Colin Cowherd Podcast - Knicks STUN Pacers, KAT Explodes, Thunder VULNERABLE On The Road, Caitlin Clark Is A “Billion Dollar Athlete”

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Thunder and how they're the all time great team. And now we're sitting here on Sunday evening and both series are two to one and very very different Colin. My initial read was just simply that this is more or less where the Eastern Conference Finals should be at this point in that I thought the Knicks looked like the better team in Game one and they blew it, And I thought the Pacers looked like the better team tonight that I thought they let their foot off the gas

in a lot of ways. The Knicks did find some stuff, and we'll get into that, but Carl Anthony town steals this game just like Aaron Nesmith stole Game one, and it kind of feels like we're supposed to be two to one Indie and here we are two to one Indie.

of them. There was this stretch in LA. Every time I went to a game he was playing, and he's in all of them. He had a quarterway. He was the best player on the floor by long shot. And he does this and you know for a guy his size, like his first step for a guy his size, like he is quick and then he gets by you and he's long and he's angular and he's a handful. He's a handful for a big and I've just seen him

do stuff like this before. But I thought with Brunson off the floor, you know sometimes when you're when you're a really gifted player and you play with a ball centric great player. This was Brunson in Dallas, you know, like he would be like it was Luca's show. And then you put him in New York and this is one of those were in a weird way. It was like Karl Anthony Taw. The team was just looking for him to lead, and we both know that he can do this. He doesn't sustain it, he gets in foul trouble.

He can be inefficient, he's flaky. But and then I think, to your point, I think I think they just they had a series of really the Pacers had a series of really bad offensive possessions, and you look up and you're like nine seven, four to two lead. So this is what happens in the NBA. This isn't college Like, there's just things happened quickly in the NBA, and you looked up and you're like, oh, New York has total control emotionally, they just felt like they were going to

win the game. With about four left, You're like, Indiana can't get out of its own way here offensively.

It just kind of changes the psychology of the game. I thought things really turned around in that late third quarter. It was so funny because stan Van Gundy goes like, I'm not sure I like this lineup. It's a bunch of guys who can't score and they need to score.

And then he goes He's like, who's gonna be the guy who brings the offense for the Knicks and ended up being deuced McBride and they went on like a seven to zero run and it cut it down to ten going into the fourth quarter, and that's what they were talking about. They're like, they just need to get it down to ten. And then as soon as they got into the fourth quarter in striking distance, Karl Anthony Towns gets going. It's the three point shooting. It's the

like you mentioned, the first step. And then once he gets that first step, the bigs all try to catch up to him, but he's just so good at powering through with that battering of a left arm as he goes to the rim and once he got going, this is the most interesting part you mentioned it, Colin, Indy's offense got shook. This is the first time in a long time I've seen Indy's offense get their foundation shaken the way that the Knicks did. And what it really

came down to is that stretch with Brunson out. You know, it's been so fascinating, Colin, because it's different than the Celtics series. In the Celtic series, Cat and Brunson were asked to defend one on one, very different kind of idea. The Celtics succumbs to their switching and they just tried to attack Brunson and Cat one on one and they did a good job. But in this series, the job for Brunson and Kat is much more sprinting in rotation,

getting back in transition defense. It's a lot of like mental focus and energy related stuff, and those guys have been rough in this series in that department. But in that fourth quarter stretch with Brunson off the floor for most of it, it's Duce McBride out there, a substantially

better defensive player. Kat was giving the requisite effort in rotation and one of the things with this Pacers team, Siakam and Halliburton can play one on one, but that's not necessarily what they do at a superstar level, right, And so if you rotate and you make them take contested shots, they might just go cold and miss them all.

And that's what happened in this game. They don't have a Brunson, a guy who's just an indomitable one on one force who can step in and get great shots, and so like that, that really is the key if there's any hope for New York in this series. And I still feel pretty strongly that Indiana is gonna get

it done. But like, if there's any hope for New York in this series, it's they gotta fly around and rotate and they got they gotta match Indiana's speed and pace and energy as much as they can in this series.

it was like six minutes. So they got into a six minute stretch where McConnell's getting He got one short look and then he forced one and then you know again they have like Nie Smith can get hot, but he's not going to beat people off the ball, and you're just watching it and you're like, oh, this is mud. This doesn't work at all. It's and you know it's I think the Pacers are a better team. I I

think there's certain things the Knicks need to do. I think what happened to the Pacers tonight can happen to the next more often where they feel a little stock if Brunson's not hitting. And if I recall, I think Halliburton was out for a little bit. He was out of it when they got out of rhythm. Then he came back in and he was sort of asked to hey, kickstart the rhythm, and it's like and he did hit a three, But it's weird when when he is whereas

Brunson doesn't control the pace, he controls them scoring. Halliburton can control scoring and the pace. So when you take him out and then you insert him back and it's like, okay, now, guys, I'm gonna change the pace of this, and he tried and he does, but it just didn't. It felt clunky and it felt like they were playing uphill. Yeah.

couple went against the Pacers late. I think this is a hard series to officiate. New York's a good defensive team. Indiana is an underrated defensive team. And the Bigs move and they collide and I don't know. As I watched this game about and I'm not a guy that bangs on officials, but I was like, man, there were a lot of calls going against the Necks for a stretch in this game.

And then on the other side, the Pacers just play so fast and there's so much running that you kind of have to put your body in the way you have to. If you don't, they're just gonna cut you to pieces. And so there's a lot of these like kind of bang bang contact plays where a dude comes flying downhill or tries to turn the corner on a drive and you try to position yourself in front and take the contact, and they're getting called for fouls in a lot of those situations, and it is a very

difficult series to officiate. But what causes those fouls, to your point, is the speed in the pace. And if there's one thing to credit the Knicks for in this fourth quarter that, like you said, there was a six minute stretch there where You're like, why is Aaron Nesmith trying to play bully ball against joshuar Ojananobi, Like o Jananoby's you know, four inches taller than you and at least thirty pounds heavier, Like you're not gonna go through

his chest to get to the rim. And there was a little bit too much of like siakam Iso, a little too much of like Tyrese Halliburton dribbling out of ball screens instead of passing out of ball screens like he always does. I thought Indiana kind of lost their identity for a minute in that fourth quarter. By the way, like that's a credit to Karl Anthony Towns. I'm a big believer in this colin I'm I think basketball is

more art than science. I think there is a lot of like psychological dynamics at play in any given moment. And like when Luca rolls up into your building in the first quarter in an elimination game and scorees seventeen points and hits three logo threes, it just SAPs you of all your energy. Like even I thought Brunson and kat both kind of were succumbing to that over the course of this game. Brunson was having a rough night.

Cat was having a rough night. What happened in that fourth quarter was Kat threw one hell of a punch and he's dunking on everybody and hitting step back threes, and you could tell Indiana was just shaken at that.

the next credit. I you know, it's just it's I think to your point, it's probably the series now probably closer to what it should be. So you go back to Game one, the Knicks absolutely outplayed him, and and going even into this game, I was with friends tonight in the in the first quarter, a little cookout at their house. We were watching the game, and it was like it was one of the people there was not a basketball fan, and I said, oh, this series has

just come down to the last six minutes. I said, one team's great defensively, one's very good offensively. There's about six really good players combined. I said, it'll be close. It'll be a four point game. I thought Indiana would win. But I also think one of the things that was good for the NBA tonight is that you're seeing a

lot of road teams win playoff games. They've been a ton I mean Indiana obviously, my entire life, even as an NBA fan, I always felt like the home team got the whistle, and I just like seeing road teams win. I think it just I think it's just better for basketball when the road team wins. I mean, I think it's just funny now that the Knicks can't win it home and the Basers now are winning everywhere but home, and I think it's just good. It makes the series captivating.

I'm interested to watch the Pacers come out in Game four because my take is they're gonna try to push the pace again because they they walked into that locker room and they're like, we lost our way at home in a game that could have clinched the series, Like they just lost their way credit the next defense, But that was as bad as Indiana's looked offensively for a six to eight minute stretch the entire series.

Calves went into Indiana in Game three and blew them out. And that's not a that's not that's a sixty four when Leyden roster that went into Indy and suffered one of the most humiliating blowouts that we've ever seen in the NBA when they were trailing eighty to thirty nine at the end of the first half. So Indiana is gonna come out and they're going to throw their best punch.

What's fascinating to me is coming into this series. I mentioned to you on your show that I thought the Pacers were better on offense and better on defense than the Knicks, and that was why I thought that they would win the series. But interestingly enough, this is a Knicks team that's kind of had mediocre results for the

majority of this season, and they beat the Celtics. And what's fascinating to me now as I look back on this all is there's kind of a range of outcomes for all of these teams, and the Pacers are a team that pretty consistently hits their ceiling. They're not like what you saw tonight was very out of the out

of character for them. The Knicks, I've seen them a half dozen times each in this postseason look like a putrid defense and look like an awesome defense, like at multiple different points in this postseason, they've kind of oscillated back and forth between those two ideas. They just have a wide range of outcomes. And so we've all known that the Knicks can have defensive stretches like they had in that fourth quarter tonight. They did it to Boston

multiple times. They can fly around in rotation and contest shots and do all of that stuff. They just can't sustain it. And so Ultimately, as you zoom out from the series, the Pacers are up to one and they are more likely to sustain their peak level of play. Yes moving forward, and it makes some assaye for Bet to win the series.

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don't think they're a fun watch. I just think they're really athletic and really deep. Do I am I supposed to take anything beyond just a desperate, well coached team in Minnesota ant crazy and it was just a young team lessen really feeling their oats and just got overwhelmed and just packed it it. I mean, it is anything more than that.

foolish game plan through the first two games. The gist of it is, if I asked you what Shae Gildes Alexander's strongest traits are as a basketball player, you'd say he's probably the best driver of the basketball in the league, and he's just like the best isolation player in the league. He was like of all isolation players who attempted at least three hundred shots. He was number one by a mile this year. And so what Chris Finch was doing was picking up Shay at half court and letting him

play one on one, staying glued home to shooters. And it was just like gift wrapping Shae, the perfect environment for him to thrive on. And it was hilarious juxtaposed with a Denver series where we saw the exact opposite game plan with lesser defense of personnel have a great

deal of success. Now they won by forty because yes, there was an urgency gap, and they shot a lot better and there were a lot like Anthony Edwards was hitting shots over triple teams in the second half, Like yeah, that was what it caused it to manifest in a destructive blowout. But right away to start that game, one of the reasons why they were able to quickly assert control and hold Oklahoma City. I think they held him to fifteen points in the first quarter. The reason why

was they immediately dropped back to Denver's game plan. They had Jaden meet Shay inside the three point line because again, if you ball pressure a player, it's the easiest time to drive past them because you're being forward aggressive as a defender, so of course she's going to go right around you. He's literally the best. He drove to the basket more than two hundred times more than the second best driver in the league this year, Colin. That's like

almost four times a game. He's far and away the best driver. You can't pick him up that far. He's gonna go right around you. Jaden sat back and then they start pack in the paint off of shooters, and so as a result, it looked like the Denver game, and all of a sudden, it turned into Oklahoma City's role players needing to knock down threes in Shae having to make tougher decisions in the lane about whether or not he wanted to shoot over some double and triple

teams where he can have some shortcomings. Because if I asked you what Shae's biggest weaknesses are, it's probably his three point shooting, yeah, and his ability to process in traffic in the lane. Now, he's still pretty good at those things, but they're not his strengths. And in that end of the first half, he was one for four from three, he had four turnovers. He finished the game I think four for fifteen from the field. Colin. Only eight times all season did Shae shoot below forty percent

from the field. He is one of the most consistently efficient scorers in basketball. They held him to thirty one percent in that game. So there definitely was a better game plan and so as a result, I think Game four will be a closer, more tightly contested game because they're running the right game plan for this time well.

and doesn't. And I think when you force Oklahoma City and you just say okay, okay, young guys, hit your shots on the road, loud crowd, it's hard, there's a history, it's like, really really hard. And I also think, and I also think when you're playing a team like Okay See so much, I wonder about sometimes Okay See is so good defensively and so swarming and so frenetic. I do wonder if Minnesota players tend to spend so much

of their on court time thinking about that. So much of playing OKAC is deciphering their defense and figuring out I mean, you have to really be you have to already be intentional when you play them defensively, because they can trap you, they can make you look bad fast. And so I think sometimes when you play okay See, they don't play like a lot of other teams. Nobody quite plays like them, and I think they can get

into your headspace and it's why. And then you go on the road and they and now they lead by six and SGA is getting the whistle. I do feel something, and I don't know what the numbers say, but I do feel like OKAC is like Indiana. I get the same team, the same team. I got enough veteran I feel with Oklahoma City they're a vulnerable road team. I've got a shot. You know, Denver. They didn't look quite

the same at Denver. Now maybe it's altitude. Now, maybe I'm wrong on this, and the splits don't say that, but I do feel like a Oka See is a vulnerable team on the road that you can win your home games against them.

Pacer squad home and away. They want to run if they can't, you know, I just, okay, see, of all the four teams left, I feel like I get a different OKAC team home and away.

They're daring Minnesota to take and make corner threes in this series and in the like when after Game one when Ant was like, I vowed to be more aggressive, I'm like, that's not the answer. They're like, you're gonna just drive into the teeth of the defense and you're gonna take bad shots. And by the way, in the first half of Game two, he took eighteen shots and

had sixteen points to show for it. What was kind of fascinating about the flow of this series is to your point, you start to get more comfortable as you adjust. Aunt and Julius were awesome in Game three, especially early at making those corner kicks, and they were finally knocking down those corner threes. They have had three games worth of experience against Oklahoma City's base defensive scheme, and they're

starting to figure it out a little bit. Oklahoma City saw that bad game plan for two games and then Finch throws the appropriate game plan in game three, and they looked like completely shell shocked by it. I mean, Colin, I don't know if you saw it. In Game one, Oklahoma City only took like twenty threes and the reason why is because they were staying glued off the ball and letting Shay play one on one. It's it's such a fundamentally different defensive game plan that Minnesota is rocking

from this point forward now. To be clear, in Game four, by the way, via DraftKings. All of our odds are from DraftKings. Oklahoma City is a three point favorite in Game four, and that feels right to me. I think it's gonna be a close game. They're gonna bring an intense defensive effort right away out the gates. That's gonna test Aunt and Julius's decision making again. And then you're gonna see Oklahoma City, because they have seen this defense

before with Denver. You're gonna see them kind of come into the game prepared for that game plan. That said, and this is the one thing I'd say, like, I think Minnesota has a much better chance of beating Oklahoma City from this point forward than the Knicks do with the Pacers, because what Minnesota can bring to the table is Denver caut problems for OKC was some weak defensive personnel.

Minnesota's got a bunch of really good defenders out there, and so if they properly execute this game plan, they could potentially do some real damage. And as long as

they ride that momentum going forward in the series. There's also a little bit of like a Aunt straight up can be unguardable sometimes with some of the shots that he can make, and like he was just better than Shay in Game three, and if he can maintain that, that would be the other thing that could swing things back towards Minnesota.

casep and they didn't. I mean, they didn't have a great bench to begin with, and now it's a bad bench and they become you know, Murray gets hurt. And I've never been a huge Michael Porter fan. I've always been. I always think Aaron Gordon's underrated Porter to me, just I think he's the nod fit and a bit overpaid. And then all of a sudden you look up and Denver just looks good. And I watched Indiana, I said, and I thought to myself, God, I love watching them play.

But as I watch all of these teams, even Oklahoma City, and we've just stated it there, they're the one team that you get a different version on the road. They're not nearly as good as they are at home. Is that I feel like whoever wins this year will not win the following year. And I first of all, there's gonna be ay honest move. KD could go to the Knicks. They could get another basket. You know, if they moved off Karl Anthony Towns at his flakiness and just said

we're gonna go get Durant. We'll let Carl go, We'll keep Robinson, he is what he is, but we'll have Durant at the in the game late, so we can we can live with them. I feel like the Pacers feel a little bit like the Nuggets. I'm falling in love, like I fell in love with Jokic and Gordon. I'm like, God, I love this team, but it wasn't as sustainable. It

was very Jokicic dominant. And Murray, you know, he's just one of those players that I like a lot, I don't love, and I kind of feel like with Indiana, I'm falling for it because and I'm doing this because it's like confirmation bias. I love watching them play, and so I'm talking myself into Indiana's great. But then I watched them and I think to myself, no, they're not great.

What they have as a remarkable player in Halliburton, and what Denver had is a remarkable player in Jokic, And what Minnesota has as a remarkable player in Ant and Brunson's one of the great small closers in the game is I think this is what the NBA is going to be, is that everybody's going to have a great player and a very good too. But the days of having three guys that you can depend on I just think, Jason, I think it's over. I just don't think that multiple aprons.

I don't think they allow it. And so those teams are just going to eventually get beat. They'll come in as a favorite, they'll have it, they'll have an injury, they'll lose a bench guy, and it's just funny watching Indiana tonight. I'm like, oh boy, this team, this team, I thought, wait, put the brakes on Jesus. They can't even get to the next tonight. What if I took these four teams, all things considered, and I said, one of them will win multiple titles? Are you set on Okac?

a year. That's what Isaia Hartenstein got. And if I'm Miles Hard, Miles Turner's agent. I'm going to him like thirty is the basement, Like, so are you gonna how are you gonna continue to build around Nie Smith, who, by the by the way, Nie Smith is a dude who just stole you a playoff game, who's averaging fifteen points a game in this playoff run is your primary point of attack, defender and shooting forty five percent from three. That's a twenty five million dollar player, Like Halliburton's a

super Max player. Nemhard, you could argue as a twenty million dollar player. Siakam is a forty million dollar player. Like It just gets really difficult to maintain the payrolls in these In these situations, the thing with Oklahoma City is they're going to run into that problem in a

couple of years. They can theoretically win this year, run it back, win again, run it back, but it will be a shorter window relative to previous entities like this because of the fact that eventually they're gonna have to pay j Dubb Cason. Wallace is looking a lot like a twenty five million dollar player to me, right, like Jed Holmgren's a forty million dollar player. Ja Dub's gonna

be a forty million dollar play. Like, they're all just so good that inevitably going to have to pay all these dudes, and it's just going to become impossible to maintain the roster. Now there's a second conversation to have as it pertains to whether or not the league should pivot from this structure because it penalizes smartly run NBA teams. But yeah, on the other three teams Indiana, New York, Minnesota, there's no chance to like sustain success because of just

how expensive it is to have. Like you talk about a playoff rotation, you want six guys you can definitely trust and probably a seventh that you can kind of trust. And it's like a playoff guy you can trust is a bare minimum twenty million in the open market. So like, it's just very difficult to find the means with which to maintain this. And Oklahoma City will have draft picks.

They can supplement it with draft picks, but a draft pick isn't going to be able to impact winning at a playoff level right away, And you can try trading them, but it's just going to bring back expensive contracts. It's just kind of the reality of the situation. I will say with the Knicks, Colin I, I think there's a lot of interesting Kevin Durant potential destinations. I think the Knicks are one. I also kind of think the Pacers

are one. One of the reasons why I like the Pacers is like, I don't think the Pacers have much of a chance at all to beat Oklahoma City. I think it's a horrible matchup for them. Oklahoma City has six lightning fast guards that can chase all their guards around, and they could switch everything, and they also have im protection, and they have all the offensive talent to be able to score on them. I worry about the Pacers' ability to get a bucket against a team that can keep

them in front. And they're a team like if I just had a better version of Siakam, I all of a sudden view them as a more substantial title threat, and so like, they're a team that I could see like, Okay, we're a little older, Miles Turner's kind of older. We need to make some sort of win now move to capitalize on this before it gets too expensive. I could see KD being that guy for them as well. There's a bunch of teams where KD could immediately raise their ceiling.

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see what the fuss is about. Head to your local Walmart, Target and try the og degree cool Rush for yourself. And now for our next segment, whiskey business. Yes, whiskey business, brought to you by Green River Whiskey, the official whiskey of the Colin Coward Podcast. Okay, I want to bring this up. We can close on this because I saw this today. It's fascinating. So a university professor in finance looked up the value of Caitlin Clark for the WNBA.

This is insane. So this year, last season in the WNBA, Caitlin Clark was twenty six and a half percent of all economic activity as a rookie on the worst team in the league when she entered it. So now she has an eight year, one hundred and twenty eight million dollar deal with Nike, so you know she's she's gonna eat merchandise in the league. Went up off a rookie from a Midwest based school on the worst team in

the league two hundred and thirty four percent. But here was the one that struck me so before she got there, the Indiana Fever, the valuation of the franchise was ninety million. Remember they play a short season, it's not like the NBA where it lasts like six months after playing what forty games. The valuation of that team now is three hundred and forty million dollars. She is almost.

that nobody else in the sport does. So she's a bit of a It's like when Tiger Woods came on the tour, Like he drove it further, He's long, putting was better, he looked like a football player in the red shirts, Like he just was different than every other golfer you grew up with, and people like unique and different. Here my question to you is there's still no other Like somebody said at the party, well there'd be another Caitlin Clark, and I'm like, well, there's not another Steph Curry.

Like there's guys that can shoot threes. I don't think it's a game you duplicate. And I listen, let's just be honest. There are more great male athletes in the world than female athletes. There is no second Steph Curry there is no other player that plays like that. My take is she could be a billion dollar athlete. Are you are you surprised by it? Like when I see these numbers, I'm like, oh, this is Tiger in the tour. This doesn't this isn't even Jordan, this is totally different.

really bring eyes to television. To take it a step further, there are two types of basketball players that I think are far and away the most winning impact in the current game of basketball. It's the big, strong playmaker think Lebron, Luka Jokic, And it's the indomitable shooter, which there's really only been Steph. I think those two types of players are the players that give you the best chances to

win basketball games in the modern in the modern world. Now, what makes it fascinating to me, because that's what Caitlyn Clark is. She's a different type of player, and she can do a lot of different types of things, but she's a essentially bringing a Steph Curry like basketball impact to the WNBA. It's really this simple. If you can shoot the way that she shoots, so the way step shoots, and you can perpetually be in motion running around, inevitably

there is an overreaction to your shooting ability. And we see this all the time with Kaitlyn, just like you're gonna see you're gonna see Aliah Boston get NonStop easy buckets in the mid range or rolling to the basket, because every time she sets a screen for Caitlin, her defender is stepping up to guard Kaitlin because as she comes off of that screen, if you're not there, she's

gonna shoot it and she's gonna make it. And so there's a reaction that invert spacing in brings a four on three because you bring multiple defenders away from the rim, there's a four on three with a vacated paint and because of that, there's a lot of easy opportunities to score there. Like that's the thing with Steph Curry, Like, Steph Curry is not the same shot maker that he was for you years ago in twenty twenty one, but just the simple threat of him running around gives the

Warriors a chance to score. And that's the thing. Like Caitlyn hasn't even really started hitting shots yet this year or the way that she's capable of, but everyone knows she can and they guard her in that fashion. And so to me, it's kind of like a proof of concept in that if you can shoot and you can run around the way that Steph does, and you can strike fear into a defense in that way, the trickle down effects with the way that defenses guard you just

make everything so much easier for her. And like you could argue she's already the best offensive engine in the WNBA and she's literally a second year player and like, and she still has so much room to improve, Like she still struggles with ball pressure, she still turns the she turned the ball over too much against the Liberty the other night. She still has a little bit of an issue where she kind of cross fires across her face, which makes it so she can only shoot going left.

She needs to build it out so that she can shoot running to her right as well. But like, judging by her psycho competitive attitude, she's probably gonna figure that that stuff out in the next year or two and then she'll be the best player in the league. And so like, to me, it's just she fits the mold of one of the most impactful types of basketball players you can be today, which is the deadly movement shooter. If you're a deadly movement shooter, it just opens up

so many things for an offense. And and honestly, I just think I think she's musty television Colin. I've watched all four of her games, and and I'm in my busy season, Like you think i'd be taking a break. My wife said to me the other day, She's like, you're watching more basketball. I'm like, it's Katelyn Clark. We're watching more basketball. Come over here, let's watch this.

She doesn't quite get as favorable a whistle as you think, so I think.

you're an official. You don't want to give her too favorable a whistle because the players in the league will resent her to some degree. She's getting all this attention and I don't. And I will say this, I've defended the w NBA with this baseball and the WNBA feel ignored the NFL and the NBA. In college football they get a lot of press, and baseball always feels like, hey, we're America's pastime. So they're very insular, sometimes very provincial.

And the WNBA, similarly, you don't pay attention to us. So there's part of it, like I get like they sort of resent this one player. Nobody talks WNBA. They do, and it's all her, you know. I remember when Tiger was eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, coming on of the tour. There were a lot of people in golf that were like, could you guys show, could you talk in your sportscast about anybody other than Tiger Woods? So she's not. Bryce

Harper came into baseball. He fought with an own teammate in the dugout because it was like, oh, everybody wants to talk to So I do defend the WNBA. Is that I get if nobody paid attention to you for twenty six years and now they do, and they feign interest in the rest of the league. What we all care about is Caitlin. So the animosity built up by players, I give it a little bit of a pass, you know. I think people are spending too much time on race.

You know, it is what it is. There's a million platforms, a million opinions, but I I don't know. My take is they're still in the adjustment period with Caitlin. How to market, how to promote, how to officiate, how to defend, and it's just fluid. That's what it feels like to me.

didn't watch the WNBA. I have grown to really enjoy watching WNBA basketball even when she's not on and they're like Thenfista Collier became one of my favorite basketball players watching her in the finals run last year. And what brought me to the television was Caitlin. So like, let's say that the league came out there like every Caitlyn Clark games on national television, like, that's just what we're

going to do. Deal with it. That would be genius, because the best way you can market the other WNBA players is to have them play against Kaitlin Clark because we'll all be watching. Okay, well, no one's covering the rest of the league. Okay, but if you put Caitlin on television and you get more people to watch, it will create more WNBA fans. And we live in the most colin I started making NBA content out of my

guest bedroom. Okay, you create a bunch of WNBA fans, Passionate members of the media will originate from that mass and will cover the league better, and overall, the league will gain in popularity and gain and impact, and it will become a momentous thing that carries forward and actually does shine a big flashlight on the rest of the WNBA.

Caitlin Clark is the vehicle with which to microwave that, to accelerate it, and to move it into a fast track towards what could be a bright future for the WNBA. It's great basketball, It's genuinely great basketball. She's the best vehicle with which tow to elevate the sport. I think anything they can do to put her on TV and promote her is the best thing they could do for the sport.

basic marketing. And I've said before I do think the WNBA women's basketball and I said this years ago in FS one, probably five years ago. The sport was getting better. The women were you know, several generations of women were encouraged to play basketball and to be athletes, and nutritionists came into the sport and better trainers. There was money in the league, so they had better training and the

players were getting better. But it takes this, Listen, it took Magic and Bird in the NBA to take a league that there were some financial problems. So it's not like a gender issue. It's a I mean, I I think Connor McGregor's erosion as a fighter has hurt UFC. It doesn't feel as urgent. And that's and that's already established and so and we all know that Michael Jordan left once Magic Bird and Michael had driven the league up,

Michael left, the ratings dropped fifty percent. So this stuff outside of the NFL, it's all cyclical, it's all market based, it's all star based, and it's just a WNBA. You know, was waiting for its first Tiger, and golf's probably had four in my life, you know, Jack Nicholson, Arnold Palmer, Tiger. I think Rory's got a little bit of it, Phil Micholson. So the history of golf, you know, if you modern history has got like five guys that have done it.

So there's no reason to be defensive about it. It just it's all these leagues. They all eventually, I mean, look at boxing, Ollie took it from whatever it was to the next level. Then there were Sugar, Ray, Leonard and Hagler. But when Larry Holmes arrived, nobody wanted to watch Larry Holmes. That took an old George Foreman and telling a grill that you bake chicken on or cook chicken on to I mean literally to get the casual

back into boxing. Was George Foreman's second tour. So this is the way sports works outside of football.