The 25 Most Intriguing NBA Playoff Guys With Zach Lowe
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The NFL draft is in four weeks. Don't forget to listen to the Todd McShay show or subscribe to his newsletter because he has some great, great, great draft stuff. Check it out. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Put up a new Rewatchables last night. It was Good Will Hunting, the episode that we did live in Boston last Thursday at House of Blues.

So much fun. You can watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. Prestige TV pod. I did White Lotus episode seven recap for that. And that is on the Ringer dash TV YouTube channel as well as a video podcast on Spotify. We've been putting a ton of video pods up on Spotify, including

Today's guest, Zach Lowe, we announced late Sunday night that he is going to be joining The Ringer and Spotify. He launched the Zach Lowe Show, which you can subscribe to on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It's going to be a video podcast twice a week, Mondays, Thursdays, maybe a couple other days.

stunt special pods episodes during the course of the playoffs. Who knows? Writing as TBD. We talked about that when he comes on here in a little bit. We want to do a big gimmick for Zach's return pod. He has not done a podcast since I think beginning of October, something like that. So he had a lot of takes to get off and I had a blast. We went for two hours. It's super fun. Zach Lowe is back. He's here. Coming up first, our friends from ProJab.

All right. My old friend, Zach Lowe is here. He is joining the ringer and Spotify. We're back, baby. Uh, we launched the podcast that is called the Zach Lowe show. It's going to be Monday next week. There's a YouTube channel. That's already up.

And you're going to be doing a bunch of stuff for us. And I couldn't be more excited about it. This is a great week. Great to see you. It's good to see you too. And yeah, new name, new show, new graphics, new everything. And

I've been paying attention to the NBA season as I normally would have, even though I didn't have a job. I've been watching probably even more than usual because I've had no other work to do. I've been meeting people in the city when they've come in and I've traveled to some places. So I've kept my finger on the pulse in preparation for a potential in-season return, which is now imminent.

Yeah, I was, I was worried you might just sit out the whole year and that, and we wouldn't get you for the awards, the playoffs, anything. But I think to me, the catalyst was the Luca trade. That was the moment where you were like, Oh my God, I need a platform. Give me a platform right now. So I was asleep.

When that happened because I don't have a job. And so I didn't have to be up at 1230 in the morning or 1215 in the morning. I woke up the next day and obviously my phone is just, there's a million notifications that I didn't even look at. I was like, I guess Jimmy Butler got traded overnight. I guess that finally happened. And then like eight more minutes passed and I looked, I was like, Oh my God. And then I still, I still, I mean, we're going to talk about the Lakers a lot. And I watched their game against the Rockets last night. One of my buddies, Nathan is a huge Rockets fan. I went over and watched with him and we're,

almost two months out and I'm like, I just can't even believe that he's on their team. And having been to a Lakers game recently, like they can't even believe that he's on their team. It's insane. No. And it's, I feel the same way. Every time I watch them, there's three or four moments where I just kind of step out of the watching experience and go, how did this happen? How did we let this happen? How did we let this happen to the Lakers? What were some of the other big things that

you know, you were gone for four fifths of the season. What were some of the other stuff you wished? Oh man, I wish I had a column or, oh man, I wish I had a podcast. I would love to chime in on this. What were some of the big stories? Well, let's see. I got laid off on a Wednesday. I flew back on a Thursday. I had several friends meet me at my house along with my wife with alcohol. And, uh,

Two or three drinks into that night, Carl Anthony Towns got traded to the Knicks in what I would rate as like a top 10 most interesting trade that has happened in the 15 plus years I've covered the NBA. And we were just laughing at the fortune of like what timing, like you don't see a lot of trades of that magnitude right before the season starts. So that was one just, I mean, the all time best.

We'll never have a perfect storm of disaster seasons like we've had in Phoenix, Philadelphia and Dallas. Like it's just incomprehensible how badly all of those things have gone and all in totally different ways. Some self-inflicted, others not. And I just think I'm just looking at the standings to jog my memory. I mean, the excellence of.

the Cavs and the Thunder would have been really fun to talk about all year. Um, and I, I still, you know, some, some outlets, including Spotify ringer accepted. I still don't think those teams have been talked enough about enough. I mean, the Thunder are 63 and 12 with like the greatest net rating in the history of basketball. Um,

And I just, you know, so many interesting storylines like, oh, here comes the Chet-Hartenstein combination. How's that going to work? How's Caruso fitting in off the bench? The Cavs and Kenny Atkinson reworking their offense and Donovan Mitchell being sold on a lesser role. And you and me both.

We're going to be wrong a lot. One of the things we've both been right on is amid all the, maybe Evan Mobley is a bit overhyped. Maybe he's like, he's like, you know, whoever bad big man 2.0, I won't name any names. We were like, no, we're keeping the stock. This guy's going to be awesome. And he's been awesome. And he's been awesome.

not in the way that people necessarily like the low hanging fruit with him was, well, he's just got to shoot a lot of threes and make more threes. And the Cavs were like, you can shoot some more threes and it would be helpful. But how about we redesign our offense, enable you as a passer,

And how about you just beat the hell out of people inside and get super aggressive and physical? And it's really worked. And I just, those things jump out. Sorry, you asked an open-ended question. I haven't talked into a microphone in a long time. I got a lot of takes. There was a lot of stuff to work with there. No, I think Mobley and Tatum are in the finals of...

Oh, I didn't realize you were kind of a bully deep down. Both of those guys, I think, have asserted themselves in ways that we always wondered, is it in there? And Tatum, who's been awesome, right? He's been one of the top three or four players in the league for most of the decade, top five, whatever rankings you want to do, but he's in there. He's first team all NBA multiple times. There was that small piece of like,

Does he, does he really want to stick it to the other team? Does he want to eviscerate the guy he's going against? Does he want to send a message? Does he want to bully somebody? Does he want to take offense to how he's being defended? And I don't know whether it was, you know, not winning the awards during the, during the championship season last year, what happened in the Olympics or just age, the fact that he's 27. But I, I personally see

A little bit of an edge to him that I don't think was there last year. And I think it's really helped the Celtics team. You look at like, I think they're 15 and one in their last 16 playing for nothing. They're the two seed. They've been the two seed forever, but there's an edge to them now. And you, they go on the road. I feel like they're, they have that little swagger that I think you need on a back-to-back team. I think he's a big reason for it. And then Moby, same thing. Like just seems like he's not a pushover anymore. Anybody else in that group with those two that,

dug down and found something that you were surprised by? As a team or as individual players? Individuals. You're springing this one on me as you do. I know. Well, you knew I was going to do that. I guess Reeves would be another one, right? That had a little more in there than maybe we were expecting. Yeah, I don't want to spoil our coming talk. Our gimmick. Reeves is going to make an all-star team at some point, if not multiple all-star teams. Reeves is very, very good.

I've been impressed until, you know, it's been a little rocky the last couple of weeks, but I liked at least offensively how cat has attacked his season in New York. Yeah.

Yeah. I was a Cade stockholder. I actually think Cade's level of improvement has been maybe a little overblown, but he's been awesome and he's probably going to make an all NBA team this year. That's been fun to watch. And I know that you are just, I've listened enough to know that you just enjoy the fact that the Pistons want to fight everybody every night and including a potentially very dangerous one in Minnesota the other night involving all the usual, like round up the usual suspects. And here we are. So those are...

Those are some. The fight in Brooklyn Nets were fun for a minute. The Clippers. We're going to talk about the Clippers. If you had told me the Clippers are going to be 43-32 in this four-team morass for 5-8 with Kawhi having played less than half the season and look on a lot of nights like, oh, is this a... Do I got to get back into this again? Am I going to fall for the... Not fall for it, but...

I don't see Ty Lue's name coming up a lot in coach of the year. And, and I think that he at least should be like in the, in the third place, second place talk. Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, when I went with that Clipper OKC game last week and I was watching the intensity and the physicality of it, and it kind of helped frame where my brain was for the playoffs because I,

I feel like whatever competitiveness I was watching that game and how high level it was. So I left the game and I'm driving home and I'm like, how many teams could actually get to that?

And it's interesting that the Clippers are one of the teams, right? We don't know what's going to happen with the West. Like Memphis is still in the middle of the pack and the playoff thing, but they might be the eighth seed by the time we actually finish the season. There's going to be, it's going to be roulette left and right. But I see a team like Minnesota and I think like fundamentally they could get to what I watched in that game, right? Intensity, competitiveness, defense, switching, physicality.

I think the Warriors might be able to get there as weird as that sounds with how late they've gotten in the season. The question for me is the Lakers because they're big. And we went to the Laker game together last week. They're missing a rim protector. LeBron has to rebound, I think, a little more than maybe he's ever had as a burden in his career. And same for Luka. Like they're going to have to patch some stuff together.

but ultimately it's a pretty physical team and kind of a different way. Do you think they have that in them that when we're talking about intensity, competitiveness, the defense, the banging, we saw it last night. It seems like they do, but I'm a little suspicious just because of how much of the load is on a 40 year old LeBron. I think that's fair. They're actually, they've actually been outscored with LeBron Luca and Reeves all on the floor together. And yet by the, and that's mostly because of defense, but,

I think all those guys are bought in to the right kind of style on offense. I've talked to some of their coaches about it. They're like very, very excited by some of the off ball stuff, by some of the motion that those guys have bought into. And yeah,

I do. I do. I mean, three to four series is going to be hard for a team with a 40 year old. And once you get by the first round, it's every other day, relentlessly the whole way. But they have a level, at least for an isolated period of time, maybe not six weeks, eight weeks, but I wouldn't count it out either. But they have a level. I'm a believer like they're.

They're a strange team because they're huge. Like they sometimes play three. They basically start three power forwards in a center. Sometimes when they take the center out, they basically replace him with another power forward. Two of the power forward size guys are two of the five greatest passers in

in recent, if not all time history of the NBA. Hachimura has been great for them. Vincent has been great in the last month. Finney Smith has been great. Their non-center lineups have been tough to deal with. And they just have those two nasty Terminator passing chess master dudes at the top of it. Like I wouldn't want to, they beat the Rockets last night and like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to play them. I would think hard about picking them over essentially the

any team but the Thunder in the playoffs. And I don't think the Thunder love that matchup either and have not loved that matchup. And by the way, you mentioned LeBron, a lot of concern about, you know, his up and down play since he came back from another injury. Yeah. A couple of games where like the double digit streak seemed to be in semi jeopardy for a hot second. Like all fair, fine. A, he's 40. B, like

Remember he guarded Jokic in the playoffs a couple of years ago and guarded him pretty well. And it was like a six or eight minute stretch. And that's like all they could ask of him. Last night, JJ Redick can go to this 40 year old dude and be like, we just need you to guard Shen Goon for maybe the entire game. Can you, can you go do it? And he's like, yeah, I'll bang, I'll bang with him the whole game. Like that's right. Deserves a lot of credit for that. Yeah. And the thing that jumped out to me, seeing them a couple of times in person recently is athletically. He doesn't. Yeah. I remember there was a moment with Carl Malone.

in the early 2000s where he still looked like Karl Malone. His hair was going, but physically he was about as imposing. But athletically, there was just some slip and you could feel it. And you could feel that when Jordan was on the Wizards. Now, granted, it's a different era. They have way better ways to stay at the top physically now. But you could see like, oh, he's losing this, he's losing that. LeBron will have these moments where it's like, this guy looks athletically as devastating as he was 10 years ago. He hit that block last night in the Houston game.

Where he was up and he read it and it was like, you know, it wasn't a chase down block, but it was half court, but he was up in the air. I was like, all right. Yeah. I think round one is going to be a little easier for them with all the breaks. Round two is where round two is the separate the men's from the men from the boys round. And that's where the teams with the bench, like Cleveland and OKC in Boston, it's such an advantage. I mean, he's playing every other day. If one to eight, if, if,

The play, if the if the seven and eight seeds come out of this group of Clippers, Minnesota Warriors, Grizzlies that are all jostling for those places and one of the Dallas Sacramento Phoenix Brigade of Losers does not like somehow sneak in to one of those spots. Yeah. Every round one series is going to be.

a battle featuring a team that you could talk yourself into winning other than maybe Memphis, the way Memphis is sliding right now, but they have an upside that's pretty high too. And by the way, can we just say before we get to it, because I don't know how much time we're going to talk about them.

How embarrassing is it that the Phoenix Suns cannot catch for 10th either the Kings, who can't beat anybody right now, or the Mavericks, who finally got some of their players back but have largely had no players, and the Suns still can't catch them? And I know you and Russo have talked about how pathetic they've looked defensively in a lot of games, how disengaged they've looked. But these teams are begging...

Begging to become these teams have been the equivalent of Eastern Conference play in teams for like a month, which is a horrible insult to levy at any Western Conference team. And the Suns are like, we still can't catch it. We can't catch it. And they've had if you kept a list that the expanded standings had a list of, wow, you just didn't care tonight games.

Other than the lottery teams and the teams that are tanking, Phoenix would easily be the number one. I mean, how many, how, speaking of that, how many, how many emails did the league send Danny Ainge before they finally had to find the jazz? One of the great parlor games of the season has been looking at the jazz box score every night and being like, all right, so who didn't play? And yesterday it was Walter Kessler, Walker Kessler, DNP returned to conditioning. Lowry Mark is Lowry market in dead.

John Collins on a beach in Mexico somewhere. Like, so embarrassing. The Jazz, they're all the Raptors have been embarrassing for the past month. Like, hey, we're just not gonna play any of our guys in the second half of any close game. The Jazz have been embarrassing the entire year. And Phoenix has somehow been more embarrassing than the Jazz relative to expectations. Yeah.

Yeah, I got a lot of takes. I haven't talked to a microphone. I haven't been able to make fun of the 26 teams would trade front. We trade places with us. Matt, it should be a statement that's going to be in Springfield one day. 26 EuroLeague teams, 2026. I think you just spent all the teams, even college G League, uh, Europe. That'd matter. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Phoenix and Philly, I think it's been a really, really crazy, weird season. But I think when you see all of these teams that are either falling apart down the stretch, throwing away second halves, resting guys or sitting guys out for the season with fake injuries like foot contusion.

Back back stiffness. We're we're we've never been better at fake injuries. This is another case for me that we should be at 70 games. Why do we need this extra month of 12 teams not giving a shit? How shocked were you when Zion got shut down for the season the other day? Like just like like was it the equivalent of the Luca trade level of shock that the Pelicans had shut down Zion for the season? I was amazed he played 30 games.

And then they had the list of all the games he's played. I mean, when you look at the Zion and Ja, that combo and that draft and how few those guys have actually been, how few times those guys have actually been available in games. Pretty incredible for how much time we spent talking about that lottery coming up, how important it was, how transformative it could be. And then...

You know, those guys could stay on the court. That's why all the talk about what happened with Taylor Jenkins, you know, what what happened with Noah LaRoche, what happened with Isalo, this this this Finnish coach that they've hired and now promoted. Why now? Why with nine games left? Well, they're sliding. They can't beat any any good teams. Their record against above 500 teams is terrible. They had expectations, blah, blah, blah.

It shouldn't be the sixth paragraph of that, that you mentioned that John Morant just plays half the games. And Brandon Clark's injury was a sneaky big blow to their team. He was a big glue guy for them, a lot of their best lineups. And like, if you take out your best, if not your, maybe your best bench player, but certainly your best backup big and your star plays half the games, like you're, yeah, you're not going to beat a lot of the above 500 teams in the Western Conference. It's going to be hard. And the vibes are, are off.

I think, you know, people have been writing about it, but I think the teams that have been interacting with them and playing them are kind of like, ah, you know, same thing with Phoenix. You could feel it early on with that Phoenix season. I think to me, the Philly thing was not surprising to me at all. I went under on them in the over-unders. I didn't like the Paul George signing. I was trying to be careful about how I framed it. I thought it was the wrong city for him. I thought it was super risky. I knew why they had to do it, but I wasn't surprised how it played out.

I was, I'm still stunned by Phoenix and you know, it's one of those things you look back and you're like, how did we get this so wrong? Why did we think like Budenholzer was going to come in and unleash this awesome offense? And it's been the opposite. Why did we misread the chemistry thing? Why did we discount role players? I still don't have an answer because if you're doing the all NBA exercises, Booker and Durant credential wise,

are kind of in the mix for a third team. And yet I don't know if I can do it because of how bad that team's been week, week to week to week. I don't have an answer. So you're watching this from, from home. Are you like, what would you have written if you could have written a son's piece in January? Well, I mean that, that the offense is just fine and fine. Is it going to be good enough? And it's not dynamic enough. It's still not dynamic enough. Um,

You know, you can go back and look at the transactions that they've made. We don't even need to get into the Durant thing, but just the Aiton, Toumani, Kamara, who's really good in Portland for Nurkic thing has turned into a disaster. And then you have to salary dump Nurkic and attach more stuff to salary dump him. And Beal just doesn't play. Like Beal still doesn't play enough games to get the offense running at full throttle. And then the defense is...

you know the bottom 10 in defense is basically all the tanking teams in phoenix and some of their bad defensive games are the mistakes the non-rotations are just suggestive of a team that doesn't care and and they have better games than that sometimes but sometimes it's like no no one no one rotated from the weak side like no one even seems angry that no one rotated from the weak side no one gives the my bad for not rotating from the weak side just like all right on to the next one

Yeah, if you're going one to 10, how close-knit does a team look when you're watching them in person? And 10 would be any team that Tim Duncan was on where he had his arm around every single player in his team during every timeout and every foul stoppage. And that was just the feel-good, we love each other kind of era. That was one of the reasons I'll defend Tim Duncan to the death. His team's always had...

that tightness, that closeness. You could see it when you went to the games and the Suns were like a one and a half or two. I was shocked. They just looked like vessels passing in the night. Timeouts, nobody talking, people shooting foul shots, just five guys standing in different things, like all the check marks of things you don't want. And I think you and I are

I hate using the word defenders, but I think we've been pretty pro KD and his legacy and how great he's been over the last almost two decades. It gets tough when you look at these last few years. I think it's going to become part of how people remember him, that he was on just a series of unhappy teams. He still has a chance to fix it. Maybe this summer, wherever he goes, maybe with after his max count. He's already talked about how he'll take a minimum contract to end his career on a good team.

But it's not nothing. This has been four years of, hmm, what's wrong with KD's team? I don't want to do the Durant thing now, the Durant what-if thing. But I will say that I have long been so fascinated with Durant that after the Warriors won their second championship and it was largely anticlimactic, the only piece I could think of to write the headline was, what does Kevin Durant want? And it was a lot about how he had been unfulfilled by winning the first championship.

And I talked to him and I talked to tons of people who had been around him. And, you know, literally three nights ago, watching an NBA game with a buddy asking me, he was asking me about Kevin Durant. And I said, man, I don't really want to write a book. It's one of the things I thought about during this time, not the right time for me, but boy, would I love to write the Kevin Durant book? Like I just think his career and the fork in the road of the 2016 off season and the reverse engineering, you could do the what ifs, all the paths not taken, um,

is just endlessly going to be fascinating because talent wise and statistics wise, there's like no question this guy is one of the 10 to 12 best players that has ever played. And there's been nobody like him ever stylistically. And anyway, that's it. No more, no more KD unless we talk about where he's going to get traded. I think it's fair to, even though LeBron has the most points ever,

I think KD has a legitimate argument for best scoring forward in the history of the league. When you look at like the peak years he had, plus the totality of all the seasons, things like that. You mentioned all the what ifs though, just one thing and then we'll move on. The Seattle thing I think is a bigger what if than 2016. If that team just stays in Seattle,

And that was, I think that should have been a top seven or eight market just from an owner spending money. They had all this money moving in from the tech world that was already there and that was going to keep getting bigger. And I just think there's this alternate universe where Howard Schultz doesn't sell.

The Sonics stay there and Durant's still in Seattle. And he's the most beloved athlete in the history of the city. Like that's other, or at least since Ken Griffey, but he's in the running for most beloved Seattle athlete ever. And I really think that's a parallel universe that could exist. He never leaves that team grows together. They spend money, they win titles, and we're discussing them in a completely different way. And I think that's real. Let me,

I live about as far from Seattle as possible in the NBA market. Right. The Sonics have not existed for what, 17 years, 18 years now? Yeah, 2008. I still have a Sonics conversation with somebody in New York or Connecticut.

every other week, every month. I see kids who have never, were not alive when the Sonics existed, wearing the green and yellow, like just throwback stuff that their parents got. The Sonics matters so much to so many people and something about that color scheme, the Peyton Kemp teams,

the frenetic way they played has stuck in the collective memory and even like outlasted the generation of fans who were there. And obviously we all agree, like they need to come back in Seattle. The supersonics need to exist again. Well, it's going to happen, especially after the Celtics got 6 billion plus, which was the number Adams over wanted the whole time. I talked about it last summer. They wanted to get to six. Now they can get six for the two expansion teams.

I'm not positive who the two teams are going to be. I think it's 100% Vegas and 90% Seattle. We'll see. But I'm really hoping in Seattle, and if it's not one of the expansion teams, I think there's a couple teams that could potentially be

franchise movers. We're going to take a break and come back and play. We had to do a gimmick on your return to the pod. Let's go. The Bill Simmons podcast is presented by FanDuel. If you're in need of a midweek boost, FanDuel is America's number one sports book, and they have you covered with an NBA hump day parlay profit boost. Every Wednesday, you get a parlay profit boost on everything from spreads to over-unders, even player props. We have some good games

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So it's tough to crown the best play in football history. No one can deny the magic when the right two players work together to pull off the unexpected. I hate admitting this and I was at the game and it almost broke my heart and I'm still bummed out about it. But the helmet catch, I think has to be considered the best play in football history. The Patriots tried to go 19 and 0. The Giants, Eli's running around. There's nine holding penalties on the play. They don't call any of them. Chucks it up into the middle of the field.

And David Tyree jumps up, makes a catch that probably would have been the most incredible catch of the year anyway, because he catches the ball against his helmet and it somehow doesn't get dislodged when he lands. Two guys are on him, keeps the drive going. The crowd made a sound that I can't even describe. And I think that's probably the craziest play in football history. Offensively, defensively, you go Malcolm Butler in the Super Bowl against the

against Seattle, I think would be the leading contender for that. But you know what else is better together? The David Tyree and Eli Manning. I can't believe I'm praising them. Bundling your home and auto insurance with the personal price plan from State Farm. The personal price plan lets you call the place so you can choose the right coverage

at a price that's right for you. So talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Hey, before we do our gimmick, can we talk briefly about Lakers-Houston last night? Yeah, whatever you want. Because I watched the whole game.

I was really interested in Houston and how they would play the Lakers and what a weird matchup that is. And like the amount of athletes they have, could they basically just kind of overrun the Lakers? A little, a little like what the bulls did the game I went to when the bulls just tried, basically ran them off the court and the Lakers fell asleep and they let it happen. And it was like, well, what, what would this look like? What will this look like as they whip all of these athletes at the Lakers for two and a half straight hours?

And my fear in the back of my head for the Rockets was this is going to be a close game in the last eight minutes and the Lakers are just going to out-execute them. And I'm not going to love the shots the Rockets took. There's going to be those mismatches. The toughest thing with the Lakers now is you have those three guys that

And the third guy is Reeves, who is a guy that on most teams, I think is now like a 23 to 25 points a game guy who can not only create his own shot, but create shots for other people. And now you're putting your worst defender on him and you're just constantly trying to, it's like whack-a-mole trying to figure out who do you stop? And the Rockets lost. And I don't think it was an accident. I think if those teams played in a playoff series, that would be the result. What was your take watching it? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the Lakers are a big team and your little guy, your Fred Van Vliet is either Gargard Reeves or if Finney Smith's on the floor, maybe Finney Smith instead of Hayes, or maybe Hachimura who got a couple of post-ups last night in that kind of matchup. And,

You know, the Lakers are running a lot of stuff where Reeves and LeBron will screen for each other away from the ball while Luka has it. And that cutting is what teams don't want to switch because they don't want to switch a small guy onto LeBron. And they have Luka just waiting for whatever pass opens up.

And when they don't switch, someone cuts open or there was a miscommunication. I think Finney Smith got a three in the second half last night out of it. They're just hard to beat in a chess match, no matter how athletic you are, because they're big. But the Rockets, like if the Rockets could throw speed plus shooting at them, that's a different kind of equation for the Lakers. It's just speed, but not enough shooting, not enough shot making. You saw what the Rockets last night. They still can't decide.

Jalen Green's on the bench in the fourth quarter late in the game. Presumably their quote-unquote best offensive player. I don't think he is. I think Shen Goon is. But then there's minutes in the fourth quarter where Shen Goon's on the bench for a long time. They're playing Jabari Smith at center. They're not even playing Smith. They're playing five wings. And I'm sitting there thinking, I think a lot of this offense has just got to run through Shen Goon. But LeBron, they got a takeaway on an entry pass late in that game. We all saw this coming for the Rockets. It's why they're going to be

maybe the most interesting team in the NBA over the playoffs and depending on what happens in the playoffs after the playoffs. But I don't, I mean, look, I think that would be, that series would be a really, really hard fought series. I probably would, I guess I would probably pick the Lakers. I haven't thought about it, but I would probably pick the Lakers just based on experience and reliability if they stay healthy. Houston is still the number two. They have, as we're taping this, they have a one loss, basically a one and a half game lead over Denver.

And the Lakers are kind of surging toward them. But the two spot means you're looking at Golden State, Minnesota, the Clippers, unless Memphis drops down there. And I don't, I just feel like Houston, when I watch them as good as the record's been, and I've enjoyed them. And I think they're in the running for league pass MVPs this year. I feel like they're a year away. They're a move away. And I don't, the move probably involves Shangoon or Green.

But they're, they don't have that, like, I got this guy in offense, which is why the Booker option would have been so interesting for them. I don't know what they do, but don't you think like one year from now, I'm really interested to see where they are. Oh, like, well, first of all, it's funny. I was talking about this with somebody yesterday in the league and it's like, you know,

We all know that they've kicked around both of the Phoenix stars, right? And I think there's some division internally about the Durant question there. Eme Odoka obviously has a history with Durant, really likes him. This person asked me, what do the Rockets do if they lose in the first round? And I think the implication was that would make them even hungrier to go for like a big win now trade. I said, well, let's flip it around. What if they win a round

And they lose to Denver in seven games, like a really hard fought. Like I can feel good about this outcome. And my implication was, does that make you more confident in staying the course? And the scout that I was talking to flipped it around and said, actually, it may make you think we're so close that we still should go for the right kind of like all in upgrade. And it's just going to be interesting to see how they perform in the playoffs and what the implications of that are.

are. Offensively, I just don't think they're good enough, but defensively, toughness-wise, they have everything. One of my favorite subplots of the whole season has been the Steven Adams resurgence and the fact that they stumbled into this Adam Shingun just work. I looked at the numbers of that lineup

It was I think I think they're now after last night, plus one hundred and three points in one hundred and thirty minutes with those two guys on the floor with an offensive rebounding rate that would rank in the hundredth percentile of all lineups and a defensive rebounding rate that would rank in the hundredth percentile of all lineups. Just beating the hell out of everybody. I don't know if it works. I don't know how it works. They're just so gigantic across the board.

A really interesting team. They've drafted really well. Reed Shepard doesn't play. Cam Whitmore doesn't play. Like they have good guys who don't play. I know that's kind of the league. Now these teams are so deep that you have these dudes who would have been like sixth or seventh men on good playoff teams 10 years ago who get DMPs. I can't believe Adams. Do you know how old he is? He's only 24 years old. No, he's older. I think he's like 28.

No, he's like 22 years old. No, I don't know. Oh, you're, you're obviously saying which Adams am I forgetting? He's one of those guys. He's like 28 or 29. He's been around forever and you just feel like he's a veteran. Oh, he's 31 now. One of the all time. Does it feel like he was on OKC like a hundred years ago playing with like Perk and, you know, Derek Fisher? Yeah, he's a grizzled veteran who was also a grizzly. Anyway.

I don't know what to make of Houston. FanDuel didn't either when they... I found these cool... They had these odds for making each round, and you can look at it now. Houston would make the Western Finals right now, so they'd have to win two rounds. It's plus 770. And they have home court right now as it stands in round one and round two. And FanDuel is still like, go ahead, bet it. Eight to one odds. I bet it's not going to hit. So I think people agree. And there's this...

With the veteran teams, Golden State, Lakers, and Denver specifically, there's still such a fear factor with them based on what the upside is and the pedigree that I think this is the hardest, other than the OKC piece, this is the hardest conference to figure out in a long time. Who's going to make the Western Finals? You could talk me into six teams. It sounds disrespectful to the Rockets, who are 49-27.

Their net rating is plus five for 100%, which is very good. Memphis is plus 4.7. Minnesota is plus 4.5 and surging. The Lakers are well below that. They're at just plus 0.8, but they did remake their entire team in the most seismic trade in the history of the NBA, like not long ago. Denver is plus 4.1. That's relatively close. And Denver has the pedigree and the best player. And so like-

don't throw the record out because the record matters. It's going to get them home court in a lot of rounds. It can get them a higher seat and all that. But these teams are not that far apart, particularly the way Minnesota's trending, Denver's trending. We haven't mentioned the Warriors are plus 2.7, but they're obviously, I think, 18 and five since they got Butler and either Butler or Steph missed three of those losses. So totally different team there too. It's just the top eight in the West currently. And if that's the playoff field, it's just,

One really good team after another. Clippers are plus 4.0 net rating. They're not far away either, remarkably. Yeah, and the Clippers, you know, they have a pretty easy schedule the rest of the way. That's the other thing when I'm looking at this, where it's like they're the eighth seed. They play the Pelicans Wednesday. They have back-to-backs at home against the Mavericks. They play the Spurs, Rockets at Sacramento, and then at Golden State to finish the season.

So, I don't know if Kawhi's playing all those games. You know, could they run the slate and get into the 4-5 spot? It's going to be so much fun to see who plays who. And, you know, I'm obviously, as a longtime Steph guy, who just...

who just enjoys watching him play basketball, especially in big playoff games. It'd be fun to see him. Denver, Jokic, incredible. Are there any not-Steph guys? Like, Steph, it's the opposite of, like, Waiters Island and, you know, you were on Risa Shea Island. Like, Steph is just like a planet. There's nobody that's not a Steph guy. What happened with your realtor on Risa Shea Island? Did you...

I've liked Reese O'Shea all season. I have the text to Atlanta Hawks officials and coaches to prove it. I'm like, this guy's good. And now he's surging. But he just knows, look, is he going to be, is he the guy, is he the dream number one pick when you win the lottery? No. Maybe that guy's coming this year. Maybe that guy's coming next year. That guy came the year before, et cetera. But it was very clear right away. The guy knows how to play basketball and he's big and he's a decent athlete and he's smart and he does a lot of things pretty well. And now he's coming along.

And, you know, you'd have Hawks fans saying, wait a second, you'd have Hawks fans saying, hey, wait a second, don't give rookie of the year to Castle quite yet. Our guy's making a push on a team that actually semi matters this season. Yeah, I think that's fair. To answer your Steph question, I think there was some LeBron versus Steph discussion.

stuff in the late 2010s where the two fan bases got a little frisky about pushing their guy at the expense of the other guy. But it feels like that's done. And I think all of these dudes, LeBron has a different thing because he's battling the ghosts of Kobe and MJ. He's in like two totally different conversations. Kobe with the Laker fans and then Jordan with everybody else. Curry's like, I just think he's in that place where it's like, yeah, it'd be really cool if we got to watch it play. Jokic, same way.

Be cool if we got Jokic for a couple rounds. Lakers. Hey, we get Luke and LeBron for a couple rounds. No matter how it plays out, it's going to be fun. All right, we're going to do our gimmick. Let's do it.

Actually, let's take one more break and we'll do the gimmick. All right. So way back when, and it's been 10 years since we like officially worked together other than doing cameos on each other's pods, but we did the great land basketball, a great show with a great set that only lasted 10 episodes. Uh, one of the things we did heading into the playoffs was 25 most intriguing players. And I think I made the list and didn't consult you on it. And then we just ripped through it.

And I went from one to 25. Yeah. I have zero memory of that ever happening. I have no, like we did a television show and that was the topic. And it was like that 10 years ago. I have no, I must've been so frightened to be appearing on television.

with my bad shoes and my baggy suits back then that I just was just blocked the whole thing out. Well, I remember I had to basically bully you to come on the show. I had to bully you into doing a podcast and I had to bully you into coming on the TV show. Do you just like, I just want to write, I just want to, I just want to do my thing. I don't, I don't want any of this. Um, 25 most intriguing players was the gimmick. We are tweaking it this time.

borrowing a little bit from fantasy's movie draft where it's not really a draft but it's like categories and you have to pick one thing for each category so we created a bunch of categories we each only get one person in the categories it's not a 1 through 25 but you can pick the guy you want and put them in the category and then you get to talk about them and then that guy is off the board and you can't so i never get to we can't pick a guy for two categories you cannot okay

Now, did I already screw you up? No, no, no. I'm good. Okay. I'm good. I just wanted clarity. That makes it harder. Here are the categories in alphabetical order. Apex superstar, beloved bench guy, crossroads guy. So that can be, is he in a post-season's crossroads? Is he in a crossroads in his career? Is he in a crossroads with his team? He's in some sort of crossroads. Defensive stud, feel good star, hot seat coach,

Hot seat player, legacy guy. Cause you know, everybody loves a good legacy conversation. Got to have it. Second banana, third banana, the leap trade machine guy and weak link. Did we, did I put that one in there? I met a surprise category, weak link as a surprise category. So we're probably going to have more than 25. I'm going to give you the first pick.

on your comeback pod. You can have any player for any category who you take him.

Any player for any category. Yeah. All right. I'm going to go second banana, and I'm going to cheat right away and pick two guys, a duo, together. You're already bending the rules? We just started. Yeah, I'm bending the rules. You can make it one if you want, depending on the two guys I'm going to mention. But I am going to start with Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren as the number two and three guys on the Oklahoma City Thunder team.

They underperformed against Dallas in last season's playoffs. When the going got tough, they couldn't make enough shots. Check could make enough threes. Jalen couldn't just score enough points. The non Shay offense fell apart against the Mavericks. Obviously this is a different team. It's a deeper team. It's a better team. Aaron Wiggins has made a leap. Isaiah Joe is better. The Hartenstein homegrown combo is mauling people. They have different optionality. They have Caruso coming off the bench. Shay's better. J Dub's better. They're all better.

At some point, like I think they're number two or number three in offense in the NBA. Shea is likely going to win the MVP, having one of the greatest scoring seasons of all time.

If you can take care of the ball against them, and I realize nobody can. They are remarkably... I wonder how many teams have done this. They're number one in forcing turnovers on defense and number one in not turning the ball over on offense. It's like they start every game ahead 10-0 just because of turnovers. But if they run into a low turnover team like the Mavericks with Luka, where the entire time Luka was there before they inexplicably traded him this year...

They might have a game or two When their offense in the half court Comes into some moments of like Huh like they're not making Threes Dort has an 0 for 8 Game you know whatever even though he shot 40% this season

Shea's on the bench. Like, are those guys ready? All the evidence, like I pick my pick and I haven't had a podcast this year. I pick Celtics over Thunder in the finals at the beginning of the season. That's on Twitter. I have never wavered from that, not for one second. So don't take this as a shot at the Thunder, but there's just going to be a moment where it's game three of a 1-1 series and the offense is like a little clogged. And can those guys, can those pick one of them

Whether it's Chet rolling to the rim as the five or shooting threes or J-Dub just running things or whatever. One of them is going to have to have a moment where they rise up and I think they're ready for it. I'll allow the combo pick. I don't like that you cheated coming out of the gate, but we'll allow it. Well, who's the second? Who do you even call the second banana? I guess offensively, it's Jalen Williams. And if you want to take one and we're talking offense, it's Jalen Williams.

Yeah, I think it's a double banana situation. I think you might be right. But it is the thing I worry about with OKC. And it's the thing as I think about the Celtics making the finals and playing them and what they're going to do against OKC and how they're going to try to beat them. I would assume all of it is going to be about making Shea give up the ball, sending multiple guys at him and making Jalen Williams or Chet play four and three.

Or Hartenstein. Now, the OKC with the Hartenstein piece of it, because he's always been really good at the foul line and he's always been good in those four and three situations. So when he's out there, it gets tougher. But I still feel like, hey, Jalen Williams, can you beat us?

is going to be a strategy. Chet's a little different because Chet always gets his points in the flow. They're not like, oh, let's run our three Chet plays. But Jalen Williams, they need. They need him to beat guys off the dribble. They need him to do that little pull up from 15 feet. And he's really good, but that's a different spotlight. And we haven't seen it. We didn't see it in the NBA Cup. We didn't see it last year in the playoffs. We just haven't seen him do it on a big stage yet. I'm glad you mentioned the NBA Cup because...

we talked about this in LA. Somebody else mentioned the NBA cup to me 10 days ago. And I was like, that, that happened this year. Yeah. Who won that? Who won that again? And I'm like,

it's a bad sign that someone who lives and breathes the NBA has zero memory. It took me a second, about minute, 30 seconds to remember exactly who was in the final four and what happened. And I don't care at all that the Milwaukee bucks on the NBA cup, it does not matter to me. I don't think it really matters to the bucks. Like I just, I don't know how to, it's a, I guess it's cool. The courts are fun, but I, it,

Do you care? I don't care. I think the problem with the NBA Cup is it was cool as it was happening, but now we have two years in the bank and it's meaningless.

Yeah, the playoffs come and you're like, oh, this is the real stuff is about to start. The Bucs don't even have remotely the same team anymore. They've, you know, they're keeping their fingers crossed on Kyle Kuzma corner threes. They don't know when Dame's coming back. They're a team that's going in the wrong direction. And it doesn't matter that they win the NBA Cup. I don't know how to fix that. So Chet Hartenstein, the numbers on those two, which is obviously the midseason curveball they threw at the league when Chet finally got healthy after Hartenstein missed the beginning of the season.

Plus 15 per 100 possessions, elite offense, elite defense, elite rebounding. Hartenstein's passing and floater have fit in about as well as could possibly have been expected. And it's just another it's not a curveball. It's the way they they start games and it's worked. It's worked that well. And I just one of the things I love about the Thunder and I wish I'd been at a podcast to talk about it is.

There's something old school about it. Again, they're your second or third or fourth in offense or whatever. So it's not like they're not an amazing offensive team. Yeah. I just love the fact that in this cycle, are there too many points? Is scoring too easy? Are there too many threes? The team at the top of the standings is like, you know what? We are going to win first and foremost because we are...

a historically great defensive team that is going to take the ball from you a lot of times. And when we're not taking the ball from you, we're going to be all up in your shit, all over the floor, deflections, steals, physicality, size, everything. And when our offense sputters, that was the old, that was the way the NBA used to be like, Oh, your jumpers comes, go defense travels, defense shows up to every game. And that the thunder have that element to it. And I love how, how,

intense they are, how proud they are, how they do not relent at all. And they're betting more than anything else on, Hey, yeah, even if worst case scenario happens to our offense, good luck scoring on us more than we score on you. It's the nightmare scenario for the Lakers. And I'm in the camp of don't get sucked into, Oh, the Lakers expertise, veteran, like two scorers. This is the kind of team, like when I, when I saw OKC on Sunday night, play the Clippers and

And they were missing a couple of guys. So they had to play Dort and Caruso and Wallace together. And it was like, Jesus Christ, this is the most terrifying perimeter defense I've ever seen in my life. Those three together, they have all these looks. I think the Celtics are the same way where the Celtics can, because of Porzingis and Horford,

And then they can have like the, all of a sudden there's four white guys out there and all of them can shoot. All of a sudden they're playing double bigs. All of a sudden Tatum is playing stretch five. Like they have different looks, but the OKC, the wrinkles they have,

to me are the second biggest reason that you're going to pick them to win the NBA title if you're going to pick them. And I'm about to give you the number one reason. All right. So yeah, do you, how does this draft work? Do you now pick your second banana or do you go to any category anywhere you want? I do whatever I want. Because we just made up these rules 10 minutes ago. I'm going to the Apex superstar category. Okay. And I'm taking SGA. Oh, good. Because, um,

You know, wait, we have a week and a half left and Jokic, who's one of my favorite players, non Celtics, probably ever having the best statistical season he's ever had. And I think he's carried a massive load. And at this point, I still think I'm voting for SGA. I mean, the odds, it's not, it's not a controversial pick. The odds are way, way up there for them, but.

The piece that's interesting to me heading into the playoffs, it isn't just can OKC win the title. It isn't just can Sam Presti, who's done a pretty incredible job for almost two decades here, is this all going to finally work out? Are we in an 86 Celtics with also having the number two pick in the draft coming up scenario of, holy shit, not only is this the best team in the league, but they also have this asset and all these young players and what the hell are we going to do? They're in that zone.

But for SGA, there's no zone, by the way. No one's ever been in their zone. There's never been a team with this many assets. This good now and this set up for the future. I said this to a year and a half to two years ago on the low post podcast, which doesn't exist. They are the best present plus future set up in the history of basketball. And I don't know enough about the history of other sports to say the history of all professional sports. I just have a hard time believing there's another convincing example.

The only case is the Celts after they won the 86 title with bias coming for those 48 hours before he tragically died, which we covered in Celtic city, uh, in episode five. That's the only other thing I could think of where they went 67 and 15. There are 15, one at home. They had a three-time MVP and they were adding somebody who worst case scenario was going to be as good as, you know, in that Barkley Carl Malone thing. That's the only thing I could think of. Here's the case for SGA. Why I took him here.

If they win the title and they just kick everybody's ass and they end up finishing, I don't know, can they get to what? 69, 70 wins for the season. And then they end up being like an 84, 85, 86 win team, which would put them on the short, short list with him at the lead.

On top of the fact that he's having one of the greatest offensive seasons in the history of the guard position. Like it's, it's up there with any Oscar season. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, any Jordan season, any Kobe season, like pick a great guard. He's either doing better than one of their best seasons or he's right there. And then if he just keeps that rolling through the playoffs, he's,

And we finished mid June and we're like, holy shit. The thunder just went 86 and 16 and SGA averaged 35 in the playoffs. And this is now Michael Jordan. I think he's the most intriguing guy to me in the whole, in either conference. I had most at stake. I had him on my legacy list for essentially all the same reasons, a chance to cement his place in,

in not only the current NBA, but to begin cementing his place in NBA history with a dominant playoff run. And, you know, I looked up his stats from the Mavs series last year, and they were way better than I remembered or would have guessed. His scoring carried over into that series and his efficiency carried over into that series. Yeah.

He's not an A, A plus playmaker like some of the other, you know, like Jokic, like Luka, like LeBron. Yeah, but he's B plus A minus and he's gotten better. And I think that series, the Mavericks size, the way they clogged the lane on him, tested his playmaking. And I don't think he was quite there yet as a playmaker. And I don't think the Thunder supporting cast and shooters were definitely not quite there yet. I think they're there now. And I don't see any reason why.

I mean, people talk about you got to put size on him. This guy's a good matchup for him. You've talked about Tatum trying to guard him or Brown trying to guard him or Anthony Edwards trying to guard him. No one has been able to really guard him. And I don't see any reason that the scoring is going to... It might slow down a little bit just because the percentages are preposterous across the board. I think the scoring is going to persist. And I think the team around him is more ready. And I think he's more... The other parts of his game are more ready. And I think he's...

just unbelievable. And I expected me to continue to be unbelievable in the playoffs. I hate nobody's talking about these guys enough and nobody's giving these guys enough credit conversation on talk shows. Because I feel like we've talked about OKC a lot all over the place. It's just the way the infrastructure is going to go. They're always going to talk about LeBron and the Lakers and the big ass teams a little bit more. Just how it goes. I actually feel like we haven't

Totally talked about how great SGA is as a score. I feel like we're like a couple conversations, videos, breakdowns short because watching it in person and

And watching all the moves he has and watching the yo-yo shit he does and how helpless defenders are against him when they know what he's trying to do and how he can get to the rim, how he uses contact, how every team thinks he's getting all the calls and they're pissed off the whole game. It's just, it's really a master performance. It's, he's really great. And I think going against him in a finals, uh,

is fucking terrifying no matter what round, but especially like for the Celtics. And they have the perfect team to stop him, right? They have wings with size. They have weight. They have holiday. They have rim protection with Porzingis. It's everything you'd want. And I still think he'd get 35 a game against them. I don't think it matters. I mean, I agree. And, um,

It's an art. What he does is art. It's beautiful to watch. The level of space he creates when you don't even realize that he's about to create it is...

He'll have five feet of open space. And you're like, wait, did he even do a hard jab step? What move was that that got that guy? Yeah, they were guarding him at midcourt. How did he create the space? People are so afraid of him getting by them because he has a top gear that he doesn't use much because he doesn't have to use it much. Just a little glance forward, guys are jumping back and he's just pulling up for these wide open 18-footers. And I think the reason...

you know, people in the MVP argument, which thankfully I have not had to be a part of this year. It hasn't been so ugly. Like it was the last couple of years either. Um, you know, people will point to the defense and say, uh, you know, SGA is a plus defender. Jokic is not. Um, and I think that's largely been true this year. Um,

Jokic is rebounding and just positional smarts and hands at a position where defense really matters, I think is a little bit underrated. But to me, the difference has been teams game plan to attack Jokic. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The Nuggets are 20th and defense is not good enough this year. We'll see if it tightens up in the playoffs.

Teams can game plan to attack Shea too, because there's just no one else to attack on Oklahoma City. He's kind of like their Curry in that way, a better defense player, obviously, than Curry ever was. But Curry was the weak link because every other link was as solid as a link could be.

could get on those peak warrior teams and the Thunder aren't worried about it like he's big he's stronger than you think he blocks he has more blocks and seals than Jokic combined it's not close and they are ideally positioned around him to tilt the floor toward him if he needs any help but they're not they don't have to sit in coaches meetings and think

What do we do when this team puts Shea in the pick and roll or when this guy targets Shea? Sure, when Luka has him, it's going to be, you know, the size advantage is what it is. But they don't have to sit there and think that hard about, oh, we got to we got to scrap everything we're doing defensively because they're going to go at Shea this way or that way. It's so funny how it's evolved, because when I was going to see him as a rookie on the Clippers and it was like, ah, this guy's kind of Rondo-y.

I could see him like a, you know, elite defensive player and a good playmaker. Like he's really interesting player. He's definitely going to be really good. But this is like, he's one of the best guards I've ever seen in person ever. I don't, I don't know how long that list is and I'll probably have to figure it out at some point, but it's, it's on the short list of the, the best, most impactful guys. Like the Clipper game I went to Sunday, he couldn't buy a shot.

Just was one of those. The ball was rolling around the rim. The ball was hitting the back. Like he was getting all the shots he wanted. They just weren't going in. And it was kind of shocking to watch. I was like, oh my God, Shay's not getting bounces. He always gets bounces. Anyway. All right. We're, we're on a slow pace. We've only done two. What's your next guy? All right. I'm going to go.

In the interest of leaving you some of the categories that are right. You don't have to leave me anything. You try to destroy me. Like, OKC is going to try to destroy the Lakers. I didn't know we were actually building a team. I feel like this guy qualifies as either one of the bananas, but I'll take him in the leap category on the other number one seed.

Evan Mobley in the playoffs. I just can't wait to see how this Cavs team looks in the playoffs on both ends of the floor. I think their offense is number one with a bullet. Mitchell has done enough in the playoffs. He's had a couple dud playoff series, but he's also had like three or four. Oh, my God.

playoff series so like i trust him garland i trust i trust the offense largely despite the spacing concerns it's still you know theoretically exists playing two big guys together um defensively i'm i'm very interested to see depending on the matchups and if they do get to boston how they match up in some of those series and where mobley is on the floor and how how

Does he have to guard Tatum? Does he guard Brown? He's guarded all these guys here and there, but how do they utilize him? But I think the Evan Mobley thing is, I mean, even against the Celtics last year when Jared Allen got hurt, he played center and all of a sudden everyone's like, oh, he's got to play center. This is how he looked amazing rolling to the rim and dunking. And he looks amazing now with the big to big passing, with the cutting, with just, oh, you're going to put a wing on me. I'm just going to dribble from 18 feet out and beat the hell out of him and hit a hook shot. I, I,

I just I would have him in pen on second team all NBA. I actually thought about him for the fifth spot on first team all NBA when Mitchell started slumping a little bit. I think Mitchell has now popped out of that slump and reclaimed that spot. But that's how good, you know, and I heard you and Rosillo talking about whether Anthony Edwards was coming for that spot. And I was saying, like, I think actually Mobley, given he's averaging 21 a game, what he does on defense, what he does as a playmaker.

has a case to be at least in that discussion but i have him in penn second team all nba and all that said we we've seen what happens to this team's offense in the playoffs it's a totally different offense new coach garland's healthy that was the most undersold thing in dumb nba conversations going into the season is people just not remembering what a miserable season darius garland had health wise last season and what a difference a healthy darius garland was going to make

but there's going to be moments where the floor gets tight and a team really challenges them to, does your, like all your little fancy cutting stuff, which I think they've actually done a little less of lately when I've watched them, all that's going to be scouted. We're going to be totally dialed in on that. It's going to get harder and it's going to get harder in ways that test Evan Mobley. And this team reasonably now has championship expectations that don't ride only on him. But I think he is, uh,

the biggest swing factor along with their, you know, how are they going to defend these big wings when they run into them? Like it's Max Struess. Really? The guy is Deandre Hunter. Really? The guy that Deandre, by the way, the Deandre Hunter lineup, like Hunter in Struess's place and the other four starters has only played like 30 minutes. I'm actually surprised how little they've used that lineup. I think they're saving it.

I don't know. I just think they like... They've been number one seed for like a month. I don't really understand why their defense went sideways. I'm with you on Mobley. There's going to be... I think he's their most important guy in a Celtics series. More important than Mitchell or anyone else they have. And there's going to be two or three times in that series where he has an open three in the last four minutes of a game they need. And I'm not sure if it's going to go in or not.

And it might and it might not. But that's going to be the thing. If he's hitting threes and doing all the other stuff and looking like late 90s KG on top of the three-point thing, then they could win the title. But there's no question. Is he defensive player of the year? I can't decide. I don't have a ballot because I gave mine up last year. And even if I wanted to get it back, I don't think they give them to unemployed people. You're employed. But now I am. We'll get you a ballot.

I can't, I'm starting to buy into the Draymond self-created hype for defensive player of the year. Cause he has been spectacular the entire year. Jaron Jackson Jr. has missed some games and still gets into foul trouble. Like once every three games, they just have to take them out constantly. Cause he's in foul trouble. And obviously Wemby, Wemby is not eligible. You know, I'm going to continue that conversation with my next pick. Cause I have some thoughts. Okay. Yeah.

I'm going to grab in the defensive stud category. Okay. Lou Dort. Wow. Okay. I haven't done all my defensive player of the year work, and I'm not going to say, I think it should be this guy. I really want to like study it because I think it's really interesting that there's no clear cut guy.

I'll just say this. Lou Dort is the best defensive player I've watched this season in multiple games. And I've been shocked by some of the shit he's done. I don't, I think it's possible he's never made an all defense team. And if that's the case, that's going to change this year. I, what he did to Jalen Brown in the game in Boston was like startling.

Like, and you know, we were arguing on Sunday's pod about how tall he is. Cause I was watching him stand next to other dudes and I swear he looks like he's six, two, maybe he's like six, three, whatever he is, but he guards everybody. And the thing with him that you know, how good of a defensive player he is, is like people get actively bummed out when he's on them.

He had a game, I think, a week or two weeks ago when he just was like, I'm just going to take out Desmond Bain today. Desmond Bain went one for 12. He destroyed Brown in the Boston game. I went to that Clipper game and he could guard everybody in the Clippers. I've been to two OKC Clipper games where Harden just has this look like...

This is the worst two and a half hours of my life. All these dudes, but especially Dort. And I just think, right, I know Daniels has been amazing. So good, by the way. The hands, the steals, the poke checks, the athleticism. He's won games with his defense. I think I'd have him as a most improved player, by the way. I know all the smart money is on Cade. I think considering expectations and expectations and prior track record, I don't...

I don't think anyone's made a bigger leap than Dyson Daniels. I mean, like, it's not surprising when he scores 20 points in a game and, and also does what he does. Dort is a great, is a great pick. I think, can I, can I say one thing on Daniels? Yeah, I completely agree. So, right. And obviously not allowed to bet on the awards. I always want to mention that, but I always look to see, like, am I missing something? Like Dort was 26 to one last week. And I'm like,

I haven't done all my work yet, but if you just put a gun to my head right now and said pick an offensive player of the year, I think I'd pick Dort because he was the best defender I've seen. I felt the same way about Daniels. I thought he was going to be favored for most improved player, but it's Cade. Daniels is plus 110. I'm not shocked that Cade's better. He was the number one pick in the draft and he has a better coach and whatever. Daniels was thrown into the DeJounte Murray trade basically.

You know, he was one of the prizes, but it wasn't like, oh my God, they traded Dyson Daniels. It was like, I don't know what that guy is. And now you watch him and he's like an absolute keeper. And I don't know why he wouldn't be the most improved player of the year. I don't get it. So the incredible thing about Oklahoma City's defense is Dort is going to be their

all defensive representative. I actually think I would have Jalen Williams on as well. I think I would have two Thunder players on as well. Well, they missed him that Clipper game I went to not having him on Kawhi. You could feel the difference because that's 6'8 type of guy. You can look at a lot of the metrics who will and the metrics will tell you

The Thunder have three better defensive players on their roster than those two guys. And none of the three, Hartenstein, Holmgren, and Caruso are eligible for awards because of games played and minutes played. But the statistics scream out that those guys would be in this conversation too. And it's like, oh my God, how many? Well, you mentioned Wallace. And Wallace is terrifying. Yeah, Wallace is another one. Wallace is like, he and Jalen Williams, you don't see a lot of guys who will just...

I'm just going to swipe at the ball constantly because I can do it without fouling you. And they just, when they're in the mood or whatever, they're just like, I'm going to go for every, every time you dribble the ball, I'm going to try to get the ball from you. And it's unnerving. Yeah. It's, this is why, you know, sometimes this happens. You have to pick a player and it's probably not Lou Dort.

But whatever OKC is doing defensively, it almost needs like you need like a defensive players of the year award just to capture the fucking havoc. And they start immediately. And the teams, you can see it in their faces really like, oh, my God, this really you're going to defend me 90 feet. Yeah, we are. Actually, we're going to make your life miserable for two and a half hours. And then Wallace is going to go out and Caruso is going to come in. Oh, hey, how about we're going to throw some blue door on you? That seems a nightmare. Make your next pick.

Uh, okay. I'm going to go, um, I'm going to go crossroads player. Okay. And I'm going to go with Carl Anthony towns. He was on my list. Now to some degree, I think towns crossed the crossroads, so to speak. Did he last year in the Denver series? And I even wrote about it on ESPN about, you know,

All of a sudden, the turnovers were down. The fouls were down. There was a calmness and a steadiness to his game that combined with his shot making were like, okay, this is the guy that

that we've seen in the regular season. And this is the guy we've been waiting for. He guarded Durant really well, considering the sort of stylistic differences between them in the first round when Minnesota beat the hell out of Phoenix, despite Phoenix having a roster that only three teams in the NBA wouldn't trade for or wouldn't trade with, according to Matt Ishbia. You love that. I do. And then he sputtered again against the Mavs in the conference finals. Then he averaged 19 points. He shot poorly.

And then he gets traded in this just massive total shift of his life from he found a way to thrive next to a real behemoth center and Rudy Gobert, who could do all the dirty work on defense around the rim that he's not very good at. And now he is almost a full time center now for the Knicks, who are.

living the benefits of that on offense and feeling the pain of it on defense and Mitchell Robinson just hasn't played enough minutes yet that we can see sort of how that pairing works and I'm actually surprised Tibbs has not used it much even when Mitchell Robinson's been available for 15 18 minutes a game I thought they'd we'd see more of it just to see can we replicate some of what happened in Minnesota even if that means like a little bit less of one of the core wing guys who have all been good to great for the Knicks this year Brunson's got to get healthy

We all know that the team is dead in the water without him. They're a spectacular offensive team in Brunson's absence. You would have, you've talked a lot about this. I've talked a lot about this with people behind the scenes this year.

They weren't using bridges enough. You don't trade all that stuff for bridges. If you're not going to lean into him as a secondary ball handler, even when he's the third, fourth or fifth best guy on the floor, he has that skill set that you should swing the ball for him to do. Hey, do a inverted McHale bridges, Jalen Brunson, pick and roll, swing into a McHale bridges, towns, pick and roll, just involve him more. Now they've had to he's thrived.

Yeah, who could have believed that a guy who used to average 23-24 a game would actually know what to do if you ran a play for him? And he's even gotten to the free throw line a little bit. He's averaging like three and a half free throws a game since Brunson went out, which feels like an avalanche compared to the almost zero he was averaging before that. But I do think they've been almost written off, I think, as a real threat to Cleveland. Boston is a different story. Boston is a nightmare matchup for them.

Um, I think the Knicks are better than I've, I've, I'm higher on this team than consensus, despite the obvious limitations of towns in the middle. I think they were the biggest threat to Boston last season. Obviously they've completely remade their team since then. Um,

Now, they might have a very interesting first round. They will have a very interesting first round series, either against an upstart Pistons team or maybe even the remnants of the Bucs. The remnants of the Bucs. I think there's a great team in here somewhere, even as is. And a lot of that has to do with Towns

finding a way to still contribute on offense when teams do what they're going to do which is put wings on him and put their centers on josh hart and his production in those scenarios has been uneven and just can he do enough defensively to survive with all the help around him you could argue he crossed the crossroads last year he kind of did this is a new team new setting new expectations um as good or better i think than the minnesota team he was on last year

And I just, you know, let's see how it looks. And is the Robinson thing still a wild card that we could see a little bit more of in the playoffs? Or is it just too late for that? I'm curious about that too. Yeah, I'm not banking on Mitchell Robinson. No, you can't. Celtics are a nightmare matchup for Towns.

There's so many different ways to attack him and mess with him. Wasn't that opening night? And it was just like, this is a, the Celtics, I think it was opening night and Missoula came out with a game plan that was like game one of a playoff series between the Celtics and the Knicks. Just let's exploit every advantage we have, including overtowns. Yeah, it's been interesting because there's been some Celtic games where they haven't wanted to tip anything at all.

And then there's been other games when they've tried to send a message. And that was one of the messages. I like the Towns pick. I don't really know what he is, but this is going to be the best version ever of it. Right? He's never going to be better than he is this year. He's never going to be in a better situation as a stretch five slash flimsy rim protector on a really good team. So we'll see. I actually have been shocked by how well that trade worked out. I think if you had told me

what's going to be a disaster, Paul George on the Sixers or Towns on the Knicks and had like a betting line on it, I would have said minus 160 Paul George. But I think there would have been some Towns action. You think it's surprising that it got to Paul George has to cancel his podcast. It's so bad. Levels of disaster. What are we going to do without Podcast P? All right. Well, man, there's a lot of good picks left. What's up?

Let's go legacy guy for my next pick. Okay. And some good legacies on the line here. On the line? Some good legacies on the line. There's going to be a lot of legacy talk. If he doesn't show up in the playoffs, his legacy is tarnished forever. This is it. He has to come through tonight. I think the Tatum legacy case is by far the most interesting of all the legacies, except for the Laker guys. And I don't want to take the Laker guys. I'll leave them to you.

The Tatum thing coming back from last year where he doesn't win either award. And then he goes to the Olympics, misses the first two practices, just had a kid, ends up not playing, buried on the bench. And then his transformation this year. And if he actually comes through into the much tougher playoff competition this year and becomes the guy that we've been watching the last couple of months, I think there's a real edge to him.

I've been so impressed. Look, I know the Celtics have been locked in two seed forever. I've been so impressed with how they've looked the last month or so. And I know when teams get locked into playoff spots, they have a tendency to drift one way or another, or you could have a tendency to overreact to what you're seeing. I'm seeing a really mentally tough team. And I think Missoula is fanatical about

this whole season about what it's like to defend a title, what it takes, what kind of mental edge you need, how you have to have a bullseye, how you have to have a chip on your shoulder. I think he's been motivated them a lot. I think he's been really challenging them. And Tatum has been the guy that he's challenged the most and Tatum does the most. And now he's in a situation where if they win the title, this is no 1A, 1B situation anymore. He's the best guy in this team. And he's one of the best three to four guys in the league.

Well, did you waver from he's the best guy on the team at any point? I know Jalen Brown won finals. I'm just saying there was like one A, one B stuff last year with those guys. They were a pairing. They're not really a pairing anymore. He's the best guy on the team. And if he rips through and they went back to back and he's by far the best guy. Now it's a different conversation about where he is career wise, where his historically people start looking at his decade, the NBA is all the playoffs. Yeah.

And there's some real, there's some real great stuff sitting for him now. So I just wanted to, uh, just wanted to capture the moment there, Zach. He was number one on my legacy, uh, on my list of guys to potentially take for this category, just because if you are the best player and you win finals MVP and you break the no repeat streak that the NBA is in right now, and you do it emphatically, um, you become a two-time champion, a back-to-back champion on the Boston Celtics.

I think you catapult up into different historical kinds of conversations. I think he's going to get there anyway because he's still so, you know, he's right in the meat of his prime. His career has so many years left. His career numbers, if he stays healthy, are going to be outrageous across the board. He's just become...

a better all around player year to year, every year in every possible way. Six assists a game this season is careerized. Defense is always good. You never have to ask Jason Tatum to play hard on defense, to play smart on defense, to take tough matchups, to guard up in size, to do whatever the team needs him to do. He's just an awesome player. And, you know, you don't win the title without being mentally tough. They are mentally tough. I think there's been periods of this season where,

Their offense has not... I mean, Ryan, I've heard him call it hunt-happy, where they just kind of settle into old patterns, and the patterns are effective, but you feel them just settling for the sake of settling. When they don't do that, when they mix in the hunting of the small guys, which if they get a Halliburton or a Garland or whoever is going to be a huge part of every... A Brunson, of every series that they could possibly be, and a Dame, if knock on wood, Dame can get healthy. When they mix that in with...

Don't forget you have a pick and pop big man. Don't forget we have all these other off ball actions that we can run. They become very, very hard to guard. And he's at the apex of all that. Yeah. There's a strength thing with him. Remember like LeBron in the late two thousands when we were like, he's got to get stronger. He's got to start posting up people. He's got to be more physical. And then there was some moment probably when he got to Cleveland again, after the Miami thing where all of a sudden physically, he just seemed imposing.

And you could feel it and you could feel the shift. And it's like, you, you can't guard LeBron with that guy anymore. A little of that's happening with Tatum when they try to put smaller guys on him. He just is bullying people. And he's really strong now. Uh, I've been really impressed. I think he's, uh, I think he's checked every box for me. I was worried last summer, you know, his three point shot was going sideways. He's benched in the Olympics. It was like, Oh my God, where's this going? And instead it went the best possible way. What's your next pick? All right. Someone's got to do it.

I'll just go to the trade machine category. No, I love this for you. Someone's got to do it. Yeah. Haven't talked about Giannis yet. Let's talk about Giannis. Oh, I thought you were going someone else. Jesus. No, I mean, we can do the Durant thing. We can do the what does Boston do with its payroll thing going forward? No, there's plenty of time for that. Like, that's all fun. We've all done that stuff. The Bucks just exist right now in this purgatory of...

I think even with Dame, even with Portis coming back, even with Kuzma integrated into the lineup, it just felt like...

With blah, just just not good enough. And and, you know, maybe putting up 30, 12 and six every game. And it was like, I just watch. And I'm a Damian Lillard true believer. He's been on my MVP ballot multiple times when I've had an MVP ballot on average higher than other than he was in sort of the aggregate voting in those seasons. I think he's one of the greatest leaders the NBA has had in a long time.

I'm surprised when I look at his stats from this year and I see how good they are because I haven't felt that level of terror and impact from him as consistently as the stats would suggest. And maybe that's just me unfairly, not unfairly. Maybe that's just my brain watching the bucks and being like, there's just too much, you know,

There's just too much Kyle Kuzma happening. There's two like Torian Prince has been awesome. Just too much Torian Prince happening. They're too dependent on Brooke Lopez being awesome. They're just they aren't good enough. I don't think and I don't think they've been there's no evidence that they're good enough other than you just don't want to see Giannis ever in a playoff series. And if it just if it just ends up that they aren't good enough.

You know, and right now they're sixth. And so I think that would manifest in Dame, no Dame, whatever it ends up being. They just lose. They lose to the Knicks in six games. They don't have home court. The Knicks have been better than them all year. Whatever. I don't know. I'd have to look deeper into that series about what the matchups would be and who would guard Giannis and who Giannis would guard and who would guard towns. Giannis would probably guard towns a lot. All that, you know, they don't really have a lot of pathways to just revamp the team completely in a way that makes sense.

We've tiptoed around this territory two or three separate times in the last five years and never gotten there. I don't know what else to say other than

A lot of the eyes of the league are going to be on the Bucs again if they flame out in the first round. I even saw there was, I think, a New York Post story I saw linked on NetsDaily.com. Yeah, it started. I didn't think it would be until the playoffs when it started. I mean, we're already talking about Brooklyn. It's plan A. I thought Brooklyn's plan A was suck for two straight years, but they couldn't even execute that plan well enough this year, at least the lottery was. I'm not accepting any...

you know, if I have to dust off Picasso, the trade maintained machine territory, I will, but I, I'm not ready to talk about the honest future in detail yet. Cause that's, I don't want to spoil our June podcasts. Okay. But I, but I have two butts, but,

Houston has to be the first team if we're going to start making a fake Giannis straight. Houston has to be the first team. Like I said, I could have done Durant. Everyone knows Durant's getting traded this summer. I could have done Porzingis, Holiday, however the Celtics, if they don't win the title and or they decide we just can't be this expensive, what they do. But, you know, those are easy. Why not get a little dicey? Well, that leads to my second but.

And here's why I think I completely agree with this pick and why he went there.

If you're a Knicks fan, and I know a bunch of them, you're not that scared of the Bucs. And they have Giannis in the middle of another awesome Giannis season. And people are like, would you rather play the Pistons, Pacers, or Bucs is a real combo we're having. I think Giannis could average 40 and 20 in that series, and they would still lose in five or six. I don't think it would matter. I just think they're beating the Bucs. And if you're Giannis, you're at the point of your career, I don't know what's important to him. He keeps it close to the vest.

But is this just going to be what the rest of his career is like? I don't feel bad for him because they traded a shitload of stuff for a day and they won a championship. Yeah. So this is sometimes the price when you give up that many draft picks. Eventually you got to come pay the bill at dinner and they're paying the bill. I hate to say it,

The AJ Johnson kid in Washington who got tossed into that Kuzma trade with Chris Middleton. Oh, you bought some stock. He's got something, man. Like people peep the draft Knicks all were like, this dude is a monster athlete. He's got something. And now he gets to play because if you're on the wizards roster and you're healthy, you now get to play. Yeah. And he's, he's got some stuff.

It's not quite Quentin Grimes level regret. Just throw that on top of the Luca trade. Grimes had 40 what now again? But, you know, there's something there. All right. One more break and then we'll rip through the end of this. All right. Since you picked the trade machine guy in Giannis, which I thought was a fantastic pick. I got to grab the other guy who has to be considered here. John Morant watching Memphis last night. The stuff that's been leaking out from there.

The past week, the fact that he doesn't play, the fact that the Grizzlies now feel like 2022 is about 11 years ago. I just don't know where this goes for him. Physically, it already seems like he's starting to break down a little bit. There's some questions about what's going on with his knees, his shoulder. Is he a winning player? I just would love to be in the room if Memphis and Charlotte got on the phone and started talking about John Lomelo.

Oh my God. I would just love to be the third party for that conversation. Now the Memphis fans are going to get mad and the Charlotte fans are going to probably get mad too, but I would love to be in the room if that conversation is broached and then they both went into separate conference rooms and I'd love to be in both of those rooms at the same time as they batted around what made sense and what didn't make sense. But I just find it hard to believe that he is not going to, I don't want to say shop, be shopped, but I don't think they're hanging up.

Well, when Zach Kleinman, the Grizz GM, came out a couple weeks ago and said in almost needlessly strong terms, like we're not trading John Moran. He made some statement about like, it's cool that it's fun that the inside people want to speculate about. We're not trading John Moran. I was like, I must have. I mean, I know I haven't been.

fully employed this year but i must have missed the parade of people like knocking on the door to trade for first round picks for john moran maybe for a guy making a max who doesn't play i'm sure there are teams that would give up a lot of stuff for him but i i don't you know like he hasn't played enough and i think one of the under discussed stories of the season before the grizzly season went off the rails was he just hasn't looked like the same guy in the ways that he has to be

consistently excellent at to be a number one guy on a great team. He's not finishing in the paint the same. His turnovers are up.

He looks like wild and out of control sometimes. And he's always played with a certain wildness, but he could compensate with it. He could compensate for it with just, I'm such an incredible athlete that I'll make something out of this crowded, crazy situation. And more often than not, compared to before, he's not making anything productive out of it. And look, the jump shot has always been a question mark. He's shooting under 30% from three. I think teams give him threes. He's taken a lot of threes in a lot of games. That's either going to happen or it's not going to happen.

The John Morant thing was just all about he's going to be unstoppable in the paint. And you want to pin it on this strange offense that they've been running this year with less pick and roll, more cutting, more motion, the kind of wheel offense that they've been running. Okay, fine. Like he just hasn't, when he get what he, it used to be when he got into the paint and rose up or started pivoting and faking, you knew that

he's going to get off a pretty clean shot here or something that works for him. And now he gets in there and it's like, this could go haywire in a lot of different ways. And the percentages back it up. He just hasn't, look, he has core skill sets and stuff that he's never going to be great at. He's got to be great at the core stuff to be John Moran. And he hasn't been great at the core stuff this year. Free throw attempts down, shots not getting better, and he doesn't play. We covered this on Sunday, but I want to get him on the board. All right, you're up.

I can pick any category? Yeah, any category. All right. Let's talk about, you know, there's a feel-good category. There's a beloved bench guy category. I'm going to pick somebody who qualifies for both. I was so happy to hear you talk up the case of Malik Beasley for sixth man of the year. Yeah. We have not talked about the Pistons yet, other than a little aside on Cade. I don't even quite understand how they're this good.

But they've been a top 10 net rating team now almost for the full season and top six or seven for quite a while. And I can hear the internet rumbling

smart guys when the line you know malik beasley in the playoffs he's gonna struggle on defense yeah no kidding we know like we got it like he's gonna get targeted on defense it's not a great defense but everybody knows he's been so phenomenal offensively and so critical to unlocking that team and that roster and kade specifically and duran and just he just keeps shooting threes he's i haven't looked it up in the last month but i was like a month ago i tweeted something like

he was at some threshold of, of attempts like 12 per 36 minutes or 11 per 36 minutes and over 42% that only Steph had ever done before in any season. And I kept hearing how the sixth man of the year was going to come down to Peyton Pritchard and Ty Jerome. Like, am I crazy? Or is Malik Beasley been neck and neck with Peyton Pritchard and above Ty Jerome, just based on minutes played alone, Ty Jerome has been unbelievable for the Cavs. Um,

DeAndre Hunter also belongs in that conversation, but Malik Beasley should be in consideration for number one in six-man of the year. And that team, like, I don't know

How high their ceiling is. I don't know how Jalen Dernan, who I've always been much higher on. He's one of my white whales of the NBA. I'm just fascinated by him. The physicality, the athleticism and all that. I don't know how he's going to respond. He's only 21 still, I think, to play off offenses going at him in the pick and roll. I'm not quite as...

scared of them if I'm one of the East favorites as maybe the numbers suggest I should be. But they are a great story. And Malik Beasley has been a huge part of it. So I'm just going to give him a little nod as my beloved bench guy. I love it. And I'm with you. Like, I'm just telling you right now, I'm voting for him for sixth man of the year.

Pritchard is minus. You're going to get booed in Boston. I love Pritchard. The Pritch Please shirts. You're not going to be allowed to buy one of those. I love Pritchard, but he's on an awesome team and the team can survive whether he's good or not game to game. Detroit can't. Beasley is beyond an irrational confidence guy for him.

They actually need him to make big shots night after night after night to succeed. The Celtics don't need Pritchard in the same way. Like he's eight to one for six men in the air. I don't, I don't get that. I think Pritchard is going to win, but I just think Beasley's for coming off the bench, what he has to do and what his role is. I think it's more important. I am going to grab my beloved bench guy since she took one, Al Horford for the Boston Celtics, who is,

It feels like his career should either be over or close. I don't really fully understand it. And if you do the exercise of going back into the 2000s and seeing how many guys from the drafts in the 2000s are still playing, he is now, I think, one of the last guys left. It's like LeBron, Chris Paul, him, Conley, Durant. I think those are the

the final five maybe from years of service, but he also played in college. Wasn't like he was like one year down in college. I think he had at least two years, maybe three in college. Um, he's so important to the Celtics team again. And I don't know whether it's a rejuvenation thing. He stopped eating red meat. What's going on, but he's swinging games. Like everyone talked about that Laker game when he defended LeBron over and over and over again, or Luca or whoever they want to throw at him. But,

He's become really important and they've figured out how to move him through the season, not put too much wear and tear on him. And he's going to be a huge asset for them. And I can't believe the kind of career he's having. He's like, he's a guaranteed hall of famer now, I think. Right. I mean, everybody makes it. I don't know how many all-star teams he's made off the top, but enough. But you know what other hall of fame he's in? He's in the, I can't believe you reinvented the second half of your career like this hall of fame.

But if you watch what he was the first half of it versus what he is now, there's some similarities, but it's a completely different impact to everything. So when you consider his career was almost over five years ago, we're still, and I talked about a couple of weeks ago, like, well, and this was a wrap in Philly. It keeps changing because when he turned into a spacing three point shooting, big man, a five time all-star by the way, um,

It started off as it often does of like, all right, the release is medium to slow. He needs some time and space. And now it's just, if he's in the corner, you can contest it. You can be closing out on him. That thing is up there quick. And he had 26 points last night. He's still a force defensively. I will say...

You know, he's had as switchy as he still is for his age. He's had playoff moments against both Donovan Mitchell and Trey Young, who we haven't talked about. Trey Young's on my list for a lot of different categories where those quicker, smaller guys on switches can make him look old again. Yeah. But the Celtics are, look, I mean, I picked him to win the championship. I'd still pick him to win the championship. He's been awesome. And I think you've got to just be so relieved

that Porzingis has come back from whatever viral thing that was and looks spectacular. We don't, we don't talk about my dad and I don't talk about Porzingis. We've just agreed not to discuss anything. It's like talking. If he plays for two straight weeks, it's like talking through a no hitter. Just like, eh, Porzingis looking pretty good. Uh, Corford, I think in the running for most beloved Celtic teammate, I can remember, uh,

just from anecdotally what people in the organization say, what the teammates say, the quotes that are in newspapers, just beloved. I mean, it really feels like he, he had like a lifelong impact on Tatum as a human being, like shit like that, shit that goes beyond basketball. I just think he is an all timer. I hope he keeps coming to games after he retires. Um,

he has moved into the fabric of the team in the city in a real way. - Well, I remember when they were in the finals last year and they were up 2-1, 3-1, you know, I wrote a big, for Grantland, I wrote a big profile about Warford back in the day. - I remember that one.

And I just started calling. I thought about maybe I should write something. Maybe I could work it into the Celtics with the championship piece. And it ultimately died on the vine. But I started calling just like Joe Kim Noah, Kyle Korver, Billy Donovan, Kenny Atkinson, Mike Budenholzer.

suspecting that they were all watching the finals with more of an emotional investment than you would think considering the distance between them and Hal Horford. And they were all dying for him to finally win the championship. I mean, they were all over the moon for him. Billy Donovan was like texting me from Europe being like, do you need a quote? You know, here's like, like they just love that guy. Every stop on his career,

all those people were watching the finals being like, this guy deserves to win the championship. And you just don't see that as much anymore. No, you don't. All right. We got to, we got to move with some pace now. What's your next pick? Why don't you take Trey young somewhere? I'll go crossroads guy, Trey young, you know,

this is funny you've taken two crossroads guys i don't know i'm gonna allow it i'm gonna allow it uh what no i could put it i could be a trade he could be a trade machine guy you can't be a feel-good guy so i don't know i mean my feel-good guy i'll tell you know what i'll tell no i'm not gonna take trey on my feel-good guy i guess will be steph curry um because this was the best case scenario for steph curry yeah you just don't get

Even when you have the rare chances that the Warriors got as an elite team who had this gap year or gap years where they got to pick high in the draft and they whiffed on the highest pick they had in Wiseman, you just don't get to contend for this long. And the most likely outcome for Steph was always going to be he rides out to Twilight and Golden State. The most likely good outcome

good outcome, upside outcome was he rides out the twilight and golden state on good, solid teams that don't really have a chance to win the championship, but they're good enough. They're 46, 48, 49 win teams that if they made the conference finals because of matchups and just excellence, luck, whatever, but it's not surprising. It's kind of a fun team. And I think because the Butler trade just fell into the league's lap,

They're better than that. Now, I still... It's hard for me to see them winning the championship, but they're a pretty goddamn good team with him, with Butler. And I just think, you know, the Warriors are 18-5 with those two guys. They're a threat to beat anybody in the West, maybe excepting Oklahoma City because they're just such a giant favorite of everybody else. I just think it's going to be awesome, assuming they make the top six, which is not guaranteed by any means, that...

we're going to see them play real meaningful games with real meaningful stakes where it's not just like, oh, this is kind of cute that Steph has a chance to win a first round series. And we all know they're going to get destroyed in the next round. Like, it's not that. This is a real team. It's a delight. And it's why you do the Jimmy Butler trade, which I described as not a Hail Mary, but throwing into double coverage on third and 14 and hoping your guy makes a play. They had to do it.

I loved it for them right from the start. I saw it was completely risk-free. I would have put Kaminga in it too if I had to. If it was a choice between the first-round pick or Kaminga, I would have thrown Kaminga in there. It's a great pick. I have nothing to add. Feel-good star for me. I think Mitchell belongs here because the Utah thing wasn't... He had some good moments there and it got a little rocky near the end. And then he goes to Cleveland and...

It was a weird trade. They gave up a lot. And then the next couple of years, people like me and maybe even you were talking about, he eventually wants to ends up in New York, which I'm a hundred percent sure is true. Um, and then the next door closes with Brunson, Brooklyn falls apart and it becomes one of those situations where it's like, maybe this is the best spot for me. I really think that he probably went through that thought exercise and landed there. Like we have really good players. Maybe I can be on a championship team. How do I elevate these guys? Um,

And, you know, we talked about how he slipped a little since the all-star break, but the game the other night was a good example of like, he still has that thing to him. You know, that when you're in a playoff series or in a game six, game seven, I need somebody who can go toe to toe with whoever the best guy is in another team. I think he has it. And he has a chance to now not only be a first team all NBA guy, but to maybe play for the, in the finals. Yeah.

Um, I think he's a great guy. I've always heard good things about him. Um, he does a lot of good charitable stuff and, uh, seems like a good teammate. I think the Cavs guys all love him and I'm just happy he's in that moment. Cause I like them one peg down.

The Darius Garland situation also could have gone sideways. And the rumblings around that were about his, I won't say unhappiness, but the uncertainty of whether this was really going to be the place for him with Donovan Mitchell having superseded him as the alpha guy in the backcourt. Those were true. And he's figured it out. He got healthy. They figured it out together. He's one of my favorite players to watch in the NBA. Deserved all-star. It's a great, great pick. Love it. Okay. All right, you're up.

I can't believe we haven't done hot seat coach yet. Well, cause it's like, we're both scared. It's a sad conversation to have. Well, we can do one. I just do fat fat. Let's do, let's each do a hot seat coach. Really? We don't have to talk about it. I'll go first. I mean, yeah, you know, Mike Budenholzer. Oh, all right. That's fair. I think the seat, it's like an Inferno. I don't know if it's hot. I think he's just sitting in a pool of lava. Like he's, he's a proven good coach and be,

Are you that embarrassing that you're just going to have a new coach every single year? This is going to keep, just keep doing this. Like you're not going to get any coat. You're not going to give any coach anytime. I don't see how he comes back. I just think this is, this is who Ishby is. I think he just every year is like, all right, this, none of this was my fault again. Who could I blame? I have tips for this category. Oh my God. Yeah, I sure do. Yeah.

I mean, I could think of like three names. That's fine. Not even counting the teams that aren't making the playoffs. I'm just looking at playoff teams. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Make the case. I have a feeling I know the case, but I want to hear you make the case. Defensively. They're pretty easy to score on offensively. The numbers are great. And the Brunson towns thing is legendary. All that stuff. Um,

I just feel like from a creativity standpoint, the stuff you mentioned earlier, and I've been talking about all year and the Knicks fans don't want to hear it, but I just don't understand why you're trading all that stuff for bridges. And then, you know, give a shit about using them ever. I think there's a version of this team that,

That is way scarier to me as a Celtics fan than they've tapped into. I don't think he's used the bench enough. I think he's played the guys way too many minutes. You don't think so? You don't think the bench has been utilized enough? There was a game in December. I think it was December where they, I didn't watch the game. I looked at the box for the next day. They beat the Hornets by 24 points. I think the final score is 125, 101.

I know obviously 24 game, 24 point game can be semi close. It's points, whatever. Yeah. McHale bridges. Someone could fact check me on this. I'm going from the top of my head, played the first 46 minutes and 30 seconds of the game consecutively in a game. The Knicks won by 24 points. Yeah. And I was like, how, how is that even, how's that even allowed? Like, I don't like that anyway. Yeah.

We both like Tibbs. I think there's a real question of whether his coaching style can be sustainable for 10 months, nine months, if you're trying to win a title. And we're going to find out. Brunson stepped on somebody's foot. You can't say it was the minutes that caused it. But I don't think it's sustainable how he coaches, and I don't think he's been creative enough. Let me defend the offensive creation. Creation is maybe the wrong word. Because the Bridges thing has been underutilized until now.

In part because the Towns Brunson thing is so unguardable. So Tibbs has been, and all the Tibbs backers around the league will tell you, his teams have performed better offensively than his reputation. He's had a lot of top 10 offenses in Minnesota, Chicago, elsewhere. And even though he's been pigeonholed as this defensive mastermind behind the 2008 Celtics and other great defensive teams, the Bulls with Noah and Gibson and all those guys. And that's true. They're right.

And almost all of those offenses have been of just the complete brute force variety. Like we just don't turn the ball over. We're number one or two in offensive rebounding. We're number one or two in free throws. And we just beat the hell out of you. We just, we isolate, we play simple basketball, low risk basketball, and we beat the hell out of you. This team still has some of that in, but it's not built to be a great offensive rebounding team. It's not built to be a beat the hell out of you team. It is built to have a Josh Hart runs the ball down your throat six times a game team.

But I do... You can quibble with the Bridges thing, and I think you're right. I do think... Can I quibble with the Minutes thing too? Because it's those two things together that I think are the biggest red flags. That's definitely right. But I do think it was interesting and smart how...

He decided to use Towns as a passing hub very early on in the season. They have a lot of artful cutting in their offense because of the way Towns lifts the opposing center off if the center is guarding him. Bridge is a good cutter. Ananobi is a good cutter. Hart is a great cutter. And he leaned into that in a way that I think was smart and made their offense a little bit more unpredictable than Brunson pounding the ball and Cat pounding post-ups and just spamming pick and pops, which I think they could always run more pick and pops with those guys. I...

Early in the season, I was like, this is different than I envisioned it. And he's built an elite offense. Now he's got elite offensive talent, no doubt, but he's constructed an elite offense that doesn't look anything like and doesn't project statistically anything like the other elite offenses that he's had before. Counter. He has awesome guys on offense. You and I could have done that. It's true.

It's true. He's on the hot seat for me. If they lose to that weird Bucks team in round one or they get absolutely smoked by the Celtics in round two. Well, so so I think that's the most likely outcome, right? Is like the Celtics beat them for one, maybe for two. And is that is that a failure or or do you say, well, you know, we say he's taken them as far as they could go. Well, we'll find out. All right. What's your next pick?

Well, can I just name another coach? Yeah. Let me be very clear. I'm a little rusty on this one. Let me be very clear for the aggregators. This coach is not in any danger of being fired. This coach's seat is ice cold. This coach was in the coach of the year conversation last year. I think he was number two on my ballot and he was on pace to be that high this year before injury struck his team.

We are long past the point where the Orlando Magic's offense, despite Suggs being out, despite Anthony being out, despite Mo Wagner being out, all of that, it just should not be this bad. It's so bad and so unwatchable and so uncreative that at some point, someone in what remains of the basketball media in Orlando has to gently ask the question of like,

So what's the idea for this offense? And now the idea might be, we trade a lot of points, seven, eight points per possession. What the idea might be. We trade a lot of stuff for a guard that can create a lot of the offense. We don't have that. The idea might be, we trade a lot of stuff for a center. That is either a threat diving to the basket, a threat popping for threes, a threat as a passer. They don't really have a guy who's a really good at any of those things. Oh God. Um,

So those are all fair answers, too. But the coaching staff has just got no scrutiny for the fact that this offense stinks and it stinks no matter who's on the court. And it's they're like 27th in offense. And I know their guys were hurt. And I know that they had injuries that it takes those oblique things for Franz and Paolo. It takes time to recover from them. They still stink now offensively. It's like it's it's they scored 87 points last night against the Clippers.

So I'm going to make that hot seat wildcard. So we had hot seat coach and that was supposed to be hot seat player, but we'll make it a wildcard pick player coach. Yeah. Can we just, can we just at least have a meeting about it where we're like,

Maybe we need to bring in an assistant who does this really well. Can we at least talk about it? When is the expiration date on the Magic or a feel-good story? Are we done with that yet? Maybe they can hire one of the 17 fired Grizzlies assistant coaches. Can we treat them like a real team now? Cerruti right now is high-fiving people in his living room. I have for my hot seat wildcard, Julius Randall. We don't need to talk about it.

There's a scenario where he just completely torpedoes Minnesota in round one and people are like, that guy sucks. You can never ruin them. He ruined Minnesota. Got to get him out of here. We all see it. I would advise Wolves fans to not check his playoff stats, which are in very few games, but still. What's your next pick? You still haven't picked an Apex superstar.

I mean, I was just going to pick I was just going to pick Luca because it's been the subplot of the fascinating plot of the season is Luca Donchic plays for the Los Angeles Lakers. He plays for LeBron James. He led his team to the finals last year in the conference finals two years ago. You know, look, we don't need to get into the trade or the the off court, whatever issues that are, you know, just are what they are and have been what they have been.

I don't think he's looked like a, a, a plus Luca yet in LA almost at all. Um, he still looks a little slower than usual to me. And he's not a speed guy. Obviously the game we went to, he scored what? 21 points in the first eight minutes. It was really exciting. And it was really exciting. He shot tons of threes. His two point field goal percentage is down. His turnovers are up. And a lot of that is just learning new system, new city, new teammates, new world. Like, like the,

the best player of the generation is over here and I'm on his team. And, and I think they've all bought into the right things. He's been very good for them. He would make an all-star team. He would make an all NBA team. He would probably make first team, all NBA for sure. Well, I don't know for sure, but he would make first team all NBA if he were healthy and playing this exactly the way he's played for the Lakers. He's almost the first team, all NBA caliber player, if not, definitely. So, and so you wouldn't have traded Anthony Davis and Max Christie in a number one for him.

I wouldn't have done it from whose perspective I would have done. You wouldn't have taken that as a trade offer. If you were the Mavs, you would have said no. I would have been your move. If I worked in the Mavs front office, I think I would be fired. No, I think, I think Nico Harrison would have fired me or I, because I would have just, I would have thrown everything I had against this trade and they would have found me annoying and an irritant. I do. I do think, you know,

a robust discussion within the magistrate office occurred at some point, but, um, Oh, but I just, I thought only three people knew about the trade. When, when do we have to stop pretending that that was the case, but I can't pretend that LeBron and Rich Paul and Anthony Davis didn't know about it. I can't believe he's on the Lakers. And right away you framed it, not you did. A lot of people framed it correctly as like, wow, they've got the bridge, uh,

the bridge to the post LeBron era, which they did not have before. They have the best possible unimaginable version of it. And I think in the shock of the trade and the realization that the Lakers had found yet another generational superstar to carry the generational superstar torch, I think it took like a week or 10 days for people to be like, Oh man,

This team's kind of good. This team's kind of interesting and dangerous, and they can play different styles and different lineups with no center. Should we do an RIP for the people who had the 48 hours of, I'm not sure these guys can play together? That was... One of my favorites. Unbelievable. That was great. That was a nice little basketball IQ test. It's like we've all...

I think starting with Wade and LeBron, there's just been this overthinking of, well, you just can't pair two ball-dominant guys. Even though that duo obviously succeeded at a crazy level. That's LeBron James. It's a different story. LeBron James in his prime. They're not just two ball-dominant guys. They're two of the five greatest passers maybe ever.

And there are two ball dominant guys with very good to elite post-up games. And that's the kind of thing that Phoenix and all its ball dominant guys does not have. They don't have guys who can change the geometry of the floor in tons of different ways by getting to spots on the floor with a bully ball game that those two guys have, let alone the transition game. They both have an inside outside game and can pass. And the other thing is they don't have to play all the minutes together.

That's the piece I thought of right away and I wasn't alone. I'd be like, well, fuck, one of these guys is going to be out there for two and a half hours. Well, and you know what I've loved that the Lakers have done? If you watch their rotations carefully,

Luke is the one who gets the solo minutes. Reeves and LeBron will be on the bench together. And almost all the time LeBron is out there, if Luke is resting, Reeves is also playing with LeBron. So LeBron does not have to do the heavy lifting by himself ever. And I know he's been, by his standards, unproductive as a scorer lately by his incredible standards.

I think that is the only avenue to set them up for short-term success was to lift the burden on LeBron to that degree and unlock all this other stuff that we talked about earlier that they're doing. I think this is a really dangerous team that if Luka can rediscover a Luka form,

Yeah. I just, I never want to see that guy in a playoff series. And they got, they got a lot of like Gabe Vincent sitting shot. They got a lot of stuff going on right now. That's interesting. And the crowd likes the team. They're going to be tough to beat in LA. Yeah. The, the, uh, well, that leads to my third banana pick, which is Austin Reeves. We don't need to spend 10 minutes on it, but I think he's the best thirds, the best third score on a team, not just this year, but in a while, like when you're talking about a guy that

Might be able to score in the thirties, even if the whole team's playing, but also one of our two guys is out. Can you score 40 tonight? He can do that. There's nobody, nobody has that in the NBA right now. And nobody's had it for a while. I was trying to think of like best third scores on really good teams.

And you go backwards to Steph KD. And then clay was the third score, but even as great as clay was and as great of a shooter as he was, you couldn't run the offense through him. They can run the offense to Reeves for like six, seven minutes. And he actually can create shots for himself or other people. Like it's,

It's pretty great. So there's a lot of good third bananas. I think he's the best one. Phoenix fans are so mad that they're scoring trio. Just we didn't even didn't even pop up in either of our brains. Also mad Sacramento Kings fans who are like, well, what about the Zach Levine, DeMar DeRozan, DeMontis, Sabonis trio? That's pretty. Can we talk about that? By the way, that's a team to watch. And they're not even we haven't even mentioned them yet. Levine was going to be one of my I don't know what categories we have left, but Levine was going to be a third banana for

pick for me as well. Oh, do it right now. Just because what a catastrophic year for a franchise that seemed to have finally veered out of the catastrophe lane and just was like, you know what? We want to go right back to it. Let's just fire the coach. Did you like what they got in the Fox trade at all?

They got some okay draft equity. I mean, if you're going to have to trade a guy to get an all-star, and Zach Levine has been an all-star, and some draft equity is fine. The fact that they fired the coach, the fact that they pissed him off so much

And now he's talked about it on record in a couple of different places. He's like, yeah, they fired the coach and left me to hang out to dry and made it look like it was my fault. And I actually liked the coach. And yeah, and like, what's wrong with our organization? Not great when an ex player where you just traded who was like a beloved part of your team is like a week later being like, oh, yeah, that's a circus over there, basically. And they get Levine back. And Levine and a lot of these games just feels like.

like almost an afterthought. And he's averaging 21 a game, which is actually not a lot for him. His assist to turnover ratio has gotten like perilously close to even with the Kings. And it just feels like between DeRozan and Sabonis and now Monk coming off the bench, I realized like for Levine to be worth it

He's not a great passer and he's a minus defender. He's got to take a lot of shots and it feels like he is sort of semi-predictably, I guess, trying to feel out like, how do I fit in here? Or the coaches are trying to figure out. He just hasn't been the explosion of productivity that the numbers in Chicago suggested he would be. And, you know, don't feel like the Kings and the Bulls are destined to keep just keep trading these guys among each other. Maybe just trading with each other. Well, I mean, this Kings thing now,

It's a decade and a half almost. We did that Grantland draft room war room short when they let us behind the scenes. Remember that? It's on YouTube somewhere. Oh, yeah. And then I'm taking Nick Stauskas. Yeah. And Vivek is kind of nudging people towards Stauskas. They sing to him. Don't they like sing or chant something on the phone? They call him like one, two, three, something. I'm going to make this quick. My Crossroads guys, Kawhi Leonard,

And here's why. He should be flattered to be still in a crossroads given his health situation. And I love Kawhi. His bounce is there if you see it in person. I don't know how long it's going to last. And it's gotten to the point when he's out there with the other guys they have. The Clipper fans, I think rightfully so, are like, we can hang with any team in the league. And the reason he's a crossroads thing is I think the Clipper fans are at the crossroads with that feeling.

This is now over a half decade of, well, if Kawhi can just dot, dot, dot. And I think this is it. And if, and if he gets hurt again or he falls apart in some way or he's not there or round one, all of a sudden game three, um, Shams is reporting Kawhi Leonard is doubtful for tonight. I just don't think the Clipper fans want to do it again. This has been, um,

five years of this. So there it's a crossroads from a sense of you can't realistically think you can win the title if he's one of your highest paid guys and best guys in the team when he hasn't been able to make it through a season and a half a decade. And that's it. You don't need to have anything else. Okay. Unless you have it, you go ahead. Well, I think the Paul George decision, which looks like a stroke of genius in retrospect, even though they did offer him a three year, a hundred, whatever, $50 million deal. Um,

I remember talking about that and saying like, yeah, it's great. They've signed all these nice role players and, you know, Harden's back and,

to make that decision signals to me that you don't think the team as presently constructed can win a championship. If you thought it could win a championship, you'd go all in and they didn't go all in. So I don't think they entered this season necessarily expecting to be in this kind of conversation that we're talking about now. It's like they can go toe-to-toe with people. And here they are. They're a really well-balanced team. Like, I love, you know, Powell and Chris Dunn go out and in comes another defender in Derek Jones Jr. to replace Dunn and another scorer in Bogdanovich to replace Powell. I think...

My hottest Clipper take is that if he's a Zubats belongs, I don't think he's going to make third team all NBA for me. But you need to have him on the list of guys that you've considered for 13 NBA, along with James Harden is making a late push. Is he making a late push for you? I do the list every week. He was on my third team this week. I don't know if he's going to stay, but he's in there. Great. Do you have for a defensive stud? That's a that's a hole for you right now.

uh, that hasn't been picked. Um, you can pick between Amin Thompson and OGN and Obi. Let's do Amin Thompson. What else? The guy's an absolute freak. I mean, just the plays he makes are ridiculous. Um,

I couldn't like him anymore. I don't care that everything... You saw him in person this year, right? Yeah. Yeah, we were texting about it. It's different in person. It's like, oh, these guys are amazing athletes, and yet he's a better athlete than all the amazing athletes. It's crazy. I had a front office person, not Rockets, just literally yesterday, but I was talking about it because this is what I do. I talk about Amit Thompson, I guess, said he's the best athlete in the NBA, full stop. And

And his brother might be the second best athlete in the NBA. So they're the best athletes in the NBA. Jesus. And they play the right way. And he's just we we haven't seen one of those in a while where a guy comes off the bench. Another guy gets hurt. He gets elevated into the starting five and it's immediately clear. He's never coming off the bench again. This other guy, this other guy, this other guy's not a starter anymore.

Uh, I'm going to use a second banana pick cause I have one and I'm going to take Jimmy Butler just cause I feel like he needs to be in any sort of most intriguing guys setting it to the playoffs list. Uh, it's been really fun to watch him. I don't know what happened with Miami and I think blame goes every everywhere. And it seemed to got really, really, really deeply, darkly personal with him and Pat Riley.

um, about as personal as it's gotten with an executive and a player maybe ever. And I think it affected everything to the point where both sides needed to move on and they did. And he went to Golden State and he's clicked with Draymond and the Warriors took off immediately and it's prolonged Steph's prime. And I can't wait to watch him in a playoff series again because he's fucking awesome in the playoffs. So where they land, we'll see who they're playing. We don't know.

Um, but it's great to have them involved because I did not like this Miami version of Jimmy this year. It was just felt like a wasted, wasted talent this year. It's like, this guy's good. He still has it in him. We're just going to throw a season away for no reason. So he is, uh, my second band of pig. All right. I don't know if I did this correctly, but it seems like we only have two spots left. I still need my leap guy and I'm going to give you a wild card back so we can get to 25.

And I just want to point out, we haven't taken Nikola Jokic yet in this intriguing thing. So you have the floor. You haven't been able to talk about him for five months. Wildcard? Wildcard? Yeah, I'll give him to you as a wildcard. I'm going to just zig right away from that and go with related Jamal Murray. Jamal Murray might be the biggest wildcard in the NBA. The first two months of the season, plus the Olympics, plus the way last season ended was like, uh-oh.

As great as the Okich is, as great as the Aaron Gordon fit is, as steady as Michael Porter Jr. jumper is, as improved as Christian Brown, who belongs in the most improved player conversation to as approved as he is. They can't win for a playoff series without Jamal Murray being the Jamal Murray who was the second best guy in a title team two years ago or something close to that.

And he's been pretty damn good now for the next two and a half months. A little bit quieter lately than he was when he started really rolling and putting up 30s and 40s. And even I think he had a 50. They need fully. If they have that guy, 28 a game, Jamal Murray, killer Jamal Murray, mid-range assassin Jamal Murray. I wouldn't sleep on these guys. I don't think they quite have enough.

to win the championship, even if they get him because I just think their bench is too much of a wild card and their defense hasn't been good enough. But we know they're tough. We know they have one of the greatest players of all time, if not maybe the best player. I still would rank him the best player right now, even if I didn't vote him MVP. If they get that Jamal Murray, I wouldn't want to play them if I were any of these teams, including Oklahoma City. So we'll make Jamal and Jokic the co-wild card.

I mean, Jokic is in a wild card. Jokic is in a wild card. I know exactly what I'm going to get from him almost every game. And sometimes I'll get a 30-20-20. Who knows? I was thinking more wild card, like Jokic just rips through the West, beats OKC by himself, makes the finals again. And we're like, oh my God, this is one of the eight greatest players of all time. I'm going to go with my last pick for the leap. Surprise day hasn't come up yet. Talked about him a little on Sunday. Tyrese Halverton. I'm so glad he brought up the Pacers.

So they're in that four or five spot against Detroit. It looks like assuming Milwaukee stays in six.

And we all like Detroit. It's a feel good story, but I just think Indiana has a better team than them. Detroit's going to try to muck it up and there's a chance we might be really celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Artest Melee in an actual way with the same uniforms. Maybe they wear the uniforms. Don't say that. Don't do that. I'm just a little worried. Detroit clearly loves brawling and they're going to get physical. There was a traumatized kid in the Wolves crowd. They gave him a jersey and he was like, yes, great. Thanks for the jersey. Thanks for the jersey.

I just want to mention James Johnson's on the Pacers. So I'm prepared for anything in a Pacers, uh, piston series, but, uh, with Halliburton, the way he's played the last three months, uh, he fully looks back to where he was the first two months of the previous season. There's a path here for him playing the Pistons around one going toe to toe with the calves and round two, where it's just like, we leave that series like, wow, Halliburton has been the best guy through four games.

Holy shit. Are the Pacers going to beat the Cavs? They could just run up and down the way the Cavs defense has been the last month or so. There's some vulnerabilities. I guess my question is how good is Halbert? Is there a level for him to go up in the playoffs? Was last year just a fluke of injuries and the fact that the East wasn't deep and they snuck into the Eastern finals and it didn't mean anything? Or did that actually mean a little more than we realized?

I'm just intrigued. So I have him as my possible leap guy. Love it. He's on third team all NBA for me right now on the ballot that I don't have. He's played even above that for quite a bit of the season now. They're just a really good team. I mean, I don't have their schedule in front of me, but they started, they were under 500, maybe 20 games into the season or thereabouts. And since then have been a legit, very good team.

The Cavs series would be interesting. The Cavs are a little bigger than they are on the front line, but Siakam's really good. Turner's good. Obi Toppin feels like he hasn't missed a shot in a month now. Yeah, there's like 10 years ago, Obi Toppin is in the running for sixth man of the year because we had way less six better of the year candidates. And we're like, hey, what about we're just trying to talk ourselves into candidates? I mean, he comes in and swings games every once in a while. Look, they've got Turner's free agency hanging over their head.

And the tax implications of that. Someone I've seen has suggested, well, they could just dump Obi Toppin. I'm like, that guy's good. He's been good for their team. Dumping Obi Toppin, there's pain. They're just a rock solid team. And if you're not healthy or you don't bring your A game, they can beat you four times in seven games. And Halliburton is just a guaranteed good offense almost by himself. I just realized with the categories that I put Luka down twice for you.

And that Jokic can be your legacy guy. So moving in here, here's where we land. The Balkan guys. Apex superstar. I had SGA. You had Luca. Okay. Beloved bench guy. I had Horford. You had Malik Beasley. Crossroads guy. You have Kat. I have Kawhi. Defensive stud. Lou Dort for me. Ahmed Thompson for you. Feel good star. Steph Curry for you. Donovan Mitchell for me. Hot seat coach. Controversial category.

Boone holes are for you. Tibbs for me. Got, got a, you jerk backwards and screamed out. Whoa. Hot seat wild card. You went with Jamal Mosley on the Orlando magic who can no longer score. I went with Julius Randall legacy guy. I have Tatum. You have Yoke. Second banana. You took Jay Williams and Chet Hornbuckle together. I allowed it. I took Jimmy Butler. Third banana, Austin Reeves for me, Levine for you. The leap.

Mobley for you, Halliburton for me. Trade Machine Guy, Giannis for you, Ja for me. And then a wildcard pick, which I gave to you so we could get to 25, Jamal Murray. That gimmick actually worked. Covered a lot of ground. I'm really glad to face it. We didn't pick LeBron James. Maybe we should put him as another wildcard. We talked about him a lot though. Okay. He'll be fun. Hopefully, hopefully, uh,

Hopefully he's okay with not being mentioned as one of the 25 most intriguing players in the playoffs. He's kind of legacy and printed onto it. We don't even need to have him in there. We can't call him either of the bananas. He's above a lot of these things. Yeah, yeah. He's lingering above.

I'm sure there'll be some LeBron fans out there who'll be upset. They didn't even pick LeBron. Welcome back, Zach. Fuck you. Zach Lowe, you start your podcast on The Ringer next week. It's called The Zach Lowe Show. So I guess you're going to have to do the welcome to The Lowe Show. We're workshopping. I'm about to spend the next three hours recording different welcome to's just to make sure I get it exactly right from Monday. I remember losing the BS report once upon a time.

And it hurt and it just became the BS podcast. And then that's how it went. Your YouTube channel, we launched that as well. There's going to be some writing stuff that we'll talk about as the playoffs get closer. That's a TBD. And anything that I didn't leave out? No, you said TBD. That's good. We'll see. We'll see. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Playoffs are going to be fun. We're almost there.

10 years since we've worked together steadily and we're back and it's great to have you back. It's great to have you in the basketball conversations. I had a fantastic time. Great to see you as always, my friend. Much appreciated across the board and look forward to a lot of good content over the next few months before the NBA chills out for a bit again. All right. Welcome back.

All right. That's it for the podcast. You can watch it on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. You can always watch it as a video podcast on Spotify. I hope you're watching Celtic city. We put up an awesome episode, episode five. It was about the mid eighties and Larry bird and, uh, and kind of the peak of the bird era. The last interview I think anyone had with Bill Walton is in there and he's fantastic. And, uh, I think it's probably my favorite episode of the nine just cause I had the most attachments.

to that team. But you can check that out on Max. You can catch up on all the episodes there. You can check out the rewatchables as well because we put up Good Will Hunting.

The plan the rest of the week, I have podcast Thursday, and then I think we're going Sunday earlier. And then Prestige TV podcast might be live coming right off the White Lotus season finale. So it's going to be a busy week. Don't forget to subscribe to Zach's pod and Zach on YouTube. And we look forward to having him next week. I will see you on Thursday.

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