The 30 Most Intriguing NBA Playoff Guys, With Zach Lowe

凌翎尘 重他 不是 是 不是 不是 你是 你說 我 特別聚集 雨魯 nogle 著急 感染 一定好了 魇夫 螳结 大部分的 该煮什么 或 enjoy 不管是这一天 电话 这粉丝 对 你有开始 因为这次开始 什么事 要不然我已证明 在干什么 跟俄网站在这一天 我觉得 West 要是在开始 因为有限项目的 电话的三个月 电话的四个月 就变成了一段时间的电话 在这一天 电话的三个月 今天有限项目的 有限项目的 有限项目的 在这一天 我说了一句话 那时候我只能玩15-20分钟 要不我能玩65个的电话 我只能玩65个电话 我只能玩65个电话 我只能玩60个电话 我只能玩60个电话 我只能玩60个电话 我只能玩60个电话 我只能玩60个电话 我只能玩60个电话 我只能玩60个电话 No, no, David Rady. BIGBODY RODY, Baby, can't stop big body Rady. Yeah. No.Wenby for San Antonio. So now, I guess my question to you is if you're Denver, are you like celebrating right now, are you happy? I mean, you're celebrating that you got the over, your over was 53.5 for the year. Miraculous over. I won, we did Terribon overunders. You won for most, most correct overunders. All of us were under 500. I went five and three of my locks. I'm selling that to my fans this summer, off year, five and three in the locks. But if you're Denver, are you celebrating? What are you doing? Uh, I think you're, you're like, you clearly didn't care, right? So if they cared, they could have manipulated it more than they did. And I think, look, you're going to have to beat these teams sometime. I, you could argue, like, is it better to go Oklahoma City and then San Antonio and hope one of them gets knocked out? Or is it better to go San Antonio than Oklahoma City? The order they're going to have to go now, you might have to be both of them either way. Might as well have some fun. Don't tempt the basketball gods by manipulating the standings and pulling shenanigans on the last day of the season. Have some fun. Get in San Antonio's head. Maybe I, I don't mind it. I mean, it's six to one half dozen of the other. I would have liked the easier first round matchup, but it may not even make a difference in the end. And we'll see how Minnesota looks in the first round, right? Jayden McDendell just came back and just missed some time. They've been just up and down and weird and Denver actually kind of played much better against the wolves this year than they had in the prior couple of years. I think there are three and one. So I like it. Go for it. Get some W's. Well, I was trying to think of the weirdest game 82 that actually swung seasons because there was one. I don't remember what year it was with the Dunkin Spurs, but they lost a dumb game in the last week or the last day and it swung the seeds and it actually like screwed up the playoffs. I believe it was. Because I'm old now. I believe it was lost to New Orleans on the last day of the season that set up the Spurs, Clippers, Epic first round series. And New Orleans. Yeah. New Orleans made the playoffs because of it. Yeah, you're right. 2015 then. So that was one. Then the other one was two years ago. San Antonio with Wembee beat Denver in the last week and that swung the Denver seed a little bit and then all of a sudden the road was much tougher and it hurt them in the playoffs. You know what? Your road's going to be tough. You want to win the road's going to be tough. And you know, I have some Denver thoughts on the road to the finals or whatever that I'm going to share later when we do our draft. I like it. Roads going to be tough. Don't tempt the basketball gods. 54 wins for Denver. They don't have Gordon half the year. They lose Peyton Watson for a long time. Cam Johnson's not really healthy until the last, I would say month and a half and they hit their over under by a half win. Feels like around the right thing. Yet I watched a ton of Denver this year and I really feel like that could have been 60 wins. They had some really dumb losses over the course of the year. So Denver, Minnesota now becomes, I think our best first round series. Right? That's the best matchup where there's history. I could see an upset. Great players are in the game. Minnesota seems like the relatively healthy. I think that's number one now. I think so. I mean, Nick Hawks has a lot of fun potential, but it doesn't have the history. You know, this is a rubber match. I think three of the last four years now that I've met in the playoffs. That's what you want. That's where rivalry's happened when you face the same team four out of five years, three out of four years. A lot of the characters haven't changed. There's been some changes, but like a lot of the core guys are still there. It's won one epic seven gamer the last time they played that Minnesota won on Denver's home floor. It's the Tim Connolly like hovering over everything. Yeah. Rudy Gobert draft day trade like stuff happening and Tim Connolly reacquiring him in Minnesota. There's just a lot here. And yeah, it is. And it's a big series for the wolves because I think they've banked a lot on. Hey, we've made the conference finals two years in a row. We play up to our competition. Sometimes we played down to our competition. We get bored. They wake us up in the playoffs. So now you woke up and you're six. And this is what you're looking at. Nicole Eokech having his best offensive season. Have a Jamal Murray going to make second team all NBA maybe third team. I'd put them on second team. Good luck. That's not what you want. That's a, this is your reward for, you know, kind of lolligacking through parts of the regular season. You have to go Denver. San Antonio. Okay, see no shot. Not happening. Not happening. I don't like my chances as healthy as Minnesota. So the most unhappy team was Minnesota. I'm sorry. They go into the day thinking they might be able to play the Lakers in round one with Luke of maybe coming back halfway through the series. Instead they have Denver. The happiest team is the Lakers. Lakers now add. Are they happy? Yeah. Yeah, they're probably happy to get to play that weird Houston team who loves nothing more than being up eight with four minutes left and then bowing the game. I don't know. I think out of all those teams, they didn't have a real chance against Minnesota. They don't have a chance against Denver. Did they have a chance against Houston? They can tread water. Maybe it's two one after three. Maybe it's two two. Maybe they're down three two. Luke comes back like game six, seven, five somewhere in there. You know, there will be a game where the Lakers shoot 55 free throws or something crazy. Love that your plan to seed's already wasted no time. Five minutes. Yeah, no time. You know, there's going to be a game that Houston chokes away at 12 point lead with five minutes left and the people that haven't watched been watching them all year. Like, what's happening? Why is KD dribbling the ball up against suppress? What is this team doing? That's not. I'm prepared for this to go seven. That's the game that the body language doctor is going to write a 10,000 word column analyzing what happened to the rocket. Shouldn't the rocket. Couldn't you argue the rockets are the happiest team because they get the Lakers without Luca and without Reeves. Maybe Luca comes back. I don't know. I'll believe it when I see it. We don't know when he's going back. Could you argue that the rocket two of one nine out of 10 and are playing kind of well that they're actually the big winner or that Oklahoma City is the big winner because Denver and San Antonio kind of slotted where they should and they'll have an easier seconder. I think Houston and Oklahoma City have cases too. So rocket slakers, both of them are static to be playing each other. Yeah. Nobody can be offended because they're equally as excited to have the other team. And around one series. The other thing that got decided in the West Portland locked down the eight seed, which means we have Portland Phoenix. It was an almost hilarious game 82. The Kings, they're like a Mongoose. I don't you you watch Instagram videos of a Mongoose just taking down a snake and you're like, how did that happen? Is that something you're doing regularly watching Mongoose in the first second? I had to delete it. What were they eight and eight in their last 16? How do you say that? This is why you can't fire Doug Christie. You got to keep on me. You could be this could be the next, you know, pick a all time great coach. We could be sitting here 20 years from now. Doug Christie just won his 600th game and said coach, you can't fire him. How could you? I got to say the young guys are looking better when they remember. It's pretty good. wc是為了一個觀看胸部的誰的女人和 weird 誰 little guy. Oh, we picked him in the first round. Maybe we should try to play him. Yeah. Should I play him? Yeah. Um, I don't know. I was thinking in nickdames for them. Whether they're the Sacramento drunk kings, because they're just drunk at all times. You have no idea what to expect. They're the drunk guy at one in the morning. Anything's possible. You think like the game made it to today. It's like, I don't know. They could beat Portland. We'll have to be Portland because they're the kings. How can you figure out anything they're doing? I don't know if they're drunk from drunk or men or the Sacramento drunk kings, whatever they are, but they've just had three bears in them at all times. I think it's, it's, it's just a lot all the time. It's just, you know, like we've already made great fun of the intentional foul on Seth Curry. And just, it, you know, it's bad times when your defense in the court of tanking law is your own incompetence. That's the only, your honor. No. We're just that dumb. Yeah. We just misread the situation and we're stupid. They have a guy doing card well. That's kind of feisty backup center who I have in my head called him Dwayne Coswell, 130 times. And it's just too much for me. And I think I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna say that he's Dwayne Coswell. So anyway, Portland ends up holding off Sacramento. And now we have a really good blazer suns game in the 78 matchup. And I have not looked on Fandall yet to see what the line is. But I'm gonna guess that that line is around like the sun's being barely favored. Would you agree with that? Like so is like minus two. I'm not a betting guy like you are, but I was gonna throw out suns minus four and a half or something like that. I think it's gonna be a really fun game. I'm gonna find out right now. I don't, I don't see a line yet. It might be too soon. It might be too early. Too soon. We'll go back. Fandall not ready for us yet. Maybe they're still trying to figure out what happened in that weird Sacramento game. I'm bummed that I'm Phoenix. I would have much rather played the Quippers. I just don't think the Quippers have enough size. And I think I think everybody's excited to play the Quippers right now. Like if I'm Golden State, which is gonna be Wednesday night, I'm so excited. Can't wait to go. Might be Steph Curry's last meaningful playoff moment for all we know. Who knows? We have no idea if the words will ever be good again. This is not a meaningful playoff moment. I'm sorry. I know it involves Steph Curry and Kauai Leonard and Drey Mungreen and a bunch of big names. The name we could not call the 910 game a meaningful playoff moment. I'm banning you from doing that. Counter. No counter. I don't accept your counter. Counter. They win the 910. They win the 8.9. And now they're playing OKC. The team that gave us the first great Steph Curry arrival moment, the double bang when it became clear that this was somebody who had a chance to be a generational guy. And now we circle all the way back. They took Kevin Durant from them. They're gonna be, you know, prohibitive favorites. They probably no chance of beating OKC. But OKC, Golden State, I would watch every game every minute and really enjoy it. And who knows with Steph Curry? Okay, we talk ourselves into a who knows with Steph Curry by an hour before that series. By the way, they'll probably get swept. I was gonna say I feel like that's a nice, that's like a nice pre-game intro for whatever network has that game. And then eight minutes in we've forgotten about the pre-game intro and it's 26 to eight Oklahoma City in game one. Luke Dordard. It's just clubbing Steph Curry. Portland though, legs that I talked a surprising amount of them on Thursday. They now that Charlotte is no longer allowed as a guilty league past team because they just became a well-known good league past team. Portland over the last couple of months became the guilty league past pleasure team, especially when Abdiah came back and Abdiah is right on the fringe of a third team on NBA. If Luca is not eligible. Now I asked multiple NBA sources today. Hey, how about a Luca ruling? That would be cool. Like we're all doing podcasts this week doing our votes and we have to turn the votes in. Like, you know what'd be cool? Knowing if Luca Dachit was eligible or not because there's a huge still no idea. I think they're not even allowed to file the appeal until the last day of the regular season. So that's now and I mean, it's just, I can't believe that we're in a situation where we have to wait for like actual litigators to figure out whether a guy is eligible or not. And we're just like, I don't know, this fourth on my MVP ball could be Jalen Brown could be Luke Dahl. I don't know. Well, there's some salary cap stuff tied to this, right? Which is one of the reasons you didn't want to vote anymore. But like, like I have castle on my third team on the, yeah, I'm just spoiled or I'm putting them on. And I don't know. Does that affect? I have no idea. Does that affect like his, it doesn't, right? For no, he's too soon into his career. Unless I'm wrong. But what about Scott, the Scotty Barnes does it bump him? The see get like a percentage thing? I never, see, I try not to look at this because I don't want to think about this stuff. You got to be in the right year. And I don't think either of those guys is in their, in their right year so far. Well, we'll see with Luca. All right, to the east, the game of the day, the reason game 82 exists, the reason the play and it's so much fun, Boston against Orlando. Celtics were like 13 and a half point favorites. And I was telling you, underdogs underdogs underdogs. I mean, yeah. They were a live dog to say the least. If you know anything about this Celtics team or Joe Missoula, Joe Missoula incapable of tanking. And for the record, you and I talked on the phone six hours before the game and you predicted exactly what was going to happen. The Celtics were going to play all their backups and the backups who play hardest shit and the magic would be like, oh my god, we're in a game. What's happening? Does Desmond Bain? Maybe come back, are you still in the arena? Maybe come back and play. We might need you. This was, if we had an ad San Antonio, Denver a weekend ago. This was in the running for game of the year. We had the reunion of the main lobster claws. This was it. This was the main lobster claws sports movie. We had a Celtics team that had 11.5 million in active players playing Orlando, who's playing everybody except Desmond Bain, who did the ceremonial. You'll play the first half. You played 82 games in a season, congrats, buddy. Have a seat and enjoy the second half. And he's back in the game with five minutes left, which is the ultimate humiliation. Three Celtics had career highs, Baylor Shireman, Ron Harper Jr., who was on his way to 40 and got her and then Luke and Garza. Garza hit the craziest three of the Celtics season. Orlando crawls back, ties the game. The Celtics can barely get the ball in, but if somehow, scans one or two for one, that's basically Garza just shooting a 26 footer on Carter right in his face makes it. And if you're thinking about voting Missoula for Coach of the year, it's nights like this. This team is just from player number one, the player number 20 is just wired to try really hard and play smart and do well. And it was an amazing achievement. I am, I would vote Joe Missoula for Coach of the way. I'm thinking of asking to lead to get my ballot back next year. I'm getting itchy, but I would vote Missoula Coach of the year over JB Bicker staff. They would be one two for me. And my second observation is, I'm almost alarmed by how delighted you are talking about Game 82. This might be the most delighted. I've seen you talking about the Celtics on any of these podcasts. Something about this cat. I've been here. I mean, you're, this is your, you're getting. Listen, Shireman is turning into a guy. Oh, no. When I say he's turning into a guy, I'm not saying like this is somebody who's going to be an all star or be the focal point of an offense. But if we're, he is now at least moved into the in a playoff series, there's going to be a weird bearler, Shireman half quarter game. Something weird is going to happen with him above. So there's that. I like Garza and I think Garza is better than Boosebitch for this team. And I know they're going to have a week to try to get Boosebitch going, but I like the fact that Garza was really good. And I continue to love Ron Harper Jr. And I feel like on a lot of different teams, he would have played 25 minutes of game. So all that stuff was good. But the reality is this is everyone's like, is this Jalen's team or is it Jason's team? Who's team is it? It's Mizzoula's team. This guy, this is one of the best coaching performances I've seen in a long time. He was, you could tell in the first quarter, he's like, it was like a game seven. And he never, he had that energy and was just was really something for half a second, for half a second there. When you were saying is a Jalen seems a Jason's team. The reality is for half a second, I thought you were going to say it's Shireman's team. I thought there was just like my brain just went for half a season. He's actually going to say Shireman, by the way, the way I think the way I would put it is like that guy is now ready to be a 20 minute a game guy in the highest level of postseason games. Like whether you has a half or whatever, like he's ready to play real minutes, real backup bench minutes against the best teams and hold his own up both ends of four. He's a good, good player. Couple of fun things with him. Really good at not always breaking up two on one and three on one, but at least kind of fucking up the play a little bit. And an excellent rebound tapper, which I know is one of your favorite skills. Love the tap. Love a good tap. There's two There's two different taps. There's one where the guys just blindly tap it backwards, which we were taught. when we played basketball, never to do that 'cause you're jump starting a fast break for the other team. Then there's the other tapers that are like really smartly tapping it to teammates or in areas where you can get the ball back. He's really good at that. The flip side, Orlando. I think mostly, I don't think he wasn't on the hot seat before, but this is a borderline catastrophic Orlando loss. I mean, they actually went backwards in the standings. They now have to play a playing game as the road team inexplicable. The bean thing, and we'll talk about it in a second, but this whole thing about just not taking game 82 seriously enough because the other team's gonna arrest some guys. The league's too good now. We saw it with Denver, we saw it with the Celtics. When guys play scrubs, they're not scrubs anymore. The only thing I would say is all it costs them, and I think they understood that it was the most likely scenario by far. All it cost them was home court in the 7-8 game against the Philly team that's not gonna have Juel and Beat. So let's just not pretend that it cost them the fifth seat or the 60th. It cost them, and it's certainly embarrassing. The bean thing was extremely unusual and also kind of embarrassing, but it didn't cost them that. They should still be able to beat Philly with no MBE on the road. And if they can't, and their season ends, then Jamal Mosley's seat has been hot all year. It then erupts in flames, I think. - It was a horrific coaching job, and I will say this as somebody who watched that entire game and was talking to people about it as it was happening, being in disbelief that they weren't pressuring a team that had no point card. The Celtics had no point card in that game. They had Banton dribbling the ball up and Shireman and Ron Harper Jr. and Orlando has all these dudes that could pressure you and people that can, you try to trap, just try to get some turnovers, and they're just letting them walk the ball up. I thought I was incredibly confusing, but the team that was probably the most furious was, Atlanta, who can also look at themselves in the mirror because they decided not to care about game 82. And now they have to play the Nix because they can't. - Instead of the calves. - Instead of the calves, but here's my question. But now they have to go Nix round one, Celtics round two potentially, which I'm gonna guess wouldn't be ideal. My question for you is, it seems like the Hawks were cool with that. - I think they were cool with that. I think even mapping it to round two is kind of misses the point of what their season is. If anything in round two for them is gravy and sure it would be nice to get an easier round two. I don't think they cared, Nix versus calves, they've played both, I mean, they've had good games in both of them and in the last week of the season, they lost to both, but good games. And I think they also probably wrongly assume that Orlando would win, which would create a three way tie that they would then win and keep the fifth seed in Orlando messed up Orlando's plans. It messed up Phillies travel plans. Phillies got to cancel some travel plans and it messed up part of Atlanta's plans. But in the end, I just don't think they really care. - Yeah, well, I watched, I watched them play the Nix on Monday and I watched them play the calves on Wednesday. I saw the second half of that one. I watched the full Monday game. And Alexander Walker was great against the Nix. I mean, he probably had one of his best games of the season. Nix ended up winning at the end. Brunson made some plays. - That's a game McCallum makes the crazy half court shot that doesn't count by like-- - Doesn't count. - Finger nail. The Hawks looked really comfortable against the Nix. And if I'm the Nix, I'm fucking bummed. I would have so much rather played Toronto than Atlanta. Atlanta has dudes to throw on Brunson. Brunson's gonna get his points and do all this stuff anyway, but they could throw Daniels Adam and Alexander Walker Adam. That's not nothing, right? They could even put Jaylen Jocelyn Adam if you want to go big. It's just a weird matchup for them because their teams kind of built to stop the other teams awesome wings. But the Hawks have like just weird guard stuff. They get points and bunches. And if you look at like what the last, I had this written down. Last 31 games, both teams are 21 and 10. And they're right next to each other in ratings. So for 40% of the season, they've basically been right next to each other. I don't know. I thought Atlanta calves would go seven. I would say six or seven for this. It's just like not having done any of the studying yet. But this just at least feels like a longer series to me. What do you think? Yeah, I can't wait to dig into the film and everything over the next couple days. But yeah, I don't think it's going to be a quick series. Atlanta's ceiling is just higher than Toronto's. Like Toronto can hum along at an OK level because their defense is always pretty steady. They just can't hit the heights that Atlanta can hit because their offense is just pretty limited. To your point about Brunson, I'll be interesting to see I'm going to go back and watch. Who they would have put, who Toronto would have put on Brunson in a playoff series. What can you put Scotty Barnes? They hit on him. Do you need cap? But these are things that we don't care about anymore. And the next dominated Toronto in the regular season. So I'm sure the nicks would have rather had that match up. It's a comfortable one for them. Atlanta is like this new team. Used to be like a pretty direct. As tricky as Trey was to game plan against on defense, it was a pretty direct game plan. Like Trey is coming at me on one end. And on the other hand, we can direct our entire offense to wherever Trey is. And now it's just a hard team to grasp and plan for and a tricky team to play against. The problem is there like a bench guy short and it was funny watching Portland tonight because Cretchie was playing for Portland, who they they gave away a guess for tax reasons. But I think that one of the games, I think it was the next game. They got eight points total from their bench. They just got like nothing. And Caminga is going to be, you know, Caminga is going to be hit or miss. He'll have 21 game might have to the next game. Toronto to your point. And this is Cleveland had to be another one of the happiest teams today because Cleveland, I think Cleveland Atlanta would have been kind of a bloodbath. Toronto went 500 for the last 75% of the season. They started out 14 and five. They went two and 16 against the top three seeds in each conference. They got swept by the Celtics. They got swept by the NICS. So to your point on the ceiling, yeah, they finished with the five seed because of what happened Orlando. But I don't I just don't feel like there was any difference. Five six seven eight nine, even you go all the way to Miami. Like I just all those teams could look good on the right. You know, and out of all all those teams, I think my favorite's probably Atlanta. If you go from five through 10, I think I thought Atlanta was playing the best at the end of the year. Yes, Charlotte has not stumbled, but they've kind of come back to earth a little bit in the last 10 games. Ended up ninth, which is great. It's a great it's a great season for them anyway. Certainly they can still get into the playoffs. Atlanta's been the highest level team in Toronto. This has been a huge talking point in Toronto. A year they can't beat good teams. They haven't been good enough at home. They've actually been decent on the road. Just a weird team who's offends on the wrong night, just looks clunky and gummed up and yeah, see how they do against the calves. It's a team that has a good bench, which can go a long way over the course of a regular season. But in the playoffs, I don't know if it necessarily matters that much. Atlanta and the calves. What which actually you know what? Let's take a break because I want to find out from you, which one just first glance is feeling the most upsetting to you. But we're going to take a break, come back and answer that. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandall. 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Orlando trades all that stuff for Desmond Bain and wins four more games. And I don't think their fans are doing backflips about how the season went. Do you think if you're Detroit, do you think Detroit has a preference out of Fili to trade Charlotte Miami for who they want to play? I would just feel like, they're good against all those teams. Yeah, I think if you asked Detroit, they would say, dude, we won 60 games or whatever. We're tough as shit. We played defense, we rebound. Like we're gonna beat the hell out of all these teams. We're not afraid of any of them. Realistically, I think you would have to say Charlotte would be the one that you would say they have demonstrated a very high level play for a very long time and competitive against us. Although we beat them in the Brawl game because they could not handle our size and our physicality. That's what kind of triggered the whole Diabate Durin Stewart Brawl. So I don't think they'd really have a preference. But if you're telling me I get to choose between like fully healthy Charlotte, Fili without imbede or Lando like a half broken team, Miami kinda just like stumbling around for the last 20 games. I didn't at least want not Charlotte, but I bet they don't care. Then they shouldn't. They're the number one seed. - Yeah, I would say Charlotte as well, except I watched that game Friday and the pistons really big boyed them in that game. Which has happened to Charlotte, you know, the more, and they've been an amazing story, especially when you think they started 4 and 14 or whatever it was, but they're a little small and those, the bully teams seem to really enjoy going against them. And I start no wonder if Detroit would just be a bad matchup for them. I might have been too low on Detroit, especially like we did our scariest playout, like scariest ceiling of a playoff team. I feel a little differently about Detroit than I did a couple weeks ago. - Well, the way they weathered the K-Aid injury was tremendous and they're just, they're just, I think everyone is focused rightfully so on the outside shooting and do they have enough to have enough secondary creation, all that Jenkins has potentially answered at least a bit of like the, can anyone but Kade create some offense for us? Off the jump, we'll see how he holds up in the playoffs. But they just get by with just cutting toughness, size, rebounding and their defense is legit, top to bottom, they're really good. And like they, to your point about where they had, where we had them in the scariest draft, like their offense may never reach scary levels, but you're just not gonna beat them in a short series. Like even if they lose to Boston or lose to the Knicks, it's gonna be like a long nasty series. And that tends, I think that just favors them 'cause they're just bigger and meaner and tougher than a lot of these other teams and they wear you down. - I think one other thing happened with them. So I was thinking about it Friday night 'cause I really thought Charlotte was gonna show up Friday night and I didn't bet on it, but I just felt like, you know, coming off the fight to insharlate, this would be a nice little test for the Hornets, like they're playing for stuff and Detroit really big boy, though. I wonder like in the last month or so, 'cause this happens in, this is more of a football thing than a basketball thing, but in football, there's always the nobody believes in us team, especially when we get toward the playoffs. And there's this team that gets a chip on their shoulder 'cause they feel like they're not being respected. Basketball, it's a little tougher 'cause I think for the most part, it's really tough to, if you play like shit, you're probably gonna play like shit in the playoffs. And if you're really erratic in the regular season, you're probably gonna be, Miami's really the only team that's been able to pull off the nobody believes in us thing over the last 10 years and a real chip on their shoulder and a switch. I think Detroit has that now. I think they just seem pissed off to me. Like I don't know if you read or heard any of this stuff from the Charlotte game, but like Durin didn't wanna do any sort of post game, anything like canned shakes. The game ended and like we're off the floor. Like they were still mad about the fight stuff. - I like that. - So I wonder, and then Cade goes out and everybody's like, well Detroit's done Cade's out. They're not gonna lose the number one seed. They didn't. I just think there's, I've been reading between the lines, reading stuff on them. And I think there's an edge to them now that I'm not sure they had at start of the season. - Yeah, I mean, they are the nobody believes in us team, which is ironic 'cause they're the number one seed. I felt like JJ Reddick tried to nudge the Lakers into that when he was like everybody wants to play us and say, yeah, man, with no Luca and Reeves, you can probably get why that is. You don't get to be the nobody believes in us team. But Detroit has a point. They have a point. People think they're young, shooting challenge, all that. Cade got hurt. I thought they were safe for the number one seed. I didn't think they were gonna lose that at all, but they have a point. And I'm very excited to watch them in the playoffs. If they roll in the first round and come like guns blazing in the second round for Cleveland or whatever, that's gonna be a lot of fun. - They have a great crowd at home. They're gonna have home court. They got something with Jenkins that they didn't have before the All Star break where they've turned Jenkins now into a real asset. You know, those Cade minutes. Cade, they got to play a couple games here heading into the playoffs. So he's not just coming in. - Looked to good. - Flat. I will say though, this is, I wanna mention this. As you know, I'm the unofficial Zara professional sports. I think this is another great case for the one seed in each conference. It should be five games at home. Two, two, three. Because for Detroit, so let's say Philly loses to Orlando. And now they have to play Philly in round one. But maybe Mbid can come back. I'd wonder who they would wanna pick out of the Philly Orlando Charlotte Miami. Or what if Charlotte ends up being the eight seed and they're like, fuck, and Boston gets Philly and Orlando's out? It just feels like there should be some advantage toward being first that I don't think we have. - You're preaching to the preacher. I think the number one seed you get to pick its own opponent. I think I'm fine with the five, two home court thing in the first round. If you play the whole 82 game season in a year where teams are not really playing the whole 82 game season for good reasons for bad reasons. And you come out number one. And in Detroit's case number one by a pretty hefty margin in these, you should get a bigger reward than you get. And by the way, Detroit played its guys every game down the stretch. They didn't have to do that. They did it because I think they pride themselves on we wanna stay in rhythm. We wanna stay in peak physicality. And we wanna deliver, like we wanna go in the playoffs feeling like we didn't leave anything on the table and we're going in like full blast. And I was fun. - I wonder at the end of the year if a team should get a trophy from like the Adam Silver trophy or something for just like, I'm just proud of you guys that you gave a shit for every week. Thank you. Thank you for being a role model of how the leaks should work. You guys really cared the entire time. Here's another reason why they should get a 223. It's actually better for Boston the way the setup is now because the 78 game happens and Boston's gonna know from that point on who their opponent's gonna be, right? They have four days. But if you're Detroit, now you have to wait for the eight nine. Like it could be like, let's say Charlotte versus Orlando for the eight nine and you're not gonna know until Wednesday game Friday night. - Totally dead. - And then we go on Sunday. So you have the number one seed allegedly with a huge advantage not knowing who they're gonna play on a Friday morning having to scout two teams. It seems stupid to me. Phoenix Portland is the other seven eight. And as we said before, genuinely I think Portland could win this. Scoot stock, by the way, my accountant just called like a half hour ago asked if I saw the crossover in the first half when he just went right to the rim and looked like Derek Rose, I said I did. But Scoot again, look pretty good. I've the looks great. The center, the team has a nice vibe. Not like, you know, if they win the set, if they are able to win the seven seed, put them against San Antonio. It's not nothing. I don't think they'd win. But if I'm San Antonio, I'm like, all right, this kind of sucks. I thought we were gonna play Phoenix. - Is either a team that pleasant to play against? I mean, it's kind of a rock fight between two mediocre offenses and tough physical defenses, lots of turnovers, lots of fouls. San Antonio is above, should be above caring about this and should wipe out either of those teams in a playoff series. But Portland's frisky, I've also held onto some Scoot stock over the years, not as much as you. So I've been happy to see that. And I'll pick all the play in all the play in games on my pod, either tomorrow or Thursday or whenever, whatever's left, I'll pick them. And I, 'cause it's, it's folly to pick one game, but it's also fun. I very well might pick Portland to win that game in Phoenix. - I have a Fando line. You were correct, sons, four and a half. You claim you're not a gambling guy and you're just picking lines exactly. - Look at me. - Portland is plus one 52. - I don't know what that means. - I like it. That means if you bet $100 and that means you win 152, if they win. - Okay. - So, and then the Magic Sixers, Sixers are one point favorites. And then the Clippers are minus three and a half against the Warriors. - Magic Sixers may be the play in game I'm least excited about in the history of the play and that doesn't involve the Chicago Bulls. Interesting. Did we have it at Lanna Charlotte playing game at one point? I feel like that was worse. But though any game involving those two teams is just going to be there's going to be goofy offense. Somebody might score 145. Lamello will take some crazy shots. There's always fun stuff going on in those games. Well, the 910 Charlotte Miami, which is really the one of the worst rival is we have. That would be a fun thing. Top five worst rival is Charlotte Miami. How many times do they play in the playoff series? They're in the same division. I mean, they played once. It was a seven game ugly, ugly series back in the day with three times. 2001 Charlotte won three nothing. 2014 Miami sweep. LeBron's last year and then 2016, the aforementioned ugly four to three battle that Miami won. I think that was nobody won. Somebody just lost. I'm going to say Steven Jackson still there on Charlotte. No, who was there on Charlotte to Al Jefferson? I think big Al Jefferson. Kenba certainly there. Joe Henderson's probably involved. How sad is it that this was a seller? A seller. I don't remember anything about the series other than it was seven. I had an idea for this winner Charlotte Miami winner advances to the eight nine loser has to take Terri Rozier back. That's it. He's actually at the game. He's hanging above the arena like the world wrestling when they do the WWE, when they do the money in the bank belt. Terri Rozier is just in a strap hanging over the arena. And then after the game gets lowered down and rejoins one of the two teams. That's my idea. I don't know if you're into it. I mean Rozier, it's got a movie prize game. Look if we're trying to gin up interest in the play and it's got, it's not the worst idea you could come up with. It's certainly the most controversial and probably Adam Silver is going to listen to this and be like, why? Why did they have to say his name? Why? Miami waved him two days ago. I know you can't hide from the news NBA. You can't hide from the news. We'd come back from commercial and then come back up to him hanging over the court again. There's Terri Rozier. He said, "All right, where's the phone? Where it goes? Why is he on his phone? What did you do? I thought we disabled his wireless. And then Clipper is Golden State is the definition of an awesome playing game. Steph versus Kauai 2017. We're back, baby. The rematch. Kauai's revenge? No, probably not. You were so excited. And it texted me so excited that you were going to get a Los Angeles home Steph Clipper's game. I'm legitimately excited. As if this was like 2014 Blake Griffin, the Sterling controversy, Chris Paul, young warriors, rise and up. And I'm like, this might be the least exciting possible Clipper's warriors postseason matchup of the last 50. It is the least exciting bird. But it's still Steph Curry and it's still Kauai Leonard who's going to make second team all NBA. Steph would have been ready in that conversation too if he hadn't got hurt. You know, it's sad because I knew you when you were an impressionable pup, you'd wide eyes. You really love basketball. Just the thought of Steph and Kauai and a do-it-die game. What did Delaydie do? No end. Now you've been on some studio shows. You're hanging out with Gwyne Wade. Okay. All right. And now it's like you're too good for. No, I'm good for Steph versus Kauai. Guess what? I'll tell you what, Zach Lo. I'm showing up at like 530 for warmups. I'm going to get there soon as doors open. I'm in. I would expect if you are there at 530, I will expect at least one tweet from the body language doctor about Derek Jones Jr.'s pregame warmup. How's G. Absolutely. How's G. Santos high five game in the warmup? Like I just give me something. Give me some insight. I'm going to do multiple IG posts. Get ready. Watch Steph do the full court. Heave shot, whatever it does. If you're two questions off this game really quick, Ken Golden State went to in a row. I think it is is conceivable as Lazy as they've been this year. Of course it is. Of course it is. And Portland or Phoenix back to back. I think they can. Yeah. Absolutely. If you're the clips, do you wish you had Zubat's in this game and you're never made the trade or you still love the trade? Love the trade. Good value. And we'll see how the lottery, see how the lottery unfolds. I think that's also the right answer. And part of that trade was they thought they'd get a Neater House or who's a bad ass for like a week and a half and then got hurt. But I think that was part of the reason that you're going now. Matt Mathurin slumped to the finish line. He did. Has hurt both that trade for now and also his value in the Aussies of the agency of the Clippers, even resign him if the number gets to a point where they are not comfortable with it. I mean, it depends on what LeBron is going to want when he switches teams. Okay. All right. How much money are they going to have to have left over? I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I mean, do you really? Do you really think there's a chance LeBron goes to the Clippers? I've always been told through the years hard know on the Clippers. I've said that as well. I'm just trying to torture the Clipper fans. Sorry. Oh, they've been through enough. My God. I gen remember when I threw my warriors, the area you with LeBron a while ago, I don't know, six weeks ago, I'm starting to become convinced that's going to happen. And I think it's the expendables went. Remember when sliced alone did the action movie when he got all the older action heroes back together? Yeah. And it was like never saw kind of an all-star team of older, Dolph Lunger was a bunch of people. I'm really convinced that that's how this plays out. Look, they're looking at everybody, right? Like Stein, I think broke the news that they looked at Kauai at the trade deadline, which is true. I've now confirmed that. That's true. And like, they're just like, whatever, who can help Steph? Who's gettable for Kankai, Yannis? Who can we get? Hurts Yannis stuff, too. You did? It's been all over the, but what the warriors are just how much of a disaster the trouble situation is. No, about like trade. Trade preferences. He heard this. He doesn't want to be on the West Coast, which rules out my Portland theory that I was really excited about. Okay. That's what I heard. And I looked at a map to back up the information I was getting. Greece really is far from America. It turns out that's what the map said. Not close. As it turns out, Greece is far away. But when you're going from Greece to America, the East Coast turns out closer to Greece than the West Coast. Do you want to talk? Portland, Portland really far away. Portland's like, you're talking 19 hours from Greece. I don't know. It's not it's 19, but it's long. I'm glad that this is dawning on you. I was going to. Did you bother me right away? I was going to talk. I was going to ask if you want to talk about the Hungarian election today. If you really just want to get into some geopolitics or do I just just keep going to leave that over to the side. Yeah. So, but on the flip side, suddenly a team like Charlotte, not that far from Greece. Oh my God. They had look. Okay. We're not doing this. We're not doing it. Look at the map and go down the east or east or seaboard. You know what I want? First of all, the bucks probably shouldn't care and don't care anymore. And number two, give me the guy who's like, you know what? I want Midwest. I like it here. Give me another Midwest team. Deal me to Chicago. Let me go save the bulls. Someone has to save the bulls. Someone has to save them from themselves. I'll do it. It's 100 miles away. I'll do it. I'm glad you mentioned the bulls. I want a five American cities with direct flights to Greece. My least favorite eight major American airport, by the way. Oh, here. I hate oh, here. I think mine is probably Atlanta. It's just too big. I don't like when I have to get on a tram to go from one terminal to another. I don't like tramps. I just want to just want to land. You know what's an amazing airport, Burbank. Never found an Uber bank before. Burbank. We did San Francisco Burbank. Amazing. You're like out and you're like in your car in a second. Round one. Okay. So Boston versus Philly or Orlando, those are the two choices. If we go upset watch, let's cross up. Okay, so you're San Antonio because no round one team is beating either of them. Okay. Upset teams, Minnesota beating Denver. Who is even favored in Lakers Houston? I better look at that. I'd Lakers have home cord. I would I think Houston should be favored personally. Houston is giant favorites minus 900. So Lakers would be the upset in that Cleveland, Toronto. So Toronto beating Cleveland Atlanta beating the next or Detroit or Boston losing to the Hodgepodge of teams. What is your most upsetting? Where's upset watch going in your opinion for you? I mean, I think of all those series. I'm going to just park Lakers rockets over here because I don't, we'll see who's healthy who's not. I'm tempted to say Minnesota. I just don't have enough confidence in the state of their team over the last month. I guess, I guess next, I guess next Hawks, because I think the Hawks are, are interesting. I will pick the next to win that series, but anti-cavs who have had their playoff bugaboo's over the years kind of lucked into it. a good matchup for them in the first round that they should be able to just no matter if Hardin comes out and has a bad game or Jared Allen gets pushed around on the boards or whatever usual stuff happens to them. That should just be a series they should win. So I guess I would say the next. I would as well because I just don't think Toronto has it in them to be Cleveland. I think that would have to be a real collapse. I will say Cleveland fits a lot of the rest of you would want for a playoff upset because of their defense. That's just a great way to lose the series not being able to guard anybody and giving up a bunch of threes. I'm trying to think which team would have a better chance of upsetting to trade. And I think it's probably Charlotte even though we just litigated how small they looked in that. But just the Charlotte three point shooting the longer that series goes that they just got hot. I would start to get scared after a while. Plus you're in a situation where Lamello. I don't think he would be but it's conceivable he could be the best player in a series. Right. Not saying he would be. I'm saying it's at least in play. It's in play. I keep trying to talk myself into what I thought the magic could be in the preseason like Franz is back Anthony Black is back. They've got the full complement of players. They have a scary upside. Their defense has been top eight in the last couple of years. Not this year. It's slipped backwards. Their offense is actually better but it's still kind of a mess. But they have all these guys. They're all healthy and it's just too much has happened too much has gone wrong. There's just too much there and they should be it. They should be the answer to this question even with as well as Charlotte has played the fully healthy magic who had a 50 and a half over under before the season should be the answer to this question and they're just they just aren't. We did bad on the overrunners. It was the worst I've ever done. Now, but here's the thing and I'm not making excuses. I think all the tanking really screwed up some of the record stuff like some of the stuff that normally works even like one of I had the the unders for Washington and Brooklyn I think for because I just thought they're trying to think we all did. The problem is with this many teams trying to tank they end up playing each other a bunch of times. So you had teams getting wins that didn't even want to win. That happened the Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Dallas golden state those situations being where it was just an awful year but now I'm really I'm motivated to make a comeback. I have some playoff odds for you on Fandall. Next minus 255 for the series over Atlanta. So that's a little row. I would have said 3 to 1 but minus 255 Atlanta plus 250 and win that and then Cleveland is minus 480 against Toronto. Toronto is plus 370 to take that and then Minnesota Denver. What do you think the you know nothing about odds but what do you think the odds are for that? Minnesota Denver based on all the numbers you just threw out on those other series. I'll say like Denver minus 500. Denver minus 330. Okay. So so faith in faith in the wolves. My stealth contender who all first of all stealth means stealth right like low chance but possible. Stealth is a key word and also matchup dependent and they've just walked into a nightmarish path to get anywhere in the playoffs. 330 is a little lower than I expected given ants up you know in and out of the lineup. Jaden has just come back and I that's a little lower than I would have thought. I agree. I think there's some pedigree stuff with Minnesota just the two conference finals which I think is meaningful. Okay. Enough for play. It's time. Okay. 50 minutes. We did it. Last year we did it. This will go faster this year. Our 25 most intriguing people in the 2026 playoffs. We did this last year and somehow picked 28. Oh highlights. I'll ask you here. We did it categories. So it's basically a draft. We're going back and forth to drafting but you have to draft a player for a specific category and here are those categories America. Apex superstar. Beloved bench guy. Crossroads guy meaning somebody who is at the crossroads of his career crossroads with his team whatever defensive stud. Feel good star. Hot seat coach hot seat wild card could be coach or player. I didn't know that could be. I didn't know that could be a player too. It can be a human being. Okay. Could be an owner. Oh my god. Legacy guy. Second banana. Third banana. The leap. Last year I took Tyrese Halliburna as my leap guy. Neem a huge leap. Trade machine guy. Somebody were coming out of the playoffs like that guys getting traded weak link. And then we just get a bonus guy who has to be mentioned. So I gave you the first pick. You have to pick somebody and then stick him in one of those categories. So it's your most intriguing player assigned to a category. So you're expecting me to come in here and get Wembee or Yochitch or SGA because you know, I guess I want to win this right? Like there's I don't know how one wins this, but you think I'm going to take one of these names and I'm not. I am going to for the crossroads category. I'm starting here. I am taking Donovan Mitchell in the crossroads category. And I just think he's had a fascinating career. He's made the playoffs every year of his career and has never made the conference finals. His team and it's not on him. I'm dead. People say like he's never made the conference. His teams have never made the conference finals. He's had some great series. He's had some clunkers. His teams, particularly in Utah, both both Utah and Cleveland have had some like pretty epic flame outs. I think in all I think he's been in the playoffs eight times already, eight for eight. His teams have won I think just one series where you could say they beat a team as good as them or maybe a little bit better. And that was his rookie year when they beat the Thunder with Paul George and Russ in the first round in six games. They had the same record that year. Other than that, they've lost to their peers. They've lost two couple teams that who are worse than they haven't been anyone who's better than them. And look, Cleveland's obviously had a kind of a checkered history with this core. They exchanged one member of it, Darius Garland for James Harden. Donovan Mitchell's the guy. I trust the most of Cleveland's best players. Like I expect him to be great in the playoffs. He's been great in the playoffs. He's been at times like the only Cavalier you felt you could count on in the playoffs. But it's just like I kind of want to see him make make a run longer than he's been because he's been such a consistently great player. And it's a crossroads pick for me also because like if they if they disappoint in the playoffs again, they've already traded one of these guys. I just don't he's not like up for you know he's not a flight risk anytime soon. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like they're just comes a point. You've seen it with the Clippers, the Chris Paul, Blake Griffin Clippers were like if you just lose too many times too early in the playoffs for what your pedigree should be, it just starts to go sideways a little bit. And I think Cleveland is kind of nearing that point. And Donovan Mitchell, it just it's I want to see a deeper playoff run. That's all. And he's had some bad losses. I think the last couple of years were bad. But the Clippers Utah one were didn't Kauai. How many I can't remember because that was the one I got hurt. Half way through the series and they still lost. They were up to oh, they lost four games in a row. And the sixth game is Terrence man having like an out of body experience and hitting a million threes and just and the other the next year when Utah limped out of the go bear go bear Mitchell air. Luca was hurt for part of that series and they still couldn't beat the maps. That was the Brunson. Maybe he could be have his own team. I thought that was a really good pick. Thank you. I had ironically had Mitchell third on my list. Not first, but I had him third and I saw the case. I don't I don't have for that category or for just your whole list. But just make your probably I would have no I would have put in me their legacy across road. Here's the thing with Mitchell. We've gone through this a couple times with players. How far can we go with this guy? Chris Paul you mentioned him he got in there. I think Dame was in there too. Even though Dame did get to the conference finals and that really weird gold state Houston year when Durant got hurt all that you know and then they got swept. But I don't think anyone felt like that was a conference finals team. Westbrook I think was another one. We're like what? How far are we going with this? And I think Mitchell is certainly a better higher upside player than than Westbrook was. On paper, he seems like somebody who should be able to be the best guy on at least a conference finalists. I also think if it doesn't happen this year, I wouldn't be surprised if he's on another team next year, which is why Crossroads, I think, was the right pick for them. I think we both agree. If this if something bad happens to this team in one of the first two rounds, I'm prepared for any outcome with any guy in that roster. Absolutely. Nothing nothing would shock me if they lose. I mean God forbid they lose in the first round. I expect them to win that series. But if Detroit just we've seen different versions of Cleveland, but with the same front line, we've seen them get out physical and outtuffed in the playoffs before by big burly teams, notably the NICS. If that would happen again in a Detroit series, I just all all bets are all Yeah, because you could even see, I don't know, I noticed the luxury tax bill came out. Seven teams paid the luxury tax. The cabs had the highest luxury tax bill. I think it was 68 million. I don't think they're doing that again. And then you look at some of the desperate teams around the week that want to make a big splash. And we'll see. Mitchell always like, it always seemed like he was supposed to go to the next. I went to went to school and Greenwich, like famously want to be at the East Coast and then just kind of ended up on Cleveland. I've always been suspicious of that. And maybe Brooklyn, how many years in a row are the size just going to be like, yeah, we're going to suck again. Like at some point, they're going to have to make a real run and have it a team. Well, they don't have one. They don't control their pick next year, which makes them kind of a wild card in the off season. Look, I expect like Don of the Mitchell is resigned with Cleveland at the moment when he could. He's got multiple years left on his. We know that doesn't mean anything though. No, but he's also like, I don't want to make this too much of a pan. He's got a lot of years left on his deal. He said all the right things. He's been happy there. People tend to get less happy when their teams. He's got. He's actually he's only got. Next year in a player option left on his deal. He's also showing up for them in the playoffs with other people on their team were injured or didn't show up. So you've got to get him credit for that. He's a big, a big moment for him and for the calves. Yeah, a really good season. If Luca is really ineligible, which we're just never going to find out if he's eligible or not. He is really ineligible. I think Mitchell is going to be my. What's the guy in that team? How about this? If we're going to take forever to make these rulings and we're going to have to litigate this. Why remember the NBA award show when they tried to make that a thing and like kept all the awards secret for this. The big award show. Yeah, red carpet. And then that they pretend like that just never happened. We never tried that. Listen, ever talk about it. Bring it back. If it's going to take forever, let's all get together again in July and give us some awards. They can get the lawyers can come out like the Ernst and young guys and announce it in talking. You know, who knows. I'm going to take in my. In my apex superstar spot. I'm going to take Wembee. And I do think I liked your Mitchell case. I had Wembee first on my ballot. I think he is by far the most intriguing guy in these playoffs. I wrote down on my notes is this is 1975 JAWS moment. It's just the moment when we are releasing a summer blockbuster. And it's going to make a cajillion dollars and be known as one of the best films of its kind. And. And we're always going to remember this was the year it came out. Or we're going to wait a year or two years. Who knows. I've just I'm old enough to remember when it seemed like Samson or Lajewan were going to be around forever in that last of a year. I never trust any sort of long term anything when big guys are involved. And I know right now he has a really good team that's been kicking ass in January first. He was the best part I saw in person this year. I'm not voting for MVP, but he was the best single performance I saw in person this year. My questions are can he play 35 to 37 minutes a game in the playoffs, which I think he's going to have to do for this team to win. And you're going to have to rip through this Denver, OK, see whoever comes out of the East gauntlet went for an arrow. My question for you, if they make the finals and he's age 22, but they lose in the finals, is that season still a huge win for him because I would say it is. Oh my god, yeah, absolutely, even though you talk it out and you think they lost to an Eastern conference team in the finals, they'd be favorite to get to the finals with this young group of guys in a couple of veterans would be a massive win. Great pick. I'm jealous. You got wimbee. He also doesn't really fit any other category like he's too young for the legacy guys. He's too good for the defensive stud category. He's already made the leap. I'm don't if there's probably another leap coming, but that that it just is the only category you can really maybe feel good star could be. But he doesn't feel right for that. So you got him in the right category. The other thing that we should just mention really quick and why, you know, I'm always excited for the NBA playoffs. Trying to think of the last time a new guy was in the playoffs that was kind of can't miss. I don't care who San Antonio plays every round. I'm not missing a minute of the spurs in the playoffs. And I think the last guy was probably curry out of the new guys obviously going back to the 2000s their others, but when curry and we were working together at Grandland, I think it was your first year when curry had kind of his breakout that year when they upset Denver and then they lost to San Antonio. And at some point there in that. It became like I'm not missing a curry playoff game anymore just period. And I feel that way about Wembee. I think Wembee out of all the guys that are in the playoffs. I don't want to miss Wembee or Yoke age one minute of any playoff game with those guys. I felt that way about Luca when he first cracked the playoffs with Dallas and he lived up to the high. That's good. I should have mentioned him. Yeah, you're right. That's a good Luca, but it was was in the bubble. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, the bubble. You're right. That's good call. My apologies to Luca. All right. You have the next pick. All right. I'm going to pick Yoke and I have him in the legacy category. That's the right category. And I think it's it's the right pick. And for just this just this reason only. And I was hoping the seeds would fall this way for this pick because he is a three time MVP. He probably should be a four time MVP. I don't think he's going to win this year. He's going to get closer. You can get second again probably. You I think before the season said he's already one of the 10 greatest players of all time. I don't think that's premature to say that. And I went over this on my pod last week. If you look at all the guys who have won three or more MVPs. It's a very short list. Every one of them but Moses Malone has more than one ring. And I think that's one of the reasons why Moses Malone doesn't get mentioned enough in these like all time great conversations. And that's nothing against Yoke to pro. If you replay the 21 and 22 seasons with the fully healthy nuggets. It feels like they get one of those titles potentially like one of those may have belonged to them. You can make some argument about the Clippers. But it at some point he's going to I don't know if he's going to have to get a second ring to enter that kind of stratosphere because he's just been this good. I just think if he does and if he does it this season by running through this gauntlet of teams. The entire conversation about him goes even up another level where some of the most how load names in the league begin to not only be mentioned alongside him but maybe a little bit behind him. But that's that's if right that's if and at some point I do think he'll make another run to the finals and if it's if it's this year. We're going to be having some pretty high level conversations about him after the finals. Yeah, I think I'm dealing with that. We through two picks. No, that's you made all the right points. I would have made all the same ones. Moses is a great comparison because he was the best part of the league for five years and had some bad luck with the team. He was on only one one title only one finals. He made the finals like a 40 41 team. But for five years, he was the best guy in the league. Yo, it's just been the best guy in the league for this entire decade. He's either been one or two depending on who got super hot that year or whatever else is going on. I did a tweet this week about this weekend about if he's second in MVP if he finishes number two, which I think is conceivable that he'd be the third player ever to to be first or second MVP for six straight years. Whether to a Russell on bird. There's only he would be I think the sixth guy ever to just have six top two MVP finishes. And I think MVP finishes are super important to good way to look at who actually had real impact. It's easy to be like, oh, this guy was amazing. But go look at where did they stay in the season? This is the thing that is probably the worst for Curry's top 10 case is he kind of doesn't have enough like top three top four MVP's. If you're really putting him against everybody, it's the one thing you can ding him on and for Yoke is just the finals. By the way, you look back and you go, he only won one title. What happened? And you weren't there to see how devastated the Murray injury was because it took two playoffs away from him. And the other thing I was out to dinner with some guys in Denver last night, nuggets fans. They wanted the third seed and they wanted the gauntlet. And I thought it was interesting why I don't know if the team probably doesn't care about this. But they are so sick of hearing about how Denver had an easy road to the first championship. How they got to face two play in teams along the way, including in the finals that they now want the they they're they're not getting greedy. If they're like if we're going to win it again, I want to win it the hardest way possible. And it just got me thinking about not only Yoke itch and the MVP in history, but like if they actually did this against these teams, what it would mean for the whole franchise. The gauntlet's good. I mean, my favorite Celtic team ever was the 87 team the year after they won in 86 when they had to they basically had a seven game war against Milwaukee, a seven game war against Detroit. And then they had to put the Lakers and they didn't beat the Lakers, but it was like just that pulled the most out of them. They're almost broken down at the end and it was a real championship run. You know, this nuggets teams a little younger. I think they could survive other things. I think there's more chances here. But Yoke has just had the best career of his career. is probably not gonna win the MVP. The offensive stats, I was doing all the work this weekend, trying to figure out a vote for. And the offensive stats are just like, you just can't even believe it. (laughs) You're just like, oh my God, like true shooting, just pick any stat, or like, oh my God, this guy's created over, what do you, 28 points a game and 12 a seat created like over 50 points a game of offense? - And I'll say it again, the defense is that. - Is it the best rebounder? - Their defense has not been good enough in the last 20 games, whatever, problematic. Maybe it's a wait till the playoffs thing, maybe whatever. If you're just focusing on that, what you're missing is like, they're making it look so easy on offense, no matter who they play, that it's actually a little bit scary. It's some of these games are like, it's like shooting fish in the barrel. It's just too easy for them, that if they actually ramp up their defense at all, like Peyton Watson gets healthy, whatever, they can absolutely win the title. It's just a hard road. So that's my pick. - Denver 12 to 1 to win the title. Okay, see his plus 125, San Antonio's plus 480 and the Celtics are plus 550. Cleveland is 10 to 1, that was the other one. Cleveland's odds drop because of how the playoffs played out with Toronto, which I thought was interesting. Okay, really good pick, you're doing a great job. - Thanks, man. - Your scout in the department should be proud. - I have to take Tatum here because it's a most intriguing draft. - Okay. - And I'm gonna put him in the feel good star category. - He was my number one pick for that category. I was actually gonna take, I might as well give him a take him next room. - We don't need to talk about Tatum. Everybody knows the stakes. This was one of the craziest comebacks I've ever seen. And in some ways, he's even better than he was before he left. In other ways, he's not. Like I thought that next game, he had a lot of trouble going buying around in an OB, which I thought was notable. Like there's a certain way to defend him that I just don't think he's 100% comfortable with the first step yet. Everything else is back, the rebounding's back, the passing's back. And he's just so much better than I thought he was gonna be. I was like, boy, it would be nice if he was a rich man, Sam Hauser. And it's like this guy's one of the 10 best rebanners in the league already, and playing defense and the passing. And you know, just is a really meaningful athlete to Boston fans and Celtic fans and at the games. And everyone's just really invested in this. So the longer it goes, I think it could be pretty special. - It's the right pick. You would have been a good second banana pick, maybe the way this year has gone, but just the right category for him. I was gonna take him next round, but you taking him in this round allows me to make the most obvious pick, but load up my roster. Apex superstar, 'cause that's a Yokech for Legacy Guy. Apex superstar, I'll just take SGA, just sit in there, low hanging fruit, I'll take him. Everything I said about Yokech, it legacy, what happens to him if he levels up? He's probably, I would say, gonna win his second MVP. If he finishes that with back-to-back titles, breaking the leagues, no repeat streak and back-to-back finals MVP's, we're talking, I saw some tweet today, he already won the 25 best players in the league. That conversation is gonna go zoom in, and a different, or is zoom in higher than that, if this postseason goes that way. So look, I got Yokech, I got SGA, I'm taking SGA, Apex, and there's no other category for him. This is the only category I think where he fits. So I'm taking him here. - I just did my pyramid, I just updated it for the playoffs. And I have him in level four. And I have him 30th. Okay. And I think that's the right area, but I think if they win a second title, and he's two time back-to-back MVP, back-to-back titles, back-to-back finals MVP's, he's in the top 25, and that's it. It's not arguable, that's just where he ends up, because now we're talking about some real shit that only a handful of guys have done in the history of the league. Good pick, I have no notes. I also think he could have been, if there's a category of who could be dinged by these playoffs, that would have been an interesting one. Like if he just sucks in the San Antonio series, or there's some other outcomes, so then we're like some, I have a draw go of the Russian or cut outcomes, which you could feel a little bit over in December when they played the Spurs a couple of times, like, huh. But then, so if we have a seven foot five alien, we can stop this guy. - But that's the only time you felt that way. And I just never worry about him having a bad game, and even his bad games were like, oh, he shot eight for 21, and still got 10 free throws and finished with 29 points. And then you know, the next game, he's gonna play, but he just never has two bad games in a row. Defense is a constant. Anyway, that's an obvious pick. I changed my mind on my MVP pick 230 times this weekend. Forget to tell you. - Are you gonna finish that story, or are you just gonna leave an egg in there? - Still haven't decided. - Okay. This is for my weak link pick. - Oh boy, you're getting hit. - It's mad. - No, you know what? I'm gonna go hot seat wild card. - Oh, I'm jealous, 'cause I have two guesses where you're gonna pick, and I'll just pick the other one later. - Deer and Fox. - Oh, you went not coach, okay. - Went not coach. - Okay. - Hot seat wild card, Deer and Fox. I've talked about this on the pod, and the past don't need to belabor it, but this is the guy to watch on this first team as we start climbing levels and seeing how high they can go. Somebody who used to be one of the best clutch guys in the league who had the offense running through him in the Kings who now has to figure out when to pick his spots on this team with a seven foot six alien on it. And there's been some signs, some, oh, signs from me watching them. If I'm a spurs fan, the ball seems to find him a lot in big moments. I'm not always sure he's gonna deliver. And I'm just really interested to see how it plays out because ultimately when you go in these playoffs and you'll see it like when it's Hawks Cat, when it's Hawks Knicks, ultimately that game's gonna come down to CJ versus Jalen Brunson, right? And if you're a Hawks fan and you're in these tight games with three minutes left, you're gonna have this epiphany where you're like, "Fuck, we have CJ who's a good player and they have Jalen Brunson who's second team on B.A. We're kind of at a disadvantage here." If Hawks is the guy deciding offense for them, but now I'm going against Yokeage or SGA, I just don't like my chances as much. And I think it's a lot of pressure for him. And he could be the lightning rod if things don't go well in a series, especially when we have 48 hours, 72 hours between games. And he has like a three for 16, 0 for six from three, game four, start of sports center, start above the shows, start above the pods. What's up with Darren Fox? Did they bench him? Just interested to see how it goes if it goes wrong. And it might not go wrong. - Yeah, the should we bench him feels a little far fetched to me. - In the podcast era, what are you talking about? - Okay, fair. In the hot take studio show era, that will absolutely be a topic. - I'll just say this, like I had him on the list for my candidates for the trade machine pick. The problem there being he has four years left on his contract after this at a gigantic number. I've actually been completely fine with how he's played this year. I dipping down to 33% from three is a little disappointing given he started higher than that. I think he's just done a good job at fitting in and not forcing anything and gradually developing a better chemistry with Wembee. I don't think he's ever going to be tasked with, okay, man, now we need like we need to run every offensive possession through you. It's crunch time. You were clutch player of the year, two years ago, three years ago, whatever. I don't think this team is built like that and that's fine. But he's being paid a salary of that level of player for many years going forward. And the Spurs, although they're thrilled to have this sort of like present all-star Darren Fox now, two young guards rising up behind him. Nobody's over taxed. The young guys don't have to do too much. At some point that equation starts to wobble when the young guys get ready and expensive. And it's only natural. And you know, you just never know when the time is going to come. So he was on my list for that category and I don't disagree with a lot of your reasoning. I also just don't worry about him much in terms of like underperforming. - Yeah, and from an aggregation standpoint. I'm glass half full on Fox with this team. I'm just trying to look at if things start to go wrong, what would people point at? And that seems to be the one. But I actually like him on this team. And I think if they didn't have him, you would still want a guy like him, somebody who's a little older, somebody who's been in some situations, he's competitive. I think he's a legitimately good point guard. And this is an awesome spot for him. They actually need him. They need him at the end of games. You know that he's just got to figure out how do I pick my spots and how much do I take over, how much do I deferred. I don't end being because he'll be the lightning rider but doesn't work out. All right. I'm deciding if I want to make a good pick or just an annoy you pick. And I think I'm going to just annoy you and take Peyton Pritchard as my beloved bench guy. Just so you can have him and obviously he's been phenomenal all season, whether he started or come off the bench his paint game one on one game is reaching Paul Bunyan level proportions at this point and he's massively important to arguably the best team in the Eastern Conference. So I will take him off the board for you. I was delighted that he had a really good next game against a team that he has always sucked against. I thought that was weirdly important that he finally put one on the board because they're going to definitely see him. All right, let's get crazy. My next pick is Jalen Williams, which one? J Dub. You know what? I'm not going to get that crazy. Now fuck it. I'm going to take him as my trade machine guy. I like it. Just for fun. Just for shits and gags. It's not just for fun. Don't do that. You got something to ruin in your head. Okay, so he has a lot of money to spend over these next couple of years. And I just sometimes I wonder, like if it doesn't work out for them this year, how does that play out? And I also couldn't think of another place to put him because I didn't want him as my second banana. Look, he's looked good lately. I don't think there's a lot to worry about here. But I also think it's going to be really hard to have three max guys plus K-San Wallace, plus all these draft picks. And I do wonder like, if you're going to take a huge swing, what is what does that look like? Now, if they win the title again, they're not trading anybody. But who knows? I'm just trying to loosen the draft. Look, there's a reason why I have a stool softer pick. I'm just loosening things up. There's a reason my trade machine list is loaded with guys on the thunder that are not j-dub, but are like door and, you know, Wallace and AJ Mitchell, just guys that, you know, they can fling around the league. I'm not going to go to that category. Now, I'm going to go chalk in my second banana category for reasons that need not to be elaborated, not at all. I will pick Carl Antidie Towns as my second banana intriguing for the playoffs. Team is built to win now. Team fired. It's coached, despite its first conference finals appearance in forever. Up and down season, he seems to be the subject of a team-wide existential crisis every two weeks has actually finished strong enough that I would put him third team all NBA right now. His defense has been, this has been a pretty solid defensive couple of months for him. And you just know that by game, maybe by game two of the first round, there we will have an existential crisis of like, why did he only take four shots in the last three quarters of that game or why are they not running the Brunson Towns pick and roll enough, which they've been running a lot lately. We shall see how it goes against the Hawks. He's had ups and downs in the playoffs to say the least. I think he's turned some corners in that regard over the last couple of years and got a little more consistent, made some huge shots last year along the way. But he's still one of the more enigmatic second banana types in the league. And I'm proud to have him on my roster. You and I both know a lot of next fans and you live in Connecticut. So you're around them probably 50% of techs I get from next fans are about towns. But sometimes like positive like excited that they think towns, good things are happening with town. So he's figured it out. I think this is Atlanta matchup. I think this Atlanta matchup is a good matchup for him. I don't think it's a great matchup for the next relative to what they could have drawn. But it'll be interesting to see how the Hawks guard him. If they guard him like they guarded him the last time they played last week, it's a good matchup for him. And the Nick should lean into his offense more. So I'm optimistic. Because it's an optimistic hopeful pick of cat. I am a I need to get this guy off the board before you take him. It's a little early. I'm taking him for third banana. But I also think he's super intriguing for these playoffs because I think he's a ceiling changer. I think you're going to take my guy. Yeah, I sure am. You can say hi to him in Denver right now. It is all no. Yeah. Yes. He's the superpower of this Denver team. He looks like he's back. And you could and Yokeh physically looks like he's back. And I think this might be the most healthy they've had all three of those guys at the same time playing well. But I can remember it since they won the title. So for that was three years ago. It feels like he just gets slightly better every year. And there's been guys like this over NBA history that just as they get older, they age like a fine one. And he's one of them. I just feel like every year he's gotten 5% better. So that's my third banana pick. I mean, he needsless to say, he was my number one choice for this category. And I've almost already taken him twice and I'm angry that you took him. I'm glad I got paid in preacher. Maybe I'll start just take maybe I'll just make a run of Celtics despite you. Maybe just just get resentful. Maybe I'll take maybe I'll take Google now is my defensive stud just just to smile. Wow. I'm not going to do that. Yeah, I'm not I'm not doing that. Let's see, let's see, let's. I'm going to go back to back bananas. Okay. And for my third banana, I will go back to back nicks. I guess one could argue if he's the true third banana. But the other noisy Nick dialogue is all about McCale bridges because of the five first round picks because of the like last six weeks where it's like, did he not crack double figures again? And just they need him to be not only a more reliable score, but a more when they're flowing, he's just more involved in the offense, both as a secondary ball handler as like a playmaker and open space. He's just more involved and they're going to need that version of him. And just like cat, if they don't get it, like just in general, if this playoffs goes poorly for the nicks, if they lose to the Hawks in the first round, which is not as impossible. If they lose to Boston in the second round, there'll be no shame in that, right? Like Boston's been the best team in the East for the last 40 games. That's a good matchup for the nicks, but there certainly be no shame in it. However, there would certainly be like an organization wide stain of we fired the coach into this really dramatic stuff and took and are out around earlier. And we traded five first round picks for this guy and Yannis is still sitting out there. I just feel like there's going to be a lot of McCale bridges noise. And so he's going to be, you know, Annanobi could be a third banana for them. I'm taking McCale bridges. Interesting. I feel like Annanobi is their third banana, but maybe in the playoffs, it becomes bridges. I don't know. I guess they're both third bananas. Maybe they're on that team. They're both third. I guess that's fair. That's the sometimes real and sometimes theoretical strength of the nicks. If they just have a lot of very good players and he's one of them. He's certainly given the ball handling load he showed he could take in Brooklyn is sort of more tailor made for like a banana 2.5 kind of role that he just hasn't played enough for them. You can tell that I'm just the nicks are just the most interesting puzzle to me in the NBA. Them are the calves. And so it's not a coincidence that I've drafted to next. Well, there's also their storylines with them that include they haven't won the title since 1973. They are looming as a semi blow it up team. They're looming as Yannis possible destination. They're looming as a possible dawn of a Mitchell destination. They're looming as just a destination. I'm prepared for anything with the nicks that they lose and round one or round two. I listen, you started out really well in this draft and the board has just been breaking for me perfectly ever since and you know, like it takes no, I do. I've just excited that you left this guy in the board for me for the hot seat coach category. I'm a doca. I've not been impressed by the coaching of this team this year. The chemistry doesn't seem great. I think the offense is just been bizarre. I don't understand why they have why email hasn't just said I have to sink or swim with reach shepherd because I don't have Fred Band-Bleet and it's going to be impossible to win even two straight rounds without a real point guard and he's just doing it his way. They put a staggering amount of miles and minutes on Amen Thompson who led the league and minutes this year and Kevin Durant who's 37 years old who I think was like seventh and minutes. They know they were one. Hard minutes. They were one to the last time I checked. Oh Jesus. Hard minutes. It's like total minutes. Right. I feel like he Kevin Durant's running to the corner and just setting up shop watching other people on the play. He's dribbling the ball up against people like Jada McDaniels and she's like that. I don't understand half the shit this team has done all season. And I don't understand the reach shepherd thing at all. I don't care if he's weak for you on defense. You're putting miles and unnecessary crunch time issues on your team. And it's like if you took reach shepherd third either either he has something or he doesn't, but you have to find out this year you're not winning the title. So I just don't understand it. And I would be very unsurprised if he was not their coach next year. Remember for this category last year I took Tom Tipado and you did a triple take backwards. And I was proven correct. I think they're they've backed into it. Not they've won nine out of 10. They haven't backed in anything, but they have a good first round matchup. And I think if they win a playoff series and play a pretty honestly competitive second round playoff series, despite all the offensive infrastructure stuff that we spent all year talking about the crunch time disasters and whatever would pamphlet injured and finnie smith being a complete nothing. I think they would walk him and I think they'd be fine giving you may another year. It's it's a it's not a completely off the wall pick. What if they lose to Lebron and the Lakers in round one in a series that Luca Dottich plays two games or no games. And by the way, would there be would there be with I mean, Eme is trash talk Lebron multiple times in games. I feel like he kind of wants to fight Lebron. Yeah. Like he just there's just something there. And if they're losing who the hell knows. It's not it's it's it's it's it's it could be the first. If if he made came off the two guys that could come off the bench and actually get into a fight with a player him and Joe Mozilla. I think Joe Mozilla it's anytime there's any sort of an altercation. I was worried. But this happened in 1975 in the finals when Al Alados came off the bench and fought Mike Reardon and got ejected by the way. Okay, you're up. I'm so excited. The leap the leap. Hmm. I could take this guy in multiple categories. I have a I have a feel good star that I want to take in that category. But you've already filled that category. I believe so I'm I'm I'm strategically shoving this pick down the road. I know you wish you had this guy on your roster. So I'll take him in the leap category. Steph Castle will be my will be my leap guy. And I'll just pen pen him in. Damn it. I don't even need to explain it. The guys might he's might be like my favorite non top 10 player in the league to watch. I just everything about him is insanely entertaining to watch. And I know one thing can nitpick is shooting nitpick is turnovers. Can't nitpick is passing. Can't nitpick is assist passing. Can't nitpick is pain scoring. Yeah, one thing I know for sure is that dude is not afraid of anything. That's about to hit them into playoffs. He wants all of it. He's not afraid of any player. He's not afraid of any opponent. He's not afraid of any scheme. He's not afraid of having a always shot. He started 0 for 8 in his first career playoff game. Is he going to get rattled? No, no, he's not. So he's my leap guy. I spent a half hour making sure it wasn't absurd to put him on 13 mom and ba. And the answer was it's not I would encourage anyone questioning whether he should be on an all on b 18 with all the guys that are now missing. Seem in person once. It all makes sense if you see him in person. I didn't and count league past two because I watched a lot of spurs to sure because of wimby. I never saw that guy take a split second off. Even today in that Denver game, there was a stretch where he was just getting offensive rebounds with there was surrounded by all these taller guys and he just kept jumping up over people and getting offensive rebounds to give them the people. I love stiff castle. That's a really good pick. I did half him. Okay. Gonna have to do it. You did this last year. So don't feel like I'm cheating. And if you want me to just confine it to one player, that's fine. No, do what you want to do. This is for the crossroads guy. And again, they might not even be in the playoffs for all we know. But I'm taking Palo and I'd like to really take him with France. Just because I feel like if this week goes badly for Orlando, I do not think these two guys will be teammates next year and they will just have to make some hard decisions. I think this is a stealthy honest team. I think it's a stealth. Hey Sacramento, you give us the fourth pick in the draft and we'll give you Palo. Let's let's dance. I'm just prepared for anything with this. But I think they would have to take a hard look at whether it makes sense to build a team around these two guys together. I think they already probably have and are doing it pending not even pending the playoffs. I had him. I was going to take him in my trade machine pick for all the reasons you outlined. Okay. I'm fine with you. Can have both him and France. He was a little too young for me in the crossroads category. And as always, by the way, Palo has always shown up big in the playoffs. And I think that's one of the good. That's one of the interesting reasons to take him here. After a pretty spotty regular season, the last couple of months have been better than the ones that came before it. Fit with France is still kind of TBD. But on underman teams, that dude is always showing up and not just in a like, oh, he had to take 30 shots and he got a pretty inefficient 35 points. Like he's showing up on both ends of the four and played pretty well. And that guy is still in there. Obviously. So it's a good pick and I had him on my trade list. Yeah, because they could lose the filly and they could lose to Charlotte and be out of the playoffs on Friday night. And at that point, the wheels and the trade machine will come off. All right, you're up. It's time for another spite pick. Mm-hmm. I contemplated him for leap. Okay. Defensive stud. I will take Derek White. Another one of my favorite players to watch in the league. Unrelenting makes every decision correctly. Would have been in my all NBA conversation. I shot the ball a little better. I saw Pena put him on. I just don't think you can put a guard who takes this many threes and doesn't make enough of a mod in all NBA team, even with all these guys missing. But he's on the fringes of the conversation. And I think if he shot 39% from three or something, I think he's that good at everything else. And just an all time great defensive guard for a team that again has legit finals ambitions. Do you have him first team Aldi? I do not. I have him second team. Yeah. It's funny because this is an intriguing draft. And I think he belongs in the draft for the reasons you just mentioned, but also because much like the Aaron Fox on the spurs, he could be the guy that sinks the Celtics if he can't make a shot. Because it'll hit a point a little like 2022 where teams are just going to leave them open if they don't think it's going in. It hasn't been not bad, but it's been veering toward the vicinity of, hey, we're going to actually have to see a make-2 before we start flying out of it. Yeah. I heard you talking about this with legs. And I am on like team Azula about this. I'm not worried. And if you want to leave him open, I'm thrilled that you're going to leave him open. I want him to take all the shots. I'm not worried either, but I'm a tiny bit worried. Just a little bit, a little, a whiff worried. All right. He's still on the board. I can't believe I can get him with this kind of value this late. As my legacy guy, I'll happily take Jalen Brunson here. So this broke to fantastic pick. It's broke pretty nicely for them. They get to play Toronto round one, which no, they play the all Atlanta. They play the whole. Yeah, that part didn't break. That part didn't break nicely for them. Actually, it didn't break nicely for them. I take it back. I reckon at that comment, but they go at laying around one and then boss them round two. He's got a ton of confidence against Boston. He's got ton of confidence against everybody. He's a beloved New Yorker. He's done a lot for the team. They came within two wins of the finals last year. I don't know how many more swings that they apple year to get. You have a one-seed Detroit team that's pretty young. You have a two-seed Boston that you feel like you could beat because you beat him last year. And this is about as good of a chance as you're going to get. San Antonio, not quite San Antonio yet. Wembee next year is going to be more frightening. Okay, so you will be the same. Denver, probably the best they're going to be. It's a really nice moment for him. He's second team on B.A. I don't think he will be a top five MVP. Do you? No, I don't. Do you think he could sneak fifth play? I don't think he will. No. And I think he's kind of settled into people having opinion on him and they think he is what he is. But I think he's somebody that can go toe-to-toe with every great player of the league. And we'll see. Like Obviously guy. I think it's a great pick and it's a great pick particularly because he's a Nick and because of what conversations he's already in like this every week there's a new is he already the greatest Nick since X or could he be the greatest Nick ever? Is he already a better Nick than this guy? If he takes them to the finals, there's going to be you in compare. There's just going to be a lot of like you and obviously had incredible longevity. You got this guy's from the 70s and all that. Like there's just because he's a Nick, all the legacy talk feels like doubly important and noisy. Well, especially because they're all sitting courts out at the games. He's had a taste of it because they've had success in the playoffs the last couple years and you can see how the entire city mobilizes behind the team when they're playing well and he's the focal point of it. So there you go. Okay, you're up. I have a lot of the negative categories yet and I'm not I don't want to go there yet. Just since you've left me a guy who doesn't fit anywhere else other than has to be mentioned. And so you know who has to be mentioned. Jalen Brown has to be mentioned. The guy who is going to be in the top five of the MVP and probably be first team all NBA and set the tone for a Celtic team that was not going to accept pessimists like me saying gap year under 41 and a half, whatever. And it's been all too happy to talk about that. And now the playoffs are here and Jason Tatum's back. And I'm just fascinated to see how Boston continues to evolve with the guy who was their undisputed best player. Now back in the lineup with Jalen Brown coming off an incredible regular season where he leveled up in a lot of to degrees in different categories that as you said, you don't normally see guys in year 10 leveling up this much in his passing. This much in his dribbling. This much in his steadiness. This much in his decision making. Now the bigger stages here and there's going to be not scrutiny, but just sort of curiosity of like, okay, now you're facing the best teams, the best defense is a game planning for you. Just days back. How does it all look? And so I don't have another category to take him in. He's got to be taken. I'll take him in my must be mentioned category. So you're taking him in bonus guy who must be mentioned. Yes. Okay. Because I don't have any other place to take him and I get to steal on from you. It's interesting. I thought you might take him in the leap. Well, I took Castle already. Yeah. The leap already, the leap kind of, I mean, I don't know. I don't know where else to take him. So I'm going to take him here. And boy does he deserve to be mentioned. He's been one of the half dozen best stories, biggest stories, most important stories of this entire season. I'm going to take, oh, my field good star is gone. Damn it. I already took a field good. Well, that really complicates things for me. Well, oh, man, looks like I have to do second banana. And I get to take one of my favorite guys this season. Somebody I've really thoroughly enjoyed. You took Steph Castle for me that I would have put in this category. I'm going to take Jaylen Thurne of the Detroit Pistons who I think I'm going to vote for second team on B.A. I think he has been, you mentioned Jaylen before and I think Jaylen Thurne is like this too. I think when we only go stats and advanced stats when you're looking at somebody's case for whatever and you're not also talking about the stuff you can feel when you're watching as a season, the nuances of the season. I think to me that Jaylen Brown, Jaylen Thurne are the two guys I think up for this. And Castle is some degree too. Jaylen Brown, there's all kinds of stats where you can be like the on/off, it's not as good. And if you didn't actually watch the season, you'd understand how important it was that he scored Jaylen Brown scored 35 points, I think 35 times this year. And he repeatedly guarded the other best guy and the other team and just showed up night after night after night where this weird team that they had with no Tatum and you never knew if Pritchard was going to show up offensively or if white or one of the wings. But you always kind of knew Jaylen was going to be there with his 30 points and his 12 free throw attempts and his 9/2 points. And there's something to be said for that. Durin is the same thing for me. It's night after night. This guy is 20 and 10. He's one of the physical, most scary guys in the league. There's an intensity to him that he has that I think the team feeds off. And I think other than Cade, he's the guy in this team that they he's the emotional fulcrum. And I think he's gotten better as the year went along too. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like he's gotten a little better offensively as the year has gone? Well, especially without Cade when they needed him to get to get 20 every night. So I think he's got 25, some dinesy got 30. I think he's a very intriguing player because he's still so young. I think he's still 22 or 23 years old. There are still occasional hiccups with him on defense in terms of positioning in his angles, but he can make up for a lot of it with just sheer athleticism. That's going to be tested. I've had a couple of scouts kind of just say I have a little skepticism of his offensive game and how it will survive in the playoffs because he seems to sometimes operate on the knife's edge of risk of turnovers of thread the needle passes. Is that dribble move really going to work? And they're curious to see how it holds up against elite defenses who are a little bit more focused on him. I would be optimistic. I think he should be an absolute lock for all NBA. I'd have him 13. I wouldn't really argue too strongly if you put him second team, but he should be like he should be a lock and he'd be a lock. Even if Luca and Ant were both eligible, he would still make my 13. So he's a great pick. And the thing to reason why both Jalen's are front for the intriguing draft because they're both intriguing. Jalen's going to be intriguing for all the who's going to have the ball at the end of the game. Can he continue to stay at this level? Jalen Brown. And then Dern, it's like, okay, you guys are number one seed. You looked awesome in the regular season. Can you now go up like 8% in the playoffs? Can you now be like a 20 and 14 guy, 22 and 14? Can you do this tonight after night? Can you stay at a foul trouble? Can you keep that physicality without losing your temper and shit like that? All right, you're up again. We're running out of categories. Yeah, I'll just take the low hanging fruit and be quick. I'll just take Mosley for hot seat coach. We already talked about it. It's an obvious pick. Someone has to do it. I like it. Oh, I put that in the hot seat wild card. Okay. I got rid of both of my hot seats already. Man, there's some good guys that we haven't taken, yeah, including this next guy. Let me see if I have a spot for him. Oh. Huh? I'll put him here. I'll put him in my bonus guy who has to be mentioned. Anthony Edwards. He depends on mentioning. That's for damn sure. Just, I didn't even really expect to take him here, but we've gone too far. Without him being in there. Couple of intriguing things about him. He's 100% healthy. Can he beat Denver again and have this crazy, fairly successful run against a pretty great nuggets team over the years? What happens if he can play OKC in a series? What happens if he gets going against Wembee in a series? We sort of outcome with Anthony Edwards and any round is intriguing and fun. We'll see if he's 100%. I've heard he's close to 100% but not 100%. He was also sick. That was part of the reason why I missed a couple of these games. He was like quite ill and it wasn't just the news soreness or whatever. He was out with the other. I know one thing that'll happen. Like if there's one guy who's actually going to try to dunk on Wembee in Yama, it's him. And talk shit about the French and God only knows of him. Okay. We're almost done. Trade machine guy. I've got a number of candidates. I could go boring like Cam Johnson, salary dump to resign paying Watson. I could go whatever. I'll go Julius Randall as my trade machine guy. I guess. As had the shaky last six weeks or so. The world knows they were going through whatever machinations would have been necessary to try to get involved in the honest. I mean, there's just almost no way he wouldn't be part of some multi team trade in that scenario. He was awesome in the playoffs last year. He had the best best wall of his life in the playoffs last year. And if they are going to be the team that they think they can be, they got to get out of their own way in a number of ways. And one of those things is him. And if not, who knows? So I'll take Julius Randall. I have no notes. I'm going to go right to my weak link. And I make this pick. I'd like to make the point. This is not a character assassination. I've been really impressed by how he's played this year. I'm just judging it based on history, reputation and whether he can shed some of that reputation. But also some of the situations he's been in this season where his team, which is really good, has really needed him to all of a sudden like, well, our leads down to one. Can you create a really good shot for us? And that man is to bias Harris. Oh, wow. Now, we're going to be back. - Wow. - Yeah. Will he remain a playoff weak link or will he shed the weak link label? Because all I know is watching this Pistons team, the ball seems to find him in big spots. And we've seen in the regular season that's fine in the playoffs, it's usually not. But I can promise that if you're a Pistons fan, you've had this conversation with yourself. Like man, we really needed that 17 foot fall away from Tobias on the baseline to squeeze out that wind. Is that gonna be happening in Round 1 Round 2? We'll see. - Well, he's especially important during the non-Kate minutes for them. He plays almost all the non-Kate minutes for this reason. Like hey, at the very least, the floor of our possession is a 15 foot turnaround in the post from Tobias Harris. And not a lot of shot creation on that Pistons team, although Jenkins has gone better. - He's been great. Tobias has been the heart, like one of the heart and soul guys on that team, a vet, they love him. I just saying all that, I didn't think he was high profile enough to fit that category. - Oh, a critique of my draft. - I mean, look, weak link, I could go. - This is the number one seed, the third best player, the guy who takes big shots from that. - Is he the third best player? - Is that, well, I guess I saw Thompsonus. So fourth best player. All right, fine. - I mean, weak link, I contemplated a whole bunch of you guys. Your guy bleached. - Are you gonna take one? - Yeah, I'm gonna take a loop. I'll just weak link. - You're ragging a man to buy a serous, you're taking a boost of that. - I contemplated. Of course I contemplated Aiton as we all would. - No, he doesn't. - He's just a permanent weak link. - He's not a tree gank. - I'm not a tree gank to see if he won't be a weak link. - I'm gonna go in tree gank in weak link. A more high wattage player could have been a trade machine player. I just, I'd like to see Jalen Green again in the playoffs. And can we just get a redo on the Warriors disaster from last year? He hasn't played much this year. They plugged him right back and is the full time starter. And he's basically just being Jalen Green, which has taken a lot of shots and not making enough of them and decision making is a little bit better. He's had a few nice passes on the picking role lately that I think are level up passes for him, but it's just, it's very inconsistent. His contract is super tradable. And I could see him shooting them out of a play in game or a playoff game and also like the one game they won. Or one of the, I'm sorry, the one of the games they won. The one game he played really well last year against the Warriors. It was because he just won crazy. I just think we haven't seen if that is this really the right fit for him with Booker and maybe we'll learn a little bit more in the playoffs. - That's pretty good. - Thank you. - Oh man. There's a guy I really want to take here, but I feel like it's a waste of a pick. I'm gonna do it. I feel the same way about this guy that I did about the guy I took last year. I don't think it's gonna work out the same for his team. For the leap, Tyrese Maxey. I don't know if this will happen, but if you're just looking at the playoffs and saying which guy could completely change his narrative in a month and a half, I took Caliberton a year ago because I thought the Pacers had a legitimate chance to win around or two, and I liked how he was playing and I liked that team. I don't like the Sixers team as much. But if they're in a two seven matchup against the Celtics, I think he would go toe to toe with the Celtics for two weeks and all the Celtic fans would be terrified of him and relieved that to get rid of him by the end of the series. If he goes against the trade, same thing. I actually think he has another gear in him. He's great at home. The fans really believe in him. He's a guy that could just go for 36 a game in the playoffs or some crazy thing. I could see it. I had to have him somewhere in the straf and I'm taking him. He was sensational the last time we saw him in the playoffs two years ago against the Knicks. 30 a game, seven assists, a bunch of huge dagger shots, including one that, I believe one game five for them. I can't remember what my head what game it was. On the one hand, I want to say Kenne Gaia who almost averaged 29 points a game make a leap, but without him be it could definitely make a leap in terms of just his standing in the league if he has a series of games. I'm talking like this is a totally on the table, totally on the table. Yeah, this is an I'm carrying a team by myself to a giant upset. And I think this is the right point of his career. I also like there's something about that, dude. You're up 10 against Philly and he'll just score 10 points in like 90 seconds. And it was like, oh my God, what just happened? We're up 10. He and Donovan Mitchell are like that. They might be the two scariest guys in the league when their teams are down 12 with 90 seconds left. And you're about to check out of the game. They'll just go insane. Okay, feel good star. I'll do it. I'll just take my feel good star, easy pick. I've been just biting my time on this one. Lamello ball. I almost took him for leap and I'd have the balls. No pun intended. He is the textbook central casting feel good, the narrative turned all the way around. And let's capitalize on it now in a playing game or two. And let's get him away mo. But love it. Boy, what point are the little mellow driving jokes going to expire? Are we almost there? Never. It's the hard part is that driving is a part of his game. And so you're just going to say it all the time. And it's going to always conjure up that image. Okay. I have to bang out beloved bench guy. I have to bang out defensive stud. And those are my last two categories. So beloved bench guy. Had him in Boston once upon a time. I think he's going to play an important role in a long spurs playoff series because I am dubious of Wembe staying completely healthy for 10 straight weeks. And this team's pretty good when he plays the one and only Luke Cortanette. I thought one of the best signings of the off season. They don't, they obviously lose a ton when Wembe's not in there. But it's not a catastrophe. And if anything, like it's kind of fun when Luke Cortanette's in there and he gives him a different look. And I wonder if they would even play him in Wembe together from time to time against a big lineup. Would you ever see that happening? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what French vanilla was the thing for a while, it hasn't been a much of a thing lately, but you need all the things in the playoff moment. You need all you need to do. That's the great thing about the place. If you're going to go a long way, you need every tool in the toolbox to come out at some point. All right. So you have one pick left and it is your hot seat wild card. Okay. I just want to mention we've done this entire draft and nobody took career LeBron. Okay. I mean, Derek or Kauai. I mean, LeBron is Devon Booker or Luke. Look at that. It's okay. It's a deep league. What do you want me to look at? Luke is hurt. LeBron's carrying a team that is not quite drawing dead, but is in major trouble with all the injuries. Curry's on the tenth seat. I mean, it's intriguing. I'm not, I know exactly who Steph Curry is. He's amazing. I just don't think there's going to be a lot of like gold stay warriors playoff games. Here are my candidates for wild card hot seat. For coaches, Chris Finch and Kenny Ackinson. I think they're wonderful coaches. And I don't think anything bad should happen either of them, but I just know how owners are when bad things happen in the playoffs and we'll see on both of them. I think they're awesome coaches. I'll go off the beaten path though for this. And I just want to say there is I'll go off to beaten path for this off the beaten because this is the off to beaten path hot seat category. I'm going to go Zachary Reese's Shay, who was recently benched by the Atlanta Hawks and is the former number one pick in a draft that happened not that long ago and would be potentially a must have ingredient in any massive. The Hawks did what? Where? Who's on the Hawks now? Kind of trade. And it's like, hey, look, man, Reed Shepard's come along. Alex Sarr kind of played fake basketball for 50 games. He's pretty good. Castles of stud. Klingon is becoming a stud. There's a lot going on in your draft class. Can we get something? I'm your young. You're 21 years old. It's not fair. But whatever a team is like, you know what? I think we're just better off with Corey Kisbert getting some of your minutes and you're just not going to play. It's not great. It's not great. So I'll go Reese's day. Who did you make fun of me for? Because I took all the beaten path off the beaten path. Who was your off to beaten path hot seat guy? Or Deer and Fox. OK, it's a better picked in mind. Last pick. I just left the other draft. I only have defensive stud left. Apologies to Donovan Klingen. I did think about you here, especially if it's somehow, is there any, it could potentially be Portland, San Antonio, right? - Yeah, he's on my list for defensive stud. - Donovan Klingen, Wembee, battle would be really fun. I thought about Dyson Daniels here, trying to chase around Jalen Brunson. And I'm not taking either of those guys, and I'm not taking Rudy Goberi there because I don't want Rudy on my team. (laughs) - Wow, that was, talk about on call for it. - Oh my God. - Oh my God. - Just don't want him on my team. This guy, I think, is the most intriguing guy left that we haven't taken, because I think they would need him to be Boston in round two. And I thought what he did to Tatum the other night, alarm me a little bit as a Celtic fan, 'cause I thought Tatum had a lot of trouble with him. I have him as a second team all defense. I think you can make a case if your life depended on the game and you wanted five defenders out there. He might be one of the five, Oji and Anobi. There's a certain type of guy that he's just awesome regarding. And if he's really locked in, and it's basically any scoring wing, it's Durant, it's Tatum, it's Jalen Brun. He's just, he's big, he's physical, he knows all the moves, he gets right in your chest. And I think if they beat the Boston Celtics in round two, I think it would be him, and I think it'd be Jalen Brunson would be the two reasons. - He was definitely on my list for defensive stud. I kind of took Derek White just to be mean to you. I love Oji and Anobi. I flipped flopped him on first and second team all defense four times in the past two weeks. I think I'm gonna end up with him on second team all defense, but like you said, his physicality and his strength, the combination of strength and quickness is extremely rare. You can guard every kind of player. He's guarded M.B. in playoff games before. Like he's just that special. A lot, all the, all the key things about all the defense is. Right, got taken. - Yeah. - I was gonna say a good way to think about all the defenses. If you're a guy in the other team, how high on the, oh shit, this guy. How are you on that ranking for the different players in the league? Like I think point guards are like, they see OKC and they're like, Kason Wallace, fuck. - How about the whole team? - Karuso, Karuso didn't get drafted for the D-St-Dort. - I know. Yeah, apologies to all those guys. We also didn't draft. Curry LeBron, I thought there was a CJ McCollum case. - He was in my favorite-- - Koi Leonard, my feel good star category. - Koi Leonard, Devon Booker did not get drafted. Mike Brown, Luca Donchic, Jalen Johnson. - Duran. - Duran. I almost took Duran, I almost took Duran for legacy just because, I mean, we've almost talked it to death over the years of just like, the Kota to his career, to all the twists and turns post-leaving OKC, what a Houston playoff run would mean. I just don't think this particular team has a long playoff run in them, but-- - You know what? It's not like there are rules for this. Let's add a category, Kota guy. You want Duran, I'll give you Duran. - Yeah, just, you just made it up and I already took a guy, so I'll take him. - All right, so you have Kevin Duran as a Kota guy. It's a rant and that means I can take just so we can have him in the draft, Steph Curry. And by the way, LeBron would have been an acceptable picker as well. Steph Curry, winning two straight playing games, going at SOKC and doing the Dental Washington last 40 minutes man on fire, I'm just gonna take on an entire drug cartel and see if I can survive and I'm gonna die, but you're gonna have a good time. This is happening, I think I would be in there. All right, recap of the draft. - Okay, yeah, see we took-- - Then the people can vote. - The people can vote. - Apex Superstar, I have Wembee, UFSGA, Beloved Bench guy, I have Luke Cornett, UF Peyton Pritchard, Crossroads guy, UF Donovan Mitchell, which was a great pick. I took Palo, Franza as a little dotted line. Defensive stud, I have OG and an OBU of Dark White. Feel good star, you have Lamella Ball, I have Jason Tatum, hot seat coach, Shaman Mosley for you, E-Made Doca for me, hot seat wild card, Zach Risha Shea for you, I have DRM Fox, Legacy Guy, I have Brunson, you have Yokech, Second Banana, you have Towns, I have Jayland Duran, Third Banana, the best pick of the draft for me, Aaron Gordon. You took McElbridge's, the leap, Steph Castle for you, Tyrese Maxi for me, Trade Machine Guy, Julius Randall for you, J-Dub for me, and I gotta be honest, I thought that would get a reaction for me and it didn't really react. Week link, Jayland Green for you, Tobias Harris for me, bonus guy who has to be mentioned, Jayland Brown for you, Anthony Edwards for me, and then Coda Guy, Kevin Durant for you, and Steph Curry for me, and I have bad news, we both been fired for me, SPN because we didn't draft LeBron. So pack up your bags, we're done. (laughing) Again? Actually, this can be a first-hand segment. LeBron doesn't go into 32 person, most of the cheeky draft. What's going on? That's it for the draft. All right, can we make up a category best on court dad? You know what? We have 30, I think we have 32 right now, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Now, 30. All right. Yeah, so we'll just give LeBron special achievement. LeBron, he goes to both of us. Special achievement LeBron. We share LeBron. Please keep your speech to a few more than three minutes. We both take LeBron, 'cause he's been that important to the league. Zach Lowe, Denver, tomorrow night, sold out show. You're gonna have the one and only Chris Ryan, even though it's not Sierra Amat, that anymore, you're gonna have Tim Hardaway Jr. Who else is gonna be on you? You have one more person. Adam Morris from DNVR, who knows LeBron. I forgot. I don't know if anyone in the world, so we're gonna do it. We're gonna do a lot of different stuff. And then you're going to be, you're gonna be doing Tuesday, Thursday, Pots this week? Well, I don't, we'll see if the Denver one is the Tuesday one. I don't know, but 'cause we're doing it Monday night. But Thursday for sure, I will do my annual eight by eight, slash six by six, rapid fire preview of every first round series that we know about. And I have to thank New Era for helping us out the livestream. And I have to-- They're also sponsoring my show tomorrow, so thank double thank you, New Era. Also sent some really good stuff that I've broken out a couple times. Thanks to Gahown, Eduardo, and Chris, and Jack Wilson, as well on the ringer side. Thanks to everybody who watched and listened. I hope the draft inferiority, or made you mad, or anything. I'm gonna be back on Tuesday and Thursday this week. New rewatching was coming tomorrow, basic instinct, get ready for legata on Tuesday. And this was really fun. Good to see you, Zach, well. Always fun. Thanks for having me. 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