Shelburne and Bontemps

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It's Monday afternoon Ramona Shelburne. How are you? How are you? So here's how I am Ramona.

You really want to hear how I am? I do. I really do want to hear. So I'm thinking about the NBA, as I normally do, and the playoffs.

And I'm sitting here, I'm looking at this piece of paper of notes I have right here, creating crazy person notes on Clippers sons. Yeah. And I'm thinking about how the Clippers haven't released their injury report yet. So I can't say for certain who's playing and not playing with their season on the line.

And as I'm thinking about that, I'm thinking about a lot of exes and old stuff. I think the sun's offensive starts to show some signs of getting a little bit of rhythm, particularly in the second half of game four, despite some hiccups and some heavy minutes and some depth issues. But they're starting to look a little more cohesive. Then I'm thinking about, boy, this Kawai thing, this PG thing, and how if they lose this series, they're down 3-1.

Fighting like hell. Can we just say it? Fighting like hell. Russell Westbrook, I owe you an apology.

I wrote you off as a winning player. And although your team does not look like it is going to win this series, you, Russell Westbrook, along with some other people, are doing your best to make it a real series. Dorn Powell. Dorn Powell amazing in game three.

Not so much in game four, but game three. Then I'm thinking about how they lose this series. All the late nights and excitement that we all felt four years ago when, in back-to-back lightning strikes, the Nets signed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and turned a more-abung franchise into Mustwatch television. And before that, or after that, I rather the Clippers hit the literal Las Vegas earthquake, Paul George and Kawai Leonard together.

How all of that in four years may amount to four total playoff series wins combined for both teams in four seasons, if the Clippers lose. And the Clippers are going to lose, I think, if Kawai and PG don't play. And then I was thinking about how in three and a half hours, oh, just a little thing. The Milwaukee Bucks are down 2-1, and Janis has played 11 minutes in the series.

And he's coming back. This podcast will probably go up right before that game. So we're not going to talk about it. So I will say this, this Ramona, if the Bucks lose tonight, the entire axis of the NBA universe is flipped on its head.

I, for one, am assuming they are going to come out with a fierce urgency and win in Miami, and even the series at 2-2 and calm the waters a little bit. But that's another injury. Then I'm thinking, boy, I got to start watching film of Boston Philly, the series we've all been gearing up for for a long time. Then I remember, boy, boy, Joe L.M.

Bead, he's injured. And then right as I'm thinking all of those things, Adrian Wojcenrowski tweets that DeAren Fox, clutch player of the year averaging 31 and a half points per game in the playoffs, carrying along with Malik among the Sacramento Kings offenses, the Monosubonus kind of struggles to find his way against the best interior defense he's faced all this season, has a fractured index finger, tippy top of his index finger, in his shooting hand. I think personally he's going to try to give it a go in game five, that's the vibe I'm getting, but you just don't know it's his shooting hand and it's a dribbling hand in his everything hand. And Ramona, you were at game four in San Francisco, I almost said Oakland, apologies Oakland.

You know, I flew into Oakland, it's okay. Which I thought was give or take the game of the year in the NBA and one of the craziest NBA games I've ever seen. And I was so excited to talk about game five. And now just as it was with Jon Marantz, hand wrist, whatever in the Memphis Lakers series, which resumes in five and a half hours, this injury is more or less the whole thing.

Like I just don't think the Kings can win two out of three against the Warriors. I don't know what their offense is with a limited DeAren Fox. Now maybe he won't be that limited, he did play the last five minutes or whatever of the game with this injury and made a critical three pointer and a floater and some free throws. What have you heard on DeAren Fox and how are you Ramona?

You're not injured are you? No, I'm doing okay. I'm gonna let allergies going on, but you know everyone does this I'm here. So I was at the game, I didn't know DeAren was injured because he was amazing the whole game.

And I've talked to folks in and around the Kings and goes to him since this came out. And they're all bummed, but I think the general consensus is he's gonna find a way to play. If there's any chance that he can play, he's gonna play. That's what I meant by give it a go.

I'm not necessarily guaranteeing he's gonna play. I'm just saying, I think he's gonna do the stuff gearing up trying to give it a shot. But then listen, I am not a basketball player at the level that DeAren Fox is, but I have broken a finger before. That hurts, that really hurts.

And especially catching the ball, shooting the ball. I know the idea is, okay, when you shoot the ball, it usually touches your index. Your middle finger is really the big one, right? That's the one that gives a lot of power.

But then the index finger is probably the second most important. If it's the tip, that's, you know, when you shoot the ball, it'd be flexed. That's where you're gonna feel it. So I think it's just gonna really hurt for him to play through this.

I've seen Kobe Bryant play with all sorts of mangled fingers before, I mean, there was one where he like popped it back in on the sideline. And then he was like, well, I'll just shoot differently. How do you just shoot differently after all your years? And like, it can be done.

It's just gonna really hurt. And I don't know how effective he can be as a shooter that way. But one thing that I don't know people paid enough attention to because of the way that game ended, because of the Dremon coming off the bench, and then Dremon guarding Darren was, Keegan Murray was really good in that game, Zach. And I don't know, like Mike, I feel like, I don't know Keegan Murray very well.

I'm not around the Kings enough to know if this is always how it is. But every time I talk to Mike Brown about Keegan Murray and the press conference, or I see him talking about him, I think he's like really hard on Keegan Murray. Like he was like, yeah, I cuffed him out after the first couple of weeks. You know what I'm- So bonus is too.

They're all really hard on him, which I relate to, because that's how I was as a player. I coach always used to yell at me. And I was like, why is he so hard on me? Like he's so mean to me.

And I think it's a compliment though. I learned to take it as a compliment, because A, that means I think you can take it, and B, they care. My coach used to say, like, when I stop yelling at you, that's when you should worry. Like when you're not relevant anymore enough for me to get worked up and yell at you.

So Mike Brown was like pretty openly yelling at him, and then talking about Keegan Murray in the first two games in the series, and for three games. And then boom, game four, he was awesome. And I feel like that's why they care so much about him, because we're gonna learn a lot about him in this next game, because they're gonna have to rely on him and Malik Monk. And I still think with that crowd in Sacramento, and the way that they competed in game four, they really competed that game.

This is still a really good series. It's not a little bit, a little less than it's been taken off with Vox getting hurt here, but I still, I wouldn't hand this to the Warriors by any means. No, no, that's why I said, I don't think they can win two of three. I don't even say that that's strongly, because the Warriors have just been so bad.

They tried to lose that game last night. My goodness. Well, have you ever seen three, I mean did you see, did you see Dremel and Green and Bob Myers on the court after the game? Like that comment.

So, Dremel and talked about their little post game, you're gonna have to tighten up a little bit here. Like, Dremel was a left stuff on an island, which made him have to call that timeout. And obviously they didn't have a timeout. B, Dremel and get off a clean look from three, or late in the game when they're down four.

And like give him the two, crowd him a little bit. When you're down four, the one that you don't wanna do is give up a three. And he gave him way too much space there. And then even the last play, I don't know, there was so much about the last couple of plays.

One step shooting the ball with, I think there was 10 or 12 seconds left. We're gonna get to it. I mean all I'll let you. I wanna do the full on dissection, because it was the game of the year.

I'm just saying their offense has been very fox depend. It's been like Fox plus one shooter gets hot, and everyone else chips in enough to get them over the finish line. And if Fox can't be like Fox Fox, it's just gonna be tough for them to score enough to win two out of three. But to get to seven, absolutely.

And if they get to seven, then it's at their house. So I still think even if he doesn't play, like let's put that scenario in play. If he doesn't play, I just don't know that they have enough. If he plays at like 70% effectiveness, I do think they have enough to have a shot at two out of three.

But I would pick the Warriors. I picked the Warriors and six at the start of the series. Because Subonus just hasn't been able to get off in this series. Herder hasn't been able to get off.

Harrison Barnes hasn't been able to get off in. Oh my God, as many have noted, the poetry of Harrison Barnes potentially hitting that shot would have been off the charts. And I thought it was going in on TV. And if he had made it, I wanna live the alternate universe where he makes it.

Just because you know Harrison and I know Harrison, he's so polite and nice that I bet if he had made it, I just hope he would have just lost control of the niceness and the politeness and just going totally off about how he was the one cast out. He and Andrew Boge were cast out to make way for the Superstar, which they should have done a hundred times out of a hundred, but it just would have been fun to watch. It's always fun to watch your most polite and under control friend, lose control, lose control there. Anyway, so there was that.

It's like when you were watching Croatia in the World Cup. Yeah, that was, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed watching you.

Just, yeah, I'd say you lost control several times. Yeah. I did. So anyway, none of those guys have been really able to get off other than Monk and Davey on Mitchell has had a fantastic series, but it's not like he's gonna get you 25.

It's not like he's replacing the offense. So they're gonna need Fox's points somewhere. Keegan Worry, man. That's the guy.

That's the point I wanted to make. What respect you have to have for the Kings at this point? I know they lost both games in Golden State and everyone was like, well, Game 3's been, you know, they should win Game 3, Dream on the top, that's a tough ask. That's a motivated Warriors team at home.

You're coming in, young team, first road playoff. That's a tough ask. How many times in the fourth quarter last night? Did it feel like the Warriors had landed, the Warriors knock out punch?

The, and by the way, their offense for portions of that game was not as crisp. Like the Kings have made them make tough shots. The shot making from Clay and Steph and Poole last night. I'm talking about like one on one, like we got nothing else but our individual talent against your individual talent.

And we're gonna make, we're gonna make really tough shots. Eurostep, layups for Poole. Steph, Steph had that one three where he dribbled up, like with Harrison Barnes climbing on his hip, like they look like two fish swimming next to each other. And then Steph just shot, just stopped and hit a three.

It's like, like that's a normal thing to do. Clay hit a bunch of ice so long twos, like they made them earn that win last night. And every time it felt like the Warriors had knocked them out, they came back right to the end with Big Shot after Big Shot after Big Shot. Fox made a bunch of Big Shots in Keegan, Murray, as you said, like the response of that team in that environment was super impressive.

So this is, you know this from going to the arena there. The press seats are kind of up a few sets of stairs. And generally speaking, when it's a blowout, you wanna get down the stairs before the game is over, because you're gonna get stuck in the foot traffic. Like all the play, all the play, all the play, all the.

Nothing, it's very frustrating to get stuck in the foot traffic. Like everybody's going up, like all the fans are coming up the stands. And there's supposed to be a press elevator, but that just gets completely jammed the whole time. And so.

I'm just anti-elevator. If there are stairs, I wanna take the stairs. Yeah, and there's not like good stairs to use there. So there's always this game of like, they got this, right?

And I think that is 10 seconds away from getting up. I was like, okay, I think they got it. Let's go. Let's go.

Come on, everybody on press roll, let's all go together. And then I think that's when they challenged the call and they lost the challenge. And I was like, ooh, maybe I shouldn't get up. Maybe there's still a little left to be played here.

And I think all of the unraveling starts with the challenge that they should not have challenged, right? Like, Looney laid out, like Monk. And I thought Monk was initially, I thought, oh, Monk sold that. Yeah, like he didn't.

And then you even saw Dremont on the broadcast, saying to Kerr, I think he was moving. Like, I think there was a recognition that Looney was moving. Don't challenge that. And then you'll lose that time out there.

It's not worth it on that challenge. And that just starts the whole thing. Because they lost the time out. Steph didn't realize they lost the time out.

And all of, I mean, I was kind of trying to make notes like Kendra Andrews and I were in the press room, trying to re-watch some of these plays. You know, you go on NBA.com and then where the stats are and you watch each one of those plays. And it was like, it was even stranger at re-watching it all knowing how it ended. Because like, we all thought that he was over.

I mean, it looked like they had it. And then they just, this series of self-imposed stupid plays that time out, that shooting the ball, I think Steph was a little rattled by calling the time out. And he goes back out there and they could have run, I think they could have run it down to two seconds. And he goes and throws up an off-balance floater.

And I know Steph likes to do the hero ball stuff, but that was like, whoa, take some time off the clock. Like, run the clock down. And they, like Harrison Barnes was really open there. Like, that was a good look that he got from three.

It's a great look, great look. They did not disagree there. You, every coach in the NBA in that situation signs up for a look of that quality. Like against the defense, against D-M on Green defending you at the point of attack.

Like, that's a good look. And it just is so fascinating on the margins that this stuff turns on. So let's also, I'm curious your take on the defense on that last play. So at one point, like, D-R-N-Fox was cooking everyone.

And finally, I think Krista Marco and Dejan in the huddle go, you know, we should put D-M on on him. Which is unbelievable that D-M on Green can guard somebody as quick as the Iron Vox. Ramona, I've been waiting for this the whole series. It was one of their go-to match-ups in the regular season.

I even said on the show on NBA Today, last week, I was in LA, it's sitting there in their back pocket. And I thought they would use it by Game 3. I was surprised it actually took them this long to try it. And now they did it.

And so you have D-R-N, you have D-R-N on D-R-N. And he's already given up a three. Because he usually lets you try to take a three, because you don't want to foul. But this time, you definitely cannot give up anything there.

And I'm thinking D-R-N's just going to drive on him. Like, you got the big out there in the lane. They tried to clear out as much as possible. Drive, try to foul.

Like, you tried to draw a foul. Like, if you're a guard who's as quick as D-R-N, and you got D-R-N on you, that's what I would do all day long. But he doesn't drive. He waits for the switch.

Harrison walks over, Steph's on Harrison. And you see Steph kind of, oh gosh, I can't switch. I can't switch. And it was just like two guys who played together for so long for Steph to get out of that situation, to where D-R-N was still on him.

So they double-foxed, leaving Harrison open. And it was like, how quickly that could have turned. It could have gone so differently. If D-R-N reads that quicker, he could force Steph to have to take it.

He could have driven on Steph. And it was like just watching that unfold. I'm like, that's the series right there. That's the game.

Well, you think of how much different does that Harrison Barnshaw have to be? Like a half an inch. It wasn't off by much. And that's maybe it.

That's maybe it. That's the Warriors going into the offseason with a whole lot of uncertainty, with a payroll that is about to become, in terms of roster building, unsustainable because of this new CBA that's aimed squarely at the Warriors and the Clippers. That's it. It might be it.

Just like last year, Jimmy Butler's shot goes in. I don't know what happens to the Celtics. That's an all-time bad collapse in game seven of that series, in game six, but especially game seven. Like that's the margins that decide these games.

But again, the Kings just, they showed up and they kept fighting. And I have all this stuff, these X's and O's about what to look for in game five. And I just don't know how much is relevant without Fox. But can we revisit the last two minutes of the game?

Yeah, let's do it. Fox also, by the way, the finger thing, everyone wanted to see how the young Kings would respond to a situation like this. And Doris Berg rightfully, I think, criticized a couple of their decisions late in the game, like Monk going headlong for a layup. It's like, here's the guy in Harrison Barnes even pulled a three pretty fast.

But he was looking for a two for one, I think, with like 35 seconds left. And they got the offensive rebound. And she was saying, here's the young team that hasn't been there before. I actually unbalanced thought they got good shot.

Like Fox missed a long two. That was pretty open with like two minutes left. Then he missed a floater that was really open with a minute and 20 left. Good shots for him.

And this finger thing has me looking at those shots in a different light. Does one of them go in? Yeah. I want to watch the video again, because I think he heard with about two minutes left, there's a play where he kind of shook his hand.

Someone posted it was like four and a half minutes left. Four and a half. At least that's the theory. So here's, let's just go blow by already.

About a minute and 45 seconds left, I think. Looney misses the dunk off the split action that they've run 100 times. The Kings come up with numbers. And I think they're down one at the time.

Something I don't know about that. I've lost track with the scores. That's when Draymond kind of interferes with Harrison Barnes at the rim. Harrison Barnes misses.

The rebound goes to Sabonis. Draymond blocks Sabonis. The Warriors come down. They run a Stefan Draymond pick and roll like at half court.

Double Stefan. How many times you can close your eyes and see it? Double Stefan, pocket pass to Draymond. Looney's man steps up.

Bounce pass to Looney. I don't think they even bounce it to Looney. I think Looney's man stepped up. And then Wiggins curled in around Looney as Wiggins's guy who was monk went to account for Looney.

Wiggins curled in makes a floater. And then of course, the ending sequence is just, I think that probably put them up by five. Maybe I can't even remember anymore. But the first thing that I did was was the timeout, which was like an out of body experience.

I was like, what is going on? Then the three. And to your point, the three goes in with 27.7 seconds. And I have said this over and over and over again.

Teams who get the ball back with like a three or four second differential and the lead. And the other team decides not to foul, which is probably the wrong decision in cold analytical terms. Should just hold the ball until there's one on the shot clock. Heave a moon ball three.

And if the three hits the rim, the game is probably over. Yeah, it's gonna be a long redone. I've come to realize that it must just be impossible to do that because nobody ever does. I think Mike Conley did it in one game from Memphis.

I think in the playoffs, it might have been against the Warriors. That's the only time I've seen anybody do it. And it worked. But I've just come to the conclusion that either defenses are too smart about forcing the issue.

And that's why I thought Fox was really smart to go for that steal. I don't know if he meant it. But he forced Steph Curry to get into gear and Steph was like, oh, I guess I should shoot now. And they got the ball back.

And I think more teams should just hold it and launch a moon ball. Nobody ever does it. I guess people aren't wired to do that. And so he shoots way too early.

And I'm sitting there like, I cannot even believe that the Warriors are falling apart. Like the whole thing was just insane. There's still 10 seconds left. Like 27 minus 24.

We can do the math. 3.7 seconds. Three points. I've always said four is the sweet spot where it becomes a very hard decision whether you foul or not.

Five, six, seven, you can play it out depending on what the score is. This is a one point game. So it's a minimum possible score obviously to have this discussion. Four is like, maybe are we really going to be able to get a good shot off?

If we even get a stop here. It's probably not really going to be four when I'll send you the reading. Yeah, the weekends four I mentioned with 125 left put them up 126, 121. So they were up three when Draymond made 14 consecutive insane defensive plays to keep the game then the technical then the three then the end.

It was just a it was just an absolute. Yeah, the 126 121. That's when I wanted to go downstairs. That's like, yeah, we can go downstairs.

We can beat the crowd. No, God, we stayed. The defense though, like Draymond guarding the air in Fox is an interesting card because I think once you play it, like you have to decide you're going to always play it because the Kings will just make an adjustment now. Like that's not something you can just do the whole time.

Well, I mean, one thing the Warriors when they've gone to green on Fox, if Looney's on the floor, they've actually been willing to switch. The Fox, so bonus pick and roll, even if it means putting Looney on Fox. And if that's the case and this is why Fox is if he can't be like 100% wide, such a blow for them, I'm just trying to engineer that. I mean, the Warriors will stop doing it if Fox hurts them.

But he can he can blow by Looney. I want to see how good is the Fox is this right hand? Like how good is he on drives to the basket finishing with his right? I think he's he's a pretty ambidextrous kind of guy and we're finishing at the rim.

Obviously, I'm shooting. He's not got Kobe Bryant out there with everyone Kobe's issue left handed. Yeah, just for fun. Well, no, because he heard his shoulder.

I know that and just for fun. Yeah, for fun. I don't think he's going to quite do that. I don't know that much.

You know, in terms of if Looney switches on, he's in those situations. I think Darren Fox plays. I think he has things a gamer. I think he's just going to be limited in terms of his shot outside because that's that's the one where you're going to feel it the most.

What a series. This has been the series of the playoffs so far. And it's also with so much at stake. Like you're in the building in every single play you're thinking is just the end of the dynasty is this the end of the dynasty?

And there's all these poetic moments. I mean, I wrote a column about Dream on offering up his spot. I thought that was pretty significant. I don't know how long they'll do that if he's right back in the starting line of her game.

But the Warriors are moving to a world in which Jordan pool is a starter. They're paying him like a starter. He's probably not the best in his career. The only question is who goes to the bench if pool is going to start.

And I know they've dabbled with that throughout the year. And sometimes it's been because Wiggins has been hurt or they just needed some more shooting or some more offense in the starting line up. They usually find their way back to the two big lineup because that's just who's the current trust. I loved.

I wish people could see my game notes that I write during the game that I type up each game because I'm sitting there and I was writing. I think he's over. I think they're overthinking it. But they didn't get back to Dream on and Looney until like a few minutes before halftime.

I think they played them for like a couple minutes in the first half. And I thought I kind of feel like I get what they're doing, right? The Kings the Kings defense has been up to task up to task. So bonuses move in his feet.

They're switching when they should switch their handling to split actions. They're not getting caught cutting back door for the most part. And so we got to open up a little more spacing and the way to do that is to separate Dream on and Looney. And yet it's like that lineup works.

We know that lineup works. I don't think you can go away from it to the degree they want to. And sure enough you come out in the second half and Dream on to starting. I'm like, OK, that's it.

I don't know who I if I the guess they start pool again just because it worked and we'll figure it out if we have to go early to the double big lineup. But it was it. I mean, the Kings have stressed the Warriors to that degree that they're making these kind of changes and that again, they won that game for the most part behind incredible individual shot making good timely defense. But not as many of like the easy Warriors kind of like, yeah, oh, the split action, pin down got Steph and Clay a wide open three.

They got some of those, but they had to earn every single one of those 126 points. I cannot wait to talk to Mike Brown when this series is over whether they win or lose because Mike was on the Warriors staff for several years. He knows those players really well. And I love talking to him about what did you learn about defending LeBron by coaching LeBron, right?

You know, when he was when LeBron was about to break the all-time record, I called him his old coaches, the Tai Lu and Mike Brown. And I asked him, what did you learn about defending LeBron from coaching LeBron? He goes, well, you know, there's no way to stop him. But he doesn't like it when you get up close to him and you get low and your physical with him kind of low.

So they're always kind of when they're defending LeBron, like even if you put a smaller guy on him, if you kind of go at his legs a little bit, he found that to be something. And that was something you would only know if you coach him, you saw him up close like that. I think he knows he knows some things about the Warriors from being on the inside that I'm going to be very curious to hear him talk about either. I don't know if it'll be on the record conversation.

I'll do one of us on a podcast, but he knows how to slow them down in a way that I don't think and I think we'll just make them uncomfortable. All right, you want to go just through a couple of stats of note. The series is now Warriors are now plus seven for the series total in four games. It's been a very close series defensive oriented.

Both their offensive ratings would be average or worse for the regular season. Curry Warriors are plus 45 with Curry on the floor and minus 38 and 34 minutes with Curry on the bench. That's pretty crazy. Both versions of the Warriors starting five are solid plus.

I'm just beginning to think it's just Curry. It's just Curry. Curry's plus if Curry's in the lineup, it's plus. Yeah, definitely.

It's just 16, 12, and four and a half assists on 48% shooting. He averaged about 20 something in the regular season on 64% shooting on two. So they've really limited him and almost seven assists as a sister now. Staff in game four, the most recent win, ran 16 pick and rolls.

That's the fourth lowest of any game this season. And if you do it per minute, his lowest of any game this season. And I did think they're letting the Kings get away with hiding Sabonis and Len on Moses Moody and Gary Payton the second. And even like there were some possessions where the centers were on Dremon and Dremon was playing the five and they ran all their cute little stuff and sometimes it was like you can't let Alex Len get away with being on the floor.

He was Gary Payton as a screener and see what you can get. That said, I bet you they ran more Dremon to Steph pick and rolls with Steph as the screener for Dremon than they have in any game season. That has really worked for them in this series. It's just been a fascinating chess match.

And I think the Warriors have made more moves than the Kings. Well because they have more moves to make, they have just a bunch of different looks they can go to. And the Kings just took it to what they do. And the Kings big move before the series and it's largely continued was we're going to spam you with pick and roll more than we have at all in this season.

And Fox and Monk and Monk especially is blowing away his pick and roll numbers just going at Looney in drop coverage. But I don't know what moves they have left in it. It's hard to really project. It feels like it's a bonus time.

It feels like it feels like it's a guy. But how? Because dumping the ball to subonists with Looney and Dremon is a losing proposition. He's not going to score enough on those guys when I won.

They're too good. You want to say if you're going to run pick and roll, look for him in the pocket a little bit more. And if he's got a switch that's not one of those two guys give him the ball. There have been a few possessions where he's had good match ups and they haven't given him the ball given the ball especially especially if Fox is hurting.

Yeah, I almost like he is capable of taking the ball and running and initiating the offense from the top from the top. But you could put him up top you could give him the ball early to where he's taking people off the dribble. He's that kind of player. I do kind of I do wonder a bit if there if the rib cage brews the sternum brews whatever you want to call that from the stomp is affecting him at all.

I know people were quick to dismiss that as a theaters and to get dream on suspect. No, he was he was hard. And I don't think that was it wasn't WWE where somebody fake stops on your chest. Like he really got stomped on the chest.

And you see the last couple games it just hasn't seemed like the same I want to say energy level but it goes energy level puts it on him. He doesn't seem like the same player in the last couple of games. Well, look, they're making an heart from they have to absolutely elite post defenders dream on one of the greatest ever and Looney just playing the best basketball of his career. The other stat I wanted to make note of the Kings took 61 combined free throws in games one and two and 41 combined in games three and four.

And that's just that's the story of the Warriors all season at home. They foul less or they allow free throws in teams don't shoot as well from three and that was a big reason why the Kings took to a lead and a big reason why it's now even but this is you just knock on wood that Darren is going to wake up tomorrow and somehow feel less pain and feel good to go because he's had a magical season in the Kings of that a magical season and it would be nice to see them be able to at least give these last three games an honest goal of it against the defending champs. Yeah, I think this this this always felt like the best first round series I was thinking Phoenix in the in the suns the suns against the Clippers would be because that both those games it was they were kind of a bummer. What do the Clippers do this summer Ramona if they just bow out here both Paul George and Kawhi Leonard have one guaranteed left one guaranteed season left next year on their deals and they have player options for the year after that they're obviously capped out the wazoo that all their picks are gone until you know actually the last pick they always 2026 after that they get control of their picks back.

You know there's going to be this like well it's now time to move on and trade guy at Kawhi or PG and you just like the whole the whole league has watched them get hurt every year like the whole well also like every other team who would potentially want these guys and trade stuff for them has seen this whole soccer playoff like why am I trading all the stuff that would make it worth your while if it seems like I can't count on them like as soon as they needed Kawhi to play big minutes in the games that they've been gearing up for two years you got hurt again and it's not I'm not saying it's fault it just is they're hurt all they're both hurt all the time like there's no there's just no way to sure go through reality that they're hurt so like what do you think they do if they lose if they lose yeah and I think they're gonna lose I mean that's you know that's I think 3-1 without one court advantage in your stars if they don't play if they look pretty awesome for where they are in terms of number of games played together they're pretty good my biggest question is just are they playing too many minutes because you know Kevin Durant made a joke and we played that highlight on Sports Center me asking about playing somebody minutes ago that I looked tonight yeah you look pretty good you look all right but this is the first round and Russell Westbrook Norman Powell the guys and Clippers scrappy guys playing hard making these competitive have forced Kevin Durant and Booker and Chris Paul to play more way more minute than you would want them to in the first round they're exerting a lot of effort but at least they're winning and they should close this out in the next game I think with the Clippers two things you have to answer first before you talk about Paul and Kawhi number one they're moving to that new building in 2024 I don't think you can underestimate how for the 24-25 season correct 24-25 season so do you know that have you heard about the toilets from I got a lot of toilets I can't wait to go in the bathroom the into it is it the into it what is I'm gonna try every god damn toilet I want to see how many there are how many games to take me to use every god damn toilet in that place I think there's like 11,000 toilets I'm gonna find the best one I mean the whole the whole theory behind it is that Steve Ballmer does not want you leaving your seat he wants you in your seat cheering as much as you possibly can so exactly exactly we have the game do you have any angles you want to cover I was just in the bathroom the whole game sorry I was going from bathroom bathroom didn't see what happened somebody got hurt I was in the bathroom I mean they're so there's just okay so they're moving to the dome and they want to be good it's the one they're not gonna put a dud product into that into that place so I think that matters right don't you think that matters I mean I look the most likely the most likely scenario is what the hell else you're gonna do just keep running a back in hope that one year you get you get the breaks you need a break and like everyone wants Perkin I went back and forth about this the other day yes this era as of now is a failure given what they traded to build it it also resulted in the longest playoff run in the history of the Clippers franchise it's not great run it's not nothing it's that western conference playoff that western conference finals run in 2021 I went to every home game there and that crowd has never exploded the way to date I mean that that was the best time of clipper basketball ever really ever okay so you were saying I don't want you to interrupt you saying they did in with dome and something else so I think they need to be good I think they need to be relevant you need to have some stars and then so if you're not really gonna get that much for Pollock why this year if you're even thinking about that because every team of leagues you see them get injured and you're definitely not gonna get back what you traded away and Shae Gil gets Alexander is gonna haunt them forever probably because of how good he is and how well he's done in Oklahoma City not to mention what those picks become including Jalen Williams okay the best field was well they're both good but yeah the one the one that's on the all-rokey team first team I think I think you keep Pollock together because I don't think you can get back anything of real substance so then you say how much longer does this Tyler want to be around for this is he is he a happy person there in that spot I think he's one of the best coach in the NBA I think this the way that this has gone with the the constant and just being in that press I'll say it like this I mean that press conference for game three where he was asked point playing when did you know Kawai was not going to be available and he said this morning to you run when did you know that it was a possibility that Kawai might not play last night I mean it was you could tell like this you know you don't have all this communication back and forth on Kawai Leonard so it's kind of just a oh Kawai's not playing tonight it's it's not like a big ramp up big organizational thing where everyone gets on the same page that gets old after a while because it's been like that the whole time he's been here and I'm not putting words in ties mouth or there's a level of competition that they all know they should be at and because of these injuries they have not been able to and then then you get into the when people get frustrated it's people get frustrated things like this weird things happen right like when people get frustrated weird things can happen and so I don't know I'm not I want to report anything you're saying here I just think the level of frustration has to be pretty high in clipper land that once again you're not seeing Paul and Kawai in the playoffs and in the way that this this tends to play out we have some breaking news you want to talk about breaking news I've been seeing them I've been seen a pop across the feed to not to Murray has been suspended for game five against the Celtics we will just blow right by that that was I saw the video you probably seen a video of him bumping around that's a no brainer as soon as I saw that the essay he's done I texted people and blessed he's done and Wojj reporting email Doka Wow I agreed to a deal to become I now I have to check everyone's Twitter to make sure it's like the real Wojj I know you know I know um I become the head coach of the Houston Rockets which means he's not becoming the head coach of the Toronto Raptors and Nick Nurse is not becoming the head coach of the Houston Rockets um obviously you and I yeah did a whole thing on the email Doka's situation in Boston and um this is not the time to to dive too deeply into that because frankly like I wasn't prepared to talk about the email Doka situation today um but I can talk about it a little bit but this is yeah go because this is this is one this is one you have to handle internally and externally in a very forthright manner of like here's what we know happened in Boston here are the details and here's why we think it's okay so you have to be able to answer these questions about what happened in Boston publicly and privately and particularly to the female employees of your organization correct and and then you have to go and do that publicly and so I remember um I did I do collins with the radio station up in Canada especially when you know a coach gets fired and you're the national reporter so I said yes to a couple of these and uh every single question was about email in his past and what happened in Boston and I could just kind of this is when he was reportedly like just reportedly as a um as a favorite and I remember doing these interviews and I was like oh I don't know if this is gonna go in Toronto like I like it's just there's just certain media markets where I think um the level of scrutiny and the type of awareness that the people the reporters of in Toronto were all over that like that was um this wasn't just gonna be a rubber stamp kind of thing this was gonna be highly scrutinized and what an air careen of the athletic tweet is something that is effective over the weekend this is the Raptors are also a franchise that has been front and center yes um placing women into positions of power within the organization and then and then trumpeting that rightfully so I know most of those women they're all amazing and saying and essentially saying like here like presenting this as evidence of how forward thinking they are against organization it's also owned by basically sports and entertainment to corporate entity so there are different um there are different HR rules for corporate entity like that then they're gonna be totally honest right now Ramon I'm gonna let you lead this because I I have an time to go back and look at my notes from September October when this was happening so I don't even remember like the specific specific specifics of what exactly I know transpired with e-mailedoka and Boston I mean I can give the basis of it I want to wade into that before I really really went into this but you continue please so um I think the most important thing is you have to have he he may have had all this time to think about what he would say or what he's gonna say when he gets his next job interview um the situation in Boston and this is and this is something I wish I had the right reporting answer on but I think it's been quite murky for those of us even who have tried to report on this is whether or not there's anything ongoing there you know is that is that HR investigation closed I know they had a private they said they had an internal investigation but is that closed is there any civil cases pending if there are all any lawyers that are involved are not going public with this but all of that really matters when when you're talking about how you move forward from something like this because um he I'm sure you may would have to give those answers to his future employer in any interviews he does but then you have to be able to do that if you get hired to the female employees of your organization and to the media and you're gonna have to do it a lot you have to explain a lot and so I just even me doing those interviews in Toronto I was like whoa I don't know if this is gonna fly Toronto like it was it was like you know sometimes as the guest you end up becoming like like I'm being interrogated like I'm not I'm just telling you what I know or what I think um it was it was uh the level of scrutiny that was gonna get in Toronto I kind of was skeptical after that that he would he would really be the the choice there in Toronto as highly regarded as he is a head coach that's how you there's a lot of franchises that I want to hire you my dog as a coach it's very highly regarded but um you know just getting back in a very general sense about what happened there I mean it's um without going over all the details and getting into it first of all I feel really bad for all of the women in the organization whose names got dragged into this that had nothing to do with it there was all this speculation about and pretty much anyone who worked in this self-ex organizations that you could find out at the work chart people's names got out there and that was that was rough but also like if he had an inappropriate relationship with somebody who worked for him um you just everyone would ask this question of why is that a big deal okay if you were two consenting adults people have had relationships that's a big deal because even when somebody worked for you and now this relationship ends what do you do in your career do you just keep you keep them in the same position are you gonna see them every day if you move that person into a different job is that seen as a demotion even if it's all the stuff you know I would encourage people to listen to the episode you and I did in the fall where we talked about the the our dynamics of this and why it's more than just well you know they had an affair that this is when there's power in the workplace and we talked specifically now I'm you're talking my memory about like well if if she's reassigned like what that's that's that's a whole that's a whole separate potential legal issue like there's there's all sorts of power dynamics at play here like the specifics have never really come in and I'll go peel back the curtain of how we usually find the stuff out as reporters is that usually there's a civil case and the attorney representing the person in the civil case will leak those details in the media right it'll be it'll file in court those details will come out you know by the person who has a civil case so either there is one and we don't know about it yet or there isn't one but nobody's for nobody has to tell anybody anything usually there's a motivation for details to come out so I'm sure everything's bigger and Boston is tried I know I tried quite a bit to find out more of what went on and so you get the you get the sense that it was handled internally and there's not a motivation to provide more details or for those details to come out and now he's been away from the game for a little bit I know the the nets obviously took a look at hiring him and backed away on that the Rockets the the Raptors interviewed him the Rockets are hiring him and so there's no there's no question about email because coaching ability he's regarded as one of the best young coaches I'm I want to say that I'm glad he gets a second shot because I don't believe in just ending somebody's career over something that we don't obviously know all the details here all we know is the Celtics that it was serious enough to do what they did to a coach who led them to the finals and so I'll be interested to see what comes out next or what he says next because you know that that interview that press conference that disclosure has not happened yet very interesting breaking news and that the Rockets are entering a pivotal off season in which they're clearly going to try to get better they owe their pick to the Thunder next season from the Russ CP disaster and they have a good amount of young talent and I think their young talent is actually a little underrated given how kind of messy it looked and you know Al P fan I'm an Al P fan offensively I think the low hanging fruit I think the low hanging fruit for them on offense is one more the offense through sin Shengun I don't want to talk too much about the Rock this is a big summer they have capspace we know who they've been linked to speaking of that topic let's end with this we've all been looking forward to Philly Boston all year I'm about to talk to Tim Bontem I actually already recorded the Tim Bontem segment on the Eastern Conference so I forgot to mention RJ Barrett in that segment RJ Barrett shout out to RJ Barrett he's playing awesome and bullying the hell out of carousel Bert what do we know about Joellen Beads knee so when he initially went down with this it happened and he played through it okay so it's it was something you played through but you saw the injury you could see it you know it live and he was kind of limping but Joel falls a lot and he kind of looks sometimes it looks hard getting up you know that's kind of a standard thing for him and so you never know which is an injury which is which is just him getting up slowly but he was he was really sore afterward I think Tim Bontem said something like he had more ice around it than I realized he even had in the arena and they it's a sprained LCL so that's your lateral collateral ligament LCL and the hope was it was just going to be a week maybe two like maybe depending on how he healed and how he responded so far the sense I get is that he's doing pretty well swelling's down he's moving around pretty good so it doesn't seem like a serious injury but I don't want to have any I don't know there's all the CLs and you know mcls swelling is not a predictable thing it can you can you can swell back up with playing one hard game yeah you have to wear brace now he's got a he's got a new doctor's meeting in the middle of this week so they'll see kind of where he is but the injury happened on April 20th I think the Celtics now look like they were pre-commanding 3-1 lead and now there's not any Murray's not going to play so if they close out the Hawks here in five Saturdays when that playoff series starts so we got heard on a Thursday that's 10 days 9 10 days ish that's a little soon I mean I think it was thought to be just a week but I could see a miss game one depending on how he's doing I could see that but you know I know he wants to play and I know that he'll do everything he can to try to play I just think being there for game one is not important is being there for the rest of the series so if it's if it is that quick of a turnaround what Doc River said the other day was right right you know it's 50-50 he's there for game one just based on how quickly the Hawks Celtic series wraps up and how quickly the next series starts obviously they're margin for any kind of setback against Boston is very very slim the Celtics have owned that match up although I said many times on this podcast I don't put that much stock into the Celtics record over the last four years against the Sixers in terms of what it means for this playoff series that we've all been looking forward to I've also said we're waiting and it's gonna happen for the Embiid playoff scorched earth campaign it's gonna happen at some point if they keep giving him good teams there's gonna be a season where he stays healthy and he puts it all together in the playoffs and it's just like every game is a rampage and I was hoping this would be that season maybe it's maybe it's still will but you know given the way Hardin looked at least on two-point shooting against Brooklyn it's hard to imagine them beating Boston without Embiid for like six of the seven they need him for almost every game and they need him to play well almost every game because Boston is really really good. Boston's really good and I think it comes down to Tyree's maxi maxi has been pretty damn good and he really you really carried them in those games three and four closed out the nets closed him out and I think he's a he's a guy it's you for the bet you know he's he's due for the proverbial bag this summer he's a extension eligible he's the key piece of their future and I think he this is the part where somebody else has to probably carry them in the first part of the series now the first game is about we're gonna be tough anyway anything can happen in one game yeah I think about one game and these playoffs it's like it was what I said about game three of Clippers Suns when it seems so hopeless co-aggart ruled out at one game like Norm Powell can I think I said I'm not a little crazy and like you might sneak out a win yeah they didn't but if you can just find a way Tatum had goes six of 30 like you just get a random one game thing suddenly you've you've held the fort you know and anything had happened in one game so I also think you want to get into the duck rivers uh duck rivers talk about targeting the NBA by targeting stars I definitely don't want to get into duck rivers talk about not playing with your meat I would rather talk about anything else than that I don't you know what I've talked enough about groins and groin shots and flagritts and then there was like another one with Dylan Brooks who like I just I don't know I actually so I actively don't want to talk about what Doc River said I don't know no no offense to Doc Rivers I just don't want to talk about flagritt thousand people hitting other people in the groin anymore yeah I just when you have Joe well with an injury how do you how do you stop Joe well you you had him I mean he really clearly the nets were yeah they were doing like the Jordan rules almost on and beat and by the way the Clippers are beating the hell out of Durant in the series and they're paying for it with free throws and I actually think although the nuggets are miles better than the current version of the Clippers I actually think the Suns are going to feel a little bit of physical relief against Denver not not any other kind of relief but I just don't think that series will feel like this one does I don't think their guards are gonna beat up they just don't have the same kind of physical just beat the crap out of you guys yeah well first of all I was trying to do the first two was he was he's really sons will get into that series and be like oh this feels a little better now the team that we're facing is a different animal and that dude with the ball who's throwing passes around our ears is a whole different thing but like this feels a little better but yeah and beat was getting beat up there's no question I mean it reminds me of peak shack like I covered those shack over years and like there's this there's this part when you're really big and tall and dominant that's that's what people do and I think they did a lot even more to shack because you couldn't make free throws you know it was it's I don't think it's talking about quite enough how good a free throw shooter to all and beat it's like that is you can't just hack him the whole time because he makes what's 80 80 percent 85 something like that between 80 and 90 yeah I mean he's a really good free throw shooter for a big but I do think there is if he's gonna be weird if you already know he has knee injury not something you need to watch in this series I do think Boston will not guard him the way the Nets did in terms of sending the double teams flying out of from before the ball even gets there I think they'll I think they'll mix up defenses a little bit more and I think what what we saw from them playing a horford and time lord together for extended minutes for the first time against Atlanta their days could come into play against Philly because I like that alignment I like the idea of like a horford on and beat and Rob Williams on PJ Tucker kind of looming in the background um what a day all right Ramon I go home to your beautiful children and your and your husband and stop talking to me I appreciate you making a little time though yeah it's fun all right let's go back to the Eastern Conference which is in a little bit of a state of chaos it's 115 eastern time as we record this in about six hours the bucks and the heat will tip off with honest returning from injury reportedly and if the the bucks don't win this game whoa we're gonna have to reconvene and talk about it and see what the state of the east looks like because on the other side of the bracket in a series that has been one for someone who likes defense and physicality and ugly ball the New York Knicks with two resounding home wins over the weekend have taken a commanding 3-1 lead over the Cavs who could not figure out how to score jailin bronson has been the best player in the series even though he's shooting 28% from three nobody least of all Julius randal can make a three pointer to save their lives in this entire series Tim Bond times how are you doing well Zack not as well as the fans who have been shutting down 7th Avenue after these games the last couple days but i'm doing well man it's good to be honest the Knicks are back baby i'll tell you what i like i like that whole crew i like the whole rowdy crew don't you wish you came to the Knicks kd kd it was amazing so for people who remember that sidetalk video for when the the Knicks beat the Celtics double over top to start last season people were initially thought the Knicks were gonna roll through the air obviously last year to back over the Knicks one of the guys in the video had this rant about gadie and go you regret outside with the Knicks after game three he reappeared on 7th avenue and asked the same question again in front of a middle of a mosh pit of people and they were having a lot of fun and look man like i saw jeff ann gundee before sunday's game went talk to him and brian mark jaxon and i asked him hey like that crowd on friday seemed like the finals back in 99 and he said i think it was better than the crowd during the finals like as you i mean you're obviously in the area too zak like there's so many nich fans here who are just absolutely dying to have a real championship level nich steamed or root four and the nichs aren't there yet but they're on the path of that i think really for the first time since that 90 final steam and being at those two games at the garden this weekend the energy was incredible the atmosphere was great and the nichs you know the nichs are playing like the 90s nichs they're physically dominating the opponent and winning slug fest and everybody here's fired up about it look here's where we are they're beating the superstar guard that they didn't trade for and the guard they signed for free not money-wise but asset-wise other than cavities is out playing the guard they didn't trade for and they still have all the assets that they didn't trade for the guard they didn't trade for so winter lose going forward they're looking like they're in very good shape and yeah the nichs fans are going bananas in the show this is a sustainable good team that has not that is up three one both teams so far in the series are scoring at a rate that would have ranked dead last sub hornets sub hornets in the regular season one team is just a little bit less worse on offense than the other and that team is the nichs the cabs cannot score just can't score can't find a lineup they like can't find a defensive game plan they like but mostly they just cannot score and here's the thing they're down three one it's bleak it's bleak looks bleak right now but the thing about having home court advantages three one is overcomable when you have five and seven at home you just got wind five force the nichs come back and close it out and six and if they don't all of a sudden you got game seven home it's much different being down three one the way the hawks are down three one or the wolves are down three one after saving up elimination last night so the big question that we have to dive into is why can't they have score and what can they do to start scoring at an acceptable rate i have some ideas i would like to hear your ideas because this offensive performance is you know look we all know the nichs aren't guarding anybody who's not named garland or michol whichever whichever fifth guy jb bicker staff he spins the wheel and a new guy comes up and throws him out there doesn't matter who it is okay same result look you know what it's time for it's him what is it's time for it's act dean wade your company's accounting man dean wade it's time for dean wade because ricky rubiel can't cut it jeddy osmond is minus ten thousand in the series caris lebert is fine and needs to play isa core is fine and needs to play a little bit more danny green i'm sorry it hasn't worked out if there's gonna be a third it might be time to resurrect dean wade you know it's funny dean wade is a guy nobody really knows about right he's sort of a non-descript sounds like a NBA 2k created player right there's this guy dean wade who's on the team but that being said sort of a significant part of the story the calves this year i think is that he heard his shoulder earlier in the year and he just never got right never got that he had the skill set to be the exact guy that they need sort of like obviously larry market and show in this year's a far more talented player but they essentially last year larry market would be a big wing who could stay in stay in the way on defense and hit open threes on offense and that dean wade at least had the ability to do that in theory and physically he's just never been right and so i don't think we're ever gonna really see what that could look like but look that's been you know our buddy brian winners have been talking about this all season with the calves that's been the story of the calves all season they can't find that fifth guy that was the story of the calves the minute they made the down of the middle trades like can i see a core shoot and if you can't shoot what are they gonna do and they haven't answered the question they haven't and they haven't answered it and to your point you know you look at that game yesterday game four the next we're running away from anybody who was catching the ball in the corner letting them shoot it double team and down of the Mitchell going at dairies garland they're like hey one of these guys hits six seven threes fine we'll live with that we're not gonna let these guys get going i mean the calves did have some success with small small picking rolls earlier in the series i'd like to see them go back to that a little bit more the one time they have to stop there because that's the most interesting thing that's happened in the last two games the small small picking rolls won them game two and what they did was they targeted jail and bronson the whole series has just devolved into where's the little guard bring him to me that's the whole series it's just like it's it's kind of boring if you don't like that kind of basketball because it's just all right where's dairies garland and then okay where's jellin bronson and then in game three tibs decided i'm not gonna make them hunt jailin bronson i'm just gonna put jailin bronson on dairies garland because otherwise they're bringing him up into screens and i'm just gonna say here's jellin bronson on a platter for your point guard yep and and jb bicker staff in game four said huh that's interesting how that worked um for them because we stopped bringing jellin bronson into his many picking rolls let's do the same thing let's put darius garland on jellin bronson so they don't have to hunt him we'll give we'll give our guy to their guy on a silver platter and it didn't work and i think that it didn't work speaks to the difference between all of these guards garland and even mitchell are really good obviously they're incredible scores but their one-on-one game is different from jail and bronson they're not a bruising physical isomid range type players don't even mitchell can be that player with a head of steam that's not really garland's game although i do think i do think the cabs need to lean a little bit more into our spacing is their way let's just let these guys cook a little bit more get you fired up it's monday i'm tired i'm jet like let's just let these guys cook let these guys cook one-on-one a little bit i do think they need to try that but they're more liable to um get good shots in rotation in other words let's start picking roll with bronson where they got a hedge we catch the ball on the move bronson's like rotation rotation now i need that just give me the ball and i'm gonna do my footwork stuff and so it's been interesting to see how they both coaches did the same thing and for one coach it worked to kind of confuse cleveland's offense because this weapon was taken away from them a little bit and for the other coach it didn't work because jail and bronson's like oh cool i just had their his garland i mean now that's great i don't have to look for him well and to me the the word you used when you said bruising and bullying that's why the nix are three one in the series it's not to me like they're off into issues with the cabs they're pointing out them obviously but the nix are winning the series because they are bullying the cabs at both ends of the court they're playing they're the far more physical team hold on i've got a new i've got a news bulletin i've got a news bulletin okay mit mitchell robinson just yes he just pushed jared alan out of the way and got another offensive rebound even though the game is not going on me so robinson got another offensive rebound i mean look coming into the series i thought the two biggest keys were commiser robinson dominate the glass because the nix were one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the league and david and mr robinson was the second best offensive rebounding big in the league behind steven adams he has completely in the cabs were a bad defense of rebounding team even with the two bigs mr robinson has smoked them inside and josh art other than the one game with the sprain dacle has absolutely terrorized the cabs with his physicality at both ends between gardin not in the mitchell on defense and just relentlessly hitting the boards on offense that's why cleveland is losing the series they are just getting manhandled at both ends of the court and if that doesn't change that that has to change before you fix any of this other stuff because you're gonna run out there the seven mobile chair out line up for so much of the game as they are and you're still gonna be getting killed on the boards and losing the physicality battle that's the whole point of playing with two bigs is you're gonna win the rebounding battle you're gonna be the more physical team you're gonna be the bigger team and they're they're just getting beaten up by the nix and it's really shown throughout the series all right let's be clear on a few things number one the nix are rebounding 37 percent of their own business which is like it's like having two steven adams on your team it's just wild they're getting to the line at a rate that would have been number one and number two for the whole season they're very good at that and they're winning that battle the nix bench has been phenomenal and wildly outplayed the calves bench now partly that's because bronson plays a lot of minutes with the bench if you can i pop in can i pop in real quick pop pop in two of the three nix wins made it quickly didn't make a basket including yesterday in game four and after the first half of game one julies rando is 15 for 52 from the field and is six for 25 from three if i told you those two things for the series started you would have said this might have been a sweet admin would have said well the calves are definitely got three one like they're gonna be controlled the series it's just wild to me that the nix have put themselves in this position when two of their key got in the bench has been great but i think i mean josh art has come in it's been incredible whenever he's played but it is just amazing that some of these foundational things for the nix have not worked very well and like you said channel's not hitting threes like that the nix haven't shot the ball ball ball at any point nobody's interested in the nix is shooting 27 percent on threes the calves are shooting 31 percent so it's not even like the calves can be like well the nix will cool off and threes nobody they're shooting worse the next are shooting worse quickly has the best plus minus in the whole series plus 41 top in who closed yesterday over rando has been great has been fantastic hardenstein minus in the whole series of plus 20 through the and that's partly because they're playing well partly because they're playing a lot of minutes with bronson and the nix cannot score any baskets when bronson sits they have no they're they're often to rating without bronson if i read it to you i was kidding it's so bad um and partly because the calves bench is a disaster zone to that point mowbley and allen combined plus 10 for the series the calves best four players have played 98 minutes that's a little bit more than half the series they're plus 12 in those 98 minutes every other lineup is getting destroyed they just can't find the fifth guy so i guess let's go back to the question how can the calf score more points and who should play i mean i think so if it does come back to the physicality part right like the nix because the nix are winning the physicality part they're getting off into rebounds or getting foul shots they're able to grind the game down i think the calves at every possible opportunity you need to get out in transition they need to run i think they won i think they need to try to get you know they had the one time they had success in game four was when they were starting running pick and rolls at the start of the second apeteries garland and jerelyn allen and they were getting mitchell robsen away from the basket now the reason that worked is because chuis ran it was basically playing against events and just watching either dairies garland or jere now and get to the rim for a layup or a dunk over and over again which is i think part of why he was on the court in the fourth quarter i want to be top and play very well and tips wrote him to the end but they have to to me they have to do that they have to give us robsen away from the basket they have to get out and run in transition and the other thing is down in the middle just has to be in particular a lot more aggressive like he he missed some open shots in game four but if you told me that in a game at the garden with the calf season on the line dot of micha was going to sort of be invisible especially in the second half or you didn't really try to make his imprint on the game i would not have imagined that would be the case if anything i would have thought of in the other way you've been trying too hard to really do stuff with the ball and obviously the next one wrote a lot of doubles out of you wasn't making the right play guys are missing shots but it was pretty surprising to see how i don't know if passage is the right word but how uninvolved you end up being in particular in the second half of that game i just never imagined that we would have seen that yeah don't have an initial after game one when he was outstanding has scored 50 points in three games so 16.7 points a game on 20 of 48 shooting he has nine free throw attempts attempts not makes attempts in three games and i think part of this is look the spacing is just not going to be good it's not going to be good no you have the two big guys out there it's just they've lived with this all year clearly jb picker staff is hesitant to put a core out there with the two big guys and have three total zero shooters on the floor at the same time i think he's gonna have to play that group more because the core is just too good defending bronson and really the only good option they have defending bronson heck at times in game four he was actually aggressive attacking you know he would catch the ball in the corner he would attack the rimpers of layoffs like there were stretches where he's okay out there offensively he will make a corner three like if the hands are gonna come back and win this series he's gonna have to have two games where he's two or five on corner threes it doesn't have to be you know he turns into like danny green for two spurs danny green not this danny green you just got hit a corner a couple corner threes um and and you know look you if you're gonna have three non-shooters on the floor it's got to be those three don't it can't be rubio a core and another big man that's like that's over they're just not even a guard group they're gonna pretend rubio's not on the floor right um but i think these guards are just gonna have to be more aggressive and to your point about bringing mitchell robinson into the pick and roll one thing i liked in that stretch with garland and to a lesser extent mitchell was they drove at mitchell robinson head down decisive and look i get that's hard mitchell robinson's gigantic josh heart is behind you if you're down to mitchell on your hip like you feel that he's a big dude not you know or if it's garland it's gill and frontom is a small dude but and then you get right to the foul line and mitchell robinson's waiting for he's got his arms spread there's obi top in in the lane not guarding evan mobli there's uh whoever not guarding and it's kind of like a too bad you're gonna have to make hay out of this that's what you do you're a star guard and b i did think there were a couple possessions where if you get that deep in like there was one where donned but mitchell attacked a drop he kind of snaked it like chris paul likes to do left to right and pulled up for an 18 footer because that he looked around and he said here's mr robinson karstler two in the weak side corner they're not guarding him his guys in the lane i can't get any further i have to take the shot and that's cool he's got to take it and make it there were a few possessions like that where i thought to myself there's like 15 on shot clock past the ball to caris lbert wide open in the corner because even if he doesn't shoot let him pump and go and just like get the machine moving a little bit mobile he had when where he forced an ugly john pukin donnedemitchell was wide open in the corner like on some of these possessions there are one pass away and it's not like a great option it's not like you feel like oh i'm passing to a knockdown shooter or someone who's gonna dunk the ball it's just a pass to like just keep it moving and see if we can get it moving a little bit and i feel like they can they can stand to do that but to your point bringing jared allen up particularly on empty side picking rolls where the help assignments are a little more complicated you saw them during that stretch they didn't just like walk it up and run a pick and roll they got garland running off flex screens and coming up so that he's got a little airspace before he gets the ball just more of that more pace a little bit more creativity i just they just got to crack it open with like sheer star power i think at some point i they have to i mean look like you said this team is built on the defensive presence of the two bigs and the offensive presence of the two guards that's what got them to this point the defense has been pretty good it's not like the nicks are going crazy obviously the nicks are going to have a better shooting game so good the calves but the nicks have more guys who are going to potentially hit shots but dares carland dot have been initially good enough to take over games and win games and they have to do that and by the way obviously it's not looking great for the calves right now being down three one in the series but the thing that i would probably be most frustrated by if i was a cast fan and i assume the calves are as well those two games this weekend were winnable games the nicks did not play great in either of those games like playing right but right but my point is it's not like the nicks played an a game and won at home right they played a couple c plus games and won at home like they played super hard they're they've been dominant physically in the series but there's a lot of money left on the table for the calves and like i like to me it's obviously you got to look at it as a one-game at a time thing but like if i'm the calves i go home and i think look i couldn't have played worse these two games of the garden both games were tied in the third quarter despite playing terribly for the first half in both games like if they come out and execute the way we're talking about and fix some fairly basic stuff they can absolutely win game five and then they got to just win one game at the garden like you said it's not like they have you know if you chop it up like that it's more manageable to think about than well we got to win three games in a row like i do think there's a world that they do it but they just have to like you said there's some of this basic stuff they just have to do far far better because we know what the nicks are going to do the nicks are going to be playing incredibly hard they're going to be crashing the glass they're going to you know jailor brus is going to be doing is you know moses mollum or uh the chemo lajuan you know dream jake footwork moves to get shots like we know what the nicks are the calves have to get back to who they are and they got a chance here we are in the year of our basketball gods 2023 and tim buntems mentioned moses mollon and a chemo lajuan i miss some instances is jailin brus and i didn't laugh that's how good jailin brus and here's the other story to your point about the guards second year in the row jailin brus and donald and mitzel are meeting the first round of the house and jailin brus and is killing donald and mitzel like that that's the story really like donald and mitzel the cows got donald and mitzel to win them games like this and people in new york wanted donald and mitzel last summer because they wanted to win games like this and game four cows down to one donald and mitzel went five or 18 and jailin brus and had 26 points and hit huge shots down the stretch and led the next to win the other thing i would like to give the next credit for defensively is the calves realize that they're just getting strangled the spacing is smother in them and so if you watch there'll be a main action on the ball like a garland two-man game a mitzel two-man game and on the weak side the calves are trying to occupy the nix defenders with what coaches call fluff which is just decoy action like oh here's evan mowley setting a pin down for kara slivert and the nix are just completely like that's cool we don't care like we're just gonna you're not fooling us with any of this we're just ignoring it completely and there has to be a way for the calves to exploit that like you can't just let the nix you gotta run that stuff with some intention of like maybe actually using it if the nix are not gonna guard it and to that point there was one possession in the third quarter about halfway through where this is just simple stuff but it's hard it's hard this is like really intense basketball the nix are an amazing defensive team in this series anyway they're actually like below average by a bit in the regular season when mitchell and allen on the right side of the floor ran a pick and roll and i think this was just improvised i don't think there was any planning to this because it was late in the shot clock and michal robinson came up because it was jared allen screening for donald mitchell there's not mitchell's too many mitchell's okay and donald mitchell instead of attacking it which i've been saying he should do immediately it was like all right mitchell robinson's now at the three point arc boom swing darius garland caught the ball lane open isolated on bronson and beat him off the dribble like setting up garland to isolate with the rim protector already gone was i think an accident but a really smart accident that if i were them i would try to engineer a little bit more but yeah they just they just got to be a little better and the next because the nix are gonna start hitting shots soon i'd love to see the nix find ways to get a randal going because this randal thing is we all knew the playoff crash was coming to some degree but this is just like this now he's covering from an ankle injury he's banged up i realize that they're they're always thinking of him going well that's the thing right so i thought whoever won game three was gonna have a massive advantage going into game four for two reasons one it's obviously a super physical series so on a quick turnaround if you can win game three you're gonna you have a chance to really have some momentum but you don't always do in a seven game series because it's such a short turnaround it's basically a 36-hour window and you know the downside after the nix was jewish randal just absolutely did not look right in game four and you have to wonder you know tips that have time to do it after the game he's still feeling this ankle he certainly did not look like he could move around great and with a couple days between these games going into game five you would think that it would give julies a chance to um you know get his legs under him and play a little better because yeah like i said that's the crazy thing he has been very bad since the first half of game one and the nix are still in control of the series if he has a good game in game five or game six and he starts hitting shots and they start hitting threes you know it's gonna be very hard for the calves then because like we said this series is really just about trying to get to 100 twice on both sides it's just such a struggle for either side to score that if the next can get julies on top of some of the stuff that they're probably going to have automatically from how hard and physically they're playing it's gonna make an uphill climb for the calves that just have a target. Evan Mobley's short roll game is like short circuited like something just malfunctioned in his right like he gets the ball in open space he's like okay i'm gonna throw the ball now and it hit backward like this he just like he's just like he's a floater is it a pass like nobody knows um i will say i've heard from a few executives in the last 72 hours as the calves have fallen a little bit apart kind of parroting the line of how come they didn't do anything at the trade deadline are they like look at the nix who went out and got josh heart you know traded a first round pick real stuff for josh heart camera the nix are happy they're giving up the 23rd pick in the draft for for josh heart right now and and these people are saying well why couldn't the calves like they didn't really want to upgrade their team at all like what were they doing and on the one hand they looked around like i heard names worse than josh heart i heard like joe harris who can't make a shot in the playoffs for whatever reason um but you look at the calves they don't have any first round picks to trade they traded them all for donny vinciall they have literally can not trade a first round pick they have some extra seconds right they have got like but they're like warrior seconds and other seconds and they don't have like much fungible salary than anybody wants they're also only a million dollars under the tax so like the easiest way to like make your team a little bit better just on the margins which is all they need is like who wants to cut money who wants to get a decent player and to cut your tax bill they can't even do that i'm sure there must have been some move they could have done there's always some move you could do i just don't know what it is or what it was i mean i know they were looking around at wings like at the kind of middle bottom of the barrel they didn't get any because they just don't have much to trade i don't know if you remember what you heard about them at the deadline but that's going to be a storyline that comes up now if they lose the series and particularly if josh heart plays a big role in knocking them out of it yeah i mean look this is this is sort of the choice the nix had last summer right the choice was do you go all in for donny and trade a bunch of first-round picks and sacrifice a bunch of your assets to get him or do you wait and try to keep building your team until you get to a place where you can trade for him i really like the trade for the calves at the time because they have him all the have jared down oh no there's no let's be clear all good and if you think if you think i've sold one share of my ebb and mobile stock because of four okay playoff games to play out games i've got all of it i'm right now the stock price i didn't do any i didn't do any insider trading with my ebb and mobile stock either the series i got it all ebb and mobile is going to be a great player all right there's no i don't think there's any question about that he'll be he'll be just fine but my only point about that was like you said the calves traded just about everything they had to get down to the Mitchell and so like yeah i'm sure the cows will look i mean we it's not like you and i are the first people to talk about the fact the calves don't have a fifth guy right the calves the calves wing position the three positions probably the single weakest position of any playoff team this year like everybody could see that including imagine if imagine if they just got to rent tori kreg from the suns for every year tori kreg would be like a revelation on the calves and in phoenix it's like this tori kreg would have to be the fifth guy on the calves to throw a freaking parade because tori kreg was on their team and that's into your point right this is the problem that they're in like they have cares of her and an expiring deal they almost have to sign him no matter what this summer just to have the body available either to trade him or do something with him later because i can't replace him if he leaves and they because they traded everything for diamond they're in a spot where they just don't have a lot of stuff to add that fifth guy and that's going to be the challenge for gobi altman in their front office going forward is with the limited assets they have where can they find on the margins the guys that can fill in around them to make this team deep enough to take the next step forward now the other thing they're going to need is evan mobili to me has to take a massive step forward this summer which he's very capable of doing he's a hugely talented player but they need him to take a step forward so some of these issues are mitigated by him stretching out as a shooter by him becoming a little bit better handled in the ball in the short world doing these things that would help unlock our offense a little bit and they've got to find a way to add that little bit of depth so that when they're playing the team like the mix it's not just well we're going to play four on five and just pretend whoever this other player is we're just going to pretend they're not there because that's not going to be good enough in the playoffs evan mobili is 21 years old if you want to be one of the people on twitter mocking evan mobili enthusiasm you go ahead just bookmark the tweets it talked to me in three years about about your evan mobili skepticism um you mentioned levert bronson spent a lot of the first couple games guarding levert hiding trying to hide on levert and the cats exploited that by using levert and a lot of different ways part of the problem with levert is when they try and use him as a ball handler he's just so scattershot that he'll he has i think nine assists the whole series in four games he's just sort of an unreliable a little bit scatters a very inconsistent player right like there i've seen him score i feel like i've seen score 50 points it gets itself at five times and everybody's a self-explanatory looks like an all-in-a-player but he he's just a very inconsistent shooter and scorer and there's some games when he looks great and there's some games when he looks really bad and you know it's hard to rely on that guy as a fifth guy in in a playoff series and he's you know a bit of a liability at the other end too so i mean it's just sort of emblematic of their issues where they just can't all these guys have a significant flaw and it's just it's very difficult to figure out what the right matchup is which is why chibi pikr staff has been trying all hundred different things and as you correctly pointed out when those four guys around the court the cast will great and when any one of them is off the court it doesn't look as good if given what i just said about levert if bronson is on garland again i think they need to lean even more into mitchell garland two-man game see what they want to do the nicks when bronson is faced with a switch on or hedge and rotation i think they need to do a little bit more of that we'll see what happens in game five it's not this one is not one of the ones i'm writing off as over as an over series we are however mr bontemps getting close to philly boston credit to the hawks i just want to say credit to the hawks i said last week they didn't look like they belonged on the same court as boston in the first two games show me something in itlana they showed out in itlana they won three shot to hell of it they pushed boston to the limit almost in game four in loss and it was a nice effort but we're almost there you ready for that one because that one that's the one this second round we got some mega series coming up we certainly do especially the south xixor series where there's a lot of online we'll see where joell and vida's at at the end of the week um hopefully the big fella's feeling better with his brain knee and is able to go um but yeah look i mean we've i've been waiting all year to cover south xixor's this has been the these things have been on a collision course since the summer and there's a ton of history there both past and present so i think the third or fourth time joell and vida's played them in the playoffs they've obviously played many many many times over the years it's you know there's there's just a ton at stake on both sides and you know like you said in the second round where there's going to be some real mega series i don't think there's going to be one with bigger stakes than than that one when it gets cold and like i said i just really hope that joell is able to go full go because he's spent all year hoping to be healthy when the playoffs came around and if he has that to rail by another flooky landing on a attempted contest of a shot it would just be really unfortunate we'll have to talk more about that series going forward when it when it gets when it gets there will be time for that i think tim bontempt you got to go do some television thank you for making some time i will see you somewhere in an arena probably next week whether it's the world's most famous arena or whatever they call the sixers arena now or somewhere i'll see you around buddy i'm sure well man i'm looking forward to it thank you for having me appreciate it