Well, we were hoping on a Monday edition of the program to be previewing a game seven tonight between the Knicks and the Pacers at Madison Square Garden at Midtown, Manhattan. But that MSG is dark tonight unless they have a concert or whatever's going on, there's no basketball. NBA Finals begin on Thursday. Let's do some NBA with our next guest on a Monday. Tom Haverstrow, Buddy, how are.
You doing good? How are you?
I'm good, I'm good. So let's let's be let's be reductive right off the start. Why are we not previewing eight game seven tonight between the Knicks and the Pacers.
Well, the defense of the Knicks just couldn't keep up with the Pacers. Karl Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson as your rim protectors. It didn't bode well for the Knicks. They've got Jalen Brunton and Karl Anthony Towns, who are two one way superstars. They are superstar offensive players, but defensively Josh hart ogn and Obie mckel bridges and Mitchell Robinson to a lesser degree, he was coming up off
the bench for most of the season. Those three wing guys were supposed to be more than enough defensively to cover up and hide Jalen Brunton and Karl Anthony Towns.
But you can't.
Excuse Karl Anthony Towns having one block in that entire conference finals. It just can't happen. And it's the first time that we've seen a player that size in the conference finals, play that many minutes and have that few number of blocks. It's just very difficult to win when your best center is not a rim protector and a good defender. Now Nikola Jokic gets away with that. He's not as soft as Karl Anthony Towns.
Is as a rim protector.
The defense for the Knicks was really their undoing is that they just were not able to get enough scoring in order to compensate for that end of the floor, and the Pacers they moved the ball, they'd exploit matchups. Pascal Siakam, Tyrese Haliburn were excellent at creating mismatches and
taking advantage of the Knick slow defense. You know, like Karl Anthony Towns, how many times was he jogging back on defense or complaining about a foul call on his back and the Pacers just ran him out of the gym and ultimately og Ananobi Josh Hart mckel bridges had to hit shots had to be not just d but also the three, and they couldn't do it. So the Indiana Pacers move on after being the This is a
crazy stat the Indiana Pacers. Before this season, sportsbooks had projected that the New Orleans Pelicans would have a better shot at making the NBA Finals than the Indiana Pacers. So that is how much of an underdog this Pacers team. Even though they went to the Eastern Conference Finals, they were just I think it was plus twenty to win the East and make it to the NBA Finals. And when you compare their title ads, they had the same
or worse title ods than the New Orleans Pelicans. So this really is one of the most unlikely NBA Finals matchups, and that's mostly coming from that East side with the Indiana Pacers.
Your point about the next defense is spot on, and that's that's the thing that I've been talking about on the show because the two games where they guarded, they won, but they only guarded for two games, Tom, And you know I said on Friday before we signed off, prior to that game, six on Saturday. Like, I know that the Pacers were getting you know, a lot of a lot of credit, a lot of love for their shot making. The game one comeback where Nie Smith went crazy. You
go back and watch the final few minutes. The Nie Smith shots were practice shots. He was stepping into mostly wide open threes. Given credit for turning into Ray Allen circu. Nineteen ninety eight or whatever. But I don't fully understand how a team who's head coach is all defense was such a sieve on that side of the floor more often than not.
And I do think it comes down to cat. I do think you have a cat problem. Now.
I also will say the cat was better in this playoff run than I've ever seen him play in playoff basketball. I don't want to make this like I'm only crushing Cat. But you look at their books, Tom, They've got their five million guys signed for a while.
But I don't know.
I think you do need to figure something out with Karl Anthony Towns because he just does not play defense and commits some of the dumbest fouls that I've ever seen watching NBA basketball.
So if you're Leon Rose and you look.
At a season that I think a little bit is twenty dollars in the back pocket of jeans that you pull out of the dryer because you did get to the Eastern Conference Finals. You did block Boston from winning a championship. But I don't know that this group has more in them than what we saw. I don't know that this is an NBA Finals group. I don't know that I would pick them to make it back to the Eastern Conference Finals next year.
What does the offseason look like in New York Town?
Well, the tough thing here is a couple of things. One, they put in five first round picks and cleaned out their cover to first round picks tradable first round picks to get mckel bridges.
And he just wasn't good enough to justify that price tech. He just wasn't.
He was softer defensively, not as physical as you would want someone point of attack defender. He's a guy who loved the mid range and hit a bunch of mid range shots, but became kind of Ben Simmons esque yips. He and Josh Hart just did not want to take a layup, and for that you gave up five first round picks. And the only tradable first round pick that you have is Washington's top eight protected pick next year, and that's almost certainly not going to convey. And then
it becomes two second round picks. So really, the Nicks don't have any tradable first round picks. They have a couple swaps that they can do. But when let's say you're offering the Milwaukee Bucks Karl Anthony Towns and two pickswaps, well, when you're acquiring Jannis Anadakumpo, how valuable is a pick swap if you're offering it to to you know, Milwaukee as a as a as a carrot in that trade. Milwaukee looks at that and says, I really, how much?
What are the odds that.
We're going to say, Yeah, the Knicks with Jalen Brunson, Michel Bridges, O g n andob and and and and Jannis Enatakumpo are going to have a worse team than the Milwaukee Bucks with Karl nthing Town. So it's like you look at a potential blockbuster trade, you put it on the on the table for for Jannisanda to coompo. If Janis even wants out of Milwaukee, Leon Rose has to a convince Jannisana da Cumpo that the New York Knicks are the team for him. He's not a CAAA client.
And we've talked about this before, is that the New York Knicks have aligned themselves with Leon Rose's former agency CIA. He used to run the basketball side of CIA, and his rolodex is super deep in terms of the clients that he had in the NBA, including Lebron James and Dwayne Wade. You go on down the list, he had an incredible stable of NBA players on his list. Karl
Anthony Towns might have been the most lucrative. One of all is that when you look at the contract that he signed, Leon Rose was the biggest benefactor there and it was his largest client when he was on the agency side. But Jannis is at Octagon and so the CIA link that he has with Jalen Brunson, his son, Leon Rose's son is Jalen Brunson's agent at CIA, Sam Rose.
If you look at.
Og Annobi CIA, if you look at Josh Hart CIA, Karl Anthony town CIA, the New York Knicks have allocated one hundred and thirty million dollars of their payroll this year to CIA clients at the largest sum in the NBA for any team an agency. So it's very closely aligned. The bonds between CIA and the Knicks are very strong, right, So you got to convince Jannis, hey, we are the team for you. If you want out of Milwaukee, we are the team for you. But that's not the hard part.
I wrote for.
Yahoo Sports yesterday in a column. The hard part for Leon Rhodes, are you really going to portray Karl Anthony Towns like that? He was Karl Anthony Towns' agent before he was picked number one overall. He was close with Karl Anthony Towns and war Why West. When Karl Anthon Towns decided to go play for the national team, the Dominican national team, the coach was John Calipari, who then coached him at Kentucky. Like, they're very close and they
go way back, right. So, now that you're on the Knicks, is Leon Rose going to be able to look at Karl Anthony Towns and say we're going to trade you to Milwaukee for Yiannis. That's going to be a tough proposition. Even if Joannie is like, I want to go to the Knicks. Leon Rose has to just like say, all right, this is a tough decision for me, but I am going to send you to Milwaukee.
That's gonna be tough.
The other thing is like KD. What happens with KD. You know his rich Climban, his agent is the New York guy, and KD if everyone expects him to be on the market this summer, whether it's Minnesota or somewhere else, Houston, Miami, New York, New York again, Karl Anthony Towns would have to go. As is that trade money wise, you have to bring in a three team deal, and that might
be a possibility. And the way that you might you might argue, if you're the Knicks, all right, we get KD and we get off of Karl Anthony Towns's long term money. We're going to able to get a better center to go next to KD, who probably can't guard four as consistently at this age. But you get up the long term money because right now he's going to be an expiring deal next year. If Leon Rose looks at this and says, all right, maybe.
I don't trade you to Milwaukee, but you get.
To reunite with Devin Booker and Phoenix he gets to take care of his client. There there's other options for the Knicks.
They run it back.
Maybe they move mckel Bridges to Dallas or somewhere else where. They can move mckel and try to get maybe Daniel Gafford and Caleb Martin from Dallas and Dallas upgrades on the point of attack defense next to Anthony Davis.
And we know.
Nico Harrison, we know he wants defense wins championships, and right now their point of attack defense is like Klay Thompson and Cooper Flack. I don't think that that's going to work out for them this year if they want to win, and so maybe you propose that trade. But even then it's very likely Spence, that the Knicks just decide to run this back.
I think Knicks fans would love to have you. I think they would love to have KD.
But it requires a CIA team to trade away their top caa guy in Karl Anthony Towns. And that's it matters. More than people realize, is these relationships over time, and Leon Rose has always been a very loyal guy. Uh Jalen Brunson's father, Rick Brunson, was his first client, NBA client and now he's the coach for Tom Thibodaux, another CIA client, so this of course gets his son to
be the star in New York. These bonds are very strong, and if they are going to upgrade next season, it's gonna mean that the CAA link is going to be tested. And with Karl Anthony Towns, the CIA client, Josh hart, ogn Andobi and Jalen Brunton all CA guys, I mean, are they gonna be willing to move one of those guys to upgrade the roster or are they just gonna say, look, we're gonna run it back next year and we're going
to improve. Everyone's got to improve in different ways. And that's what the Knicks are looking at, is I mean, is Karl Anthony Towns the guy or do you move him to try to get a superstar in KD and Yannis? So that's really what's on the table for them is I mean, we don't know that Giannis is going to be a trade target this summer, but I can tell you every team does these contingencies after the season. Is if we're going to upgrade this roster, how do we do it? And I wonder how willing they are in
moving Karl Anthony Towns considered. I mean, he wore that jersey with so much pride and playing through that visibly playing through that that knee injury.
But is the ceiling maybe.
Eastern Conference semifinals and finals. If you have Karl Anthony Towns as you're starting four and maybe you're starting five, that's I mean, that's good. That's better than the Knicks have had in the last couple decades. But is it enough to win a championship?
And I say no, Do we talk enough about how elite Rick Carlisle is. I mean, I was going over some of the stuff this morning, and look, I'm a big Tom Thibodeau guy, and Tom was an assistant for Jeff and so was able to get to know him. And to your point about where the Knicks find themselves now, it's so much better than anywhere they've been for decades that if you run it back and Tom's the guy, then I think most Nick fans would say, Okay, like
sign me up. It's at least nice to have a team that's relevant as opposed to what it's been for a while. But I think I think Rick took him, took him to the cleaners I thought this was a series where Tom was out coached. I thought some of the challenges didn't look great early on.
I don't know what sort of.
Adjustments you make when it comes to Indiana's ability to get him down. But I'm just imagining Tom watching tape of Game six and seeing four runouts off of makes for dunks and layups, and he's going, what, like, what are we doing? So you know, Rick gets his championship with a twenty eleven Dallas Mavericks team that was interesting with Dirk being peaked Dirk. That was Jason Terry six the Year award, that was Tyson Chandler Defensive Player of
the Year. But they won a couple of series where they were underdogs and they beat.
The Heat in the finals.
And now he has this group that nobody thought was gonna be relevant outside of maybe winning a series, and they're in the NBA Finals. I mean, I don't know, man, I feel like the maybe the public conversation surrounding Rick Carlisle needs to start sounding maybe a little bit different.
Give me your thoughts.
Well, the best ones always adapt. And it reminds me of Greg Popovich and how he regarded the three point line or regarded zone defense, or regarded different styles of play. And Rick Carlisle that twenty eleven team. I covered the NBA Finals in Miami, and it was amazing to watch this veteran team rally together. Sean Marion, derk Novisky, Jason Kidd, Karn Butler, like this is a very old team. This team,
the Indiana Pacers, couldn't be more different. They're They're led by Tyrese Haliburton, only a few years into the NBA, and the average age on this team is barely twenty six years old.
Or that that.
That Dallas team in twenty eleven was a bunch of dudes whore at the end of their careers. And so the ability to adapt in the NBA as a coach is something that I think is in direct contrast to Tom Thibodeaux this series where you know, you look at Tibbs and Tis TIBs.
For better or for worse.
But he played that five man lineup all season long about forty minutes a game. Basically the Brunson Michel Hart and Nobi and Karl Anthony Town started them and played them into the ground and they never got to a good defense. They never did and then in Game three he had to switch up and put Mitchell Robinson into the starting lineup, and I got to give it to TIBs like he did expand the pitation and he did make that lineup change, But it did feel like a
little bit too late, a little not enough. When you talk about how stubborn Tom Thibodeau is, or I guess just hard headed when it comes to who his guys are and what his beliefs are, it seemed like Rick Carlo in the opposite direction all year. It was like, we're gonna win by playing up tempo and running teams out of the gym with a deep roster, and we are going to no matter what stay tued or our playing style, and not rely on two guys to win
us games. We're gonna rely on Nie Smith is gonna win us a few games, nemhar You saw him in game six, how well he played in Game six, and how well he played in previous series. This is a team that really just believed Rick Carlile believed in these role players to play like stars when they needed to, and unfortunately, on the Nick's side, the role players just felt apart.
I mean, Duce.
McBride the og McHale Josh Hart. They did not step up, whereas the Indiana Pacers and the belief that Rick Carlo imbued in these guys. It really did seem like two very different coaches on different ends of the ends of the spectrum. And you know, fourteen years ago, when the Dallas Mavericks are winning the championship, and I told you that in twenty twenty five, the Indiana Pacers are going
to win the East. I can't imagine you're gonna say, Rick Carlisle is gonna be the architect of one of the best offenses in the NBA with a team that just runs teams out of the gym like seven seconds or less. But that's what Rick Carlisle did, and I really appreciate how he's been able to adapt as a coach.
Indiana's consolation prize for making the NBA Finals is a matchup with a team right now, Tom that just feels like they've found a little something, well, not just found something.
They've been historic all year.
But I was resident, I should say hesitant and reticent as I canbine those two words in one question to just anoint them, because I'd never seen them make a long playoff run and then jokes on me because they're just they're everything you want and they've been able to stay healthy, which this time of year is a massive thing. So what sort of chance do you give Indiana to make the NBA Finals interesting?
And with Shay the MVP on.
One side, I am blown away with how many players Mark Dagnold has at his disposal. I heard somebody use the term he's like a starting pitcher with six different pitches. I mean he can he can bring whatever the night needs. He can say, how do you want to play? Okay, that's fine, we'll beat you playing that way too. So can Indiana make this interesting or does it feel like it's pretty overwhelming in Oklahoma City's favor.
Barring injury, they have a slim to none chance of making this a serious Yeah. Okay, See, he's just that good. When you look at the regular season point differential between these two teams, it's one of the largest we've ever seen, if not the largest, in NBA history, And in terms of the finals matchups like the Thunder had one of the biggest points differentials meeting. They outscored the opponent by over twelve points a game in every game this season
on average about twelve points a game. The Pacers were good this regular season, winning fifty games. But when you look at what the Pacers like to do, the Thunder are well well equipped to match that. You know, the Thunder do not turn over the ball. And the Indiana Pacers are a team that really likes to run out, like you said, get out and transition and take advantage of a team that can be careless with the ball. And the Thunder just do not turn over the ball.
And they're well coached. And I just think that this is a team the Thunder with all their weapons, and how much rest they've gotten coming into this series, how healthy they are coming into this series, how confident they are coming into this series. They just dismantled the Minnesota Timberwolves that were a top three defense in the in the NBA this season. I just think that the Indiana Pacers are a really good story, a really good team. But the Thunder, and I've been hammering this and beating
this drum all season long. This Thunder team is all time good, like all time good, like one of the ten best teams we've ever seen put together. And of course that final chapter of winning the NBA Finals will seal that. But I everything I've seen from this season has told me that this is one of the best teams we've ever seen. I mean, they've already won eighty games this year, and there's only three other teams in NBA history who have won more in a at this point.
And it's like peak Jordan and peak Warriors. So this team is so good. I'm going with Okac in five. But honestly, my brain is telling me heat and four. I mean, Okac in four.
Yeah, Like my brain.
Is telling me, okay, see in four, but like my heart is saying, okay, see in five. But I really do believe that this could end up in a suitep I just if a name eight to paper, I'm probably gonna go Oka see in five.
Yeah, I'm with you, man, all right, before I set you loose. Kind of a surprising piece of news. I mean, I hadn't caught wind of any rumors in this direction, but the Utah Jazz have hired Austin Age as their president of basketball ops. So of course, and we're gonna hear Austin speak here coming up in a bid. According to the statements that were made by Ryan Smith, Danny
no statements. He stayed completely out of it. Sounds like this is gonna be a scenario where Xanik is still the GM and he works with Austin on a day to day basis, and both those two report to Danny, and then of course Danny reports to Ryan as the owner. So what we have here is a team that's locked up their head coach through twenty thirty one, potentially now has a front office that they've locked up for the foreseeable future as well, without a lot of results so far.
And yes, they're three years into a rebuild. We'll see what the coming years bring.
But what are your.
Thoughts on the direction of the club out here? Bringing in Austin Ange as the president and kind of having their front office and their coaching staff locked.
In for a while.
Well, this is NBA front offices and power structures across the league. If people want to say nepotism, then I would say is this is very common in the league. The Lacubs and Kirk Lacub in the front office, the owner's son in the front office.
There.
You look at the Colangelos and Phoenix, and in Toronto you look at you look at the Airsons in Miami, similar story. You look at across the league, you're gonna have this this And I'm not saying that Danny Age is the owner, but I think people are crying foul at the idea that the CEO, Danny Ainge would hire his son to run basketball ops. And I'm just like, I mean, this has been the NBA for a very
long time. Is We've seen this kind of relationship and it's just another one of these father son combos in ownership and in front office. Austin comes very highly regarded in the Boston front office, of course, from Danny Ainge, of course, But I would also say that I think it's important to have a younger GM or someone who has a lot more ties to like the grassroots level NBA when the league is getting younger and in order to draft these guys you don't have as much tape
because of nil and all the transfer portals. You need someone who has their boots on the ground and have a lot of intel, and that typically comes from a profile of like Austin Ange, who's younger and has a lot more relationships on the younger side than maybe Danny Ainge did. And you see this in the NBA. A lot is in the Charlotte Hornets organization with Michael Jordan.
Mitch cupcheck with the g for Michael Jordan, Like Mitch Kupchak isn't going to every gym and going to all of the European and going to every AAU tournament, because look, the guy is the guy had a.
Great run with the Lakers.
But you need someone younger to burn that midnight oil in ways that Austin Ange will be doing that for the Utah Jazz. So it's a People might say that this is kind of a corrupt thing to do because the CEO just hired his son to run basketball ops, but Danny Ainge has earned that right. And I would also say that this is nothing new in the NBA, and that you see these types of things all across the league, and that is a story as old as time in the NBA.
Well, Tom appreciate the time. Was hoping to talk Game seven at MSG tonight, but hopefully the NBA Finals carry some intrigue. Where can everybody go get that great work of yours?
Yeah, Yahoo Sports.
You can check out that column about the three Trades that I wrote wrote out about the new York Knicks where they go from here. And also you can check out Basketball Illuminati, the NBA podcast that we do account the things with the me and Al Hassen and of course Top Chef. You're a big fan of that show. I get my Pack Your Knives podcast as well as my newsletter Tom to find. Are lots of places, but it's always great to spend time with you, Spence, but.
Great Tom Aberstrow. Monday afternoon, we'll catch a quick break. We're gonna bringing Richard Smith live in studio Austin h currently is speaking to the media. We'll bring you some sound in about an hour from now. But Tommy stops bout today courtesy of our friends at Advanced Window Products. Was your house too hot over the weekends? Well, if it was, there's a good chance you might need new windows. And if you don't replace your windows, you're gonna have to jack up the AC and it'll cost you a
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