Joining us now to start the three o'clock hour of the program, The Great Howard Beck from The Ringer on a Thursday.
Howard, Happy Thursday, sir. How are you you?
I'm well, do we find do we find you? In a lovely Indianapolis, Indiana?
Currently you do?
I had a guy Okay, I'll tell you what on television that building looked insane.
As a guy that was there. What was the atmosphere like last night?
Really great? It's funny because I was having this conversation with someone, a couple people at the arena earlier to day after practice. We were just kind of, you know, chit chatting about the crowd, the intensity and all that stuff, and comparing to Oklahoma. And I will say, this is not a knock in India at all. Like it was super loud, and I think it was still like slightly less loud than Oklahoma at its peak because the thunder crowd is just incredible, man Like, it just never lets up.
It's ear splitting and listen. I was at a bunch of playoff games at Madison Square Garden this spring, and it's always out of the garden, even even in bad times, it's always out of the Garden. I don't think that anybody can, like for my limited movement around the league the last couple of years that don't travel nearly as
much as I used to. I think Oklahoma is the loudest arena and it's the one place like I walk out of thinking like I don't know if like my hearing might be damaged, right, Like maybe I should have worn ear plugs. So but the Pacers fans last night like dished it out just as well. Maybe not the same decibel level, but it was. It was raucous there and like they're just you know, the Pacers are are are every turn, are surprising everybody, and you know obviously they're related here.
Since you brought up Madison Square Garden, Howard Penny for your thoughts, A bit of a non sequitor.
We'll get back to the finals, of course. Yeah, but look like my.
Whole thing A was like, down't fire, am, but b if you do, you better have a contingency in place. Emi Udoka, Jason Kidd, Chris Finch, Quinn Snyder, Billy Donovan, Oh for five, I mean you can't like this is truth is stranger than fiction.
Stuff with this moron who owns the team.
So give me your thoughts on what they're doing and who do you think ultimately gets that job.
Speacoming like performance art. I said this last night on Blue Sky, where like I'm wondering if they're just are the next trolling us the audience? They are they trolling their own owners, the front office, trolling Dolan for being the one who probably arguably is the one who fired Tibbs, like maybe over some frontfous objections, like like what is going on here? Listen, Like you and I collectively have seen a lot a lot of stuff at the garden, a lot of weird things, a lot of things that
have not happened anywhere else. But I've been doing this for twenty eight years covering the league, and I've never seen a team be shot down. What do we have to four?
Five? Five teams?
Five teams? Don't I don't understand this. Forget the whole tips thing for a minute. Forget whether or not they should have had somebody lined up. If you're going to fire a coach with that resume, you better have a better one in mind. Blah blah blah. That's all fine, even if this has just been like your your garden variety average. We fired a coach and we need to
high replacement, and we're doing our due diligence. I don't recall anybody's due diligence involving trying to pry loose five different coaches who are already under contract and being turned down by them. It doesn't look great on a number of levels. It starts to feel kind of comical and desperate.
They're being mocked by Charles Barkley, They're being mocked by Kevin Garnett, so that, you know, after years of building their esteem back up, building their respectability back up, they're now starting to look like the the you know, weird old nicks of just flailing around. So it's a bad
look in that regard. The other thing is like which aren't let out of their contracts very often in this league, Like it happened with Doc Rivers once upon a time, going from Boston to the to the Clippers, And there was another one within the last like seven eight years. Who am I? Who am I thinking of? But it's I mean, Jason Kidd went to the Bucks from the Nets with some draft compensation. But it just doesn't happen very often. It's like a once every seven to ten
years kind of thing. And to think that you're just going to like start to probably loose every coach who you you have an interest in, only to be shot down. It just it just looks bad. And then eventually you're gonna hire somebody like let's say it's Taylor Jenkins or Mike Brown, and one of the questions that the press conference is going to be, Hey Mike, you know, all
due respect, Hey Taylor, I'll do respect. But you know there were reports that the next tried to get Jason Kidd, Chris Finch, emy U Doka, on and on and on. First like it you you like when you finally said all on, a coach is going to look like he was like your tenth choice. And you know there's some really good co which is available right now who are not under contract, who you don't have to get permission for. Like, what are you doing? I'm I'm absolutely baffled by it.
I have no good explanation for it.
Yeah, because it doesn't exist.
I mean outside of the idiot who owns the team, because this is the deal with him and has been for twenty five freaking years. Somebody I trust back there sent me a text earlier that said, Mike Brown's getting the job, and if he does, that's just kind of like okay, like you know, like it's I don't know that Mike's a bad coach. You know, obviously he's had stops in multiple places that have had mixed results. But if it is Mike Brown, what's the reaction to nick fans waiting to see who's next?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna try to predict how fans are gonna react to it to a hypothetical because we just we just don't know. I don't I don't know who it's going to be at this stage. Mike Brown's done some really good work. Mike Brown did not
deserve to be fired by the Sacramento Chichu. Yeah, Taylor Jenkins, I thought did a great job with Memphis, And you know, I I I understand in that case, like I had heard some things about you know, you know, relations with the locker room blah blah blah, and like he's a little like TIBs, little old school like and after a while you might wear out, you know, you know, your voice might wear on your players, like that happens. And I think Michael Malone had some of that too in Denver.
But you know, you get a new locker room and then guys who haven't you know, heard you before, and you get a fresh start. And like I think Taylor Jenkins Mike Brown could both be great for the for the next Michael Malone could two, but I just don't think that they're going to go down that road, considering that Malone's issues with the Nuggets front office are very parallel to things I've heard about TIBs in the front office.
So there are good options. The good news is for the next there are good options, and there are good options who are free agents and that you don't need permission for, and we'll see where it goes.
All right back to the finals, let's see. So for Game three, we'll get to the Halliburton stuff in a minute. And the piece that you wrote, which was very good because it always is, But I'm just gonna ask you, thirty thousand foot of view, what are the main differences between Game three and Game two?
You know, it's like these are like little microscopic things at this stage, Like I just the thunder just didn't look as sharp for whatever reason last night, and I know that they're a team that likes to play at pace also, But I do wonder if the Pacers are starting to wear them down, because the Pacers just love to fly around, not just up and down the court, but like you know, they're going to move the ball aton within the half court and you have to expend
a lot of energy to keep catching up to the ball, and so I just wonder if there was a little bit of that. I don't know that there's any grand conclusion to draw from last night's game. I just think that the Pacers continually show us that there is a lot of fight there and a lot of dimensions to their offense because you know, they don't necessarily have dominant individual scorers. They attack as a unit, and it's a very challenging thing to deal with night in night out.
What stands out most about Rick Carlile's coaching job throughout the course of not just this finals run, but throughout the course of the postseason, and then quite frankly, if we go back to January, you know, these are the two best teams in the league. Since January, o case, he has won Indiana's two and Rick, you know, won a really odd championship in twenty eleven with the MAVs against the Heat, and I don't think very many people
thought he was going to do that. He was doing a good job with the Pistons before they decided to get rid of him and bring in Larry Brown. So it's not like this is the first time that we've opened our eyes that he can really coach.
But this has been a masterclass.
What stands out most about his approach, his communication, whatever it is to you, A lot of it's.
Just his evolution. I think he was always regarded as as kind of, you know, you know, old school, kind of controlling coach, and you know, he really empowered Jason Kidd quite a bit batter in the day with the Mavericks, and in this case, like he's running an offense now that like, I think there's some echoes of the two thousand or late mid to late two thousand Phoenix Suns where Halliburton is kind of like Steve Nash, a version of where you know, he's you know, they're gonna fly
up the court. He's going to move the ball quickly, just as Nash did. It's going to move around. There's a lot of improvisation to it that these are not you know a lot of set play calls. And I think Rick, you know, as a guy who you know obviously has been at this for decades, I think he's given up a lot of control over time and just trusted his players and especially his his point guards, you know,
kid in Dallas, Tyre's Halliburton now Luca and Dallas. I know that things didn't end well with the two of them, you know, per the reporting at the time, but I think he's learned to just really adapt to his players and to this this generation of players.
So are you willing to say that you think Indiana can win the championship? I mean, Vegas still favors OKAC, I like most of the free world picked OKC in five.
Obviously that's not going to happen.
And while I'll continue to say the same thing to me at the risk of sounded like a broken record, I will never cheer for the Indiana Patiers. But I am so wildly impressed at their ability to continue to find ways to get this thing done. But do you think they can actually do it? Can they get two more wins and win the championship?
Yeah? I don't think we should doubt that now. I mean they still Game one with one of their wild flurries, right like, we're just you, We're never going away. We're going to stay, stay at stay in it, and wait for Halliburton to hit a miracle shot. And he's done it so many times this postseason. But you walk away from that game thinking, wow, like they really truly stole one.
They get thumped in game two, which is kind of what everybody expected, and then they come home and I think for most of us who have just seen a talent gap between these teams, figured, okay, Thunder will take back home court in game three. You know they'll they'll win the road game, take back home court advantage, and things will start to go more to form, and the you know, Thunder and five will still be on the
table as all of us had predicted those are. You know, it was a a definitive win last night, right, like they didn't like thump them. It wasn't a route or anything, but like they it was a it was a convincing victory for the Pacers. And at this point, it's, you know, at two to one, with another home game coming up tomorrow night, Like we'd be foolish to dismiss the possibility
of the Pacers winning this series. That said, if the Thunder win tomorrow night, now it's two two, they've taken back home court advantage, it becomes the best of three series with two of the three in Oklahoma. The Pacers clearly can win anywhere, like they've won road games, important
road games, you know, every round. But I do think a Thunder win tomorrow, depending on, you know, like how convincing of a win it is, will probably cause everybody to shift back towards them again if they weren't already. And you know, we're always prisoners of the moment. We always overreacted to the last thing we saw for sure.
For sure.
Now you wrote about Halliburton and the discussions and narratives surrounding him, quite frankly all postseason long have been a little bit exhausting, and you pointed out the Nash comparison. He's just more Nash Er Chris Paul than he is Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan or quite frankly, SGA who has Rix said after Game two, you can just kind
of mark in his thirty thirty four or whatever. Last night was it just more a concerted effort from him right out of the gates was a different coverage from OKAC, and then your thoughts on what he means to Indiana that's just different than what SGA means to Oka.
See.
I understand the comp because there are the two stars on both sides, but I just think it's a failure to see the forest through the trees and a misunderstanding of what Halliburton means to them juxtaposed to what SGA means to OKAC. Because, as you pointed out earlier, and Rick said again, last night, we need everybody, and last night they got everybody.
But certainly ty Reese is the head of the snake.
Yeah. I mean, look, these are not perfect analogies, but you know, if you had seen Chris Paul dueling James Harden or Chris Paul against Russell Westbrook, and you know, in their relative primes, and granted there's a little bit of a generation gap there, but they they had a
lot of overlapping years. You'd see Westbrook putting up these monster numbers and you'd see Chris Paul going for like, you know, fourteen points and twelve assists or something, and you know, at a glance, you'd say, well, Westbrook must be the better player. Look at all these numbers he's putting up, but Chris Paul was absolutely the better point guard.
And you know, you could cite Steve Nash or rajah on Rondo or Jason Kidd, like there have been plenty of great point guards who control the game with their passing and their intellect and not so much and their ability to just kind of bend the defense, but not so much they're scoring. And that's Halliburton. And so I think it's hard for people to process, even though we've got all these other kind of versions of this over
the years. I think people see a guy like Halliburton and like, sometimes the scoring is there and sometimes it's not. And the fact is, look too in Game two, when he struggled, it wasn't just that he wasn't scoring. He you know, he finished with seventeen points, but most that came in the fourth quarter after the game was out of reach. It's also that his like assistant turnover ratio was like six to five, which that's not controlling the game.
And he's he's at his best when he is, you know, you know, making quick passes, quick decisions, getting his teammates going. And I just I think he just couldn't quite figure out where to attack, whether through the pass or through the shot. In Game two and last night it just looked like he found some gaps and took advantage of,
you know, the way the thunder were playing him. I think, you know, I think the centers were in drop and I think he was finding like there was that room to operate between the arc and the paint a little bit. Then he made some shots and I think that got him going as well. You know, it was just I think a really just it's kind of surgical performance by him, and you know, got pretty damn close to a triple level.
Now it's on Mark Dagnault as to whether or not he wants to adjust rotations or coverages. And the effect of the matter is Oklahoma City has still outscored Indiana throughout the course of the series, and they've had the lead far more. But ultimately, the scoreboard says what it says in two to one, and honestly, and I.
Could be completely wrong.
I mean I've been wrong a lot throughout the course of the postseason. I thought Boston would be New York and five, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But even if they go down three to one, I'm not sure that I will be convinced that Indiana can do this until it's actually done. But tomorrow night Okase loses, that
just makes this mountain ten times higher. They are plus I think seven in a very small truncated space when Chet and Hartenstein play together, but that's been something that Dagnault has decided not to do as he's starting Case and Wallace.
So as we move over tomorrow.
Are you expecting Okase to shift anything or are they just going to say, look, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing because we've been historically great most of the season.
That's a great question. I don't know. I don't like there's they already changed, you know, the lineup to start the series, and they've they've kind of, you can say, stubbornly stuck with it or confidently stuck with it. They haven't played a lot of double big like they did a little bit last night. I don't have the plus minus stuff in front of me. Maybe you do, but like you know, it seems like they're more comfortable now in this series going with the single big and I'm
not sure. I'm not sure you know, do you pull another lever at this stage? Does that seem panicky? Or do you do you feel like you know what? We had Game one in hand but lost it. We we won Game two definitively. Game three was fairly close. We've we've done fine with our scheme and our our rotation. Do we just kind of stick with it and and counted a better outcome because we've got the better talent? Like it seems like Dagnad kind of likes what he's
doing right now, and I would. My guess is he would stick with what he's got, with what he's been doing. But I don't know. I don't know.
Last question, and I realize I'm putting the cart way ahead of the horse. Okay, I want to let you know that I know what I'm about to do before I'm about to do it. But if Indiana does this, if Indiana actually pulls this off, and you look at the bulk of their rotation with Halliburton at twenty five, Matherin who was awesome last night at twenty two, TJ's thirty three, certainly he's up there. Nemhart's twenty five, Nie Smith is twenty five. Shepherd's twenty three, Siakam is thirty one,
but even Toppin is twenty nine. Miles Turner should not be twenty nine. I feel like he should be forty five. He's been around forever. But the bulk of this rotation is either in the prime of their career or just entering.
Is it safe to say or it's not safe to say?
Is there anything here where if they can actually get that done with Boston in flux New York. Clearly they don't know what they're doing as far as this coaching search, and there's some other teams we can throw in the mix. But is there a chance that Indiana might be the class of the East at least for a little while if they actually pull this off?
I feel like there is. It's not just that it's a stretch to like start jumping ahead about them winning the championship, but more like I just think that we're in a time in the NBA where like nobody can sustain anything for very long.
You know.
I know, the thunder certainly feel like they're built that way. The Pacers, as you just laid out, seem to be built to last for a while. Things just change so fast in this league. And like, yeah, we're about to get what's you know, more or less a gap year from the Celtics, right, you know, they win a championship,
they fall short this time. Tatum's out for a year with the Achilles, And like, I think it's safe to say that the East next season is going to feel wide open on October twenty fourth or whatever opening night is. But a lot of it's going to depend on, like, you know, all right, what do the next do with their coaching search? And do they you know, do they hold onto this core? Do they make some adjustments? Is
Cleveland holding on to its its primary cores? Does Orlando finally get a point guard to go with their two stars? And could that launch them into the mix in the East? Is Yanna staying because it's starting to feel like maybe he's staying. I mean it's been a lot of weeks have gone by without a trade demand or anything, and no substantial chatter about an actual trade. Like maybe he's staying. I don't know that that puts you on or puts the Bucks in the mix. But like, Okay, what moves
are they making? Can they are they rebuilding on the fly? Can they do enough quickly enough to be in the mix there and the Pacers win or lose, I don't care either way. At this point, they're definitely they're definitely the favorites in the East going in next season. I think, like I just I just think that that's that has to be the case. You defer to the team that just won the damn conference and so championship or no championship, the Pacers deserve to be the favorites in the East
on opening night. But again, we have a lot of off season to go and and teams are gonna make moves.
All right, Howard, Before I say you lose, I want you to put your Anthony Bourdaine hat. We're gonna do the Howard back parts on Known Take. You told us, okay see, you had a great breakfast spot. What's standing out about the lovely metropolis of Indianapolis.
Actually, I want to go back to okay see for a second. I would I would just want to tell you and your listeners I had a phenomenal Laosian meal at dinner place called Ma der Lao. It's like it's you know, it's it's you know, obviously Laos close to Thailand, So like that kind of of of flavor. Incredible. I know that is the last thing anybody would have expected
about Oklahoma City, but phenomenal Laosian food I have. We just got here, so like I and I got here late the on the off night, so I've had a press room meal, which you know, there's nothing to talk about there, and of course our one off night where I did get dinner. My my editor took us all to Saint Elmo's, which is the least creative response I could give you, because Saint Elmo's, for anybody who doesn't know, is just at an absolute institution in Indianapolis. You know steakhouse.
They're famous for their shrimp cocktail and their shrimp cocktail sauce, great meal. But it is the least interesting answer that I could give you. I do not know where I'm going yet tonight, so maybe I'll have a better answer next time we speak.
Media member, you would most like to see what entry in a restaurant and media member that would cause you to turn around and walk out outside the door.
Nope, not going No, but that laugh indicated that you had a name. That laugh indicated you've had a name that entered your head.
Howard.
That's all I'm saying I'm not.
I'm just not going to start, you know, like stirring it up with my media brethren at this stage. It's just that seems unwise.
Porter.
Let Dave mcmannimon know that Howard Beck hates him when when we have him on this week, I can't.
I haven't seen him the entire finals. I don't know where he is. I mean, there's this. I mean, you guys already know this much. If I see Mannix, I'm going.
The other direct for sure. That's for sure. That's all of us. So that's a consensus.
All right, my friend, We'll set you loose, safe travels, enjoy the rest of the finals, but chat soon.
Okay, that's good.
Thanks, all right, the great Howard Beck from The Ringer. I always appreciate his time covers the NBA for The Ringer. After a stop at the New York Times, LA Times, he covered the Lakers the Knicks.
He's been doing it at a high level for a long long time now.
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