problems are your fault, and we're going to play not a shooter in your place.

We're going to play another guy who doesn't really take threes or space to floor and Gary Payton the second and still play these three-man combinations, including closing with one that have three quote-unquote non-shooters in Draymond, Jimmy, and GP2.

And we're not going to play you at all.

I'm tempted to say there's no coming back from that in terms of team-player relationship, but there's always a coming back because there's always a next game and there's always a limited, restricted free agency market that the Warriors might win.

But that was,

even though the rumblings were starting and Steve had kind of laid the groundwork for a rotation change of that nature.

What did you think of that?

Here's what I thought.

We didn't even talk about it on my pod last night because I thought he was hurt.

I didn't,

he him not being out there, I just thought he wasn't healthy.

And then came to find out reading all the stories this morning that it was just a benching and it was Kerr was going with his guys.

I was like, first of all, I disagree, and I see it like you.

Kaminga has something,

especially in bigger games.

I like how competitive he is.

Like, there's something there.

I still feel like there's something there, not to sound like Joe Lacob.

But in that specific game, with how, how important Kawhi was for the Clippers and how he was like bullying Peyton and Butler on some of those plays and just physically seemed bigger than them.

Like to me, that's the perfect Kaminga spot because he has the size and physicality to at least make Kawhi work a little bit.

And he just threw it out the window.

So I'm with you.

I honestly thought he was hurt.

I didn't realize that was just a coach's decision.

And I'm a little more on the, I don't know if you come back from that one.

That was the biggest game they played this season, and they're like, you're not one of our best looking guys.

It's no secret that Caminga's people and the coaching staff have not seen eye to eye for years.

The front office has sort of been this intermediary between those two parties, higher on Caminga than the coaching staff, I think.

But, you know, they respect Steve Kurtz, a Hall of Fame coach.

They're not going to sit there and tell him what to do.

I think they just have a blind spot.

I think this happens sometimes where coaching staffs just, you're too close to it and they see all the warts and he's not their kind of player traditionally on offense.

And they just,

I don't know, I disagree with the way they've handled it.

It's been a slow burn leading to this.

Yeah.

They might need him again.

And by the way, everyone's already doing the thing where it's like, oh, well, this could work out for the Warriors.

Like, you know, they win this game at home against Memphis.

They get the second seed.

They get the Rockets.

Like, Rockets can't score in the half court.

Okay.

Terrible for them.

First of all, I know the Grizzlies are sliding and they can't beat any good teams anywhere of any any kind lately.

Okay, fine.

If they have Morant, Bain, and Jackson,

they're dangerous.

Now, the Wells injury really hurts them, and it hurts them in this matchup because he was the only guy who had any chance guarding Steph, and they didn't really have much of a chance guarding Steph anyway, particularly when Edie and Jackson are out there and they're just this behemoth team against the smaller Warriors.

And that's, by the way, what a size.

The size discrepancy between these two starting five, like Butler and Draymond guarding Edie and Jaron Jackson Jr.

is just an incredible size discrepancy.

And if the Grizzlies don't just match them on the offensive boards, I don't think they could win the game.

But

like

you're a little more bullish on the Grizzlies than I am.

I think they're DOA.

I think the Warriors are going to win the game.

The Grizzlies are obviously like,

you know,

not quite playing out the string because they have two chances now and they should at least win the second one and then get rolled by the Thunder in the first round.

But like they have, they're a dangerous team.

The Warriors have have lost them in the play-in before, and the downside is you get Oklahoma City.

The upside is, I get Houston's aft-court offense is a big question mark, blah, blah, blah.

Anyone watched that game like 10 days ago when Ahmed Thompson looked like seven different guys on the court, and Steph Curry couldn't even get the ball, and they're just so unpleasant.

And Shangoon beat the crap out of everyone the Warriors threw at them.

They're just really unpleasant to play against.

And that's no picnic.

And even if you win that series, you're coming out of it an older, relative to Houston, Houston, unathletic team that's going to get pounded for six or seven games.

And then you got to come out of that and play, you know, whoever you end up playing in the next round out of the 3-6 thing, which is a war.

I think it's terrible for them.

Couldn't agree more.

And that's why they did what they did with Kaminga yesterday, because I think they treated yesterday as like, this is by far the biggest game of our season.

Gets us rest, gets Curry and Butler and Draymond.

at least five days off.

And I think Butler needed it because Butler's gone, Butler's been playing, you you know, he hasn't exactly been 82 games a year the last couple of years, right?

And

the intensity and the amount of minutes that he's just been playing in the last two months, I think he probably hasn't carried that burden for a couple years.

On the Caminga thing,

Steve has done this before,

right?

Think about like some of the Olympic teams.

Like they basically buried Brandon Ingram and then came up with some fake illness or whatever because Brandon Ingram

Ingram to Warrior trade rumors were so funny to me it's like it's never happening never happening and he didn't fit there he did it with Tatum last year like he doesn't give a shit he's has what does he have 10 rings what did he win five as a player four as a coach like he's just going to do what's best for the team and he's not going to care that Kaminga's agent is going to be mad at him the next day but I thought The fact that Kaminga didn't play in that game tells you how important that game was to them, where it's like, they know they can beat the Lakers.

That's just small ball versus small ball.

That's a good matchup for them.

Now they have this dumb Memphis game.

They're going to put miles on themselves.

And then this Houston team, that's just a pack of pit bulls with some real size and the chance to uproot an older team.

But it's your classic, classic, classic older team, younger team game.

This is one of the better versions of it, right?

I was thinking about it last night.

Like, this is the textbook.

Do you like experience?

Do you like having the best guy in the series?

Or do you like just this team that's coming?

You know, and sometimes we've we've seen versions of this where like the young team just sweeps.

You're like, oh my God.

And then other times you see the six, seven game version, but I do not think it would be a short series.

Well, look, the Warriors are a small team.

They're a horizontal, not a vertical team.

They get a little

shot full of hit the rim sometimes when they see people coming at them.

And

Houston is going to be bigger and more athletic across the board.

And that's a challenge the Warriors have solved going on 10, 15 years now of being the less athletic, but smarter, more ball movement, more motion offense team.

It's still a challenge, though.

And by the way,

Steph was fantastic against Memphis in the regular season.

He put 50-something on him the last time they played.

He was fantastic in the finale against the Clippers.

He had a mislayup late that was a tough shot and then a turnover, but it was largely fantastic.

And we're not going to do too many awards, but I'll tell you this.

I'm putting him first team all NBA on my ballot over Donovan Mitchell.

He has the fifth spot for me.

And I'm not really sure

what the case is that it should be Donovan Mitchell, other than the Cavs have a much better record.

Steph has him in points per game.

Points per 36 minutes is identical, 27 and a half a piece.

The shooting numbers are Edge Steph across the board.

The passing numbers are Edge Steph.

The advanced stats are Edge Steph.

Defense probably Edge Mitchell.

And I just like,

we saw it.

This is like not a very good offensive team the Warriors have, even with Jimmy Butler.

It's just an okay offensive team to good on some nights.

Just the power of his shooting, 40%

from three on 11, 12 attempts a game, moving all over the floor.

It's just a complete one of one in the history of the NBA in terms of just the ever-present impact, all the eyes on him, all that.

I just think he's had a better season than Donovan Mitchell by a teensy, teensy, teensy bit.

And if you disagreed, that's fine.

The Cads were the story of the East.

I get it.

That's just my personal take.

I'd put him first team all NBA.

Obviously, I looked at it long and hard because

I'm a steph guy, whatever that means.

I just appreciate what he does.

And I think he's even more valuable than the stats, especially all the stuff he creates just by being on a basketball court.

The reason I went with Mitchell, and I'm going to pick Mitchell for first team.

is I think he really truly sacrificed something on that team.

And I think his stats were even better.

So that's why when like comparing the Curry stats to the Mitchell stats, I don't think it's fair to Mitchell because I think he could have scored four or five more points a game.

It was better for his team to have the season he had the way he had it, and he gave up something.

And this is something that dates back.

You know, it's funny.

I was talking to Isaiah Thomas a couple weeks ago and the Detroit Isaiah Thomas.

He's very, very mad about, very mad about LeBron not wearing a shirt during warm-ups.

I know.

He got a little get off my couch-ish.

I'm like, we're like 15 15 years into LeBron doing that.

Isaiah didn't like it.

But Isaiah is the best example ever of somebody who really sacrificed numbers to help his team.

He's the best because

I was watching basketball that whole decade, and Isaiah could have averaged 29 to 31 a game if he wanted to.

And he knew that wasn't the best thing for his team.

And he really took a backseat.

He got, there's a great books written about this.

He really wanted to elevate everybody else and he took over when it mattered.

And I think that's what Mitchell tried to do this year with Cleveland.

So I don't want to like ding him on it because do I think he could have, if you switch Curry

and Mitchell and Mitchell went to the Warriors, could he have averaged 28 to 29 a game on the Warriors?

Probably.

Would he have played more games than Curry?

Maybe.

So I don't know.

It's a really tight one for me.

I had trouble with it too.

And his sort of mini by his standard slump toward the end of the season, Mitchell, was so much less meaningful than Curry's mid-season mini slump because the Cavs already had the number one seed.

Yeah, they have nothing to play for for two months.

That's why I did look at points per 36 minutes to sort of even it out and they're dead even there.

But to your point, he could have won that.

The advanced numbers aren't close and the shooting numbers are not that close.

It's interesting.

I was looking at Edwards versus Mitchell too.

Because I think Edwards has a real case.

Edwards is right there because the minutes are incredible.

The durability and the minutes are to be commended and maybe rewarded.

He's second team for me as well.

And we both love durability with awards.

Like, I think this is one of the cases for Zubots, too.

If you're playing 78 to 80 games.

This makes me so happy that you're going to be team Zubots all the way.

If you're 2,600 minutes in a season and you're just there night after night after night, this is the Tatum case, too.

I think that really matters.

And I don't think, you know, people just look at the per-game averages.

The fact that you're showing up for your team night after night after night when you're not 100%, my ankle hurts a little bit.

Tatum hurt his ankle a couple weeks ago.

Guess what?

He was back on the court, you know, five days later.

So I think with Edwards, the reason I didn't have him over Mitchell was because if you flip them, as amazing as Edwards is, he's still at the stage of his career where I don't think he sacrifices like Mitchell did.

Mitchell, he's at the stage Mitchell was five years ago.

And he goes there.

He's going to want to, you know, have his 45-point games because he's a young guy.

He's still trying to figure out where his ceiling is.

And I think it would have messed them up, as weird as that sounds.

I don't think they're a 64-win team with him.

There's still enough with his decision-making, like that

late in games or just the games where he decides I'm just going to take a lot of shots tonight.

Um,

that that paused me for first team, but he's a he's second team with a bullet.

And when he dials in, he's an amazing defensive player.

There's nothing not to like about Anthony Edwards as a basketball player.

Do you know how many all NBAs Mitchell has made?

I'm going to say this will be his fourth.

He's only made a second team all NBA.

That's it.

That's it.

Yeah.

Wow.

I was really surprised.

Yeah, he's been on that cover.

Whatever year that was, I had him first team.

I remember.

Yeah, so I mean,

the Curry thing is tough for me because I always like rewarding the great players.

It's almost like boxing champs where you kind of have to lose the belt.

And I feel the same way about LeBron.

Like, there's...

There's cases against LeBron where you could kind of shove him the third team all NBA and feel pretty good about it, but I'm not doing that.

Like, he should be second team.

He's, you know, if you watch him game in, game out, and that's another one where he's actually been on the court.

But yeah, his LeBron's net rating for the year is minus 1.5 or minus 1.3, something like that.

Like there's ways to ding his candidacy, but he's still

25, 8, and 8.

And an Iron Man on a team that had a lot of turmoil.

throughout the season.

And even, honestly, the way he handled Luca coming to the team and kind of sharing the

biggest plate of chicken with Luca, basically, it's like the Chris Rock joke about does dad get the biggest chicken and then the kids get the smaller pieces.

And, and like he, he looked at Luca and he's like, you know what?

There's going to be nights where I get the smaller piece and you're going to carry us and I'm good with that.

And I, you know, older stars don't necessarily always do that.

They're not always good with sharing the limelight with somebody.

I'll just do my all-NBA teams rapid fire now.

Let's hear it.

I want to hear it.

First team, Jokic, SGA, Tatum, Yannis Curry.

Second team, Ant, Mobley, LeBron, Mitchell, Carl, Anthony Towns.

All right.

So we have the, I think we have the same 10, except

I'm kind of leaning toward Mitchell.

I flipped Halliburton to third team and cat to second team.

Third team is Brunson, Halliburton, Cade Cunningham, Jaron Jackson Jr., James Harden.

Apologies to a number of people.

Zubat, Shengun, J.

Dubb was a tough one.

Domas, Trey Young, I talked about with, well, I'm going to talk about with Mo coming up.

Siakam and Zoo

has a case.

And I just like, can I just give you a couple of Zoo stats to back up this case?

Second most post-ups in the NBA on offense.

He's still more of a dependent offensive player than pretty much everybody else.

on this list, but much less so than he has ever been.

Second to Jokic in total posts and over 1.1 points per possession, according to second spectrum, on those post-ups.

Well, not just that, but their teams double him when he gets the ball in low posts.

You watched it yesterday.

Like teams are afraid of him posting up.

And there's that list of centers who teams react when they get the ball on the block.

It's like five guys.

I still don't think he presents as much versatility on defense in terms of schematically as some of the other elite elite elite defensive players.

He's going to be all defense for for me.

And then you look at total isolations defended.

He's 11th most in the NBA.

Mobile is number one.

So they're daring to switch him a great deal is what that means.

And he's 0.84 points allowed per possession on those isolations.

Just an incredible season for him.

He just falls.

I just can't decide who of those guys on third team I could take off, given that he's still,

you know, the range offensively sort of pigeonholes you into playing a certain amount of style, and the range defensively, although it's broadened, kind of doesn't pigeonhole you because you have the third best defense in the NBA.

I just couldn't quite get there.

But if you wanted to remove Jaron Jackson Jr., punishing him for the Memphis slide late, I wouldn't quibble that hard with it.

And I can't take off Cade and I can't take off Brunson and I can't take off Halliburton.

You left out some Zubat stuff.

79 games, almost 33 minutes a game,

plus 9.2 net when he played.

Leads the league in offensive rebounds.

Since the all-star break, he's basically 20-14, 65% shooting.

One other thing with Zubats versus Jackson.

Zubatz is like 2.1 fouls a game.

Jackson gets into foul trouble all the time.

It's the most frustrating thing watching him.

When you watch him in big games, you just assume he's going to commit a dumb foul with three minutes left.

I looked at the Jackson candidacy, they're 7-16 in their last 23 games with him before yesterday.

He was 20-5,

5 rebounds a game.

He does not get rebounds.

I just think Zubats has been better.

I think he's,

if you talk to people on the Clippers, they'll tell you the two most important players they have are Hardin and Zubats, and they don't really differentiate between the two of them.

This will appeal to your heart, Zach Lowe, because you haven't turned in your ballot yet, have you?

I don't have a ballot.

Oh, you don't have a ballot this year?

Unemployed.

How much Marcus is in this Zubat season for you?

Oh, boy.

One of your favorite players ever.

And I'm not saying he's the passer, but all the jobs.

Or the jump shooter.

I'm talking Grizzlies Marcus.

All the stuff Marcus Saul did.

Remember, he was defensive player of the year that one year?

The way he's always in the right spots with his hands up.

Like you watched that Warriors game yesterday.

He defended the rim like 20 times in that game where he's the last line of defense.

Their whole defense is geared around funneling people to him because they know he's going to not only take care of it, but not foul somebody.

And then you throw in like the way he meshed with Hardin.

I haven't decided.

He loves Harden.

I mean,

it's a mutual love affair.

From day one, they've loved each other.

I haven't decided yet, but I'm leaning toward two clips on the third team.

Yes, Zoo, man.

Because Hardin has to be on.

To me, it's Hardin versus Halliburton is a bigger question.

Zoo's an all-time developmental success story, and he's worked.

I know Zoo.

He's worked really, really hard.

He comes to Croatia Show almost every summer.

He's played a lot of national team, too.

Well, it's going to be awkward when you tell him you didn't vote for him.

Well,

you know what Hustle's awkward for?

It's one of the great bad trades in the history of the league that I've mentioned ever.

Mike Muscala.

Mike Muscala for, I think it was Beasley and Zubats.

LeBron needs a shooting five.

Just a classic.

The Lakers made so many bad moves and just keeps stepping on $100 bills and a pile of shit.

I don't know how they do it over and over again.

So we both think the Warriors are going to win against Memphis.

I thought you were too kind to Memphis.

I think Memphis is terrible for a playoff team.

I think they're as a play-in game, I don't see much difference between them and Atlanta and some in Chicago at this point.

They can't guard anybody.

They can't get stops.

Do we even want to discuss Dallas-Sacramento or do you just want to move on?

So, Dallas, Sacramento, I remember there was a Celtic year

when Jim O'Brien got fired.

John Carroll was the coach.

Do you remember that?

He was the intern coach.

And the team was completely checked out.

And

I remember asking somebody who worked for the team, like, what do you think?

And he was like, this is an all-time one-two-three Cancun situation.

Like, these guys just want the season.

I was hoping the the Celtics came up in the discussion of Mavericks King.

Well, yeah, I try, yeah, I try to do my best.

The point is, I always think of that team of like, I just want the season to be over.

I just want to get to the summer.

And I wonder if the Mavs are at that point.

Could the Mavs be a one-two-three Cancun?

This has been the worst two plus months for all of us.

It would be really nice if the season just ended.

Like, you're not taking that.

You're not going into the game going, I want to lose, but when it's actually time to fight, to be like, ah, we got to win this, how much fight are you going to have if you're having the year from hell?

Is my question with them?

Did you believe the Babe Ruth quote from Jason Kidd was real when you first saw it tweeted, or did you think that it had to have been fabricated by one of these fake joke accounts?

I didn't think the quote was real.

I didn't think the trade was real.

I still can't believe.

There was no way we could get Austin Reeves.

He wasn't on the table.

Was a thing that was said by human beings to each other does jason kidd know what the babe ruth trade was like what happened to the team that traded babe ruth does he like

well i i mean the babe ruth trade was actually not as bad as the luca trade because the babe ruth trade was a pure financial thing the owner just wanted to save money and wanted to fund this play called no no nanette that he wanted to make and he just basically sold babe ruth off and used the money and people cared way less about sports back then this this luka trade is worse than the babe ruth trade babe ruth was a greater athlete athlete than Luca, but this trade's worse.

It's less defensible.

The 2097 NBA title.

Great.

Look at this kind of great in Dallas when the curse of the trade is finally over.

Are you convinced that the owners of the Dallas Mavericks will be the owners of the Dallas Mavericks a year from now?

Wow.

The owners.

Yeah.

Are you positing something afoot?

I'm just asking you.

I haven't thought about it.

I've thought more about Nico Harrison than the owners just

saying, this sucks.

We hate this.

We're selling the team.

Is that what you're positing?

I don't know.

I've never seen a situation like this before, and I don't know how it gets better for them.

And it's almost like you almost have to think about a complete reset.

And the Vegas team is coming.

I know that's been a big conspiracy thing, but I also wonder how much of that is,

how much smoke is there.

I just, I don't know what to expect with this situation.

The sad thing is when you were saying the one, two, three Cancun comparison, I actually thought you might be talking about the Kings.

It might be possible.

All right.

Kings Maps is going to definitely be like a sociology experiment.

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Ball over everything.

Speaking of Zubats is a power eight, let's do a rapid-fire preview of the two series, starting with Clippers Nuggets, because Zoo is about to face the king of the Balkan bigs, Nikola Jokic.

This is like loaded with history.

This is like the Nuggets acquired Aaron Gordon to guard Kawhi Leonard in a playoff series.

They announced themselves a contender in a regular season blowout of the Clippers before Jamal Murray Torres ACL in 2021.

There's the bubble where they humiliated the Clippers, what was supposed to be their best team, their best chance at a championship coming back from 3-1 as the Clippers just fell all the way apart and didn't really want to be there.

There's the Russ revenge factor.

There's so much overlaying this series.

Wait, you left out one thing.

2006 Clippers playoff series win over the Nuggets.

Very important moment for all Clipper fans because I don't think they'd win a playoff series in LA ever.

Clippers trending the right way.

Nuggets trending, I guess, the right way in three games with David Adelman after firing everybody, after firing both the GM and the coach.

What did you take away from game 82 for them?

Because I thought Houston wanted to win and played hard and Denver absolutely kicked their ass for two quarters and then Houston was like, okay, fine.

Here's my takeaway.

You ready for my takeaway?

Yeah.

When the best player in the world says things like, maybe the beast gets unleashed when he's vulnerable.

And after that game, after the Rockets did try to win the game, they played their guys until the game got out of hand.

and says after that game something like, if we play like this, we can make a real run.

I stand up as a uh-oh, uh-oh, like, yeah, there's been drama, yeah, they have no shooting when they take one of Murray and Porter off the floor, right?

Yeah, they have a lot of defensive challenges in this series.

Like, who is guarding Norm Powell?

Is it Jamal Murray?

Is it Michael Porter Jr.?

Like, how is that all going to work?

Uh, I assume Christian Brown will guard Hardin and AG will guard Kawhi when the starters are all out there.

Um, the Zubats has actually played Jokic as well as could be.

Anybody could play him.

They actually leave him on an island sometimes, and he does not do horribly.

Because he doesn't foul.

That's like the best thing about Zubats.

He stays in the court.

Now, I think Jokic has left something in the tank for this matchup.

I'll give you a set.

You ready to friggin' set?

Jokic led the league in post-ups this year, 11.5 per 100 possessions.

In three total games against the Clippers, he posted up 10 times.

He just decided he didn't want to do it in these games, and now he has no choice but to do it as much as they need him to do it.

Clippers have a lot of defensive answers, right?

Like they can put Dunn on Jamal Murray.

They can put Kawhi on Aaron Gordon.

Harden has been good, kind of moving around, just hiding himself, switching here and there.

And yet, I just,

I mean, they have Jokic, and Jokic is the league's ultimate problem solver.

I think this is going to be an absolutely awesome series that would not surprise me if it goes seven.

Do you think this is a better series than Minnesota versus the Lakers?

I think

from a basketball nerd standpoint.

I do.

I think watching Kawhi problem solve, like, all right,

where's Jamal Murray?

Can I go at him?

Harden, Hunt and Michael Porter Jr.

Jokic, do we double?

Do we shade?

And this is like the Clippers are a great help and recover team, a great team of big, rangy wings who can shade towards Ubots if he needs help, but not give up the easy kickout passes.

And Jokic is Jokic.

And I do.

You know, I mentioned the defensive challenges and I went through the matchups for

the Nuggets and

it it made me a little worried that i'm not worried but will we see more peyton watson and michael porter jr's place for defense

will we see like russ has has guarded um

has guarded harden at times before everybody when everyone was not fully healthy and i i think more more russ is bad for the nuggets yeah but i think there's a lot that the clippers bring to the table here um including like the clippers allow a ton of threes on defense the nuggets shoot none so there's one you know not weakness, but strategic choice that can't come back to haunt them.

The Nuggets are an amazing offensive rebounding team.

The Clippers are number one in defensive rebounding rate.

What a feather in Zoo's cap among everyone else.

And yet you don't have Mama BA.

Stop.

Zoo's going to be mad.

But I just...

The Nuggets have the ultimate Trump card.

I don't know who I'm picking yet in this series, but I would lean Nuggets in seven.

But again, like Jamal Murray just came back.

Is he going to stay healthy?

Is Is he going to be healthy?

I, I don't, there's the Clippers can 1,000% win the series.

You, I enjoyed everything you said.

You left out one thing that I think is actually going to be the key to the series.

There's, I left out a ton.

Look at my notes.

My notes are insane.

I watch all these films.

They're in, it's like the scribbling stuff.

There's one thing.

The Clippers are kind of built to shut down Jamal Murray with the guys they have.

Chris Dunn,

who

might be on one of my all-defense teams.

Spoiler alert.

He's not eligible.

You can't put him on.

He's not eligible.

Again, I misspoke about Ty Jerome last week.

I checked with people on this.

It's the 20-minute a-game rule.

He's not going to hit 20 minutes in enough games.

I don't think he's eligible, but I reserve the final answer for when the weekend actually sends out the ballot.

All right.

Well, I'm going to have to, that's why I haven't turned in my ballot because I wanted to research dumb crap like that.

Chris Dunn, you saw what he did against Curry yesterday.

Curry had eight turnovers in that game, but they have him chasing around Jamal Murray.

They have tall wings with size they can put on him.

And I just don't think the Nuggets are good enough unless he's really good in the games.

That's unfortunately, that's where they are.

They don't have a bench.

You can spot Jokic, just give him 35, 16, and 17 every game.

And if Murray's not good in the games, they're not going to beat the Clippers four times.

And that, to me, is the matchup to watch.

Can they shut him down?

Like, even if you're looking at gambling props and dumb stuff like that, I think their whole defense is going to be, if we take out Murray, we win the series.

And I think the Clippers, to me, they're a top four or five coach team in the league.

And I actually think the Lakers might be in that conversation too.

I think the Celtics are.

But the Clippers are just really smart with how they attack teams.

And I think they're going to try to cut Murray's head off in that series.

And

they know that they just don't have enough other guys.

Their bench is so much better than Denver's bench.

And you saw the Clippers' bench last night.

It's not even that good.

But when they get Patoon back for the series, that's going to make a big difference for them.

They just have so much length.

Ogdanovich has settled in there after a cold start and really, really helped their team in terms of just.

They stood my stock from nine years ago.

Yeah, just a lights out, a lights-out shooter.

Yeah, I mean, I get what you're saying.

And like, they absolutely do.

And Jamal Murray is not going to have a safe hiding place on defense.

You could put him on Chris Dunn to start games.

And when the bench comes in, there's places to put him.

But if you put him on Chris Dunne, Michael Porter Jr.

is guarding Norm Powell, which is not a good matchup for Michael Porter Jr.

And he's going to get hunted mercilessly

in the series.

And by the way, Powell's kind of, you know, he's playing 35, 36 minutes in these games before Kawhi came back.

And he was scoring big points and he was a big part of what they were doing.

And there was all-star buzz for them.

And he settled back into that instant offense role, I think, really nicely.

I've really enjoyed watching the Clippers this year.

I'm shocked by how much fun it's been to go to games, just to watch them day to day is like the late night game out here.

And

I think they're the second best team in the West.

I really do.

With all that said, is anyone going to be surprised between game two and game three when you get that, you know, the little tweet or the hoops hype thing about Kawhi Leonard mispracticed today.

Like that's what the Clipper fans, they're just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop with him and it just hasn't yet.

Well, and

you feel shitty.

Saying it and I mentioned his minute totals and how great he's been.

It just happens in the playoffs.

It's just happened too many times.

A half decade of it.

That's it.

It's been a half decade of the same thing happening over and over again.

Specifically, mid-series, like you said, just, oh, he tweaked something.

So just knock on wood because, you know,

they could absolutely win this series.

I don't know who I'm picking, but they could absolutely win this series.

A big series for Aaron Gordon because the clips are going to switch a lot and one to four.

And he's feasted in the post against some of those matchups.

And they'll look for him.

And he's had an incredible season.

I mean, incredible.

And now he's been in and out of the lineup too.

His shooting is

like there's games where he'll just drop like 35, 38.

I think if Jokic, I'll go this far.

I think the Clippers are decidedly better than Nuggets.

I do.

With Kawhi, with Kawhi, the way he's playing, I just think they're better.

And if Jokic wins this series, this will be one of the great

things of his career to just beat this team because this is the second best team in the West if they have everybody.

And if he beats them, it'll be because he beat them.

And that's it.

Yeah.

I mean, and he, I mean, you watch these games.

You and I have not decided on MVP yet, or I haven't at least.

I'm starting to lean.

You want to spoil it?

I'm just,

I've talked about it in a couple of my pods.

Like,

I've just never seen anything like the season he's having.

Jokic?

Yeah.

I've never seen anything like it.

And you.

That has to be part of MVP.

If somebody's doing something, and I voted for Kobe in 06,

even though they were a 45-win team or whatever, they ended up winning.

And I didn't even have a vote yet.

I think it was just my column vote.

But I was just like,

I don't necessarily even totally agree with what he's doing because I think it's crazy to have this many shots in a game.

And

the amount of control he has over.

His team's offense, I think, is going to end up killing them in the end.

But this is one of the craziest things I've ever seen.

How do you not vote for this?

And I do wonder with the 60-10-10 game really messed with my head.

He was so good in that game that it's just like, what are we doing?

If you ask anyone in the NBA who the best player in the league is, they're all going to say Jokic.

Like, all of them.

Is there one person who would be like, I think it's the spray?

It's like, it's Jokic.

Everybody thinks that.

It's unanimous.

So that I'm having trouble with it because I don't think it's his fault that

his team's not very good and that they didn't put together a good roster and they have no bench and they didn't spend enough money.

Like, I don't know how you hang them for stuff like that.

And if he, SGA, who's been incredible, that team is how many guys on OKC, how many guys on Denver would play for OKC?

Other than Aaron Gordon?

And Murray would come up with a bunch of people.

Gordon Jr.

would play.

Do you play over Wiggins?

Yeah.

He's a 6'10 guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you'd lose the Wiggins defense?

Defense is not persuasive to me in this.

Okay.

So you have four nuggets being able to get time for the thunder well maybe it's not as bad as i thought

um

how do you factor in the organizational turmoil and the team firing the coach i've seen it spun both ways um that well you i saw waz say you know you can't vote for someone mvp whose coach gets fired at game 79 and i've seen other people say for them to have won 50 games I mean, 50 is a real number in the Western Conference and get home court in the first round

and he be the beacon of stability throughout all this other crap going on around him is almost a, is almost a point for him.

I'd lean that way a little bit, but like,

I, I can't, the Malone Booth stuff to me is not about him at all.

I'm fully leaned that way.

I think it's amazing that they had the season they had when it was that dysfunctional.

You know, and some of it's overrated that like,

you know, if the coach and GM don't talk, it's not like that's going to single-handedly submerine your team.

But when it gets to the point where the coach isn't playing certain guys because he feels like they're the GM's guys and there's obvious stuff with the lineups like Zeke Najee playing with Jokic and the stats are good and he just won't do it because he doesn't like that they gave the extension.

When it gets to that level, or you're the GM being so mad that they're playing Russ in these big spots that he's just talking to everybody in the organization about it, that he can't believe they're doing it.

That stuff's pretty poisonous.

You know, these guys are together all the time.

They're on the plane together.

You know, they're at practice together.

And when it's that dysfunctional, I don't think it's great.

And I think Rocky,

look, we've never been in this situation before where we had two teams that were playoff teams, where the people running those teams said to themselves, I'd almost rather blow this up now because there's a faint chance it might work.

But if I don't, we have no chance.

It's unusual, but I think it speaks to how deep the league is, right?

That was my biggest takeaway.

It just feels like there's so many good teams and so much talent now that desperate teams, especially in the West, are just so much more desperate than they used to be.

You know, like think about that, that Nuggets team in 2014 would have been like a 63-win team.

You know, think how fucking shallow the league was 10 years ago.

West is, the West is absolutely no joke.

Let's do a few minutes on Lakers-Wolves.

Luca versus Gobert, 2.0, after the iconic shot.

Not going going to be a great series for Go Bears.

He's going to have to go against some of these five-out lineups that the Lakers are going to throw at him.

We've kind of seen this play before.

Big Julius Randle series.

He's got a lot of playoff demons to exercise.

He's going to have to guard LeBron a lot.

How

Minnesota, I suspect, will change the matchups a lot.

Move Mike Conley from Austin Reeves.

Austin Reeves is kind of, they're hunting him with that.

Let's put him on Rui.

Okay, we'll see if that works.

But however you slice it, both Julius Randle and Ant are going to spend time on on LeBron.

Ant maybe more than people expect.

It's a power versus power series.

That's kind of one of the fun parts about it.

You know, the wolves don't really have,

unless there's a Rob Dillingham moment in here somewhere, like the water bug super speedy guard who can get by the Lakers guys.

And it's Ant.

It's Ant against some of the gods of the game, two of the gods of the game, and Luca.

and LeBron.

And it's just Minnesota's got a lot.

They're deeper, I think, than the Lakers by a a little bit with the quality of their three best bench guys.

They're big.

They're nasty.

They are a top 10 team on both ends of the floor.

And the Lakers have Luca Doncherson and LeBron James together on a team that makes sense around them.

I think it's a fascinating matchup.

And I would be shocked if it's not a long series.

Who's your five at the end of games for Minnesota?

I mean, with this matchup, it's going to go.

Exactly.

One of the things I want to see how that plays out.

It's going to go game to game, and Chris Vinch is showing no fear about benching Conley or benching Randall or benching Gobert or benching anyone.

It could be Jaden McDaniels at the four and Nas Reed at the five in some game.

And the Lakers, you know, when Nas Reed's out there with Randall, they're going to have to rejigger the lineups.

So there's a win guarding Nas Reed.

It could be DiVincenzo, Edwards, Gobert, Reed, you know, pick McDaniels, whoever.

Like, McDaniels is going to be huge in this series.

He's going to be the primary guy in Luca a lot.

And I think to start the series, I don't know the answer to that, but I know Chris Finch is not messing around.

Like, he will bench those guys if the spacing is bad or the defense is bad.

Whatever way he's got to cut, he'll bench it.

It feels like to me, it's Nas,

Randall,

McDaniels,

Ant, and Defincenzo when you go bigger.

would be where I think they go because they don't Conley, it's not like the Lakers have some point guard that they're going to need to pressure or defend any of that stuff.

There's a couple of things I really like from Minnesota in this series, one of which is that Ant will go into the series thinking he's the best player in the series, which is insane, but he will.

I think the Lakers would be absolutely stoked if Ant approached this series like, I'm winning this by myself.

This is my moment.

It's a great, it's a great outcome.

If it's a hero ball, first three quarters of the 2010 Game 7 finals, Kobe situation with Ant where he's like, I got this.

I'm winning this by myself.

Terrible for Minnesota.

The part that worries me the most is the Randall piece because the bully ball stuff he was doing really to the last couple months that I thought was really good.

Like, I actually liked the way he was playing the last few weeks of the season, but you're not gonna be able to do that against this Lakers team.

And if you're gonna do the, I'm ramming my body into dudes, you just, this, this is like the bulkiest, weirdest front line.

You're not, you're not bullying any of those guys on the team.

I have a Rejulius Randall rule for this series.

If you're going to play that ISO ball, you can only do it if there's a mismatch.

If we run some two-man action where now Reeves is on you and Reeves is going to be the point they pick at, then yeah, go to town, like bully him, draw the defense, kick it out.

Not against Rui, not against LeBron, because you know LeBron's going to get the benefit of the doubt with the whistle.

And honestly, not against Luca.

Luca's a big dude.

It's not going to work in the same way.

Like the wedding's worked with him.

It's always like the smaller guys, you know, or the 6-6 small forwards.

So, and he always feels like he has to be involved.

I don't think he'd be like, this isn't the game for me.

I'm going to get everyone else involved.

He's just not like that.

I do like the matchup for Minnesota, though.

The Gobert piece is

that's the one that I just can't figure out how he affects the series.

I don't think you can play him in crunch time against that weird Ruby lineup that the Lakers have.

They're just going to space him out.

When Hayes is out there, he can play.

When Vanderbilt is out there, he can play.

And

I think the Rudy and space thing has been overdone.

Like, he can guard guard Rui or Finney Smith when those five are out there.

But the Lakers will go at him.

And

even if it's not damaging to Minnesota, it's suboptimal enough that you can see them saying we have other cards to play on this roster.

Luca, we should talk more about.

Obviously, lit up the Wolves last year in the playoffs when he was playing for the Dallas Mavericks.

Sorry, Dallas fans.

If there was an overarching lesson the Timberwolves took internally from that series and an overarching lesson the Celtics took watching it with an eye on the finals, it was the Wolves let Luka off the hook defensively.

They let him sit there on Jaden McDaniels and say, you know what, Jaden McDaniels just isn't good enough for us to tilt our offense toward him as a screener, as a whatever, just to hunt Luka Doncic.

And the Celtics watch that and they're like, now we, every player they play is a better offensive player than Jaden McDaniels, but we don't care where he is.

We're going after him every single possession.

And I expect the Wolves to do that more, even if it means pulling Jaden McDaniels into ball screens with Ant.

And if you watch the film of the one game Luca played against the Wolves as a Laker, that's it.

The Lakers actually switched Luca on to Ant quite willingly.

Instead of doing the like, you're going to hedge and we're going to double and then you're going to rotate back.

They'll mix it up.

JJ's really smart.

JJ's been thinking about this for a long time.

And they've just sort of said, yeah, switch on to him.

He might beat you off the dribble, but we're a really smart, help, defensive positional team, and we'll at least make his decision-making complicated.

But I expect them to try to run Luca ragged in this series after not doing it at go time last year.

That's where Defincenzo becomes important, too.

It's just another creator who you can put in picks with people and just trying to chase them.

McDaniels is a real wild card for me because if you catch the T-Wolves on the right night, he looks good.

And when he looks good, they look really good.

But,

you know, the Nas Reed, he's basically a better version of Rui, right?

Ant could do a reasonable facimile of

Lucas stats.

Maybe not the rebounds, but he, you know, at least kind of matched the points.

And you go on down the line, you could make the case.

I just think the thing that worries me if I'm a Minnesota fan is the same thing that will worry me as a Clipper fan.

The way the first round's structured.

And you have all these breaks between games, that's going to really help the Nuggets.

The Nuggets are going to be able to play all their guys 40 plus.

Their top five will move 40 plus minutes a game.

What do they care?

Three days off after you run those guys on the ground.

And same thing for the Lakers.

The fact that they're going to be able to play LeBron and Luca big minutes and not have to worry about it.

I just think, I also feel like JJ's completely figured out how to stagger the minutes in the best ways now.

When you watch them, they always have offense.

It's 48 minutes.

And everybody's involved in the right ways.

And,

you know,

not to do the first take kind of angle on the game, but this is such an interesting LeBron series

because they're going to throw a shitload of stuff at Luca and they might be okay with like the LeBron step back 25 footers every once in a while or LeBron trying to barrel into the paint against Rudy and things like that.

I'm just interested to see how he plays it.

And if, is he more facilitator, LeBron?

Is he more, we need my offense, LeBron.

There's a Reeves piece of this

where sometimes when they play certain teams, it's like, you know what?

Reeves is our best option here for the next five minutes that they've been really good about just letting it giving him the car keys.

I wonder if that still happens in the playoffs in the same way, though.

That's an interesting subplot to me because the matchup that makes the most sense for Minnesota is Conley on Reeves.

That looks to be on paper the only safe place to put Mike Conley, but it's not a safe place.

Austin Reeves will hurt you in a million different ways.

He'd be delighted if that was the

why i wonder if they will sell out to put their three best defensive players on the lakers big three and just say conley you're guarding hachimura i know there's a size disadvantage we're just going to live with that or play conley less and it'd be interesting to see i think that's what happens yeah or or

I just I'm fascinated by who guards Reeves because I have a good feeling who's going to guard Luca and who's going to guard LeBron.

It's going to be a series of, you know, the McDaniels, Randall, Ant.

Who do they put on Reeves?

What priority do they place on like, we just can't let this guy get off?

We can't make it easier for him to get off.

The other thing with Ant is, you know, I mentioned switching.

The wild card with Ant is

you talk to coaches and scouts.

He's very unpredictable handling hard blitzes.

It's like sometimes he'll throw the wrong pass or he'll hold the ball too long.

And you know, there are some coaches just like, we're blitzing him every time because we just don't trust his decision making.

And that's the one, there's still a little bit of that, like, not just with Ant, with the whole Wolves team of like

they will go through a five-minute period where they just make bad decisions.

They just make decisions that are just beneath them as a team.

And when they had towns, they had the sheer talent and spacing where the decisions were easier and they had a fail-safe that they don't quite have.

Now, like, that Bucs game, did you see them play against the Bucs a few games ago in a game that was like massively important for them?

The Bucks went, that was the game the Bucks were down 24 points in the fourth quarter.

I saw the comeback.

The Bucs went zone.

And if you want to see, I mean, literally, this is not an exaggeration, the worst offense an NBA team could plausibly play against his own defense, that was what the Wolves.

It was like

without Ben Simmons?

They just went haywire for six minutes.

And I know the Lakers are not going to go haywire because of who has the ball on their team.

And that's the haywire factor.

is why if you're going to pick the Lakers, I think that's why I just trust them more.

Because top to bottom, I think this Wolves roster might be a little stronger than the Lakers and has a lot of size and toughness.

Look, you're playing the Lakers in a playoff series.

You're just not going to get as many calls as them.

It's just a fact.

I don't mean to be a dick, but they're

first and free throw rate.

LeBron and Luca are the two hardest guys in the league to officiate for different reasons.

So you have that piece.

Conversely,

Luca has been a little on tilt since the trade, and you and I saw it in person when we went to that game.

What was that game?

And he started just talking to people.

The crowd.

It was a nuggets.

The crowd.

And the nuggets sat everybody.

If I was Minnesota, if Minnesota hired me for conciliary and they were like, give us some advice.

How do you think we win this series?

I would say, Les Conley,

fuck with Luca every game.

Just try to try to

agitate him.

And I don't mean it's going to like fuck with him like he's going to play badly.

He gets caught up in it.

He's still not mature as a player.

Like he, he doesn't like when people talk back to him.

He doesn't like when people complain about they they fouled Luca and the ref called it.

They didn't think they fouled him.

And they start talking to the ref and Luca will just start talking to the guy like, you fouled me.

Stop being a dick.

I think the guys on this team with Ant, with Alexander Walker, with McDaniels, I think they can

get in a mind game with him where then you want Luca in this situation where he's just like, oh, I'm going to show them.

And then you're throwing the Lakers off balance.

If the Lakers stay smart, they're going to beat Minnesota, I think.

If it starts to become like macho shit, like, I think Minnesota could beat him.

They could definitely beat him.

Alexander Walker has actually guarded Luca pretty well, though.

I think Luca has enough size where he should be able to solve that.

Nas Reed has gotten some chances guarding LeBron.

It's just a way to, you know, if that's the matchup that you need to go to to keep Nas Reed on the floor, they've been willing to do it.

Do you think Randall can guard LeBron?

I think he's going to have to.

He's going to have to.

But do you think he can actually like

because i feel like physically i don't think lebron will be able to overpower him but i also could see him pulling randall out just going by him and getting 2000 it's it's the navigating pick and roll when you're guarding the ball handler which randall just it's just not something that bigs have to do as much and he's going to have to do it but i i think we'll see some of randall on rui and ant on lebron which is going to be super fun because you know ant's going to relish that moment.

I think this is a very, a very fun series and sort of contrasts and styles in a lot of ways.

All right, right, you got to go.

I've taken up too much of your time.

Did we not get anything you wanted to get to?

No, we hit everything.

It was the right amount of Dallas-Sacramento talk.

I'm sorry, guys.

Sorry, Dallas and Sacramento.

That was the

perfect amount because that game was.

Someone has to win.

Someone has to win.

And whoever plays that team.

Whoever loses the Warriors-Grizzlies series, I mean, can you imagine if it's the Warriors and they're in that spot, how much pressure they would be under?

And again, your prize is the thunder, but even the Grizzlies, like do we really want to go out like this like we're going to lose to dallas the remnants of dallas or the remnants of sacramento all right bill simmons uh you are at the master i don't need you the bill simmons podcast is whatever it's great to have you aboard zach thank you sir i'll be in touch this episode is brought to you by boarshead you know what's great about summer with all the pool parties picnics with your partner and game nights with the guys you have an abundance of opportunities to get together with everyone it's even better when there's delicious food to enjoy and the best way to get that tasty spread, Boar's Head.

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All right, to preview the Junior Varsity Conference, I am thrilled to bring in one of my favorite guests.

first time on the Zach Low Show, the ZL Show.

I don't know what we're calling it, Mo Takil.

You can find him on Twitch.

He's been writing for Bleacher Report and the Athletic and all over the place the last few years, former video coordinator for the LA Clippers and the San Antonio Spurs, both very relevant teams in the NBA discourse in the last 20 years.

Mo, what's up, my friend?

Oh, not a whole lot.

I've missed you, Zach.

I've missed you.

Have you?

Have you, really?

I have.

I have.

I missed you.

You're one of my favorites.

Don't tell any of the other media members, but you are one of my favorites, my go-tos on the podcast to read, everything like that.

But I also just enjoy bumping into you when we're at the same arena.

You know what, Mo?

I don't hear those words enough from my loved ones.

I missed you.

It's really, it's really heartening to hear.

It's mostly, did you forget to do this?

Why did you forget to do that?

How did you lose that thing?

Okay, let's fly through the east.

We're going to go play in, play in, and then we'll do the both, the two series that are set, New York, Detroit, and Milwaukee, Indiana, both juicy, juicy series.

But we must get the play-ins out of the way because they are the soonest, and

we're not going to belabor these, okay?

These are not juggernaut versus juggernaut, powerhouse versus powerhouse.

We will start with the Orlando Magic and the Atlanta Hawks in the 7-8 game.

The winner gets the Celtics.

Have fun with that.

The loser plays for its life to face the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Have fun with that.

We should note, Mo,

we must start by noting that this is a game featuring the first place finisher and the runner-up in the glorious, much-hallowed Southeast Division.

Congratulations to the Orlando Magic.

You are the 2024-2025 Southeast Division champions with a robust record of 41 and 41.

And I am imploring you, Orlando Magic.

I know your history as an organization has been sad since Dwight Howard left.

Do not hang this banner.

Don't do it.

It's embarrassing.

You are going to be way above this status to begin with if Paolo and Franz and the rest of your roster suggest did not get hurt.

You are going to be above this stature next year.

This act is going to be beneath you.

It's beneath stuff the Magic Dragon.

Don't do it.

Don't hang the banner.

Okay, Magic Hawks.

Two teams very close to each other in the standings.

We have a terrible offensive team in the Magic, who's 27th on offense, elite number two on defense, a net rating of exactly 0.0 for the season.

How about about that against the Hawks, who are a bad defensive team?

We know that.

But sneakily, just 18th in offense, lost Jalen Johnson, their second best player and maybe best all-around player for most of the season.

He ain't coming back.

What is the most interesting place to start with this play-in game?

And I don't want to talk about this for more than six minutes, Mo, so get to it.

Got it.

Right off the bat, I think the most interesting place to start is Paolo and Franz.

Look in the three games that they've played against Atlanta.

They've combined for 61.3 points.

Like that's pretty big number.

They need to kick that up a little bit, I think.

Just like you said, the offense is a little bit tough.

Franz hasn't shot it well from three, but I think it's going to be a really interesting battle for them.

And I'm very curious how the Hawks will try to slow those guys down because they don't seem to have an answer for Paolo or for France in the way they're doing it.

I know Dyson Daniels is doing all that he can, but for the most part, like this is a difficult matchup for the Hawks in general.

It's going to be tough, Zach.

Yeah, Dyson Daniels, first team all defense for me.

Many people's choice for defensive player of the year, not mine, but a fine, fine defensive player.

We'll guard Franz.

That would be the primary sign.

But now, an interesting wrinkle there is that

Franz will be guarding Trey Young a lot on the other end of the floor.

And if Trey is ever stuck on Franz, can't get out of that cross match, you go right there.

You waste no time.

You do not pass go.

You go right to putting Trey Young in jail.

Paolo, without Jalen Johnson, has been a riddle that the Hawks haven't been able to solve.

In the last matchup, they guarded him with Onyeka Kongwu, their center, who's had a fantastic year,

made a nice jump this year.

And they put their power forward, Mogay, and whether they start or play Mogay is going to be an interesting subplot here, too, because his lack of shooting really cramps their offense.

And they toyed with starting the Yang at the end of the season for that reason.

And then went back to Mogay, who's a much better defense player.

But anyway, they put a Kongwu on Paolo and cross-matched their power forward onto Wendell Carter Jr.

And, you know, that didn't really slow down Paolo at all.

He's still going to do what he does, which is, where's Trey Young?

Trey Young, Trae Young's guarding KCP.

Come set a screen for me.

Trey Young, you're stuck on Franz.

We can do our two-man game with our best players and go from there.

And that's basically other than forcing turnovers.

And by the way, both of these teams commit.

a crap ton of turnovers on offense and both of them force a crap ton of turnovers on defense.

Whoever has the least crappy turnover game on offense is going to have a little small, small edge in this battle of the Titans.

But I mean, that's basically Orlando's offense in a nutshell.

And Okangu did an okay job.

It's just a tricky cross match for him.

It's not the kind of defense he's used to playing.

And, you know, the personnel around him is okay.

Reese is okay.

Trey is what he is.

Daniels is elite.

And then off the bench, they bring this interesting trio.

of Niang, Terrence Mann, and Karis Lavert.

And that's been their answer to the power forward riddle more and more as the season has come down the stretch is just go small,

don't play Niang, don't play Mogay, and sometimes don't even play Risochet.

Just play those three wings together.

I like Risochet enough that I'm not psyched about just sort of excising him that way in crunch time.

But I mean, if Orlando can score enough,

you would think that would give them the edge and has given them the edge in this series because

we know their defense is going to be stout barring a Trey explosion.

But what else are you watching for here, X's and O's-wise?

Yeah, I'm actually watching the way Trey works.

Like you brought up, Trey, this has been one of those years where he's actually had a poor shooting year, but I think this has been my favorite Trey Young year for the most part because he's more accepted the role.

We talk about Donovan Mitchell kind of taking a step back.

He's kind of taking a little bit of a step back in the sense of like, I don't have to be fully involved.

And this was bigger when they had Jalen Johnson healthy and they were able to kind of run Trey a little, work Trey more off-ball or whatnot.

But I think him embracing that has been fun I think the the thing I'm really gonna just keep an eye on is just how will they continue to match that up how will they attack this really tough Orlando defense because everywhere you look I just feel like it's a nightmare for Trey there's not a lot of places for them to attack over and over again I know we'll do high pick and roll a bunch we'll try to find ways to get Trey into the lane try to find the lobs or whatnot but the length that this Orlando team has it's really difficult like I just find it it it's just all limbs to a large degree, where it's like, I don't know how you're going to get the passes through.

I don't know how you're going to get shots that are going to be fully uncontested.

I even come up with a late contest.

And with Trey's size, I'm going to be really interested to see how the Hawks try to attack them offensively.

Yeah, and the Magic can obviously switch almost across the board.

And we'll mix in that against Trey, even if they have to switch Wendell Carter onto him.

As for their backup lineups, they get even more switchable because they've been leaning more into Isaac at center instead of Batadze.

I do have to say, I saw my friend and colleague Bobby Marks tweet that Jonathan Isaac hit some kind of games played bonus for this year that was quite substantial.

Kudos to Jonathan Isaac's agent.

I don't know who it is off the top of my head because my takeaway from the season has been, I guess this dude's just never actually going to play.

Like he's just going to, like, he's averaging even fewer minutes now.

He's healthy, and he just plays 12 minutes, 18 minutes, six minutes, and he got a bonus.

He got, I think it was like $2.6 million.

He got a big bonus.

The one thing I did notice on Trey, first of all, kudos.

I want to bring up Trey real quick.

He's getting like no all-NBA buzz at all.

And I think he's being a little bit unfairly punished for the fact that the Hawks are just not very good.

And again, I think the Hawks would have a much better, they're 40 and 42.

I think they'd be three, four games better than that, at least with Jalen Johnson.

But Trey Young, 24 a game, 11.6 assists.

Yeah, 41% shooting, 34% on threes, 47% on twos.

Those are like roughly equivalent to, shooting-wise, to James Harden's numbers.

And James Harden's getting much more all-NBA love.

And I think that's fair given the Clippers' record versus the Hawks' record and the conferences that they play in, respectively.

Both are negatives on defense.

Trey, I think, is still a bigger one.

I'm not going to have Trey on my all-NBA teams, but I can see a Hawks fan saying, wait a second.

If Harden's this sort of low-efficiency, high-volume, elite assist man, negative on defense.

And he's going to make third team all NBA.

I don't understand the argument against Trey.

And to your point, he deserves some credit for opening up his pick and roll attack a little bit to like, yeah, I'll work with Dyson Daniels as a screener.

I'll work with Reese as a screener.

Earlier in the season, a critical development.

I will lean all the way into Jalen Johnson and I'll set ball screens for Jalen Johnson.

I mentioned two episodes ago, Trey set more ball screens this season in this one season than in his prior combined career, all seasons together

that's not nothing like like that's not nothing anyway um

just one thing orlando did have problems with the last matchup trey loves those stagger screens with niang and a conquo setting that double drag orlando got confused a little bit um in that alignment look if their defense is stout and they get anything off the bench and anthony black's been surging for them toward the end of the season I'd pick them to win this game at home.

But who the hell knows?

It's a play-in game.

Anything else before we get to the other one?

No, I think we kind of summed it up there.

And did we hit the six-minute mark?

Are we good?

I don't know.

Last thing.

Both teams draw a ton of free throws, and both teams hack the crap out of you.

Orlando actually hacks the most crap out of everyone in the league.

They're dead last in free throw rate allowed.

So just, you know, keep an eye on that.

Get your fast-forward button ready.

Miami, Chicago.

The 9-10 game.

The winner will face the loser of the 7-8 game.

The loser will go home, head hung in shame for not even getting out of the lower bracket of the play in the east.

These are the 20th and 21st ranked offenses in the NBA.

However, the Chicago Bulls are 15 and five in their last 20 games, surging, chugging toward the finish line with an offense in that stretch that would rank about fifth or sixth for the season.

They play at the second fastest pace in the NBA.

They fly, baby.

The Heat, they play at the third or fourth slowest pace in the NBA.

The Bulls take a ton of threes, third most threes in the NBA.

The Heat allow a ton of threes on defense.

This has been their custom the last few years.

You know, Chicago gets hot from three.

And Josh Giddy is playing the best ball of his career.

He got a little nicked up toward the end of the season.

I'm assuming he's going to play.

The matchups in this one are really interesting.

Who guards Kobe White?

Who does Bam guard?

Who does Bozellus guard?

But the Bulls are undeniably playing much better than the Heat coming into this game.

They have this game at home.

They present some interesting, stylistic sort of challenges for Miami, but Miami's Miami.

They are both of these teams, veterans of the play-in, veterans of the play-in, grizzled, the heat, more success in the play-in, maybe than the Bulls.

When this game tips, what's the number one thing you're watching?

Like you said, it's going to come down to the matchups.

Who's guarding Giddy?

Who's guarding Bezellas?

Who's guarding Kobe White?

Because that's really where it's coming off.

Like, Giddy's having probably one of the most amazing runs post-all-star game that we've seen from a young player in a while, where you kind of left him for dead midway through the season when you looked around going like, man, he's really struggling.

Doesn't look like this is the, the trade looked really bad for the Bulls at that point.

And then he goes to another level post-all-star game.

I mean, when you look at his numbers, 21, averaging 21 points, shooting 50% from the field, 45.7% from three, 10.7 rebounds, 9.3 assists.

That's like.

Pretty solid numbers right there.

I think that's been his resurgence has really kind of lifted the Bulls up.

Kobe White's been steady, kind of just the way he's been.

This is who we kind of see from Kobe White.

I'm excited for Bezalis.

The way he ended the last game against the Heat, knocking down a couple of big threes.

By the way, Tyler Hero pulling up for three when he had a wide open layup with the team down five with about five with about like 50 seconds left.

I get it, but I'm also like, take the two.

You know what was funny about that?

I was watching that game because I'm dialed into the play in breath, baby.

When that game came on the schedule, they must, must watch.

That happened,

and my brain

didn't even register it as a thing.

My brain was like, oh, Tyler Hurricane's going to shoot a three.

Okay, I guess you're going to shoot a three.

He missed it.

Didn't even like, it just like, I knew it was a slightly audacious decision, but it was, it's now to the point where I was like, oh, I guess this is just what's going to happen.

Yeah, no, because the problem is what happened right after that.

Because then Bezelis hits a corner three and now puts the Bulls.

Now you're into just such a six-point swing where you're just like oh wow this this one really put us in a hole i think this is going to be just a fun game though i think it's going to be a matter of styles this is going to be the bulls trying to run up and down the court and then the the heat trying to slow them down it's going to just be it it that's going to be the the deciding factor in this game for me really it's just going to come down to if the bulls continue to play fast i think the heat are cooked and going home and and it's been kind of a blah season for them.

I think they're ready to kind of end it.

And for the flip side of it, if the heat are able to slow the Bulls down, keep this in the half court, I think they'll find more ways to attack the Bulls and pull off the win and continue this long season for them.

Let's just dig into the matchups a little bit for people who have not maybe paid attention to these teams, starting with like who are the starting lineups on these teams now.

The Bulls have been starting Giddy,

Kobe White, who's just liable to score 35 points any game now.

Kevin Herter,

he now now plays for the Chicago Bulls for those just tuning in, because the Bulls and Kings trade with each other on a semi-annual basis like JCPenney has sales.

Oh, Buzelis has usurped Patrick Williams, the $90 million man, is the starting power forward.

And Vuch still hanging around it.

It's a powerful offensive lineup.

Defensively, we'll see.

It's been actually okay lately.

Where it gets interesting to me is the Heat.

The Heat's go-to starting five toward the end of the season has been Hero, Alec Burks,

Andrew Wiggins, Bam, and Khalel Ware.

Why that's interesting to me is starting with the question of who guards Kobe White.

In that group, in the last matchup, it was Wiggins that started on Kobe White with Burks chipping in now and then.

The trickle-down effect was that Bam guarded Josh Giddy because Wiggins was being used on Kobe White.

And that, like, Bam can guard anybody.

I just think it's interesting.

And Kevin Herter has gotten the Tyler Hero match, or I'm sorry,

Tyler Hero Hero has guarded Kevin Herter, which is a place that the Bulls are obviously going to try to pick on when they can.

What's interesting to me is I wouldn't be surprised if Spo

made a one-game adjustment and started Davion Mitchell in this game to guard for Alec Burks, to guard Kobe White so that Wiggins has more flexibility to guard Giddy and Bam can guard Boozelis and maybe test the rookie, maybe roll a little bit, although Bozelis has been shooting it really well.

That's an interesting one to me.

On on the other end of the floor the question of who does Boozelis guard is central to this game in the last game they started him they were scared to put him on bam and so they started him on kalel ware and put vucevic on bam and kalel ware just feasted on the offensive guys just too big then they switched it up and put boozelis on bam and vucevich on ware and bam didn't kind of go crazy but has the potential to go crazy in that matchup so those are the areas where i'm looking i think both teams will play a good deal of zone and have played a good deal of zone against each other.

The Heat, obviously the kings of the zone.

And both teams are like Hero is going to go at

Hero is going to go at

Herder and the Bulls are going to go at Hero.

And I'm interested to see if

Giddy is guarding Wiggins, which could be the matchup.

I think the Heat will need a big Wiggins game to win this game.

Can you exploit that matchup at all?

Can you run bam Wiggins inverted pick and rolls?

Like lean into the versatility of your roster.

Those are some of the things I'm looking at, trying to get myself.

I actually am kind of psyched for this game.

I think this is going to be a fun game within the no offense to Atlanta Orlando.

I'm kind of hyped for this one because I think we're going to have a fun one.

I think that last game was a lot of fun, the battle back and forth.

I think this is going to be interesting.

The thing that scares me when you have to depend on Wiggins is that just never seems to go the way you hope, right?

It's the Wiggins has big games and moments where you're kind of like, oh,

yeah, that's right.

Okay, like he can do this.

And then on the games where you're like, we need to have you tonight.

We have to have you tonight.

He tends to not show up, you know, and it worries me.

And there's a lot of times where there's games where I just go, I'm watching the heat going like, oh, yeah, that's right.

They have Andrew Wiggins.

You know, he's just there and around.

And it's, and that's the thing.

They can't have that.

Like, he's the X Factor for me.

I had it written in my notes notes for the Heat in this game, this one game.

He's got to be a monster.

He's got to be the way he attacked the Warriors in the Miami

Golden State game a few weeks back.

Like, that's got to be Wiggins tonight or tomorrow.

That's got to be him.

He's got to be aggressive.

He's got to look to take his shots.

He's got to look to attack the matchups.

If he doesn't, I think the Heat are going to be in trouble.

Hey, look, it's one game.

We're doing all this allegedly good analysis of the game.

Vooch is a drop back defender.

Tyler Hero is a pull-up shooter.

It just could come down to Tyler Hero goes 15 of 25 and just goes bananas on jump shots and the Heat win the game.

I never know what to make of these things, Mo.

So the two things the Heat do really well on defense, by the way, they finished eighth in defensive efficiency.

This is a very good defensive team.

Bam deserves a ton of credit for that.

They're fourth in defensive rebounding and third in free throw rate allowed.

So they don't foul.

Great.

They're not giving you any extras, right?

That's that's fantastic.

The Bulls don't do either of those things.

They're 29th in getting to the line and 28th in offensive rebounding.

And I can't decide.

Is that like bizarrely good for the Bulls?

Like, like all the heat strengths don't match up with our strengths at all?

Like, that's actually good for us.

I never know what to make of those kind of things.

All right, let's go to the real playoffs.

Are you ready?

Do you have any parting thoughts on this?

Are you ready to go to the real playoffs?

No, I'm ready to go to the real playoffs.

Let's see.

Where did we clock in there?

19 minutes.

Not terrible.

We bullshitted bullshitted around a little bit, so we weren't too terrible.

Goodbye playing teams.

I want to start Knicks Pistons.

The history of Bucs Pacers is delicious, but I want to start Knicks Pistons.

Good for the Detroit Pistons.

Just

one of the biggest in-season or season-to-season improvements of all time.

And they get the Knicks against whom they went 3-1 in the regular season.

Now, the Knicks had a bunch of players out for some of those games, including Kat in a game that I sat frighteningly close to James Dolan's seats for with a buddy of mine.

James Dolan was not at the game.

So I saw that.

Are you worried about getting banned if he's like looking at you going, hey, you said this, banned?

Let's put it this way.

The buddy who was kind enough to invite me, there are four of us.

There was a text thread where I was like, hey, look, I don't really know the probability of anything like this happening, but I just want to give you a heads up.

And that's all I'm going to say.

Nothing happened.

He wasn't at the game.

I find this a fascinating matchup.

We get Cade Cunningham's playoff debut.

Cade had a great deal of success against the Knicks, lit them up in the regular season,

going at Cat in the pick and roll, trying to get Brunson switched onto him before going at Cat in the pick and roll, which is an artful little thing that the Pistons are good at.

Made a lot of threes, has to take care of the ball.

That's been the Cade bugaboo all season.

If he's not going to make an all-NBA team, he'll be on mine, but I think that would be why it really drags down his efficiency and sort of chips away at what look like can't miss counting stats, but he's on my third team all NBA.

The Knicks force a decent amount of turnovers, not so many.

I have a place where I want to start in this series, like the puzzle piece of the series, the first thing I'm going to be looking for, but I'm going to let you lead off.

Where do you want to go?

Yeah,

I actually want to lead off with Cade and the matchups because I think that's one of those things.

You know, I went back and watched a bunch of his buckets.

against the the Knicks and Zach, he gave it to everybody.

It wasn't just Kat.

I mean, it was, they would start start out with Mikhail Bridges on him.

I think that's how they're going to start out when they open the series.

I think that's the thing.

He torched him.

I mean, we know, listen, Jalen Brunson, Kat, we understand the pick and rolls.

We know that he, but then, you know, they put hard on him, no problem, torched him.

They put OG on him, gave him buckets.

Like when you're watching this stuff, I don't know.

Dude, look at it.

Deuce off the bench was too small.

Kay just pushed him around.

Can't hang with him in that sense.

You know, when you look at the way he's scoring against the Knicks, he's averaging 30 points.

And it's, this is the crazier stuff.

56% from the field, 52% from three on top of diamond everybody up with 8.3 assists.

Like that, those are great numbers when you're going into the playoff series.

You're going, this is, we're excited.

We have this guy.

He's going to be able to drive this team nuts because I don't know how they will fully defend him.

You know, and that's, I want to watch what the, what Tibbs has defensively for Cade.

You know, is he going to mix things up?

Are they going to double a lot more off the picks?

Are going to try to deny him and make it difficult for them to kind of.

But even then, it's switch and then into the traps or what are we doing?

Are we trapping him as soon as he crosses half court?

Like, I know there's going to be a million adjustments throughout the course of the series, but I want to know what's the primary way they start out.

Because the one thing we know from what we saw in the regular season is one-on-one, they don't seem to have somebody that can really slow Cade down.

Cade also guarded Brunson a fair bit in these games, particularly when Asar Thompson was coming back from the blood college issue.

I suspect Asar will get that assignment to begin with, and boy, is he a monster.

But that's one thing I want to give.

Cade's not a great defensive player.

He has his on nights and his off nights, his nights where he's a little bit less alert, maybe off the ball, and then nights when he's dialed in.

I think he gets a lot of credit.

He gets a lot of credit from me for taking on tough assignments throughout the year,

like being willing to be physical against ball handlers more or less his size.

And just as an example, recently, I watched the first Bucs Pistons game, the one that was actually important.

The Bucs won and clinched the fifth seed.

There was a stretch of that game where they assigned Cade to guard Bobby Portis, which is no picnic.

Like Bobby Portis is mean.

And there was a possession where Cade stood him up in the post, they got the stop, and then the bonus of that, which is very much

calculated into how they use Cade, is Portis is now stuck on Cade.

Cade can't get, he can't extricate himself from that assignment.

Cade just dribbles up, hits Bobby Portis with one nasty jab step, and pulls up and hits a three in his face when Bobby Portis is falling back a little bit.

Like, that is a massively valuable sequence of events that he deserves a lot of credit for buying in defensively enough to enable it happening.

Anyway, that's Cade.

Love Cade.

Can I tell you where I'm going to start?

Yes.

Who's guarding Kat?

And I was actually surprised

that the Pistons did not not hardly at all do the thing that I would classify as the smart team thing against Cat and the Knicks, which is put a wing or a big power forward on Cat and put your center on Josh Hart.

No, they put Jalen Durn on Cat more or less permanently.

And if that's the case, and Jalen Durn's made huge,

I am in the tank for Jalen Duran.

The guys I went to that game with, the whole game, I was like, you got to watch this Jalen Duran guy.

If he ever figures it out athletically, he is.

And he had a big big game in that game.

I was very happy.

And he's got the foot speed.

And the combination of, I think they want to be physical with Kat.

I think they want to hit him a little bit.

Now,

talk about a series where foul trouble looms large as a variable.

Foul trouble for Jalen Duran and foul trouble for Kat, who until last season's playoff run could simply not stay out of foul trouble in any playoff series against anyone.

But he's got the physicality to get under Kat's skin and the foot speed to kind of half hedge on brunson and get back to cat before he can pop for three now if i'm the knicks and you're giving me that matchup i am spamming brunson cat pick and roll i'm leaning even more into it than i did through the regular season because and i'm especially going to try to get tim hardaway jr on brunson with some pre-screening action leading into that because i just don't think

If you really hit him with it over and over again, I don't think Detroit's defense is going to be able to sort of handle just the relentlessness of it.

I think they will wobble and break down a little bit.

And it will not surprise me at all if by game three of this series, Jalen Duran is guarding Josh Hart here and there.

And the Knicks, by the way, Josh Hart,

when that happens, when he gets that assignment, he's setting screens.

He's like, you don't want Jalen Duran in the pick and roll?

Too bad.

He's coming with me.

You want to switch him out on the way?

We know how to counter that.

I'm crashing the offensive glass if you ignore me because you're center zombie.

So they know how to do that.

But that's where I'm starting.

And if Durin is indeed on cat, the Knicks need to just win that matchup.

And if they win that matchup, I think they should win the series.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting one there.

And this is going to be the fun wrinkle stuff that we're going to see through the course of the series.

This is why I love the playoffs because it's all the chess match.

Game three is my favorite one through every playoff game because then we get to see what adjustments are being made after two games.

And I think that's going to be the, that would be one of the first adjustments we can can expect from the Pistons, right?

Is let's adjust the cat matchup.

We don't like how it's going with our big on him.

And then you kind of switch it around and you, you're, you're moving guys around with, with what you have.

It gets really interesting, though, because the Knicks top five, like you just highlighted how Hart takes advantage of it, you know, when you put a big on him.

I just don't know where else to put Durin at that point, right?

Like, you know, you put him on heart.

You've seen a couple of teams flirt with using Ananobi.

And I think the idea is you'll see coaches try to play chess and just think, yeah, Ananobi is a better all-around offensive player than Hart.

He's a better shooter than Hart.

In theory, he's not the place for this assignment, but maybe we can sort of tempt the Knicks into overdoing the Ananobi factor and get them out of rhythm.

It hasn't worked, but I agree with you.

There's just not a lot of great...

options here for the Pistons against an elite.

I mean, this is the fifth best offensive team in the NBA.

By the way, and for all the Knicks' defense crap, like, oh, the bad season, they finished 13th.

Like, they're not a bad defensive team.

No, they're,

I don't know if you could be a bad defensive team when you have Bridges, OG, and Josh Hart playing the number of minutes that they're playing.

Now, maybe it might be too much, but like, you're, you're, those are three good defensive players.

Like, I know they're making up for, they're trying to make up for Kat and Brunson, but like, those are three solid defensive players.

That's part of the reason why when I was going back and watching the K stuff, going kind of shocked, realizing, like, wow, there's nobody that's been able to stop Kate.

It kind of put Kade on another level in my mind.

But I think you're in a situation when you're Detroit.

It's okay, then do we go small?

Like, that's really the next question.

Do we drop down in size and then put, you know, Harris on Kat?

and try to attack that way.

I'm not sure that's a matchup I'm going to be really comfortable with.

That's when Kat, to his credit this year, when they've inverted matchups like that, he has gone into beast mode.

Like, I will take you to the post.

I will roll hard to the rim and unlock that part of my game.

I'm just going to beast you inside.

He has had an absolutely magnificent all-around offensive season.

Yeah, I mean, this is, I mean,

everything the Knicks wanted when they traded for, they got from Kat.

Like, I don't know the expectations.

could be any anything else.

This is, they got exactly what they expected from Kat this season.

Unbelievable offense,

questionable defense.

I'm going to be nice.

And I think that's the stuff that you're getting with him.

But then that puts Detroit in that difficult position.

Like, I know there's a whole push now of like everybody's talking about Detroit being the team that can create the upset and everything.

But it's a really tough, that top five.

I like to do when I go to playoff series is look at, all right, who are the best five players in the series and which team has the most?

Right.

And I, you know, just my rankings, and you could, you could quibble with it and

throw things around.

I got Brunson one, Cade two, and that was really close.

That one,

I wouldn't even,

different mood, I might even switch it.

Then I have Cat, OG, and Bridges.

So the Knicks have four of the top five in the series.

Like, I don't, and I'm not trying to slight the guys on Detroit.

Just I would take all those guys before I'd go to the next Detroit Piston.

And I think that's the challenge that the Pistons have in this series is

they're deeper, but their top-level talent after Cade worries me.

I mean, to boil it down even simpler than that,

even though the Knicks were a mediocre defense this season, I'm not sure the Pistons offense has enough juice to keep up in this series.

You're telling me a lot of, there's a lot of upset buzz for the Pistons.

That's cool.

The Pistons have had a great year.

I am picking the Knicks to win this series, and I'm not really thinking that hard about it.

I just think, now I know they have not looked awesome since Brunson's return.

I'm just chalking that up to late season malaise, getting him back in rhythm.

I think they're going to be fine.

They're getting a week off now.

I just think offensively, this team is monstrously talented.

They know how to attack the Pistons.

I think they're going to score fine.

Now, the Pistons know how to attack them, too.

You're going to see a lot of

Cade Tim Hardaway picking roles to try and get Brunson involved.

And the Knicks, for the most part, have tried to have Brunson hedge and get back to Hardaway Jr.

instead of switching him onto Cade.

You know, I get why.

What that does, though, is unlock Detroit's kickaround game where they start moving the ball.

They put two on Cade.

They move the ball around for an open three.

They've toyed with, hey, maybe we should try switching Brunson.

We don't want to do too much because you don't want him to get banged up and tired out.

But we have all these rangy wings around him to sort of cover space and shade toward him and help him out.

And in the meantime, we don't give the Pistons two on the ball.

We don't give them the thing that triggers their passing game.

I'd like to see some of that from the Knicks.

A couple of interesting things.

The Pistons, similar to Bulls Heat, the Pistons foul everybody, and the Knicks do not get to the line.

The Knicks bizarrely get no free throws.

If that changes at all in this series because of Detroit's handsiness and the Ron Holland, Isaiah Stewart will beat the crap out of you every game.

Philosophy, that could swing it.

Knicks offense, fourth most shots at the rim.

Detroit's defense, fifth fewest attempts at the rim.

That's a sort of strength versus strength battle that's really interesting.

And I think part of Detroit's path to an upset is they've got to migrate some of those shots to the mid-range because the Knicks don't take a lot of threes either.

I think they're 28th or 27th and three-point rate.

And they're going to go at Cat.

And

the more they give Kat stuff to do before the pick and roll, like hit him with a screen on the way up and a screen, the screener action, use some misdirection, I think the more effective that gets.

Ironically, Tibbs never does it.

I do wonder if there's a point in this series where they put Kat on Asar Thompson and try to switch more on the pick and roll by

putting Hart or Ananobi on Durin.

That risks Durin playing some big boy ball on the offensive glass.

He's a monster athlete, all that.

They do that when they play their two bigs together, the Knicks.

They'll put one of them on Asar Thompson or Ron Holland or one of those guys and the other on Durin when they play Kat and Achua or the wild card everyone's waiting on, Kat and Mitchell Robinson.

So it's not like that tool is foreign to them.

But, you know, interesting wrinkles.

The K Dennis Schroeder combo has been effective for the Pistons as a sort of double point guard look.

I just, to me, this centers on, you know, sort of on Detroit's offense.

And just one last thing.

The Knicks allow very few threes and Detroit takes very few threes, which could be good for Detroit, bad for Detroit, depending on how you want to spin it.

I'm just not sure they have enough juice offensively.

Maybe they'll prove me wrong.

Anything else on this series before we move to the Heartland battle?

I guess just two quick ones.

You know, one, we got to talk a little bit how Malik Beasley has kind of been the veteran guy.

Yeah,

the whole deal, but he's been kind of like the veteran fighter for them that's kind of been that guy.

I didn't expect that coming into this season.

You know, credit to him in that sense.

And I just want the over-under on how many altercations are we going to have with Ron Holland and Stewart on the floor with the Knicks.

I'm just curious, are we going to have a couple of fireworks with those guys?

If I were a GM,

I would just, I would be like, I would be so tempted to give Malik Beasley an insane contract because I just like him so much as a player.

I loved that when Giannis hit him with the shimmy, Giannis blocked his potential game winning, or I can't remember game winning, game tying three.

And

hit him with the shimmy like three times.

He hit him with the shimmy when Malik Beasley was on the floor.

He hit him with the shimmy when he tried to help Malik Beasley up.

And then he hit him with the shimmy when he was backing away from Malik Beasley.

Then he tried to shake Malik Beasley's hand, like, oh, former teammate, what's up, man?

And Malik Beasley was like, get that hand out of my freaking face, man.

And I slapped it away.

I loved every bit of that.

Get out of here with your clownishness, Giannis.

Get out of here.

I'm Malik Beasley.

I'm the three-point champion.

Okay.

Speaking of Malik, Giannis, Pacers, Bucks,

a lot of history between these two teams from the play-in last season when Halliburton gave the Dame time sign, one of my favorite, I'm using your taunt against you, moments, and a first-round playoff series last year that was marred by injuries to both Dame and Giannis that Indiana won, and Indiana ended up going to the conference finals.

How did you forget Ballgate?

Oh, Ballgate!

How did you forget?

How did Balloon's Shibwe's first first points Yes, and Giannis had had what did he have?

I forget what number it was a career high right in points like he had a

pretty it was something like that and then ballgate

forgot ballgate

that was I remember that there was an extensive investigation and I even called like I actually embarrassingly had to call Rick Carlisle like Rick Carlisle Hall of Fame coach Rick Carlisle, head of the coaches association, Rick Carlisle,

suffers no fools or foolishness, Rick Carlisle.

Like, we'll just hang up on your ass if he thinks your question is stupid and be like, hey,

so the ball, like, any idea where the real game ball went?

And I don't remember the answer, and

it was not my finest moment as a Capital J journalist.

I don't remember what Rick Carlisle said to me.

Anyway, obviously, look,

we don't know if Dame is going to play as he recovers from his blood clot issue.

And as boring as it is, I think the analysis has to start there and almost end there because if Dame doesn't play and they start Ryan Rollins, he's been fine.

Like Ryan Rollins has been good for the Bucs.

They have Portis back.

They're playing Giannis at center more often, which I think is healthy for their team.

And one of the reasons that they got Kuzma to sort of unlock more of those lineups.

I just don't think they can win without Dame.

I don't think they can beat the Pacers four times without Dame, as amazing as Giannis is, as incredible as a season he's had.

I don't know whether we should posit he plays or he doesn't play.

It's noon Eastern on Monday right now.

We may know more later in the day.

Right now, we don't.

You can go either way on this, but

I prepped as if he was going to play just for optimism and all of that.

Where are you going to start with your analysis of this one?

Well, I prepped with him not playing.

So I'm the pessimist between the two of us in in the situation i want to start actually with not ryan rollins but it's kevin porter jr

right like that's the guy that's gonna matter for them you know we we know what you're gonna get from yannis and all that but it's where else does the play creation come from after giannis and i think it's got to come from him you know i listen they're getting bobby portis back at the right time with everything and he's been good in his three games back but when you're watching everything it's the athleticism that you get from Porter, which is something that the Bucs have been missing for a while, is just having a little more athleticism on the perimeter.

And I think just his ability to kind of attack defenses is going to be real critical for the Bucs in this series because they're going to need to be very offensive forward in this game.

This is going to be a fast-paced series because that's the way the Pacers want to play.

They weren't as fast as they were last year, but I think they finished seventh this year in pace.

And I think that's just the way they want to go.

Is they want to fly.

We've seen it what halliburton gets cooking they're going up and down the court and they got to be able to run in this track meet and i think that's why you need to have guys like porter playing a big role for the bucks if they're really going to be a threat in the series he's got to have a huge series um let's start with pacers offense which is you know one of the elite offenses in the league obviously um

Torian Prince has gotten the Halliburton assignment quite a bit.

Giannis has guarded Siakam quite a bit.

And they have shown the Bucs that they will switch the Halliburton-Siakam two-man game.

I don't think the Pacers have leaned in enough to posting up Siakum when they get that switch.

I think he can do a lot of damage there.

The other major question, and we've seen the Bucs go back and forth on this, including back and forth within last year's playoff series, is who does Brooke Lopez guard?

They actually started the series last year with Brooke Lopez on Siakam.

I think theorizing, as other teams had, the Sixers used to do this with Embiid,

he's more of an interior player.

Let's put Lopez on him and try to snuff out the Miles Turner pick and pop threes by putting a faster player on Miles Turner.

They flip that back halfway through the series because it does unlock the Halliburton-Siakam two-man game a little bit more easily.

He can roll.

He can get into the pockets.

Siakam can.

So that's an interesting one to me.

And obviously, if he guards Turner, which he's done mostly this season, they've put him on Miles Turner.

You know, a lot of possessions are going to start with the most, you know, I think that was the number one pick and roll combination in the league, Halliburton Turner.

So those are some places where

I think

the Pacers will look to attack.

And there's some interesting matchups that are exploitable there.

Both teams have played a lot of zone against each other,

which is interesting.

When the Pacers have the ball, what else is interesting to you?

Yeah, I think it's not just just everything you mentioned with Siakam and the Turner and the Halliburton game.

It's when the other guys come in, Neesmith making plays.

You know, it's when Nemesis is.

He's their second guy on Giannis.

You know, Siakam will get most of the assignment to start, but Neesmith has guarded him too.

Yeah, and then he's going to, and, and, you know, he's strong.

Like, he does a pretty good job trying to hold up as much as he can against the Greek freak who's rightfully named that.

But I think offensively, it's finding those other pieces that can make

the Bucs hurt in ways that they're not ready for when they rotate, when they're going to focus defensively on Halliburton Siakam and the Turner pick and pops.

Like, that's what you're going to do if you're Milwaukee.

You need these other guys to knock down shots, to make plays, smart cuts, work the dunker spot, whatever it is, all those guys.

It's Neesmith.

It's Nemhard.

It's Obi Toppin when he comes in the games.

It's going to be really interesting to see how the pacers sort of...

say, cool, you're going to try to take this away.

We're going to hurt you with this.

And if they start to hurt them, then how do the Bucs respond with like, we're giving up way too much to the other guys.

How do we kind of level this thing off a bit?

It's,

this is a tough one for Milwaukee.

This is going to be a tough puzzle for them to solve.

I don't, I don't know if I'm

very high on it for them.

I think this is a

one that's going to be really challenging for Doc in terms of just the equations.

You know, when you're, what cards can you play?

And I think they're going to run out of cards quicker than the Pacers.

They obviously have the best card in the series, and that's Giannis.

Siakam is going to start off guarding Giannis.

Neither has guarded him a little bit.

Toppin's actually dabbled in it a little bit.

I don't really trust that.

And the Pacers are going much more frequently now with no traditional backup center with the Toppin Siakam.

Wouldn't shock me, Caitlin Cooper hit this in her newsletter today if Jarrett Walker has a role in this series and in those lineups.

His skill set kind of matches, I think, the Bucs pretty well.

Halliburton's the weak link, right?

Like, we know that defensively.

They're going to hide him on Prince.

Look, I mean, if Dame plays, they're going to hide him on Prince.

If Dame doesn't play, they have a lot more flexibility of where to put him.

Nemhart has gotten the Dame assignment.

And

they,

it's an interesting thing because

to hunt Halliburton, they've really used Torian Prince a lot on offense in this matchup.

They've had him curl around pin downs from Giannis, you know, empty the left side of the floor, have him effectively run a pick and roll with Giannis.

And that's great.

It works.

If you can get Giannis rolling to the rim, that's death for most defenses.

I do think they've gotten, in watching, I was like, they've gotten a little in obsessing with Halliburton.

They've gotten a little bit away from the Dame Giannis two-man game.

It's not like Nemhart can switch onto Giannis.

He can't.

And actually, I checked the second spectrum.

For the season, Dame Giannis, 21 pick and rolls per 100 possessions.

Against the Pacers, that dropped down to 11.5 per 100 possessions.

I think they got away from it a little too willingly as like their number one go-to offensive play.

They love the Giannis Lopez pick and roll is another one they love.

The Pacers rather have shown an inclination to switch that if Siakam gets hung up on a screen and they have the personnel to do that.

Indiana also was the number one transition defense in the league this year in terms of frequency of possessions.

And the Bucs need to get out and run.

So it's interesting.

It's just sort of, it sucks that we don't know Dame's health status because with him,

I think this is a toss-up.

And I'd probably pick Indiana anyway.

I just think they're deeper and more together.

The Kuzma thing has not been great.

I mean, he's fine, but it hasn't really changed their team.

Without Dame, it's a very strong Indiana, you know, 4-2 max pick for me.

Yeah, and I think it's really, the one thing I hope is we continue this becoming a rivalry.

I do hope we get a couple of ball gates i do hope we get a a couple more issues there i like this being repeat series sort of become create rivalries in my opinion and i think that's something we're we're hoping we'll get out of this but i just think it's too much to overcome if you don't have dame right he's so important to you offensively he's your secondary creator he's your guy that you you guys you you put too much focus on yannis he'll drop 30 on you no problem you know and then start hitting you with the dame time uh signals and all those things.

Like it becomes a really just difficult scenario for the Bucs without Dame.

It's going to be challenging.

This is one of those things where you were talking about it where, hey, a team's really good at this, but the other team doesn't focus on it.

Like that's kind of the opposite for me with the Pacers and the Bucs.

Like all the stuff.

the Pacers want to do actually already hurts the Bucs, you know, and they can take stuff away from Milwaukee.

I think the switching of the 4-5 pick and roll with Giannis and Lopez and stuff, not great,

but they're probably better equipped to handle it than most teams in the league with Siakam and Turner.

And I think that's the stuff that you're going to have to really deal with.

And then you're wear down Giannis with just a pure fact of he's got to do everything in this series.

He's got to be a monster on both ends of the court.

He's got to create for everybody on top of getting 30 each night.

At a certain point, that wears you down.

And then with this game being a fast-paced series, you know, in my opinion, where the Pacers, if they control the tempo, you're really really struggling.

And then, you know, I just don't know how the Bucs really can fully compete, especially if they don't have Dame.

One thing Giannis has to do is get to the line a lot and make his free throws because that's one clear statistical edge the Bucs have.

The rebounding thing is very interesting and I think tilts Pacers.

Bucks are an incredible defensive rebounding team.

The Pacers are 29th in offensive retain.

They just simply don't care.

So Bucs, great.

You get all the defense.

I mean, that goes with the transition defense, right?

That's how they cut down the frequency of transition defense.

The Bucs don't force a lot of turnovers.

That's a dock thing.

And the Pacers have the third lowest turnover rate.

So they figured, like, step one, get a shot up.

That's if the Pacers get even more shots up than usual because you don't turn them over at all, good for the Pacers.

And let's see what else we got here.

Rebounding wise.

The Bucs are dead last in offensive rebounding, and the Pacers can be a little bit vulnerable on the defensive glass.

And so, that you know, we'll see if the Bucs amp that up a little bit.

All right, Mo Takil.

Um, I always tell people: if you want to know what's going on in the games, this is the guy to follow.

Where can they follow you coming up in the first round?

I got a whole lot going on now, Zach.

Um, I have my Twitch stream, which

will be mostly Monday through Thursday in the mornings.

But if we get some great games through the playoffs, which we will, I might just pop on live in Emergency One.

Uh, I will be doing the, for the play-in tournament, I will be doing a pregame show on the NBA app with Alexis Morgan and Zach Harper.

Yeah, so we'll be doing that all this week.

And then I'm actually jumping into the podcast game again.

I'm just starting a podcast with Jared Duvin.

Our first pod will come out later this week, Drive and Dish.

So look for that wherever you listen to podcasts.

Look at that.

Just on the ball with your promos, Mo.

You're the best.

It's great to see you.

I'll talk to you soon.

All right.

Thank you for having me.

All right.

Hope you guys enjoyed that.

We'll be back later in the week once we sift through the remnants of the first play-in games.

Look ahead to a couple other matchups that will materialize.

By then, it's a great time to be an NBA fan.

Playoffs are here, baby.

Let's go.

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