Israel Gutierrez (0:01)

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Daniel Jeremiah (1:02)

The 40s and free agents podcast with Daniel Jeremiah and Greg Rosenthal has prepared you for the 2025 NFL Draft.

Greg Rosenthal (1:09)

We've told you what last year's playoff teams need to return to the postseason.

Daniel Jeremiah (1:13)

And how teams with new coaches should approach the draft.

Greg Rosenthal (1:16)

So as draft season comes to a close, we've got you covered. Before your favorite team goes on the clock, we'll break it all down. Once all 257 picks have been made.

Daniel Jeremiah (1:24)

We listen to the 40s and free agents podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Camila Ramon (1:34)

I'm Camila Ramon. And I'm Liz Ortiz and our podcast Hasta Bajo is where sports, music and fitness collide and we cover it all. The Arriva Asta. This season we sit down with history makers like the Sucar family who became the first Peruvians to win a Grammy.

Greg Rosenthal (1:51)

It was a very special moment for us. It's been 15 years for me in this career. Finally, things are starting to shift into a different level.

Camila Ramon (1:59)

Listen to Astavajo on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts for wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by E L F Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

Nick Wright (2:23)

Welcome in what's right with Nick Wright. Quick reaction pod to last night's NBA playoff games. Want a listen? Grizzlies Thunder just sim to the end. We'll get to that briefly at the end of the pod. Somewhat interesting mo momentarily or at least briefly interesting game between the Bucks and the Pacers. A 15 point lead trimmed to two in the waning moments, but the Bucks not able to get over the top and what that means for Giannis. But the game of the night, which turned into the rock fight of the night. Lakers 94, Timberwolves 85. I don't think anyone is actually surprised by the result. Home team loses game one. They are going to come out more urgent, more focused, better in game two. And the Lakers did and blitzed him in the first quarter, 34 to 15, and then really just held on the rest of the way, culminating in a fourth quarter where neither team could hit shots, where the Lakers were just kind of limping to the finish line and everyone seemed a little out of gas except for the oldest guy on the court. And we can do big picture stuff shortly. And I. I understand that some folks will hear this and be like, you got to be kidding me. LeBron scored 21. His jumper wasn't falling. He was 8 of 19 from the field, 1 of 5 from 3. And you're gonna wax poetic about the game LeBron James had, and the answer is, yes, I am. Because there was one play late in the fourth quarter that to me, symbolized who LeBron has been since they acquired Luca. And who he has been is whoever they need him to be that night. I will mold my game accordingly. 3 minutes left. Lakers with the smallest lead that they've had since it was 15 to eight. They are up nine. The the Lakers were up at least nine points for the final 40 minutes of this game. And the Timberwolves, however, in the fourth quarter, were slowly trying to make it a game. And the Lakers had a bad possession. Luca got caught up in the air, threw the ball to basically nowhere, and Luca was excellent. More on him in a moment. And all of a sudden, the Timberwolves are in transition. Three minutes down, nine, chance to cut it to six or seven. And. And all of a sudden, all the pressure will be on LA. And LeBron circles around to where Anthony Edwards is getting the ball at midcourt in a semi transition situation. Steals it from Anthony Edwards, burst to the basket, layup up 11. Game over. And what is, to me, so remarkable about the best player I've ever seen, if people are being honest, the best player anyone's ever seen this year has been his ability to. The instant they got Luke at oncage, him saying, okay, I have to be a totally different type of player because we're a totally different type of team. After, for the entirety of my Lakers tenure, which at this point is as long as he has ever stayed with one team consecutively. Seven years, he had to be on the ball, ball, dominant, running the offense, his transition from that to a do it all, jack of all trades player who in this game said, defense is what we needed to lock in on, defense is what we drastically needed to improve on. And in the Lakers best defensive game of the year, at least as far as how many points their opponent scored, he was the best defender on the court. And get in where you fit in on offense, crash the boards, try to get other people involved and lock down defensively to the tune of Anthony Edwards. And not that he was on Anthony a lot. After having nine assists in Game 1 0, no one other than Julius Randle getting going at all. And the Lakers winning a game they had to have where they only hit six three pointers. Now the Timberwolves only hit five where neither team could hit a three because it was their best defensive game of the year. And the best defensive player for the Lakers by a. Jared Vanderbilt was excellent in his, you know, very limited defensive moments. He only played eight minutes. But the best defensive player for the Lakers was LeBron James. And you can get away with LeBron only scoring 20, no one else scoring more than 16. And hell, other than Austin, 16 RUI, who might have broke his nose in this game, which is something to watch because guys do not like wearing that mask. The only player who seems to not mind wearing that mask is Jordan Goodwin, who's been wearing it for months. If he has to wear that mask the rest of the playoffs, that's a concern. But the reason they were able to win that game when no one had it going offensively was because they locked in on the defensive end led by LeBron and because they hit all their free throws. Now, I understand folks are going to and moan about the officiating. I thought the officials took too big of a hand in this game. However, it was so physical and so such a slog on offense. I don't know what it would have been if they would have let them play even more. The for folks that care about the actual numbers, 24 fouls on LA, 22 on the Timberwolves. 20 free throws by the Lakers, 20, 25 by the Tim Rolls. Now the Lakers went 20 of 20 from the free throw line, which was damn important when the Timberwolves are trying to cut into the lead late. But I am. I have just been really taken aback by LeBron having the opportunity, kind of unexpectedly, to prove to the world that what he has said his entire career, I'll be whatever player this team in this moment needs me to be. Ego aside, that that is actually exactly who he's going to be, usage rate plummets, being on the ball plummets and he just then can expend that energy in different places. And so I thought, I have thought for the last few years this I the the fact that there is more commentary about LeBron James's defensive failings than two of the other, probably not two of the other. The two other all time legends in our midst who carry a massive offensive workload for their teams. And because of that and because of for those guys, their own physical limitations, they're downright negative. Defenders in Steph Curry and Yo and Nikola Jokic, nobody gives a. Everybody just recognizes, well, Steph's undersized and he is expending so much energy on the offensive end, you just got to kind of hide him defensively. Joker is doing everything for the Nuggets offensively and is so limited athletically that you gotta just kind of work around that on the defensive end. Those guys, nobody ever complains about their defense. LeBron, who has played 20 some thousand more minutes, maybe 30,000 more minutes, not 20,000, probably more minutes than Steph, who's near a decade older than Joker, who for the Lakers pre Luca carried the exact same offensive responsibility on his team as those guys did on theirs. Half the commentary seemingly around the last couple years as well. He's not the defender he once was and what he is showing you in real time is yeah, that's been out of necessity but if that role or responsibility shifts, he can still ratchet it up to not the defender he was in Miami because he's not the athlete he was in Miami, but still an excellent, impactful, disruptive, versatile defensive player. And the Lakers had to have that yesterday. I'm still waiting for the Lakers offense to show up to this series. Now the Timberwolves have done a great job of getting out on shooters, of not letting anyone other than Luca really kill them, of staying connected. They have been able to hide Mike Conley who had a really rough game. And other than Mike Conley, anyone and everyone they put out there is somewhere from passable defensively. And Julius Randle on the scale from passable to excellent. Jaden is obviously excellent. Rudy is obviously excellent with a few, you know, glaring weaknesses, but his strengths are just massive. Nikhil Alexander Walker when he gets out there is great defensively. Anthony Edwards is one of the best two way players in the league. So this is. And by the way, in the next round you are going to be playing an excellent defensive team if you're the whoever wins this series, no matter whoever wins that series, because the Rockets and the warriors might be the two best defensive teams in the league, not named Oklahoma City. And in round three, you're probably playing Oklahoma City. And so the Lakers, locked in defensively, got just enough from the offense, had a first quarter that the Timberwolves were not ready for, and then held on the rest of the way on Luca. I give Luca an A minus for this game. And the only Luca was really strong defensively himself. Everyone on the Lakers. Everyone on the Lakers should feel good about their performance yesterday, honestly, except for Jackson Hayes, who at this point, you have to. I, I think you. You keep giving him a chance. But that sequence at the beginning of the fourth quarter was just as dumb as it gets. A totally unnecessary illegal screen in the back court. And then following that up with one of the most obvious goal tens on a shot that had no chance of going in, and then seeming shocked by it. That's. That's a maddening sequence. He played nine minutes, had five fouls. It was just brutal. But what I was trying to get to before I interrupted myself on Luca. Luca, the reason it is only an A minus is because. And you saw it bubbling. He almost let the refs take him out of this game. And I'm not saying Luka got a bad whistle. Luka got to the line 11 times, but there was a sequence when he thought he was getting hit, didn't get the call. And then in a borderline dirty moment, Jaden McDaniels is on the ground and with his own ankles, grabs Luca's ankle. And Luca tumbles. And Luca was livid. And I thought he was going to get a technical, if I'm being honest, probably deserved a technical. Maybe the ref knew he had missed it, and so he didn't want to give him a technical after the ref missed what was, honestly in today's NBA, a flagrant foul. That's a non basketball dangerous play. And Luca, you saw him starting to unravel a bit emotionally. And the Lakers, I think, then called timeout. His teammates got him under control. But aside from that brief moment, Luca was unbelievable. Now he needs to stop trying so often to just embarrass Rudy Gobert. I think that takes the Lakers out of their offense to a degree. But 31, 12 and nine in a game, his team scored 94 points. And he was the engine and the catalyst and the guy that had it going in the first quarter. He had to have almost outscored Minnesota himself in the first quarter. I'm gonna Actually, check that real quick that The Timberwolves had 15 in the first quarter. The Lakers in that game, in this game, I should say. Let me just go. My friends at Basketball Reference are good with this quarter one Luca had, Luke had 16. So he didn't almost outscore the Timberwolves in the first quarter. He. He did outscore the Timberwolves in the first Quarter. And we've now had 13 playoff games this year. The best one anyone has played is Kawhi's game two against the Nuggets. The second best one anyone has played, given the context of everything, was either Steph Curry's game one against the War against the Rockets, or Luca Game two against the Timberwolves. Now Giannis might be like, what more do I have to do? And more on him in a minute. Because the answer is I don't know what more he can do, man. And you, you feel sick for him. More on Giannis just momentarily. But the Lakers now have the opportunity to take a breath. They, because of how the schedule falls, they don't play tomorrow, which I think is nice. Travel today. Or maybe they, maybe they travel tomorrow, actually, I don't know. Who cares when they'll travel? But they play Saturday night, is that right? No. What day is today? Sorry, Today's Wednesday. They play Friday. So they go Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday for Friday, for this series. I'm screwing this up. I apologize. It's early in the morning. Point is they get two days between, oh, between game one and two and two days between games two and three. Game three is Friday. They then have one day between game three and four and then again two days between games four and five and then it's every other day, however much longer the series goes. So I think those will be two important days off. I think the offense needs to get rolling. I. I'm going to check with our friends what the updated series price is. This opened Lakers -200. Then it quickly shifted, obviously after the, after the game one win to the Timberwolves as slight favorites. It is now a pick em series, so you would expect it not to have shifted a ton from where it was before game two because the Timberwolves were series favorites despite the fact the Lakers were big favorites in game two. My, if you guys remember what I said was my favorite bet of the Lakers minus a game and a half in the series, meaning Lakers to win in four. That's off the board. Five or six was plus 120. It is now after last night, back to plus 255. I still like I still think a Lakers in six is very on the board. They obviously need to win Friday in Minnesota and then a quick turnaround because they play Friday late night and then Sunday afternoon. We'll see how that one goes. But this was a huge win. I thought LeBron was exactly who they needed him to be. I thought Luca was exceptional. I thought Austin, after a rough first quarter got it going. Now Austin's got to stop trying to throw these lobs 13ft in the air. As Dragonfly Jones wrote, he's trying to throw lobs to 2009. LeBron, that guy's not walking through the door. And they got to figure out what they're going to do with Jackson Hayes. On the Timberwolf side of things it is even though I didn't expect them to feature Rudy Gobert offensively, it is remarkable to me how little they will give him the ball when he has a mismatch. And I think that play that's good for the Lakers. Dante wasn't able to get into this game really because of foul trouble. Now the foul trouble was hard to figure out because Reggie kept telling us guys had four fouls and then the graphics kept telling us they had three. I didn't know who to believe, but Nas Reed got in foul trouble as well. Julius Randle obviously was exceptional, exceptional, strong. Julius Randall was the one guy on the Timberls that had it going. They, they as a team had 14 assists. He had six of them. The rest of their starting lineup had two assists. Jaden with one, Conley with one. And their ability, which is what I begged them to do before the series two. Listen Ant, you're going to get to the basket sometimes. We'll deal with that. We are not going to collapse on you to all of a sudden leave other guys open. I thought they did a way, way better job of that. Which made Ant have a quiet 25.6 rebound, zero assist game. And so that's the Lakers game. Let me remind you guys, the NBA 82 game grind is done now. 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