Jalen Brunson Walks Down the Spurs to Take Game 1 of the Finals | Group Chat

Hello and welcome to Group Chat, I am Justin Varyer and joining me, Rob Mahoney, Jay Kyle, man, whoo, what a start to the NBA Finals Rob Mahoney, that's what I'm fucking talking about. Like, I honestly, beautiful, ugly, no holds barred basketball. Nobody getting bailed out with a foul call. Everything has to be difficult all the time. We almost lost Jaylen Brunson because of it, but he survived, we survived the Nick survived. Yeah, a surprising amount of, they let him play. I know we say that a lot, but there was, there was, there was some grab and let some hand fighting here and there that maybe I would say, I would, I would imagine there's going to be some, some chatter to the, the league office and appeal to like maybe cut down on some of it, but overall, um, yeah, ups and downs, it was drama, it was theater, it was everything you would want. Yeah, that first quarter, I feel like I'm still kind of catching my breath from. It reminded me if you guys have seen the Friday night lights movies where I believe it's preacher, the like defensive end when they go against that really big team in the whole game is like, they're so fast, they're big. And then plus they're fast. That was just like me writing down all of my notes, whereas I was big, fast. Um, by the end of the game, things seemed to switch. Obviously Brunson came back and that fourth quarter in particular, it really felt like he put his stamp on the game. They really seem symbolic rob that down the stretch. Brunson was taking over. Wembee, unfortunately, dribbles off his foot, Brunson takes advantage and that's pretty much sealed it for the next. Yeah. I mean, just what a joy it is to watch Jalen Brunson work. And I say that as much for the stretches where he doesn't have it going is anything else. Like he comes back from that injury and he has to like really put his head down to try to get to the basket a couple of times. It kind of works. Then he gets sort of phased out. Then he comes back. It was just like he had a response for every way that this verse tried to guard him, like all their little tag and recover stuff. He would beat it. All there's kind of soft drops. He would beat it. He saw some switches in the fourth quarter. Eventually, that wasn't good enough either. And so like, there were points in this game where you would look at his shooting line. Like, oh, like that's a little much, you know, just by the percentages, not the most efficient night so far. But that's not what the finals are. And like to me, watching a superstar who can shoot and play through all of those tough stretches of offense is one of the best things about basketball. And so one of the things that someone like Victor Webbingam is still learning how to do, honestly. Well, I don't know if they're going to go back to the switches, but if they end up having to do that and the tag and recover stuff like you were talking about, I think they're going to have to make that work because they can't concede that switch with champagne because Brunson had that's how Brunson got in a rhythm was when champagne was guarding him. And he can just overextend him. I think anybody that plays, you watch the way that people guard Brunson and you think, Oh, man, they're really pressuring and mo. You know, they're bothering him. It's just like Brunson lives in those little margins where you're, you're leaning towards him or that's, that's an advantage for him. It's honestly very like on a different scale, Luca ish, where the guys that are up on him, he doesn't look at it like, what am I going to do? He's like, I have you on this sharp hook that is my ability to use my balance. And then he had him. I mean, he got him a couple different times. Yeah, that was, there's some more stuff I think that we can get into about how they're going to guard him. But in the first half, it was cat kind of outplaying Wimbee offensively. And then in the second half, Brunson, after having such a wobbly scary incident there where I think it was his own guy, bumped Barnes into Brunson. Really unfortunate. He comes back and does what he does. It was kind of Iverson-ish. You know, like that shot he hit in the corner. I definitely had flashbacks to like Iverson over Tai Lu kind of thing. Yeah, Landry Shaman almost had his Illuminati pass revoked their Justa. And it was, it was real close based off of knocking Harrison Barnes into Jill and Brunson's knee, but all's well that ends well. Yeah. Well, why don't we take a quick break, come back, break down the road. This episode of The Ringer NBA Show is presented by Ferreiro. The world is watching. Go all-in for your team this summer with Ferreiro. Enter for the chance to win a range of prizes just by purchasing your favorite treats like Kendra Bueno with an irresistible chocolate wafer and creamy hazelnut filling or Kebler chips Deluxe cookies with indulgent and rich chocolatey chunks or Ferreiro Rocher squares with crunchy hazelnuts and milk chocolate wrapped in iconic gold. Go all-in by any two Ferreiro brands and you could win one million dollars. No rules apply. Learn more at goallinandwin.com. So Jalen Brunson obviously a master of the pivot and I feel like down the stretch there like just watching the amount of like counters and up and unders and spins and pivot pivot. It's just like you get dizzy just like watching him being able to guard him is one thing. But the synchronicity that he has with his bigs, there are like several key moments where I feel like Mitchell Robinson in particular, like you could see him ceiling off when he's going to be. But Kat too, like I felt like this was like the prime example of a veteran team that's played together for so long that knows each other's movements and like just to see those things collide because this Kyle said Kat was amazing in this game like he studied the Knicks until Brunson can come back takeover late. But it just felt like things like all fit together perfectly at the end there in a way that you would hope for a team that's more veteran-laden that's going to grind you down versus a team like the Spurs that wants to play with a little bit more frenetic style and just like kind of just Raymond down your throat. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know how much of that is just kind of the impressions that we superimpose on things. But the Knicks do feel like the calmer team. They do feel like the steadier team based on the way they've executed not just in game one, but all throughout the playoffs. And to the point where in the first half like OG and OB and McKayle bridges weren't really a part of the offense at all. I thought the Spurs did a great job of mostly holding down those spots on the kickouts, but also recovering out to them and forcing OG to put the ball in the floor and then have to like make some difficult decisions thinking that Wimbee could be around every corner. It just wasn't really going anywhere. But you just kind of trust that over a long enough timeline, Jalen Brunson is going to bus free. Kat is going to help some of these guys get open and sure enough like then OG starts to pop in the fourth quarter and the Knicks just have that kind of balance right now where you trust that if things tilt too far in one direction, somebody is going to help counter balance it. And we should also say Josh Hart a huge part of that effort too where I mean three points, not really a score or whatsoever. What he does when he's not being guarded is really difficult and requires like high energy, high intensity, incredible focus to execute at all times. But there he is just making like a truly ridiculous number of connecting plays to make the Knicks go six rebounds. Yeah. Yeah. Hart, Hart, I thought an underrated thing that he did tonight was he definitely pulled the Zach Randolph to mark his cousins like we bully bullies in my neighborhood thing where you know, Castle is coming to this game where he's just been hitting first and just being just relentless ask OKC fans if they how they feel about Josh are the way that Stefan Castle gets officiated as opposed to the way they get treated, you know, and the median things like that. I mean, he's been that guy the whole the whole playoffs and I kind of felt like Castle. This is the first series where I've been like Castle looked like he just kind of got beat at his own stylistic game tonight in addition to all the all the stuff that they were that they were doing there. Speaking of the cat thing in the first half, like, you know, he I was wondering going into this game strategically. I was I texted Michael Pena this morning where I was it was one of those things where you wonder if the obvious thing that's right in front of your face is actually the answer. They have a name for that Occam's razor where it's like I was like, why don't they if they if they feel confident that they can contain Brunson straight up with the guys that they have? I was like, why don't they just play Wimbee? You know, we kept talking about where they're going to hide them and you don't want to give up that zone stuff. But I mean, the the first kind of like taste of blood, I think that the spurs got in this game was like when catch blew by ripped and blew by Wimbee a couple of times it was repeatedly. It was interesting. Yeah, he was there. I rewound it watched it from the overhead angle. There's there's a lot of hand fighting going on. Of course, like he's getting it on him and I'll be curious to see if how that changes. But it kind of made me wonder if they do stay there. It's like when we really, really was above the break with his feet committing to that matchup. And I'm kind of wondering if they stick with that. Yes. So like the spurs did eventually start moving Wimbee around and put him on people like Josh Hart and try to move him away from Cat. It took like all of six minutes for that to happen because Cat grilled him so badly in those opening minutes. It was incredible. And yes, I think part of it is calibration, right? Wimbee is playing up a little too high. Respecting the jumper may be a little too much. He also overplayed a lot on some of the handoffs the cat was trying to execute and then just gave Cat the drive as a result. But I think you have to give towns a ton of credit. I mean, he's been an incredible driver all playoffs long. And these are a gutsy plays in which yeah, he's hand fighting to get free. But then he's fending off defenders as they come to challenge him and still converting. I thought he was just sensational in this game. The combination of the driving and punishing Wimbee. And then they move Wimbee away. And then he starts beating spurs on the offensive glass because he's so much bigger than these other guys like that dominoe. That's so devastating in a game like this. Yeah. I was pretty skeptical that the cat revolution would continue on into the finals just because you know, he looked at the competition or just like, you know, at a certain point to something was going to fall because that's what happens with Cat. It wasn't just like beasting guys on the offensive board. He was physical and like, domineering in a way that previous cats would not be also doing it without really over following. I remember there's one point like, I think it was early in the third quarter we picked up his third fall. They kept him on the floor and he kind of just played a bit more measured as a result of that is defense on Wimbee as you guys alluded to. But those drives, man. just so funny watching him because they're so effective in ways that you wouldn't expect it to be because it's almost like he's so top heavy that he really does have that bear on roller skates vibe where it's like he seems like he's gonna crash and then he's second like he takes a wrong thing he's like teetering and tottering going down there but he has just so much top strength like he he's basically wearing like a big old barrel like like a poor person and like a cartoon when someone loses all their money now they wear the barrel hook and let him cook Rob like like it's just like when he was struggling to like keep track of that and he got in his way it's just like he was so effective at that and cat was cat was amazing in this game so incredibly effective and effective the other way too like he was so physical guarding Wimbee and like how many possessions did we see Wimbee try to face up and attack cat one-on-one have to settle for like a kind of cheap turnaround jumper from the mid-range that ultimately missed because he got absolutely nowhere on his like first second and even kind of third attempts at a move I just don't think we can praise cat enough for a game like this this is these are the biggest possible stakes this is the matchup of this series is like what do you do with Wimbee on both sides how do you how do you torture him a little bit in the way that he tortures opponents and cat had these guys all spun around yeah if you're if you're an offensive player like that likes to operate in the middle of the floor I feel like the spin is one of the first things that gets targeted I don't mean I feel like I hear that a lot like that's just a guys that like to spin around the foul line you're basically just going completely blind yeah for a second and that's that's a thing that they can they can exploit it's it's interesting because the Knicks did a really good job with the timely digs on that they did a really I have a couple shots of like they were kind of creating a little triangle around Wimbee every time that he started to code a go to one of those moves I'll be curious to see though one of the things that they did kind of hit on a couple different times is just using that you know past the ball to the left side and then have a pin down to get Wimbee to that spot and so that you you don't end up with those you know telegraph digs I thought overall on defense I thought that they did a great job there was a point in this game where I mean you can't come at we were talking earlier about I felt like the Knicks really needed to steal this game to like really light the fire I feel like I feel like people have treated them like they can do this like this tonight I felt like was like if they come in there and make a statement and get this one you shift the home court in math obviously but then I just thought that they couldn't there was a point in this game where I was looking at the numbers where you know Wimbee ended up six of 21 he got 26 points but he you know he got a lot of those at the line Fox was horrible we can talk talk about that I thought the cell looked like he was over pursuing it all night and I just felt like yeah I just felt like you couldn't come out of this game if you were the Knicks and not win this one with the way it was it was going to hurt really bad if you lost this one considering how badly the Spurs played on offense what yeah I mean they played badly on offense because the Knicks locked these dudes up like we've led with Brunson we talked about Cat we talked about like Josh Hart and the effect he has on the offense this was a defensive win for New York the Spurs shot 36% from the field they shot 26% from three and I think most importantly all those like wide open Julian Champenny weekside threes that were there in the first half completely iced out in the second half and a lot of this comes down to those digs you're talking about Kyle where the Knicks were overreacting or just like a little bit off their balance in terms of applying pressure on Wimbee and walling up the guards as they tried to dribble penetrate and they were giving up some of that kick out stuff second half comes around and all that is buttoned up and then all of a sudden the Spurs were just kind of constantly searching like passing the ball around San Antonio's ball movement was pretty good but there's just nothing open because the Knicks had everything locked up yeah I mean it seemed pretty apparent from the jump that the Knicks were bigger in match to physicality in ways that perhaps we haven't seen the Spurs go up against all playoffs like the only thing that was probably like approachable was like probably the Timberwolves or the blazers in terms of fear of size but obviously like I see you I see you that's right that's right I've brave shoehorn to blazers reference in there I don't care um fucking 10 months into this season I can do whatever I want that jar that jar has dust on it like a flavored vodka bottle at a liquor store it's like there's all out well Harper was meteor to begin with and it just felt like he was pretty pedestrian after the second half I mean we could get into whether or not like they should have played him more down the stretch but it did feel like he hit like his energy bar just kind of dissipated down the stretch and I have to wonder if that was a lot of the defensive adjustments that the Knicks were making you guys are looking to I think it's some of the the defensive adjustments also I just think you can't overstate how draining a game like this is the physicality is one thing the emotional toll like the psychological toll of like you could see it from the Spurs they were by far like the more jittery team to start and Kyle I think you were right about Devon Vaselle in particular like it just looked like he was hunting a little bit too much like how many rushed jumpers and threes did we see from the Spurs in the first five minutes of this game some guys kind of settle down don't heart for settle down I thought when be settled down a little bit in particular deer and fox I thought moved well all throughout the game but just never really seemed to convert anything from any range at all which is going to be a problem uh but all of this like if you start out kind of working extra hard to settle into the game and then you have to fight these dudes all night long and then it's going into crunch time I mean it was a tie game going into the fourth quarter you're scrapping for every single possession there's bodies on the floor everywhere I think it's natural that especially if you're a younger player by the time you get to the end you just might not be used to 40 like 48 consecutive minutes of high intensity basketball at this kind of level yeah a couple things there I mean the the Harper thing he for as brilliant as Dylan is I think his talent positioned in the Spurs offense where he is playing as like a response like he's catching the ball and and attacking a straight line drive like he's so talented that like rotating defenses are just are just not equipped to handle him I mean he had one worry uh he bodied OG it's we're running through the list of who can't he bodied OG and put that one in I was like holy smokes and then bridges looked like he was holding on he looked like like the like somebody holding on to like the the overgrown kid and like pee we football just like like couldn't stop him but there's a big difference between that and like hey Dylan take the ball above the break and orchestrate and you saw that last player is like this is an experience next team as awesome as Dylan is it's like that's that's a lot to ask so I don't know that we're I think you got to continue to look for for ways to to use him but I don't know that like putting him in spread ball screen and saying save us is going to be the what the doctor ordered but you know and I kind of go back and forth with Vassel and with champagne they talked about on the broadcast how champagne he took an aggressive one in transit you need those aggressive shots just so that that audacity has a ripple effect on your offense if they're going on but I thought Vassel was chased them all over the place in a way where he never seemed totally comfortable to me maybe maybe this birds will be able to make some kind of an adjustment to get those guys in more comfortable spots I don't know what it's going to be. Yeah Harper just felt like he was more comfortable in this moment you would expect that for someone who literally just churned 20 years old last month it's wild you were talking before we hoped on here that apparently Dylan Harper is 13 when COVID hit which really just sent us into our battle like that I don't like that at all but he's just like he marries not only like that sort of youthful like I I don't know what to do with my hands or like I don't know how bad this can be so like I almost I'd play with a certain ease and like I don't have the weight out of my shoulders as dude but he also like gets away with a lot of some like just holding and like kind of veteran moves I don't know if that's because he's the son of a former NBA player or what but like he kind of marries the two together to the point where like he seemed incredibly comfortable things ultimately kind of flipped out on there but like yeah Kyle go ahead oh no I just something really raining on pop to my mind because I'm sorry you notice my face process something uh Nat I've mentioned I have a little kid I have a five year old so I'm at playgrounds a lot like just you know whereas in the past I was at playgrounds and the cops would come and it was awful but it was a whole tough yeah no but I mean you just you watch you you watch kids play and things like that and I remember there was this girl who was like there's a fearlessness that comes with being really young that's like it's a superpower it's an ignorance where you don't you don't necessarily see danger unless and then it enters you but I remember she kept she was standing way too close to this thing and she kept bouncing this ball really hard off of it and I was like man I was like that things getting ready to hit her directly in the face and she just bam and it like knocked her back but that she was standing so close and I feel like that that's what maybe think of where it's just like when you're when you're a certain agent you have an experience things it's like there's a powerful fearlessness I think that I don't I'm not saying Harper's gonna lose that but that's that's what that maybe think of I think the fearlessness serves him very well I also think it's a compelling reason why he should play even more than this we alluded to it despite the fatigue despite the difficulty of the series despite the fact as you mentioned Kyle like by role he's not often asked to initiate offense in the complex ways the deer and foxes for example I'm not even saying deer and fox should play less I'm looking at like the 12 very vacant Harrison Barnes minutes for example and I just don't think Harry can play in a series like this one he's he's giving them nothing I know they're trying to steal minutes in the front court I know Keldin Johnson was just like out of his mind in a way that they kind of took him out of out of commission here he got shared a block by Dues McBride at one point just like straight up drove on him and he blocked his - It didn't go great, but I think Dylan Harper needs to be out there even more than his what it ended up with, like, 28 minutes. For a couple of key reasons, the most important to me is games like this. This is a single possession game for a lot of crunch time. Again, tied going into the fourth quarter, so much of it comes down to chaos. So much of it comes down to, like, the one long rebound, and does that long rebound turn into a fast break, or does it turn into the kind of, like, slow we have to reset sort of possession, and I trust Dylan Harper in those chaotic moments to drive hard and convert through traffic, basically more than anyone else in this series, barring, barring, perhaps Jalen Brunson. So if you can get one of those, like, guys who can draft off of the insanity of a game and the intensity of a game like this, I just think that's worth its weight and gold. You know, you want the guys who can help you execute in the half court, but you really desperately need the players who can help you make sense of the things that are hard to make sense of. Yeah. I mean, I dinged his ability to, like, orchestrate, but that's what you write. I mean, that's one of the areas where, not that he can't orchestrate, it's just like, I don't want to really totally put that burden on him. And Fox has to be better. That's the other thing. But yeah, I mean, he was just, like, Shamit, I was texting some people like, Shamit was a clear target for a bunch of the Spurs, Ball Handlers, and in transition, Harper got him a couple times where I was like, this might be an issue. So I don't know. Maybe it's just like finding, maybe it's not putting him where he's the lead decision maker, but just incorporating him in more plays where he's catching it like a, like a jet sweep kind of thing and just going to the basket. Well, especially be careful what you wish for. You know, if like, we all want to see Dylan Harper do more. If he starts doing more, the next we're just going to say, okay, O. G. Annanobi, you're not guarding Darren. Fox anymore. Now you're guarding Dylan Harper. Let's see how that goes for him. Well, I want to talk about O. G's role in this, but why don't we take one more break? Come back. The Ring or NBA show is brought to you by Fandall. It all comes down to this. Who do you think will be wearing the ring at the end of the NBA finals? Make your call with Fandall right now. New customers can hit the court with $350 bonus bets guaranteed after betting $5 for seven straight days. Fandall is the best place to bet all your favorite players during the finals bet on their baskets and boards or build a same game parlay for a chance at a bigger payout. All right. We're going to make this easy game to odds as we're recording this spurs minus five and a half. Oh, it's a little bigger of a line than I would like, but I like the spurs to bounce back in game two. They're going to lose two in a row at home. Miami's going to play better. I think some of the reserves are going to play better too. So giving the spurs minus five and a half for now, if you get a better line, that'd be nice going into game two. So just visit Fandall.com/ringerambia to get started 21 plus select states 18 plus DC Kentucky or Wyoming first online real money wage or only minimum five dollar wage are required for seven consecutive days bonus issued as nonletrable bonus bets which expire seven days after a seat gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler call one eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit ccpg.org such in Connecticut. So obviously the big kind of strategic match up thing that everyone was looking forward to going into the series was just what they would do with Wembee defensively what he guard Josh Hart. So as you guys talked about up top like they started with cat as is in the match up there, but then they switched it at half time. I thought that ultimately probably wasn't the best move. I thought it worked fine, but I do worry about it going forward in part because you saw the nicks immediately go into OG on the blocks trying to go up in the post against Fox. And I do wonder like it didn't work. OG didn't really play offensively all that well into the fourth quarter when shots started to fall, but you saw like where there was an obvious or a spot that the nicks could take advantage of. I do wonder all of a sudden OG takes advantage of that in the next game. The advantage starts to like compound a little bit more there on top of that just felt like heart. I felt was ready for the that sort of strategic adjustment in the way that perhaps he wasn't in the regular season matchups, just watching him create and just make the right hit ahead pass on the move with the extra bit of space just felt like it stressed the spurs defense in ways that it probably had him before. I'm curious what you guys think about that overall because that feels like the big chest move. And I would say at least in this first game, it went toward the nicks. Yeah, I would say the closest thing they've seen is some of the effect that like Alex Cruz can have on an offense, you know, not on the days where he's not beating you at the shot. What else is he giving you? But we saw heart kind of dribbling through and doing some of the Nash stuff that we talked about in the last series. Just overall helping them move side to side and activate different parts of their offense in a sort of counterintuitive way. I don't know what the best like positioning for Wembe is like if Josh Hart is going to play this way and he doesn't have to have a hot shooting night to play this way, that's going to be very tough to counter no matter where Wembe is. If you want to keep him on cat as we alluded to, I think he just needs to come off of the shot a little bit and play a little bit further back. Make Carlisth and he towns have to go through the process of thinking, do I have enough room here to get this three off over Victor Webanyama? Make him consider it and reconsider it, make him have that flicker of doubt, take them out of kind of the natural rhythms of their offense because I think the more he plays up into cat, weirdly enough, the easier it is for cat to drive by him or the easier it is for the nicks to get into their handoff. So I think playing a little bit off of towns could go a long way if they want to keep him in that spot. Yeah, I mean, that's a knee jerk decision that's a lot easier than the uncertainty that Wembe creates where you're just kind of like eyeballing it like can I even, and we saw guys do that tonight. I mean, OG deliberated about it for a while and made a crazy shot. We saw a vibrato sizing him up. I felt overall like the nicks were just a little more, they had a little more certainty I thought in the half court about how they were going to go about doing that, whether that was cortotting him when one of their, you know, when Ronson was driving, like we said, Robinson had a really good job about that. You mentioned heart gnashing where I think we mentioned this when they played in the cup where they started to kind of poke at these things and figure them out where it was like, no, we're not going into this where we're like, oh, we thought we thought we were going to flow into our offense and this thing isn't there. They're like, no, this is just an assumed part of the sequence where we're like, we're moving, Wimby, we're not, we're not reacting, you know, and then once heart gets to the other side of the rim, it's like there's the, there's these actions that are triggered where you start to kind of attack Wimby being out of place. Yeah. Well, it's so funny too, because I look at the next bench and I just think like, I don't know if like it made a dramatic impact. Doose definitely had his moments, Mitchell Robinson played through not having a hand. I think fairly well, clearly made an impact on the boards and just being physical in the paint. But like they were clearly like a lobber to where he just couldn't finish because he just literally doesn't have access to the mobility in his hands. But it's just so funny because like when I look at it from afar or remove more from the game, I'm like, well, there's just so much more talent that this birds can tap into across the board here, but it just felt like the nicks across the board just kind of like showed up in ways that you would expect for a team that's probably a little bit more used to this sort of environment. I think that ultimately used what it came down to. It felt like the nicks were just forged in this sort of fire where things get crazy and like they just have a steadiness about them. I think Bronson probably represents that back. I feel like we haven't talked about Bronson maybe enough considering like, it's true. 30 points. Like this was his game. It was his game. I want to come back to him a little bit, but I think maybe even praising him some in absence because if we are going to praise anyone on the next bench, I thought Landry Shame. It was pretty good as well. To me, those Jose Alvarado minutes, like that's really where the game hung together for New York. Like everything could have gone totally haywire when Bronson checked out to go back to the locker room or in the second half, I think Alvarado came back for one more stent just as a regular rotation part of the substitution pattern. And the combination of Alvarados, both poise and intensity, playing off of what cat was giving them at that point of the game, that to me is like the defining run of what the next did. Yes, they close. Yes, Bronson hit all the huge shots, but like not falling apart when the game kind of threatened to fall apart. I think it's just a testament to everything that they've built and the way that they have been able to tap into all these guys at different times. And then it was cat and Alvarado. But then later when Jalen Bronson comes back, he so seamlessly picks up and attacks whatever defense you put in front of him. Also just like some of these possessions where Jalen Bronson not only is breaking down a style of coverage, but almost like the idea of a defender, like they put Carter Bryant on him for three straight possessions and it was torture chamber stuff. It was it was exactly what Kyle was talking about up top where if you are one of these defenders who kind of like lunges forward and wants to pressure, he will exploit you. He will like play that against you for leverage and just create, create, create, create. And this is after he just had what looked like it might be a series altering the injury. And yet he's just working Carter Bryant up and down the floor. And then following his own mis for an offensive rebound, it's just, it's insane. The level of exertion that Jalen Bronson is able to apply in a game like this because if he is not attacking, the next kind of can't sustain like they need him to be super aggressive all the time in the hunt for offense, even if he doesn't end up being the one shooting. Yeah, it's interesting because Shay obviously had a good series against the spurs, but things just didn't work out in ways and he wasn't particularly efficient. I'm curious what you guys think is the difference in this series is just the fact that you have Cat as the counterbalance and some of these other role players are just doing enough. Or do you think there's something specific about Bronson and the methodical nature of how he goes about his business that you think is having more effect. Or perhaps it's just. just like the spurs are a little bit more run down after going through the gauntlet of the seven game series in the West Finals. - Honestly, one of the things I've been thinking about in these playoffs is that, and we kind of talked around this as we've been negotiating everything that Brunson did in a game like this. I think he's just the most physically balanced scorer in the entire league. And some of that is the low center of gravity. Some of it is what that enables in terms of that pivot, pivot, pivot style. He's just so shifty and so hard to combat, but also I think because of that, because of the physical balance of his game, he's able to negotiate some of those in-between spaces in a way that even Shay can't. Like Shay is great at creating space, he's great in the mid-range. One of the most unbelievable shot creators in the entire league. But there is something about Brunson when we're talking about the most counter-intuitive angles, the little spots within the heart of the defense that shouldn't be possible to get a shot off. And it's what's both very effective about his game, and also very charming about his game, is just the improbability of how did he even do that? How do you even make that possible? And to beat the spurs, you have to have that in your back. Like you have to have someone in the lineup if not multiple creators. And I think your point is well-founded too, JV, as far as just like the cat counterbalance is something that Shay Gil just Alexander didn't really have by the end of that series. Like as a secondary creator to help prop things up. But to me, it's just everything that Jalen Brunson can do in the seams of a defense, I think he's better at working those angles than basically anybody else. Yeah, you don't really see Brunson going in there. I mean, one of the things that Shay would do a lot is sort of like just frees you with his movement. It wasn't as much about just grabbing on to Shay's rhythm is really hard where Brunson definitely uses physicality, but he's not going to try to extend and just get away from you. The way a lot of like guys in the paint do where it's Brunson. He does sometimes. I mean, if he beats somebody on a straight line, he'll get to that left hand and try to just get away from you. But he just doesn't play that game because I think he knows it's 6'1", that it's not a game that he's going to win. So I would say that Lucas is like racing somebody who is in control of the starter pistol. And I think that Brunson is placed that way too. And I think when you got there in the paint, I need to go back and watch. But I just feel like we need to see more stuff on castle on him as much as you can get on him. - Granted, it says here that 19 possessions he was guarding him. Granted, that's not like a super time. But I just think you can't afford to have like the Julian chimpanzees or the. You're going to have to really figure out ways to keep your best guys on him because there's some vulnerability. Some of them may be unavoidable because he's so good. - I mean, they were they were prying castle off of him a lot just with ball screens. And castle is one of the best at recovering around those screens. But if you over pursue it all, Brunson will take advantage of that too. It's just kind of an impossible situation if you want to keep the one guy in front of him. - Also, was that hearing things or did the crowd seem a little bit more pro-New York than you would expect? No, but when like Duce had a big play, I think toward the end of the third, I heard her like around a douze. And I was like, "What the fuck is that?" And then toward the end, they were pretty rockest too. Like, what's going on there, Spurs fans? You got to push those guys. Shell May was in the second row. You couldn't like box out some more guys in the top like boxes. I don't know. I think the problem with teams like the Nix, it's not even that their fans traveled. They're just everywhere to begin with. There's just enough people who have left New York and live everywhere around the country. - Yeah, right, when Dylan Harbour was born, right? That's when they all moved out. But it's certainly fat Joe's down in San Antonio. I don't buy that. - Well, we talked around Wembee. We should talk about just like his impact on this game directly. Defensively, it's always fun seeing a new series start and like everyone like get accustomed to the fact that they can't go into the paint where it's just like real floors lava where they step in and they're like, "Oh, okay, no, that's not gonna happen." And there were a couple times where towns had to cock the ball back, almost as if it was like at his ankles just trying to wait out Wembee and just never work. I think you drew a follow on it once, but it's just like, dude, it doesn't happen. He just doesn't even have to leave the floor. But offensively, I would say fairly pedestrian given the standards he set in the previous series. Got to the line a ton, which you have to wonder if that like the compounding effect of the physicality probably were on him. But like I could always, you could always kind of tell when Wembee has an off night because the threes, the attempts are up and he had nine in this, didn't hit a ton of them. And like that kind of tells the story of just his impact was there, but not the like the full-throated like takeover that I think like they probably need in this game to push them ahead. - Yeah, I thought his impact was much more there in the tilt that it put on the Nick's defense overall. Like they had to play down on every time he rolled to the rim and they were super physical with him in a way that teams should be, that the Nick should be. Like I think it's one of the kind of margins you should work against the spurs right now. The fact that if you bump or hold or foul Victor Webinyama in any way on a roll on a lob before he gets the ball, it's not even a shooting foul. So like why wouldn't you do that? Basically every opportunity and dare the officials to call them because the penalty is so low for it. So like you should be as physical as possible in those moments, I thought the Nick's were, they took that element out of his game and the spurs game almost completely. And it really was either working from the outside in, three-point line outside or face up from the mid-range against either Kat or Mitchell Robinson. Or you know, the occasional mismatches that kind of forced the Nicks into something dramatic, but I thought New York did a better job of kind of maintaining the shape of their matchups and fighting through those things to keep the bigs on bigs for the most part. - Yeah, I mean, we saw the spurs go to a move that they pulled in crunch timing. It's okay see that I actually kind of broke the game open where they were doing the double wedge screen high where Wimby would just kind of turn and seal and sprint to the rim and he beat Heart and Stone with it a couple times and they tried it a couple times in this game in the Nick's stifled it. So I don't know where they're gonna, it was just really interesting to see as hard as it is score on the thunder, it seemed like there, it just seems like there are new problems to solve for them in terms of just, I mean, in the first half, he didn't get any kind of looks at the rim. I mean, we started to seem get a little more active on the glass like trying to just cobble together where he could, but they did a fantastic job. We were talking about the spurs not playing well, they didn't, I granted there some areas where I think they can tweak their sort of errors of commission, but yeah, credit the Nicks for just kind of thwarting a lot of that stuff. I wonder with some of those ISOs specifically against Kat and that was kind of like the game plan coming into the first quarter was Wembee one on one against Kat basically and you could tell it was trying to exploit the matchup, probably also trying to see if he could pick up a foul or two on Kat in the process. None of it really worked that well and we saw you know, maybe in the game to a little bit better effect, one of those like plays that would have really stood out if the spurs had won, was that clear out Wembee had on the left side of the floor told Devon Vicell to get out of there with one on one against Kat, drove through him and won for the finish. He fed the handoff, I wonder if they're gonna try to do that again, like that cleared the side, is that the one you're talking about? - Exactly, I think that kind of fake handoff could be really good. I also think, and we don't see this from the spurs a lot, but if Wembee's gonna handle the ball this much, I think some inverted pick and roll stuff would be really good for them, like having, I mean, trying to drag Shaman or Brunson into that action with the screener, then you're not, yeah, or harp, like basically whoever can pull a smaller defender in there, I think could be beneficial, who's not OG Enanobi, and then Wembee can drive without having to spend backwards, without having to expose the ball, like he could just sort of gather over the top of the smaller defender and have an easier way to get into the basket. - You know my favorite adjustment is? - What's that? Play better? - They do need to do that too. - And I do feel like, for the lot of the guards that the spurs have, like that's probably with bullet point number one. I do wonder if things become a little bit easier if the threat of some of these other guys was a little bit more apparent. It seemed like Harper was the only one that really had an impact. Their castle hat is moment, definitely for sure, but Fox was a pretty big negative in this game. I mean, I don't know if it's an easy, like, answer, but perhaps like this is more of an injury concern trickling in from the previous series. Obviously he's been battling that for a little while now. Just seemed like they, they typically, even like during this playoffs, even in the midst of Castle and Harper, having like these meteoric rises, it still feels like Fox's turn to when they need it, right? He's like the ultimate stopper, like, whenever they just need a bucket to happen in the Portland series when I was there, it's just like, Fox has to be the guy, especially when Wendy was out for those games. It just didn't seem like he had any impact in this game whatsoever. - It was pretty brutal. And look, I think some of it is just the quality of the defenders who are in front of him, which are uniformly better than any of the other guards castle included. The nicks have clearly calculated that they're gonna live with a certain amount of Sifon Castle mid-range stuff and it's just gonna be the cost of doing business for the way they want to defend elsewhere on the floor. But Darren Fox, it feels like when he does get a shredded daylight, he's rushing in a way that doesn't feel characteristic of the guy we're used to seeing. Like he feels a little bit panicked by like, oh, this is finally my opportunity. I'm gonna rush and get something up and he's like backrooming jumpers and floaters, like stuff that is really the bread and butter of his game when you're getting into the meat of the court. It's very odd to see and I don't know, you know, maybe it is the injury, maybe it's not. Maybe physically he feels better, but his timing is still a little bit off and that'll improve over the course of the series as he kind of eases into it. But it simply has to be better than this. - Yeah, that's a little bit of what we were talking about that difference between the nicks and this is why they went out and got these guys, you know, that went and got bridges and OG. It's that just a little bit more kind of forward size in their guys and their ball pressure guys and their switchability. I mean, there was a play where, And I mean, that length causes you, you know. The length is different than the sort of six two six three six four guys that the Thunder were throwing at him It's like he could get away from those guys until kind of get to his shots because Fox is a deceptively I mean, he's probably six four. I mean, he's he kind of seemed small in the court But I mean, he's a little bigger than you would think He had a play there where He got into the pain. It was at a pretty crucial juncture. I think there were I think they might have been down one and he actually Did exactly what you were talking about. He like broke through the the the ball line of the the the defense and He shot like this just limp floater that he could have easily lobbed to Victor Which was clearly just like him here in the footsteps and also just like the spurs just the shooting just wasn't there And you've seen how much it just like everything rolls from that was out at the beginning of game seven like when there's shooting lights out Just things just kind of cascade and just champagne was out of his mind in that first half I think he was like why he hit five of them five six or something like that. Yeah, I was like is we're just gonna get Danny green Finals MVP buzz yet again Remember that was a thing for like the first three games of that series I'm here for champagne finals MVP. I'm not putting it to rest yet, you know if the spurs pull this out We get three more games in this we might have a serious conversation on our hands. Oh, definitely have the opportunities Defensively because I think they're gonna try to spotlight hit him a lot if you're the next But you didn't make another one for the rest of the game and then like the only other person on the spurs who hit more than one Three was Victor and obviously that didn't go too well and so like It seems simplistic, but a lot of what the spurs do kind of rolls from there Just because they don't really have a ton of those threats and so I do wonder have a little bit more success there I have to wonder if that's why they were turning to Harrison Barnes I mean called in Johnson didn't like and sconce himself in glory But like they were looking for something and they were they were looking for something But like so many of those things to me come down to the tight ropes that Defenses have to go through and you know they were highlighting this on the broadcast with Luke Cornett You know trying to guard the pick and roll as Jalen Brunson was throwing lobs to Mitchell Robinson, right? It's like how much do you play up and lunch forward? How much do you lurk back and kind of try to take away the lob? Every defender is put in this constant push and pull and I thought the nicks Uniformly did a much better job with the push and pulls as it related to the three-point shooting of the spurs in general How to close out how to close out under control? How to take away that stuff without like really making themselves too vulnerable in the second half the balance of New York's defense I just thought overall was really exceptional and so if you have that going for you There's going to be a lot of tough three-point shooting nights unless guys like champagne are just getting white hot shooting over the top of people Which you know you shrug and you go about your business and you you trust that you did your job to the best you could if you're the next But the series may come down to that Those minutes where Cornette was defending the big and roll were pretty hilarious where the physicality Inside I put a clip on my Instagram of him He just like club the shit out of cat on that one-boy and cat and cat was just like, I mean seriously like Pretty pretty funny pretty funny when Cornether came in there and threw his weight around I guess he got inspired by that by that big block and he thought This is my domain, but yeah, he uh, yeah, he was doing it He caught a glimpse of a nun just was in spot. Yeah, the nuns on the box. They were the box So you got to move them down like that divine power. It doesn't work like that like you got to get some proximity to the court I think Is that what worries you need sight lines? I think you too, you know, blessings can only go so far. I was thinking uh This is much like much more lighthearted. This is a this is a big game for For for foot size win being cat. There was a play where they were standing toe-to-toe literally Literally, and I was like, I think this might be the biggest possible foot matchup that we could get in the finals There's some big-ass feet man cast guy like size what 22 Huge do they track that on on stahead biggest feats Kyle is just proportioned. It's just like Feet of feet. He just looks like he has a canoe sitting at his feet. It's like it's it's wild stuff Kyle outing himself as a foot guy on this pod I mean, you just hate to see it though. Totally not a foot guy I'm more I'm everybody that's heard me talk about anything knows. I'm a hand guy. I'm just kind of struck by the foot tonight You were struck by the turtles. Yeah, much like Jalen Brunson's ankle like the second injury He almost sustained as Luke Cornett landed straight on that thing like I was so mad You understandably look he absolutely got fouled on that play and then hit the deck and then Luke Cornett fell on him Would you not be mad under those circumstances? Luke's got to throw his weight around man. All right Anything else you guys want to hit before you get out of here go to game two You know the matchup advantages and he like Cut really insightful stuff. You want to hit it? There's gotta be something right have we went to scheme from every possible angle I mean we didn't talk about Mike Breene saying that a bunch of his bosses and Adam silver were handsome men interesting I thought that was great. I thought it was a great fit. What is it? It was a good one Breene is unimpeachable, honestly. Oh man Mike Breene apex mountain calling those The nicks in the finals Yeah, it personally it might be but I think if he gets an opportunity to double bang at any point in the series on a nicks shot of any kind That's gotta be it All right, let me wrap it there keep it a little briefer than usual because when I get this out to you guys as soon as possible We'll be back after game two So we're doing the same thing recording and immediately following game two of the NBA finals Thank you to Ben Cruz for filling in a production while everyone else is in fucking Sweden We'll talk to you next time 21+ in present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas, sarcasino or 18+ in present in DC can talk your Wyoming Gambling problem call 1800 gambler or 1 800 my reset call 1 8 8 8 7 8 9 7 7 7 7 7 or visit ccpg.org/chat and Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland Hope is here visit gambling help line ma.org or call 800 327 5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts Recall 1 8 7 7 8 hope and why or text hope and why in New York Louisiana call 1 8 7 7 7 7 0 7 8 6 7