The Clippers Blow a 3-1 Lead With Ryen Russillo | The Bill Simmons Podcast

all right we're here taping this it is 8 45 pacific time tuesday night we moved we're celery was supposed to be on thursday and said hey racillo what if we do tuesday night instead game seven clips nuggets who knows maybe something will happen here's what happened one of the one of the great playoff chokes in the history of the nba we're going to get to that in a second but i want to start on a positive note nicole yokic we haven't had an impactful center in almost 20 years i would say since 2002 shaq uh the third of his three finals mvp seasons when he could still reach deep down and just destroy a team and since then we've had dwight howard we've been embiid we've had cups of coffees with guys we deep down we knew they weren't great and i think joekidge has a chance to be the first impactful guy we've had in uh 20 years before tonight's game 27 playoff games 26 12 and 7 51 field goal like really nobody in the history of the league has done that for their whole career and then today even though murray was the guy who scored all the points jokic had a triple double in the third quarter he just completely discombobulated the clippers and yeah the clippers fell short and we could talk about all the terrible things they did in this series but the bottom line is they didn't know what to do with jokic they didn't know how to defend them they didn't have a plan for it and even in game seven as it's slipping away they're doubling him they're blitzing him it's like they had no idea who he was what was your reaction as you were watching this well we always talk about changing up coverages right and we do it we talk about football all the time and then we get really excited about it with toronto and nick nurse and then some of the stuff where spolster even downplayed it in the boston game where he's like yeah we had a few zone possessions but we like this stuff right we like it i think jeff van gundy was incredibly van gundy in the cut was very very telling and where he's like yep they just keep doubling them they just keep doubling oakich and he's just throwing it to everybody now again when you're saying you're doubling the greatest passing big man of all time which is what van gandy called him yeah and it was like it was walton in the second quarter and then by the time they had it run again they were like nope it's joking it's jokic it's not walton anymore i mean that they stopped arguing about it right that's seriously like what kind of come up this series is for jokic and his standing and and where he is in this game and that's what happens as a playoffs and that's why it's so fun but there's part of me that goes you know eventually they didn't change it though they did change it where they put a big on him in the switch but you're selling out and you're trying to double and by the way the lakers excuse me the clippers are up nine at one point here okay they're up nine third quarter yeah and then paul george fouls out with five or excuse me gets his third foul at 5 15 although it may have been good on offense to not have him ever come back and then murray unleashes but then on some of these double actions where there's times where i've watched denver now so closely over the years ago i don't know is that two-man thing really going to work well when grant hits a couple threes and then harris gets his first one and then milsap hit that one at the top of the key when they doubled again you're like okay well this is different now because a lot of games grant's just out there to miss and not rebound harris can't shoot to save his life i think there's probably a lot of people that forgot milsap was on this team three times this year but this whole series man i don't want to get too far in the weeds with it but at least for let's just talk at least for game seven i think it's almost having to credit jokic going well look if this is what you're doing and you've given me all these options i've already figured them all out now because it's seven games of the stuff and i'm too good that's the key point right you're challenging somebody who already has the answers to the test you're saying like hey here's another multiple choice test and he's like i have the answer key right here what are you doing yeah it's a c b d whatever you're doing i'm ready i already know how to handle this he had 13 assists he had one catch in the paint where he was facing opposite to a guy at the elbow of the three and he got doubled fake the pass to the opposite corner and immediately turned around like because these guys all know where everybody's supposed to be positioned that's why when you see your throat out of bounds they'll point to him being like you're not you're off your spot he already knew that he wasn't passing to the guy in the corner was passing it to somebody behind him exactly like you're saying because now he's so comfortable and he's seven feet getting double just looking over everybody and if they do the double and then they back off it he's smart enough to take his time and get the little foul line jumper or the runner or pretend he's going to have the foul line jumper and then hit somebody last second he had 13 assists what's crazy about it is murray was six for 13 from three the rest of the team was seven for 24. if they had hit more threes in this game and if they credited when you have you know you think those couple times where a guy got fouled because jokic got him a layup and it didn't count as assists for him like he honestly could have had 20 plus assists in this game if there's two layups where the layup actually goes in when the guy's getting fouled and then four other people hit a three or whatever he's up there i i just thought he was so dominant and it's weird because murray had 40. murray finally showed up you know in both half of utah massive massive massive his second quarter was nuts but that's the guy that shouldn't you would think like all right jokic if zubots get some foul trouble which is what happened immediately in this game well all right that's gonna be trouble for the clippers murray they have seven guys to throw at him and he was torching them and i felt like the spirit of the clippers you could see it fading as that second half went which is the same thing that happened on sunday in game six right i you know the whole the whole point of the clippers this whole time is you go okay look at all these options that they have when it's right because when it's right it looks pretty good yeah and when they're up 3-1 you're like okay this is what's supposed to happen and when they're up 19 in game six you're like okay enough of this and then you go what the hell is wrong with these guys you're like okay well now whatever human nature there is which i don't think we do enough of where i always say look you can't fake being desperate you can't be as desperate as the team that's down 2-0 now if they're terrible if we're talking like a nets or magic first round series here being down 2-0 is not going to help you yeah if you're pretty good and denver's pretty good there's just a different gear that they're going to have but then when it gets to game seven tonight bill and the clippers get up you know almost 10 and then they get up seven early in the third quarter did you think they were playing well though because i i didn't think they were playing that great i didn't think they were playing well but i thought whenever they attacked and swung it denver's actually pretty bad on their rotations and look you'd have to believe me even van gundy's pointing it out he's like look he started talking about that pistol screen that they were sending yeah and you know again why van gundy's just better than everybody else that does it i don't think there's another color commentary person naturally for basketball to start pointing out the pistol screen problems like and he had it immediately it was like two plays they ran it he knew the action and he was like this is why it's messed up and denver was messing with some of their defensive rotations that van gandy's even pointing out and i'm going okay you know like the normal thing is going to happen here because kawhi and yet then it gets back to something that we've talked about where it feels like we've had all these negative storylines with these teams because it's been so unproven it's why do the clippers think that why do they think so highly of themselves kawhi went and did that in toronto last year i did it without any of you guys the rest of you guys haven't done anything so why do you guys carry yourselves like this team that's like in year three after back to back titles and that's kind of how they carried himself with this this group that never really clicked yet at the same time i'm like okay how the hell they ever get up 3-1 how did they get up 19 in game six how did that team just look [ __ ] petrified in the fourth quarter of a game seven those are grown men that were scared to be playing basketball and i give kawhi a pass because i think he was trying to press the issue and it just wasn't working like he had an awful game but other guys were scared bill yeah i agree with that but i do think you know game seven you saw in the first half none of the denver guys could hit a three and it had all the makings it's like oh man this is just gonna have to be murray and yokish and they and they those two guys together kind of kept denver hanging around until denver started making some plays but they were playing good defense though and i think you know you think back to that jeremy grant trade where okc is like hey we feel like saving money any interest to jeremy grant denver's like sure i thought he did a good job on kawhi and i don't i don't know we know kawaii i i'm not going to say he you know i i i'm like you i hate using the word choke i thought he looked tired and this is something we had talked about heading into these playoffs where it's like the every other day every other day every other day was that going to favor younger teams was that gonna hurt older guys was that gonna hurt somebody like kawhi who's really been careful about how much mileage he wanted to put on himself the last couple years now look at who we have in the final four we have this young celtics team we have a miami team that has a couple of guys but for the most part younger guys like bam and and hiro and people like that and then this denver team built around two young guys and then the lakers who haven't really been tested yet but i do wonder like if you had home court and you and the the schedule wasn't as kind of stacked as it was would this have been the same result we'll never know but i think we have to mention it well it's certainly with denver because when you look at their runs that they'll have and then you'll kind of more so two years ago than than this year but you'd be like well wait a minute what's the what's the record on the road that was like more me two years ago and talking about this team yeah you know even this year with philly i'm like wait this healthy team i'm supposed to take seriously and you suck on the road and then you know everything happens so home and road doesn't really matter but i think as much as i i do want to get back to the clippers thing and i do want to get back to kauai i almost say save that though because i want to hit that in the next segment i i want to hit nuggets and why they won first yeah no that's what i'm doing like i want to give you more room here to just talk about yokitch and what is now like this is the fun part this is the great part about the playoffs you have these kinds of performances and now we have to look at you a lot differently now even though the numbers might be the same even though look his playoff regular season numbers he's blowing up but just to control the game the way he did he didn't shoot it great tonight he's also in that group of like how come you don't shoot a little bit more but he's so patient he's dissecting every single thing and once he gets rolling and as we said at the very top once he understands everything that you want to do it's it's like magic johnson type stuff what about when he takes the rebound and he goes and he's running three on two fast breaks okay and that's where when you're talking i was lucky enough to see walton at his peak and then when he was on the celtics when he was a little rejected not at this peak never yeah well but still like an incredible bench player yeah never saw sabonis saw like grainy youtube of him stuff like that and then jokic and those are the three great passing centers of all time i do feel like it was funny that jackson mentioned will chamberlain as a great passer um which is just you know he was forcing he wanted to win the assist title that one year and really like was assist assist assist kind of like when rondo was chasing assists on the triple double last two years the guy everybody said was a great passer back then was russell because and russell's like never mentioned any of these but if you go back like russell averaged over five assists at least one of those playoffs and was a great outlet pass his outlet passing alone on those old clips is like unbelievable outlet passer and then also they used to put him kind of like how denver uses jokage at the top of the key and they would run all these little zigzags and he would hit people and throw so for whatever reason he hasn't mentioned jokic i think the difference with him and these other guys is his ability to off the dribble to create plays like we've never seen centers do that before it's it's kind of i i've never seen anybody like him walton and walton was not like him want was a great passer but they were not alike as players at all and when the jokic thing first starts happening too you go like who is this guy and he looks like and a lot of people are going to get this reference but do you ever remember being a little kid and like maybe it was you and your buddies you're on a little league baseball team so you were like the popular kids in recess but there was that kid who had like a hand-me-down winter coat and he always had boogers in his nose and he was like bigger than everybody else and nobody really talked to him and then his face was always like red and weird and then like one of the cool kids like said something to him and started making fun of him and then he just went berserker mode on you and beat you and all your friends up in the at recess that's what jokic looks like to me when i see him he's got like these weird like jogging things he'll he'll like kind of do this odd apology to a ref with his hands his mouth he'll be like uh you know and then he's just killing everybody and he wouldn't pass my right yeah he wouldn't pass my alien test like if you brought an alien to a basketball game or like who do you think the best player is they would not pick george no it would be like the seventh or eighth pick he's like an extra large sham it face well so i did some research because he's you know he's over 25 10 and five again in the in the playoffs this year so heading into this game he was 26 10 and five and a half but now he had like so he's probably like 26 11 and five now something like that here all the players who were 25 10 and five uh with shooting fifty percent field goal joking stated twice tim duncan larry bird in 84 chamberlain in 67 blake griffin in 2015 underrated playoffs barkley in 86 to set 12 games there wilt chamberlain 68 magic and 80. bill walton in 77 and lucas and 72. those are all the guys 16 games or more all of those guys are hall of famers except blake and at least four one two three five of those guys are top ten all-time guys this is not something over the course of a playoffs you're not supposed to be 25 10 and five he's 25 12 and seven and i know the stats are a little messed up because the way basketball is being played now but it's not like he's shooting threes it's not like he's assisting like this is all flow of the game [ __ ] and he's just dominant yeah i mean i'm just going to double check it here again tonight too because i don't know what the the numbers isn't he's 16 19 and 13 something like that uh 16 13 assists 22 boards 22 boards and he only took six free throws i mean he was he was five or 13. he missed every three that he took tonight so if you just looked at this this is one of those basketball reference games you'd be like oh that was a weird game like but he wasn't doing much and you go no he was he was kind of doing i can't say he was doing everything because he would discredit how incredible murray was and that's very very which it just kind of changed everything but i still kept waiting for that clippers comeback i kept waiting for it to happen but uh this is like i don't know what's to happen next you know i'm probably going to pick the lakers but i i now look at it yokoch and murray as different and this isn't you know this becomes this battle of like oh these guys have always been this well not really like not really and now they just did it again they came back from 3-1 again and when they were down 3-1 to utah i'm like oh man this denver team like why does why do people on tv say like oh look out they're like this sneaky team that could come out of the west and now it's real and now it's a real possibility so yeah like now i look at the denver nuggets differently because now they've done something and what they did against this clippers team i still can't like i'm sitting here in disbelief that this actually just happened well let's talk about a key component continuity and we're in this league now where everybody just changes teams constantly changes players constantly and the stars switch teams and all this stuff and the clippers are a great example of that right these guys were thrown together they played two thirds of a season we never were 100 comfortable with where they were as a possible contender pandemic happens go back in the bubble and the same thing on off switch they look great one game ease up the next game whatever's going on and denver is a team that's kind of grown up together here you know they added grants a new piece porter is relatively new even though he trained with them last year but the jokage murray harris millsap those guys have been playing together for a while corey craig's been there for a bit yeah and i i think this really helped the celtics in that raptor series too where you had you had smart and jalen and tatum and those guys have been in wars now together for for three straight years jalen and smart have played together four years i do think the continuity helps and when you really notice it is when things are going south and like this clippers team in game six and game seven where all of a sudden they look like a pickup basketball team they don't have the history and hey the first time i really noticed this as a phenomenon was the 08 celtics because the only celtics were awesome they won they were what were they like 66 and 16 65 and 17 in the regular season and then the playoffs came around and atlanta was going adam and it was like they just the continuity and the cohesiveness just wasn't there yet they hadn't built it they hadn't played with each other enough and they barely got by atlanta they blown out in game seven same thing in the cleveland series took them forever they finally finished them off in seven and they kind of built that continuity as the playoffs went along and then it kind of clicked in the detroit series then it took off i don't think this clippers team had a chance to do that and i don't really know what their identity was because i think to the bitter end they didn't know who their best five guys were at the same time they're still playing lou williams in this game they're going down the ship with him lou williams shouldn't be playing at all in this series the defensive stats on him were worse than the herald stats they couldn't denver was hunting him way worse than toronto his son and kemba in this series and they didn't need his offense but doc just was like oh this is these are my guys we'll figure it out and then all of a sudden the game's over oh it was just it was hard to bet against it though even though that was something that was happening the whole time right because we're watching them we're going when are they going to play together i remember going on cowherd and he was like i think this is great by design because they're wrestling guys i'm like dude it's not by design they would love to have 20 games with these guys they would love to have 20 games in a row with all of their players and figure out what's happening and then you come back and montrez isn't ready to go lou gets busted for going to magic city pat beverly's in and out of the lineup the whole time and it's really tough like they had a moment with reggie jackson where reggie jackson was playing some really good basketball for him and then you'd say uh you know what i don't really want him out there closing and then he had to go to him at some point and then sham it you know he turns his ankle but like i thought oh hey shamit's back on the scene he hadn't been able to hit any shots in the playoffs whatsoever but it was like they didn't want to give up on him but the jokic numbers against montrez were terrible the second unit numbers were terrible and long stretches throughout this playoff season they tried to mix it up i think late with paul george getting in some more minutes with the second unit but really what it comes down to is like when you max out and everybody in the world wants paul george like and look people are going to listen to me thinking i'm giving quiet pass i'm going to save you the time i am he had a bad game for a guy that's at legend status this isn't his tenth hardened game okay this is somebody who carried a franchise by himself and absolutely diced up the heat becoming a superstar all right and so since he has those on his resume i'm going to look at him differently because i go you know what he's forcing the issue but there's there's a bunch of those possessions in the fourth quarter and i knew it marcus morris who may have screwed the whole series up by pushing milsap and milsap being like look you want to be a [ __ ] tough guy all the time and look marcus morris is a tough player but he's not tough mentally and milsap's been around long enough and then milsap has an incredible run in that game that's that comeback and you're like oh now look is it all because of that that'd be overstating it a bit but morris got the ball and he didn't want it in the fourth quarter and then he gets stuck with it and he took a shot i still can't believe morris hit that corner three against cleburne the dallas series because i've seen him miss that shot his whole career reggie jackson has a flailing attempt uh j michael green goes to throw it down to give him some momentum that thing ends up punted at half court then paul george in the same possession has the ball throws it out of bounds paul george dents the side of the backboard yeah that was the corner of threes and you're just going you guys are all toast like you're it was just like you i don't like saying choking i don't like questioning the manhood of these guys because deep down like these guys have all had to go through a lot but to have it be so obvious in front of your face in that fourth quarter you're like nobody not one of you guys is comfortable right now and i think kawhi's discomfort was i can just drive in on a million people right now and throw it up at the hoop but you know nothing we're done like we're toast we were watching a team walk to its own funeral we need a better word than choke it's almost like gak but you know when you see it did they look scared to you bill i thought they you know we always say oh they look a little tight i thought that the whole team went there in the headlights once the nuggets threw a couple haymakers and it was like nine points and every time i felt like the clippers were gonna have a run the nuggets would make a shot and you could just kind of see it it was that hot potato look and morris was a good example like morris got the ball a couple times morris big tough guy from philly wanted no part of it uh reggie jackson he threw him out there he he was terrible in like the minute and a half he played all these dudes i never just for the record i was always on the record i i never was a huge fan of the morris signing i didn't like the moves that made it the deadline and i didn't think they addressed their biggest issue which is like what happens if you're playing yoke at your anthony davis in a playoff series what are you doing are you like does the team really need zubats that much um but i don't know there aren't a ton of things available i mean at least morris in some version of it like he's not unplayable but i i just when he got stuck taking that first shot that he took in the fourth quarter and i was like he doesn't want it he doesn't want it and i don't know if everybody picks up on all that stuff because then you start looking for it and you go oh you know you shove milkshake when you're up but now now you don't even want to take you don't even want the ball in your hand well some teams are like that though some teams are great when they're up 13. i thought toronto i mean i'm sorry boston in the toronto series after the miracle shot in game four the whole team was tight did that mean they choked or that were they rattled from the game i don't know but you could see it you could see collectively they they were not playing freely and i think one of the great things about this denver team they're so tested now with these comebacks you know they the first team ever to come back three to one two two series in a row much less uh in the same playoffs and they just were never scared at any point i wrote them off after game one when they got killed in that game like an idiot i was like oh all right they you know this is a pretty limited team it was two guys they have too many holes their bench isn't good enough the clippers are gonna are gonna kill them and they just kind of kept hanging around hanging around waiting for this clippers team to fold we're gonna take a break and i wanna talk about some of the great collapses in the history of the nba playoffs okay so when we're talking we use the word collapse for the playoffs and there's two kinds right you always see the stat about teams that blew a 3-1 lead in a series stuff like that to me when you're talking about like really memorable collapses it's got to be the team was either better and they blew it or the team had the series by the balls and the series flipped and all of a sudden they're standing there going what the [ __ ] happened so you go back to the 60s the 68 sixers were the first team that blew a 3-1 lead to the celtics the then bill russell that was when everybody thought the celtics were dead sixers had beaten them the year before and then the celtics come back 3-1 they win in game seven 69 lakers that was the west baylor chamberlain team that the celts are running on fumes they end up pulling game six out of their ass and then they win game seven in la i think that was a collapse was it the game next one it was that last second thing which one is game six of that series yeah yeah sam jones uh 79 spurs shout out to sam jones james harden the his spiritual nba godfather george gervin who is the james harden before james harden spurs are up 3-1 and 79 over the bullets and blow the last three games that girvin disappears in the last couple minutes of game seven the 81 sixers had a 3-1 lead over the celtics celtics came back one of the great series of all time that to me wasn't i i never felt like that was a collapse that was just like an incredible series but i never felt like the sixers choked you watch those games and it's like you know one of the great battles it was just that's one of the great series that's i would say mod what we're talking 40 years now that series never gets posted i don't know you'd have to be from philly or boston remember that series as well as you probably do but um that's one of the all time that was one of the first ones me growing up i was more aware a year after that being a little kid but that series then going back and people kind of talking like the mythology of that 81 series was probably the first series i remember at least being aware of basketball and sports where it was like what happened against philly in that one it's just considered one of the all-time greats and every game was 1.2 points you can watch on youtube the 84 lakers really kicked that celtics series away the game two had the henderson steel against worthy game four had the comeback the mchale clothesline all that stuff and after that series you know that that started with the johnson's tragic johnson of [ __ ] yeah uh 87 pistons the isaiah steals the ball they blow it they have the celtics that that series is basically done it's going back to detroit they have the lead bird steals the ball flips it they lose in seven your guy barkley in 95 with the suns they blew the 3-1 lead to the rockets well they blew a 2-0 lead to the rockets the year before so 94 kills me and 95 was just as bad so that i don't need to remind you basically two years in a row where they folded when it mattered the uh 2015 clippers against the rockets i went to that game 2016 warriors that was actually sneaky one of the weird hardened beginning of some of the anti-hardened stuff well he was on the bench yeah he was like had a towel over his head i was there 2016 warriors against cleveland lebron comes back 2019 rockets last year where they blow a series where durant's out they get the break of breaks they still lose and then this clippers team and and i don't think i missed anything i think that's what about let's see oklahoma city uh when when golden state play game yeah because would you say that was a choke collapse or would you say that was clay just pulling their sphincters out i guess it's a little both well i would say it was a collapse if it looked different than westbrook and other big spots which was to say that it always looks bad for the most part so the reason i'm bringing all of these up because they're all famous for whatever whatever reason we've never seen a team roll over in a game seven like this it was a rollover it was a submission it was not only are we losing but we've we're actually giving up and you're going to watch us on live television as we throw shots against the backboard as we give up wide open threes as we do dumb coaching decisions that we're just never gonna change our dumb strategy that's not working culminating and when kawhi gets stripped and i think they're up there nuggets are up 18 with like two minutes left and quagga stripped and he just stops and everyone the clipper stops and the nuggets have a three on oh fast break and none of the clippers are even running back that's never happened in one of these collapse series i'm just telling you we've never seen a team visibly roll over like that and they should be embarrassed okay i'm not going to say that the play like that has never happened because you've seen people no no i'm i'm saying you're the whole whole quarter how they rolled over has never has never really happened in one of these situations i'm trying not to do the recency thing here but that was so it was such a i don't you know again i like i don't want to sit here and start but i'm i'm not in shock look i'm in shock from the very beginning that denver came back 3-1 again okay it's never happened before they did it again and like i said if you're that good like how did you get down 3-1 how the hell did you get down 16 and then 19 and then you still kept coming back and i think the lakers have a little of this they did it with houston they they were so um disrespectful of who houston was that they were like what like houston they would let houston get back into some of those games like you'll never remember any of this stuff yeah for sport but but when you were watching it it was like holy [ __ ] rondo's hitting threes all right let's just stop aaron and they're like wait a minute like houston just went on a 25-5 run like what the hell are we doing and i think the clippers were very guilty of that the difference is the lakers were like alright enough of this [ __ ] we're gonna go ahead and win this game and win this series in five but it's probably at least recent memory i would say it's one of the more disgusting efforts i've seen from a basketball team and i don't know how you argue against that because it just was oh for all the [ __ ] they talked about being you know who they were what they were going to accomplish the confidence and the swagger they had which they had rightfully because kawhi's on the team but when push came to shove in game six and game seven they completely disappeared in both second half in in like a really memorable borderline historic way i cannot remember a team completely rolling over in two second halfs like that when they're up 3-2 in a series to my knowledge it's never happened in an nba series before by a good team i'm sure it's happened by like the tmac orlando like those type of teams but not by a team that was favored to win the title three weeks ago i'm with you man i can't i can't believe it look golden state 3-1 lead first of all kyrie and lebron turned into like all-world players three straight games and it was still a possession game and draymond miss game on miss game five game six cleveland was amazing and game seven was a dog fight at least they fought the whole game though yeah though that's totally different that's totally i'm just thinking because i know what's gonna happen is there's gonna be some game that we're not thinking of because it's just hard to keep track of i don't know every single game but yeah that was as i'm sitting i rewind plays and go oh my god like this guy doesn't want anything to do with this like he's looking like there was one play in particular where i forget who it was on the right side but they were going to like set up the action on his side and he just went no no and started pointing frantically to start the action on the other side and the other guy was like this isn't what the play is he's like going so now i'm supposed to cut with no screen to the ball okay cool now i have the ball like what the hell am i supposed to do and it's it was weird it was just weird to watch a team completely unravel like that and it wasn't like it was like you think they were waiting for kawaii you think you think they were just waiting for kawhi to be kawhi and he was just having a bad game and he he looked tired to me and i don't mean i'm not going to make excuses for kawhi not everybody else i'm just saying like kawaii's built up this playoff resume that's almost unassailable and he just looked like two steps slow i mean we think about two weeks ago we were talking about how he seemed like he was at the peak of his powers yeah i think he couldn't even beat guys up the dribble today defensively there was there was some slippage with kawhi and you know with some of the defensive assignments there and um there's there's some other stuff if you looked at some of the dallas numbers in that series you could make the argument that he actually wasn't this great defensive um stopper but i also think doncic has a lot to do with that too or if doncic just gets you even he goes into you like it doesn't matter who the hell you are he's just gonna be bigger and finish over you but i i think kawhi had two i you know i'd have to look at it again but i thought there were two stretches in the fourth quarter where he looked like okay fine like i guess it's up to me and then he missed every shot too right and then once he missed every shot then it's like holy [ __ ] it's like the toughest guy in your group getting beat up first as you're running across the field to fight like the rival town and you're like danny just got knocked out and it was like maybe we've been home and paul george was really bad he's really bad in another big elimination game paul george was absolutely terrible and that's why i call him 30-13 13 points would have been an improvement from what he did tonight he had 10 and uh did he get to 10 he got to 10. i was hoping he was going to hit that last three so it actually would be 13 my 3013 theory but let's look at the shooting numbers here i got to be honest i i was not surprised by the results of this game i'm surprised the nuggets won by 15. but when i was looking at the lines today the nuggets were plus seven and a half the nuggets were plus 290 to win the game i was alarmed by what i watched in game six i really was i was alarmed because i thought they were real fundamental issues it wasn't just like oh that was an off game they they just fell asleep at the switch it was like no they have real matchup issues and their coach doesn't seem to realize them and you know i we have to mention the doc rivers piece of this he he's now presided over i think more of these than probably any coach now he's been coaching for a lot of years he's been coaching for almost two decades but um he's just been on the wrong side of history and a lot of these he's blown three two leads uh three times 2010 2012 2015. he lost game sevens at home in 05 and 09. he lost a game seven to utah in 2017 and then he blew a 3-1 um in this series and i don't know whether it's an adjustment thing whether it's bad luck whether he had the wrong guys on his team but um but i i do wonder does he survive this who's the fall guy did the clippers just run this back i just wanted to finish the line here for paul george four sixteen two for eleven for three one free throw attempt four boards two assists in 38 minutes so the one the doc one free throw attempt is is he should be thinking about that all off season that's embarrassing go to get to the basket george has his moments in foul trouble he has moments where he's like early seth curry with more rebounds yeah and now i think seth actually get to the hoop so i'm not turning this into like a massive yeah sorry seth curry yeah i'm a south carolina's like what the [ __ ] i would i would have at least gone to the basket uh the doc thing i don't know what happens and i don't know what happens because look we all know i like doc i think he's a really good coach i think he's really a coach for stars i think he's a really good part of it too but you're right the resume has some dings on it and when you're favored and you lose to this nuggets team after you're up 3-1 like i'm not going to sit here and tell you it's like no way you're seeing it all wrong he's like he was 11 million a year i was looking through what the extension was the extension was like a year ago so you got to think he's probably got like two more years on this deal i had an idea trade him he's been traded before he has philadelphia 76ers need a coach just starting out there for who i don't get a future first for him okay but can i ask you a question maybe you like this no you you like this this is pretty good but this is give me a little little like i know i can go too long but give me give me a little bit of time to explain this there's a reason why the same time as we were talking just a couple weeks ago about anthony davis and that i in a million years i would not bet money on anthony davis signing somewhere else because i don't think anthony i think he's a very impressionable personality and i don't think you blast your way out of new orleans with clutch packing your bags for you and then say to clutch hey you know what you know say they were to lose to the denver nuggets and davis doesn't get enough shots he starts getting beat up and he says you know what i don't like this let me experiment here let me see if i want to go i actually want my own team now okay i don't think any of that stuff would happen but the reason why teams prepare for that and work out clutch clients or do things to always be as if they are like hey we always have your back to the agency because that's part of the front office job is because the unexpected always happens in this league and the unexpected could be not only the dock part but like what if paul george goes i kind of like i'm not really feeling this or kawhi looks around and goes not one of these guys or like patrick beverly i can't sit there and say that that guy's not a tough guy because he at least plays tough but what if kawhi looked around and said i'm not really feeling this right now it's not like he hasn't blasted his way out of two other places now again toronto he just left because he could leave but san antonio who was out of there what factor is doc in that decision because do they go there because they love that doc takes care of their guys and doc absolutely takes care of his stars that is like doc 101 as a coach so all of these things i think are valid points to bring up in how weird could this offseason actually get with the clippers after what we just saw but as my default normally is with this is they usually just run this [ __ ] back considering this was year one of this group yeah is there a fall guy or do you fall into the habit of you know what it was our first year together we were all in a bubble the bar was really hard on all of us magic city we played out here for home court advantage and then we didn't have it and we still feel like you know year two we'll add another piece we want to bring this back with that said if philly calls and says we'll give you embiid for paul george and doc rivers what does bomber do oh you like that one the first ever two players in a coach trade it's not even are we drinking are we supposed to be drinking on this podcast tonight i should have had a beer i don't have a beer right now embiid we should add a beer we've never done that in the pot uh 38 minutes in crack and white claws um yeah you like it beat for paul george and doc you have to take his whole contract i tell you with the rumor mills and all the different stuff going on i still think embiid and simmons get a chance next year with everybody there but i don't know that simmons is going to cry any tears about it um yeah and paul george is as bad as he was tonight he's if he's a free agent this year he's a max player yesterday he's a max player again yesterday but like that's why i get so frustrated arguing about some of these guys and i think people kind of give up as i go look i don't i don't just randomly watch a player one day and say hey that guy stinks it's usually after a few years and i at these elimination games for george elimination games are hard but at the same time like with kawhi as bad as he was i'm not going to sit there and say okay all right so i've got i've got lebron all right giannis is going to knock him down a few pegs all right right now top three players in the league are lebron butler and tyler hero and then i now have kawhi fourth yeah but some but something did import something important did happen tonight though kawhi lost his title he didn't lose his nba title he lost the title as if you could have a playoff guy for one serious who would it be and mine was kawhi until tonight so now it's lebron again or tomorrow it might be tyler herrera you saw him again today the guy's just he's got he's got buffalo balls man he's he's upset like he told a couple buddies on a text that he's like i can't believe i didn't get one mvp vote tyler herrera he's like second team all rookie [ __ ] this i'm gonna hit the biggest three right as the celtics are about to finish my team tonight i've been hitting a huge streak no but i i do think that kawhi the kauai run which was really the best thing the clippers had going for them this year is like well we have kawaii in a series big game kawhi is the guy well he lost so i'm wondering if it could be jokic jokic could grab the title here jokic they played i went back for one playoff game come on it's lebron now if it's not kawhi after no see i don't i don't like doing this game to game it's no no no no it's vacant right now it's vacant vacant title whoever comes out of it this year has the title or the thing with you now but they've played the lakers really well they were they played them four times this year they looked they were lakers won three of the four games but the nuggets killed them once and then two that one game was ot one of them was like a one point game if you watched it it was like both teams kind of had trouble stopping the other i think their supporting cast is better and the jokic thing like all right great you have to play dwight howard and javale mcgee moore awesome yokish is going to torch those guys and then the jamal murray thing like who who's going to guard jabal murray and the lakers they'll figure it out they'll figure that part of it who do you trust who's their best defensive guard pope probably russo i think there's some awesome caruso numbers but if pope's hitting threes you know you're going to go with pope pope was getting some of the defensive assignment there um well this brings me to my next piece of that kawaii question right this just fell so perfectly for lebron and i think we said this the last time we talked about this stuff like gets the gets the beaten up portland team in round one wait wait a minute though everybody was saying oh this is [ __ ] they get the one seed and now portland's back and hell but that team was a corpse yeah okay but that's not what anybody was saying before but now that we know what happened like that was a good time to catch that team second round they get houston westbrook i am actually in the camp like it swung too far with people against westbrook because recently he had coveted we know he had coveted and he was hurt and he came back and i don't think he was even 80 and he i just don't think he's as terrible as he was in that laker series like he was terrible he's flat-out terrible i don't think he's that bad of a basketball player but regardless i thought he was terrible in the game that he had 30. like he had 30 and he was so good at four and i was like this is so bad that sounds like a daryl mori text you here's a question no no no no no no no no that was not a daryl boy text but they had that daniel house thing too and now they're gonna play the clippers in round three and now it's the nuggets like this i'm just saying like this is great for the lakers the lakers signed up for this the lakers are gonna be houston no matter what um and daniel house is important player of the rotation because it basically just eliminated 20 to 30 minutes out of that but i don't like the pj tucker stuff towards the end and i love pj tucker but like he's looking around going are you [ __ ] kidding me like this sucks okay this sucks um i have a point and i'm gonna ask you as a scholar of the game yep has anyone ever lost in the playoffs healthy because nobody the rule is if you're the marquee guy we just hear about how you're hurt like a day or two later it might even be like an hour later yeah like toronto was like hey you guys got us we didn't play that well congrats there was no like hey see well you don't see akam had a sprained mcl there was like nothing that came out after that series no injury stuff there's a there's an example i'm not gonna say anything nice about toronto for a week it's a rough ending for them wait i have one more clippers thing for you and you're right by the way about toronto because yeah nothing nothing came of it do you know this was the 50th clipper season yeah i do i wrote it down on my dating back to the braves um and they showed that graphic and it's amazing where they're like franchises for the most years not making the conference finals it was like clippers 49 years charlotte 30 years and then somebody else 18 years um amazing this is that's some class franchise it's a we're now a half a century it's finals it's not even winning a title it's you can't get to like two steps removed from winning the whole thing you can't get out of the second round for 50 years that's impossible do you know the celtics have been in nine conference finals since 2002 i had no idea and i don't even feel it you wouldn't be like man remember that unbelievable 20-year celtic run but my point is it's not like that hard to make the conference finals it's a little hard but it's like portland made it last year to not have it happen once in 50 years the celtics are in nine nine since oh two so the nets they were up in that o2 series too weren't they 02 008 2000 2012 um or maybe it was seven not nine it's seven my bad no eight is eight is when they won the title and then nine they lost to orlando because they were hurt because kg was her again um and then ten obviously they played in it and then two years ago so it's whatever but my point is it's not like it's not like impossible to make the conference finals for them never to do it but then you think of all the great players that they've had or the great draft picks they've had you know they've had just this decade they had chris paul they had blake griffin the kawhi leonard that paul george um so that whole thing like i know a few clippers fans and it was already a little weird because it was like wow the one year we have a real chance to win the title none of the games are going to be here and they're on a [ __ ] bubble in orlando but still this is great we have a chance but it's a little weird but now it's like okay we're halfway through kawhi and paul george before they can opt out in the summer of 2021. now we're talking we've given away shea go just alexander we gave away gallon air is expiring and we gave away 130 first round picks and now it's all on next year now it's 2021 or bust and one one or both of these dudes could could look at each other and be like i don't want to play with you anymore either and they're both gone and there's nothing left other than this giant arena they're building in inglewood i mean it is a [ __ ] disaster we both know any front office would do it all over again tomorrow to get those two guys but i mean i i really do think you have to and again i i know i agree i know that george would be maxed immediately but i wonder if any teams ever actually have these conversations you go hey if we could max george would we not would we not after the eighth game where you're like what the hell are you doing out there i mean the answer would still be that you were probably maxim but i think it's all valid because it was that bad it's not just disappointing it's like horrifying where you go whoa like what how what what just happened to us well the other thing that was amazing about it was these guys we thought like paul george and kawhi together this is going to be unbelievable this would be we we wouldn't have seen this since pippen and jordan were together as perimeter defenders they're just going to lock down everybody it's going to be ridiculous i just didn't think paul george's defense was that good so i thought he had moments against murray where he was incredible and he was locked in it was not tonight no i'm just saying he consistently wasn't at the level he was a year ago like i was watching i thought tatum today in that miami game even though tatum fell apart offensively in the last five minutes in overtime i thought that was the best game i've ever seen him play defensively um even that butler three-point play when butler just threw it up and i thought tayden played really good d it was an arguable foul call he was just he his hands were all over the place his switches were perfect he had he had either a couple steals or or where he forced a steal because he was in the right spots and just was a dominant two-way player for the first 43 minutes of that game before his offense went away and george had moments like that last year in oklahoma city the first four months before he hurt his shoulder he was a dominant two-way player was like wow this guy's one of the best five players in the league we didn't see that this year and i know he had flashes but there are always just flashes yeah he had a weird slow start and that was off of that horrible close to the playoff series two years ago with okc and then he had like i remember watching i don't know the first week of okc games because i was i was always watching him because i was like am i wrong about these guys is it going to click and he had kind of i mean i don't know what the game log says now because in the moment versus game log is always is always a little dangerous but i remember just going this guy what the hell and then he goes on this tear where he ends up being like an mvp type player well he reminds me of jalen where he'll you'll be watching the game and you forget he's out there for four minutes and i love jalen but like jalen today yeah but no one's no one's talking about building a team around jaylen brown and maybe we shouldn't be talking about paul george either we're gonna take a break and i have one more thing to do on this uh talk of paul george really quickly is it conceivable they that they actually do think about moving him because we know there's no loyalty either way these days right the players don't have loyalty to the teams that's been established last five years and they shouldn't and the teams have never had loyalty to the players and it's like hey yeah we're building this whole thing but maybe maybe they maybe if they make a move maybe it's that let me do some rapid fire once would you do paul george for harden right now if you're the clippers oh yeah yeah i think you still would i think you still would um it's weird like would you do paul george for bradley beal washington wouldn't do that because george only has a year left on his deal yeah that's the problem he has a year left in the deal but that might be why the clippers aren't looking for how about simmons i don't think philly's going to do that i think philly's afraid if they're going to split that up i think they'd be more afraid of embiid's long-term thing and they don't want to end up trading simmons and then keeping him beat and if it bead who his track record of of staying he's actually been healthier than i think i would have ever imagined um and maybe he doesn't get enough credit because he has the the dings here and there but i don't think it's obscene to suggest that everybody should be worried about him beats bodies gonna hold up because he needs to be getting thinner as he gets older he needs to do the duncan thing and even though he's so young and duncan got thin a lot later in his career yeah i just would like to see embiid close some of these games where he looks like he's a little bit more in shape and until you see that from him although we get to hear about it all the time and then it never actually happens i would think philly would be you don't do you agree i mean would you wouldn't you agree that philly's probably a little bit more scared of like if we traded simmons for somebody and we haven't beaten them two years from now it's not any different health-wise like what's what do we have i'm on the record i would not trade simmons and i i think over and over again we learned this it's just been so long since we just watched playoff games i judge all my dudes by who's going to be there in like that friday night game seven you know who's there marcus smart god damn is he frustrating he takes even today they're up ten early in the first quarters hitting shots and then he literally has four straight possessions in a row where he makes just the worst possible decision you're like god he's so frustrated but i [ __ ] love that guy i ride or die with marcus smart and in a game seven guess who i want on my team marcus smart guess who's not rolling over in that clippers nuggets game today marcus smart guess who i agree who wouldn't have lost guess who wouldn't have been on a team that lost by 15 in a game seven when they were favored by seven points marcus smart he just he would have gotten kicked out before he even witnessed it i totally agree and i've not been the biggest marcus guy over the years especially when he's taking shots and shooting like in the 20s from three but now the shooting from three is definitely passable there's still offensive decisions where i go come on man it's like how this early in the shot clock and you're in you're next to tatum and jalen and kemba he even had an iso where he got bam one-on-one and took a long two over him yeah you see did you see jalen go up like jalen was going up like oh this is an airball it went in his head at the rim and it goes in and jaylen brown's like whoa um marcus smart the play he made in the corner on the embiid pass where he was going opposite corner and he jumps out like a defensive back jumping into the flat like marcus smart just does stuff that's different and you know i've i've struggled with him the flopping with him drives me crazy because i just don't like it no matter what you know who i'm rooting for i just hate it because it's in the game but you're right but i don't think i think he's gonna get would you trade marcus smart for paul george no i bet marcus is untradeable for me wait a minute that's a no from you no marcus is going to retire as a celtic and he's going to take cedric maxwell's job and maxwell retires and he's going to be in my life for the rest of my life until i die and i'm signing up for it now 16 years celtic career immediately becomes either the radio guy or the tv guy and then another 40 years is that that's he's never leaving boston what if he opened a bar called smarts and everybody called it smarts smarts i think that would work can i just read you all of the denver nuggets playoff highlights in the history of mankind so 2009 they're 2-2 against the lakers in the western finals then the lakers win the last two that was great um are you done 1985 made the western finals got killed by the lakers 1970 not a lot of people having a lot of 1978 basketball conversations uh took took seattle to six and uh and seattle beat him in the 78 western finals and then in the uh the last aba finals ever they lost to dr j and the nets and those are all your great denver nuggets playoff highlights they have never made the nba finals 78 was a really fun what-if year for the league because that's right as we're heading into the cocaine era and tape delays and people really turning on the league and they came very close to having david thompson versus dr j in the 1978 finals and philly ended up falling apart washington makes it and then denver loses to seattle but we that's dennis johnson um that's the seattle yeah seattle bullets two straight years really hurt the league because those were not like you know there's no stars to like market but if you had thompson and irving anyway star-crossed franchise and this is about the best that's looked i mean if you were doing i'm starting a franchise with dot dot dot who do you pick the jokic is no lower than third or fourth at this point right it's donkey honest jokic might be the third pick i don't know you do this sometimes no don't give me that you do this yeah i am yeah now yogic is the third best player in the league and you're starting your team with them i didn't say third best player in the league i'm saying i am starting my franchise and i could have anybody who am i taking you're taking over tatum right now i think it's a debate i don't know who i don't know what the answer is but i think those are probably the next two picks after after luca giannis and i think it's tatum or jokic for that three spot i mean jokic is only 24 years old it feels like he's older than that but he's not and tata he's two years older than tatum i thought tayden was 19. murray is 22 years old and it's funny because he's young i know we always talk about like oh man what you know this no murray was a young uh like qualifier he was like young at kentucky right so it's like how kobe was a rookie when he was 17. but we always talk about like these destinations for different free agents and nobody ever mentions denver and meanwhile that's probably the best situation right not only do you get to play on a annual contender but you play with a team where the ball actually moves the guys like each other uh you could play with a guy who actually makes you better um i have one more paul george trade for you paul george for porzingis for uh przingas is a no uh just because he's too big and has too many leg injuries he's not a hard no you had a hard note the other day and it became a headline and then aggregated yeah that was actually the one of the few times you get aggregated where you know i'll get something sent to me you'll send me some article and i go oh no what now what happened this week and that one was like oh yeah that's exactly what i said and that's accurate it was like a hard no hard no so porzingis is just a hard note for you and i like porzingis but he's he's a leg problem so i'll uh you know if we ever get a beer if we ever get like heineken or one of these beer companies to sponsor a beer for us i think hard no locker would be a good one just we have a segment like priscilla's hard no of the week where i throw a trade at you and you just you're like no no hard no hard that's a soft note it's a flashlight i want to know which celtic i want to know which celtic you would trade for paul george i think i'm more fascinated by this it's no to tatum would you trade jaylen brown for paul george i don't want paul george in my life that way what about robert williams how about all three of our picks and robert williams you hate the picks would you trade romeo langford for paul george i'll say this i like having the picks this year because i was looking at koc's mock draft and it seems like everybody's just all over the map with this draft that stanford kid had like koc had him like going like 23rd terry yeah i like i'm in on that kid yeah and my halliburton was 10th the school really likes uh stanford kid the school really liked him and the more you watch him i mean some of the steph curry stuff i mean it's kind of ridiculous when you do that but he was a young kid he was taking big shots for that team so i like that guy all right uh quickly on the before we move on from quips nuggets mike malone fired by the kings yep just pulled off two back-to-back 3-1 upset victories it was a weird firing when it happened but i just like the fact that the kings didn't even make the playoffs and somehow we're losers in multiple ways right the luca trade is the most iconic fuck-up uh non-pick of the decade you know they i mean we'll be making a documentary about how did luca go to three and not even go to the team that actually had the third pick that'll be a documentary in like 10 years and then mike malone who's the one good coach they probably had in the last 15 years they got rid of him and i think they've had three coaches since no i do i'm gonna give it to you here right now to be totally transparent i was very anti mike malone for a long time and it had nothing to do with him it had everything to do with every person that wrote for years that boogie's boogie cousin's career would have been different if it weren't for the fact that mike malone were let go uh and i would be like you think so really you think cousins would have just been a super team guy and locked in and boxed out and done all the stuff that you kind of need to do if you're gonna be a winning team you just think because everybody kept writing this excuse article everybody's an exaggeration but there were many people multiple people that we know that kept writing about well he was cousins felt so betrayed so i ended up like going mike malone give me a break here on this one um and it wasn't fair to him but whatever he did whatever his deal is with a young group to get them to keep buying in in his whole one game all the cliche stuff that i don't like to give too much credit cause all of us know what what you're supposed to say i could be the coach of an nba team down 3-1 and i would all my interviews would kick ass i would know exactly what to say but he got these guys to believe it and he got these guys to believe it when they're down seven at the start of the third quarter and you know i i think you know for anybody saying kawhi is tired jamal murray is playing a ton of minutes out there too you know and then yokichi was ready to throw back out there and then they had this nice run in the fourth quarter where yokish was on the bench chewing his face off and then he throws it back in there later so you know i think they're a little predictable with that two-man stuff when it doesn't look right but then it looks amazing against utah when murray's not missing any shots and then tonight once they look if denver can ever have the consistent guy that that plays off of that two-man game that's knocking down the shots they are a completely different team so um as much as we're gonna get on doc's case for having a team collapse like this getting a team to believe that's pretty young that's never really done anything in the playoffs they probably should have been in the western conference finals last year i'm kind of surprised they still lost that portland game a year ago i just that was one of those things that kind of stuck with me a little bit where i'm like how do they lose that game and they did yeah they're young but well the biggest thing that changed i'm a fan now right i think if harris played the whole utah series it would have ended sooner and harris had a really bad regular season and i think he's been really good in the uh in the playoff bubble like he played well i don't think he was really good right away i don't know but he was really good in this series he played 37 minutes tonight hit a couple threes he would they were plus 21 when he played but his defense i thought was that they really missed that against utah and once you know if you do that you test series again where he can guard mitchell a little more often um i that was one thing and then i do feel like they kind of went all in on grant in this series because they had all these different dudes and it was like sometimes this guy would play sometimes this guy would play and you know porter played 15 minutes tonight which i think was smart yeah it wasn't a big part of this at all yeah they went with playoff guys milsat played 32. he's not you know he's certainly not all-star atlanta paul millsap but knows where to go knows what to do he's tough he's not going to back down and they basically wrote him and grant jokich murray harris and then you know got a little out of the bedroom i always like morris mitch i always like morris's minutes um but yeah the porter that's a good call because we hadn't really mentioned him at all because he hits that huge three earlier in the series big part of the turnaround as well after he's catching all that [ __ ] and let's face it i mean blake porter's not a popular guy although i did think it was interesting the young guy complaining about work wasn't supported more um but he he he hits that shot he hits that shot and you know it was kind of funny i mean it's all just results based because it's like who are you to do that and you shouldn't do it publicly um but yet porter hits that shot you know reggie miller's like good for him right so he's thinking this is awesome and you know he he backed it up a little bit even though he said something that he shouldn't have said and then for him to not be a big part of this though was a surprise because you're thinking if denver's going to win a game seven some third guy has to go off i think that's the thing with denver this is the thing you look at with the lakers the lakers are probably gonna stick to a lot of the same rules hey grant you got to beat us first all right gary harris we're gonna beat you're gonna beat us first but but i think anthony davis is a completely different deal than zubach and um aguero closing defensively against jokic they'll probably not ask anthony davis to chase him around from the tip all the way through but i would be shocked if davis is not closing on jokic they might cancel each other out and then it you know the problem for the nuggets is lebron is so consistent which is crazy with the amount of years he's been in the league but feared seven game series with them he's going to be there in a big way in probably four or five of those games and with murray it's maybe two maybe three lebron you know people don't talk enough about lebron's steadiness but hey lebron jackson on me lebron had some shooting games in that houston series remember that first half where he had like 20 something and he was hitting every he was doing that deal where he was like not just he checked but he was like what can i what can i get to go in tonight yeah can i make this 29 footer oh [ __ ] i can all right let me i'm going to go to the left side and try this now so i almost think that gets lost a little bit did you see the the clip of all the times lebron blocked westbrook he had four like crazy video game blocks on westbrook he clearly just kind of westbrook bothersome i think i think yeah one year westbrook won the mvp lebron probably just kind of tucked it away and his things to get pissed off about file and was really kind of taking it to westbrook and then when they had that moment with rondo and they're going back and forth and westbrook's like double better not double they're down 29 in in a quenching game he's talking [ __ ] and lebron's just laughing at him it was embarrassing that was a tough series for westbrook by the way the other part of that that series is that rondo turned into like klay thompson and then you're going okay if you're the rockets you're going all right this is hard enough and now you've played a couple games so now you've figured out that we don't really do a ton okay right so it's easier for you guys to figure this out and i still think oklahoma city must go back and look at the tape of those games and go why did we not attack the perimeter guys more like what the hell were we doing why are we why are we getting stuck all the time offensively and then when you saw lebron lebron is different than chris paul and certainly shake kill just alexander but rondo just killing you from three if you're the other staff you just go oh so like what are we out of here in three games this sucks i think paul george would make a great rocket i don't know how we can make that happen i think the salaries can work i could see paul george getting traded to the rockets and then he and hardin at the intro guaranteeing a title i'm proud of us for one thing we talked in the bubble about we weren't sure home court was going to matter and we felt like with this every other day stuff might advantage the young teams even to see when they showed miami was a five seed and the celtics were a three seed and that was the first time the top two seeds hadn't made the eastern finals since like what 1999 or maybe it was even i thought it was 84 84 or whatever it was um i do think it's just weird 2012 was weird it had weird outcomes okc made the finals we didn't expect that to happen boston and philly um played in a round two you know we did we didn't expect to see philly in the final eight um and i think that the the possibility we have to consider it of a denver miami heat finals it it has to be considered and acknowledged it just does miami is a better team than boston i don't know if that means they're gonna win but they are they have a better one through nine i was really worried about this series i know we're gonna talk about it in a second um i could not believe boston was favored i was stunned talked to sal about it on sunday night he thought i was reverse jinxing i was not but you know denver could absolutely beat the lakers i don't know if i would bet it but okay wouldn't that be the perfect outcome in the bubble is a denver nuggets miami heat playoff series fourth rounder well i'm glad you brought that up no because i was going to ask you at some point be like how weird is that going to be how weird is that going to feel and you can take more credit because you shouldn't give me uh really any credit but this is something that i've just gone on circles on the entire time where leading up to the bubble it's like hey we're going to expect all these weird different things and we're weird outcomes um okay maybe but we could still have lakers we didn't get milwaukee but even though milwaukee had this incredible point differential when people were kind of off in milwaukee and loving teams like boss i was like well look boston hasn't really played together a ton but i think boston defensively when you look at even what they did today against miami and then what they did against toronto i think they have a defensive gear that's really really special but if they were going to have to play against anthony davis in the finals like i'm sorry i'm just not picking the celtics against anthony davis i'm just not going to because i've seen what a really good big can do against a short front line and so i kind of still defer to like why would the bubble all of a sudden have outcomes where lesser teams were all of a sudden better and the better teams were lesser versions of themselves but i think it speaks more to the individual teams where you and i for years now have had this thing about milwaukee where we go what are they really as a playoff team the other thing you and i have talked about now for two years is the difference between regular season and postseason basketball if you're a three-point barrage machine and you think that's just going to completely mimic itself in the playoffs and get the same outcome i think we're learning more and more with this new version of basketball last few years that that's not really a guarantee it's actually more unlikely that you're just gonna be able to duplicate your success with that kind of style where you just play five out and and take a million threes like i mean how many more teams do we have to see that are sort of disappointing so is it the bubble or is it that an unproven milwaukee came up short again um is it the size with the clippers today 9 for 35 from three right like is is the bubble the reason yeah granted the clippers would have had home court but you know denver probably evens the series at 2-2 because they would have been playing up in denver um and if it's the bubble then then why are the lakers just rolling through everybody right now so i don't know that we have the answer but if it's denver miami it's only going to be because of the bubble it'll only be which is unfair totally teams but that's the way it'll be played up is that oh it was this really weird deal that's the only reason we got it when it's like well wait a minute there was no golden state okay there was no chicago bulls there wasn't even a lakers with kobe or the celtics those three year run there was nothing that was established enough this year as a group that should have scared us off that you know we may have had a very unlikely outcome in a normal circumstance every year has some sort of weird variable this year was the bubble and some teams figured it out some teams didn't and the teams that i think milwaukee is a team that really could have used the crowd and that was why you played the whole season and i think it would have helped them i don't think if i don't know if it would have been enough because i really do think miami was just a worst-case scenario team for them to play and i think we would have had the same result maybe miami wins in six and they get an awesome crowd in game six and whatever but it definitely you know wasn't ideal for miami i think same thing with denver in this laker series if they're playing the lakers in the western finals in games three and four in denver like that's it's hard to play endeavor teams have trouble there they have a great home record no matter who's on their team um so the bubble's even some of that stuff out but what i like is it it's it strips out all the [ __ ] and a lot of these games have just come down to who has more people who are going to show up for a big moment you know that toronto was a great example toronto had so much respect for that team they didn't even play that well lowry was the only guy who really shot well out of their best three van vleet was under 40 percent for the series like ciaco was a disaster but but this team was so mentally tough they just would not go away they're [ __ ] michael myers we shot their head off to get rid of them we should do a when it's all said and done or maybe you know up into the finals if we have an off day or however the schedule works out but we should do like a reassessment list of who are the five to seven players that we may have to reassess after these playoffs but then the excuse will always be the bubble get back in the bubble but pascal siacombe is one of the first guys i can think of because he was so bad in that celtics series and i haven't heard if he's hurt or not yet but his story is incredible when you watched him in college and you're like ah he's kind of this big athletic guy but is he super quick twitchy and it's a little robotic and but then his story is unbelievable he gets the money he was on a tear at the beginning of this year when you watch him you can see that he is if he doesn't already know where his feet are going ahead of time a lot of that stuff isn't natural and once you figure that out with him as a defender he'll turn into the wrong side of the defense like when he would go to post whatever whatever like the end of his his combination of moves that he was throwing at you he would actually turn into the worst option you know like unless it were boom boom two dribble okay i'm bigger and i'm more athletic i'm gonna finish the siacom part of that series like i end up with that series going you know for all the stuff about toronto and oh they didn't get enough credit they didn't have credit like wake the [ __ ] up you lost maybe the best player in the world it's not complicated it's not personal don't take it personally you lost kawhi leonard that's why people offer you and by the way everybody was wrong including me about what they would be this year but when it was all said and done and they lose in seven of boston they weren't as good as boston i go i think they got the right amount of respect i think the people that mattered gave him the right amount of respect certainly for me the second round of boston wasn't a huge shock because they were struggling in those games and then you'd look up and be like it's a four-point game again like they were michael myers right thing jaylen brown just figured him out semi he figured him out and yeah and then it was like the whole team and then they're like i started this guy yeah and then when he couldn't hit threes he was in his own head and that was it but you know i think it's weird i think it's weird for these guys and i get it they've been there for over two months now they're running into guys they're playing against in elevators and on campus and all these things and it's a different vibe and people handle that differently and for the the the guys who like the younger guys like tatum and uh jaylen brown those kind of guys like you can see like tatum like loves this tatum today i'm telling you that those first three and a half quarters that was the that was some of the best basketball i've ever seen him play and he was really carrying himself like i'm ready to take over the league and then i think all the energy he was exerting on the other end and chasing all their dudes and all of a sudden all of his shots were short lost his confidence and that's why he's not there yet but he's gonna get there i really do think he has a chance to be like really truly a special forward you know and you think like the great forwards of the last like i don't know 25 years like durant hit a point and i don't know if he's going to be as good as durant got to i think durant as you know i think he's one of the 15 best players ever he's certainly one of the greatest offensive players ever um but durant hit that point in like 2011-12 you it started with the turkey world championships when you're like oh so this is actually really going to happen now and then it kind of then there's baby steps and it took us 2012 and you could see the mvp coming and it feels like that's happening for tatum in these playoffs where it's like if you told me tatum's going to win the mvp someday i'd be like yeah i could see it he's hitting all the check marks you would hit if that's going to be the logical ascent to where this ends up like he said every checkpoint so far is my point guys foot long season is that subway they make it easy to make a good call on food so here's a little segment we're going to call bad call good call racillo we'll look at some of the good and bad plays let's go from tonight give me give me an example of a bad call in one of the two games not referee call a bad call by a team or a player that we saw tonight so not refs um i didn't love the celtics offense to close uh regulation and in overtime it was uh you know as much as we're gonna give love to the big picture of tatum i was incredibly frustrated that they looked like the 12 seed they can't believe they're about to knock off the five seed in the ncaa tournament and then they just freak out and take terrible shots to close the game and then lose great great example bad call the clogged toilet the celtics ran uh another bad call we uh kyle and i we watched football on sunday with my son and we got um wasted we got we got we got wings from a place oh you know we're just we're getting wings kind of moved closer football we should have gotten subway but we ended up getting wings and i got the spicy hot wings and i was feeling it for the next 24 hours not exactly my greatest decision this week kyle we're going to make a good call instead like a sweet onion chicken teriyaki sandwich from yeah another good call getting a free foot long when you buy two at participating subway restaurants so let's make some good calls this week order and pay contact free in the subway app for quick and easy pick up or delivery on game day or any day it's foot long season at subway eat fresh freshly prepared in front of you subway did you know so by the way though did you know subway originated the take because everybody says takes hot takes a whole fresh take yeah subway fresh tech hotline subway fresh take hotline yeah yeah they originally the ogs of the take one of the great ad campaigns um the clock toyota offense that the celtics ran this has happened to them a couple times in the playoffs it happened i know when it's happening and i start yelling at the tv because the whole reason they're beating miami in game one and they should have won this game and it's probably gonna come back to haunt them let's be honest they're playing with pace they're using their athletes they're pushing the ball when they can they're not going slow it's not turning into a slow half-court game and then all of a sudden they're 40 feet from the basket with eight seconds left on the shot clock just kind of dribbling and this was it wasn't just the last minute this was probably eight or nine plays in regulation ot where it's just like they're killing clock like like they have like an eight point lead they're running like the four corners and i thought it was just bizarre and i thought it cost them the game yeah there was one campbell one in particular where he just dribbled it the whole time and then you're like look even if you get the angle the help guy's going to be bigger than you and at that point with the help with how long you took to drive yeah there's four seconds what's happening right yeah that's that's what i can't stand with some of these clocks is where you go all right fine i get that i'm not even talking about like the last second where i don't want to leave anything left on the clock you're talking hey there's still 140 left and you're up a possession and the whole reason you like the celtics team is they've got four guys that can make a basket and then when you decide hey i want you three guys to watch and you know i think it happened more probably going back 15 years i don't know you know it's not like i keep track of blitzing opposing point guards but i felt like that was every defense's like first movement where they'd blitz they'd bring the big they'd keep it with the point guard and that's why teams are always scared off of small point guards they're still teams that are scared off of it and i'll see times where you blitz kemba and he's still good enough to get around you and turn the corner and now you're talking about four on three or maybe even five on three if he still has the ball and there's a couple times they swung it and they made some good decisions but for as much i loved tatum he had going on in the toronto thing a little bit and the final numbers are great maybe it's because we have such high expectations for tayden because everything you said about who he could possibly be i'm with you i don't have a ceiling for him and it's it's so cool now and some of the passing he's making in the defensive assignments we're like brad actually likes him better than anybody else there defensively when he has jalen and marcus he guarded butler on the big on the big play of the game i thought smart was going to guard him and he played him but you know i can't help but think the celtics won a game that you know could have gone either way miami's the better basketball team of the two but to just let yourselves take yourself out of your offense like that and not even ask miami to defend anything that's that's not what i'd expect from brad stevens in the celtics and tatum did it too many times to close this guy we'll talk about kevin in a second the difference between the reason miami won this game in boston loss comes down to two plays for me tatum at the end of regulation playing for the last shot and it was almost you could hear it it was like he was channeling kobe it was very cool classic terrible kobe hero ball possession that all you know it goes in once but they never show the youtube clip of the 20 times when it didn't go in ends up with just a terrible step back he knew it wasn't going when he shot it because he's running in for the rebound and it's just like dude you're you're an incredible athlete you can get to the basket anytime you want get to the basket try to draw a foul get some contact get in the air maybe we get offensive rebound whatever go to the basket so now we go into overtime butler same situation right he's i think they're down one takes tatum off the dribble goes into him and he's just like you're i'm getting a foul and i'm get and the ball's gonna hit the rim and i might get a three-point play but i'm deciding this myself i'm not doing some garbage step back thing not that when tatum does it's garbage it's just like i just want my guys going to the basket so when he got blocked at the end by bam which was an incredible block one of the greatest blocks i've ever seen of all time i love that i'll defend that a hundred times out of a hundred with tatum should he have dunked it i don't know could he have tried to do it no no or tried to the things you can get on tatum for it's not getting rejected by bam no no i'm saying like no i'm i'm could you have said like could you try to bang off him and try to get contact i don't know who cares you tried to throw it down bam made one of the greatest i like plays i've ever seen in a playoff game so i'm not happy i'll tell you this i've been watching the celtics for how many i've never seen anybody play that tatum dunk have you does that happen before he when remember when he almost got lebron oh no he did get lebron in 18. remember he got ron in 18 and lebron got to laugh about it because they won a game seven so it didn't really matter um so yeah i don't i don't know i mean that band play i i don't feel like it is recently biased to say it's one of the most amazing blocks i've ever seen in a basketball game with everything well how much strength do you have to your arms behind you as somebody's tomahawking it like the odds are i think more likely you separate your shoulder because your shoulder is getting pulled backwards out of your body but somehow he blocked it anyway the dribble into traffic 180 turnarounds where he goes off on one leg you're like what are you doing tatum are you trying to make this even harder and by the way you're right the butler drive because he had hit that three before when you probably at that point thought the celtics were gonna win the game and butler been pretty quiet i think 12 points going to the fourth quarter he hits that three in the corner and you're like ah here we go you know jimmy time because really i think the scary part for the celtics long term in this is that even though we both agree miami's better you go okay but they don't have the big as great as bam is they don't have the big to exploit them they don't have the good big because gasol's a bad big and that's why i think nick nurse struggled with how many gasol minutes he wanted to play him more because he was big because even though ibaka was the better player he's like now i'm playing right into the boston thing by being small with them and i'm not explaining their front lines should have played at balkamore though well yeah i would agree with that but i think i can understand what he was trying to do and where miami you'll go wait a minute they can't really exploit that part of it but when when butler hit that insane and one layup there's also a play off to the side where uh dragon dragon and um uh jay crowder are arguing about who's supposed to set the screen and butler just says [ __ ] it i'm going like if you look back at that play butler's like whatever you guys like out of the way done and that's what i think every philly fan watches and misses it's like you know what like butler we've done it before we don't need to do it all again what's the standing as we update these things by the minute but to know that you have somebody after we just watched a clippers team where it looked like every single guy was afraid for 12 minutes jimmy's just at least never going to be afraid even if he's not one of the top overall guys every single year and it was a little bit of like tatum's the best player in this series tatum's going to be the best player in this series this is gonna be awesome that's not the way it closed cause tatum made a million mistakes and jimmy made two huge plays and it's even worse than that you i'm glad you compared the clippers to them the heat have so many bad [ __ ] in this series bam warrior dragach not afraid of anybody jake crowder john quite his first sub machine gun at nine years old crowder crowder um you know maybe could could dip into the marcus morris and this clipper game tonight side but i think is more the guy that we saw today where you want him out there in crunch time he's gonna fight um and he's gonna make plays and then crowders always get the toughest assignment too crowd was the gun yeah he was the one guarding giannis not bam and he's played and crowder's been in big games like they made the 2017 eastern finals that year when he got concussed by jair and then hero is the least afraid of anybody in the league i mean the [ __ ] balls that he has that three he took near the end of regulation was like it wasn't even a play it was just like he was open for a split second he's like [ __ ] it and it was a huge three if you missed it you would have been like it was like a marcus smart terrible three but it went in and uh i don't know this team just has a lot of swagger to it i think it's gonna be a really hard team to beat i felt that way before the series i think the fact that the celtics over and over again in these games they they're up 10 they're up 12. not just miami but the whole playoffs they're up 15 they're up 13. but they don't have a bench and at some point you either have to play the starters too many minutes or the bench is gonna let up a little bit and all of a sudden it's a two-point game again you saw it again today and the other thing with the heat you know they made how many threes they were 16 for 36 44 from three in this game i wouldn't say they're red-hot that's kind of who they are they're gonna be between 38 and 44 game of the game they're gonna hit between 15 and 23s so they're never going to go away you're not blowing them out now and even when boston got up you know i don't know why i don't how many times people gonna watch games where a team goes up 15 and the other team comes back like it actually happens that's that's normal where they come back so even when boston was up early and marcus smart like marcus smart hitting a bunch of shots earlier like okay this is weird because you know there's going to be some late one coming we were like ah but he's just going to take him and you have to accept well you know it's amazing what now you know the theory when marcus hits a few in the first quarter it's actually you get worried yeah yeah well that yeah he's like no i got this guys i'd rather have he he missed early and then hits them late here let me give you let me give you some more numbers on the threes though i'm sorry but like kemba yeah in his last five games 106 106 106 107 109. when it's against toronto where toronto's entire defense was set up to screw you up and you're watching it going like that was hard it was really hard for camera to get free on that box one against toronto it worked on stopping kemba it did not work to the point where you won enough games to win the series but then you're looking at this miami part of it you're going okay it isn't boxer one like you have your free looks to come off that high screen dribble into your three kemba is not a catch and shoot three i don't know what the numbers are it just doesn't look comfortable at all he's so much more comfortable dribbling into the three-point attempt those shots are there for him again and now this is five straight games the guy can't hit any shots and i don't i think he's moving all right so i don't know what the deal is here i'm on a lot of kemba tech threads right now how's dr bill doing on it he doesn't understand what happened to kemba oh it's there's two three types of text threads one is he hurt they're not telling us and it doesn't look like he's hurt and then two it's like what the [ __ ] happened to kemba because this guy was awesome during the season like he you know he not only is like a 40-plus three-point shooter but you know he can beat people off the dribble and he has like these three spots a little like chris paul he has like his little spot on the right free-throw line he's got his little pretenses drive and then does the step back 12-footer and then he's got like a 20 so he has these shots that he just consistently hits and i've never really seen him miss them consistently and now none of them are going in and and trying to figure out what happened to this guy and i really think it's as simple as this this is uh doc this is dr uh psychologist bill simmons not my dad myself uh my theory licensed he hasn't been in a big game since march madness uconn nine years ago and i think he wants this so badly and this is it it's almost i i wouldn't say it's like when you say somebody's choking it's almost like he wants it too much and he's thrown himself out of his game because some of the stuff he's doing is is stuff that i've never seen him do before like he's pat one time today he passed up an open three so he could pass to marcus smart for a contested three and it's like you would just never do that in january you're just taking that every time and then some of the stuff when he's driving in the basket it's like his handle's off and he it just seems like he's pressing to me i definitely think he's pressing so i would say it's more that because i just don't like when a guy's out there running around for 40 minutes we're all supposed to just think a guy's hurt because he has some injury history from before even though i think all of us think that watch it closely that there could be a lingering thing there with kemba but not enough to use it as an excuse that you can't hit a shot now for five straight games but his drives into traffic not without much of a plan and you know you're always going to be the smallest guy there and you're not some high-flying guy especially at this point of career but like the last five years he's been 38 37 39 from three he's a really good three-point shooter a guy that can really number one option when he had no help like the numbers he was putting up with that charlotte team were there's it wasn't like there was another guy you know it wasn't like he was doing some absolutely gross shot attempt thing to get his numbers he's a really good player so this is this is alarming that it's gone on for this long and i well he's i don't know just the last three games he is 13 for 46. it's game six game seven game one today and i liked some of the stuff they were doing late in the game they were just doing a two-man game with tatum and cambo trying to figure out like okay well if we get the switch here that we like like how do you want to attack it but then it's like okay like at least with jokic and murray in the two-man game even though it's predictable there's different options off of it when it's right and look again i'll admit there's times that i didn't always like it with kemba and tatum it was just okay we gotta switch all right who wants to do an iso i do oh all right i'll get the next one it was i couldn't believe i couldn't believe how bad it was at the end of that game but miami was tougher they were tougher than them at the end and by the way the game shouldn't even go into overtime because smart flops gets that [ __ ] call before the inbound they take the free throw and it's just such a horrible look it's such a bad look in that spot because you go you only made the call because you fell down i'm gonna ask people and i know softball stats holy cross two on two games house shout out to the whole worcester crew but how many times do you fall down and pick up games is the answer zero the answer's probably zero when everybody was pretty good like maybe somebody falls in a layup attempt maybe somebody could fall guys don't fall down this much normally in a basketball game and now everybody falls down the greatest athletes on the planet are falling down left and right and it's like flopping is isn't as bad in the game but some of the off the ball flopping that gets called now and i just don't understand like i think the league needs to really revamp this or actually make it harsher to go unless you saw someone absolutely get crushed on something let's default to they probably flopped because most guys this strong wouldn't be falling down for two and a half hours well the kemba thing today i actually liked a lot of the shots he got i just thrown away the end of the game but it certainly he had a lot more freedom than he did in the toronto series and i also like the fact that defensively they could hide them on a couple different guys like there were times when he was just guarding crowder because it was like well if you're if there's only three yeah it's like if you're gonna exploit if you're gonna post kemba up with crowder like please go ahead knock yourself out that would be great or iguodala same thing please post them up um so i think i think this is a better series for them the drag thing is a problem obviously i think those are the type of guards and i said this on sunday night those are type of guards that have just killed these celtics teams over the last couple years it's the one type of guy that marcus isn't great at guarding i think they did a really nice job on butler you know he hits that three in the corner that huge three hit i think either an ot regulation whatever but that was regulation the one in the right corner yeah he was kind of like a broken play no and it was a broken play and he stepped up as the defense went behind but he was a non-factor this you're right about dragach carried them when it was weird and they had an amazing second quarter and then harrow hit that one big three yeah late but dragach early was i thought really important to kind of keep in a minute but what worries me the most is i mean why they actually wanna maker was pretty good today that was that's a good one of a watermaker game yeah he was and they actually brought him in for defense at the end which i don't remember them going offense defense with kimball like that in a big game but they don't really they can't play robert williams against olynyk because all miami's going to do is they're going to hunt him and sneak olynyk off and shoot threes and then they'll have take williams out grant williams is going to have to play which means miami's going to leave him open and then other than that it's like oj and stuff like that my point is everyone's like well hayward's coming back this series okay well if hayward let's say he comes back for game two he plays 20 minutes we're not getting like pete gordon hayward like we've seen him come back from injuries he's always tentative he's going to be rusty even if he plays out of it that's not going to be until game five game six and i just think the celts are in trouble because this team the the dirty secret of that toronto series was toronto wasn't very good like go look at the stats go look at their shooting stuff like van van vliet and and even lowry didn't shoot that well baca was the only guy who like really shot well for them in that series it was just they were so tough and they were so well coached and they knew every trick in the book and they were able to drag that series to seven meanwhile boston won six of the seven games basically it's not gonna work against this miami team miami is really talented i think they're the most talented team left i would have said that before the clippers lost i don't know that i can see most talented when i still think like they're one and two in the drop-off from where the clippers were in the lakers i mean that's that's what are we arguing here i'm saying one top ten guy they don't have one top five i like their one through nine more than any other team including the clippers who are now gone no i know what the argument is because then you go one through nine that's why i think the lebron promo where it's like we're built different man we're like well yeah so he's right three three would you rather have a great one and two and then a bunch of i'd rather have a great one and two you would yeah i think history tells us you'd rather have a great one and two but the difference between miami's depth is that it they're gonna be able to do different stuff they just are i'm gonna say this right now queue it up kyle get the record button ready if miami plays this lakers team if miami gets by boston and the lakers get by denver i think it is a 2-4 2004 finals scenario in the making for an upset i think it's a terrible matchup for the lakers wow so you're talking pistons figure them out and then every game you're expecting the lakers to figure it out boom yeah it's like oh no they got it and then it's gonna be like this clippers nugget series where it's like oh the series is over yeah the difference is that the lakers won't be coming off of a bunch of titles in a row where they're sort of over it because they're not as hungry it's a good plan um and that's also something that i think is kind of funny do you think of the irony of some of the discussions around kawhi or it's like what do we do with this guy if he goes to three different franchises and wins a title like it's never been done this is crazy like what do you do and my argument was as impressive as that is the difference is that the great players of all the other generations wouldn't have jumped to three teams in three years and put them in position they would have won a title they would have stayed and a lot of these guys stayed for the prime of their careers and we have this odd deal here but lebron is actually close to doing the thing we were ready to start applauding kawhi for doing which we didn't really talk about i thought on sunday night i thought miami should be favored in the series and i thought they were going to win the series unless tatum went up a level so i still feel like that's in play and i know that's kind of a cop-out it's like we'll just pick the series that's like that's my pick i think miami's going to win the series unless tatum vaults up a level a little like durant in 2012 in that spurs series and just everything that happened where durant went up a level and then it was like this guy's the best part in the series they're going to win that's what has to have for boston there's a scenario where kemba shakes out of this slump and starts hitting shots again and might go back to being a 25 points a game guy but i can't bank on it anymore we've he just hasn't been good you know really in the bubble like that other than a couple philly games and i'm not counting on anymore nope nope miami's a better basketball team and if boston have gotten this one you know who knows uh it's it's still not impossible you know the miami thing that's like they roll through milwaukee but i mean it still feels weird that if they'd played i think an 82 game schedule when i threw that number out to you they would have been a 49-win team i know but the thing is the or iggy trade that changed their team i don't think and they got here by the way i don't think iggy does much for them at all no but i just think it rounds them out and it gives them a flexibility they didn't have before and the hero just got better as the year went along was the other piece um all right quickly couple more things and then we'll go cause i want to get this podcast up uh most fun d'antoni team for you where do you want him to go ooh okay i'm i'm well we've heard the philly thing for a while i really hope it doesn't happen please no no i don't i don't know that it makes a ton of sense for him because it's just not built that way unless it's a check unless he looks at it one more time and says hey this is the check and i'm ready to go um it's probably new orleans yeah that's how i feel this would be the best thing to happen alonzo right here are the car keys alonso i'm showing you steve nash and uh and james harden videotapes all summer i'm gonna spread the floor for you do some lonzo stuff now whether he's that type of player i don't know but he's just been great with point guards i mean he got jeremy lin to look like an all-star for four weeks so if lonzo can be redeemed and koc did a good job talking about this the other day on his podcast about lonzo went south it wasn't just a shooting it was like this guy on the lakers looked like he had a chance to be a semi-special defensive player and doesn't play defense anymore in new orleans so i don't know if d'antoni's the one who's going to be tapping into that but i agree i think him with zion would be really fun the important thing is lonzo looked so bad on the restart that i want to forget it happened and give him a clean slate that he goes into a normal season looking like the player that looked like he was gonna you know he's gone from oh i kind of like this i like these in-between things he does and not everybody else understands he was really good defensively he's a smart defensive player in the concepts and then you're like oh this guy's going to be a bust he stinks he's passive he can't shoot he's on you don't even guard him and then this year in the normal phase of the season there were really some good things to that you were watching if the shot was better he had to be somebody at least had to close out on and respect enough and yet the defensive part of it i mean god it was so bad watch him come back i'm just going to pretend it didn't happen and do like clean slate lonzo thing i think that's fair yeah because the restart was too short so let's see does lonzo have shame at face in your opinion no because he went two you can't have shamit face and go two does gary harris have sham at face he went pretty high though okay just checking would you trade here's my next thing for you would you trade drew holiday for the number two pick andrew wiggins and the minnesota top three protected pick next year i got three more years of wiggins though right yeah you know i probably true holiday is like 31 now i probably would i think i would too and i think i would have found golden state i could go curry clay drew holiday draymond and free agent whoever jacob evans um yeah that one i mean wiggins immediately scares me off every time i hear the name but uh okay i i kind of i know look maybe i'm an insane person but do i kind of want to hear by the way jacob evans finish here with minnesota just want to double check that for the huge jacob evans fans out there um am i nuts for wanting to kind of see what wiggins looks like with the rest of those guys that would be where i landed as well if i were them i would trade back and try to get somebody to fit and they have like a 17 million dollar trade exception i would trade back from two to like 9 10 11 range to some team that's hot to trot for like to get somebody second and try to steal some like jeremy grant type whoever that version is right this year yeah and you go back and you get like the eighth pick and you get that guy you put him in the trade exception i think that's a better move i would want the draft pick because of the the fixed cost and i like some of the guys in this draft yeah that's where i think the new orleans thing would be interesting because you could i'd have to look at their salary sheet i i'm not going to pull it off right now but would the two picks save you enough that if zion stays healthy in your abilities you get like a second reset with zion to bring in somebody around him um but also with golden state and how the salaries i mean the four guys and those salaries are so nuts that if you're moving wiggins out you still are so high up salary wise that it'd be amazing to get a couple picks just for that that cost effectiveness of it and you would figure you know at the very least you get a rotation guy but maybe not this year who knows next thing for you fertitta calls you or for tita for tita yeah either one whatever however you pronounce his name he calls and he's like uh he's like hey just i'm just been calling around people i respect i'm a huge fan of the podcast what would you do if you were me would you run this back with this team in a different coach would you try to get it big what would you do i go hey does james want to play with russ again or can you trade russ and by the way trying to trade russ now is i think it's impossible possible like have you maybe been able to trade him well you didn't even want to trade him i think hardin still likes russ i i gotta know what what's important to harden i go okay hey the new coach comes in he doesn't want to let you dribble the ball between your legs for 40 [ __ ] percent of the game um do you do you want to keep doing that yeah what are you into that are you do do we need to do this another year to see that it doesn't work like what do you what are you looking for james and i don't even know what kind of answer you get from james hardy he'd probably be like oh you know i'm built different i'm a problem um i would i would blow this whole thing up i i would i can't imagine owning the team and having to watch this and then sign all the checks so i would as talented as hardin is i i would not want to run now i don't know if with his money situation everybody keeps writing about how he's not liquid and with everything going on and all the hotels and all that kind of stuff does he need to just be competitive so he could trick all the rockets fans into thinking like hey man you know who's been on fire this this february is hardened you know we went we went 12-3 in our last 15. i think we could really do it this year is that enough that you know and again who knows what normal is is that enough like what would you do all right let's turn it around he calls you what would you do hey bill i want to make you gm go i think because you have no other choice you talk yourself into how the team looked in february and what that could look like outside the bubble with fans and i can't tell you how it's gonna look no no i'm not saying it's right but i think it's like a relationship where you break up with somebody and then you get back together and then maybe like ah maybe she won't cheat on me with other guys again and you you just talk yourself into whatever reality you want i think maybe she only knows meth on the weekend right i think the reality of this team is that their window was 2018 and 2018. and then the other thing was they traded they deserved it for 18. they deserve a ton of credit it came damn close but the other thing i think that [ __ ] them was they traded chris paul not realizing that he was about to go to this plant-based diet that completely changed his career like go google chris paul plant-based diet he he basically went a time machine back to 2014 athletically and that's why he looked so good this year he had chip on his shoulder too but i think if they had known that was going to happen the smarter move was just to keep chris paul in those two extra first round picks and the contract that ended a year earlier than russ i think yeah they were selling selling high on chris paul because his career was about to go in the poo poo and they didn't realize that he was about to have this kind of rejuvenation um don't make it paul's been hurt paul no paul's been hurt okay so i'm not but paul's argument was hey i'm still beating guys off the dribble folks okay like all of you that want me in a retirement home here i'm still taking people off the dribble the problem is is harden doesn't move okay off the ball harden doesn't do anything and you can say that it spaces everything but like the defenders know in big spots once james isn't in the play he's not in the play now i have to pay attention to him that was paul's beef but i also think because paul's like this this high iq basketball guy he'd be pissed at harden all the time and harden's like this is my team i'm sick of this [ __ ] i get along with russ better anyway and so harden goes to management or excuse me goes to ownership and says i want to play with russ so i think that's your biggest problem even if you want to try the harden thing again the guy's incredibly productive we know this he's healthy he's going to hold up i think for a really long time but i'd want to know like hey do you want to keep playing the style okay you do well the rust part like i know those two months were incredible we opened it all up but like do we want to just be incredible in february or march or do we want to have a real shot at this because having a real shot at this the way we're constructed right now we probably don't have a great chance and that's the biggest like the covington thing's great i love pj tucker eric gordon you know look up and down but for where he is on this team as the third sometimes fourth guy it's not that big of a deal but i would have to know where hardin's head's at with the whole thing because just to run it back with russ and him which is probably what happens um because i think trading for russ is really really hard the only teams i ever hear about russ this is what happens i think i've shared this with you before but a team that would sit around and be like we're stale we haven't done [ __ ] we're totally off the radar for five something years do we just throw a bunch of pieces at russ and say all right we've got a superstar and i'm using air quotes for superstar with russ do we just do it to shake it all up and be different and have a cool attraction and then you're like wait he's 44 million and he's hurt no it's something in the 70s and 80s in the nba like russ would have been traded two more times it's like like how george mcginnis where phil is like hey man any interest in george mcginnis and denver's like yeah that guy's great here's bobby jones and then they give bobby jones the best defensive forward in the league straight up for george mcginnis because back then like people barely knew how to run a team and we still have that with certain teams like could like a team like sacramento go hey russ i mean you won the mvp three years ago could you sell tickets for us put them at the air and fox that's exactly that's that's buddy buddy for russ like we're getting the better player and then all of a sudden russ is on your team and russ has moved again and it's like oh wait i thought you and james harden were so close james like yeah buddy healed spot-off shooter um so it my guess is they'll run it back new coach blame stuff on the bubble and the fact that you know russ was banged up well they'll blame somebody they'll definitely blame somebody those those articles are coming um because there's very little accountability uh with that organization yeah this is i mean look the the referee report against golden state two years ago i still think is one of the more embarrassing things it was a joke is tom brady washed up how about aryans going yeah i don't know what the hell his problem is he looked like tom brady practiced i don't know what that was all about we're like whoa not used to that uh here's here's something i want to tell you because i was i was actually listening to mason in ireland out here on 710 big fan of the show and they were doing the brady segment where it was what does this mean i almost called in because you should have i can't believe in what world would we have 20 years of evidence that brady's the [ __ ] man and that belichick's the best to ever do it and that somehow that's still all on the balance with a few weeks here in his 20th season at season 43 that would be like watching braveheart and watching william wallace the whole movie going all right whoa all right okay all right and then he gets his guts spoiler alert guts taken out at the end and then somebody in the theater turns next to you goes hey we're not that tough after all huh it wasn't that tough you're like what are you talking about like we already have we we have all of this evidence that they're both incredible i just i resist and i think less of the argument that somehow that this is some thing that's on it's a zero-sum game yeah there's one winner and one loser we're still not sure who's actually any good in this so um that's not a bad rumor it's just a bad bad segment yeah i saw your your tweet was like what was it belichick one brady zero yeah it's the updated bill and tom power rankings i had bill one this week tom two but i'm gonna we'll see how next week plays out salad i talked about it on sunday and i don't feel like this is an overreaction brady's lost his ability to improvise and i think it's a really important quality for the quarterback position when something unexpected happens or when you have to go to plan c on a play you're really already there you're good but you because i think they started last year too i felt that way last year i felt what i saw in this game was a continuation of last year where he's he's become like a stage actor who has to have the lines exactly how he memorized them and then the other actors have to say their lines exactly and he's used to it but if somebody had libs on him he'd he kind of doesn't know how to roll with it anymore that's what i see when i watch him i think he knows what he's doing for two and a half seconds when the ball is snapped and if anything goes wrong he either throws it away doesn't want to get hit and he's not ready to experiment he just doesn't want to do it anymore that's what i see as somebody who's watched him now for two decades of my life he used to have this supernatural ability to move around and create an extra second extra second and a half just kind of move around without being like a scrambler like josh allen no his mobility in the pocket's the best i've ever seen mobility in the pocket he's not a mobile quarterback but his mobility which is i think far more important than getting out he doesn't move like that anymore he just doesn't and now these teams now are going all they're just sending dudes at him because they're like if we can get to him if we can start hitting him he's gonna he's gonna not be able to do his thing he's just not now he did get like a hundred yards of pass interference on top of his stats so i think his stats were a little deceiving but i thought he had like five or six like really terrible plays that i don't think you can chalk up to oh he doesn't know his teammates yet that wasn't what i saw i saw a guy who was 43 or didn't really want to get hit i thought the evans throw where it was the first pick i could see how that could be on evans but again this is 20 years of thinking it was never his fault on any interception i know that's how good he was because you can usually go back and look at every interception in those peak brady 15 years and you go yeah all right actually you can see what happened here and why that went wrong i don't know whose fault that was um the throw to the right looked like it just took a long time to get the ball over there and that's the throw where people will tell you like when it goes that's the third you can't really make anymore it was funny watching drew that's what happened to manning yeah well manning's it was over he's having to throw pop-ups to get the ball down the field and because he's throwing it higher in the air it was easier to recover if you were the defender on the route but it's not that bad he's not as bad as manny was i wouldn't compare that in a million years yeah good good good i'm glad we got that out of the way cause it's about to go there anyway but you know drew locke for denver like he had a throw to the sideline that was sick in that game against um against tennessee and i was like oh that's right because brady's looked so bad i'm gonna go ahead and wait because i think brady's a huge well we know this i don't need to say i think so i should stop saying that we know that brady is a big rep guy there's no way he got the reps he thought he was gonna get i don't know why you wouldn't defer to brady that's what elway did the great peyton manning story when he was in his free agent tour he goes to harbaugh and he and harbaugh are playing catch and harbaugh's actually like uh losing a little something on the ball and harbaugh was like you're going to he's like what are we going to run and harbaugh's are you going to run what i'm going to run we're going to run my stuff and then he goes to elway always like we run whatever you want i don't know why you'd bring brady in and tell him he can't run his stuff that he's comfortable with so i got to see more of him looking bad before i'm ready to write this off although the accuracy numbers last year there was a lot that weren't very good how about this he's 43 years old you know that stat about the seven games yeah you know that stat that's stat and i'll repeat it one more time seven games have been started by a quarterback 43 or older in history this was never gonna end well and there's going to be a season where it just is a rough season and then it's going to end and it was bred far from 2010 it was manning in that last season and then when the super bowl uh they barely did it but it was jarring because i was with kyle we're watching the arizona san francisco game on one tv and then bucks saying how about kyler huh how about his run well that you're watching kyler and then you're watching brady and it's like if a cardinals play went wrong kyle just like all right cool i'm gonna run for 11 yards and by the way he had like 30 minutes he had kyler had 13 runs and he either ran out of bounds slid or scored on 12 of the 13. he only got hit one time he just dominated it and yeah you watch brady who it's like if if the play didn't go perfectly the first two seconds it was either he's throwing it away or he's getting hit or god only knows and it's like all right it's it's hard to say he's the goat anymore even though he's the goat i'm just not ready to i'm not ready to say that it's like you you sound like you're ready to just write i'm pretty bummed i was rooting for them i i really i i bet on them like i wanted to root for them and and it was a bummer is this like when older buddies show up alums come back to school and they're like 25 and they get shit-faced with you and they sleep on your couch and they wake up at your house and you look at them and you're like oh my god that guy looks so old you never have i was like sleep at your house now we had a couple and we were like horrified we're like what the hell is that what's gonna happen to us i was thinking last two years bird when it's like he looks like larry bird he could still put up 20. i can't believe a couple awesome games like i knew it was different i just didn't want to admit it yeah i'm trying to use the celtics as a comp that was amazing he loves scotty miller i'll tell you i'll tell you joe he loves scotty miller he really loves this guy he loves him we're gonna hear that all here uh priscilla thanks for staying up late on a tuesday night to commemorate the uh clippocalypse of uh 2020 trademark there you go tm all right uh you have a podcast coming thursday i do as well we will uh we'll see you then thanks guys

Channel: The Ringer

Views: 217,012

Rating: 4.6048236 out of 5

Keywords: The Ringer, Bill Simmons, The Bill Simmons Podcast, BS Pod, Ryen Russillo, Los Angeles Clippers, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Clippers Choke, Clippers Nuggets, Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray

Id: -PtGprJb7wQ

Length: 115min 34sec (6934 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/atlfirsttimer]

If the Lakers win he's gonna switch up real quick and say it was a cakewalk

[u/Number333]

Ryen Russilo hits back with: "Yea but the difference is the Lakers aren't coming off a bunch of titles in a row where they're kinda over it."

[u/PairedFoot08]

oh no way really Bill you think someone would beat the lakers tell me more please

[u/magna77]

Scrappy underdog lakers gonna prove the world wrong

[u/Regex00]

Is he gonna make an emergency podcast again if Lakers lose game 1 in this series too?

[u/5ManWolfPack]

Bill is so desperate for takes these days.

[u/emi_b7]

Everybody is a bad matchup for the Lakers according to him but then after they win he says they haven't been tested yet.

Bill's takes on the Lakers and Lebron are awful, he gives them 0 credit and is always throwing shade. You can bet your ass he will be all in on the "asterisk championship" take if the Lakers win the title (he won't say anything if the Celtics win it of course).

I don't even like the Lakers and like Bill in general but it's hard to listen to him talking about anything Lebron/Lakers related.

[u/ThaneKrios]

When Portland won game 1, he did 30 minutes on how the Lakers were in trouble and their fans should be seriously worried. Lakers won four in a row. Then they lost game one to Houston and again Bill did his whole "if I'm a Lakers fan I'm seriously worried right now" shtick, Lakers won 4 in a row again. Today he said the Lakers haven't been tested so far. Dude just hates the Lakers (which of course he does, his whole thing is he's a Boston homer, it'd be weird if he didnt hate them) and he hates LeBron because LeBron dad dicked his team for nearly a decade in the East.

[u/atlfirsttimer]

Bill Simmons with another trash take.