Latest / Small Ball with Kenny Beecham / 1 Good Thing, 1 Bad Thing About Every NBA Game 1

Transcript

1 Good Thing, 1 Bad Thing About Every NBA Game 1 · Small Ball with Kenny Beecham

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The books, as critical as I am of them, slash Doc Rivers, I have never shut the door completely because the upside of this team, if Chris Middleton is playing like he did tonight, is a championship.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: The upside is a championship.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, are they gonna get there?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I doubt it, but I haven't closed the door completely.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Kenny Beachum Podcast Playoff Edition Time, man.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It feels great to be back to our two times a week schedule.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: This weekend is like no other.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of my favorite.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking first weekend of the playoffs over All-Star Weekend a hundred times out of 100.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically 12 hours a day of nothing but pure hoops.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it was fantastic.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: This year was different for me, though, man.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was different for me for the last, let's say, six, seven years, as long as I've been doing this full time, so closer to nine years, I've been able to sit down on this first weekend and not have a care in the world about anything else.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Strictly, strictly hoops.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: But now I have a toddler.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when she's one year old or a newborn, it's a like my daughter was born in April.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So she was born in the playoffs last year, right?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I have a story that I normally don't tell people, but hey, we in this together, right?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we had Avery, got home, got to watch some playoff games, and we had to go back to the hospital because she had Jaundice, which is not that big of a deal, but you need to get it checked out, right?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was the uh Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs, we're sitting around in the hospital.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's on this little old monitor, little old TV screen.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like pacing watching this game because obviously my daughter's in the hospital.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know nothing about jaundice, but also I'm like, this is my time for content.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And my wife will then fiance sees me pacing.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, if you want to go home for 30 minutes to film a video, you can.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I did.
• 1:56
  unknown: And I did.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then everything was great.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Avery's two years old now.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: She's she's singing her ABCs, she's singing the uh Miss Rachel Rainbow song, All Damn Day is perfect.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But because she is a toddler and there's a lot more things that she can get into now that she's running and jumping and skipping, there are times I have to step away from the TV, and that was just not normal for me.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not normal for me.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if it happened on Saturday, I was able to go back and rewatch the things that I missed.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But today I'm saying that because like the first half of Pelican's OKC, I kind of missed the entire thing because I was in I was in solo pop mode.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the TV, but I'm also trying to make sure my daughter's doing things that she should be doing.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: But we'll be talking about every single series today.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: All eight of those series.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the way we're gonna frame this then is one thing that I liked and one thing I didn't like about every game.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Another really cool thing about the playoffs is that majority of the stuff I'm gonna mention in today's episode is gonna be like irrelevant in two days.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's about coaching, it's about chess, it's about this, it's about that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk about some of the things I really liked from a particular coach or a particular defensive scheme.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the opposing coach might be like, okay, they did that this game.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want them to try that again because now we have counters.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: We saw that in real game with um Tom Thibodeau and Nick Nurse, which is like two of the better coaches in basketball, but I didn't think they was gonna be playing chess like that.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It happened in game, and I can't wait to see what both of these coaches bring in game number two.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Leave a like, subscribe, um, tell your friend and tell a friend that if they need their fix of NBA podcasting for the playoffs, this is the place to be.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to again give y'all a thank you.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some big things are happening in life.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like on Tuesday, my other podcast, numbers on the board, is premiering on ESPN2 at two o'clock Eastern Time.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you're interested, it'll be there.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just me and the rest of the guys talking about basketball and basically the stuff that you like because you're watching this video.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And also, before that premieres at one or two o'clock, I am flying out to New York to be on first take for the second time.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm in studio, y'all.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in studio.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: The first time I was there, I was here in this basement, right?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had my enjoy basketball hat and a hoodie because that's just who I am.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But when you go to the studio, you gotta do it a little bit bigger.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not a suit guy.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: The only time I wear a suit was to my own wedding.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I did level it up.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you gotta tune in to see what that looks like.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I cannot wait.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Will the lights be too bright like Jared Allen last year?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't really know.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: That that live TV thing's a little bit different.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I appreciate y'all's support because if you didn't watch these episodes, you don't watch some other content, they wouldn't be calling me to be on their show.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the reality of it.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: You could be as good as anybody at your job.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have people that's listening or watching, it doesn't really matter.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so thank you for that.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into the playoffs, though.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned before that my favorite series of all of them was Suns versus Wolves, and it lived up to the hype 100%.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to say that my prediction was Suns and seven.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a guy that's gonna go back on predictions.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about being right about my predictions.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that my logic behind it was pretty sound, but the playoffs were different.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things, one of the questions I posed was uh what happens with Carl Anthony Towns on the defensive side of the ball?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because I watched those previous two games.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: They played each other twice in the last week and a half of the season, and one of them was with our Carl Anthony Towns, and one of them was with Carl Anthony Towns.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just very curious about what they were gonna do because in those two games, it was Anthony Ewitz with a Kevin Durant assignment, mostly because I guess what Patrick Beverly said years ago, if you're smaller than Kevin Durant, you can kind of get under his skin a little bit more.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it had been Anthony Ewitz into the playoffs, where the ball tips off, and it's Carl Anthony Towns guarding Kevin Durant.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, what could this be about?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm watching this game, and it took me about a quarter and a half before I really put it together what Chris Finch and the guys are really doing out there.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing was they were not sending help on isolations.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Unless the player that had the ball got past his defender and we're talking about getting two feet in the paint, that that is when you saw Rudy Gobier slide over and contest at the rim because that's what he's great at.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But other than that, they were completely okay with letting Kevin, Devin, and Brad play one-on-one basketball.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that is just different than what they did in the last two games.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: See, in the last two games, when you saw Kevin O'Rant get a touch, specifically a touch against a favorable defender, you did see a second defender, and that let Kevin Durant swing the ball to swing the ball to swing the ball, and it led to a Grayson Allen three, or laid to led to Bradley Beal dropping 36, and so on and so forth.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But in this one, it was straight up.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Kevin O'Rant, what's Kevin O'Rant?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You think about Kevin O'Rant being guarded by Carlton Towns, it went exactly as you could imagine, but that was all they really had.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: JD McDaniels made life hell for Devin Booker the entire time.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing I said when I was trying to make my prediction was this was a defensive, a legacy series, if you will, for Rudy Gobert.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Rudy Gobert is one of the greatest defensive players of all time.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I know all of the stuff people say about him.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is objectively a fact.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: He's about to win his fourth DPOY, and that is an elite elite class.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I absolutely loved about this game is that they they let him come up at the point of attack on defense.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Rudy Gobert, in the entirety of his career, was a heavy drop defender.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was the best in the world at that.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of the reasons why the Utah Jazz defense was so good with Rudy Gobert.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: He got back, he protected the paint.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you wanted to take mid-range jump shots completely free, that's cool with us because that's we don't really care about that.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: We'd rather you take that than take an open three, or we'd rather you take that than get to the basket.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he did it over and over again.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: He was elite at it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: But against the Phoenix Suns, this is a great mid-range shooting team.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is a great pull-up shooting team.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of just dropping, dropping, dropping, Rudy Gobert came out on the defender or on the offensive player.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the times it was a complete switch.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what did Rudy do?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: He held his own.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Something I've been saying that he's been able to do for years, but people don't be watching these games.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of the times, Kevin Oran, again, made tough, tough shots.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of the greatest scorers of all time.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Other times, we saw that man get in his chair.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: There was even one where he stripped Kevin Orang clean.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's no help.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: That completely nullified, if that's the word, the Grayson Allen effect.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Grayson Allen's one of the best three-point shooting percentage guys in basketball.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this one, he took three threes and he missed them all.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was at the end of a shot clock.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was a grenade.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: They completely got him out of this game.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they kind of need that man.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: This was a complete, complete mastermind.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And now you see Frank Vogel say, okay, that's the way you're running your things.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna play small.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: We'll play small.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna have to beat us playing big, but we're gonna play small.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they did that.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what Chris Finch did?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ran his own.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because they knew that the idea of Rudy Gobert being one-on-one or guarding a player that is sitting at the corner is a recipe, not for disaster, but it leaves you very vulnerable on the back end.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they ran his own.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Rudy Gobert didn't have to worry about the corners.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: He had to worry about that painted area.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: He's two and two nine in all damn game.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it was a masterclass of scheme and execution.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's one thing to have this as a plan, especially something that you haven't really done much against a certain team.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's another thing to execute those things.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what they did.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anthony Everest played great defense and great offense.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was phenomenal in this one.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the whole thing he only averages 14 points per game against the Phoenix Sun thing was completely, completely overblown.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they really did their thing.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this was so fun because there were also times where Chris Finch kind of let the defensive player of the year just play through IQ and let him communicate to his teammates exactly what they're doing on that defensive possession.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is why I love playoff basketball.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I love defense, because you can completely take uh all NBA player like Devin Booker out of a game, and that's what they did.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can completely take one of the best role players in the league out of a game with Grayson Allen, and they did that.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great game, man.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great game.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in tonight, uh, I guess the entirety of the playoffs, the last two games, or two days, the home team won every game.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that could be relatively boring.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't feel like it was boring that we didn't get any upsets, if you will.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, 77.8% of the time, the team that wins game one goes on to win the series, which is a way higher number than I thought it was going to be.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So is the winner of game one gonna win every one of these series?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I would expect not, but it's it's definitely, definitely possible.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the Suns need to bounce back heavy.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: I know the old saying is uh the series doesn't start until a role team wins a game.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's partially true, I guess.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the Suns need to come out and try to punch these dudes in the mouth again because they got embarrassed.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: They really did.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Suns are one of those teams that you never know what you're gonna get.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: One day they look phenomenal, other days they're down 31 to 4.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Never really know.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: The next game I thought was extremely interesting comes from today.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is Bucks versus Pacers.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Damian Lillard experience.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And let me double check something.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just double check something.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't think um he scored in the second half at all.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about Bradley B here.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he scored in the second half at all.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let me I'm just going to quickly get these clicks.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he definitely did not.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: He had zero points in the second half and yet in this game with 35 of them things.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this was the most fun game I've watched since um the game winner game versus the Kings, I want to say.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was nothing the buck the Pelicans, not the Pelicans, the Pacers could really do heavily contested three-point shot.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you were dropping, he was taking advantage.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're coming up point of attack, he was taking advantage.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: This was a classic Damian Lillard game, and this was such an important win for the Bucs, considering they don't know when Giannis is coming back.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you you have a little bit of your pressure alleviated by winning game one.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: The pressure is all alone if you lose this to the Pacers.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh man, Giannis, you don't really have enough time to really heal up.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we lose game number two, it's GG's, it's the series is over because the team that wins game, or if the team that goes up 2-0 wins the series 90-something percent of the time, we can't afford that.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Dame said, I got us.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that was phenomenal.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there's the the Bucks, as critical as I am of them, slash Doc Rivers, I have never shut the door completely because the upside of this team, if Chris Middleton is playing like he did tonight, is a championship.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The upside is a championship.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, are they gonna get there?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I doubt it, but I haven't closed the door completely.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Middleton, tough shot taker, tough shot maker.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when you get to the playoffs, you need stuff like that.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You need players like that.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: You need people that when it's four seconds left on a shot clock, you can throw them to the grenade and they make something out of nothing.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: They gave a lot of post-touches to Chris Middleton.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to go back um to watch a lot of these games or certain parts of these games that happened tonight, because I want to count how many times he got the ball on the block and count the same thing with Bobby Portis, how many times he got the ball on the block, and how many times they scored out of those uh those actions because it happened time and time again, especially in the second half when it wasn't any Damian Lillard hitting the shots, but it said it was it was the others.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Pacers um had Pascal Siakam give them everything they could have imagined.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was phenomenal tonight.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of it.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if there's any silver lining in this one, because losing a basketball game in the playoffs, it's hard to find a silver lining.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Pacers shot 37 jump shots tonight, and 29 of them were considered open.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good jump shooting team, a really good jump shooting team tonight, those didn't fall.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you ask yourself if we shoot a little bit better, we're in this game, should we be panicking?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because we don't believe that we're gonna shoot this bad again as the playoffs.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen teams have multiple games where they shoot this bad, and that is a shot in the foot.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's raps if you do that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have to talk about my boy Tyrese Hallibur.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because he was not aggressive at all.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: There should never be a game.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just double check this.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just double check this.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: There should never be a game where Andrew Nimhard attempts one less shot than you, where TJ McConnell attempts six more shots than you in 20 less minutes.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: There should never be a game.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where Aaron E.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Smith, okay, Aaron E.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Smith attempted more shots than you're not that crazy of a thing because he's a good shot taker and maker.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But as the guy, as the all NBA caliber player, the best player on the team, we cannot go into a playoff game and take seven shots.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the first playoff game of his entire life.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe this is the Tyrese Halliburton Will getting game two through however long this series lasts.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in a game one, that was one that you could have taken because of the advantage you had of not having Giannis, we wanted, I wanted him to be more aggressive.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the entirety of this offense is really revolving around Tyrese Halliburton finding his teammates and getting open looks.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again, as I just read you the stats, they did that.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: They got open look after open look after open open look and just missed them all.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: But if if you are the guy you are, and I know how good Tyrese Halliburton is and can be after watching him for the last couple seasons, um, and and then from the draft and on.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: When your teammates miss the sixth straight shot as the guy, it's just normal for the guy to be like, okay, hold on, I got it.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let me settle some things down and me take and make a tough shot or a big shot or get to the basket.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: There were plenty of times where I didn't, I wanted to see him turn that corner on the pick and roll, it just didn't happen.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of the best passing players in all of basketball, but the greatest passers that we know can also flip it on when you need to.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jokic is the greatest passer in basketball.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know what he did to the Lakers?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: He flipped it on.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Luca Doggers, amazing passer.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: He they flip it on tonight.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he can turn it on.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Paul, one of the greatest passers of all time, can turn it on.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: That mid-range jump shot that Chris Paul patented was the best shot you can get in basketball for like a four-year stretch.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not anymore.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Lord knows not anymore.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the greatest passers also know when it's my time.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's my time, especially when we're losing this game.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because Pascal again gave you everything you could have imagined.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: 36 of them things.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a beautiful game from Pascal.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: The other struggle.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when you have that, you have that.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what else is in my notes here?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um Halley turn on them, Swiss.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the Rick Carlisle rotation thing.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um Rick Carlisle is a is a is a good coach.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Great coach, maybe a stretch.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way he should be running a five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven-man rotation in the playoff game.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not in game one.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hell never.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Unless you got blown out where you were pulling your starters with five minutes ago.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: An 11-man rotation is nasty.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's specifically nasty when part of your rotation sees it that your two best players, Pascal Sakam and Tyrese Halliburn, have time, you have times where neither of them are in the lineup.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: That boggled my mind.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it happened in the regular season.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hell, that happens for a lot of teams in the regular season.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the best teams, the teams that are competing to win championships, are not gonna have where they're two best players on the bench at the same time.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: You need to stagger these minutes.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: It happened in the first half for I I I I timed it myself.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: One minute and 48 seconds.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ain't that time span?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Bucs went on a 10-2 run.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's not very good.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're already playing catch up, you were already down early.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now you give up a 10-2 run because you don't have Tyrese or Pascal Siakam on the court.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to stagger because it's not like you have a Malik Monk.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have Manu Ginobili, you don't have a great six man to come in.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And granted, TJ McConnell has been phenomenal for the last three months.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to take that away from him, but he's not Manu.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's not, he's not Malik Monk.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's not the guy that you want to take over a game for a four-minute stretch.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have that.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So instead, it has to be Tyrese by himself, or it has to be Pascal by himself.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in the second half, I don't remember it happening at all.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: But in that first half, that 10-2 run was enough for me to notice, and it just couldn't, it couldn't happen.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I thought they did a good job contesting shots throughout the entirety of the game.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Damian Lillard was just on a burner.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And again, they have tough shot takers and tough shot makers.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a series that Malik Beasley said, hell, when we see them in the playoffs, he said this in January, by the way.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: When we see them in the playoffs, we're gonna bust their ass.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in game one, they did exactly that without Giannis.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So wake up call for the Indiana Pacers and see how they retaliate.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Next game we got is Clippers versus Cavs.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the Clippers have no Kawhi Leonard and they win.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've seen conflicting reports, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen conflicting reports.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I got into not an argument, but a disagreement on my other show numbers on the board.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in this one, um, a week ago, Tyron Lou was asked about the status of Kawhi Leonard.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what he said was basically, I don't know.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: I posed the question: could this be him playing chess?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because even if he knows that Kawhi Leonard's not playing, why should I tell the media that so we have it, so that Jason Kidd can just make one game plan, which is how do we defend without Kawhi Leonard, but leave the door open so that we have Jason Kidd and his staff do a little bit more work and so on and so forth.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Luca Dante's after this game came up to the podium and said, Hell, we only prepared for the Kawhi Linner was playing.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then Jason Kidd came up to the podium and said, Hell, we we prepare both ways.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it was.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: But they did not look prepared at all.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we saw the greatest ISO player of my lifetime, of our generation, maybe of ever, in James Harden, dominate a playoff game.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of memes going around.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like if when your best player is down, there's no better player to have on your team than James Harden.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because over the last couple of years, of course, with Jordan B, was out, he had that 40-point game and so on and so forth.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then today, um, his final stat line ended up being uh 28-8 and two rebounds.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: But he was phenomenal in the pick and roll with Zubac, which is a great arc for Zoo.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we're only talking game one who knows how the rest of the series is gonna go.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a great arc for Zoo because three years ago when they played against each other, Luka Donchis tormented that man.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: He had to be sit, he had to sit down next to Coach because he could not hold his own against Luca.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not a lot of people can, but I thought that Zubotch was as dominant as he could possibly be on both sides of the floor.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where early in this game, the James Harden Zoo combination was looking Shaq Kobe-esque.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was looking um, um, I'm trying to think of other pick and roll duos that might have been ridiculous.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was looking phenomenal.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no, there's not a big gap between the Clippers bigs versus the Mavs big.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hell, you can argue that you would take the Cavs or the Mavs bigs over the Clippers big, but in this one, the Clippers bigs dominated.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that, a lot of that, is just having a guy like James Harden to set the table.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's been talked about before how Zoo and James, when James first got there, spent hours together after practices to make sure that James knew exactly where to throw it to Zoo, where Zoo felt comfortable catching and so on and so forth.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: In this game, we saw a lot of different coverages for uh James Harden, but I know one that he loved a lot is when Maxi Kleber came on that floor.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: They were playing drop after drop after drop, and James was like, You just gonna give me the open shot?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, back.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if they didn't get the open shot, it was back James Harden.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a vintage James Harden game, and that's great because in the last month and a half of the season, he was averaging 15 points per game on bad shooting splits.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very big win for the for the Clippers.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Many people pick the calves, me included.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, on the Mavs, I keep saying the calves.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Mavs, me included.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: But this one, whew, you gotta feel great about if you are the Clippers.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have to feel great about.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And my favorite thing about all this is not just James Harden in the pick and roll.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not just the bank shot three that Paul George hit, or Amir Coffee stepping in and hitting a few shots early in this game.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite thing about this from the Clippers' perspective is that anytime you saw that the Mavericks trying to get back into this game, Tyran Lu called a timeout and got a bucket after the timeout, an out of timeout bucket, time and time again.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is how you play your timeouts, other coaches.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not thinking of anyone particularly.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's how you play it.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my the opposing team is starting to get some momentum and get back in this game.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's a seven on run timeout.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go run one of our sidelines out of the bounds to get an easy look.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it happened.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the times they they missed, but I I counted three of them that went in.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And like that, you cannot ask for a better coaching uh situation from them.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: In this one, obviously, that second quarter is the one that everybody's gonna talk about.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Second quarter, eight total points for the Dallas Mavericks.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: They also generated a bunch of open looks that just did not fall.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Daniel Gaffer got into foul trouble very early, and it was Gigi's from that point on.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think he ended up tweaking his ankle, too, if I'm not mistaken.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but either way, I need to see more Josh Green.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Josh Green in this one was good in the nine minutes that he played.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't watch Tim Hardaway Jr.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: get feasted on by Paul George or James Harden for a seven-game series, bro.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have to cut it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that his role on this team is to be a microwave, hit some shots occasionally, but if he's giving everything up on the defensive side of the ball, you just gotta let Josh Green run.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta let him run.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Luka Doncic and company, or I'm sorry, um uh uh Kyrie Irvin was awful in that first half, got it together with a perfect third quarter and everything.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: But this was a rough one.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is a rough one if you're a Mavs fan because without Kawhi Leonard, and again, we don't know if Kawhi will be back for game two, game three, hill, we don't know if he'll be back at all in this series.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: But this is one of the more on that you think that you should go in there, you should win in Staples.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, the fans were showing out in that.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was delighted to hear all the Clippers fans um because I've been to a few Clippers games, and one of them being the playoff game, and it I don't want to say it was 50-50 split, but it definitely felt more like more away fans than it should.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: More Clippers fans in totality, but more away fans than it should.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: But this one was like all Clippers all the time, and I love that the atmosphere was great.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is a huge, huge win for those guys.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Next game, we got Cavs versus Magic.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to Evan Mobley, man.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Evan Mobley hit two threes in the first quarter.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I almost fell out my chair.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Almost fell out my chair because the whole game plan, one of the game plans for the Orlando Magic is let that man shoot, leave him open, clog that paint, get all through all the passing lanes and make sure that Don From Mitchell doesn't get ahead of scene to the basket.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they were doing that.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if Evan Mobley's hitting shots like this again, since February, he's been shooting 40-something percent, not a high value, but 40-something percent, he hit two in the first half, the first quarter, and that kind of changed a lot.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It changed so much that in this game, Evan Mobley and Jared Allen played 23 minutes together.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is six more minutes than average, because usually they stagger, like most good coaches do, they stagger to better players.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons why uh JB has been staggering is because, well, sometimes the offense, especially late in the games, where you have these two bigs that aren't spacers, it makes it more difficult for Donovan, it makes it more difficult for Garland.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if Evan's hitting the shots, you feel comfortable with them playing 23 minutes together.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And now, if he's hitting the shots, that front court is one of the best defensive front courts in basketball.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I and you saw that.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: The defense showed up and showed out.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, granted, I've said this, I think, in every single one of these series I've talked about, the magic generated open looks, but that was by design.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: When you are the 24th ranked three-point shooting team in basketball, yeah, hell yeah, we're gonna let you shoot.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Time and time again.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what happened to Franz Wagner's jumper.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: I thought earlier in the season, like he's gonna get it together.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: He hasn't.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: He hasn't.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um part of Orlando missing um part of them, their offense being so bad, it's just they missed every single three that they put up.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Their half-court offense was atrocious.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was the worst half-court offense of the playoffs so far.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's saying something because that Knicks did you see the Knicks in the half-court last night?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was tough.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I saw a stat after this game, and it made me go back and re-watch the majority of it.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Palo Ben Caro's pick and rolls generated zero points.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not on a pass, not on a bucket, zero points.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is an insane number considering the volume of them.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it felt fake.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I rewatched it, and that's a real number.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was a real number.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Donovan Mitchu had a great game, one, and neither of these two teams shot well.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason I took the Cavs in the series because I thought their offensive upside was just higher.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was very interesting to see uh John Isaac starting.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: He had started the last two games of the season, but I thought because the Cavaliers are a bigger team that they would go big as well, they decided not to, and that kind of limited the amount of switching that they had to do defensively, which I kind of liked a little bit.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, when you miss every single shot you shoot, you're gonna lose the basketball game.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Knicks versus 76er next.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: I loved, I mentioned earlier about the the chess match.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I love the way the Knicks guarded Jalen Brunson in this game.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, the the 76ers guarded Jalen Brunson.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: They made everything that he did extremely, extremely tough.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in this game, you saw Josh Hart hit three threes in the last six-ish minutes.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the scheme, the game plan for the 76ers is we'll we'll live with that.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Josh Hart's a 31% three-point shooter.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Last night, they lost that game, but I bet they didn't held hold their heads low because they forced the Knicks to basically take the shots they wanted late in the game.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is a make a men's league, and Josh Hart put on a masterclass in the last six minutes because he was struggling before that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: But those are the shots that the 76ers were prepared to give up.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want Jalen Brunson to get his footwork, get to that mid-range area.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to let him get to the basket.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to let him get an open three-pointer.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if that means that the others have to shoot, so be it.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: It reminded me so much of um in the um the Knicks versus Hawks series a few years back.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: That was a year that R.J.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Barrett shot 41% from three in the regular season.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: But what happened in the postseason?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: No team guarded him.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, this is the fakest 41% I've ever seen.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if RJ Barrett's hitting four threes, five threes, and we lose, so be it.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: And though, again, uh Josh Hart shot 31% from three, it's a 10% difference, they were completely okay with giving it up.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Josh Hart hit four threes in this game.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: He hasn't hit four threes in the game in months.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Again, if you're a 76ers guy, you probably feel okay, especially considering a lot of a big run that the Knicks went on was after Jordan B self-libed to himself and looked like he tore his knee again.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: The scariest thing, man.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm lit, I'm watching this game with my boy Pierre.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Pierre is a diehard Knicks fan.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And even he was like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because nobody wants to see an injury.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to see an injury.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're rooting against that team, you don't want to see an injury.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: But JoJo powered through it, and I thought he was dominant in this game on both sides of the floor.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a Twitter thread that I saw, and I wish I would have linked it so I could give the credit, but part of it was breaking down the defensive scheme on this uh in the second half.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And part of it might have been because Joel and B was injured and didn't want him, we didn't want him going through a lot of different actions.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the way they were kind of playing their pick and roll is that if Joel and B's guy was the one screening, someone else from the opposite of the strong side came over to take over the pick and roll for him, and Joel and B just filled the role.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was very, very interesting.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Where it's like Kelly Ubre is the guy guarding the pick and roll instead of Joel and B.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it might have been just because we didn't want to see Joel and B moving so much, or maybe that was just where they found most of their success.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it worked really well, except for eventually we saw Tom Thibodeau say, okay, so they're helping off the weak side.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let's put our good shooters on the strong side.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, because the Joe OJ Ananobi's on the weak side, then he put Oji Anobi on the strong side, and it was an open three for OG, and he hit it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it was again just a chess match back and back again.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was perfect.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Miles McBride cannot go this segment without mentioning Miles McBride and uh Mitchell Robinson because they both were phenomenal.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a second quarter masterclass.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think Miles McBride had 13 points in that second quarter alone off the bench, and that's just great for a guy that doesn't have many uh many minutes in the playoffs.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: The injury scare scares me, though.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I will say it again.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I love Jordan Bede, love watching him play.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to see him go down.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that was such a ferocious play that he went down on.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was over with.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And luckily, again, he came back, played through it.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, when you think about him having to do this for a seven-game series, and if they want to go win that championship, a couple more seven-game series, not feeling great about it.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Lakers versus Knight is probably the one I should have opened up with, but it is what it is.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: LeBron James' first half was a master class.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, offensively, making the right play, hitting the shots.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of progression we've seen in LeBron James' jump shooting again, we're talking about year 21, it's not a surprise to anybody.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's now a plus jump shooter.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, I listened to Mind the Game episode one when it first came out, or episode two, and LeBron was kind of talking about how envious he was of certain people like JJ Reddick, who knew how to shoot a basketball, um, how they had consistency in their jump shot, and how he used to lean, and then his guide hand helped too much, and it was no fluidity.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now he's just like really a good jump shooter.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the first eight, nine years of his career, 10 years of his career, he couldn't hit a jumper.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And now he's hitting multiple.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's just taking them.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: LeBron and Anthony Davis are both phenomenal in this one.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: LeBron in the second half, yeah, a lot rougher than the first half.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing that's scary about the Nuggets is LeBron and A.D., you could argue, had better games collectively, collectively.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Jokic was an absolute monster, but collectively you can argue that those two players on the Lakers had a better or equal game to the best two players on the Nuggets, and it didn't matter.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Would they go on one run to make it look interesting?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just saw the Nuggets go on a anytime they got a live ball uh rebound, it was a bucket, time and time again.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm very curious to see what happens with D'Angelo Russell.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: One of my X factors of this was him because last year in the playoffs, he couldn't play.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: He played 23 minutes per game.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: He averaged six points, he shot 20% from three.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was awful, right?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: He had to sit next to coach, Darwin Ham.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a redemption because right now D'Angelo Russell is like their third most important player if they're gonna go on a run.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: But in game number one, he was bad.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And not just missing shots bad, because I am a firm believer that you can have a good game if you're missing shots.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're missing shots and you well saw or missing rotations, that's too many misses.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: There are a few times where D'Angelo Russell was completely lost, and that led to a KCP open look.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or it led to a KCP open look where somebody else closed out on the KCP slit and won more.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's just too much.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Gabe Vincent was a guy that I mentioned in my preview.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be curious to see how much he plays because in the playing tournament, he was great in the amount of minutes he got.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if we see more Gabe Vincent in game number two, because they could desperately need him.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Anthony Davis, I thought he settled for way too many threes in the second half.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you him shooting 0 for 4 for 3, I'm like, whoa, what's going on?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I say that is because when you go against the different nuggets, every single one of these possessions matter because they're a low turnover, great offensive team in the half court.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: They had four turnovers tonight, or something.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was four turnovers.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not Googling, but four-ish turnovers.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Anthony Davis three-point shot is one that will be there.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: This I have the same complaint about Draymond Green.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the Draymond Green shot the three-point ball well this season, so maybe previous years, Draymond.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if Draymond is taking a three-point shot with 14 or more seconds on the shot clock, that is a bad possession.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because we know that same exact shot will be there at four seconds on the clock, if three seconds are on the clock.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So let's run into some other stuff to see if we have a better shot.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: And three of the four Anthony Davis three-point shots came with 15 or more seconds left on the shot clock.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's too much.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: One of them, I'm giving them some wiggle room.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was one minute left, and they were down by a certain amount of points.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: They just need to get three-point shots up.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: But three of the four three-pointers he took will be there.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're not closing out on that.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Even one of them was like, maybe I want to give him a little bit of wiggle room there, too, because one of them he got, and there was an opportunity to one more to D'Angelo Russell, but he took it himself.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because hey, D'Angelo Russell went hitting shots either.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I would like to see Anthony Davis take less three-pointers, um, especially if they're early in the shot clock.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know Darwin Hamm and him have been trying to get him to take more threes, but I went through it.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Four or three-point attempts is the most he's had in the half all season long.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: You pick right now to shoot four or three pointers and miss all of them in the first game of the playoffs against the best team of basketball?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like that.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like that.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but this just shows how much better the Nuggets are than their competition because I thought the Lakers played a good game, but the Nuggets played a great one.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that was without Jamal Murray being a supernova version of himself.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Next series you want to talk about is Celtics versus E.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: One of the series, the least watched game of the day for me.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that I like the most about it, especially early on, was the patience that Jason Tatum played with.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of it was just him finding the right play or finding the right player for an open shot.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually they went to that zone in the second quarter and Sam Hauser shot them out of it.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's just not that the Celtics are a team that will happily let you play a zone against them.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I'm sure if you played the zone again in game number three, they might miss more shots than they make.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: But Sam Hauser and those guys know how to shoot, man.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: They made a lot of three-point shots today.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, this is a Celtics win of a series.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to FanDuel Sportsbook, they are minus 50,000 to win the series.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: You look at the other series, it's like the team that won game number one is like minus 154.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, the Celtics are minus 50,000.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you put$10 down and the Celtics win the series, you get two pennies back.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's how good the Celtics are and how beat up the Heat are, slash how weird that offense can really be.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um Jame Haquez.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jame Haquez was phenomenal.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, love to see him hoop in.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think if there's any silver line to all of this, because again, I think the Miami Heat are losing this in maybe five.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't I don't have I don't have a lot of hope for what I've been seeing from them over the last three games.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um the silver line, like I said, Jame Hawkes getting playoff for Spearance and Nikoli Jovich again can continues to surprise me over the last month or so of the NBA season and the postseason.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of cool.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Tyler Hero is probably gonna struggle for the majority of the series.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I say that is because the thing, the way that I've seen people guard Tyler Hero very well is to have defenders that can bump him on his movements.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that happened a ton today.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Happened a ton in that first game versus the 76ers.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: They have people that are just willing to put a little shoulder into him, get a little bit more body-to-body contact, and that drives him off the spots and then makes his shots if infinitely more difficult.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I hate it the fact that Jason Tatum played off uh 12 minutes in the fourth quarter.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: It could have ended really bad.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Caleb Martin thing could have ended really, really bad.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And luckily he got up, he popped up immediately, and he was a real professional about all of it, but that could have been really, really bad.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and as somebody who's followed a team with a coach that played his star player more minutes than he should, and you're trying to go in a deep run, I would just hope that Joe Mazzula decides not to do that in the future.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that Delon Wright hit four threes in the fourth quarter and tried to make it interesting.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: They could have survived.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I saw what Sam Howard was doing.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: They could have survived.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and hopefully you want to rest Tatum a little bit more for the next game.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: The last series, again, as I mentioned, I missed a bulk of this one.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't have a ton to say about Pelicans versus Nuggets other than it was an ugly playoff game.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw people on Twitter complaining.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what is going on?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: You get we get complaints about the scoring be too high, too many fouls, so on.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then we get a game like this: a grinded out game with the youngest one seed in NBA history, and then a team that is as physical as hell, and it ends up being sub-100 scores on both sides, and y'all are complaining?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Cut it out, man.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: This was a great game.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was a few times in this one.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all know I got all the Trey Murphy the third stock imaginable where he looked phenomenal.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: But there was like two shots in this one where he heat checked himself from like the logo late in the game.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Trey, it's gotta be a better look than that.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the physicality really, really played his part.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: In this game, you saw 18 offensive rebounds from the Pelicans.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in that, um, like five of those happened on one possession late in the game, and they did not even score.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see, second chance points.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't have the stat in front of me.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder how many second chance points that led to.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was the biggest question, one of the biggest question marks about OKC in their run.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Valentunas was bruising, bruising, bruising chess chet all day long.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was one of the determinant factors of this being really, really close.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: I thought the defense that Herb Jones played on Shea throughout the course of this gang was phenomenal.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, Shea hit that big and one late in it, um, but he was struggling until that point.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Chet huge block on Larry Nance was just cool to see.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of like the fact that um Willie Green is so okay with telling his better players to sit the hell down because you don't got it tonight.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the most impactful things if you're on this team and you are Dyson Daniels or you're Najee Marshall or you're Jose Alvarado, that you don't feel like no matter what I do, I'm not gonna play over this guy.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Willie Green is like, no, who is the best team, the best five that can help us win this game?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he'll he'll go with that one.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: In this last possession, Kasen Wallace ended up having the poke away on CJ, and CJ still got a very good look out of it, but ultimately the OKC Thunder win.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Kasen, one of my guys, he had a no-dip three-pointer in this one.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Chef's kiss, y'all know that's one of my favorite things in basketball.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: A funny thing is Jalen Williams, um not J Dub, but the other Jalen Williams, hit a three, and then the broadcast showed J Dub's stats and added three points as if J Dub hit the shot and they like immediately cut it down because, like, oh no, that's the other Jalen Williams.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the Jalen Williams that put up 19 today.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but either way, um, I would have to re-watch this first three quarters, I would say, to have any real takeaways to kind of see what the Pelicans play differently.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was up for grabs for them.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's they let it slip through their fingers, specifically on that play where Larry Nance missed that dunk, and then again, they got like four or five offensive rebounds on one play and was not able to capitalize at all.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that that was like the nail in the coffin.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm excited for game two.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: That game one was a lot better than I anticipated.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Both teams play phenomenal defense.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they were saying on the broadcast, this was the only matchup of the first round where both teams were top five or top ten in offense and defense.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of fun.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that is uh every single playoff series so far.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate everybody tuning in, man.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And let me know what you think.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: If your team is in the playoffs, you're lucky.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, let me know in the comment section are you worried about game number one that they play well?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Some things that you enjoy, some things you didn't enjoy.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And for the other people that's sitting at home with your favorite team not in the playoffs, let's just have some fun and watch this hoops and not be too critical with the players that don't play well.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that too much to ask?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Leave a like, subscribe, and I'll see y'all soon.