Jason LT (2:18)

Foreign. Welcome to Hoops tonight here at the Volume Heavy Monday everybody. Hope all of you guys had an incredible weekend. Well, we have a good chunk of our playoff field set. We have our top six seeds in both conferences set. We have four playoff series set. Our obviously waiting on some play in results but as is always the case on Monday, I want to start with 10 big takeaways from this basketball weekend. We have a jam packed week for the show. We have Nick Wright coming on the show tomorrow. We have Brian Windhorst coming on the show later this week. We have eight series previews we're going to get to before we get to Saturday. But today I just want to kind of go big picture and talk about my initial thoughts as we head into the postseason. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Make sure you like this video and sign up for post notifications. That helps us a lot. And last but not least, you guys want to get mailbags mailbag questions into future mailbags. Drop them in our full episodes on YouTube and we'll get to them throughout the rest of the postseason. All right, let's talk some basketball. So my number one big takeaway from this basketball weekend. The spurs might have just cost themselves the title by doing one of the stupidest things I have ever seen an NBA team do. Very rarely do you see things line up in a way to where a single regular season game is as straightforward and important as last night's Denver San Antonio game. You regular listeners of the show will remember that over the last few weeks we have had some important regular season games. I talked about the second Lakers Rockets game as being something that was super important to the three seed. I talked about that crazy overtime Rockets Wolves game where the Rockets came all the way back and then they blew it in OT. I talked about that gaming super important for the 5 seed. And here's the thing. At the time they really did seem important. But there was a few weeks left in the season. Plenty of time for weirdness. What happened with the Lakers? It didn't matter why Luca and Austin got hurt, so they ended up dropping to fourth anyway. Anthony Edwards got hurt, Jaden McDaniels got hurt and the Rockets finally kind of hit a little groove. So that game didn't matter. The Rockets passed him for fifth, the Wolves beat him again and it didn't matter again. It is very rare to have a regular season game that important. I as last night's game and it typically happens in game 82. Why? Because it's literally the finish line. But last night was a classic example of that game. The spurs had an opportunity last night with one single home win against the team that was essentially punting the game. They played Yic to get to 18 minutes so he can qualify for awards and then they pulled him. They had the entire remainder of their starting lineup out and several key bench guys out. Denver was punting that game because they had to play San Antonio and okc. No matter what, they either had to play OKC and then San Antonio or San Antonio and then okc. See, obviously, assuming the seating holds, I've heard lots of people on Twitter say, well, don't count out this team or don't count out that team. Yeah, the Wolves and the Rockets are certainly capable of winning series, but we all view them as a tier below those teams. Those teams will be favored for obvious reasons. The Nuggets were going to have to play both teams anyway, so they were like, whatever, we're punting the game. The spurs had an opportunity last night to make it so that they would only play one of those teams. They had an opportunity to dramatically increase their championship odds. There's some weird matchup stuff with those three teams. And again, I'm talking about Denver OKC in San Antonio. We talked in our final contender rankings last week that I kind of view them as a weird, transitive property case where one team is like rock, paper, scissors in a lot of ways. These were the percentages that I used. I said I thought Denver was in trouble in an Oklahoma City matchup because I think OKC's offense has evolved past the struggles that they had last year in the playoffs against Denver. And Denver has had consistent problems scoring against OKC's defense. As a matter of fact, in their last seven matchups where they've like played all their guys, OKC is 6 and 1 dating back to last year's playoff series. I have OKC at a 75:25 advantage in a series against Denver. I think San Antonio matches up really well with OKC very simply because of Victor Wembanyama's ability in that specific matchup to stay close to the rim and how that in conjunction with their ability to have these big perimeter athletes that can contest OKC's pull up jump shooters, I think they have a real advantage there. I give San Antonio A 6040 edge in that matchup. I have too much respect for OKC to count them out. I think we talked about last week in the contender rankings. They're a better, deeper team now. They have some more shooting lineups they could put together to try to space Wemby out. They're just better team, I think overall than they were when those early season matchups took place. But I would still give San Antonio a slight edge in that matchup. But I think Denver has a real advantage against San Antonio because Jokic is the antidote to what Victor Wimanyama does on the defensive end of the floor. He can score on him one on one as he showed repeatedly in their last matchup, and he can pull him away from the rim, which creates openings for their offense overall, not to mention any sort of close game. We saw this in their matchup on Saturday a few weeks back. Any sort of close game, you're getting this much more polished and confident and comfortable half court attack from Jamal Murray and Nicole Jokic. He's got way better shots than San Antonio down the stretch of that game. So like if they just keep things close in five games in that series, they just gotta win four of those and they win that series. So like I'd give Denver a 6040 edge over San Antonio. I would pick Denver to win that series at least as of right now. With one win last night, one single regular season win at home versus a team benching all of their best players, you could have accomplished two massive goals. You could have made it so that you only had to play one of those two teams and you could have made it so that it is more likely than not that the one of those two teams you play is the one you match up with best. Denver is a problem for you. You could have had OKC handle that problem for you. And I had a lot of people in my mentions last night saying things like, like, you know, we're trying to, we're trying to rest Victor Emanyama. He's banged up. He had 40 in the previous game. You're about to have a week off in putting yourself into two because like here's the thing with Minnesota. Minnesota is a tough team. So the alternative scenarios, Denver falls to four. You end up playing a team like Minnesota who beats the Lakers because the Lakers would have had no shot against Minnesota. We'll talk about that later. But if Minnesota gets into the three seed, you play them in round two. Here's the thing. What have we talked about with with Minnesota as their weakness over the last several years? Teams that can really protect the rim, that can also put athletes on ant, which is like the definition of what San Antonio is and represents. For the record, Minnesota would absolutely have an upset shot for San Antonio, but San Antonio would be a much bigger favorite versus Minnesota than they would be against Denver and that has a much better chance of being a Shorter, quicker series. What does it matter if you buy Wemby a healthy wemby who just dropped 40 a day off yesterday if he ends up having to play one or two brutally tough games against Denver in a few weeks? The rest angle was like completely short sighted. This was incredibly straightforward for the for the spurs when one regular season home game against the end of the Nuggets bench you get an easier second round matchup, you most likely get a Thunder team that you match up pretty well with. Now you're in the finals. Lose that game. Now you have to face Denver and OKC and you'll have to face that Denver team that has your number before you even get to the OKC matchup that you actually like. And in that matchup last night the spurs healthy scratched their entire starting center rotation. All year long the spurs sucked without Victor Weminyama and Luke Cornett in 1317 possessions. With both of those guys off the floor this year they had a -7.1 net rating. Last night in just six minutes of playing time, the spurs were -14 with Bismack Biombo on the floor. The spurs, yeah, they should have been able to win that game. But knowing the data about how bad you've been without those guys all season, it exposed you to a completely unnecessary risk. And that risk burned them last night as they got their ass kicked by Julian Strother and David Roddy. Again, it's not a death sentence or anything. This doesn't end the San Antonio title pursuit. The spurs are capable of beating Denver in OKC consecutively, but they just made things way harder on themselves when they didn't need to. And I understand the desire to keep Wemby healthy, but this was an example of straight up galaxy braining that process. You just made things harder on Wemby in his body and it made no sense. Right? This is something I was talking about before the game. It made absolutely no sense. That suddenly shaped up to be their most important regular season game of the entire season of all 82, the one single game that would have the largest impact on where their title odds would fall as they headed into the postseason and they benched two of their most important players and arguably the most impactful per minute player in the entire NBA. So here's the thing. If San Antonio loses to Denver in round two, this will go down as one of the stupidest things I have ever seen an NBA team do. Number two, San Antonio's stupidity from last night removed a lot of the variables from this year's playoff run. In addition to dramatically hurting their own playoff odds. The spurs also dramatically increased OKC's title odds. I talked last week about how I thought if Denver got the third seed, I give OKC about a 50% chance to win the title and repeat. Why? Because in that situation, they would get whatever their play in matchup is for the first round. Then they most likely get Houston in round two. A Houston team that is really not set up to handle okc. They'd be the sixth best team in the west if everyone was healthy. They can't handle the ball well enough to deal with OKC's ball pressure. I think the Rockets are doomed in that matchup. So OKC would just walk to the Comfort Conference finals. And in that situation, they similarly have an okay, they have a San Antonio problem. But what if Denver just handles that problem for them? All of a sudden you have a Denver team that they've matched up really well with. Again, they've just been dominating that matchup since the middle of that second round series last year. It just kind of clears the way had Denver dropped to four. Now it's much more complicated. Second round you get Denver, which again they match up really well with, but that makes it far more likely they have to run through San Antonio in the conference final. San Antonio is really given Oklahoma City problems this year. It dramatically changed their title lots. If Denver had dropped the four. I put OKC at like right around a 33% chance to repeat. Now I think OKC has a better than 50% chance to repeat. And it opens up. It would have opened up a lot of things for other teams in the league. Like San Antonio might match up well with okc, but the spurs are far more vulnerable to the top Eastern Conference teams than the Thunder are. Like, the Thunder would be pretty big favorites versus the Knicks and at least favorites by a substantial, like, tangible margin against a team like Boston. I, I would probably pick the Celtics and the Knicks over the spurs if they found their way to the finals. So at the spurs one last night, you could have talked your way into the spurs winning the title, the Celtics winning the title, the Knicks winning the title, the Nuggets winning the title, the Thunder winning the title. Like, it kind of would have been more wide open. Now it feels like it's the Thunder and then a pretty big gap to everyone else. And it's reflected in the odds. By the way, all of our lines are provided by our partner, Hard Rock Bet at Heart. Rock at Hard Rock Bet. The Thunder moved all the way up to +110 to win the title last night. That's how much of a difference that game made. Number three, there is a silver lining with the San Antonio shenanigans from last night. There are three series in particular that I think are going to be very fun to watch that we might not have gotten to watch. If San Antonio had one last night and kicked Denver down to four, it would have added more intrigue to the final two rounds, but it would have cost us some intrigue in the first two rounds. So San Antonio losing last night is going to give us an opportunity to see some more interesting early round series. Had San Antonio done the smart thing and played their guys last night, we would have watched Jokic just kick Shangoon's ass. Denver would have won in five or six and the Lakers would have gotten annihilated by the Wolves. The only shot for the Lakers to be competitive in a first round series was to be able to score the basketball. Because that's what you're losing when you lose Austin and Luca. Right. And to score the basketball, they were going to need LeBron James to create a lot of good shots. The problem is Minnesota has no weak link in their lineups defensively for LeBron to pick on and go Bear can pretty easily switch ball screens onto LeBron and shut down the Laker pick and roll. That was something we saw in the postseason last year. I think they would have methodically beat down the Lakers. I think the Wolves would have swept them. Flipping the script on those two matchups again remove some intrigue in later rounds. But now we are going to get. We're going to get a Denver Minnesota rematch. We're going to get lebron versus kd. We're most likely going to get a Yokich versus Wemby second round series. Those are the three series that we might not have gotten to see had San Antonio won last night. The Denver Minnesota dynamic kind of reminds me of the San Antonio OKC dynamic. Like Denver is the better team overall and they've shown that to be the case throughout the season. They also have shown the ability to win the championship in the past, which Minnesota has not, which San Antonio has not. But Minnesota presents a real matchup problem to the Nuggets on both ends of the floor. The Wolves have all sorts of big bodies to throw at Nicole Jokic, including Rudy Gobert. They can force him into higher difficulty shots. Yeah, turnover issues in this, in this matchup, it's been one of the teams that's been able to force Jokic to pop in ball screens Instead of roll with how well they swarm him, where all of a sudden it puts a lot of pressure on his ability to make pick and pop threes. Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards have both given Jamal Murray issues at times over the years. And then on the other end of the floor, Anthony Edwards and his ability to get to the rim has been a consistent problem for the Nuggets over the years. Now Denver's fared better as time has gone by in the regular season, but as we know, Minnesota can be an uneven effort team in the regular season, I'd argue more than any other playoff team. So that series, even though I'll pick Denver, that series has a lot of potential to get very interesting and drag on to six or seven games and have some weirdness and we're going to get, we're going to get LeBron James versus Kevin Durant. These two teams basically have no shot to win the title, but they can at least potentially give us a competitive and fun first round series. Houston is the far better team with the injuries, I, if everyone was healthy, I'd probably pick the Lakers in six or seven games. But that's not the case with Austin and Luka out. This Rockets roster is more athletic. They are, have more ball handling. There's just a lot more talent. It's a, it's a better roster by a pretty wide margin. But with LeBron's ability to hunt weaknesses in the postseason, specifically the ability to put Sengun and Reed shepherd in action, that puts a higher emphasis on LeBron's brain rather than his body. In the Minnesota matchup, they would have done a lot of switching. LeBron would have had to beat great defenders one on one over and over again. It would have just been very difficult for him to manage in this series. He's going to be able to put Reed shepherd and Changun in action and accentuate his passing game more, which I think will actually help lead to better shots for the Lakers on the other end of the floor. We know that Houston, because of their ability to, they, they kind, they kind of have to put together lineups that have multiple non shooters on the floor. So that kind of plays into JJ Redick's defensive game planning. I think the Lakers are going to be able to do a lot of double teaming in that series. So I, I at least think this matchup is going to give us some close games and close playoff games with LeBron James and Kevin Durant going against each other is a win for basketball fans. And then lastly, like, look, I think it was stupid that San Antonio didn't try to win that game yesterday. Why wouldn't you want to just play one of the top tier contenders instead of two and increase your chances of winning the championship? Like that to me is pretty straightforward. But in the universe where OKC defeats Denver for San Antonio, we don't get to see Jokic vs. Wemby, and so now this gives us a much higher chance. Again, if Denver takes care of business. And as long as San Antonio doesn't get upset in some craziness in round one, it makes it far more likely that we'll get to see Jokic vs. Wemby in a second round series, which again will be entertaining in the moment in and of itself as a second round matchup. So again, I do think what happened last night removed some intrigue from the tail end of this postseason run, but it did add some more interesting series here in the next few weeks that we'll get to watch. Today's show is brought to you by presenting sponsor Hard Rock bet, the official sportsbook partner of the Miami Heat and the Orlando Magic. The hardwood is heating up as the NBA playoff push rolls on, and with Hard Rock Bet, every night is a shot to build a same game parlay and score a major bucket. Maybe you like the hot hand to drop 30, the big man to control the glass of the double double, and the point guard to dish out five assists. However you draw it up, Hard Rock Bet gives you tons of ways to stack your picks into an epic same game parlay. Missed tip off of that big game? No problem. Hard Rock Bet lets you live bet all game long from the first bucket to the final buzzer. So it's never too late to to find a winner or grab that player prop that you had circled. 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Jason LT (25:12)

It feels good when the story ends with savings. It feels good to Geico. Number four Shacoz Alexander Is My MVP for this Season there's been kind of a late season push for Nikola Jokic, and it stems from a couple of different things. There's always an emphasis on moments when we talk about the mvp and Yoko just had some big moments. I talked about how I expected Denver to go on a run to end the season in terms of winning a bunch of games in a row just because their schedule had lightened up and there was some kind of weirdness with teams playing their guys, which ended up taking place with OKC and in San Antonio benching their guys to end the season and we had that major national TV matchup with the spurs in Denver, that Jokic just looked like the best player in the world. And look, I already talked about that. I I do think if I had to right now, pick one player in a vacuum where like all the rosters are the same, if I had to pick one player to lead my team for the next two months, yeah, I'd pick Jokic by a small margin over Shake Els Alexander. But that's not the purpose of the MVP award. The MVP award is a combination of who is the best player in the league, who is the best player on the best team, and who is the most valuable player in the league. Shay has been no worse than the second best player in the league. He's been the best player in the he's been the best player on the best team in the NBA and the value metrics are off the charts. The Thunder offense falls off of a cliff when Shay is off the floor. And even if we go back to that best player thing again, I would pick Jokic for the guy to lead me through this playoff run if all circumstances were equal. But I actually think over these 82 games, Shea was the best basketball player I watched. Which takes me to number five. Yes, the Thunder would have run one right around 50 games this season if Shea Gilders Alexander was not on this roster. Bill Simmons made more noise this weekend. He's been regular feature on the on the show this the last few weeks just with his takes, but he made more noise this weekend when him and Tim Legler were discussing how good the Thunder roster is. And they mentioned that they thought the Thunder would win 50 games this year if they swapped Shea for Brandon Pajemski. Now they were discussing it as part of the MVP conversation. And I disagree that it would have any impact there. I think Shay's level of play this year has been unimpeachable. This isn't like the 2024 Celtics where you had a 64 win team, but it kind of felt like their best player was like sixth, seventh best player in the league. And they were just getting, you know, carried by this unbelievable roster. I think two things are true this year. I think the Thunder have the best roster and I think Shea's been the best player out of any basketball player that I've watched this season. Now, this is where it gets a little more complicated with the MVP thing. One of the things that ends up happening, and I told, I told you guys about this when we talked about MVP last week. There are a lot of people that put a lot of weight on catch all metrics when it comes to evaluating MVPs. I'm not that guy. I'm not even gonna sit here and talk shit and be like, those guys are all stupid and wrong. That's not how I feel. It's just my own personal philosophy about the game. If you want somebody to break down for you the catch all metrics that try to synthesize a sport that is more art than science down to a single number, I'm not your guy. I'm just not. It is a. It is like kind of like, it's kind of blasphemous to me personally. So you're just not going to get that from me. There's other avenues you can go to try to get that sort of thing. That does not mean that I don't believe in data or the use of analytics. You guys know that I prefer targeted analytics. I prefer things that target play types that target individual basketball circumstances. Why? Because the game of basketball is so immensely complicated that trying to synthesize the entire game down to a single number is foolish to me. But synthesizing a small part of a game becomes a more achievable task. But even in that realm, I always say even that's not perfect. Like, if we're just talking about ball screen efficiency, how efficient is your pick and roll ball handler on a per possession basis, including passes? That has a ton of Variability? Who is your screener? How much of a threat is he? How much of a threat do you have in your other three off ball positions? How sophisticated are the ball screen actions? Is your team just running straight up spread, pick and roll or are they running a lot of double drag and stack and like mixing up a lot of different variations to keep the defense on their heels some year? This year the conferences were more even, but there have been years recently where the Eastern Conference is just a lot weaker and when you're playing the majority of your schedule versus the east, you're just playing worse teams every night which can affect the data. So like even though I use data that is targeted around specific situations in the game, I acknowledge even that struggles to actually piece everything together when it comes to trying to evaluate a basketball player. So again, I'm not your guy if you're going to be talking about catchall advanced metrics. It's just not the way that I prefer to to view the game. But there are a lot of people that do who have influence in the national media and who have votes for awards. So that is what kind of led to this late season push Regarding Nicole Jokic and you guys know how much I value Nikola Jokic. I think he's the best offensive player of all time and I do think he has this remarkable ability to consistently generate great shots for all the reasons that we've discussed in the past. And I don't want to spend five minutes breaking down how amazing Jokic is on offense right now. The bottom line is when I was watching Jokic and Shay this year, I thought Shea was a better basketball player. Each team has a unique role for their superstar that they need from that player to win games. And one of the specific things that Shea has done this year that I think has gone woefully underappreciated is he's made 52 clutch shots this year. The Thunder team is designed to drag you down into the mud and get you into close games late where Shay has this ability to either draw a second defender or get to a pull up 15 footer that he's been hitting at such an obscene rate so frequently this season that it's led to clutch win after clutch win after clutch win after clutch win after clutch win. Shay has been the guy that has pushed the Thunder from what I think is roughly a 50 win team without him up to being both a 64 win team and a team that I think has over a 50% chance to win the title this season. He also one of the big things that I think benefits Shay in this debate is he has not had the inconsistency that the other stars in the league have dealt with. We've talked about Luca's inconsistency at length. Jokic, when he came back from his knee injury was pretty bad by his standards for a while and the Nuggets were losing games. That doesn't mean I don't think Jokic, when he's at his best, is the best player. We're Talking about this 82 game slate and who did the most to impact winning for their team in this 82 game slate. And Shea was simply the best basketball player that I watched this season. But yes, I also think his team would win somewhere around 48 to 52 games if you just removed Shea, let alone replacing him with a guy like Pods who is a good NBA player. Pods would arguably not even get minutes on this team in a seven or eight man playoff rotation because of how good this roster is. And first of all, it's clear in the numbers before these last two games where the Thunder literally benched their entire rotation. The Thunder and 2,900 possessions this year without Shea had, had had put up a plus seven net rating which would rank fifth in the NBA. If you took Shea, Chet and J Dub off the floor before these last two games, they had a plus four net rating in 900 possessions, which is literally the same net rating that the Cavs finished with this year. They just have such a depth of defensive talent that can also put the ball on the floor a little bit, shoot a little bit, make reads in the half court, make reads in transition, that they dominate defense, to transition so consistently that they can win a lot of NBA games even without their best players. This is a league, by the way, where we have not had a repeat conference champion since KD left the Warriors. And yet despite that they're about to, they did finish with the number one overall seed for the third consecutive year. And I do think that they're going to repeat in a league that really hasn't had that be the case as of late. And most importantly for all of you fans out there, especially you Shay fans, stop taking offense to this. Every time we start talking about how good a team is, all the stands get sensitive. It's the biggest problem with stand culture. We want to believe that these guys are all superheroes who do it by themselves and that's just not how it works. Nobody ever won an NBA championship without being surrounded by a lot of talent. It can vary year to year, depending on circumstances, but the dynamic is still essentially the same. At least one truly great superstar player and tons of talent around him. You guys know I'm a big LeBron fan. I'm not obtuse to the fact that he won his four titles with some of his best rosters. The 20122013 Heat were the deepest Heat teams. They rectified the depth issues. From 2011, LeBron had made massive improvements and that was before Wade's body broke down. Wade broke down in 2014. It was the first year he averaged below 20 points per game. He really struggled in the postseason and they lost. The 2016 Cavs happened to be the one year his co stars didn't get hurt. And before KD joined the warriors, the 2020 Lakers. That was literally the one year in Anthony Davis's career as a Laker where he played at a top five level. Even when we look at like lesser talented rosters that happen to win the title, it usually comes with a lot of factors at play and guys playing a lot better than you would think than they appear on paper. 2011 Dirk that was the year that the Lakers broke down the Heat because that was the first year they put their roster together. They weren't very deep. That was the year that like Mike Bibby was playing for them. And it still required one of the most legendary superstar choke jobs in the history of the league from LeBron and Jason Terry going nuclear over the last two games of the series. If Jason Terry doesn't go for damn near 50 points over the last two games, the Heat win that series. 2022 Steph this is my favorite recent example. It was kind of a down year in the NBA overall. The Lakers foolishly blew up their championship roster for Russell Westbrook. The Nuggets had lost Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. To injury. Luca Doncic was young and that Mavs team wasn't ready. Tatum and Brown. It was like their first year in that window of time where they were actually competing for a championship at a high level. And it still required Jordan Pool and Andrew Wiggins to reach outlier ceilings that they've never reached since. And the very next year Pool and Wiggins declined. A couple of key rotation players like Otto Porter Jr. Got hurt and suddenly they didn't have any talent and suddenly they lost in the second round to a non contender. And if you drop that very same 2022 warriors team into this field, where are you ranking them? Do you think that 2022 warriors team with that talent is going to be favored over The Thunder, I'd argue they'd be competing for like fourth with the Nuggets. The league is just too deep at the top right now. So the talent might be like relative to the other great teams in the NBA. But you don't win championships unless you have lots of talent around you. There's no such thing as a backpack championship. You can see it for games, maybe even for a series. I, I do think among great teams, like I do think that Celtics team in 2022 had more talent than the warriors did. And Steph lifted them over the top, which is one of the great, probably the greatest accomplishment of his career. But that doesn't mean that warriors team wasn't also great. They just weren't as talented as Boston. You can see it for a, you can see LeBron score 50 in a Finals game and drag them to a chance to potentially win over a way more talented team. There was no shot. I don't care if J.R. smith didn't forget the score and he pitched it to LeBron at the top of the key and he sunk a 35 footer to win that game. And LeBron backpacked them to a win. They would have lost the next four games. Yeah, there, there are always too many good teams for a single star to overcome talent disadvantage for four rounds. Great teams win championships led by great players. Not bad teams led by great players. If The Thunder were a 35 win team without Shea, they'd have no shot to win the title this year. And this is where I think it's so silly. The quintessential job of the all time great NBA star is to take a great roster and lift them to championship heights. Because there are other great rosters in the NBA. Maybe not as good as OKCs. And that's the outlier. That's why they're fixing to put together all this success in a super deep league. But like Boston's roster is really good this year because of their success finding more rotation players on the margins and the return of Jayson Tatum and Nimi Keda developing into like just a better defensive center than what Horford and Porzingis were. San Antonio's roster is deep with talent. Denver's roster is deep with talent. Shea is the separator. That's his job. That's what he's done so well. As good as this team is and yeah, they might win 50 games without Shea. They are not winning the championship without that guy. If Shea got hurt tomorrow and missed the playoff run, no one would be picking the Thunder to win the title. So like, yeah, Shea's taken a great team, maybe even an all time great team and lifting them to championship heights. That's not a shot at Shea. He's just the next guy to do it. And yes, it's a little bit more dramatic this time because there's a spectrum as low as a guy like Steph in 2022's roster to as high as 2017. Steph's roster, and somewhere in between you might land, but you're not winning unless you have really good players who play really good basketball alongside an all time great player in those situations. That's how you win championships. It bothers me when we're having those conversations how much we, because of stand culture, we just want it to be some sort of superhero backpack job like it is in the movies. And that's just not how it works. You don't John Wick your way to the title. It's a team sport. Number six, very excited for a potential Knicks Celtics rematch in round two. It's very different than last year. If you go down the list, obviously the Knicks are a better version of last year's team. They're more well coached, they lean on their depth more. There's a heavy emphasis on driving early in possessions which leading to higher quality spot up looks. They're just a better team. Josh Hart is a much better jump shooter than he was in years past. That's a better Knicks team. The Celtics team, it's. It's interesting because I. You'd argue they're worse, right? Like you, you don't have Drew Holiday, you don't have Al Horford, you don't have Chris up sportsingis. Jackson and I were talking the other day about how like Tatum doesn't quite look like he has the burst that he had before his Achilles injury. No big shock there. Although I think Jaylen Brown is a better player than he was in previous years. But then they've also replaced their talent with a lot of like these young quality rotation players. Baylor Shireman is amounted to a very good rotation player. Nimi K has become like a rock solid starting center for them, getting options like Jordan Walsh and Hugo Gonzalez that they can rely on for short bursts of, you know, basically just aggressive defense and rebounding and the ability to occasionally hit a corner three like there. It's a very different look for both teams than they were last season. But the most important thing is the dynamic with the way that the Celtics generate shots has shifted towards Jalen Brown being the number one option. And he has been so incredibly gifted at punishing mismatches attacking the basketball, initiating that first phase of the Celtics offense that despite the massive drop in that experienced veteran talent, the Celtics had a better offensive rating this year than they did last year. So this kind of sets up for a very interesting second round series because on the one hand the Knicks pulled off the upset last year. As I've talked about, that was like the only time all season last year where the Knicks looked like impressive relative to their expectations. They were disappointing all regular season. They looked mediocre against Detroit and then they got got beat by Indiana. Right. But in that Celtics series, we saw that specific dynamic of OG Anunoby and Mikhail Bridges just flying around on defense off the ball like helping on all of the mismatch attacking that Boston was doing and how Boston kind of towards the end of that pivotal game four kind of like fell back into just Jayson Tatum isos and Jason Tatum was playing really well, but the team wasn't playing super well. This is a very different Celtics look and this is a better Knicks team and I think those two are going to give us an awesome second round show. I would pick Boston at this point. I think that I'd pick them in six. We'll see when we get to that point. But I'm very, very excited for that potential second round series.

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Julian Edelman (44:31)

Edelman from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jewels. One thing I've learned over the years, before you head out on any adventure, you gotta be ready to stay hydrated because dehydration ruins the fun faster than you can spell it. Pretty sure there's a Y in there somewhere. I was a slot receiver, not a spelling bee champ. Speaking of adventures, Liquid IV has been rolling with us for a while now. Total pros Pro show up, does the job, makes everyone better. We're pumped to have them on the team and trust me, you'll be thankful to have them with you when dehydration tries to sneak up on you. No playbook required. All you gotta do is tear, pour and Enjoy. Go to LiquidIV.com and use the code NUTHOUSE for 20% off your first first purchase and check us out on YouTube or listen to dudes on dudes on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcast. This is Julian Edelman from Games With Names. Man, I gotta look at this first ever Infiniti QX65 at the reveal and wow, the second that silk came off, it grabbed your attention. Sporty, smart and surprisingly spacious, it's the kind of SUV that really stands out. The design is bold, the the lines are clean and honestly, it feels like it was made to turn heads everywhere it goes. What's crazy is how Infiniti keeps pushing the standard. They're always updating, upgrading and just taking luxury to the next level. The QX65 isn't just about looks, it's about the full experience. The interior is loaded with details you'll notice right away. Plush seats, quilted leather, glossy back accents. It's the kind of cabin that makes you go yeah, this is different. And then you back it up with performance. Turbocharged engine, standard intelligent all wheel drive available 21 inch wheels. It feels unstoppable tech like Pro Pilot Assist, 2.1 Klipsch, individual audio and the 3D around view monitor just makes it completely ready to experience the first ever Infiniti QX65 for yourself. Visit InfinityUSA.com to see the QX65 and learn more. 2027 QX65 Expected early summer 2026

Jason LT (47:03)

Number 7 yes, it was stupid how much the Lakers were underrated as a regular season team by the national media before the season. It's kind of weird because on one hand I was wrong about how good the Lakers were this year, specifically with the ceiling that they flashed in March. I said before the season that last year they won 50 games in. This year they were better because Luca was going to be better. Wasn't really hard to figure out. You took a team that had no starting center and you gave them deandre Ayton, who is flawed as he is, was still the Lakers best center this season. And then you added Marcus Smart and Luka Doncic was in the best shape of his life, or best, allegedly best shape of his life. And then Austin Reeves, after the humiliation of the Wolf series, was going to come back and be some better version of himself. The only real downside was like, okay, LeBron's a year older and that did amount to a certain amount of decline from LeBron this season. But like, I, I thought from the very start, we talked about it before the season, I thought the Lakers would win right around 50 games as a regular season team. I thought a lot of people, galaxy brain themselves, I saw all sorts of projections. They're going to be a playing team. There was projections that had them missing the playoffs entirely. I think, I think Bill Simmons had them out of the playoffs entirely. And like, there were just a lot of teams are like, a lot of people that were just like, oh, the Lakers are going to be bad. And that didn't make any sense to me because they were the same team from last year, more or less with a handful of upgrades, and they won 50 games last year. So I thought a lot of people overthought that. Now where I was wrong was I thought they had no shot to win the title. I, from the beginning of the season was like, here's a 50 win team. They'll be right there in the top four in the west, and then they'll lose in the first or second round. That's what I thought. They flashed a level in March because of how great Luca was, because of how good Austin was, because of LeBron slotting into that third role where it was like, oh, man, like, I actually think they can beat the best teams in the league now. OKC resoundingly slammed the door on that. But I. They reached a level in March that I didn't think they had in them. So I will freely admit I underestimated their ceiling. But, yeah, I didn't understand, like, the people who thought they were going to win 44 games or something like that. That was what I really, really struggled with because I'm like, where are these losses coming from? This team is going to be able to score the basketball more than efficiently enough to carry them through the dregs of the regular season. That's more or less what happened. Right. For the first 2/3 of the season they lost every good team, but they were able to get the wins against the bad teams because it's really hard to out execute Luka Doncic in the half court at the end of games. And I'd say the same thing as we look forward for the Lakers. Is this roster flawed? Yes. Does Rob Pelinka have any shot to just flip them into some awesome roster in one summer? No. So they're probably going to be a flawed roster again next year, but they're probably still going to win a lot of regular season games because Luka Doncic is just going to win you a lot of regular season games. And they have three offensive creators, which is like a really easy way to maintain a high floor on offense throughout the season, which is going to beat all the bad teams. So like, again, I understand that a lot of the skepticism surrounding the Lakers is legitimate regarding the way they stack up with the best teams, but don't overthink them as a regular season team. They're going to be, as long as Luka Doncic is there, they're going to win somewhere between 48 and 54 regular season games, maybe even more if Rob hits on some moves, and they're probably going to be a top six seed in the West. I did think a lot of people, Galaxy brain, that before the season, number eight, LeBron is still one of the most dependably great players in the NBA. Obviously San Antonio did not hold up their end of the bargain last night, but there was a time yesterday where I was like, oh my God, the Lakers are still going to get the three seed. This is insane. And the reason why is because LeBron was able to with this unit that obviously is deeply flawed after you get past their stars, pull out a bunch of wins at the tail end of the season and help the Lakers stay afloat and end up finishing at what was it, 52 wins or 53 wins that they that they finished with at the end of the season? 52 I believe. And if you go back to what I said before the season, one of the things I talked about that was strange with this LeBron thing was for being 41 years old, he's just still one of the most dependable, like going to be there every night type of players in the NBA. He played back to back 70 game seasons before this year. And yeah, he missed the start of the season with that weird sciatica thing, but once he checked in, he played 60 of the final 68 games of the season, and in a season where Austin and Luca both broke down, LeBron looks as strong as ever going into the postseason. And it's weird because, like, there's always been this, like, kind of weird, like, skepticism around LeBron, like, oh, is he going to be able to stay healthy by the end of the season? Which I think was unfairly applied to him relative to his age because there are stars all around the league that regularly end up around like 60 high 50s, mid 60s games played and missed playoff games and are banged up at important stretches of the season when they're in their mid-20s, late 20s, early 30s. Meanwhile, LeBron's playing 70 games, the full playoffs, 70 games, the full playoffs, 60 games of the final 68 games, and he's ready to go for the playoffs. I think LeBron deserves a lot more credit for how available he's been as an old man. To put it very simply, he's been above average availability compared to stars over the course of this last three year stretch. And then lastly, because of his size, because of his iq, because of his ability to impact the game in a variety of ways, as a rebounder, as a transition threat, as a guy who can post up mismatches, as a guy who can run inverted action at the top of the key, as a guy who was able to do all the off ball stuff that he did when he was playing alongside Austin and Luca. LeBron has such a high floor every single night when he's playing hard that when it comes to big games, he's still one of the most dependably great players in the NBA. Now, LeBron doesn't have the motor to play as hard as he needs to play to be great for 82 regular season games. And so no one's going to argue that LeBron's a top 10 regular season player anymore. I think that'd be absurd. He's going to mail it in 30, 40 times a year. But when it comes to the playoffs, when it comes to looking at a two month stretch where every game matters and there's guaranteed rest in between every single game, I still think LeBron is one of the top 10 guys in the league that I would take. Is he as reliable as a shot creator as he was back in 20, 20, 20 21? No, he's declined too much in terms of his first step quickness. But the truth is, is there's like, how many guys in the league are dependable shot creators? Like, I can count on this guy to create great shots for me all night. There There might be five or six of them in the entire NBA. Once you get off of that top tier, even among the athletic guards, they could have nights where they just aren't hitting their pull up or nights where they just aren't processing well and are making bad decisions and shooting stupid shots. They're all, they're all inconsistent once you get off of that top five or six offensive players in the league. So, yeah, is LeBron inconsistent as an offensive player at this point? Yeah. So is every other star. Once you get off that top five or six guys, except for in every big game, you can count on him to be relatively healthy, even banged up. LeBron is out there doing things on defense and rebounding. He can guard his position, he can guard on the back line, he can defensive rebound. He brings that transition value. And his playmaking talent makes him relatively high floor as an offensive player over the course of any sort of big game. So like, yeah, there's this theoretical what if old man LeBron gets hurt? And yeah, he's been banged up and maybe less than a hundred percent in some of these situations, but LeBron is lacing him up and playing in every big game and in most of the regular season games, even into his early 40s. And when it comes to any sort of playoff environment, he's still like the 8th, 9th, 10th best player in the league. Like I said this on my, on my Twitter feed the other day. If you swapped LeBron James and Donovan Mitchell right now, do you think the Cavs have any sort of decrease in their chances to win the title? I'd argue their shots actually go up a little bit. And as long as we're talking about the floor part of it, like, do you think Donovan Mitchell is going to suddenly turn this Lakers team into a contender? That when you're dealing with that bottom half of the top 10, there is a lot of inconsistency. There is a lot of, like, small, flawed guards. And I just think, weirdly enough, LeBron is still kind of underrated at this point in his career here. He is the one guy who's actually ready to go for the Lakers. And like, you look at this series against Houston and do I think I'd rank Katie over LeBron right now? Probably. I think Katie definitely had a better season. But like, you're not picking Houston over LA because KD is going to kick LeBron's ass. You're picking Houston over LA because the roster is way better. Like, everyone thinks, like, LeBron can kind of go toe to toe with KD. Still in this sort of environment, which is crazy for a guy at his age. All right, two more quick ones, and then we'll get out of here for the day. Number nine. I fail to see the connection between tanking and expansion. I. Obviously, the league is preparing to vote to add to expansion teams. Probably will be Seattle and Las Vegas. We'll see what it ends up being when the, when the league actually finalizes this process in. My take on expansion is pretty simple. Like, they haven't expanded in a very long time. I don't think 32 teams is some sort of crazy number. I think if you got over 32 could start to get a little weird. But, like, I mean, the NFL has 32 teams, for example. I think we have the markets to actually hold up these franchises. Like, I think Seattle would do great with an NBA team back in that city. And I hang out in Seattle every single summer. It's a big, beautiful, vibrant city that NBA players would love to live in, that would love to visit. Like, and frankly, I do think there's enough talent. And this is where I tie it back to the tanking piece. There's this idea that's like, oh, we have all these blowouts. We have all these bad teams. That's why we. We can't have expansion. And again, if you want to tell me that you don't want expansion because you want to keep the talent in those 30 teams, I think that's a realistic take that I think is fair. But the idea that the tanking will go like, the tanking is negatively affected or is in some way tied to. To the talent level is ridiculous to me because if you actually look at all the tanking teams, they have a lot of good players that aren't playing. Like, Utah has a lot of really good players that they just didn't play down the tail end of the season. Like, Indiana has a substantial injury that they're dealing with that has dragged them down. Anthony Davis and Trey Young are just not playing for the Washington Wizards. Like, this is. I fail to see the connection there because tanking to me feels like an entirely separate. We're just not playing our good players problem. Not a, oh, we have 10 terrible teams. We don't have 10 terrible teams. We have 10 teams that are trying to be terrible. That's two very, very different things. So, again, the expansion debate, to me, I, I don't really have a strong opinion about it. My basketball fan sides like, and let's watch the Seattle SuperSonics again. You know, like, my, my, my basketball fan side says, like, I do think we have enough talent to, to, to, to have two more teams and not really dramatically affect the way that the league looks and feels. I just don't see any sort of attachment towards the tanking side of it. Like, if you want to tell me here's the reasons why expansion is a bad idea, I'd be willing to hear you out. And I'm not really married to the idea, but I just don't think any sort of connection exists between, like, oh, these teams are trying to be bad, therefore we can't expand. It just feels like two very separate issues to me. Lastly, number 10, those of you guys who are new to our show from the season should be aware of our playoff schedule. So the rest of this week, again, is going to be a little tricky. We're recording with Nick Wright today. That's going to air tomorrow. We're recording with Brian Windhorse tomorrow. That's probably going to air on Wednesday or Thursday. This week we'll have eight season preview series previews that are just going to come out as I finish them. So I'm going to literally just in every gap of time that I have this week, be working on series previews and we'll post them as they finish. So Obviously the first four will be the 36 and the 45 matchups in both conferences, the 71 or the 81 matchups. Those will not be posted until Saturday morning. But like over the course of the rest of this week, we'll have daytime content in the form of those two interviews and the series previews. But once we get to the postseason, our entire schedule completely shifts from the way it was in the regular season. We will be going live after games on most nights during the postseason, with exception of a, you know, a scheduled conflict here or there. The vast majority of the nights, including weekends, we will be going live after the final game of the night. In those shows, we will break down the games live on YouTube. We also bring Jackson on the show and we do kind of like an interactive mailbag. We will. So if you come on the show and you drop questions in the chat, we'll have like, you know, 10, 15 minutes after our reaction where we'll kind of, kind of just deal with some questions from the audience. And then about three or four times a week in the mornings, I do film sessions and I typically target the more interesting series that we have. So, like, if we have, you know, Minnesota, Denver, and it's a super interesting series or one of the series happens to be 2:2 after four games and there's a pivotal game five coming up. I'll deep dive into the film because it's a lot easier for me to get more detailed stuff back from the game when I can watch it slowly and watch possessions multiple times in a row and all that sort of stuff when I when we enter encounter those sorts of situations three to four times a week in the mornings we will release essentially just like adjustments for the next game type of videos that will be more centered on the strategy side of things. So again, the entire schedule shifts. We haven't gone live at night but a handful of times during the regular season. That's not the way we do it during the 82. But now that we're in the postseason, once we get to Saturday live after the final game of the night, which I think is Lakers Rockets Sunday live after the final game of the night. I'm not sure what the final game is on Sunday night yet live on the after the final game on Monday, so on and so forth with some stuff mixed in in the mornings. And definitely follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT so I can help you guys just kind of stay up to date as to the daytime schedule when we have other content coming out. But yeah, just be prepared for the schedule to shift as we head into the postseason. All right guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. We will see you guys tomorrow for the Nick Wright interview.

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