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to see what boost I'm betting, what bet I'm boosting. I just told you what it was. And then you can apply that profit boost. I love when the customers. Ride with me. I've been decent. So there you go. Coming up on this podcast. Kurt Goldsberry and I, we watched four basketball games. I was watching some hockey too. And we were reacting right afterwards to everything we saw. And then a little bit later, Zach Lowe, he came on last week on a Tuesday and we banged something fun.
We did it again this week. We want to talk about Draymond Green and we want to look forward to Timberwolves Lakers. So that is the podcast today. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. Recording this part of the podcast, 9.45 Pacific time. I thought the Clippers-Denver game was going to be a lot better. I thought Kirk Goldsberry and I would be talking about all these unbelievable narratives. Instead, all the narratives came.
In the first game of the day, in the second game of the day, and then the games got worse as they went along. But Denver kind of put it on the Clippers tonight, Kirk. I did not see this coming. I thought Denver was lucky to be 2-2. I thought the Clippers were a better team. And Jamal Murray became playoff Jamal Murray again tonight.
Harden was invisible. Where do you want to start? What jumped out to you tonight? You got to start with Jamal Murray. I mean, that was the game they needed from him in this series, in this exact moment. It was his best playoff game since the bubble. The Clippers look tired, though. The Clippers look... I don't know if it was elevation or they just hadn't had enough rest, but they looked like they were slower to the basketball. They looked old. And you sort of alluded to a bill.
James Harden did not look very good. I think the headline's got to be Jamal Murray, but there's a little bit of an underwhelming current from these Los Angeles Clippers to me. Well, if you said before the game... Jamal Murray is going to have his best game of the playoffs and his best game in a while. And also Russell Westbrook is going to come off the bench and score 21 points in 23 minutes. I would have said, oh, the Quippers are in trouble.
But I'm with you. They look slow to the ball. There was a moment in the fourth quarter for about four or five minutes where they looked like they did earlier in the series. But other than that... The Harden thing, it's just dumbfounding. He's now in his mid-30s. He was in the 2008 draft, 2009 draft. I can't even remember. And this has just been...
Such a huge part of his resume, his career, how we're going to remember him 30 years from now as this amazing player. And just over and over again, it wasn't quite there in the playoffs. They really needed a big James Harden game. Either last game or this game. One of those two. Does he have it in him anymore? Maybe. Are we expecting too much? Because I voted for him for third team all NBA this year. I thought maybe. you know, one of the first five games he could, he could own, I guess not.
Three of nine tonight. I mean, players that shot more than him. Zubac had 15 shots. Kawhi had 15 shots. Norman Powell had 12 shots. Bogdanovich had 11 shots, three of nine, Bill. And then, okay, maybe he's getting it done with the dimes. No, barely had five assists. A lot of those were later in the game. I was just... No, I'm ready to say if it's a big game, like a game five and big series like this, I just.
I'm almost more expectant of this kind of performance from him at this point, which is sad. So I don't think we're ever going to see it. Now, maybe he... We get another chance here in game six or game seven, and he tells me I'm wrong with the performance that just turns back the clock. This was just a complete no-show from a guy who's had a bunch of no-shows over the last 10 years in big moments like this.
Yeah, I did a rare tweet. I tweeted that they had him guarding Jokic in the second half so we could remember that he was in the game because it was too hard to tell. They're built so that they could survive. kind of an offensive no-show game from Harden. The problem for them was Denver went up a notch. They kind of stayed the same. Denver got Westbrook back, which was huge for them because that was just 23 extra minutes from a bench guy.
They played Jordan a little bit more. I'm with you. Maybe the elevation going against an older team helped a tiny bit. But then, you know, I start thinking about some of the stuff I used to write about back when my fingers worked. And this is a Clippers team that has just been snakebitten. really since they moved to Southern California. And that loss they had...
Game four where they fought all the way back and then they lose on an alley-oop where the ball seemed like it was touching the tip of Aaron Gordon's fingers and it ends up counting because they couldn't overrule it. And that loss was so devastating. I'm watching the game tonight. I'm like, man. Maybe that beat the fight out of them a little bit. I don't know.
This is a team that was supposed to be one of the best defenses in the playoffs. One of the best defensive rebounding teams in the playoffs. The stat that I kept going back to is I think they ranked first in defensive rebounding percentage all year long. And then in this playoffs, they rank 15 out of 16 in that category. Some of that is because of Jokic. But this is also a defense when Jamal Murray gets going, you'd think Kawhi Leonard or Chris Dunn or some combination of Ty Lue schemes.
could do it, and they just didn't have the fight tonight at all. And I don't know what, how many points did the Clippers end up with? 131, Bill. The Nuggets. Yeah, sorry. The Nuggets ended up with 131, Bill. And that's just, to me, that's a dumb guy stat, but that's what you need to know. You're not going to win a lot of playoff games if you give up 131 points. So this is a proud defense that just laid an egg tonight. Yeah. And you think like big picture with the Clippers.
It's never easy with them in a playoff series. In the history of their franchise since they moved to Southern California, they've never won a playoff series in four or five games, ever. Think about how impossible that is. That's crazy. They had the 2021 where Kawhi is averaging 30 a game and looking like one of the best guys in the league. He gets hurt. They end up losing in the Western Finals. The only time they ever made it. They blew the 3-1 lead to Denver in 2020.
They blew that 19-point lead to the Rockets in 2015 when they had a chance to close and go to the West Finals. They blew that OKC series in 2014 when Chris Paul, the point god, just completely fell apart in game. Game five when they could have had a lead coming back to Clippers. They had that 2006 against the Suns when they put in Daniel Ewing and he fouled Rajah Bell on a three and the Suns ended up winning in OT. This is just the legacy of this team. And if you talk to any of their fans...
It's almost a little like junior Red Sox itch before 2004. They build the hopes up. They convince themselves this is the year and then they get kicked in the nuts. I still think they can win game six. What's a little scary is that Jokic didn't put a lot of miles on himself tonight. Murray carried everything. Westbrook carried some. They were able to rest him. And he could just snap his fingers in game six and dominate them like he did in game four.
It's looking bleak for the Clippers. I might have been wrong on this series, Kirk. I'm bummed. I was wrong too. I remember, but I was like very scared coming into the playoffs because I was like looking at this Clippers team. They have that history you just mentioned. But then they have James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, and Ben Simmons, who, by the way...
Yeah, enough. What a beautiful shot tonight. He got to just inside the paint. He rises up for that little half hook and he almost hit the rim. God bless him. It was to the left of the basket. He shot it at 10.30 at night on a clock. It just was diagonal to the left. It was rough. But on Verno's podcast like three weeks ago, when all the trends that I look at throughout the year are pointing to the Clippers are the best analytic team.
closing the season. And I said, except they're the Clippers. And I was like, I'm not going to know what to do. I picked them to win this series in seven games too. I now would, I wish I could switch it. They just haven't been there. And I think they could win game six, but I just didn't, unless they completely reinvent themselves for a game seven, what we saw in Denver tonight is not going to get it done, obviously.
Yeah, but I mean, the counter is, they have been there. Kawhi's been the finals MVP in two different cities. Harden's been in the playoffs for his entire career. Derek Jones was in the finals last year. Norm Powell has been in big playoff games. Ty Lue coached in the finals a bunch of times. Van Gundy was in big games. Derek Jones was in the finals last year. This is about as experienced of a random team as you're going to get.
They don't have the best part in the series, which is a problem. And they're just trying everything possible to mess with them. But I think the best thing that happened to the Nuggets in this series, other than Jamal Murray, seems to be getting better as it's going along. Christian Brown's doing, it really seems like he's in Harden's head a little bit.
He's low to the ground and seems to have a sense of that herky-jerky style that Harden has. And he's kind of, he's doing the defensive herky-jerky version of it and he's moving back and forth with it. And I think Harden's just having a lot of trouble going by him. In game four in the fourth quarter, I think because Brown was tired, Harden started going by him in the fourth quarter. But I think it might have been tired legs more than anything. But Brown seems really confident against him.
Yeah, I think if we say there's Harden, Leonard in one corner, and then you have Jokic and Murray in the other corner, the second tier guys. The Brown and Aaron Gordon, obviously, have been great. Those, like, guy number three and guy number four. Those have been the Nuggets guys that have gone. Christian Brown hit that huge three, I thought, to end the third quarter in this game, which really set the tone. He's really an emotional leader. That's sort of...
a big thing for him. And you mentioned earlier, Russell Westbrook, getting a performance like that too is just a huge gift. And another reason they put him over the top tonight. Denver watching them these last five games and especially game four, game five, did it change your opinion at all about whether they could actually throw some haymakers at OKC?
The defense is still a big red flag to me. The defense is, I don't know if they're going to keep up with the Oklahoma City Thunder if they play them in the next round. I still think that's their Achilles heel. I don't think they'll be able to hold up on that end of the court against that young, ferocious, deep team with so much rest and so much energy coming into that series.
They've won me over with this starting five, the Murray Jokic Porter, who has come around in this series. He did, after a game one no-show. Yeah, and getting called out, kind of. by the Joker. But that starting group, I think, can hang. Where I have trouble, Bill, is below that line where the Thunder are just... They almost have a second starting five. And this team has, you know, Russell Westbrook and DeAndre Jordan. OKC versus Denver, if that's what we end up with.
It's an MVP battle too, which is always fun. Oh, that's great. And it's a big, big Hartenstein test. That's why they got that guy. Well, and also Denver got rid of Hartenstein. Yeah. James Harden, man. I don't know. I had a couple of people in my life who are like, why are you so high on the Clippers? They have James Harden. I'm like, no, James Harden was good this year. It's like, yeah, he's James Harden.
It's different, dude. I swear this time is different. I'm the one for Kim Kardashian. She told me. This is it. It's going to work out this time for her. She's going to live happily ever after. We'll see what happens Thursday night. I'm going. The crowd will be great. We're due for, if you had to pick a seven-game series out of the available choices, which are probably this one, Golden State-Houston, even though Golden State's up 3-1, Minnesota.
And the Lakers, which will be 3-2 after tomorrow when the Lakers shoot 68 free throws. Or Detroit versus the Knicks. Who would you go for a seven-gamer? Because we're getting one. That's just the rule. I feel like Detroit needs, they need to win one of these games. They had a tough weekend back home in Michigan. I think they're going to win game six back at Little Caesars. You want to talk about that game? Yeah, I thought it was a great game. You know, New York.
is fortunate that there wasn't a late foul call at the end of Sunday's game. Yes, they were. But they've been playing with fire in this series, and they've been getting away with it. I think, you know, they had a poorly timed injury here at the end of this game. You know, the Pistons have been ahead, Bill, in every fourth quarter of this series. I think in game one, they weren't ready for the smoke of the moment.
But since then, these games all could have gone either way to an extent. And I think... Cade Cunningham, they played better pick and roll offense than the New York Knicks. And they took it to them. And I'm not shocked, but I was impressed. 25, 10, and 10 for Cade. Seven turnovers. It's been an extra three turnovers a game for him because he has the ball so much. But the stat that jumped out to me, Detroit, seven for 29 from three, and they went on the road. That's really hard to do. Yeah.
The Knicks, 15 for 33 from three. And they lost at home. But the key to this game, so Detroit, they shoot eight for 29 from three, no surprise. They've not exactly, if Beasley's not going, not exactly like an awesome three-point team. But the Knicks... Nine for 25 from three, right? So red flag number one. Red flag number two, Brunson four for 16.
Sometimes you can do like he got hurt in game four and he came back and you get the adrenaline 20 minutes before your ankle starts to feel even worse than it did. He definitely looked hobbled around. He goes out at some point. Probably like, what, three, four minutes left in the fourth quarter. Then Tibbs has a chance to put him and Hart back in and doesn't use his last time out. And those guys are just standing there for a minute and a half. One of many bizarre Tibbs coaching decisions.
What you said before about the quarters. This series has been even for a week and a half. And Detroit, they take the leads early in these games or they're close. They're never having really swoons. Their defense and their rebounding has always been able to keep them around. And Cade's been... the most consistently good player in the series. I don't...
If I'm a Knicks fan now, I'm just putting miles, even if I get through the series, I'm just putting miles on my guys who already seem worn down with the Celtics just getting rest and waiting. But do you think they...
Who do you think wins a game six between these two teams based on what you've seen? I think it's going to be a hard task for the Knicks. Detroit played better basketball tonight. I think the play that sealed it for Detroit, in my mind, one of the most beautiful passes of the playoffs, but Detroit just... the Knicks in the pick and roll game. Jalen Dern is growing up in front of us. This kid.
He's a monster in person. If you haven't seen him, it's just like one of these guys. It's just a different size than everybody else. One of the great rebounders in these playoffs. But I think there was a pick and roll near the end. you know, the Knicks sent two towards Kate who ended up with the right elbow.
And who was it who snuck into the dunker? Asar Thompson, who also played a great game. He was awesome today, yeah. Yeah, Cat falls asleep, and Cade throws that pass, a rocket pass, right into the dunker, and Asar finishes it. It wasn't quite curtains because the Knicks made some shots, but that was just, I think, really emblematic of a bread and butter play where... The Cade Cunningham pick and roll with Duren, sometimes it was Paul Reed, is just...
basic basketball and it looks better, especially with a hobbled Brunson than what the Knicks are able to counter with. So I think the Pistons have a very good defense. They're very young and motivated to win this game six at home and the fundamental basketball they're playing right now. And one other thing is like, you talk a lot about tips coaching. I know that.
Can we post up Carl Towns on Tobias Harris, please? He just dominates him when they do it. It's like they're afraid he's going to get offensive fouls or something. I can't think of another reason. I have no idea, but every time they do it, it's like there's no answer. Tobias Harris has no chance.
Well, you know my rule, Kirk Goldsberry. If you do something and the defense completely overreacts and doubles it because they don't have an answer for it, maybe do it again. Yeah. Give it a whirl. That might be a sign that it's something to do. particularly if Jalen Brunson is playing on one foot. I don't know what his injury is. I'm not speaking out of turn here, but if your star is hurt, you have this other guy, this other bread and butter action you could increase.
And if it's going to be Tobias Harris defending Carl Towns on the block, dude, make them pay for that. Go old school. You know, I haven't seen enough of that. Those adjustments from tip. I thought the Knicks were going to win in five. It seemed like they were going to win in five tonight. And then Detroit had other ideas. I just continue to be underwhelmed by the Knicks.
And I know now people could say, no, Brunson's hurt. Like, well, everybody on that team plays huge minutes. The more minutes you play, the odds are going to increase that you're going to have an injury. It's just the way it goes. But in general, like... I don't know. I'm not afraid of them. I said this before the playoffs. I'll say it again. I was way more afraid of playing Indiana than the Knicks. I think Indiana knows who they are. I think they have an identity.
Not sure what their identity is. It's a lot of Brunson. It's a lot of standing around. They can have these little spurts. Towns can get hot every once in a while. Sometimes their wings. look awesome. Other times I forget they're out there. for all the quote-unquote awesome defense that their wings were supposed to bring, like over and over again, you see guys get the kind of shots and plays they want, like Cade.
You would think like with Bridges and Ananobi, it's like, we should be able to shut down Kate or limit him or whatever. And, you know, I don't think that's happened. And a lot of it has to do with CJ able to get the switches he won. I get it. But I just don't, the balance of the team just doesn't seem right to me. And I felt that way for a while.
Yeah, there's two things. The interior defense with Towns, when they made the Towns deal, that was always the red flag to me. Are we really going to see a playoff defense anchored with Carl Anthony Towns? And as I said, this key moment. you know, it's not his fault, but that's who you're relying on to be your rim protector. He's not always great at that. And then the other thing is sometimes the offense looks like crap.
And there's multiple possessions and big moments where it's just Brunson pounding the air out of the ball. and everybody else standing around, and there's either going to be a foul or some kind of fadeaway, and nobody else is going to touch the basketball. And I hate that. I hate watching it. And I'm sure the players playing alongside. It's just not.
I don't think the fans like it either. You can feel like there's a weird energy from these Knicks games. The crowds were way better last year, I think. This year, there's a nervous energy and you can feel the frustration. It's coming through the TV. Yeah, the pick and roll game too. It's like they only scored 27 points in the pick and roll game. And the Pistons doubled them up in that category. Again, Cade Cunningham, it's a lot of people's introduction to him.
But, you know, there's a danger because if they do win in Detroit, look out. Look out, Bill. If the Pistons win. If the Pistons win in Detroit, look out. Well, so that game's going to be when? Is that a Thursday game? That is, yeah. I don't know. That's not great for the Knicks, right? That's two games later and Brunson's hobbling around and Hart got hurt at the end of that game and they have no bench to begin with.
That's such an underrated part of this. Like Cleveland getting out in four games and OKC. Yeah, the Celts getting out of there today. The Celts punted on holiday for the series and kept their fingers crossed that he could get healed and they got out of it. Yeah, and they just need all the treatment, some cold plunges, you know, all that rest. And these other teams are going to be flying back and forth, putting more miles on their bodies, twisting ankles.
So it was good that Boston emerged relatively unscathed from that Orlando series. Well, I want to talk about that. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk Boston-Orlando. Hey, it's NBA playoff time. Get in on the action with FanDuel Sportsbook, our friends, America's number one sportsbook.
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And it smells like victory for all of us. So Boston, Orlando, I was expecting a little bit more of a slugfest. It was a weird game. It was close. It was close. It was close. Paolo got in foul trouble. And then the Celts went on one of those runs that they had a lot last year. They've had them intermittently this year, but more on the road than at home, weirdly. But they'll just have these third quarters.
or second quarters, whatever, where they'll just go on these like 28 to five runs and guys are hitting threes and they just put the game away in five minutes, which is what happened. I will say. And I know I talk about Tatum a lot on this podcast and people are probably tired of it, but he's just... Tatum's just been awesome. And there's... There's an edge to him that he just didn't have last year. And I think a lot of it comes from Missoula. I think Missoula...
Spends a lot of time talking to him, talking in his ear, motivating him, pushing him, pushing him to be bullied, pushing him to be tougher. Even that play when he got knocked down, when he got hurt in game two. or game one, and Mazoua's like, get up, get up. He's just constantly trying to make him a beast. You see it in these games. He's carrying himself down. He's got this little half sneer he does sometimes. I just think he's been awesome in these games.
Is the new wrist thing that he's doing related to the injury? Is it like a celebration of overcoming the wrist injury? Is that what he's doing? It feels like you try to break my wrist, but it's still here. Like one of those type of things. But that's new. I like that too. But the thing is, Orlando can't shoot.
The over-under for them winning a game in this series was probably 0.5. They won their game, but they just cannot. They can't shoot. There was that. As it was slipping away in the third quarter, Franz took a three. And it went like over the backboard and hit the over the rim and hit the other side of the backboard. It was one of those bricks. And it was just like, that's it. That's the highlight. You need to know. Eight of 38.
from three for the Orlando Magic. There's a couple of teams in the playoffs. Like Houston, I think we're fairly characterized as they're going to have trouble scoring the ball. But Orlando's going to definitely have trouble shooting the basketball. And then the other thing I like is Orlando does play phenomenal defense. And for a long time, the Celtics, I think, had no threes deep into the second quarter in this game. No, they didn't have a three in the first half.
Yeah, I was trying to go back between these two games, and it was pretty incredible. So shout out to them. They do some good stuff, and they force you into these isolation modes. And that's where Tatum really shined, I thought. And I know sometimes the Celtics are at their worst in those isolation moments, but Tatum can get buckets. in those moments. And they actually, if you look at the advanced stuff tonight, they really dominated in that isolation category. And duh, that's Jason Tatum.
It was 59-58, to your point, with six minutes left in the third quarter. And then I don't know what the final score was. I guess it ends up being 120-89. They were 36-13 in the third quarter. You know, I think the Celtics organization has been really impressed with Orlando, and I think there's a sense of relief that...
that team wasn't healthier this year, that that team was probably the third best team in the East. If you just, you know, you think like Palo goes down for a while, Franz goes down for a while, Suggs goes down for... 60, 65% of the year. But that team is really tough. They're not afraid of the Celts. They match up on the wings with Brown and Tatum, at least physically. They rebound. They had a couple of playoff guys that weren't afraid to close on you.
And I think if they just had a healthy team all year, I think that team would have been really good. And looking forward, like we were joking with Cerruti about, you got to sign Ty Jerome. Bobby Marks had a tweet where he tweeted where they were sitting going into the summer. They've kind of paid the piper already with some of their moves. They're like over, I think, $200 million with their salaries right now. Because Palo already kicked in, Franz.
They paid KCP. Going down the line, they're spending actual money now. This is kind of the team. So their best move is going to be, can Suggs come back, be healthy, and then can Anthony Black make a leap, I think. And Franz needs to develop the jump shot. And there's been some aggression there. You mentioned this. There's the hitch in the shot. It's not great. But if they can get healthy, Mo Wagner, Jalen Sugg.
you know, I'm not going to put them in the class of the Celtics or the Cavs, but I like where you have three, four, they could replace Milwaukee in that three, four, five tier. And they might have been there this year if they had just been healthy. You alluded to it. Their three best guys all missed significant time and they ended up at the seventh spot and won a game against the champ.
It's just like the rung on the ladder this organization is at right now. And I think they should expect to be a little bit higher next year for sure. Well, the Celts definitely respected them because they brought Tatum back. They probably should have waited one more game and they felt like they couldn't. And then they tried to roll the dice with not playing Drew and hoping he could be healthy for the next series. Now he gets more time.
But with the way the Knicks look, that second round series might not be as... maybe grueling as you thought. The team you wouldn't want to play is Indiana. You're confident. You're confident. I mean, the way the Knicks look, the way the Celtics have looked for the last almost two years, they have to be pretty heavy. heavy favorites to advance to round three. Indiana.
had an incredible comeback against Milwaukee that I wasn't surprised by. Even when they were down seven with 45 seconds left, I had Indian money line and a bet. And I was like, I'm not giving up. I feel like they might make a three. I didn't expect them to win. I thought maybe they had a chance to force another overtime. But Halliburton, and I'm texting. I have a friend who's a big Halliburton person. I was texting. Midway through the fourth quarter, I'm like, typical fucking Halliburton.
God forbid he takes over and does anything. And then he took over and then some, like down the stretch in the fourth quarter. It's almost like he forgets sometimes that he could just go right by people. And what was interesting about the end of the fourth quarter and the OT... He went by Giannis. He cooked Giannis. I'm going to say three or four times. You don't normally see somebody do that to Giannis. Including for the game-winning shot, I was stunned. Were you surprised by that?
Yeah, I said out loud, good luck with that for the game winner. Because he's like, he's ISOed on the left wing against Giannis. And he's like, I'm going to take this to the rack. That's crazy. He did it multiple times. Yeah, good luck. And he did it. In that exact moment, I was surprised. We have to go through the seven-point lead in 40 seconds. So AJ Green misses a free throw.
Nembhard uses like a Miles Turner screen. And Giannis, this is his fault. He's in drop coverage. So Nembhard just rises up and shoots a 28-footer. Okay, so four-point game. Timeout. Here comes the first big blunder, AJ Green inbound. And Trent gets trapped, anticipates a foul, didn't come, and just throws a bad pass. Nembhard picks it off. Pacer's pretty patient. Then we get the first big Halliburton play, the three-point play. That cuts it to one.
Time out. And then this is one of the most depressing plays in NBA history. The tread through the legs? Oh, dude. I don't want to tell you what it reminded me of, Bill, because it'll trigger. Yeah, I thought Buckner. No, don't worry. I thought it. All right. As long as, yeah. So. I mean, the dude, he hadn't had 30 points all year, and he hadn't had eight threes all year, and he did it twice in three games. Trent.
Right. He literally carried them down the stretch and then had two boneheaded plays that cost them the season, basically. Yeah, I did a rare tweet myself. I said, you know, overtime score, Indiana 8, Gary Trent 12, because it looked like with one minute left. In this game, Gary Trent had just saved the Bucs season. He took 25 shots, Kurt.
Yeah, he became the second biggest player in Milwaukee after, you know, after the Dame injury. And he made huge three after huge three. And then these two mammoth turnovers. Just a cruel, cruel end to their season and potentially, Bill, the Giannis Antetokounmpo era. There's a lot of interesting stuff, both from watching the game and the box score. Yeah. Brooke Lopez, seven minutes. Kyle Kuzma, 12. So Doc basically bailed on Kuzma.
who is somebody they traded Middleton for, beloved Buck, to get under the salary cap. They gave up AJ Johnson, who some NBA people kind of like, and there's some swap. I think in 28 that they gave up as well. And it took Doc Rivers about four games to get tired of Kyle Kuzma. Giannis leaves a 30-20-13 on the court.
And the game ends with him getting burned by Halliburton and then taunted by Halliburton's dad, who just looked deranged. I didn't understand what was happening. And I can't believe Giannis. had the restraint, but then Giannis is saying good, saying good game to Ben Matherin. And now he's like doing the Fredo, Michael Corleone cup to the head.
And just looked like he was going to, everyone was talking about this hundred guys against a gorilla. It seemed like it was going to be a hundred pacers versus Giannis at one point that our test melee too. Dude, what an ending. Yeah, I have no idea where to start with what happened after the game from the Halliburton dad incident.
to the Matherin hug that turns into a shove. The hug shove. Yeah. Yeah. It was very strange. I think Giannis was so mad at it. And, you know, Giannis does a good job in the press conferences of being like, You know, I try to be humble and blah, blah, blah. But Giannis is a fucking badass, man. He gets mad. Oh, yeah. The switch can go off with him. I really felt like there was going to be a massive melee at the end, which would have been bizarre. There's some troubling end-of-game stuff.
where he's a very competitive guy and he's lost to school. Do you remember early in his career, he tackled Mike Dunleavy. Right. Remember that? Remember that other time when he went and grabbed the ball? Yeah, it was Mike Dunleavy Jr. That other time when he grabbed the ball from Indiana that served this whole... Yeah, so he gets a little feisty.
And I was I was worried. And it also evokes and sort of gives the Pacers a little bit of credit and some shine here. It evokes like these incredible Reggie Miller moments from that franchise's history. where they have, oh my God, what? So they just got another one of these, like, what was, you did the 30 for 30, was it eight points in nine seconds? Yeah, he had a bunch of them. Yeah, but the seven-point comeback, 8-0 run in 34 seconds is just unbelievable from the pace.
perspective too. Also in that building, which I know you've probably been there for a game, right? It's that and the Clippers arena are the two best arenas and just cool that that happened right there. I thought Neesmith... You look at the minutes and it's not really an accident.
Halbert and Siakam, Nembhard, Neesmith, and Turner, just all playing huge minutes. Four of those guys were over 40. Matherin, he switched the rotation a little. So Matherin and McConnell basically just come in for these little eight, nine-minute stretches. That's it. Some top end, not that much. But I think when we go to this next round, and I continue to think that they have a real chance against Cleveland to at least take it six or seven. throw some punches at them, but this Halberon piece.
When he realizes he can get to the rim, who's stopping him on Cleveland? This is a good matchup for him. They don't really have a good defender to throw at him. I don't know. I just think they can hang in this series. They're going to score points. I think the front line of the Cavs will have something to say between Mobley and Allen. And I like DeAndre Hunter. I like... Ty Jerome obviously deserves some credit. But I think, can we do a little bit more on Milwaukee? Like you look at this team.
Wait, can we do one more thing on Indiana? And then let's do more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. What do you think the line is for Indiana-Cleveland? Indiana-Cleveland. Cleveland minus 200. Yeah, Cleveland minus 480. Oh, dang. Yeah, I'm telling you, nobody's respecting the Pacers. All right, let's move to Milwaukee because...
That did feel like, sometimes you have a feeling when it's a guy's last game for a team. I remember LeBron in 2010. Yeah. Leaving Boston in a very strange last game in general by him. but then taking off his jersey right at the end. And there's something, he just felt like, oh man, this is probably not ending well. The honest thing ended a little differently. It almost ended with a melee. But I find it hard to believe he's going to be a buck next year. I don't see it.
And I was listening to Rob Mahoney and Zach, who were great the other day, and I'll stack on their point. Can you blame him? Look at what's happened around him at this franchise since they won it all. They've sort of taken the car apart piece by piece. And he's really all that's left. Like Lopez is there. Portis is there. But Middleton and Holiday are gone. You know, Bud is obviously gone. And what we see there is...
Chris Middleton for Kyle Kuzma. Are you kidding me? And Kuzma's not even playing in these games. But 13 minutes was 2-5. I did the Waz Mahoney trade deadline pod and I was on the record adamantly. I did not see the Kuzma thing at all because he hadn't played a meaningful basketball minute or a good basketball minute for like a year. Right. since he was at Disney World in the pandemic. But yeah, I think...
Can you blame him? I think it's what Mahoney was saying. And I think it's fair. Like he got them a title. Damian Lillard. Can I blame him a little bit? For leaving? No. For wanting to leave? You can. Can we blame him a little? Because they did that Drew Holiday trade. for Dame Lillard because they were feeling some pressure with him to do something because they weren't sure if he wanted to stay or not. And that was...
I thought it was a panic trade when it happened. I was in the minority, but they gave up. swaps in 28 and 30. They gave up their 29 first. They gave up Grayson Allen, who was, had some, you know, at least was a bigger contract they could put in a deal. And when you think about it, they kind of shot their asset wide.
with Damon Giannis that I just never believed that made them like a favorite in the East. I thought it was a little bit of a Hail Mary. And would they have been better off keeping Drew? Maybe using those picks with Grace Now and Chris Middleton, whoever, and trying to add another piece to the foundation. I mean, in retrospect, yes.
I'll always remember I was at the Grant Williams game in Boston. I don't know if you were there. I was. Zach was talking about it the other day. It's like a sliding doors moment, right? Because I remember talking to everybody being like, man, it feels like we're going to be watching these two teams play. for this Eastern Conference Championship for a long time. For a decade, yeah.
And then this team is just, and that's why I think it's an interesting macroscopic study. Like you can talk about this collapse in the last 34 seconds here, but really this is a collapse that's three or four years long. and just goes to speak to the importance of ownership. transactions, roster building. But dude, yeah, I thought that Giannis and Milwaukee were going to be a big time factor for a huge part of the 2020s. And they simply haven't been since that Grant Williams game.
Well, it starts with the original Drew Holiday trade, which helped win them the title. Right. But also included their 24 and 26 first. and swaps in 25 and 27 plus the George Hill Bledsoe contracts that they kind of were trying to get off of as part of the trade. But they're playing catch up. They're playing asset catch up after that. Yeah, and they've not made any good draft picks, Bill.
during this crucial time where even if you get somebody like Dalton Connect or Corey Joseph, like when the Spurs were picking at the Derek White, we would always pick well at the end of the DeJounte Murray. You got to get those picks. to keep the momentum going, to add role players, and they just haven't been able to find anybody in the draft. They have A.J. Johnson, Tyler Smith, Chris Livingston, Beauchamp, Isaiah Todd, R.J. Hampton. Jordan Awara, like nothing. That's their 2020s draft history.
So it's just they haven't been able to build from the draft either. And that's a huge reason why this roster is so thin, too. Well, the red flag was when Lazary, the co-owner. He finished his managing partner thing and then he's like, I'm out of here. And he sold this steak to the Browns owner. I was like, oh, that's curious. And it was like...
You know, he was like 2008, the big short. He knew it was coming. Where do you want Giannis to go? Oh, well, if San Antonio is an option. Just as a basketball fan, where do you want him to go? I mean, again, hand up. I'm very biased like you are with the Celtics. I will say the San Antonio Spurs. I think it would be a really perfect pairing.
evoking the great Duncan, Tim Robinson era, or David Robinson, Tim Duncan era. Tim Robinson, Netflix comedian, Tim Robinson? Dude, I saw his new A24 movie. What is that called? But anyway, I think... San Antonio is the high upside. Holy shit. like galaxy brain explosion and they have the assets right to do it. Um, but that's, that would be the one that I think made everybody go, Oh no, what's that going to look like? I think that's a pretty weird fit.
in some ways offensively, but in other ways, the fact that Wemby wants to be 25 feet from the basket. And Giannis should probably be playing closer to the basket. Maybe that fits. But defensively, that sounds like an all-time nightmare from how are you going to attack the rim against those two guys? You might as well jack threes. It's just like David Robinson and Tim Duncan 20 years ago. Yeah, that's why I love it. It's a fantasy of mine. Realistically, I don't know if that's a possibility.
Have you thought about other destinations? Yeah, I mean, Rousseau and I talked about it a little on Sunday, just like the obvious one's Houston, because they have, the problem for Milwaukee is they don't really have their picks, so it's not like they'd... It's not like it makes sense for them to tank, because what are they tanking for? They don't have their picks to tank for.
So what makes more sense is like them doing a two for one and a three for one and getting a couple assets back with that. So that's, that's the rockets basically. That's one. And I think. You're probably trying to get some sort of big piece. The Knicks are the other one that I think would be mildly intriguing if it was a Towns. Bridges, Giannis going back with a contract.
You know, you start doing that. There's been smoke around Miami and Giannis for years. He's in the same spot there that he's in with Milwaukee. Miami sucks. I agree. They just got absolutely annihilated in the Cleveland series. They had their whole team. It's not like somebody was missing. Again, when Ernie Johnson at halftime is like, this is the worst basketball game I've ever seen. Yeah, we're not showing highlights.
He's saying that on air, by the way. He's not saying that at the water cooler before they go to the segment. He's saying that on air. That's how bad it is. Yeah. Yeah, well, we'll see. I don't think he's there next year, though. It did feel like there was some sort of finality to it. But you never know with these guys. The key to me is he already won the title. Yeah. So when you've already won, it's like, ah, I don't know, I like it here.
But there's always been some Brooklyn buzz. The problem with a team like Brooklyn is can you give the assets back that actually makes sense for Milwaukee who can't tank? You know, what's the point of Milwaukee going 20 and 62 next year if their pick is going somewhere else? They might not have a choice. We've seen that one before, too. What are you hearing about Wemby, by the way? I think he's on schedule to return for next season. I haven't heard anything specific medically.
He was caught playing soccer in Costa Rica on video. I don't know if you saw that, Bill. It was a very interesting video. I missed that video. That sounds great. Hey, you got to be deep onto the Spurs message boards to see these great videos of Wemby playing soccer. Do they rig the draft for Cooper flag for the Spurs like they did with Tim Duncan in 1997 or not? Well, they just got two rookie of the years in a row. So why not go for three? I mean, shout out to Steve.
Castle, Stephen Castle, for getting the rookie of the year. Not a great class, but I thought he was deserving. I don't think they're going to rig the draft for the Spurs to get Cooper Flagg. But, dude, Cooper Flagg can play, dude. This guy's going to change the fate of wherever he gets. This is another one of the biggest lotteries.
Whoever gets that number one. Well, the good thing is there's other good guys. Like even if you get the third or fourth pick in this draft, you're going to get somebody who's like, even Edgecombe is like a real guy. Like if he, the Spurs got him and put him with Castle. and all their wings. That's an amazing outcome.
Yeah, the Spurs have two picks they're pretty excited about. I think most likely outcome is eight and 14, something like that. And they could combine those and try to move up or they've drafted pretty well. Or they send both of them to Milwaukee in the honest trade. Giannis and Wemby. I mean, talk about an international basketball team. That's like the league's wet dream. I know it is. Giannis is the greatest international story they've ever had other than Hakim.
And Wemby is going to be the true galaxy face of the league. They're hoping four or five years from now, unless Anthony Edwards takes that too. Who do you have in Minnesota Lakers? You have to take Minnesota at this point. Okay. J.J. Redick, I think. You know, there's two reasons, depth and defense. The Lakers don't have much either. And I think the stat was that nobody has ever played all five dudes for the last 24 minutes of a playoff game.
And JJ just did that. That tells you something. Yeah, but Denver did the same thing on Saturday and it worked. And now we don't have to hear about it anymore because they won the game. JJ did it. I'm not defending JJ. I don't understand why you would have paid Gabe Vincent for five minutes. I feel okay with Gabe Vincent out there. I didn't get that.
You'd like to think Jackson Hayes can do something, but I think Minnesota just deserves credit. And the other thing is the defense. Los Angeles' defense is not good enough. Jade McDaniels is exposing them on drive. And no disrespect to Jade McDaniel. He's helping Minnesota win this series. But that goes to show that this is not the Thunder defense, dude. This is not the Rockets defense. This is the Lakers defense. It's been a red flag for me for a while. No rim protection, no rim runner.
Yeah. The rim, just not really involved. And Luca, like... Has not been great on defense. And again, the Western Conference is unforgiving. You want to call it a weak link era of NBA basketball. Fine. We're hunting matchups, whatever you want to say. Anthony Edwards. is just the best offensive player in the series right now. And on top of that, I think Minnesota has... a better defense and more depth.
So I'm taking Minnesota, Bill. I agree. I think there might be a free throw discrepancy tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? I'm guessing it's tomorrow. I'm going tomorrow and I'm just going to be laughing the whole time. You're going to games back to back, huh? Oh yeah. Sports basketball, playoff basketball. No, it's the best. Sadly, it's going to be over soon. Have you seen anything that makes you think it's not going to be Boston OKC?
I think Cleveland deserves a little more respect. And the Drew Holiday hamstring injury, Bill Simmons. Not happy about it. Yeah, not great. So, look, Cleveland. I think if Boston is limited somehow, Cleveland is a very dangerous team. So Drew Holiday in street clothes is my answer to that question. Have I seen anything that makes me think Boston might not get there? If he comes back, I love that dude.
If Porzingis is healthy, if Tatum is playing like this, Jalen Brown, Derek White, Peyton Pritchard, Joe Missoula, I think they deserve to be favorites coming out of the East. But Cleveland. is shooting the shit out of the basketball. They've been a great team all year. They've won in Boston, if I'm not mistaken. No, Mitchell always does well against Celtics. They always get games. It'll be a good series. I'm picking Boston, but I will not be shocked whether it's because Drew Holliday.
limited, somebody else goes down, that Cleveland wins the Eastern Conference. So I think that's the case. On the Western side, OKC, again, clear favorite. I don't see anybody in their class right now on the Western Conference side. I don't either, but who knows with this Minnesota piece. And who knows with Golden State? Because Golden State's love playing OKC forever. And, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm just.
If I had to bet, I would stick with my preseason OKC Boston. But I think Minnesota and Golden State and then the way Denver played tonight, who knows? All right, Kirk Goldsberry. writingfortheringer.com, pop it on our podcast. Always good to see you. Thank you, Bill. Good to see you. All right, our friend Zach Lois here. We're taping this before the four Tuesday games, but also before the two Wednesday games. And it's an awesome doubleheader of Golden State Houston.
Lakers, T-Wolves. I covered it on my pod on Sunday. You covered it on the Zach Lowe show on Monday. But we're here to talk about Draymond Green. Then we can talk about those games at the tail end. Last week, we did Kawhi. We deep dove. This week, we're going to do Draymond and we're going to deep dive. You wrote about him. I think two years ago, maybe right after the pool incident. Many, many times, but yes, including... taking that moment as a, hey, wait a second, let's take stock of...
this guy's Warriors career, which felt a little like it was on shaky ground as the Warriors were approaching, you know, do we pay all of these guys, the young guys, the old guys, everybody? Can we do that? And if not, who's the casualty? One of the things I was thinking about as we go into this, it's felt a couple times over the last three years that we might be at the end of the road with Drayvon and the Warriors.
right? And the pool punch was the first time. The second time was when are they going to be able to figure out his contract or not? And then even this year when it didn't really seem like they had any move. And the question became, well, I mean, maybe would Draymond be somebody that they might be trying to flip? He feels, I don't want to say on thin ice.
But it's felt a little rocky. And now I feel the best about it that I felt probably since the 22 finals. But even the 22 finals, he was getting yanked around. I don't think he looked particularly great. He looks great now. And this Curry Draymond thing is now officially over a decade. And there's something really unique and special about it that just continues to persevere. And you could feel it in that Houston game.
It felt like the punch changed his standing within the Warriors. They've all acknowledged that. That was very hard for the team to get over. It was very hard for Jordan Poole to get over. Then you follow it up with the suspensions, right? Like last season, we get suspended for, I don't know how many games. It was indefinitely after the Gobert incident and then the Nurkic incident.
And then there was like the flirtation with Memphis in free agency that I think was at least semi real or the potential of it anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's but but I always wrote I mean, you know, who's sad listening to this is. The guy who signed with Dallas in free agency to play with Luka and make some spot-up threes. And I always wrote that those three guys were, it was magic. Like, it's why you play basketball.
to get that kind of level of feel and chemistry and just you can do it with your eyes closed you know where everyone's going to be at all time that those three guys were meant to play together and should have played together forever and at least two of them look like they are going to play together forever in their NBA lives. It's the hardest thing to find in professional basketball now with the way guys move around. with the way now that we have this first, second apron.
I'm always thinking like we had the last episode of Celtic City and it's built around Brown and Tatum. And it's just like, I don't even know if it's sustainable to have two guys making a max once it gets into the 60s, 70s anymore. They, what Brown and Tatum have, I don't think remotely approaches the Draymond Curry thing because. Those guys actually had figured out how to elevate each other, which I think is the last level when you're talking teammates. Clay was in there too, but really...
Draymond, you could feel when Draymond wasn't in the game, what it meant to Curry, all the little pick and pops and handoffs and just that ESP that they had for each other. I can't think of, like, when I was growing up, they always talked about how the 70s Knicks had that, right? I think Bird and McHale kind of got there. I think Jordan and Pippen almost like defensively as athletes.
became so attuned, they almost seemed like a pair after a while. It's really hard to get to. And with Draymond, I've always felt like there was going to be a shelf life and it was going to flame out. And he was just being more and more erratic as his career went on. He had the podcast. He's becoming unlikable in a lot of ways too. And then you watch like last night and it's like...
I was going to say he's almost dejected from like every third game. Yeah, you're just teetering on this balance beam with him. And, you know, he gets that first technical and then you instantly get the flashbacks to 2016 game four. I'll always think LeBron knew what he was doing. I think it was a smart play. He tried to bait Draymond into retaliating, knowing that. one more anything and Draymond was suspended for the next game. And by the way, if you're right,
And there's never, maybe one day LeBron will talk about this and try to make himself the protagonist of that one step ahead thing. Draymond has also tried to make himself the protagonist of like... almost everything good that's happened for the Warriors including you mentioned the 2022 finals the turning point for him was getting in Jalen Brown's head that was like being physical with Jalen Brown getting in his head they oh my god I knew we had him at that moment I mean he said that but um
If you turn out to be right about this LeBron thing, what a tribute to Draymond Green's greatness, actually, that LeBron thought it was worth... it was worth getting him out of the series for a game, right? That he respected him that much. But you mentioned all these prior teammate combinations. And what's super interesting about this one is that we've seen like Tatum and Brown. You went Tatum and Brown and backwards to some of the historical ones.
We've seen the game has been ruled by big men. Like you mentioned, McHale, low post guys, Shaq and Kobe. We can go on and on. And big wing. These guys are neither of those things. And they're both. totally unusual superstars or stars, whatever you want to call a dream on in NBA history. and almost archetypal players that are specifically archetypal to this era of three-point shooting, which Steph revolutionized and accelerated. The development was going to happen anyway.
And Draymond as the ultimate switch defender when more defenses were like, we just got to try and switch everything because the shooting is so massively important and swing so many games. And Draymond. may not have a good sort of analog in the history of the NBA. Steph obviously has no analog in the history of the NBA. And Steph... Steph is one of one. Draymond became this weird archetype where for about four or five years,
people search the draft for, we got to find someone like Draymond. Can we find our Draymond? Can Grant Williams be our kind of Draymond Green? Grant Williams is the funniest one. Yeah. And it was, it's just so interesting that you go through those pairs of superstars and these two guys are just. strange in terms of body type, skill set, and not only just strange, but strange and meant to play in this era and meant to play together in this era.
Yeah, like, I remember he started playing when we were working together at Grantland. And it was the early days of the five-man lineup. and the plus minus stuff really early, like primitive, like people are carving it out in stone, the numbers, trying to figure it out. On websites that are dead, that are gone. Yeah, you get like a virus if you download it in the websites.
There was some stuff with David Lee and it was one of the first times because I remember that there was that Grizzlies season. And I was on TV that year with Memphis where the Rudy Gay lineups versus the non-Rudy Gay lineups. To dark time. Remember that? The Rudy Gay discourse. Dark times. Remember they'd trade him and everyone went nuts. And the people who were actually like kind of studying this shit were like, eh, they might not miss him.
And then they make the Western finals. But there was a similar thing going on with David Lee, who had good stats. Good counting stats. Hustled was the type of guy that in the old school way, be like, like that guy, good jump hook, like he does some good stuff. And he was a, you know, a good starter. But Draymond was in there and the lineups took off.
Always the foil in this story, David Lee. A very good NBA player who could do a lot of good NBA things, including, you know, remember that finals when they started to go small against the Cavaliers and it was like a garbage time of a game they were losing and David Lee was like heavily involved. Yeah, Draymond, you know, was picked 35th in the draft.
Warriors picked him after they picked Festus Ely in the same draft. So it's kind of like the old, you know, when I used to wax poetic to the Spurs about, you know, Manu Ginobili. the greatest draft pick in the history of the NBA. You guys were such geniuses picking him at 50, whatever.
And they would always tell me, well, if we were such geniuses, why did we pick Gordon Gerasik like 25 spots higher in the same draft? Right. That's the Tom Brady. They passed on him every round until the sixth round. Same thing. And it's the same with Azili and Draymond, but... Maybe Draymond is the only one that expected anything.
even 50% as great as the career and impact he ended up having on a team that ended up being the absolute perfect place for him. Well, he always had the confidence, right? So he won in high school and he won in college. And then he came to the pros. He wasn't playing that much. And I remember... I was on countdown. It might have been the 2013 season. We were talking about the Warriors in the playoff. 2013 or 14.
And we were talking about how nobody could shoot on the Warriors other than Staff and Clay. I forget what it was. And I made some joke about, you don't want Draymond throwing up bricks or stuff like that. And he came at me on Twitter. And I was like, look at this guy. I kind of like the face of this. So it was like, all right, that's cool. But he always kind of carried himself. Like, you guys don't realize how good I am yet. And then 2015.
once Lee gets hurt and the rest is history. But that's, I always think about luck with this stuff where you think, It just became a story again recently about Bogut talking about the thing that I thought everybody knew, that Milwaukee had the choice between Ellis and Curry in that trade. And Curry's ankles were so... Are you... You're dubious of that one? No, I mean, it's been whispered about for so long. I... Can we ever really confirm it? I mean, like, has anyone in the room?
in a public setting, come out and confirmed it? I always heard they gave them the choice. I don't think Jacob will ever admit it. Was Jacob even there at that point? He was, right? Whoever the owners were. Yeah. Because I think there was this real... feeling that Curry's ankles were always going to be an issue, you know, that this was never going to be a thing that healed. So you get luck with that. You keep Curry.
Not only that, how about you get the discount on his first contract, four years, $44 million or something like that, that allows you to do all this other stuff? That's luck number two. Luck number three is the Kevin Love trade, which is one of the most polarizing organizational should we do this or not saga is probably ever. To the point that they're asking people like us, what do you think? Would you do this? Would you put in that? Wouldn't that have been ultimately?
Would that have been David Lee with Clay and maybe even Draymond in that trade too? I don't remember exactly what it was, except that Clay was in it. I think I remember iterations being discussed with Clay and Harrison Barnes, both in it. I don't remember exactly what it would have been other than it was a clear like Clay was in the trade. It was like Splash Brothers or no Splash Brothers. And I think Kerr was one of those who was like, I think the shooting that we have is like really special.
Jerry West was ready to throw himself in front of the train tracks on that. It's like, we're not doing this. This is a bad move. Do you think he had like a winning time tantrum? Like the guy in winning time? Did he throw a chair through the glass window? No, he always, he hated his portrayal in winning time and RIP to the logo. One of the best, one of the best ever. Well, now we have the half court logo, Ben Simmons.
He gets to the half-court logo and he stops dribbling. But then the other luck thing was... was the cap spike in 16, and all of these things come together. And really the only unlucky break, I mean, until 2019, the only unlucky break was that Draymond. punching LeBron in the balls. Have you watched that clip recently? I have not. It is...
The most doobie. I forgot how awful it was. It might be number one for me for the league stepping in and trying to push a narrative. It is awful. It comes up. He kind of swings because LeBron's standing over him. Like they get caught up and he's just standing over him like a little, almost baiting him. And Draymond gets up and he kind of waves his hand. And I just still can't believe that happened. Because if you remember from what's the score in that Bucs game?
No, no, I'm actually, I want to, I'm trying to remember in my head. the sequence of events from that series. So I'm looking up the game logs. I'm going to talk about. So I want to talk about that game really quick is game four when Draymond gets kicked out or gets the flagrant at the end or whatever it was. They go into Cleveland. They're up 2-1 in the series.
It's probably one of my favorite five Warriors games from that whole Curry era because they lay the smack down. Like Cleveland, they're toe to toe. They pulled away down the stretch. Pulled away down the stretch and we're leaving that game going, they definitely have the best team. This is going to be the greatest season in the history of the NBA. And then the suspension happens in it. So I was at the game.
And I have this memory of doing something after the game with J.A. Adande, maybe. I don't know why that would make sense. and you know when you're at these games sometimes you're not looking at the video the video feed like um in detail and none of us realized at the time exactly what had happened and put together what was possible and now this is why i was looking back at it so that was june 10th 108 97 warriors win
There were two days off until the next game in the Bay, June 13th. And I remember they took a while to rule on it because I went out to dinner on what would be June 11th, I guess. with a couple of Warriors people. And they were like... I mean, the level of tension, it was not that fun of a dinner. Well, because Bogut was already out.
Curry had the, what was his ankle injury? So they were kind of limping to the finish line as it was. But it was not a fun dinner because they didn't know still what was going to happen with Draymond. They were fuming about what they viewed as lobbying by the Cavaliers.
They were fuming because they thought the league was going to quote. I mean, teams see everything through the lens of their own bias and what is good or bad for them. And they viewed it like the league's going to scapegoat Draymond. We can see this coming. blah blah blah blah blah it was not a fun dinner and then it was another full day until they announced
The suspension, then he goes and watches it from the A's. Did he go to the A's game or so? He was in a luxury box somewhere with Bob Myers, I remember. That was indefensible. So you think the suspension was it? But it was a flagrant points thing. He had accumulated all the points, right? You can't decide a finals like that. And it was bogus. I feel like it was bogus, the Robert Horacev. when he shoved Kerr into the scorer's table and a couple of
Nash into the scores table and a couple of Nash's teammates responded because you're going to move toward your guy who just got decked in the scores table. I thought that and I thought the Miami, New York thing. in the late nineties was, those were the three that really stayed out to me. I'm reading it now. This is Kiki Vandeway. Kiki Vandeway involved. I remember, I remember they were waiting to hear from Kiki. He's back.
The cumulative point system is designed to deter flagrant fouls in our game, Kiki Vandeway said, while Draymond Green's actions in game four do not merit a suspension as a standalone act. The number of flagrant points he has earned triggers a suspension for game five. And I remember he had a couple of really dumb ones. in the early in that series there was one where he like throws Michael I think Michael Beasley is involved he plays for the Rockets at that time
And he throws them to the ground and like almost garbage time of like a decided game. You're like, what are you, what are you doing, man? And there was, that's the Steven Adams. Well, he hit Stephen Adams in the balls two different times, which Adams reminded us of. They're still going at it right now, Stephen Adams and Draymond Green. The other thing is he comes back. Cavs blow them away in Game 5, Game 6, but Draymond comes back from Game 7 and plays the best game of his career.
And I think he single-handedly keeps him in the game because Curry is running on fumes of his fumes of his fumes at that point. That game got super tense. The last five minutes is an all-time rock fight after LeBron hits the two threes over Azili because the words are a guy short. And that Draymond game is wasted.
I don't want to say he's the reason they didn't win the title that year, but that incident, I think they went in five. I just think they go back to Golden State and finish it. It felt like a... We've seen this series a hundred times, a million times before. Road favorite.
wins game four, kind of a tough, gutsy win on the road, goes up 3-1, finishes the job at home. We've all seen this. We're taping this on Tuesday at 645. There's like three series resuming tonight that feel exactly like that in the current first round. So when you wrote about Draymond, You used a word that I thought was a great word, and I wanted to put it in the context of history. So I always talk about glue guys, right? He's better than a glue guy. Oh, no question.
He's obviously not like a star role player. That seems too low too. But in the piece you wrote, you used the noun amplifier. how he amplified Steph in all these different ways. And I was thinking like, that's the right word, amplifier. So I was going through like my favorite amplifier.
Because I think that feels like it's more status, right? It's that you're not a role player. You're not a glue guy. You're like, I am actually better than a role guy. And not only that, but if you put me next to an awesome guy, I'm going to make that guy better. So Rodman, I think, is an all-time amplifier. in the mid-2000s, 03 to 07. Horry is a classic example. Seven titles, but...
You could kind of fit him in. He didn't need the ball. He could guard whoever. He could guard different positions. You could always count on him and come through when it mattered. Michael Cooper, Bobby Jones, Paul Silas. KC Jones was the famous one from the Russell Celtics. And then there's some, there's two old, I put older in front of these guys' names. Older Andre Iguodala.
So we're like around 15 range, right? Double amplification for the Warriors. He could have been the best guy on a 45-win team in his prime, but older version. And then I think older Drew Holiday, too. kind of the Bucks Celtics era. And then the only other two I have, and they're maybes for me, are Derek Fisher and Bruce Bowen.
Yeah, Draymond's on another level from those guys. That's how I feel, too. I wanted to mark him down. But I think of all those guys, I think Draymond might have been the best amplifier. I think he might be the number one amplifier. Well, let's be simple about it.
You know, people do this thing with Draymond where they're like, well, what would he be if he got drafted by the Pistons and he doesn't have Steph? How many even ex-players have sort of derided Draymond like this? He has Steph and Klay and all he has to do is throw handoffs to them. Wow, big whoop, Draymond Green. He's not the same player without Steph Curry. Almost nobody would be.
If you're ranking the reasons why the Warriors have four championships in the last whatever years, it's Steph Curry up here at number one and then a giant gap between whatever you think number one and number two, what number two is. Draymond has two things that I think are indisputable. I think he's a Hall of Famer. I think he should be a Hall of Famer. No question. Michael Cooper made the Hall of Fame.
I mean, even whatever. He's the greatest defender of his generation, which I would define as sort of like the post KG Duncan generation of players. He might be the most versatile defender. In modern NBA history, he is like, there's this alternate reality where. Okay, so imagine the Warriors without Draymond Green, but they have Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes and whatever else. They're still awesome. They still might be a championship team. You could replace Draymond with...
I use Clint Capella as my like stand in screen and dive spread, pick and roll center, blah, blah, blah. But Draymond. Draymond's ability to play center on defense and switch across every position is completely unique. Almost completely unique in modern NBA history. And he's also, while at center, one of the greatest passers on the move.
in the history of the NBA. And both of those things allow the Warriors to play a style that is completely unusual and unique to them. And he's a big part of that. And he lifts up. Curry is better. because of all the stuff Draymond can do when you give him four on threes. When you play a handoff back and forth with him, when you can take certain risks defensively because you can play this super small ball lineup because he's a 6'6 guy, you can play center.
The defense and the passing, this is a guy, he's led the team in assists, like, many times. It's not, that's what separates him from, like... your glue guy role players. Like those dudes aren't dishing seven, eight, nine, 10 assists, approaching triple, you can triple singles. He gets made fun of a lot for that, but those are almost triple doubles. He's a totally unusual player and made the Warriors both unusual and better.
He's got to be in the running for the best one in that situation. We see it all the time now, right? Even the Nuggets Clippers series, the Nuggets are trying to put Zubats in that situation. He's been doing really well. Those guys are really good at it. Hartenstein, you know, they'll try to put him. Horford is somebody that gets in that situation. But through the league.
When teams are trying to take out somebody, oh, let's do four and three and the guy at the foul line will make the bad decision. The thing with Draymond is the Warriors just know how to cut. It was amazing to watch Butler. immediately fit into that, right? It took him like 10 seconds to be like, oh, if they're going to do that, I'm just going to cut. I'll get layups. Horford is a great name.
because he's still good at it now. And in his prime, when he was more athletic and faster, he was really, really close in sort of speed and decision-making to what prime Draymond is or was. But he wasn't as, Draymond is, I mean, in the stupidest sense, is just so fast. He moves really fast compared to the average big guy who's going to set a screen and roll to the rim. And then he makes his decisions.
faster and more intelligently than almost everybody else in the league in that situation. It's a really hard, it's not a hard combination to find. It's like a borderline impossible combination to find because there has been no next to Draymond Green. And, you know, you can do the counterfactuals of like, well, does he even get those four on threes if he's playing with whatever anonymous Eastern Conference guards in Charlotte or Detroit or whatever?
And the answer is he doesn't get them in the same way, with the same amount of space, in the same frequency. He just would have changed how he played, I think. I do think he would have been a very good player, a great player. anywhere because the defense and the passing are translatable skills to any setting. It was hard to recognize in the moment.
for a little while because we were so used to these six foot six undersized guys getting drafted, going 15 picks too late. There was that whole Brandon Bash generation of NBA player in the 2000s. where it was like they couldn't shoot threes. They were bangers. They were second round picks or low value guys. They were all missing something, right? They were three inches too short.
Or they couldn't really rebound. David West was probably the best version of all of them. And Draymond just seemed like, oh, he's going to be in that bucket. And then to watch the player that he became. And then we didn't mention the competitiveness. I don't think anybody has ever been more of an alpha who probably has a worse basketball reference page.
Right? We can't look this up on StatHead on Basketball Reference, but it's like, who has the lowest points per game who carries himself like an alpha? He might be in the running. Well, look, he's 35 years old. It's 2025. And in the first round of the playoffs, he stood up. The Houston Rockets best player who has a massive height and weight advantage on him in the most important possession of maybe the entire series stood him up.
Played impeccable defense, forced a miss, let everyone know about it and let everyone know like, hey, I'm 35. I'm old now. Don't come at me like that. Go somewhere else on your crunch time possessions. He's been sensational. It would have been funny if he made Doka was like, have you seen the other guys on my team? Where else was that going to go? Was it going to be the Fred Van Vuit step back? What were my other options? Did you watch Jalen Green tonight?
Fred was rolling and Jalen Green was on the bench. So I was watching him on, I was actually watching Jalen Green on the bench because I was doing the body language doctor thing of like, is he engaged? He was engaged. He was engaged. He was engaged. Ime with four seconds left and no timeout. Leaving Adams and Shangoon out there for the Scramble 3 situation was incredible. I don't know if he just passed out. I would have dusted off Reed Shepard.
And just been like, can you just do a Peyton Pritchard impersonation? I know you haven't played all series. I got to say, I don't want to. plant bad seeds in your head or make this about the Celtics. Peyton Pritchard's on a little cold streak on half court to... A little cold streak? He's like, oh, for his last 60. Well, yeah, the 30 to 60 footers aren't falling anymore like they were last playoffs. Well, the other team knows it's coming.
Going back to the amplifier thing and what you said about how unique Draymond is, if you take all the other best amplifiers... I don't think any of them work as well as he works with the Warriors because of the passing and the four and three stuff. Like if you just put Ben Wallace on the Warriors, let's take that five-year Ben Wallace run and make it 10 years. And they would have been better, you know, from a rebounding standpoint.
Defense, I'm not sure he would have been able to guard as many types of guys that Draymond guard, but he was an incredible defensive player there. and you don't really get anything else, and you get terrible foul shooting, and you start listing like, oh, well, you also get this, and that doesn't work. I can't even think of anybody else I would put in. can you it's almost like cartonstein a more playmaking version of him, but for 10 years. The passing is...
is what makes it sing on offense. And just like, you know, you go back and watch Prime, Draymond Green defend James Harden as like sometimes the primary assignment off and on switch. You're like, oh. Is he the best guy on the Warriors at defending this guy and also the best guy on the Warriors years later at defending Jokic? That's a unicorn on defense. Like the 17 Warriors, which I think have a real case, especially as the years pass for best team.
I don't know if I'd vote for them, but I think they have a case. And one of the cases is when you're putting out Draymond and Iguodala and Quay, who was a really, really good defender in the mid-2000s. You have those three guys out there at the same time with Curry and then Durant as the six foot 11 Spider-Man can protect the rim and do all these different things. That was... That might be the best five-man lineup I've seen in person.
Even the Bulls always had somebody who was a little bit iffy on the movie poster. Yeah, Steph, Clay, Iguodala, Draymond, Durant. I don't know if we're doing better than that. I mean, I remember being in Denver at a Nuggets Warriors game pretty early that season. Might have been the season. I don't know. It was sometime in that 17 and or 17-18. And they did the thing where they were all on the floor together in the third quarter of the game. And it was just...
You didn't even understand what it was just like a tidal wave. And it was like you lost consciousness watching the game, and it just became this blur of noise and sound and blue jerseys flying around. And all of a sudden, they had put up a 22-2 run in two and a half minutes. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit. But you just, it felt like watching the cyclone. And good teams, the Nuggets were a good team.
We're just looking around like, I don't even understand what's happening to us. Like, what are we supposed to do? Where's the ball? That guy is. Oh, that guy. It was like unbelievable. Well, it was too much talent, which everybody knew when they got him. It was like, OK, well, this is a wrap for a couple of years. They broke the 2017 Cavs, and now as the years pass, it seems like the Cavs were like the underdog in the relationship. Meanwhile...
They won the lottery three out of four years. They had Kyrie Irving. They traded a number one pick for Kevin Love. They had all these expensive role players like Tristan Thompson. I think they had... what, one of the five biggest payrolls in the league and they had LeBron James still in his prime. Like that was not, that was not hickory high. trying to make it through the tournament in Indiana in 1954. The 2017 Cavs are the best Cavs team of LeBron's two times in Cleveland.
the team that lost in the finals that year. In my opinion, that was the best Cleveland team. What's the best LeBron team to you? Tangent. We're still talking about Draymond, but tangent. I think 13 Heat are going to be tough to beat. That was the Heat team that had the 20-something game winning streak, and they ran into some issues in the playoffs that I thought were a little bit, frankly, beneath them. I thought they should have had an easier time in the East playoffs.
I mean, 17 Cavs didn't win. 16 Cavs will always be another measuring stick team. I'm going blind. I haven't looked back at the numbers of what that six, some of those teams, this Cleveland 2.0 teams. as you know as an Eastern Conference basketball fan, kind of just cruised through parts of the regular season. Conference was terrible. I think the first maybe two-thirds of that 2013 Miami season is the answer.
But when they got to the playoffs, it wasn't just like that it got a little rocky with them. I thought Wade... That was when he really started to break down a little bit. And he just didn't feel like Dwayne Wade in the same way anymore. Indiana took him to seven that year. And he was like, I just don't feel like this Pacers team should be taking these guys to seven. But I do think the streak...
which was just great. I think the streak had a little do with that. I think it took a lot out of those guys. But I would say 2013. I also think, hard to say with COVID. what happens in that 20 season. But if you look back at the guys on that team, it's a pretty good team. We have LeBron. You have Davis who's in his late 20s. You got Caruso in there. You have Caldwell Pope. You have Kuzma before he kind of went off the rails.
You got Dwight Howard protecting the rim. That team was talented. Relevant to this discussion, where are the Warriors at that time? Well, that was the year. That was the Durant-Clay combo injury. Durant leaves and clay. Which is why... And they get three shots in the lottery during their sort of down period.
Kaminga, Wiseman, Moody, the payoff has not been substantial. I like Moody. I'll buy your Moody stock right now. No, no, I like Moody a lot. I seem like you want to put it for sale. No, no, no. I think... Obviously, the Wiseman thing is a huge bust. But that was also a COVID draft. I got to defend them a tiny bit on that. That draft, you go back in that draft, that draft is bonkers. Kaminga is less defensible. I don't even care. And Kaminga, they got in a masterstroke trade.
selling as high as possible on D'Angelo Russell. But that should have been Franz. How do they not know to take the IQ 6'9 forward guy? My point is this. That's why... You know it when you see it. Certain NBA championships just mean more than other NBA championships. Sometimes it's because of a star player finally winning one in his home city like Dirk in 2011. Sometimes it's everything magical comes together for some unexpected team. Sometimes it's a team sort of...
stamping itself like a prior champion, sort of proving that, yeah, the first one was legit. The 2022 Warriors Championship is one of those more special than a lot of other championships because... A lot of time had passed since the last Durant one. It didn't feel all that likely that they would get back to the mountaintop. If you look back like.
It's a strange roster of dudes, many of whom are not there anymore. Clay, Poole, Wiggins. Well, so Clay and Draymond at weird points of their career where we weren't even sure if they were elite guys anymore or not. And they are taking advantage of this interregnum in the West where the Nuggets are in a waiting period for their guys like Murray and Porter to get back healthy. The Clippers are never healthy, and now they are healthy. But they were like... That was a legit awesome Warriors team.
that leaned back into the style of basketball that Steve Kerr wants to play, the beautiful game, the ball movement, and had enough to squeeze out four series against teams that just kind of weren't ready for all of it. Yeah, and the game four, I'm with you. That one meant so much to the kind of Steph career. resume, all that stuff. But also it seemed like they were never going to be in that situation again. You didn't even mention the sons. That was another one for the sons.
Coming off the finals, they were, what were they, like 50-6 at one point? Just seeming like they're heading back and then just falling apart against Dallas. Game seven, now we're really off track, but game seven, Dallas-Phoenix. and game seven, Boston, Milwaukee were the same day that year. Oh my God, you're right. And I was traveling to Chicago for the combine and my flight was like so poorly timed. Like it took off in the middle of the third quarter of.
And then it was going to land and Suns Mavs would already be, you know, first quarter, second quarter. I was like, I'm going to miss like so much. And I land. And it's like Celtics win by a lot. Grant Williams makes a million threes. And then I get to my hotel and I load up the Suns Mavs game. I'm like, what? And it's over. I don't even have to watch this. This is crazy. What the hell is going on? And the Warriors win the title and Draymond is really good. End of story. What's up?
Let's take a quick break. All right, a couple more Draymond things, and I want to talk quickly about Golden State Houston. The generational defensive belt. Which I'm not going to subject you to all the names since Bill Russell. I did make a list. Okay. But I think Draymond versus Rudy. basically for the post-Kawai era, which is about the moment he steps on Zaza's foot.
all the way through is the argument for the last eight years. I would say Draymond, there's some nerds out there that would be resolute about Gobert and the Gobert rim protection stats. Gobert has more defensive player of the years. I think he's had more season this season, probably. success, but that's the argument for the last eight years. If you're going to pick one guy who has the belt, it's those two, I think. He's going to be the Shaq.
Shaq is to MVPs what Draymond is to defensive player of the year or like on a larger scale, even Jordan to MVPs. Like we're all going to look back at the career, but like he only won one and these other guys won more than that. Like he's a... Sometimes it's like it's a regular season award. He misses time. He gets whatever. He gets injured. The team is so good. It doesn't even matter. Gobert is playing 82 games. But we all know it goes back to something Draymond himself said.
62 82 game player or 16 game player he's a better 16 game player on defense alone You're just taking him in any postseason. He's a better 16-game defender than Rudy Gobert. A 16-game, four series, four different kinds of opponents. He's better. And unfortunately for him, the belt is now going to be in San Antonio for a very long time.
So Steve Kerr said Draymond was the single best defensive player he's ever seen after game four. And he's been touting Draymond's defense a lot. He actually lobbied for him for defensive player of the year, which he doesn't. He's not a big award lobbier. That's Steve Kerr. He played with Scottie Pippen. And he played with Dennis Rodman. And Tim Duncan. And I was just surprised. And Tim Duncan. But, I mean, Pippen.
That's a tough one. I would love to put like three drinks into Steve Kerr 10 years from now and he's not coaching Draymond anymore and actually get the actual answer for... Is Draymond actually the best defensive player he's ever seen? It's all a matter of... I mean, defense is still statistically sort of harder to parse than offense, right? So sometimes when you're at this level, it becomes a matter of taste. Like Garnett should be in the conversation, Olajuwon.
you know whoever you we can go through all the greatest defenders in nba history He's in the conversation. That's where Draymond Green is. Whether you think he's the best, the fifth best, the fourth best, the third bet, whatever. That's where he lives in this conversation. Are you taunting me to do my belt lineage? Feels like you are. I'll go through it quick. It was Draymond versus Rudy, so we're both going to say Draymond. Kawhi by himself.
By the way, I thought of you when I was at that Clipper game Saturday. And Kawhi just took the ball from Jamal Murray. When he decided, hey, it's at half court. How about I just go take it? I'm going to take the ball now. Jamal's like, wait, you can't take the ball. I said, no, I'm going to actually take it. Thanks for participating in my exercise. I'm just going to take the ball. Every time he does that, I think of you. I think Dwight Howard's in there for a while.
By default? I'd have to look back at who's contemporary with who's old, who's young, but he certainly was there, many-time defense player of the year. 08 KG, I think, has the belt by himself. Before him, Ben Wallace. And then it's a three-headed battle for a while between Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Rashid Wallace. who I think has been lost in history now. But Rasheed Wallace was just an awesome defensive player when they decided to put him next to Ben Wallace.
And people still seem to think that Lakers series was like, whoa, that was weird. It's like Detroit killed them in that series. Anyway, would have them. Then there's like a GP versus Mutombo mid to late 90s kind of argument. which I'd probably, I don't even know where I land. I'd probably default toward GP for a little bit there. Some good playoff history in that one too. Yeah. Sonic's Nuggets. There's a Hakeem Robinson before that.
I won't entertain Akeem Robinson. I won't entertain it. I would pick Akeem, right? It's Akeem. I'm not entertaining. But I'm just saying that Robinson won Defensive Player of the Year a couple times, but Akeem was... Admiral was incredible. He's a dream teamer. What happened in the playoffs in 1995, the rest of it is irrelevant.
Hakeem also, the block steal stuff. That was one in my book I made up the word stocks because it was like there was just nothing like this guy putting up basically like seven blocks and steals a game. Pippen versus Robbin was another one. Then it starts getting harder after that, but I do want to shout out Bobby Jones. I have another Draymond thing for you really quick. From 2015 through 2025, he did not average 10 points a game. 9.6 points a game, 7.5 rebounds.
and 6.6 assists. Those are cumulative for those seasons? Those are his per game averages for like 11 years. 46% field goal, 32% from three. In the playoffs, that bumps up to basically 12-9-6. But I was like, wow, that's weird. I wonder if anyone has anything remotely that looks like that. So I rigged basketballreference.com. Who averaged nine points or less? You didn't go StatMuse? You didn't go StatMuse? No, StatMuse, I don't try. Bricell and I hate StatMuse. Alex Ovechkin. Under nine points.
Over five assists and then rebounds, whatever. Okay. It's like Jose Calderon, Avery Johnson, Muggsy Bogues, Dick McGuire, Nate McMillan, Eric Snow, Brevin Knight, TJ McConnell, Rory Sparrow. This is like guys who played 600 games or more. And Draymond has way more rebounds than any of them, obviously. But there's like...
You can't, even basketball reference is like, I don't know what to make of this. Like, I don't know. You got me. And not included in any of that search data is can defend every position on the floor, including seven foot centers. which Avery Johnson or Jose Calderon. I wonder if they should add like almost like in chess where you have in what's an ELO score for chess.
I almost wonder if basketball reference should just randomly assign ELO scores defensively for every player. Like Draymond would be like what, like a 97? Whatever the highest is. You give him 100? I don't know. Is that where Elo... I don't play chess. I don't feel like Bill Russell has to be 100. Can we have... We can only have one 100? Yeah. I think Russell's the only hunter. Okay. Yeah, so that's basically all my Draymond stuff, other than...
I don't know how much longer this goes. There's a weird... They've done a lot about this. This year, next year, the contracts are aligned. This is our last dance. I don't know if I necessarily believe that. But what's been cool is watching Butler and Draymond. And that play yesterday was like...
Draymond, like, they're going to go to Shengu and I'm going to stop him. And Jimmy's like, and I'm going to get the rebound. And then Jimmy comes flying in. He probably has, what, like 10 pounds of Toradale shot in his ass at that point. And it's starting to wear off.
And he comes flying in and gets the ultimate Jimmy Butler in traffic rebound, holds the ball, protects it, gets fouled. And he's like, that was my rebound. That was my rebound. Like the combo of those two guys, they're both insane. The rebound. Well, look, Draymond does what he does. He stands up, Shen Goon. Forces a 14-footer when it should have been a 9-footer. You know exactly. He's done it a billion times. That's what he does. Jimmy Butler is 35 going on 36.
and even when not injured, is like a below-the-rim, old-man kind of player now. And I mean that as a compliment. smart he cuts he hits people he knows what to but he's not a high flyer never really was but certainly is it now that rebound had the feel I watched it like five times this morning it had the feel of it had the feel of like This is everything I have left in my body at the end of this game is pouring in.
to jumping as high as I can with as much force as I can because Steven Adams is under there. And I know what Steven Adams is, is an offensive rebounder. It was one of those great athletic... sports moments of like digging deep and all the cliches we talked about that rebound is like he's not jumping that high again probably for the entire rest of the playoff
as long as Golden State goes on. That was like, this is everything I got. If this game goes to overtime, I'm going to feel the pain of this jump for the rest of this game, but I got to get this rebound. Well, I thought the Rockets were going to win last night. I wasn't expecting the Jalen Green stink bomb, but they did get a crazy Van Vliet game. But it came down to the fear if you were taking the Rockets in this series.
The fear was, what's going to happen late in games when both teams have to execute? How is this going to play out? And it executed, it happened the way it happened. The reason I thought the Rockets were going to win, because I didn't think Steph was going to have a big game. Because he put out so much on Saturday night. I was like, well, they're not getting that again. And Butler's hurt. How are they going to get to 100 points?
I didn't realize Dylan Brooks was going to talk shit to Butler and just activate playoff Jimmy. And now it just feels like the rockets are going sideways and we're just going to wait for the honest trade now. Trade Machine Summer. This is a Draymond Green segment. Should we talk about that Draymond Green was...
on the verge of getting ejected. I don't say he was on the verge of getting ejected in that game, but the technical, a flagrant, and the Tari Eason thing where he rolled over him and his foot hit his neck. I, I'm watching that. I'm like, They could throw him out of the game for this. It's maybe an accident. It looks like an accident. It can be plausibly explained away as an accident. But the thing about Draymond Green's accidents, and there are a lot of them.
It never feels as if he's trying to calm the accident or restrain his limbs from moving in ways that will accelerate and worsen the accident. It's always like, my legs are doing this.
You're in the way. My legs are going to keep doing this. I'm not going to try to stop my legs. My legs are doing what they're doing. And if your head's in the way, your head's in the way. Right. And there's been other guys over the years like that, too. Remember when Ron Artest just elbowed James Harden in the head?
And I don't think it was intentional, but I also think it was the same thing. It was like, hey, my elbow needed to go forward and that guy's head happened to be in the way and I had to do it. Some guys... Bowen, it was never an accident, I never felt like. It was maybe a partial accident, but he would kick his... What was that? He kicked somebody in the face running by a three that time, remember? I can't remember who it was. He did. We kicked him right in the face.
And they're reviewing the play. And I'm like, it doesn't really, it looks mostly like an accident. It also doesn't really look good. He already has a technical. He's always seems to have a technical. And as you well know, Draymond Green with a technical...
is like a superhero. He's impervious to technical number two for the most. He can do whatever he wants. With five fouls is the other one. Like he had five fouls yesterday. Felt like for an hour. And he's just doing the vertical stopping everybody and never gets the sixth foul. He's still a genius. He had a player earlier in this series.
But somebody for the Rockets had the ball at the elbow and went to pass to somebody, Draymond. It was Draymond's guy. He had the ball at the elbow. And he went to pass to a cutter. And Draymond did the thing where he read his mind. And it was like almost as if he was ahead of the pass. He starts drifting away from his own guy.
and the pass comes, and it's essentially a pass to Draymond because Draymond has out-anticipated the guy who's actually initiating the action, and he passes the ball, and Draymond's just there. And it's like, what just, what just, he just like, it's not even just in sync with the ball. He's ahead of the ball. He still makes those plays every game. And I noticed that every time I'm in person and Saturday it was at another level. It was Jokic. Sam Hauser? No, Jokic. Oh, well.
To me, there's so many litmus tests for how much people are actually watching basketball. And one of them is if somebody tries to tell me Jokic is like a shitty defensive player, it's like, go fucking watch him in person. Just blow up plays. Just be like, are you going to do that? I'm going to dive right as you're about to do that pass. Now you're jumping in the air because you thought you had that guy. And now you're like, just kind of throwing it over your head. He, he's spooky.
How he can reach it. He had a pass after the game three where they doubled him at the top. the top of the key. Chris Dunn was in the corner on Christian Brown, and he kind of leaked over. And Jokic was facing the other way like this, and Christian Brown is behind him this way. He feels Chris Dunn and just whips the pass to Christian Brown.
If you watch it, you're like, there's 10 seconds where you don't know he's there. How did you know he was there? I have no idea. That is one of his signature passes. And I've watched him. dozens of them at this point. And sometimes I go back and I rewind it and I'm like, let me try to find The last time that he made eye contact, that his head was facing the direction of the player he ends up passing to.
And sometimes you just can't find it. Like there's a defensive rebound. He has the ball. He's looking over here. And then the pass comes. You're like, I don't, I don't really, I don't know what he ever saw. He didn't know it was Chris Dunn who was coming over to double him. So he had to. Also know instinctively, Chris Dunn is coming over to double me, even though I can't see him. And then when he does that, it's like some fucking Star Wars shit when they put the helmet on Luke Skywalker.
Luke, just use the force. He can do that. Well, it's fitting that we're talking about Jokic's passing and Draymond's defense in the same breath because that's about right. I think this has been an awesome basketball round of games. And we don't even know what's going to happen in these four that are about to happen. Quickly.
you'd think they'd much rather play the Lakers or kind of would rather play the Lakers or wouldn't really want to play either if you had to guess, assuming they get there. We're definitely at the stage of the Western Conference playoffs where it's just, okay, well, that path sucks. That path sucks. That path really sucks. I would say given...
The fact that J.J. Redick just played the same five guys for an entire half of basketball, and they looked gassed at the end, and one of them is 40, and they don't have the Anthony Davis piece that kind of troubled the Warriors. the Lakers are probably a better matchup. The Warriors would probably prefer to play the Lakers a little bit. That's where I've landed too, especially from four weeks ago when they went head-to-head.
big nasty and I mean but it's no picnic playing Luka you look at Luka and LeBron are like I'm really picking that team but I think Given the respective states of the teams, I think I would pick, if I were the Warriors, I'd say I'd kind of rather play the Lakers. Yeah, and plus there's the Edwards. How real is this? This is last year.
So here it is. Anthony Edwards has joined the party. He's now a superstar. And this year, there's now this next step that might be happening. I don't want to jinx it. I think he's at the party. He's at the party for you. Yeah, he's at the party. If you're starting a franchise right now, I want to do first tech segment because I think I saw this today. Would you rather have Luca or Anthony Edwards next five years? As crazy as that sounds. Yeah, next five years. I think I'd still take Luca. Yeah.
Great choice, by the way. Can't lose. With Luca, you're at least getting the what if he shows up on a mission this year piece. Like Shaq for those three, four years with Shaq in the late 90s. It's like, what if he takes this seriously one season? Now we're supposed to pretend that never happened. Okay. And then no chance Lakers come back? Kind of a chance? Sort of a chance? Or you feel like that was their desperation game? If you have home court for five and potentially seven, you got a chance.
I would be surprised if they came back. I would be surprised if this got to seven. I would be surprised if it got to seven. I just think you gas out your team like that. You've sent a message to the team like we got to win this game. You don't win it. Minnesota's hungry. They're young. They're fresh.
I would be surprised if it got back to seven. You know what they need to do? Hope that Anthony Edwards goes into, I got this mode. They're going to probably win game five because they'll get every call. Game six. You hope for some hero ball from Edwards. You hope for the Tom Thibodeau, Doc, Game 7, 2010 final strategy of let's try to use Edwards' desire to be the hero against him.
and maybe just hope he makes some bad shots and kind of shoots them out of the game. He also could just dunk you into pieces. end your season very quickly. He is certainly unafraid. Zach Lowe, we ran out of time. I was going to ask you to rank your favorite ringer people, but we can do that the next time. Oh, that's a spicy one. Another time. Yeah, another time. Podcast for you on Thursday. Yes, we're coming off two good games Wednesday night. Yeah, good to see you, my friend.
Always fun. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Goldsberry and Zach. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahau. for helping behind the scenes. Don't forget about new Rewatchables went up on Monday night. Someone watch over me. You can watch on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. You can watch all the stuff from this on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel or as a video podcast.
on Spotify. I'm going to be back on Thursday with more stuff, some basketball, maybe a little bit non-basketball. We'll see. I'll see you in a couple of days. Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in DC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-health.com. Call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org.
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