On this episode of The Eat check Man. The Finals are actually here. Game one is in the books. I got some things to say the Lakers. The Lakers make, or at least they're attempting to make, the most shocking move chess move for a head coach probably in modern NBA history. And we got some drama bruin in Minnesota, Anthony. The finals are here. No time to waste my voice. I don't know where it's going, but it's not all the way around yet. Let's jump right into it. Drop
that motherfucking beat should be rehonnered. Ooh, I fire up Game one. Folenst in the book probably should have been better. I was hoping that this would be a more competitive Game one. Celtics, of course run away with it. They led by twenty nine at one point twenty nine, and then the Luca experiment, the Luca magic came back, and I thought maybe they were gonna stay you come back, and they did not one seven eighty nine. Luca had thirty and no one else did shit. Like nobody else
did a goddamn thing. Everyone on Boston eight like it was Thanksgiving. Six players had ten or more points, including all the starters. Holy fuck. Also Christaps porzingis Jesus Christ. Here are the three big takeaways. Where the fuck was the Mavericks bench? I mean except for PJ. Washington. I mean he's not even a bench. He's like starter. Where where were y'all at Dereck Glivey, Daniel Gafford, Magxie Clay, But where where are are y'all? At one point sam Hauser?
Sam Hauser was outscoring the entire Dallas bench by himself, and he only had six points at that point. Secondly, share the rock or at least make fucking shots when the rockets passed to you. Mavericks nine assists for the entire game, nine. Luca averaged nine in the playoffs himself. Not one Maverick was trying to make any shots, not even Kyrie, Not even Kyrie. The assist number, you look at that comparatively to the Celtics, and the Celtics I
think they have twenty three assists to nine disgusting. Also, what probably stopped the Lobs was all of the block party that was going on at TV Garden. They had nine blocks tonight, they had they had just as many blocks as the Mavericks had. Assists. No. Number three Celtics, Like I said, their defense was fucking nasty. They shut the easy lob dunks off. The Dallas normally gets in huge numbers. Earlier on in the series, they had six deals as well, and it just wasn't that Kyrie got strapped.
I think Kyrie missed a ton of open shots. My man was six for nineteen on the game. I know we were rooting for Kyrie to get under twenty three and a half points, but god damn like we weren't rooting for that. We weren't rooting for Kyrie to just get absolutely shut down. Twelve points he had. Christas porzingis incredible. That was when the knockout blow came. Christaps porzingis what did he even look like out there? Dirk Novitzky, He looked like he came down from the sky and turned
in to Dirk Lively. Looked like a rookie. Christavs was everywhere. He hit threes, he hit fadeaway's, he had leys. What the fuck twenty points twenty one minutes, eight for thirteen shooting. He was feeling it also plus thirteen when he was on the floor and then fifth lee. There were a lot of questions before the series started about Tatum Tatum. We need to step up. Tatum's gonna need to be Tatum. Tatum's gonna need to be the superstar player that we
know he can be in order to beat this Mavericks team. No, he does not. He played forty two minutes, sixteen points and somehow at a plus nineteen net rating. Uh so data, Datum's just still doesn't have to do shit. I guess Boston can win without their best player doing anything. Game two his Sunday night at eight. Come on, Dallas, fight back, fight fucking back. All right, moving on, let's get to the news. So I woke up yesterday morning to an alert. It simply did not make sense. It really did seem
like one of those WOJ bombs. It's like the longe bomb. You know, they like check on Twitter and their name's not exactly right. That was what it was. I simply cannot believe that this tweet from wojan Adrian Warjanowski is correct, is real. The Lakers are prepared to offer Yukon headcat coach Dan Hurley Dan Hurley a massive extension or a massive contract. Excuse me, a massive contract for Dan Hurley? Where is JJ everything? We want is just JJ for
the drama, for the Lebron James JJ podcast. This whole thing was, as Anthony would say, about as quiet as the g in Lasagna. Nowhere to be found. To say, I would be blindsided, would be disrespectful to the word. Not a hint before Thursday morning. You want to know how there was no hints of it. I would not be able to do this if I was Dan Hurley. By the way, I'm so bad Yukon women's coach Juna Oriama,
Oriama Oriama. People get out of my fucking mentions. Okay, you learn how to pronounce names that are vaguely like hard to pronounce, and you get back to me anyway. He said he was with Dan Hurley the other night, literally three nights ago, two nights ago, No, two nights ago, Wednesday night, and he said to Dan Hurley, listen, I think you could win a lot of championships for the Lakers. I think you'd be really good there. And Dan Hurley
laughed and he agreed. He shook his head, didn't say anything about you know, I think a lot of people might think that, you know, I think that too ridiculous, ridiculous. I don't like it. I don't like this move. I don't like anything about it. I don't like it for Dan Hurley the most, mostly besides the fact that you go get your money, playboy. He'll probably get like sixty to seventy five million dollars over the course of the contract. If somebody offered me job I knew I would fail
at for seventy five million dollars, would I do it? Probably? Yeah, probably I would. There's not never been a yelling ass coach in college that's made it to the NBA. There's never been a yelling ass coach in college football that's made it in the NFL, not that I can recall. Correct me if I'm wrong. We can go down the list. There's there's In thirty years, there's been two successful college coaches and one like they're both actually not even that
successful if you're honest about it. Like Brad Stevens got fired and then elevated in GM. Awesome, good for you, but not a coach anymore. And Billy Donovan is there for the Chicago Bulls. He's there, he exists. They're not like, he's not horrible, but I don't know if he's like a on away success and he was a back to back champion. They neither of them won a title as coaches. We're about to get a title, probably from Brad Stevens GM. Instead we have a parade of Tim Floyd, Leonard Hamilton,
Reggie Theis Good good Lord, Reggie Theis, Fred Hoiberg. Not to mention Rich Patino, John Calipari, PJ. I'll choke you out, Carlossimo. The only coach in history to win an NBA and an NCAA title as a coach was Larry Brown. So if Hurley makes the jump, boy, the odds are not stacked in his favor to do anything but take his money and go back to college. Guys worth a hundred million dollars, don't want to tell you, don't want you to tell them, or don't want you to don't want
to hear goes that fucking huddle. Okay, Like, what did you say to me? Close the fucking huddle, bitch. I'll close you, you and your huddle. I don't even know what that means, but you know what I'm trying to say. They're not running wind sprints. I love Dan Hurley so fucking much, and I love them even more at Yukon and I hate the Lakers. Everything about the Lakers and the franchise stinks. Let's be honest. Like Genie Buss, she doesn't make great decisions, and her dad made great decisions,
but she makes horrible decisions. Her best friend is her confidant and sounding board for Lakers ops, and her best friend used to be a Laker girl dancer in the seventies. I mean, what more can I say? She won't fire the GM because she's tight with him and he used to be the agent for Kobe Bryant, and she just can't let go Kobe Bryant. If Kobe Bryant was alive today, he would tell Gus you need to fire Rob Polinka. That is on God. Kobe Bryant was a killer. He
wouldn't allow this. According to WOJ, who has been dominating Champs to the point where they're now putting out tweets called meet the Shams, just fucked up. Uh. The Lakers want to close this deal by the weekend. They're afraid Dan Hurley is gonna get cold feet. By the way, remember Billy Donovan did this with the Orlando Magic right like we thought he was gonna be the Orlando Magic head coach, and then he went back to Florida. Also,
Tommy Lee, remember this, Tommy Lee. You may kids may not know Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson, but we're gonna go there anyway. Tommy Lee rock star flew to Mexico after meeting Pamela Anderson, and he was like, yo, let's get married right fucking now, because he did not want to give Pam Anderson a chance to like investigate further, you know, like he's Tommy Lee. Didn't he try to take out a rib get suck his own dick, Tommy Lee? Or was that Marilyn Manson or was that both? It
might be both. Come on, Dan, think of the kids. Alex Caravan went back to school and could have gone to the NBA. Maybe he can draft him to be a fucking LA Lakers to help make sense of this, I am my guy, and he checked producer Anthony Irwin on the Lakers Lounge on My show Man MGM tonight to ask him more questions about what the fuck is going on? Find it also on video on switching YouTube. Anthony makes some jam sen for this.
All right, Anthony Erwin's probably had a very busy day to day Lakers insider for Lakers Daily, host of Lakers Lounge as well. We woke up today and we saw news that all of a sudden, we thought JJ Reddick was gonna be the guy, gonna be the head coach for the Lakers. And wait, now it's Dan Hurley is their main target? What changed and why everything?
And nobody has any idea why.
That's the best answer.
It's Look, we've been so they fired Darvin ham back in early May, and back in early May, we thought that, you know, they said that they were going to go about this long and arduous and detail oriented process which hadn't really come to fruition to the best of our knowledge. Right now, we thought that we you know, he was We thought JJ was the guy. And and by we, I mean every single person who had any idea about this whatsoever. Everybody that I spoke to was clear that
JJ was going to be the guy. People I spoke to today who work for the Lakers were shocked at how this all came out. So Dan Hurley is apparently their.
Guy right now.
How long he's been there?
Guy?
Is I think up for.
Debate When you look at the Lakers history of making coaching decisions after Phil Jackson. Are you encouraged by hearing Dan Earley's name, or do you look at the history of former college coaches and their flameouts and say, oh, man, I don't know how this is gonna go.
It's a certain type of college coach who seems to have success in the NBA. Right, Brad Stevens comes to mind, and he's always a very stoic, calm guy on the sidelines, and he's this guy who is very good at communicating with all kinds of people, and he didn't scream at people.
He spoke to people. Hurley's not that there was a video making the rounds today where he was sitting there getting ready to do a huddle and he screams at everybody behind him close off by huddle, and I'm like, I could just imagine how that goes over the first time he tries to say that to a whole bunch of millionaire basketball players, you know. And so I think that's something that he would really have to dial down.
In terms of the.
Lakers history with with coaches, I really, I really feel like they were spoiled by Phil because he made it look so.
Easy.
He made he made coaching look really easy, and they were spoiled by that success and never really took into account, never really learned what made him successful. So every time they've hired a coach since, it's like, what if he did it so easily, why can't you? And and it's it's really kind of laid the foundation for all of their failures with that position ever since.
Yeah, and Anthony growing up in the nineties as a huge Bulls fan, and so like, I know how Phil Jackson works, and that's obviously, like you said, not what Dan Hurley really is. So I guess that would be my question. Do you think you know, because this Lakers team is a veteran team, maybe somebody like Danny Hurley could work because Lebron wants to win one more championship ring AD wants another ring most likely, and they are
a veteran team. Or do you think maybe this says if they are going to make that higher, that the Lakers are maybe looking to rebuild and Danny Hurley comes in to coach a rebuilt team and maybe not Lebron James and AD.
I think no matter what, whoever they hire is going to be there to coach Lebron and coach Ad like they aren't trading those guys. Those guys aren't going anywhere. What I will say, though, is it's really clear that whether it was JJ or Hurley, whoever they hire here isn't gonna get fired in the next couple of years for not succeeding with Lebron or with AD. The focus here is, I think now pretty clearly beyond Lebron, beyond Ad.
They're gonna give it, you know, the good old College try to see what they can do to compete this year. But I'm pretty sure that you know, whoever they hire, if it is Hurley, And by the way, this isn't a done deal. Like the reporting right now is that he's flying out to LA and he's gonna meet with Rob and he's gonna meet with Genie and they're going to talk about their vision and all that stuff, and
then they're going to discuss terms of a deal. Remember this is the same front office that lowball Tylo tried to force Jason Kidd on him. He told them to kick Rocks and they wound up having to hire Frank Vogel. And so like, how they handle this is still very much in question. Maybe they learn from that, it doesn't seem like a front office who learns all that much
from failures or whatever. But I would tend to think that whoever they hire, and again maybe it's early, maybe it's reddick, the point of hiring them is to have that person set a culture that extends beyond Lebron James and beyond Anthony.
When you say beyond, in my mind, when I think about how Dan Hurley could could integrate into this Lakers team, I think rebuild. Is that a possibility? Like a blow up? The front office blow up this team and allowed Dan Hurley to start from the beginning.
I don't think Rob Polink is ever getting fired by Genie bus. I mean, if it's just it's just not on the table the people that I spoke to at the beginning of the off season here, I was asking around, has his seat warmed up at all? This is his third head coach he's gonna hire in the last five or six years. This is a guy who has been the steward of a mostly mediocre Lakers team over the
larger sample size. Yeah, he has a couple postseason runs, but that's when Lebron James and Anthony Davis really take over his seat isn't warming up even a little bit, and no, so if his seat hasn't warmed up even to this point, and he's allowed to hire this guy and all those things, and the conversation is very much going to be how can Dan Hurley and Rob Polinka chart out the future of the Lakers. He's not going anywhere.
Maybe they do a rebuild with roster and with you know, hopefully Dan brings in some of his player development people and the Lakers finally hire a shooting coach, for example. But but you know, whatever, whatever the the the front office might look like, uh, you know, or or any speculation on the on the front office is all kind of moot because you know, Rob is very very much Genie s guy.
Talking to Anthony Irwin bet MGM tonight. We know the coaching search is a huge deal for the Lakers, but we also know that they're always always in trade rumors and there's about a thousand different names linked to this Lakers team. What does the off season look like for them?
At the beginning of the off season, I would have said that they were definitely going to go out and trade for a third star. Right at the end of the season. That was the sense that everybody had. But over the course of that time, whether it's because of the market and their and their introduction to the market, or you know, Trey Young left clutch sports that impacted that,
you know, the the possibilities there. Whatever it is, the Lakers, I would say, at this point seem far more likely to do some upgrades around the peripheries of the roster and try to get like, you know, Ruy Hachimura is much more of an offensive minded player than he is a defensive minded player. They would like to turn him into somebody who can do things on both ends of
the court. Same goes for D'Angelo Russell, right, who the Lakers are hoping is going to opt in so that they can trade him for somebody who does stuff on the defensive end too. So they need to turn some of their role players who are more impact forward on one side of the ball into guys who can do stuff on both sides of the ball. And I think that'll be their focus this season off season.
What about Bronnie James. We're now getting reports Anthony that's the Lakers will take Bronnie James with one of their picks. Maybe they'll move up in the second round if they can't get them him in the fifty. What is your sense on the Brownie James to La Saga.
Yeah, it's there was a there was a hot minute where maybe just maybe they'll take him with the seventeenth pick, and I was losing my mind. I was that was not a that was not a situation that I was all that thrilled about. Now what they have done, and they do have about eight million dollars to spend on a second round draft pick, what I could see them doing is actually buying into the second round a little earlier and maybe taking Brownie with what with that pick,
whatever it might be. That would be my guest.
So you don't so like you don't think that there's a chance that like they have to run it back just with the current roster, you do think there's definitely the Lakers are going to get a superstar, even if it's you know, like a I don't know what you'd call it, like a level B type superstar.
Like a tree. Do they have anything left to trade? That's because they got nothing left?
Yeah, because that's it. I just I want to know how they get created with the roster now they did like two years ago obviously at the trade deadline. I just I don't I don't know what that would look like. You know, how do you think they do get creative and make a move for somebody.
They have three first rounders that they can move on Draft night especially, so that'll be Draft night specifically, is going to be the night where things really You're gonna learn a lot about what the Lakers are going to be trying to do on Draft night because they essentially have to draft for a team and send that player to that team in order to abide by Stepian rules
and all that stuff. So I think on Draft Knight, you're looking at, you know, a pick or two, you know, to say Washington, maybe with like Jared Vanderbilt, and they're gonna try and get Kyle Kuzma. They'll they'll try to send a you know, maybe D'angela Russell Opson and they try to send him with a pick for Dorian Finney Smith, and it'll be you know, small boring moves like that.
The Tray Young thing, even dating back to last deadline, when I would ask around the guy that the Lakers had circled far more frequently based off of the conversations
I was having was actually Donovan Mitchell. They had a lot more confidence that they might be able to trade for Donovan Mitchell than they had in their ability to trade for Trey Young, then Trey Young, Leeves Clutch and I've been told that it's not that that ended it, you know, with with Trey Young, but it certainly was like, Okay, you know, he wasn't really our focus anyway, Let's see
what we can do with Donovan Mitchell. And then you know, Donovan Mitchell will see it looks like Cleveland is going to have to choose between Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell. And you know, depending on what choice they make there or what choice is forced upon them, maybe Donovan Mitchell is the guy that they go all in for. Reeves, three picks, Galen hoodscha Fino's you know potential. I guess all of those things basically for Donovan Mitchell.
And round and round the circle goes with the Laker sits always something. Anthony Irwin Lakers insider for Lakers Daily. He's also the host of Lakers Lounge. Really appreciate you coming on with us. Thanks man.
Anytime, guys say Tad me.
All right, let's move on. There's some fascinating offseason news coming out of Minnesota, who's had a great Western Conference run. They had a great season. First of all, the ownership debacle keeps getting stranger. Remember Glenn Taylor claimed that this deal that they made with Mark Luri and A Rod who had contracted to Bible Wolves, that they had breached their contract. And now he's like, big deals off, not selling anymore. Go on, just enjoy your court side seats
until I kick you out of the arena. And that's a nightmare scenario because as Tim Connolly, the architect of Denver's championship team as well as the architect of the current Wolves roster, had n opped out in his contract, that would have made him a free agent this summer, and we all know he would have been unemployed for like two seconds. There's probably every team would have been
trying to get Tim Connelly. Wolves fans, of course, breathed much easier when Tim Connelly was announced that he was going to restructure his contract, locking him in for another season with a scary proviso, Hey, you guys need to get your ownership shit together, because my opt out it has been moved forward for another year. I think it means that Tim Connelly simply will not work long term.
For Glenn Taylor. We know A Rod was instrumental in getting Tim Connolly to Minnesota in the first place, and if this ownership deadlock continues, Tim now has the same option to become a free agent next summer. Presumably by then we will have clarity about what's actually gonna happen. Probably a Rod was like, hey, let me get give me one more year to get this sorted out, and they are sorting it. I mean, they're downsides to both
ownership court groups. On one hand, of course, the Lourie a Rod group did indeed put together a plan to stash salary for next season, which would have necessitated necessitated some big trades and letting players go, probably Karl Anthony Towns, probably Kyle Henderson. On the other end, you've got Glenn Taylor, who's the worst, like the worst. I don't even need
really to say any more about that. Fortunately, for the Lorie A Rod group, it was announced that billionaire New Yorker Michael Bloomberg had joined their ownership group, and considering they had to scrape to put together their installment papers. They literally put the Minnesota Timberwolves on layaway. That's fucking grace. They put the Timberwolves on layaway like a winter coat in Minnesota. That's like what a mom in Minnesota would do. Having a man worth over a hundred billion dollars is
probably gonna fix the layaway scenario. So Glenn Taylor is simply outgunned, I think in this battle because Bloomberg, being the twelfth richest man on earth, can buy the Wolves with the money that he finds underneath his couch that's made of gold bars. The best news of the offseason for Minnesota fans, I think, unless he tries to run for president again, because they need to make some moves to get over the top, and those moves are gonna cost second April cut of money. And that's now you.
Now you got somebody that's like Steve Barmer out there being able to pay the contract sizes that you need in order to keep this roster together. All right. That's all the time that we have for this episode of The Heat Checked. If I sounded alarmed, I think I saw a raw oh a fox run through my backyard. Come back Monday for an all new episode. Check out the feed for past episodes of many episodes which drop unexpectedly, like many threes from Sam Hauser. Do not forget that
or a brick from Kyriervie. Do not forget to follow the heat check throughout the finals. So that means download, that means subscribe, That means tell your friends, even that dude dropping off his kid who wouldn't stop staring at you at the stop, like, tell him, hey, don't wear your flip flops in the rain. Also take a picture. It last longer, and while you're at it, you can just throw on the heat check and listen to my voice.
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