Listening to the downbeat. I'm ninety seven one the freak quick update on this Baby Reindeer show on Netflix. I forgot to mention, by the way, it's a true story, and the main actor in it, the bartender guy that I was telling you about, the guy that gets stalked, he actually wrote the story about a personal experience that happened in his own life, all right, but probably spiced it up quite a bit. Who knows, maybe not one hundred percent of rotten tomatoes. You got me, you got me,
damn it. I'm in Baby Reindeer on Netflix. And one good thing about it. I think it's seven episodes long or seven episode limited series, and each episode is no more than forty two minutes, right, So it's a quickie. So he had a pumped up guest joining us at about a half an hour. It's my brother Cash. He and I were at the spear at these fish shows. I it won't be too much fish necessarily, It's more just a sphere review. I think that's a far more broad topic
that people are probably curious about. But it's gonna be a fish talk too in a little bit of Vegas. So Cash he'll be joining us here in just a few minutes. I told make a job. He's making a coffee. I don't know. He may jump on with us because we have another guest joining us right now. We're gonna talk Mavericks. We did at seven o'clock. It's sports at seven. It's eight thirty now. And when you can book a man this handsome, and you trick him into doing it on
a zoom link so you get to look at him. He can't see us, can't see he can't see how aged we are, and we're not the beefcakes that he remembers. He's dabbing, he's flexing his all. It is Mike the machine, Marshall, the VP of content. I never know. I must text you what's your title now? Or what is it again? It doesn't matter, man, VP of content. That sounds like a corner suite. No, there's no I don't. I don't have a door at
all. Can I ask you a person zero doors? Question Mike Marshall, VP of Content for the MAVs that for some reason the last like three weeks has been bothering me. Go for Mike, does your car still the front door? Does it still have that click when you open that. I'll tell you. I'll tell you how that situation got resolved. A tree, a tree in my driveway like lost a giant branch and fell on the hood. Uh huh uh. And it didn't like, you know, impale the car
anything, but it was pretty good damage. And I was like, yeah, that happened the same time, fixed both the best, and they did. I was like, doubleway at me, it works almost every time that strategy sometimes like yeah, no it didn't because they can see, especially if it's like a dent and they see rust that's already developed on it that hadn't been attended to in like two years. Yeah, this was a year apart
at least. And I was like, both both fixed. He had a brand new Gee Patriot and he did something and I remember it was like the loudest metallic clank whenever he opened his driver's door. Which needless that that happened at Stinking Jake's Lake House. The one time I've been out there, someone like backed into the crease of my door and I just have to live with
this, and no one owned up to it at like one am. Inside is yeah, and I'm just like, all right, guys, cool, I guess I just live with this burden for the rest of my existence. But yeah, they got fixed. Thank you, that's the first thing, clear up. And and also thank you for a biting by my one and only rule, which is, uh, don't put me in a room broadcast uh scenario in general with Kevin Turner ever, No, yeah, we knew your policy. You should see our text exchanges. It's like, dude,
you want to can you jump on tomorrow? I want to talk some abs and he's like, KITCHI question mark. I'm like, yeah, Katy's here, and then just no response. But now that Kat's gone, we get him. He's like, what time you need? What multiple segments? May do the whole show six am. It's crazy, Like, yeah, we're reaching out the machine today and like our text message conversations turned from green to
blue when Kevin's out of town. Yeah, it's crazy. Instantly, Well, I made the mistake earlier reporting that Penny Marshall was at the game last night, and apparently she's been dead since twenty eighteen. Look, it happens, did you know that? I mean, I think in the spirit spirit. So we got Penny's grandson, Mike Marshall, to join us in the Mavericks. He loves it. Yeah, I played pretty low key, but I'm worth a lot of money. He loves the Clippers. Not gonna lie
a lot of active money, no money. Mike has been one of the bigger MAVs fans. I've known since I've lived here and knew all about him long before you ever worked for the team. So it's just a perfect little mix that you are now on the inside with the Dallas Mavericks. And yeah, anytime I can get you on and talk a little hoops, we try to take that opportunity, and we did it earlier today. Man, But I mean life is good, dude. That was a huge win last night.
I'll just start with the probably the biggest talking point of the day. I don't know if we've seen a defensive NBA game like that in a decade or three decades. What are your thoughts, man? Were you surprised that that? I guess that game as a hole just looked the way it did. Yeah, I mean you could tell pretty early on they were gonna let them play a little bit. The officials in terms of physicality, guys diving on the floor, doing the old school like separate the dribbler's body from the
basketball that you do and pickup, which usually starts fights. It's it was weird. It was a weird tempo. No one was really settling in. Everyone's out of the rhythm, and you're like, okay, this is gonna be this is gonna be a slobbery match, Like they're just gonna like body on body physicality for the entire game. And whoever withstands it and is like still willing to play basketball the last three minutes is probably gonna win. And
luckily we got a couple good shots in there. PJ knock down a quarner three. Luca got out at the right time. Is always ready for that moment. So our guys just stood in there longer. It was just gonna be, you know, eleven rounds and whoever's still standing and willing to play like intense basketball because they were both teams looked like they were about to tap out. That's how physical it was and how long they were. They were
banging on each other. And the only one on the Clippers that seemed to like still want that still be in for that was Paul George at the end, and everybody else was kind of like walking up, not really staying connected defensively, and it just I didn't seen a game like that in a long time, especially from this team. That's not how we win. That's not how we you know, went on that whatever it was fourteen and one run
at one point. But to go into a road environment in which a team like that has all these stars, they're gonna dictate kind of the pace and the way they want to play and say, cool, I can play that way too, and I'll beat you at it. And to split two road games again a team in which I think they've thrown just about their best defensive efforts at US twice in a row. That's awesome, man. That's that shows you like they can they can win any style, they can win anyway.
They've got the depth. I mean, the big guys aren't even playing well yet, right, They're not in a rhythm at all. They've enjoyed the series yet outside of Maxi, And so yeah, it's super encouraging, man, because when you get into those those wrestling matches and it's just okay, you don't want to be the guy who loses that. You don't just like when you go to overtime or double overtime, like that loss is more than just one loss. To me, it feels like more than one loss.
Okay, machine for people that Mike and I were talking about this earlier, and I never really felt like that game was decided until it was, like mathematically decided. It could have gone either way and it was a slugfest. I don't know if either team can play with that level of defensive intensity
for seven games, worst case scenario. What is it going to take to get the MAVs to look like you mentioned, they haven't gotten into a real rhythm yet, and we're so used to seeing this team play with a lot of perimeter ball movement, with a lot of flow, aythm, a lot of rhythm. The offense just looks kind of like it's it's like artful in a way. We haven't seen that yet. Do you see the Mavericks being able to get into that kind of rhythm? And what's it gonna take.
Is it gonna take the Clippers just the inability to play max out balls out defense for seven games? I don't know what what's it gonna take to look like the back part of the regular season. Yeah, I think that is a big part of it. Is like, how long do they want to play this way? How long do the Clippers? You know, how much you got, how willing are you to do this game after game? And if they're not getting having success with it, you know, you start questioning
what's happening? But I really need to try this hard and defense the entire game. But for us to me what it looks like, it's so weird. Whenever the offense isn't working and everyone's like, what the hell had just happened on that play and everybody's like moving, it's like whenever you're hitting, you're like as a quarterback, you're hitting like your fifth step back and like the route's supposed to be there and the guy's like already gone or not there
yet. That's what the every offensive play has looked like thus far. And my theory on it is, Okay, you get into playoff basketball, everyone starts playing a second faster, a little bit harder. The physicality to get
around the screen is taking you a second longer. You're not in the spot you're supposed to be in and Luca can almost do this stuff with his eyes closed, but if you're not where you need to be and he's throwing that pass without having a look at it, because that's the speedys to operator right now, like everything is disjointed, and so I think Kai and Luca are
operating at like two time speed offensively because they've done this before. They've played in these kind of playoffs series, they played against this exact team prior, and so they have experience of the tempo of Hey, I don't mean get there whenever you want to get there, I mean get there now, like get into the set now when I when I'm crossing half court with the ball, start the set. Don't wait for me to point at you or call
you out or call for the screen. It needs to happen. And so they're operating at their own tempo, which I would consider like superstar elite veteran tempo of having experience knowing how to do this. And then it seems like Gafford's not at that tempo. Lively is not at that tempo with the screens the other guys besides, I think PJ is operating pretty well. He's caught
up to the speed of it. But I think it's just Gafford. You can tell, man his head's spinning, and I think being home I think getting a couple games of it and knowing like I'm if I'm moving now, it's too late, and just knowing like this team is going to try and bully you around and they are not going to get calls, right, you have to fight through it. You're not going to get a call if someone bodies you in the lane, Like, just fight through it and finish.
I think just that adjustment and everyone catching up to the tempo of Luca and Kai and the pass is going to be there second quicker because it has to be. Kai is going to push ball forward and try and get fast break points because they have to. They have to get cheap points somewhere because the offense as a whole is not working in a half court since, yeah, they made some shots last night that kind of pulled that thing out late, some threes that weren't there in the first game, but as the whole,
the offense hasn't really worked. And so it's gonna come down to do the Clippers want to do this from multitude of games? Do they want to put forth this defensive effort they have that in them, and then can the rest of the MAVs offense say, like, you know, what we're operating at double speed. Everybody, Just get there. Just get where I am operating right now in terms of movement and swinging the ball and making the pass before I even see it, and we'll be fine. How long that takes for
the bigs and the rest of the team to adjust. You know, it looked a little bit better last night. I mean, you can't look worse than Game one, to be honest, That eight point second quarter was like, that was the most painful basketball. Like it takes a lot for me to like watch a basketball game and like get anxiety and get like really really upset about it. But that second quarter, I was like, oh my god, it look like we didn't practice. It was just a mess.
But I think that's it's getting your sea legs, like in the in the simplest form. So I expect being at home will help that a lot. I expect having two days off and be able to watch, Like, hey, if you're at this point, if you're setting the screen now you're late and just going over film and seeing how the Clippers are going to play them, and then you know they're going to test the Clippers minerals with this. They're gonna see how long they want to play this kind of defense, in
this kind of game, and you know they're veteran team. I don't expect them to tap out. But after giving them their best punch last night defensively and saying like now we're good, we're gonna take one on your home court and go back and and try and try and protect ours, Like I think that's got to be super discouraging for for TYLERU and and all those you know,
future Hall of famers on that team. I think they're shell shock the Clippers, to be honest, especially at getting Kyrie back and being such a badass defensive team and playing a pretty good defensive game and still losing. I think they are they're they're they're looking into a mirror, are going uh oh? Now? The other side of that same question, though I asked, I expect the Clippers to maintain defensive pressure similar to what the maps we've seen
the last few days. The outlier seems to be can the MAVs keep it up if they need to? I mean, if the Clippers do dictate, this is the kind of series this is gonna be. Honestly, I think that's the best defense I've seen the MAVs ever play or you know this version of the maps ever play. Yeah, and yes, the ceiling defensively for Kyrie and Luca is higher than we saw it in the regular season, and
we saw glimpses of it, but Jesus they were on it. If this series stays at this pace and it's just this slugfest, can the MAVs hang Yeah, and well they be all right? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you saw that. I don't know if it was came at what point in the game. I think it was second or third quarter. You saw Kyrie kind of flip the switch defensively, yeah, because Harden kind of pusted him off. Yeah, yeah, you guys, and they were
kyrief checking each other and we don't see that much. We talked about that earlier, like, I look like, that's about as mad as Kyrie gets. And you can't tell it on his face, but he's you could tell he was a little fouled up, which is nice. That is that is him fuming, man. And from that moment on he was like, if I see somebody put the ball on the ground, I'm diving after it. Yes, I'm separating you from the ball. And he did it like six times and was never called for a foul, and he was like, all
right, you want to play this way, let's go. And I think there is genuine dislike and genuine hate for this Clippers team from our side, from our players, Like I don't think they like each other at all. There is a lot of history there. There's a lot of like fake tough guy, bullying, physicality stuff that they do that I don't think anybody on our side appreciates. And I don't want it to get you know, overly physical and people just flopping everywhere and it become a mess with a game.
But there were times last night where I was like, this thing, you don't want to do that. You do not want to get Luca emotionally and physically invested in destroying you, because he will. He will win every time when you get him emotionally invested beyond the game of basketball into the realm of like, I want to destroy you. I want to make you regret your life right now, because he can. He can be a psychopath in a
game. I mean the previous series with the Clippers, he did that and the supporting cast wasn't really good enough to help him out, and it's dude, you if you start getting picking fights with him on a basketball court where he has the ability and the team around him to compete on your level,
he is going to destroy you. There are so many stories. I mean, you can read the Grant Williams practice story from earlier in the season where Grant wanted to d him up and he made a point of scoring every single point the rest of the game and just crushing him. And I would not recommend that. I would not recommend those guys getting overly physical. I mean, and you if you can lip read, you can see what he said after he hit that last three. If you go online and find that was
there an M and then let's let's go. I was trying. It looked like it was a m F and then a a H in there, and he was just yelling, dude, like he was so happy to beat those guys, like you don't want to do that to him? You want them to do that to him because I love it. Yeah, but I liked I like the response. I feel like something I felt like someone was percolate.
And yesterday between Irving and Harden and then right at the end, Westbrook and Luca had a little bitty thing, and you know, it probably won't come down to swinging, but I would expect, probably in Game three for the for there to be a little breaking up, fake fight type thing. I wouldn't be surprised at all. Yeah, some of the air has to get out of the balloon at some point because you can't just keep filling the thing up, yeah, just adding hot air into it. So one of
these games is gonna be a blowout. Everyone's gonna kind of like settle down and it's gonna be like, well, they were better tonight. Let's get back to like the tactical part of it. But right now it just seems like, hey, you want an arm wrestle, Like, let's let's have some beers and arm wrestle right now and just see who's the bigger man. That's kind of the basketball it's being played. It's pretty awesome. Honestly, I did not expect that. And then you know, the first win of
the season, when not scoring one hundred points was awesome to see. You don't peg the MAVs is like, okay, let's let's go tough one out. Necessarily, that's not our roster how we like to play. But yeah, man, if they want to make it, you know, a macho contest like where about that? We're ready for that. You saw Kai flip the switch last night, and that was if you pissed that guy off and
he's willing to like start throwing his body around defensively. And there's the thing is like it's a tone that gets set early in the game if you can get away with that and played play to the game that's called boys, play to the game that's called Is there any more or is there any better sense
of security? Blanket? And just good vibes going into a fourth quarter knowing that you've got Kyrie Irving on your team, not just because it's his best quarter historically as a player in the NBA, but just the free throw aspect of it too. Mikey brought that up earlier. You just feel like if you're in a close game in the fourth quarter, whether you're up or down by three to five or six, you just kind of feel like your chances are really good if he's on the floor. And you saw it again last
night, man, and he just makes everybody around him better. He's such a unique player and that everyone knows. The highlights the artful nature of his game, how pretty he can make it look, filling up the filter the stat sheet for years and years and years. The thing I didn't really quite have an appreciation for is when it's winning time, when it's got to have it time, the grit that he has, man, he is not going to lose. Like I didn't know he was like a competitive psycho late in
games. But yeah, when you look over there and you're like, Okay, he's gonna bring the ball up, and then the other psycho path on the other side that wants to beat you by fifty and make you sorry you've ever existed, is just was just waiting over there to get the ball right and to me, for for Kai, in these types of games, at least in this series, it doesn't matter to me what he does the first three quarters, right, It just it just doesn't matter, because I know
he can drop eighteen on your head in the force and make it all better and put the game out of reach. And it's just I didn't have an appreciation for that. But I don't know if that's a new thing with him. I don't know if that's you know, some of his maturity, his evolution of where he wants to apply himself in a game. But it's it's definitely a conscious thing, right because you can see it. He just he
just flips it and it's it's winning time. It's I'm disciplined enough, I have enough energy left, I have enough stamina, even during Ramadan when he wasn't eating, like some of those fourth quarters were insane, just thinking about that, and he's just Yeah, he's phenomenal, dude, And there's so many layers to his game that you know, I didn't really get to see the year one had in that half season and even earlier on this season,
whenever they're trying to figure out how they fit in together, and just when you can look over there and you go, Okay, I've got the best ball handler that's ever lived and a guy that has turned in turned himself into an energizer, bunny, a finisher in the fourth quarter when no one else has legs Like, that's so cool to have, man, that's so cool to have in your corner and so reassuring that everyone else can just play their
game. And what other dude I wanted to touch on. I don't know how much time we have, but MAXI played his ass off last night Yeah, that was awesome, dude. For we've been trying to find a different big man that can play in the playoffs and bring more than Maxi Kliba for like five seasons now, and then we get into a playoff series and you're rolling along and you're like, oh, Maxi is our best big man again. Yeah, it's insane. Like his effort was incredible, he was awesome.
He knocked down some big shots. He he you know, stood up to Zubats and it's just crazy to watch the guy's evolution of his career and where he is now and what he brings in a playoff series and how valuable he is and what kind of lineup connector intensively. He's so good, but he seems reluctant to fire it maybe, but then he's making He had two out of three last night. Jesus, that's all you need if you want
big ones too. Threes man and then the offensive rebound late in the game, which kind of was you know, if that wasn't the ceiling moment of it, it definitely was one of them. Yeah, his playoff Maxi is is pretty fun. Yeah, dude, he's he's he's so good and he's just he's he's perfect for playoffs scenarios because he can stretch. He can play five out and he can stretch, and he sets good picks and he can
defend almost anybody. And he's been working really hard and not getting bodied by Zubats and getting to getting the balls that are loose, and I, you know, I just think that's he saved that game for us. Like you can look at the statue, you can go like, okay, look he
made a three pge made it three. But getting to the looise balls, getting rebounds, like not letting Zoubots go off in the fourth quarter, and just willing to do anything to win for a guy that hasn't had a great season, hasn't really shot it well, has looked kind of hesits since for him to get those I think that's that's so cool man. I love that we've got like thirty seconds any I've been saying it before the series started. I thought they're gonna win the series. I was just in Vegas. I
got money on him and win the West. I have money on him at sixteen one to win the title. I don't want to get way ahead of things, but am I nuts that the MAVs could be the danger man in the NBA over the next month. Oh, there's no doubt about it. If you get if you vanquished this this demon that's been haunting you for like five years of the LA Clippers, and get past that group of superstars and the way that these games are playing in which it's turning into super physical,
super macho. Have to win a bunch of different ways. And you roll into that second round series against OKC, that's an inexperienced team that might not know what you're about to hit them with. It feels like Golden State a couple of years ago, whenever they played us and we were just rising, and then we were like, oh no, that's a different brand of basketball they're bringing. I I would be very afraid to play the Mavericks and they
haven't even played well yet my first two games. Marshall, is this young man's name? Thanks Mike. Next week we may go Kati another day off and we'll have you back on You're simple one. Alright, a cash go love you boys. I say hello to my time to talk. No, all right, thanks. We were at the damn sphere this weekend. We will review this insane billion dollar contraption and the band Fish playing in it. We'll have a little fun with my brother Cash Sirroy that is, next writer
or not. He havn't won the Freak