Game 7 Road Wins by the Wolves and Pacers, Conference Final Previews, and Offseason Outlooks for NYK, DEN, and OKC
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And now, The Low Post. Welcome to The Low Post podcast. It's 1045 Eastern Time on a Sunday night. Two game sevens. One slightly anticlimactic. The other, whoa boy. Two nights ago, Anthony Edwards held up seven. Seven fingers. So we're going back to Denver for seven.

And Game 7 ends with Anthony Edwards holding up another hand to wave goodbye to the Denver Nuggets fans. Didn't seem popular in Denver. I loved it. Talk your talk. You just knocked off the defending NBA champions on the road. Anthony Edwards shot 6 of 24. But Jaden McDaniels was huge. Carl Anthony Towns.

What a moment for Carl Anthony Towns who chilled out for almost an entire game and almost an entire series against what everyone considered, including me, the favorite to win the Western Conference this year and played a wonderful, calm game seven. And Kevin Pelton,

The second half of this game, the first half of this game ended in disastrous fashion for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Christian Brown had a chase. Christian Brown, who was fantastic and outplayed Michael Porter Jr., that's going to be a whole different discussion for the Denver Nuggets. Had a chase down block. The Nuggets get a basket at the other end. Suddenly it's a 15-point game. They come out at halftime.

Jamal Murray, Jokic pick and roll. Jamal just dribbles into the paint, sees Gobert in the paint, and is like, oh, you're not actually going to do anything? I'm just going to lay the ball up over you. About a minute later, Rudy Gobert on a fast break, inexplicably passed the ball by Anthony Edwards like 20 feet from the rim. I don't even know what happened with the layup. It might have slipped out of his hands. It might have just...

And to that point, Rudy Gobert was not having a good game. And on the other end, Jamal Murray hits a corner three. It's 58-38 early in the third quarter. The home team, the defending champions, are up by 20. And in an instant, every single thing about the game changed. Kevin Harlan said it on the broadcast. From 58-38...

to 92-82 Minnesota before it got a little funky at the end. A 54-24 run since that Jamal Murray corner three highlighted by a whole bunch of stuff. Lots of stuff happened. And I just thought Denver played maybe the best half of basketball I've ever seen. This defensive basketball I've ever seen this core play together in the first half.

And Minnesota trumped it in the second half with an absolutely hellacious effort. Everybody that played contributed. Nas Reed was unbelievable when Cat was in foul trouble. Cat forced Jokic in the post into some of the toughest shots you'll ever see Jokic take. Jokic took, I think it ended up nine threes in this game. Maybe there was a 10th one at the end that I forgot about. Yeah.

That alone is a tribute to how difficult they found it to get any kind of looks. And look, Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic finished this game combined 69 points. Jokic 13 of 28, Murray 13 of 26. Against this defense, that's enough.

Aaron Gordon, four points. Look, you don't expect scoring from Aaron Gordon. He does everything else. Michael Porter Jr., his fourth straight single-digit scoring game. Three of 12, seven points. His one three felt very big. It tied the game. KCP, five points. Holiday, nothing. Jackson, nothing. Had a horrible turnover early in the fourth quarter when things were starting to get hairy. Christian Brown was great. He only scored five points. They didn't shoot it great. I mean, Murray shot it pretty well, 13 of 26, but they did enough to...

This was about Minnesota, despite a scattershot, passive, disengaged first half from Anthony Edwards, who couldn't seem to kind of figure out what to do and where to go against Denver's defense. Just absolutely roaring back to life when it looked like for any other team, a lot of other teams, it was just getting away from them.

I don't know. Where do you want to start, KP? I mean, do you want to start at Rudy Gobert making an 18-foot fadeaway jumper on a blown possession and then following that up on the very next Denver possession by playing his textbook rover defense and stuffing Aaron Gordon as a...

At the rim, when Jokic did the classic slip pass that against every other team is a dunk, but against this team is not. The Rudy Gobert renaissance in the second half after the clumsy and o-fish and all the things that people consider the Gobert critics love. Rebounds in the second half and literally rebounds. He only had two offensive rebounds, but he drew fouls on several box outs. Made his free throw, 7 of 9. Where do you want to start? I mean, what a season for Minnesota, right?

who is now in the conference finals against the Dallas Mavericks. They'll probably be favored in that series, I would imagine. Just a crazy series for Minnesota to win the first two like they did in Denver, just doing something to Denver in game two that you never have seen happen to this team. They completely unraveled. Denver wins the next three, punctuated by one of the greatest offensive performances you'll ever see by any individual player in Jokic in that game five. And then Minnesota wins.

I don't know what the hell happened to Denver in game six. I don't even know what the score was. And then tonight, what just a ferocious rally. Where would you like to start? What happened in the second half?

I want to start with two places. Number one, I think this is an important point that you sort of touched on, but I think we need to make clear is that, you know, there is an inevitable thing that even in a series this good in this classic, it becomes about what the team did wrong to lose the series rather than what the winning team did right to win the series, because that's easier to get off jokes and, you know, hot takes and things of that nature. And there should be none of that in this series. These are

are clearly two of the four best teams in the playoffs, even though they are not going to be two of the four teams in the conference finals. Either one of them, you know, had they won this series could easily have won the championship. This wasn't some failing for Denver, even though I think there are some interesting things to discuss with their supporting cast.

This is about how good the Minnesota Timberwolves were and throughout the series. I mean, I think, you know, even if Denver had somehow come back from the 10-point deficit to win this game late, like it would have felt like they stole this series more than that. They, you know, kind of kind of controlled it or is the defending champions and that's testament to what Minnesota did.

Did right from the start of this series, you know, had had two really bad games, one really bad game at home in game three. Denver was just awesome in games four and game five, but dominated twice against the defending champs. And then the other thing I want to say, like the unsung hero, the one guy you didn't mention, I think, in for Minnesota who played a really key role is Mike Conley Jr.,

And the Minnesota training staff getting him ready to go after he was severely injured enough with his calf strain to have to miss a crucial game five and to not just be on the court, but able to contribute because we saw with OG Ananobi. We'll talk about this later. Like what goes wrong when you try to return from a muscle strain too early and you're just not able to help your team. And that wasn't the case with Mike Conley. He was legitimately important. Picked, you know, Jamal Murray's pocket at one point for a pick six as part of that run in the fourth quarter. And,

And, you know, so a shout out to the Minnesota training staff, which I think, you know, probably will not hear a lot of it, but deserves it in the wake of this game. Yeah, he had picked Jamal Murray at half court. I believe the deficit was seven at that point for Denver late in the game. And it led to an ant corner three early in the shot clock. And it got A-Rod leaping out of his seat on the baseline. And then he also had...

I don't know if he was... Was he there? I didn't see him on the broadcast. And he also calmly hit a...

massive end of shot clock, like contested three after the Michael Porter jr. Through that, I mentioned tied the game at 72 to put the, to put the wolves up 75, 72. And it did feel like once they got the lead, they had to keep the lead. How about, how about what will be forgotten is cats just like all time, bad baseline out of bounds turnover with like a minute left. And I think they were up seven at the time. Like, well, he almost threw, he might as well just throwing the ball into the crowd. It was such a bad turnover. Um,

But Cat was unbelievable. And look, the game started to turn. I mentioned it was 58-38. Ant ran a pick and roll with Gobert at like 9-20 left in the third quarter. And to that moment, those two players, the up-the-middle pick and roll combination for the Timberwolves were going to be the kind of goats, not the good kind of goat, the other kind of goat for Minnesota in this game.

And Ant, for one of the only times to that point in the game, was like, I don't really care what the defense is. I'm just putting my head down and driving into the paint. And they hedged hard. Jokic hedged hard like he always does.

And Ant got low and just zoomed, split the hedge, split Jokic, went down the middle and got Jaden McDaniels a corner three. Jaden McDaniels, who punched a wall last year, couldn't play in this series. Just an absolutely massive two games for him. They do not win either of these games. Well, they don't win this series in this game in particular without Jaden McDaniels. He was massive. It was just a really like for them to win.

with Ant shooting six of 24 and kind of no showing on offense in the first half is just a really terrific accomplishment. And I agree with you. Like, I saw some tweets about how, oh, boy, you know, whoa, the takes on Jokic tomorrow or the takes on Gobert tomorrow or the takes on Murray tomorrow.

The main guys showed up and played well. Even Gobert. You could tell Jokic was tired at the end of the game. You don't see him get beat on rebounds like the couple that Gobert beat him on for fouls once in Minnesota. By the way, Minnesota being in the bonus was also a big deal, and Gobert had a lot to do with that. Yeah, Ant, 6 of 24, 7 assists. You like that. Only one turnover. You like that. And just the defense. Nas Reed came in. I...

Nas Reid's best defensive games in the series are the best defense he's ever played in his career. And man, Denver is out in the second round. And this is just going to be like, on the one hand, you want to say like, boy, what a weird and tough break for them to draw this Minnesota team that they have been eyeing with a wariness for a year plus now because of how they match up.

We've talked ad nauseum about that. You know, they lose that San Antonio game in game 81 to drop from the number one seed. And oh, God, the bracket breaks for them. Like, this is going to be life in the Western Conference. It's only going to get harder. And every year, the second round of the playoffs is going to be like, how did those two teams play in the second round? I mean, less so maybe for Dallas, Oklahoma City, although that was a heavyweight battle in its own right. I mean, this is, yes, it's a bad matchup. Yes, it's...

whatever word you want to use, unfortunate, unlucky that these two teams faced each other in the second round of what could end up being the de facto NBA finals. I actually think it's premature to say that given that Boston has been the best team statistically in the league the whole year and in the playoffs, admittedly against the junior varsity bracket to date. But this is like this is going to happen every year. The West is only going to get better every single year going in the next two, three years. And

I don't know. What else? What other takeaways here? I mean, obviously some vindication on the Gobert trade. The Tim Connolly bowl is won by Tim Connolly. Tim Connolly's team. Chris Finch just shouting and sitting and sometimes standing up and limping around.

I don't know where I don't want to talk. We're going to have to have the Denver like what happened to Michael Porter Jr. discussion. Where do they go from here as they hit the second apron potentially with KCP up for a new deal and Gordon's extension coming not far from now. I don't want to get there yet. I want to let I want to let Minnesota luxuriate in this moment 20 years after the last time they got this far in the playoffs.

What else struck you about their performance as they got back? I mean, Denver had 37 points in half of a basketball game. 37. It's unthinkable. Yeah, I mean, I think that the Edwards third quarter stretch was really fascinating. And it's kind of fitting that he finished this game 6 of 24 because, you know, I saw our buddy Sam Amick bring it up on Twitter like,

One of the comparisons for this one is, this was much higher scoring, but the 2020 Celtics-Lakers game seven at the conclusion of what had been a really hard-fought series where Kobe shot six of 24, but I think had 15 rebounds in that game, was terrific defensively. Pau Gasol was awesome as the Lakers outlasted a Celtics team that was without Kendrick Perkins and famously without the starting five that still hasn't lost in a playoff series. But

It was one of the better six for 24 games you could play from Anthony Edwards, at least in the second half, because, you know, he was aggressive in terms of, you know, trying to actually draw the double as opposed to just allowing himself to be trapped and then get, get the nuggets in rotation and try to create plays that way. So,

You mentioned kind of that first pick and roll at the 920 mark of the third quarter after they had gone down 20. Then Towns makes a couple free throws are their next scores after that. And then they had a stretch of five consecutive scores where it was either Edwards scoring, getting an assist, or there was one play where it was a Mike Conley three where they had a

really good ball rotation after he got off of it. And Jaden McDaniels technically got the assist, but that was all set up by Edwards. He got the hockey assist on that play. And I think it was that stretch that really kind of changed the tone of the game, even if Edwards wasn't necessarily their best player in this game. Wow. I mean, we knew this was going to be a tough series. I picked Denver in seven. Obviously, that did not pan out. Minnesota won in seven. But it feels like

It feels like this series, the turn was already starting for Carl Anthony Towns, but this series feel like he cemented himself as I've shed. I mean, we're like two years removed. Not like we are two years removed from a playoff series against the Grizzlies where he like could not even stay on the floor. And in some games was completely absent offensively.

to the point where you were like, did he just not even get the ball for 20 straight minutes? How is that even possible? And the fouls are still there. I mentioned the hilariously bad baseline out of bounds turnover. But for the most part, he played a calm, polished, offensive game, took what the defense gave him, took his time against smaller guys, made threes. You know, he's been the best three-point shooter in the playoffs. And defensively,

Look, he guarded Durant in the first round. That's a tough matchup for him. He did a manageable job. He did a good enough job that they didn't have to break their entire defensive scheme just to address it. It was totally untenable for him to guard Kevin Durant. And he was...

Awesome. Guarding. I mean, like no one is going to shut down Jokic. No one's going to stop Jokic. The whole point of how Minnesota plays defense is to coordinate help to Carl Towns and to Rudy Gobert in certain ways from certain places against Jokic. But he bodied him up. He was tough. He was physical. He was physical on the boards. Like it's been a long time coming for him. And the moment the Gobert trade was struck,

The trade machine fanatics, including me, were like, where does Carl Anthony Towns make sense? It looks like they're only get out of jail free guard financially. Well, I got good news and bad news for whoever wins this ridiculous fight for ownership of the Minnesota Timberwolves, which just fittingly cannot be...

100% not embarrassing at any moment, even a crowning moment. But whoever wins this fight, you are in financial jail. You have to keep this team together. They are obviously too good. And I'm sorry, you're just going to have to pay a lot of luxury tax. Too bad.

Yeah, if the Timberwolves do win the championship, do A-Rod and Mark Lurie try to jump the stage? Because I assume it's in the NBA constitution that the trophy is handed to the managing, the governor of the team, who would still be Glenn Taylor. No, you know who they should hand it to in that case? None of you all get to have the trophy. Whether that happens, whether it's in Minnesota or...

Let's face facts, probably Boston. And if Minnesota gets by Dallas, which is a matchup we're going to talk about, and I think a fascinating matchup, Crunch, the mascot, should get the trophy. And they should interview Crunch, and he should just say nothing because he's a mascot and he can't talk. And that should be the end of the interview that Malika or Doris or whoever's doing it this year does on the final stage. Forget the owners. Give it to Crunch or bring out KG or somebody like that. Just...

I want to talk more about Minnesota. Well, let's talk about Cat a little bit more. So the Gobert trade, I think there was, you mentioned this as validation. I think there were two sets of reasons to be critical of the Gobert trade or skeptical of it. And one of those were the financial and draft pick cost of acquiring Rudy Gobert and what that means for the Timberwolves future. And let's be clear that that bill hasn't come due yet. Like they gave up

a relatively meaningless draft pick and Walker Kessler wasn't going to contribute once they drafted Rudy Gobert, there's still picks out there and the tax bill is going to be enormous come next year once the Anthony Edwards and CAC extensions kick in. But the other

Other set of criticism was, is this going to work in the playoffs? Because, you know, Kat had been better probably as a center than as a power forward to that date, even though it causes a lot of defensive problems. You know, is he going to be able to defend force in the playoffs? Is there going to be enough spacing? And those set of questions, the Timberwolves have definitively answered in the positive with the Mike Conley trade being a big part of why they were able to work that out.

individually, I mean, this is kind of a fascinating point. Like he has this terrible playoff reputation. It's based on like 11 games. He had played two playoff series in his career at the time of the go bear trade. The one that they played against Houston in the first round in 2018. Can we count the play in game where he was also terrible as a playoff game? So 12, 12,

Not if we want to say that the play-in is not the playoffs, which I think we still want to do, but a fair point. He, assuming this series goes five games, will play as many playoff games this season at a minimum as he had in his entire career before this year. So, you know, this is now a big chunk of his playoff track record. And this has been Cat, for the most part, being excellent defensively, you know, in tough matchups.

and making good decisions offensively.

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This episode is brought to you by Allstate. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like, you know to check you have the tickets in your wallet first before you drive two hours to the big game.

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Judge an individual team, something to this nature, that it's fair to judge an individual team's single season championship in conjunction with what follows in terms of how how lasting does that championship feel? How indicative of the team's true quality was it?

based at least a little bit taking into account what happens next. And he used some of the recent NBA champions who have kind of fallen on their faces a little bit in the next year, implying, I think, that maybe it demerits the championship just a little bit.

Denver is now a one championship team going forward. Another year, another no consecutive champions since the first two years of the KD Warriors, which is really not a long time in the scheme of NBA history. But none of them getting out of round two. None of them getting out of round two. Which is wild. This doesn't feel like any kind of... And people will then point to Denver's road to the title last year was littered with low seeds and play-in teams and all of that.

This doesn't feel like that to me because they were so dominant over those teams in the playoffs last year, 16 and four. And this was a series that went to the hill between two teams who could win the title. I don't know if you disagree, but if you do say so, if not, I am, though, interested in not necessarily litigating that because to me, each championship is different and special and awesome and can be left left, you know, where it is.

I do think there are some questions. This series raises some questions about the Nuggets going forward, given the financials of the team, particularly with Michael Porter Jr., who was just not good in the series and has been going through an enormous amount of family stuff, obviously. But I don't know. Like, what do you, if you're Calvin Booth, you have a couple of drinks tonight, you go to the office tomorrow, you start sifting through the rubble with your staff. What kind of discussions do you think you're having in there?

So I'd say first off to the bigger question, this loss strikes me as somewhat similar to Milwaukee losing to Boston in the 2022 second round. We didn't have, you know, Chris Middleton didn't play at all in that series, right? So that was a huge asterisk.

Jamal Murray is playing through something with the calf injury. It doesn't seem like it's, you know, that's obviously not as serious as not having Chris Middleton at all, but it's the same thing where it was a really hard fought series against a good opponent. It doesn't, you know, say anything I think about the true nature of the previous year's team. And then the other element of it is, look,

We knew all along the loss of Bruce Brown Jr. in particular, to a lesser degree, Jeff Green, was going to leave them thinner and relying on younger players. Peyton Watson got played out of this series. I'm optimistic for his long-term potential to be a contributor, but not this year. I think he obviously would have played right away in the next series had they advanced. And I did wonder at times, did Michael Malone go too quickly forward?

away from him but you know justin holiday was really good including defensively i thought justin holiday was great agreed so just but justin holiday only played nine minutes tonight reggie jackson played five minutes it was basically a six man rotation everybody but michael porter jr played all the other starters played at least 40 minutes and one of the fascinating i think contrasts from this year to last year is last year the combination of just

and Murray and then playing at altitude, it felt like anytime you got in a late game situation, Denver was going to, you know, be, be the stronger team in that situation. It's not as true in hindsight as you think it is, but in this series, there were minus seven in what counted is clutch time game within five points, last five minutes in game one of the series. I haven't seen it yet tonight, but they were clearly negative in that span. Again,

that sort of trump card that they've had that has allowed them to outperform their point differential the last couple of years in the regular season, as well as the playoff run, it suddenly did not hold for them in this series in the couple of games that were close. And more broadly, the starting five that has been the best lineup in the NBA for quite some time now, essentially since they acquired Aaron Gordon and were able to have the starting five together after acquiring KCP, right?

Was not just bad in this series, and I don't remember what it was. I think it was minus 50 in this series coming into tonight's game. Right. But it was not great against the Lakers either and not great for the full playoffs overall. And part of that is just Jamal Murray shot badly for most of the playoffs and Michael Porter Jr. shot badly for the last third or so of it. But it is interesting how that just kind of flipped and they could not –

any kind of rhythm. I mean, part of it is I think...

Teams have gotten smarter about how they defend Denver. I don't know who gets credit for the first team to put your rim protector on Aaron Gordon and do it sustainably. Minnesota is the headliner in that regard, but the Lakers copied that to some effect. Not the same effect, and I don't think the Mavericks, who have tried it also in past matchups with them, can mimic it quite as well as the Wolves do it. So I think part of it is teams have gotten smarter about

But part of it is probably just Jamal Murray's dealing with a calf injury. They had some bad shooting luck. But you just look down the line. Jamal Murray is an unrestricted free agent after next season. Michael Porter Jr. has got a bunch of years left on his contract. Aaron Gordon has a player option for 25-26. He'll be extension eligible before then for a bigger deal. KCP has a $15 million player option now.

next season that at first blush he should probably decline and sign a longer term deal that may start at even more than 15 a year and you just start doing math it's it's going to get financially a little bit ugly if you have Jokic Murray Porter Gordon KCP that starting five is going to be very very expensive maybe too expensive um this is how fast it comes at you in the NBA

With the tax and the second apron. You're the toast of the town. You got the best starting five in basketball. People are throwing around the D word way too loosely. Way too loosely. Like Dynasty is this next time. How about slow down on Dynasty. Slow down on Michael Jordan comparisons. Let's just slow down on some of the hyperbole. Winning a title is really, really hard. That's why everyone is special. But it comes at you fast. Like the financial realities come at you really, really fast and fast.

And you have to plan ahead. Like, I don't know what's going to happen in the offseason. The season just ended, but it, I would, I would keep half an eye on the Nuggets.

Yeah, I mean, this is going to be a financial situation next year, as you mentioned, if they re-sign Pope to a bigger number. And I mean, he's kind of a fascinating free agent because he's been such an ideal 3 and D cog on multiple championship teams going back to the 2020 Lakers. But he's 31. He didn't have a great offensive playoffs this year. And if you are looking at like,

How can we replace someone in the starting five and keep the same formula? I think Michael Porter Jr.'s shooting at his size is somewhat harder to replace than Contavious Paldwell Pope's combination of defense and shooting. Like if you're projecting that Peyton Watson can eventually be good enough to play that role, maybe you start to think about whether he's the guy who has to be kind of sacrificed for the financial situation.

Michael Porter Jr. is a very interesting guy to think about because he makes – I just closed the window with the Nugget seller, unfortunately. But he makes a lot of money for a lot of years, like $36,000, $38,000, $40,000 for the next three years, something like that. And in Denver, he has essentially been a shooter forever.

who has made huge strides defensively and on the glass, but on offense, a shooter who, yes, occasionally shows flashes of like attacking closeouts and making the next play and throwing some nice passes and all of that.

but just hasn't gotten much opportunity to handle the ball in traditional ball handling situations to really do much as a passer. The post-up game, maybe because of his back issues that he's had in the past, he just does not really post up smaller guys. He just shoots over them, which is fine. He's 6'10 with an unbelievable jump shot. And for that salary on this team that's trying to win it all where he's an absolutely perfect fit and they don't really need another guy to do a ton of heavy lifting on the ball,

maybe a little lifting, but not a ton. He's fine. You start trading him to other teams where he's like a number two offensive option and the reps just haven't been there. And the reps that you've seen are not like, oh yeah, I could totally pencil this guy in for like 18 to 20 pick and rolls a game and a few post-ups. Like that's obvious that he could do that. It's not obvious. Like he'd be a tricky fit offensively.

I mean, I heard Simmons mention Philadelphia, and that's why he's such a clean fit there. I mean, he just made up like trading him to the Sixers cap space and all. It's just fanciful stuff for now. But you have the Embiid Maxi pieces that are very much like the Murray Jokic pieces in their own way. I don't know. Just interesting times for Denver. Tough one. Tough one for the Nuggets. Just tough draw, tough matchup. They knew it was tough, and they're gone. Goodbye.

Jokic, by the way, 10 three-pointers tonight, tied his second most ever in a playoff game. The previous two both came in the 2020 first round against Utah and Rudy Gobert. So, you know, even though Gobert can't defend him one-on-one as we saw in game five, he still has been able to force him to the perimeter a little bit. Well, that's the series in the bubble where Mike Conley misses the crazy three-pointer at the end of game seven that would have won the series, um, for Utah. Uh,

A series in which I believe you was Utah up 3-1 in that series. Was that the first of two 3-1 comebacks for Denver? And like, not only were they up 3-1, but they were up 3-1 in such a fashion that you in one single series. And that was a weird season for, I mean, not weird. That was a...

completely abnormal season. But in one series, you swung from maybe this construction of the Nuggets just isn't as good as we thought to like, oh, here come the Nuggets. They're awesome. And then they win the next round. This construction of the Nuggets is amazing. All right, Dallas, Minnesota, Western Conference Finals. Dallas, these teams played, I think, four times in the regular season. None of them came after the trade deadline. All of them came before the trade deadline. So you can know no P.J. Washington, no Daniel Gafford.

So you can throw them in the garbage if you want. It's going to be a fun matchup. Obviously, we have two unbelievable, three unbelievable ball handling superstars. Jada McDaniels will get the Luka assignment. Anthony Edwards has guarded Kyrie Irving a lot.

That gets a little trickier with this alignment of the Mavs. Cause Mike Conley's got to guard somebody. Do you want them on Derek Jones jr. Or PJ Washington? That gets a little tricky, but when the Mavs play other lineups, it's a little easier to move him around. But if you have the aunt on Kyrie and McDaniels on Luca for any part of the game, you can switch their two man game, which they leaned into down the stretch of both game five and game six against Oklahoma city in a way that to, to try to get Luca with case and Wallace or other smaller guys on him. Um,

We get Luka versus Gobert pick and roll battle. That's always been kind of an interesting one to watch. Yeah, this is, I don't know, what else strikes you at first blush about this matchup?

I think you're underselling how much to throw out those regular season games. Kyrie and Luka played a combined three games. One together. They played together one game, but a combined three out of the eight possible games. Here's what I wrote down is the total minutes leaders for the Mavericks in those games. Would you like to guess...

Which player played the most minutes against the Timberwolves for the Mavericks this season? For the Mavericks? Yes. I'm very excited. I love when people spring crazy trivia on me. Grant Williams. Grant Williams was number two. Oh, man! Very close. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on. Josh Green? No. He was not in the top six, I don't think.

All right, who was it? Tim Hardaway Jr. played the most. Dwight Powell... Always kicking around the Mavericks rotation. Can't get rid of Tim Hardaway Jr. Dwight Powell was fourth. Jaden Hardy was fifth. So, yeah, I think we can safely throw those games. And the one game that Kyrie and Luka did play together was, unsurprisingly, the lone Dallas victory at home. I mean...

This is going to be fascinating. One of the things I looked up when we were previewing at that point, what we, after Game 5, thought would be a matchup against Denver in a 5-on-5 last week, the question was who would better match up with Jokic, Dallas, or OKC. And one of the bits of research I did for that is if you split...

teams by the weight of their opposing frontcourt, the three heaviest players who play among the five players who played the most minutes in a game. Which teams do better against smaller frontcourts or bigger frontcourts? And Oklahoma City somewhat predictably did better against teams with smaller frontcourts.

But Dallas actually had an even more extreme split of this. And that remained true after the trade deadline when they started playing bigger with Washington at the four and Gafford typically at the five. So that's an interesting piece of this to me is, you know, Dallas was able to kind of play bully ball in the last round against Oklahoma City. Now they're going into a situation where they are going to be the smaller team.

Yeah. At least in the front court. And their rebounding is been one area where they've completely reinvented themselves since the trade. And they'll need that against a Minnesota team that is actually not as good a rebounding team as you think they should be, but they're, they're big at least. Um,

Dallas' total avoidance of turnovers is going to be a potential pivot point in this series. That's a Luka thing. Minnesota forces a lot of turnovers. So if you take away those from the Wolves, if Dallas can do that. And the same thing against the Thunder. They limited their turnovers against the Thunder to some degree. And just fun matchups. I bet Derrick Jones Jr. likely starts guarding Anthony Edwards. That's fun. You put P.J. Washington on Cat. Kyrie on Conley.

gafford and lively on gobert and luca gets to hide on jada mcdaniel's and they'll go they'll go after luca like other teams have done and hunt luca down and you know rudy will drop back on the pick and roll and and um luca will have to navigate that as he's such an expert at but this this is um and and luca will will hunt conley too and try to get post-ups against conley and it's it's the maps just have this way of kind of

Ugly is the wrong word, but like these Mavs games are grimy games, slow and grimy. And it could be a fun physical series. What else? What else to look for?

I'm fascinated whether Derek Jones Jr. can keep this up because you look at his game on paper, you know, like a career low thirties, three point percentage shooter, not a guy who makes a lot of plays off the dribble off closeouts like PJ Washington Jr. does. Like he's the kind of guy that should be played off the court in a playoff series. And not only has that not happened yet, like he only got stronger as the series went on against Oklahoma city and started making a ton of threes. And yeah,

You know, they have alternatives there with Josh Green, but certainly they've been at their best with Jones in that spot and have the ability to play Green and Jones together as they did on Saturday night when Washington was in foul trouble. I guess I'm just curious, can Minnesota exploit that or is, you know, Jones just going to stay on this heater from beyond the arc?

He's been, I mean, talk about a swing player in that Oklahoma City series. The shooting, the defense, the ability to make plays on the short roll. Like he changed the face of that team to a degree that the Mavericks, if they had expected it, they would have signed it to something better than a one-year minimum contract. I mean, it was just a, what a season, what a playoffs for him so far. Yeah, this will be fun. Luka back in the conference finals. Any takeaways from that series, by the way?

Particularly for the Thunder looking forward, other than the fact that they helped, as I said last week, that they helped the Mavericks at the trade deadline and got absolutely nothing out of Gordon Hayward, which is depressing. So this, I think, sort of relates to my point about talking so much about the team that loses a playoff series and what went wrong for them.

I think that sometimes there's a Peter principle to playoffs and particularly the NBA playoffs because there's these seven game series where, you know, weaknesses get picked at and highlighted over the course of a series where you're always going, you're almost always going to keep playing until you come up against a team that is better than you or at least exposes your weaknesses. Because, you know, I tell some people,

Oklahoma City, they were tied over the course of the series. Dallas won two of the three close games. I think this easily could have gone the other direction. But now there is kind of this panic after the fact of, well, how could Oklahoma City not have done anything at the trade deadline? Obviously, they needed this specific archetype of player in terms of a six-foot-eight, six-foot-nine guy who can space the floor by shooting the three, but also make some plays off the dribble so that our choice wasn't just between

You know, Dallas daring Josh Giddey to shoot and going to these much smaller lineups with Kaysen Wallace or Isaiah Joe or even Aaron Wiggins in that spot. And I think that's kind of unfair to how good the Thunder were over the course of the season and even perhaps this series playing their style.

I mean, I'm just glad that I was on record all over the place saying that P.J. Washington was one of my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, Oklahoma City Thunder trade target. And really like a trade target that I kept saying someone needs to go get P.J. Washington out of Charlotte. He is exactly the player that you described, although he was a little bit languishing in Charlotte. But if you had watched him over multiple years and I realized nobody watches the Hornets other than crazy people like me.

You realize that there was something there, but it doesn't really bother me. Dallas just strangled them on offense, just strangled them. They had nowhere to go, and everyone's going to point to the open threes they missed. I thought Dallas did a good job of making those late clock, semi-contested, oh, God, I got to take this threes to a disproportionate amount.

Our buddy Seth Partnow had some tweets about this last week, that their shooting percentage on open threes was broadly the same as it had been. I think this was through game five in the regular season. It was just the proportion of threes that were open were way down. And, and, you know, I didn't look at it as granularly using the second spectrum tracking data that we have access to, but it,

It didn't suggest that Oklahoma City was underperforming its shot quality. And then in fact, its shot quality in this series was not very good. I do think one thing that happened that maybe that can't reflect is Oklahoma City, like Shea Gildress Alexander in particular, lost trust in the shooting in a way that I didn't necessarily expect, where he just kept kind of continuing to drive into traffic instead of making the kickout pass to perhaps a semi-contested three.

And it's fascinating to me is at the same time that Derek Jones and, you know, you mentioned Washington, 32% three-point shooter this season, even after the trade. It wasn't a product of his shots in Charlotte. That continued and all of a sudden went bonkers from three in this series. And then you've on the other side have Lou Dort,

39% shooter from three this year is so much talk about his improvement. And all of a sudden it kind of deserts him in this series. And, you know, Wiggins and Wallace guys who shot the three well in the regular season didn't in this series. And is there some, some sort of some degree of like regular season versus playoffs, or is it just, it's a small sample size, even a six game series. Dort will be a fascinating test case for next season because he's,

He's 39% this season. And we have this because NBA calendars are divided into seasons. We look at seasons and when players show uptick with age, we tend to assume like they are improving as players do. He had been like 33, 33, 33, 33, 33 every year and 29 one year before this year.

Maybe this year is, you know, you've written a lot about how many attempts do you have to take before you get a good handle on whether this is real or not. Maybe this ends up being just a random blip. But I also think, I wrote this last week, I also think one of the things that Thunder have learned about themselves is they need another way to get the ball into the paint more reliably than just this endless array of drives, drives, drives. Like, I think they need a little bit of a power gear here.

Jalen Williams should be able to post up smaller guys, like a mismatch hunting gear that's of the bully variety like Luka will do to people, like Luka will do to Mike Conley soon. Whether it's Jalen Williams, I mean, when I wrote that Josh Giddey was one of my most intriguing players for the season, coming into the season, I wrote it specifically because you could see this coming, his fit with the Thunder. It was very obvious that he could potentially be the odd man out if he didn't develop a

either a jump shot or he has the size to develop a post game, not necessarily even to score. Just like if you're going to hide little guys on me and I realized the league went the other way and hit big guys on him, but I can back you down, get close enough to the rim. You got to send help. And then I'm a passer and Chet,

Rolling to the rim is nice. He does that well. He doesn't do it enough, but he does it well. He's just got to get to a point where teams can't be like, just Tim Hardaway Jr., just like guard Chet. He's not going to do anything to you because of his size. But great season for Oklahoma City. They ran into a tough matchup. They played well. And who knows, if Shea doesn't foul P.J. Washington in the left corner, maybe we're going to Game 7 tomorrow. We've got no games tomorrow, KP. Yeah, what are we going to do with ourselves? What happened? What happened?

I think you should watch Kristaps Porzingis tape like constantly because that's the evolution that he made to become a threat and that same sort of like really high center of gravity that isn't, you know, typically a good thing for players in the post. But Porzingis has been able to leverage just that high release and his ability to get deep enough position to become a dangerous post up player on switches. And that's exactly the evolution that Chet, you know, should ideally make.

It's going to be a great series. We'll have a lot of time to talk about the Mavs and what's gone right for them. Luca,

Getting a little bit bouncier and healthier is going to be massively important in this series. I'm not sure what the reporting has been publicly on Maxi Kleba and whether he could make an improbable return at some point in the playoffs, but, you know, we'll see. At Sierra, I discovered top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Awkward.

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All right, let's flip to the Eastern Conference where the New York Knicks, with their season on the line, played a lineup of Alec Burks, Deuce McBride, Dante DiVincenzo, Preston Shachua, and Isaiah Hartenstein.

and lost to the Indiana Pacers who put up 130 points, set the freaking NBA record for playoff field goal percentage by shooting 67% in a game seven on the road against the remnants of the Knicks. But still, very nice game from Pascal Siakam. Tyrese Halliburton figured a lot of stuff out in this series to 26 points. Nobody missed a shot. And the Knicks tried to play OG Ananobi,

That was alarming. He could essentially not move. I don't really know that I've, I'd have to really rack my brain to remember a player trying to play while looking so limited and he miraculously made two shots and they did rightfully so.

Yes, Dan brings up Willis-Reed. I understand the Willis-Reed comparison is the obvious one. But, I mean, in recent history, in an era of load management and much more attention to player health and training, to see a guy out— He's got to be hardened in Game 5 against Milwaukee in 21, right? That was a good one where he really gutted it out and played a lot of minutes. But he could move. I mean, OG Ananobi could essentially not move.

And then Jalen Brunson breaks his hand at the end of the third quarter, fractures his left hand. And at that point, I had the same sensation I had sitting on press row in the 2019 finals between the Warriors and the Raptors where Klay Thompson towards ACL. It's like, let's just end it. Let's just end the series, end the season. This is getting too depressing. There's nobody left. And so the Pacers move on. The Knicks move into the offseason. The Pacers look good.

You can only beat who's in front of you and they beat them. They beat both teams. They beat the Bucks in six without Giannis and they beat the Knicks in seven without a whole bunch of people, not just Brunson in this particular game, but Josh Hart dealing with an abstrain and an OB getting hurt midway through the series. Mitchell Robinson, Boyan Bogdanovich, Julius Randall, probably somebody that I'm forgetting. Um,

There's a lot of places to go here. There's a lot of debate still around the NBA. It was a hot topic at the Combine, even in Chicago, about Tibbs and the minutes and what role this plays in all these injuries. And some of them are just...

like broken hand Bogdanovich has a broken wrist Randall has a shoulder issue um the Ananobi one is interesting because he's out for a long time right because of the elbow and he comes back and all of a sudden he's playing a ton of minutes but by that time the Knicks are out of options I don't I don't I don't know if you're interested in going in going there um I I do think like

It doesn't help. I don't know how much it hurts, but it doesn't help. And watching Alec Burks in these games, it's like, yeah, maybe that guy should have played the whole time, should have been playing. But obviously a crushing end to what was really a nice...

borderline magical season for the Knicks and the Pacers hey look man this is the Eastern Conference you make a trade you trade three first round picks for a pretty goddamn good player he fits with your already awesome player you got some pieces that make sense around it you wake up you're in the conference finals it's the East it's the sweetest deal in the NBA it's the East

Indianapolis, the center of professional basketball in the country for the next couple weeks here between the conference finals and then Kaitlyn Clark early in her career. So, yeah, it's an exciting time in Indiana. But on the Chibs thing...

I definitely think that there was too much of a movement early in the playoffs to like credit him for playing his players all these minutes and having those players condition for the playoffs. It turns out it was all bogus. They were right all along that none of this mattered, that more minutes is good if you're ready to play them.

And it was especially an odd contrast to pose against Nick Nurse, who has not been known for being shy about playing his players big minutes in the past either. So, you know, whether that was like really a huge edge for the Knicks over the Sixers, I'm not sure I buy. As you said, it's hard to trace other than, you know, the Annie Nobe injury was a muscle strain. That's the one that's most associated with fatigue and overuse.

And so that's the one that maybe you could say is related to the minutes. I think people are too quick to draw a correlation either way, but you know, my general push would be all else. If, if we, if we're not certain, let's be cautious with the guys who are, you know, the, the most important part of this team. And as you said, Burke's like just inexplicably didn't get a chance. Like Tibbs never seemed to trust him after they got him, even though he had been there before, you know, it wasn't like, like,

With Bogdanovich, it didn't maybe surprise me as much because it does seem to be kind of an aversion to guys who are not Tibbs guys sometimes. But Burks had been a Tibbs guy a couple of years ago when he was there in his first stint. And then all of a sudden wasn't this time. And he showed that he still had plenty left in the tank once he finally got an opportunity in this series. So that was a little bit frustrating, I would say.

Where do you want to start? Pacers, Triumph, Knicks, Demise. What comes next for New York, who, of course, is still famously loaded with their own draft picks, other teams draft picks, a bunch of tradable salaries and will be on the hunt for star players who I don't know which ones. I really don't know which ones. I'm not just saying that facetiously. I don't know what star players are going to be available to them this summer. Cat is going to the conference finals. Scratch him off the list.

Embiid is a sixer until prove it otherwise. And the Sixers have a gazillion dollars of cap space to load up their team that almost beat the Knicks with Embiid kicking and

Literally kicking everyone in sight. I know Stephen A. Smith mentioned Devin Booker. I continue to hear, regardless of what Matt Ishbia and James Jones say publicly about we're not trading anybody, I continue to hear that there is no Devin Booker trade request coming. Not in the foreseeable future anyway. So I don't know who it would be.

Do you want to start Knicks' demise or Pacers' triumph? And obviously they will now be colossal underdogs against the Boston Celtics, who, again, life in the East. Have the Celtics been participating? Like, they've been participating in the playoffs. I'm pretty sure they've been playing games.

My schedule happened to work out such that I missed a lot of the Boston-Cleveland games in round two. And that was, it was perhaps not the worst series. Yeah, you and Donovan Mitchell and Karis LeVert and Jared Allen. And by the way, okay, here's something that really grinds my gears. This, this anonymous bull****

That comes out after a guy doesn't play about sources within the team questioning whether he should have taken. I think the reporting is like a painkiller injection or questioning whether he could have played. If you're going to do that, if you're a source within the team and it has to be sources within the team.

Come out and say it publicly. You're going to question that dude's toughness, given that this has happened with other players where you hear this murmuring come out like, oh, this guy should be playing. Oh, he's not toughing it out. And then they play and they get hurt worse. And we don't need to enumerate the examples. If you're going to say that, put your name on it. Say, I am so-and-so from the Cleveland Cavaliers, and I think Jared Allen could have played. Don't launder it.

through the media and have it be anonymous sources questioning Jared Allen's toughness. If I'm Jared Allen and I read that, I go right to Kobe Altman's office and I say, I don't care who said this. I want to get traded. Yeah. All right. Well, let's talk about Indiana's triumph, I guess. I like how you just, I mean, I agree with you. I don't know what to add on that one. Yeah.

So game sevens are typically like what we saw in Denver, Minnesota. They're usually these tense, low scoring affairs. If you look at the 60 series that have gone seven games in the last decade, the offensive rating in game seven is three points per hundred possessions lower than the series average.

The field goal percentage is 43% compared to 45% overall. Everyone's like so nervous to make a mistake, you know, defensively and gets tight and they're playing so hard defensively that the shots don't fall. And here we have Indiana setting an all-time record for field goal percentage in a game seven.

And even though New York was incredibly depleted in this game and looked at times out of gas, I don't think this was about what New York wasn't doing defensively. Indiana shot quality in this game, according to second spectrums, you know, metrics that incorporate a player ability, quantified shot probability was like unremarkable. It was just, uh, remember the, the Miami win at Boston had been the best shot making game of the playoffs by that measure. Uh,

That game to win. This was like, I wonder if that game really happened. That game happened. This was like 60% better in terms of shot making relative to shot quality than that game. So I don't know. Maybe there's something about these shots that, you know, second spectrum, this I'm looking at the version that doesn't incorporate the limbs data. Cause I'm not sure how calibrated that is yet. Maybe we'll find out these were actually amazing shots, but it seems like Indiana just picked a great time to not be able to mess.

Yeah, they did not miss. Aaron Neesmith literally did not miss. And he was critical in the stretch in the third quarter where the game after the Knicks got it to six and you wondered why.

Are they actually going to do this after being down by 20, whatever they were down by? Are they actually in front of this garden? Credit the garden crowd. The Knicks got one basket to cut it to 18, and the crowd erupted to its feet as if they were down five with a minute and a half left in the game. And they almost got back into it. And Neesmith was huge in that stretch. And there was also...

There was also the TJ McConnell, classic TJ McConnell steal, and then an and one for Neesmith as the game got out of hand. By the way, TJ McConnell, holy smokes. You know, as I'm watching him hit all these jump shots, I remember during the pandemic when everything kind of stopped. Our editors were like, hey, I know there's like no basketball players,

but could you do some facsimile of your 10 things column just to like fill, fill some space? And I was like, well, I don't have, I can't do 10 every week cause there's nothing going on, but I can do five. And the first one I did, maybe it was the second one I did. I wrote about McConnell's just strange tendency to take like full throated nine foot jump shots. Like where most, where most people take floaters and layups and runners, he stops and,

eight feet from the rim and takes like a proper jump shot as if he's trying to heave the ball 35 feet and actually texted him. I was like, Hey, this is kind of a funny little thing. I don't, I'm not making fun of you. I think it works. You shoot like 50 something percent on these shots. And we talked on the phone and,

And he was like, yeah, all my teammates make fun of me for it. Like Jeremy Lamb had a, had a practice routine where he would like dribble six feet from the land and then mock, like bend over real deep, get to get his knee bend and like leap up into the air to make fun of TJ McConnell. Um, how LaBurton, it's been a really interesting postseason for Halliburton who hasn't been the same guy since his own leg injury in the middle of the season. A couple of games where he was really passive. Um,

and just didn't really do anything. Like didn't move off the ball, didn't go get the ball, didn't try to get the ball back after giving it up. And his assists are down from, I think, 10.9 in the regular season to 8.9 or something in the playoffs.

And it's because teams are just not giving him the easy passes. They know what a great passer he is. So they're really loathe to blitz him on the pick and roll and just give him the easy reads where the Indiana machine starts firing. They're making him prod a little bit on the pick and roll, prod into drop back defenses and figure it out. And whether it's because his leg is still bothering him or whatever, his three-point rate has skyrocketed in the playoffs. 60-something percent of his shots have been threes.

And he's kind of problem solved his way through these years where he found ways to get himself open, relocating, rejecting screens and kind of you turning out for threes. He hit one of those late in the game. He had like a dribble handoff three where he threw the ball ahead to Nemhard and went and got it and took a three. And it's been the games where he's passive or has been passive recently.

you kind of have to remind yourself that what makes this guy special, what makes him who he is, is he is pass first. He wants to get other people involved. This is his first playoff exposure to defenses that are just totally dialed into everything you do. And it shouldn't be surprising that he's kind of trying to figure out the balance between

playing the way I usually play versus just scoring more when my team needs me to score more because this defense is awesome. These defenses are playing me in totally different ways than regular season defenses did. And I thought as this series went on, he kind of found a new equilibrium to his game and new ways to punish teams. And part of it was just hunting a lot of threes and finding them and hitting them in this series. I thought it was a very good close to the series for him. It's just...

There's just it's unavoidable to talk about how injured the Knicks were. I mean, I think I had this discussion last year. What do you want to say about Halliburton before I go back to the Knicks?

Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit reminiscent, obviously not on the same level, but what sometimes happened to Steve Nash in the playoffs during the seven seconds or less suns era where teams would decide, Hey, we want this guy to beat us as a scorer and not as a distributor. Like he has an en route to these MVPs all season. And he had like, you know, like a 40 point game, I think against Dallas and in 2005 in the conference semifinals, but it felt, he like felt distinctly uncomfortable the entire time because it's not how he's wired to play. But you

At the end of it, you look up at the end of the series, he averaged 21 points, seven assists, shot 54 from the field, 44 from three. Dante DiVincenzo was the only guy who averaged more threes than him in the second round, other than Donovan Mitchell in three games. He had an awesome series. I think you can make a case that he was the best point guard in the series, as much of a load as Jalen Brunson was carrying for the Knicks. And I think game by game,

you see how he and Siakam are going to fit together and particularly how they can kind of work out the kinks in their own two man game with Miles Turner spacing the floor. And we saw in this game, it'd be interesting to see how the Celtics match up with them. Um,

That the Knicks put their centers on Siakam for most of the game because they're just – their power forwards are too small to guard him. And that kind of got them leaning into their two-man game a little bit and obviously the speed. And every time the Knicks did that, like, all right, we want Hartenstein on Siakam.

Well, Siakam's not guarding Hartenstein on the other end of the floor. And he would just fly after stops. Like, you are not finding me, Isaiah Hartenstein. I am too fast. I'm going to sprint out. And some unlucky dude who's not you is going to end up guarding me. Or no one's going to end up guarding me. And I'm going to get a run-out layup. Or someone behind me is going to get a run-out layup. The two of them were very good.

In this series, obviously the Knicks will look back at game three and what could have been when they almost won in Indiana. There are some late game shot making from Andrew Nembhard in particular in that game and some officiating stuff that always seems to pop up in these Knicks games. You know, I don't know what other Pacers takeaways. It's a good team. I mean, it's clearly a good team. It's just I don't know. It's kind of just the road they got is what it is.

Yeah, I mean, I feel somewhat similarly about Boston and Indiana going into the series where we just haven't really gotten a good gauge on how good these teams are because of the fact that they've dealt with so many injuries on the other side. And, you know, hopefully these two teams can stay healthy and we'll find out a lot more about, you know, at least one of them in this series. Because it did feel like, particularly in the Milwaukee series, like there was a

in unseriousness about them defensively that lingered over from early in the regular season that we thought hoped maybe in the second half of a season that they had licked. I mean, maybe I'm reading too much and it was just kind of aberrant shot making by Milwaukee to have won that game five without Damian, the Lord and Giannis and be able to extend that series. And, you know, New York was a very good team in the first two games of this series when they beat Indiana and just had a great night. Same thing in game five at home.

Pacers still haven't lost a home game in this playoffs. That'll be an interesting contrast to the Celtics who seem to play so much better on the road in the playoffs. Yeah, I was talking to Celtics. Just try it out. Just try out going up 2-0 in a series. See how it feels. See if you like it. See if it suits you. Like, oh, 2-0. See if it's comfortable. Just give it a shot. Don't lose game one or game two in particular at home.

To an inferior team. Here's a question I asked somebody last week. I already forgot who. Everybody's fully healthy in the East. Every team, every team that every team roster post-trade deadline is healthy. Who is the second best team in the Eastern Conference? I mean, my instinct is still to say Philadelphia because, you know, in addition to Embiid being at less than 100%, I don't think, you know, we talk nearly enough about D'Anthony Melton's absence and how much it changed things for them.

You can certainly make a case for New York, though. And if you were going to talk yourself into had the Knicks won and Jalen Brunson not broken his hand, this becoming a series is, OK, OG can maybe come back, probably not in game one, but maybe at some point in this series. And we saw them go into Boston and win late in the regular season and look really good. And then I haven't even considered Milwaukee, but I think Milwaukee, that unseriousness also came out.

Whoever I polled last week, and forgive me, I'm forgetting who the guest on my own podcast was that I asked this, also said Philadelphia. Totally fine answer. Do they have the best guy of these teams? Just a total one-man destroyer of everything in MB and an ideal co-star in Maxie. I think it's the Knicks. And I'm going down swinging on that. If you put Randall, Robinson, Bogdanov, all the guys, I just think...

Their depth and their versatility and their toughness, I would just take the Knicks. And the Bucs just... I'm sorry. I know some of it was health with Middleton, but...

We just never had like a week of elite Milwaukee Bucks basketball. It didn't happen. And we all know the drama, the coaching changes, everything. I just can't give that title to you, Milwaukee Bucks, after this fake title that I made up of the second best team in the East. Can't give it to you. I think it's the Knicks. By the way, Randall is, even in a great season, he's still a polarizing player where teams look at, people look at their record with Ananobi and Brunson together. How good Hart has looked as a starter. Yeah.

And just wonder, like, are the Knicks, quote unquote, better off without Julius Randle? And I understand the thinking. I understand that it might be like absolutely ideal if he became some sort of like super sub six man type that plays all the minutes Brunson doesn't play. Or maybe you start him and can still rejigger the rotation that way. I just think the shot creation is amazing.

against the best defenses you need as many guys who can give the ball to and just be like, just do something, get two on the ball and create. And obviously if the Knicks are going to hunt around for stars to trade for it, I think they will. His salary is going to fit into those trades. So maybe the question is moot. It should be noted OG Ananobi is a free agent. And obviously the assumption around the league, given that they traded for him, given his

with Leon Rose and CAA and all that, that it's potentially a done-ish deal. But you never know. I can tell you this. Teams with cap space are going to make the call and be like, here's a whole lot of money. Knicks, do what you will. Yeah, I mean, Philadelphia. What else do you want to talk about? It's undoubtedly their first call. Huh? Philadelphia undoubtedly makes that call. I'm making you pay for it, at least if I'm Daryl Morey. So we're going to talk about Pacers-Celtics.

You know, what do you think the possible return of Christoph Porzingis means to this series? Number one, do you feel like that's going to be an issue for the Celtics in the first two games? Not having that size and that ability to kind of play big with him and Horford together going up against a team that, you know, whoever you put on Siakam, whether it's Tatum or Jalen Brown, you're going to be giving up a degree of size to him in that matchup. So it would be nice to kind of have that as an option on the table to go to the two bigs.

And I wonder not only they're best two big – I mean, they've toyed with Horford and Cornette. They just don't like to play that way. It's a little slower and not enough shooting. You wonder if you would see Horford on Siakam or Porzingis on Siakam and a wing on Miles Turner to mimic what I just mentioned the Knicks doing. It should not matter. Boston is just better. It shouldn't matter. Obviously, it's helpful, but –

I don't think it should matter to me that the interesting question starts with, I think the matchups are, are interesting. Um,

You know, for like Boston has had Drew Holiday guard Pascal Siakam in a couple of the prior matchups and Derek White on Halliburton and you trickle down from there. But they've had a lot of guys guard Halliburton. And we know the Celtics are going to go after Halliburton defensively. The Knicks tried to do it. Interestingly, they had a hard time getting the Brunson-Halliburton switch going.

to the point that maybe that wasn't even the goal. The goal was just to get the Pacers rotating. The Celtics are much more vicious and sort of practiced at this. If I were the Pacers, Halliburton has mostly guarded Derek White. And I understand there's not a lot of great choices when you're facing Boston. There's just no safe place to go. I would be tempted to put him on Drew Holiday instead and put Nembhardt on Derek White.

See, Ockham has guarded Jalen Brown quite a bit. Neesmith on Tatum and the centers on the centers. And just say, hey, look, Derek White's been a top three player for us all season. A lot of times a top two player in the playoffs. A lot of times the top two players slumped a little bit lately. Our whole bread and butter is like Tatum, Derek White, Jalen Brown, Derek White. I just, I want to see what it feels like with Tyrese Halliburton not in those actions as often. Obviously, the Celtics have other ways to drag him into those actions, but

I know Drew Holiday can post up Tyrese Halliburton and really hurt him on the block. And maybe they just do to Tyrese Halliburton what Aaron Gordon did to the Heat's small guards in the first six minutes of game one of the NBA finals and just play that strategy out of existence. But I'm interested in kind of how the teams match up with each other. I just don't.

I mean, these are the two best offenses in the league, number one and number two. And one of them also was the second best defense in the league, and the other one was the 24th best defense in the league. I just don't know. And Boston was number one in transition defense pretty much all season by almost every measure. And that's where Indiana feasts. I don't know. Talk me into this being competitive, KP. Yeah.

I don't know if you're aware of this. The Celtics have a tendency to drop games sometimes if they shouldn't, especially at home. But, you know, to your original point about Porzingis and this shouldn't matter, like that is the other element of why it's all the more important to go up to nothing in this series is be able to delay him coming back, you know, needing to bring him back as long as possible. And, you know, ideally if...

You can take care of business without him all the way to the NBA finals. I mean, I don't know, maybe you'd want to get him some game action because, you know, coming back into that matchup, whatever it would be, would be very difficult. But, you know, if you're able to do it for like 15 minutes in game four, game five, that that's a lot more comfortable than we need him to start game three, because this is a must win for us all of a sudden.

As far as where Halliburton slots defensively, I think the other thought on the Celtics and them drawing switches more is, well, sometimes maybe teams are willing to concede those switches because sometimes the best thing you can do against the Boston offense is give them a mismatch to pick at so that they isolate and stagnate and there's not a lot of ball or player movement. Now, starting Halliburton on Drew could manufacture that same thing if you're going at him one-on-one as opposed to giving the ball to your guys who are better offensively than Drew Holliday.

Yeah. Boston is better when you hedge and try to trap and they, it forces them to pass the ball and then the ball gets moving and the ball's just got to keep moving. Like I keep harping on the shot clock doesn't, doesn't expire at 10. There are 10 more seconds, Jason Tatum, like you could keep doing stuff, but the Celtics have been, I think just fine in the playoffs. They're going to be huge favorites in this series. Um,

I guess one small thing Indiana has kind of going for them, which is nice, is that they foul the bejesus out of everybody. They're dead last in free throw rate, opponent free throw rate for the season, and Boston doesn't really get to the line, so maybe that's a weakness that is mitigated in this matchup. But Boston is going to be a heavy favorite, and they should be. And if there's a game six of this series...

I think that qualifies as a mild surprise to me. If there's a game seven of this series, I think that qualifies as a massive surprise. I picked the Celtics in four over the Heat and the Celtics in five over the Cavs. I think Celtics in five is probably like the Vegas favored outcome of or by at least a plurality of all seven outcomes in this series. And I'll probably be my pick. I want to think about a little bit more.

The Celtics are just awesome. The Pacers is a great run. The Pacers are really good. The Pacers at least are good enough offensively that you better bring it every game. You better bring your defense every game. Like if you have a five minute period where you just screw around and like, oh, we messed up a couple of switches and I chased an offensive rebound. I probably shouldn't have like you'll be down 15 points before you know what happened.

Yeah, I mean, you said they're the two best offenses in the league. They're the two most efficient offenses in NBA history. So, you know, both of these teams can put points on the board. I'm looking at this at ESPN bet. Celtics 4-1 is the most likely result. And then Celtics 4-0 is more, is, you know, lower odds than Celtics 4-2. So considered more likely to be a sweep than to go six games. Oh, well, that's disrespectful.

It's also material. Perhaps ignorant of the Celtics track record, which does not include a lot of sweeps. It includes a lot of series wins, but not many sweeps. Big series win for Obi Toppin. Do you have any hot take reaction to J.D. McDaniels going for the bounce the ball off the floor self dunk at the end of the Wolves Nuggets game? No. You know what? Look, you've won...

This was one of the better series we've watched, even though there weren't really any classic individual finishes in this series. It was an incredible series. It was an incredible game. I think you deserve to celebrate after you went on the road and did that to the defending champions. You were in that right. You know what? I almost never mind these shenanigans. Play to the buzzer. It's cool.

You also risk humiliation by failing to execute this play. And I think Jada McDaniels is kind of a stone cold tough guy and knows that he's also risking someone coming after him and is totally okay with that. Like, I think like if I try this,

And I get fouled hard in the air or someone off that bench comes at me. I'm like, cool. I deserve it. Like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be like, well, that's mean that you, that you came after me. That's unnecessary. I'm just having fun out here. I think he's ready for that. So I didn't mind it at all. And I definitely did not mind. I guess Reggie Miller was saying on the broadcast that you'll catch. And some other people seem to not take it well that Anthony Edwards is waving goodbye to the crowd. I'm all, I'm all for met. Let me manufacture this.

animosity man give i i love players with like manufacture enemies like i needed to stick it to these fans i liked it and it was like a very dramatic wave like it was like very it was a very twirly wave i like that did it get into a parade wave do we do we have to do an analysis faster than that too it's faster than that also like there were still 30 to 40 seconds down the wave for us

Maybe. There were 30 to 45 seconds left in the game. It wasn't like there were eight seconds left in the game. And Karl-Anthony Danone just had a bonkers turn. I'm just saying. I was like, oh, he's already waving to the crowd. That's aggressive. Any other parting shots on these series, the Knicks elimination, the previewing the next round, anything else we didn't get into? Or the playoffs in general, any takes you've been trying to fire off?

I think we got to most of them. I wanted to mention the playoff Peter principle. I guess the other thing I had was on Dallas, one leftover note, like how interesting it is that there's been so much talk in this playoffs about continuity and the importance of that. Obviously, Indiana made the Siakam trade and New York made the Ananobi trade and one of those teams was going to make it. But if you look at guys who actually got traded at the deadline, like

And Xavier Tillman Sr. played 9.2 minutes for the Celtics because of blowouts. Alec Burks, you know, played a fair bit for the Knicks at the back end of the series because of, you know, their depth issues. And then those are it among guys who played almost at all, who got acquired at the Terry deadline. And then you've got Dallas, who has these two starters they had at the deadline, and they look like they've been playing together for 20 years, as you wrote about last week.

I mean, Denver doesn't really have anything to trade. Like even a lot of second round picks are out the door. Is there, do they, should they have any regret about just like, yeah, we're cool. Like, I just don't know what alternatives, like even, even Royce O'Neal got three second round picks, you know,

It's interesting because their approach, I think, was somewhat similar to Oklahoma City's in that they're like, we're thinking long term. So they are out these first round picks because they traded them all to get the draft picks that became Peyton Watson and Julian Strother and Hunter Tyson and guys out there that are deeper, not in their rotation at all. That's been their philosophy is we want to prepare for this coming financial issue by developing our own replacements in-house.

And, you know, Justin Holliday certainly seemed to be a case of we're going to sign somebody who's not too good that Michael Malone's going to play him all season over.

Peyton Watson, he's good enough that if we need to play him, and he was very good in this series, he can help us, but he's not too good. And that's an interesting contrast, I think, to some of the teams at the top of the West. The older teams in the West were constantly churning those back-end spots, looking for bargain minimum guys, but there's no continuity year to year. I'm glad we've reached a great, stupid deep cut. Like, not stupid, but just a classic, just, I want to talk about this guy.

I do think Julian Strother was going to be in their rotation if he didn't get hurt. I liked how he was playing early in the season. His shooting ability, I just think he would have been in the rotation or at least a candidate to be in the rotation. But I'd have to go back and look at what was really possible for them because they just didn't get enough out of all the guys that you just mentioned other than Christian Brown, right?

And they also just didn't have a lot of matching salary. Like, you know, it's either Reggie Jackson or Zeke Nagy. Those are the only two guys on the team making between 3 million and 15 million. Zeke Nagy. Did Zeke Nagy, maybe he must've got in in garbage time. I mean, the Nuggets did not have a lot of garbage time other than the other, a couple of blowouts in this series. The Lakers was like total non-garbage time series. I mean, they did pay him.

like a four-year $32 million contract. And he has some interesting skills. I know the analytics, the advanced stats paint him as a terrible NBA player. But I don't know. Anyway, Denver's out. Denver's out. Denver is out. Jokic can go to the horse farm much sooner this year than last year. There is no parade to be cranky about. The parade will be somewhere else. And one of the somewhere else's it could be is Minnesota. Minnesota, Dallas...

and Boston, Indiana. I will be heading up to Boston for games one and two of that series on Tuesday morning. Kevin Pelton, thank you for your insight. Thank you for your time late at night here, not so late at night where you are. Always appreciate you having me on. All right. Thanks for having me. I believe you're shipping up to Boston is the expression here, right?

I'm Amtracking up to Boston. Whatever that count says, put me in a nice cozy Amtrak. Let me put my headphones on, ignore everyone, and get some writing done and go back up to Boston. You heard him. If you see Zach on the train, don't say hello. No, don't do it. KP, thank you, sir. Thanks. For the first time, Monday Night Football streams exclusively on ESPN+.

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