Ethan (3:09)

Feeling good.

Kelly Eco (3:12)

Xena Keda, Kelly Eco here. We, we just finished up Thunder Nuggets game six. Obviously, the. The Nuggets had a huge win. We got a Jamal Murray game. Jamal Murray flu game. We got a Julian Strother game. Kelly, you were in the building, man. What was your initial impression following game six? Like, how'd you feel about the game?

Gu (3:38)

I think overall the Thunder probably didn't realize the level of desperation that Denver was going to play with. Yeah, and obviously, as the more experienced team. Now, this is a group that's been in championship games before. They have the know how they have the personnel. It was going to come down to whether or not David Adelman was going to pull out the stops. He had one more trick in his back pocket, obviously, playing Julian Strother, you know, and the big mess he had. But I just think overall they were more physical than Oklahoma City. I think they, they got to the line twice as much. They dominated on the, on the glass, and they really imposed their will at both ends of the floor. And I think for the Thunder, Yeah, you won 68 games during the regular season, but this series, you could argue that Denver has outplayed them, and on paper, they have more offensive firepower. So it's obviously going to come down to whether coach Mark can. Can be tactically astute and, you know, outclass David Alleman. But so far in these six games, you could argue that Denver should have already won the series by now, and that's not a good sign heading into a Game seven. Now, after the game, you know, talking to those guys in the locker room, there's a belief that, you know, the home crowd and the camaraderie that, that they've built is enough to see them through. But unless someone else steps up outside of Shea, it's kind of hard to see, you know, the Thunder winning a Game seven even at home.

Ethan (5:07)

That feels so crazy to say, considering how tired and gassed the Nuggets looked in game four and game five when they lost leads in the fourth quarter and the Thunder were able to kind of pull it out. And now you're seeing the Thunder, even with a gas. Nuggets still allow the Nuggets to get back. I'm wondering if the Thunder can rely on the fact that they're a little bit younger, a lot of bit younger in some cases, but they have a little bit more depth, a little Bit more athleticism to kind of push them over the edge into game seven. Because Denver just looks tired, even though they're more tactically sound in execution.

Gu (5:47)

Right. So obviously, if you look at going back to what you said about their depth, those role players should play better at home. The problem is when you look. And I think after post game, coach Mark talked about it in terms of. He admitted that Denver had pretty much outplayed them, but in the fourth quarter, they were able to pull out two victories right out of the hat. The problem is, how long does that last? How long does. How long can you ride that look? And if you look at their offensive process, it was decent. That was a back and forth game. But it just felt like all of Denver's threes were just heavier. Like the momentum was shifting in their favor. Even though MPJ shot, what, 2 for 7 from the field, those two threes felt super heavy. Aaron Gordon's physicality, you know, Christian Braun, you know, he's had a tremendous year, just on and off the ball, cutting, spacing, and just being that timely shooter. They have a lot of pieces that work. Now, going back to the fake, the thing about fatigue. Yeah. The Thunder are younger, so you would assume that they have more energy in them, but.

Kelly Eco (6:57)

Right.

Gu (6:57)

If you watch that Game six, they just look the hardship. They just look tired. They looked out of it.

Kelly Eco (7:01)

It looked gassed, looked a little defeated, honestly. Yeah.

Gu (7:05)

Like they didn't give a lot of Game seven. I want to. I want to play in front of my home crowd. Game energy.

Kelly Eco (7:09)

Yeah.

Gu (7:10)

Like, they just look like they just throwing the towel early. And I think that's kind of dangerous against a team that has that much experience in Denver.

Kelly Eco (7:19)

Well.

Gu (7:19)

And who understands what the game's on the line.

Kelly Eco (7:21)

You know what they say, Kelly? I mean, you definitely know what they say. Never underestimate the heart of a champion. Right. Like, I don't want to get into cliches, but this is kind of like this Nuggets team. They're running on fumes and they're running on Jokic. And then they got, you know, Jamal Murray in, even though he was sick. Like, he comes in the game with, like, flu, like, symptoms, even though he was sick, gave him just a huge game. And then like you said, every single shot that it seemed like they needed to hit, they did hit. Strother comes in and just fires them up and completely changed in the third quarter, his stint there, where, what, did he score eight straight points or something? Yeah. And that allowed them to just like Jokic got some Rest. Because Strother went off, you know, to start the fourth quarter, they get to let Jokic sit a little bit longer just because Strother was out there and being aggressive. I mean, he had a nice drive to the basket where he, you know, drew a foul. It was just. There was an energy shift for them with Adelman going to Strother as the, the primary guy coming off the bench for some scoring punch. What do you expect to see, like, looking ahead to game seven? Let's just go ahead and start previewing it because. All right, I mean, look, we, we've kind of seen everything the Nuggets can do, right. They don't have a lot of guys. They, they just pulled one out of their hat tonight. I think it's the Thunder's turn to make an adjustment. Where do you think they need to go? I have an idea, but I want to see where you guys start.

Gu (8:48)

Well, I think one big issue for the Thunder through these six games has been Denver zone.

Xena Keda (8:57)

Yeah.

Gu (8:57)

And during the regular season, the Thunder were probably. There were a top five, top six shooting team during the regular season. But the problem is now Denver's doing so many different things with their zone. They're seeing 1, 3, 1, 2, 3. They're pressing high to the, to the, to the line. They're dropping back, they're blitzing, they're throwing all sorts of coverages at Shay. And what that does is obviously the Thunder wants to counter by a having either Lou Dort or Jalen Williams bring the ball up the floor and try to initiate action, which has worked sometimes because it allows Shay in theory to work against, you know, late shot clock, you know, a weaker matchup. The problem is that Jalen Williams offense has dried up over the last couple of games at the worst possible time. And had this been December or January and you, you were going through a scoring slump.

Kelly Eco (9:49)

Cool.

Gu (9:50)

This is a 70 win team. Essentially. You'll get through it. Right now that luxury is gone. And you know, they're putting a lot of pressure on Jalen to be that second fiddle that, that Robin. And so far he struggled. They're clock in the middle. He's. He's taken a lot of tough shots and he's become almost the de facto point guard, which is great because he had 10 assists tonight and he could have had more. But if you go 3 for 16 in the playoff game, chances are you're not going to win that game. And if Shay, who scored probably the quietest 30 that you'll ever see, if he doesn't have that help from a J dub consistently. You're working against yourself.

Ethan (10:32)

I do think that the fouls, the early fouls stunted everything that OKC was trying to do early, especially with the fact that Shai Gilgeous Alexander had four in the second quarter, three, excuse me, four by the second quarter, three in the second quarter alone. And you saw Denver immediately go on that end of first half run that I think. I don't want to say the white flag was thrown in there. But the uncertainty started to sit in to okc. Um, I think, you know, Dave, to your point of what are the adjustments? Number one, Isaiah Hartenstein, Shay Gilgeous, like they can't get those type of fouls so early in the game and a lot of them were stupid fouls. It wasn't even like trying to get after the ball, et cetera. It was, I made a mistake and I'm retaliating, trying to, you know, make up for. So I think that's the number one thing, something that really shined tonight. I mean, Kayson Wallace was gorgeous for them in terms of just getting easy buckets going coast to coast, you know, not having to battle against that zone, but literally turning defense to offense or just getting out ahead. I feel like maybe, you know, tapping into him sooner and more often in, in Game seven will be an adjustment as well.

Kelly Eco (11:45)

Look, there's another one that's sitting right there and I think Alex Toruso has probably been the second best player for the Thunder in this series. I think he needs more minutes. I think maybe even getting him in the starting lineup for game seven is the button to push. You know, everything that he's done, I mean, it just. He has been a positive contributor in every single way. And it feels like Mark Dagnault has just down the stretch when things start to the rope starts to kind of slip away. He's a little bit too late to get Caruso back in there. And Caruso is the guy that comes in and puts the fires out for them. So guys, stick around after the break. We'll be back. We're going to keep talking about game seven because it's a Game seven. The two best words in sports.

Xena Keda (12:32)

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Dave Deford (14:33)

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Kelly Eco (15:11)

Kelly said he wanted to have fun and make some predictions. But what he doesn't know is I'm actually going to make him predict Nick Celtics too, because Kelly covers the NBA. Let's just be honest here. Kelly covers a lot of teams. We'll, we'll stick with Thunder Nuggets first. Kelly, you, you know, you're the guest, you're, you're staying up late for us. How do you see Game seven going? It's, I mean it feels like it's such a toss up.

Gu (15:38)

I, I think the two days between now and Game seven will help both teams obviously, but I think that Thunder will be able to get back in the film room, settle things down and figure out exactly what went wrong. I Think Shay talked about that in terms of the offensive force that the team had as a collective, and he called it. Okay. But you know, when it comes down to, like you said, the Caruso minutes and just getting him early in the game, he's going to have to play at least 30, 33 minutes in game seven for them to have a chance, especially if their three point shooting is going to dry up as it has.

Ethan (16:15)

That's.

Gu (16:15)

That's actually the craziest part of this series. Like they've. Denver's almost daring them to shoot from three and they just can't do it.

Ethan (16:22)

Yeah, so.

Gu (16:23)

So, So I think in front of your home crowd, you know that that momentum should be there. So I think that as a 68 win team, you should be able to win at home in a game seven. So I'm going to go Thunder. But if you were to tell me on Monday morning that the Thunder lost by six, I wouldn't be surprised.

Kelly Eco (16:42)

Yeah. What do you think, Xena?

Ethan (16:43)

This is one of those things where if I hadn't seen that Cavalier series, I'd have been like, absolutely not. There's no way OKC's not coming out of the West. Like, there's no way after everything we've seen, even if they have a terrible series, I know the resume. I know what they're walking into this series with in terms of their shooting capability, their depth, everything. And Denver has truly. I don't even, I don't wanna call it expose them, but Denver's held up the light to just how deep this actually is in terms of talent and ability to execute. So I'm looking at what Denver did tonight in terms of, you know, Julian Strothers, 15 off the bench. Cool, great. I don't know if that's capable in a Game seven on the road, but I know Russell Westbrook is capable of that, at least that. Now the next person I'm looking at is Christian Brown. Christian Brown having 23 points, double double with 11 rebounds possible, but also on the road. Don't know if he's going to be able to step up on that. But I do know Michael Porter Jr. Is capable of that on the road. So I just feel like Denver, again, we talked about the heart of the champion. Like Denver, with their back against the ropes, could be capable of pulling this out and might be able to win this game. So I think I'm gonna vote. I'm gonna vote Denver might be able to pull this out.

Kelly Eco (18:16)

Look, the Thunder had a clean season outside of injuries, right? Like a clean Season as a basketball team, they. They could have easily won 70 games this year if they had just had a season. Full health. Absolutely. 70 wins, easy. The Denver Nuggets like to play in the mud, and they drag every team into the mud. And you know who the king of slinging mud is? Nicola Jokic.

Ethan (18:45)

Yeah.

Kelly Eco (18:45)

Game seven. If this game is close, the Thunder have the ability to just blow them out. The Nuggets can't blow out the Thunder.

Ethan (18:53)

Right.

Kelly Eco (18:54)

If this game is close, I'm taking Jokic, I'm taking the Thunder, and I just can't bet against that guy at all. Swing it east. Okay.

Ethan (19:04)

The.

Kelly Eco (19:04)

The Celtics, they're back. They were down 3:1. Now it's 3:2. Feels like they've got some momentum. Jalen Brown had his best game of the series. Everyone stepped up. Luke Cornett is revelation filling for Kristaps Porzingis. Makes that. Makes that sort of absence not. Not feel as. As harsh. Kelly, you know, I know you've been keeping an eye on that. Are the Celtics going to do this thing? Are they going to take it to seven?

Gu (19:35)

I think so. I think it's going seven. It's such a New York thing to do. It's a three one and look up and they're going to game seven. But if you watch that game, what was it? Five. And you just saw the level of attention to detail that the Celtics had.

Kelly Eco (19:53)

Yeah.

Gu (19:54)

Which is kind of what we saw all year long.

Ethan (19:56)

Right.

Gu (19:56)

Even without Jason Tatum, you understand why. Realistically, they should have never been down three ones. New York in the first place. Like, I feel like there was a level of not apprehension, but it might have been a level of a lack of respect that they had for New York that put them in this predicament. Because in all facets of the game, Boston is the superior team. But the good thing about playoff basketball is that going back to the mud thing, sometimes it can get a little ugly. So New York show that they can hang in the mud. They're grimy. But I think what you saw in Game 5, that balanced effort, not just Jalen Brown, Derrick White, Luke Cornette, just being able to be physically imposing and match New York's physicality. I think they would love nothing more than to go into New York in Game 6 and beat the brakes off of them. So I think it's going seven as well.

Ethan (20:55)

Yeah, that's. I absolutely think it's going. It's going to seven. And I'm happy you brought that up, Kelly, about the balance attack, because I was just trying to See if I could look it up really quickly what Boston's like, what Boston's paints in the point this series have been. I think it's been trending downwards this entire time. But you saw them in the last game finally beat New York in terms of their points in the paint, which I think opened up everything else around. But it was just for the first time we're seeing Boston not settle for three pointers. You saw this inside out, outside in like it was just a true. I mean that's how Luke Cornette has the game that he has. So I think finally we're getting a variety of defense and offense in Boston matching up with the variety that New York has somehow found in the midst of the playoffs. And it's going to be a little bit more evenly matched. It's going to be gritty, it's going to be good. It's definitely going to game seven. I'm going to hold my prediction for after that.

Kelly Eco (22:00)

Yeah, yeah, we'll save the Game 7 prediction because who knows. But I also believe it's going seven. The Knicks don't know how to do things easy. They just don't. Every single shot they take feels like an epic journey. I mean literally returning the rings to Mordor just to get a layup sometimes for Jalen Brunson. So you know, I think, think the Celtics look things are cleaner for them now with no Jason Tatum as far as like, hey, we know what we have to do. There's one simpler, you know, if you're gonna. Exactly. If you're gonna say something. He has a ball in his hands a lot and there's a lot of dribbling there. And now there's one less guy doing that. And so your, your game plan becomes so much more simple and they executed it to a T the other day. And Cornette being able to step up for Porzingis makes it so they're not so small inside when Mitchell Robinson is out there and when Cat's out there. So yeah, I think it's going to go seven. It has to. The Knicks just again they refuse to lose or win in six. So here we go. All right, well that's going to do it for the show folks. Thank you guys for listening. Thanks to Kelly Eco for hanging out. Thanks for the unicada as always. I'm Dave Deford. This has been the NBA Daily. Thanks for waking up with us, Sam. Introducing the new 2025 Ford Maverick truck with in bed power, up to £4,000 of towing capability and elevated off roading capability. The new 2025 Ford Maverick truck with a standard hybrid engine and available all wheel drive. Ford make it with Maverick Max Towing on all wheel drive models with available Max trailer tow package excludes Maverick, Lobo and Tremor models when properly equipped. Max towing varies based on cargo vehicle configuration, accessories and number of passengers. Always consider Consult the owner's manual before off roading. Know your terrain and trail difficulty and use appropriate safety gear.

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