And here's what you needed not.
The NBA season is over, but the work now begins for Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton, reports confirming today that he suffered a ruptured achilles tendon in his right leg in last night's Game seven of the NBA Finals. Reports said that he will undergo surgery for the injury later today. According to odds and bet Online, the Thunder are the favorites to repeat as NBA champions next season, sitting right
now with odds of five to two. The Rockets, with the newly acquired Kevin Durant, have the second best odds at eight to one. Nuggets are hiring Ben Tanzer as the team's executive of basketball operations. They also named former Timberwolves executive John Walla, says the Nuggets executive vice president of player Personnel, and ESPN reports that Wizard swingman Chris Middleton is expected to exercise his player option with more
than thirty three million dollars for next season. Aaron Judge of the Yankees continues to lead all players in voting for next month's All Star Game in Atlanta with more than two points.
Broadcasting live from the ninety six nine at James studios.
It's time to show in a song. Here's your host, Brandon Kravitz.
Yeah, yeah, Welcome to the show. We are live on ninety six to nine, the game streaming everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You are in the zone, the show of the Orlando Sports Fan. Your host's Brandon Kravitz here joined by my co host and producer. He is Sweet Tea Tyler Karen. Hit us up on the Mills Air text line. That's five zero eight five seven, also available on the iHeartRadio talk back. Just tap that microphone icon and let
it fly. It is the first true day of the NBA offseason, even though we've already seen wheels and deals going down in the league, but first full day given the fact that there is no more NBA action on the court for a couple months now. Much to get to. On that front, we did have a big time trade this weekend. We have a low NBA team that continues to climb the odds boards. Plus our best and worst of the weekend. A lot of goodies there. Super relaxing weekend for yours. Surely was able to sit back. I
consumed the full sports menu. I don't think there's anything I didn't see this weekend, which even during the high octane football season with college football on Saturday and NFL on Sunday, I feel like I'm always missing something, some little slice of the pie. But just absolutely no plans this weekend. Shout out to LSU for taking home the
crown in the College World Series. Tyler. We have officially hit that part of the year where once it's noon, your plans better involve water or air conditioning because it is rough out there. So especially with a five year old at the house, I got a plan ahead. I forget that twelve o'clo kind of sneaks up on you and then all of a sudden, you know he's looking at you like we just hanging around the house all day.
You've kind of run out of all the toys and the shows, and you got to come up with a plan. So this is definitely game plan season.
Yeah, you got to get creative this time of year. The other angle to it as well, is you got to try to factor in that weather. Because I just mentioned to you that this weekend, I did exactly that noon hit, and I was pulside with a refresher in hand, and I got a nice little tan to show for it. However, leading up to that, in the summer months here in Florida, you never know what the weather is going to get you.
You will get ten minutes of absolute beauty, followed by thirty minutes of them on soon followed by four hours of absolutely beautiful. I tried to time up my run down in South Florida over the weekend. It was a little rainy early on, like eight thirty to nine thirty, and then you know, have some coffee, sit around, talk to the fam, and all right, I'm gonna try to go and get a couple of miles in beautiful and half.
I was half a mile from the house, and then the rain came and it came hard, So I did not get the three miles in I was going for. But I had one of the fastest miles I've ever run in my life because I was hauling but back to the front door. And then it seems as soon as I dry off from the rain, that's when the sun was out. That's where I give up on the run. I say, you know what I tried, and that's where you hit the pool. So you got a factor in a lot of different things this time of year, the
rain doesn't slow you down. I wouldn't know this. I detest running. If you ever see me running in public, just assume that something is chasing me. I would think the rain halts the progress, even if you want to go faster. It kind of it depends. It certainly depends on what your mindset is. How hard the rain is coming. A nice little drizzle isn't really a problem. It's actually kind of refreshing opposed to the ninety five degree heat
that we get this time of year. However, when it's raining that hard, then it comes to less of myself because it's impossible to stay in the runner's mindset when you're getting rain, cold rain on you. But then it's also the electronics come to mind. I run with my phone in hand, so the phone is exposed to any weather. My headphones are exposed to any weather. So that's where
is it worth it to push through this? Or can I say, you know what I tried, We'll try again tomorrow and get back to the house still feel okay about myself, so and not have to hit up Best Buy or anywhere else to try to repair any damage to the electronics. So that's kind of the give and take a nice little sprinkle is actually preferable. But if it gets beyond that, then then you got to look out for things bigger than yourself.
BK, I understand. I well, I wanted to really go off on a tangent here about how Tyler is a phone fumbler that is just one of his personality quirks. Yeah, I worry about you holding the phone in your hand, but we don't have time to get into.
It onto game seven.
It is. It's obviously unfortunate what happened to Tyrese Haliburton, and we're going to cover this in all sorts of directions throughout the course of the afternoon, but I just want to get my take on how this went down and how OKC plays into it and the championship that they won as the night went along, you look at the way that this game started. If you were of the belief that the Pacers were going to win this game with him out there, I am not going to
be able to talk you out of it. I just disagree. I feel like the thunder performance that we saw in the third quarter was going to happen with or without Tyrese Halliburton. It's not like the Pacers couldn't score at all. TJ McConnell went nuclear in the third quarter. The Thunder got back to playing that swarming defense that was their trademark all season long. Eighteen points off of turnovers. They took eleven more shot attempts in the quarter, and that
was the difference in the game. Now, keep in mind, and this is something that I think was completely glossed over by seemingly everybody in the NBA media going into Game seven, Tyrese Halliburton was hampered. I know that he knocked down a few threes and it looked like he was gonna have a good game, and he was certainly in empt up for it. But he was clearly limited in his full skill set, and we saw that on
full display in game five when he really struggled. Then in Game six, he played well, but you could tell that he wasn't one hundred percent. Then he plays in game seven, and it wasn't even a storyline going into game six, it was is he gonna play?
Is he gonna play well?
I had my tiered hierarchy of how this could possibly look and how it could play for the Indiana Pacers if he plays, But doesn't play well, or if he doesn't play and it's TJ McConnell, or what if this is all just not that big of a deal and he plays great, We're breaking it all down. Then going into game seven, it was like, well, he played in game six, so he's fine.
Calf strains don't just go away.
So even if Tyrese Haliburton hadn't busted his achilles in the first quarter, you still didn't have a Tyrese Haliburton that was one hundred percent. I think if you wanted to play the game of if Tyrese Haliburton wasn't hurt at all, is Indiana actually a better team than OKC. I still don't think that, but it certainly looked like it was a lot closer than the perception going into this series. Either way, I think the better team was always going to win. It took them seven games to
do it. You give Indiana credit for pushing them. There take nothing away from OKAC that is a worthy, rightful champion and Tyler, I think they would have won the game no matter what.
Yeah, I tend to agree with you, And you know, this is where the conversation goes into the what if and You can take all of those what ifs to the grave, you can carry it with you.
But at the end of the day, what is is what is.
And what happened last night is what happened in the Oklahoma City Thunder are your champions. It's this team lost fourteen games in the regular season, and yes, they were tested throughout the postseason. It wasn't a cakewalk as many predicted it would be for or Oklahoma City, whether it be through the Western Conference or whether it be heading into the finals where they were one of the most lopsided finals favorites that we've seen in recent history in
the NBA. Indiana was able to push them. But at the end of the day, there's a reason why the NBA has it set so this series can go to seven. It is so that the underdog still has a chance. But you want to see the most worthy champion, and in seven games, when it gets there, oftentimes the most worthy champion plays out. And to your point about ty Reeves being hampered in even Game six, it was an
Indiana blowout. OKAC seemed like that they knew they had another game to play with, so they were okay with kind of packing it in and all right, well, you don't get in Indiana, you get to close it out in game seven in front of your home crowd. Tyre's Haliburton in that game, because you could see early on that he was a step slower than normal, but he was still able to kind of go through his normal motions, just maybe not to the degree that we're used to seeing.
But he only played in twenty three minutes in that game, so it's.
Very difficul cult to see and to say confidently that, oh, he's fine, he's back.
The calf wasn't holding him back at all.
He was able to play in the short stints in Indiana, got so far ahead so early that he was able to pack it in the fourth quarter of the game and not really have to be a big factor in it.
Play under twenty five minutes.
So if we were saying, all right, well he's good in game six, he's going to be good to go for Game seven, it was certainly something that was still lingering in the back of a lot of people's mind, and the injury is just it's unfortunate.
You never want to.
See anything like that for any athlete at any point throughout the season. Albeit in Game seven, of an NBA Finals, But I do believe that again if he is able to play that whole game this the writing was on the wall that Oklahoma City was going to be crown champion in Game seven.
The home away splits.
Although Indian was able to get some games on the road in the finals, the home away splits were just too lopsided in Okaysees. In Okayse's favor, the youth showed for the thunder throughout the playoffs. Generally, young teams are better at home, and the thunderword the prime example of that, and the home away swits numbers and okay See having some of the best home numbers through the finals and through the postseason run as a whole is a sign of that. So Indiana, it was a valiant effort. You
gave us a great NBA Finals. Tyrese Haliburton to thank you for all the moments that you created along the way and even in the finals, and shout out to the entire Indiana Pacers team that has given hope to every team in the Eastern Conference heading into next season that you have a shot to get there, regardless of where you come from, regardless of how you start the season as long as you click at the right time. All in all, it was a great finals and I think that we got the best champion.
Got the best champion, and I would have celebrated a Pacers championship. It would have been a lot of fun. But the NBA is that sport, that is the league where we like to see the worthy champion get crowned. And Oka se was the best team all year long. Love the fact that they got pushed, but we have the right champion at end of the year, and then they had to earn it. You know, they went to game seven against Denver, they went to a game seven
here against the Indiana Pacers, but they were fantastic. Which should scare the league is that it still feels like age wise they are will ahead of schedule. You know, you look at chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, two of their best three players. Those guys aren't even twenty five years old yet, Shake Gill just Alexander still in the thick
of the early part of his prime. They aren't losing anybody in free agency that you have heard of, and they have a lottery pick that they haven't even played yet in nicoleo topich and they've got like eighteen draft picks still over the next couple of years. This team is incredibly dangerous. They're not going anywhere. The thing is, though, Tyler, you have a different champion every seven years for the last seven years. Can OKC be the team that bucks
that trend? It feels like the way that they're built and given the timeline that they're on, we no longer worry about them. Are they gonna shrink in the moment whatever? They won a championship, so those questions are out the window. If you had to pick it right now, and we've got plenty of time to change our minds on this is okay, see your champion in twenty twenty six.
I'm gonna say no, just because I have the luxury of taking the field and those odds are much better than just taking Oklahoma City.
However they should.
I believe that they are the betting favorite to win the NBA Championship next year, as they should be for all the reasons that you laid out, even being a young team throughout the postseason, even with chet Holmgren. One thing I'm surprised about in this series was there was not a Chet Holmgren game at least that I recall where Chet, where Chet was unbelievable and you're like, oh my god, this guy and this guy still.
Has so much room to grow.
Even I feel like it was actually game seven. I feel like that was even though you get eighteen, which doesn't it doesn't it's not even twenty, it doesn't jump off the page.
It was easily the best game.
Yeah yeah, I mean it looked like it came easy to but it was the five block shots and the steel that did it for me. That's what makes him so dangerous is that he can score, but he is He is a lockdown defender, defender around the rim. And I thought that was his best game.
Yeah, easily his best performance coming in game seven. I just think guy as a hole. And throughout the playoffs you kind of were left wanting more from the pick, the player that was considered to be taken number one instead of Pala Banko and everything that you've seen from him, so you know, he.
Still has room to grow.
However, we have seen not just with Tyre Salivert and last nine, you know, injuries aside. Okay, se should be the favorite, but you just never know what can happen through the NBA regular season and through these playoffs. With all the stars that you have seen go down in this postseason alone, it just is a reminder that you truly never know what can happen in Game eighty to him beyond of the NBA season. So, yes, Okay See
should be the favorite heading into next year. However, I am not so confident in them still in a loaded West that got shuffled around a little bit over the weekend, and we'll touch on that that I can confidently say that Oklahoma City is the best team heading into next season to the point where they are going to win the NBA Championship.
At this point, if you had injury luck one year, it's probably going to come back and bite you in the next. Even for Indiana that was relatively healthy a year ago, made it to the Eastern Conference finals and then played all of these injury riddled teams on their way to the finals. Still it was an injury that ultimately took them out. Up next, our best and worst from the weekend. Don't miss it.