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Olivia Carville (6:52)

In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

Unknown (7:01)

Someone was posting photos.

Margie Murphy (7:04)

It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own.

Unknown (7:12)

I wanted to throw up.

Unknown (7:13)

I wanted to scream.

Olivia Carville (7:15)

It happened in Levittown, New York.

Unknown (7:17)

But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the Internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography.

Unknown (7:26)

This should be illegal, but what is this?

Unknown (7:29)

This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy.

Olivia Carville (7:38)

And I'm Olivia Carville.

Unknown (7:40)

This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope.

Olivia Carville (7:45)

Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Jason LT (7:55)

So let's get into some specifics. Why is Boston over okc? Oklahoma City, it was, last I checked, was still the favorite to win the title. Why do I have Boston over okc? Well, to put it simply, I think that their age has caused them relative to okc, to have a somewhat less successful statistical performance in the regular season. And I think that that's not necessarily an accurate representation of those two teams in their ceilings. I've said this a bunch of times on the show. Alex Crusoe is the only guy in the core playoff rotation for the Thunder that's over the age of 26. Jayson Tatum is the only guy in the Celtics actual playoff rotation that's 26 or younger. That whole team is older, considerably older than okc. They're not going to bring the night to night effort that OKC did. And yet they were still a dominant regular season team that still looked excellent on most nights. So I don't think the regular season data is as revealing of a gap between OKC and Boston as everyone else thinks. From there, I just think they're more experienced and I think they're more versatile. I think that makes them more reliable to be at their ceiling as they get into higher leverage games. I can count on Drew Holiday, Derek White, Al Horford in a different way that I feel like I can count on Chet Holmgren, Lou Dort and Jalen Williams to play consistently well, when the stakes go up to their highest, do I think OKC can win? Of course, and I have them at number two. But I think the Celtics for me deserve the nod as the most likely team to win the championship this year. Why are the Lakers over the Cavaliers? This is the first example of what I talked about earlier in terms of a team potentially being better than the team that's above them, but me dropping them because I don't think they're as likely to hoist the trophy. The Cavs are a better basketball team than the Lakers. They've demonstrated that pretty much from start to finish this season. However, I think the Lakers are more equipped to upset the Oklahoma City Thunder than the Cavs are to upset the Boston Celtics. I think the Cavs have a real chance to beat Boston. I think their wins though showed that things worked for them best in crunch time when guys were out of the lineup. A lot of attacking Sam Houser, a lot of matchups and crunch time that Donovan Mitchell was able to go at that just won't be there when they end up in a postseason series with Boston. When they end up in a postseason series with Boston. I know Tatum can score on Evan Mobley. I've seen him do it. I know Tatum can score on Jared Allen. I've seen him do it. I know Tatum can consistently generate good shots against Darius Garland. I've seen him do it. I think the Celtics just have more advantages that they can exploit over the course of a real life playoff series and not these regular season meetings that they have. I think Boston is just a much, much better team than the Cleveland Cavaliers and I think they'll show it when they get into the postseason. The Lakers specifically present a matchup problem for OKC. They are too big on the perimeter for OKC's smaller perimeter players. LeBron and Luka are too comfortable. They have the ability to on defense, load up on Shea and on offense, spread them out and pick them apart. I thought they demonstrated that pretty clearly in their two game set that they played earlier this season. I think the Lakers are more likely to upset OKC and get into the Finals than the Cavs are to upset Boston and get into the Finals. Therefore, the Lakers are more likely to win the championship this year than the Cavs, even though the Cavs are a better team. And so that's why I put the Lakers at three on the championship contender list. Why did you drop the Warriors? The warriors have been a really hard team for me to get a read on over the course of the last Couple of weeks because they looked unbelievable there for a long time after the deadline. But then they just in several high leverage games in a row, the Houston game on Sunday, the Spurs game, the Blazers game, the Clippers game, the Grizzlies game, they just didn't look like the same type of, you know, world beating, championship contending type of team that they looked before. They lost that game to Houston, they lost that game to San Antonio, they beat Portland, but then they lost that game to the Clippers and they were in danger of losing that game to the Grizzlies. And like those teams are all good, but none of them are among the teams that we have in the top tier of this list except for the Clippers and lost that game. And so I, I, I'm a little bit lower on Golden State than I was before because they look a little worn down, their role players look a little less confident. They've got what appears to be a shooting problem that has risen to the surface. I'm a little concerned about Golden State, that's why I ended up dropping them. But I do still have them on that tier. Big believer in their defense. I think Jimmy has looked fantastic in his in these last two super high leverage games. Still a believer in the warriors, but to me the Clippers did more at the tail end of the season to demonstrate to me that they had a championship ceiling than the warriors. So that's why I moved them. Why are the Nuggets so low? I'm a huge believer in Nicole Jokic. I think he's the best player in the world. I think he's the best offensive player I've ever seen. But I don't think their defense is anywhere near good enough to win four playoff rounds. I think it's a death sentence. I think they're high risk to lose in round one. I think they're high risk to losing. Like they're high risk to lose in every single round because of their defense. And so I just would be stunned if Denver ended up winning the title this year. For me, I dropped him way down because I just think there's a lot of teams playing much better basketball than them right now. And then lastly, why did I drop the Knicks for the Milwaukee Bucks? Really just comes down to Giannis over the course of the tail end of the season. I was just so blown away by this work that Giannis has been doing as an on ball shot creator without dame. I said this on my show the other day, but over his last six games of the season where he went 6 0. The team actually went 8 no of their last eight, but Giannis sat out two of those games. In those six wins, Giannis averaged 32, 12 and 12 on over 60% from the field, over 40% from 3 on over 2 attempts per game, and over 70% from the line. He legitimately has been like two way Luka Doncic over the course of the last month or so of the season. I think that is a huge wild card going into a postseason run. That makes the Bucks a substantially more dangerous team than they looked earlier in the season when they were playing so much more through Dame. Also I there's a version of this where Dame doesn't play and they lean more into their defensive personnel. I think that the Bucks have just a little bit more of a puncher's chance to make some noise than the Knicks do on the strength of Giannis Antenna Kounmpo and so that's why I moved them up to 10. But to put it frankly, I don't think the Knicks or the Bucks really have that much of a chance this year. All right, that's all I have for my top 10 contender rankings. Again. As always, I appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. Super excited for this playoff run. Super excited to get into the chess match in every series. I will see you guys on Saturday. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting Hoops tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a random rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.

Margie Murphy (14:49)

The volume.

Olivia Carville (14:53)

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

Unknown (14:59)

Someone was posting photos.

Margie Murphy (15:01)

It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts.

Unknown (15:06)

This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.