Transcript
Ryan Rosillo (0:00)
You're listening to the Ryan Marcillo podcast presented by FanDuel. America's number one sportsbook is the best place to bet on the NBA because Not only does FanDuel have all of your favorite player props, but now you can even check out stats and recent performance trends right in the app before you make your picks. Just download the FanDuel sportsbook app today to get in on the action. The ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem. Call 1-800- GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com A massive NBA playoff preview. I'll go through the series that I want to go into depth on and then pick those. And we have Frank Isola, so we'll talk playoffs with him. We'll probably talk about few other headlines, even a sneaky Knicks offseason transaction. And we've got full Wargon Life advice. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. State Farm helps you score an affordable price when you choose to bundle home and auto insurance with the personal price plan, you can choose the insurance coverage that fits your needs at a price you can afford. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. A lot to get to with the playoffs upon us here in the NBA. So I'll go through the series that I want to go through. I have all sorts of notes in the play and stuff that I'm probably not going to get to any of it now because last night's games were disgusting and I'm not going to do a breakdown of Golden State Memphis two days later. So look, I did not like when the plan was announced because I just don't think teams certainly this year you have teams that are south of 40 wins getting another chance at this. But then when the games are really good it's like, hey, the game's really good. So it seemed like people like to play in games when they're good. It seems like people don't like playing games when they're not good games. Crazy concept. As I've said the entire time. If it's a great game, I'm going to enjoy a great game. I may not like the system. Same thing with college football expansion. It doesn't mean I don't love some of these home venues or just the overhead shot of the shoe going, wow, those Tennessee dudes look cold. All right. It's just. It's just the principle of these things that a team like Dallas or Sacramento still has an outside chance of being able to get in. We also could start calling the play in when Atlanta plays. But let's talk about the teams that are in the playoffs. Let's do that right now. All right, I'm going to run through this series. I'm going to give you a pick at the end of them. Random thoughts. Try to get this done before Saturday. Milwaukee Pacers. It's the better team versus the much better player, certainly that. You don't need me for that one. The Pacers, at one point, 35 and 28, finished on a 15. Four close. Got the 50 wins. So you can look at some of the teams. There's a lot of teams that seem to end with really nice records. It's like they're peaking at the right time, like, or their schedule was really easy. Especially if you look at some of the teams in the east and half the conference deciding to kind of shut it down. But the Pacers have nice wins in there. They got Milwaukee twice, they got Minnesota twice. They had the one point loss to the Lakers and LeBron made that shot. They beat Denver, Cleveland, those are wins. But Cleveland was sitting people in those. So there's at least some good stuff to look at there. After the all star break, the fifth best record at 20 and 9. Oklahoma City 24. 4. Boston 22 and 5. Cleveland 28. Golden State 8, 20 and 7. So Pacers, you know, kind of in a nice group there. So this is now 29 games after the all star break with the 8th best defense in the. In the. In the NBA. He stuttered. The Pacers again, we're talking about The Pacers, the 8th best defense in the NBA after the all Star break. That is a little surprising, oddly, 13th best offense, where Milwaukee finished the season, also kind of under the radar. 19 and 10 close. But they're much better on offense. Milwaukee is. Than they are on defense. Milwaukee also the best shooting team in the NBA if you look at true shooting stuff post the All Star break. So they figured some stuff out. And I also think Bobby Portis coming back only playing three games, but just plug and play 16 and nine is being undersold in all of this. Giannis, by the way, if you look at his matchup against the Pacers. He does well against them. The Pacers don't really have much of a chance of shoot slowing him down at all. He's 65% from the floor against them. But they did limit his free throw attempts 8 a game in the regular season. Matchups against Indiana. Whereas, like, okay, what, what are some of the bad ones? Giannis averaged 17 free throws game against Atlanta. I may need to double check that because I, I look, I think I looked at it twice there. Giannis, by the way, closing the season at 30, 12, six and a half. He's the first player in the NBA in its history to put together three different 30, 10 and five seasons. So look, the Siakam numbers against Giannis are bad. The Turner numbers when he's matched up against Giannis are even worse. This team can shoot it really well. They're going to run everything through. Giannis, as we understand, his playmaking has been terrific. He doesn't take threes, which has made him even more efficient. But one through seven, one through eight, I like the Pacers better. Pacers and seven Clippers at Denver. So the Clippers at one point were 32 and 29. They finished on an 18 and three close. So they got to 50 wins, 25 and 11 with Kawhi. The shooting numbers for Kawhi are consistently spectacular since he's been a regular guy and playing multiple minutes, meaning more minutes, you know, not just like on a minutes restriction. The advanced up, they'll tell you that he's not, um, he is not the guy. And you know, maybe it's a little unfair to be like, are you comparing to Pete Kawhi? Like that guy was in the belt conversation as best basketball player in the world. But they are down significantly from the run of, of where he was with some of the other stuff. Jokic, three games against the Clippers, 28, 10 and 6, taken 20 shots a game. His shooting splits are insane. Against the Clippers this year, 54 from the floor, 52% from three. So, you know, I've toyed with the idea of like at least Zubots is somebody who will physically hold up against Jokic, but again, Jokic maybe depending on how he wants to set up the offense, because he basically decides like, oh, you're going to do this. Well, now I'm going to do this. If he wants to bring Zoo all the way out to the three point line, which I imagine he will do multiple times throughout this series, does that mean guys are just cutting like crazy off of him? Are they going to play him straight up with zoom. They're probably going to try all sorts of different things because that's what you're going to have to do against a player that's this good. But at least over the course of a series, over the course of a 40 minute plus night, fighting for rebounds, right, Handling all the screening that Zoo does, all of the stuff that is beyond just the box score. Dealing with somebody in that physicality like that at times could be far more taxing than it would be in some of the other potential Western Conference matchups. So I think it's important. It's a bit like the Cat thing, where it's not like Cat stops Jokic in that series that Minnesota wins last year. But as you watch the games play out, Cat at least because he wasn't dealing with some super quick guard with the ball in his hands, getting crossed up 30ft away and looking like he has no chance on a closeout. He knew that the target was always going to be right in front of him. And as long as he at least try to make it harder on the easy stuff Jokic could do around the rim, maybe Zoo can do some of those same things. And then it's really up to everybody else deciding to stay with their man and all the off ball cuts if they're playing him, if they double him, obviously more likely that he would be getting it to other guys. The thing that I keep coming back to with this is the wing matchup defensively against the Wings for the Clippers. Now look, Kawhi hasn't played in any of these games during the regular season. The Nuggets did a really good job with Harden. His shooting splits against the Nuggets year not very good. 39 and 32% norm has gone off in these games. But if you're looking at, I mean the last time they played was January 8th. I think Jokic was out of that one as well. So there's really nothing regular season here to go off of. But I just don't think as I looked at the assignments of the last time that Jokic did play. In this one you had Brown unharden, Michael Porter Jr. On batum who started Jokic with Zubots. And then you've got Murray maybe freelancing off a Dunn a little bit and they actually had Gordon on Powell. So maybe it's Gordon on Kawhi, Brown on Harden. And then when they bring in Norm, like is it, is it Peyton Watson or obviously say Picket a little bit more. And I think you also have to Worry about the Westbrook revenge minutes where there's some really nice moments in a regular season, but if he gets emotional and gets super fired up and remind us of why the Clippers couldn't wait to get him out of the building last year after that MAV series, that's not going to work in Denver's favor. So don't love this one, but I got Clippers in six, Minnesota and the Lakers. So when the Lakers had that 18 and three stretch from mid January to the beginning of March through the first week in March, and I remember doing the Sunday pod with Bill and I was like, have you guys looked at. Well, I should just say one person, but in general, I wanted everybody to pay attention to this. The splits on where the Lakers were defensively because during that 18 and three stretch, they were the number one defense in the NBA. That made zero sense to me. And yes, pieces moving in and out. I talked about the coaching in their, I think more adaptable strategy based on the opponent. Night in and night out, they do a really good job of preparing their guys. Hey, these are the rules tonight. These are the rules. You, you know they're going to be completely different a couple nights later. I also think it was worth mentioning that not having D'Angelo Russell out there for 30 minutes is just going to help your defense by default. And looking at how the rotation was a little bit different. Connect was out of the rotation. Cause he was just a disaster defensively. Bringing in Dorian Finney Smith is a plus. Vando being out there just hacked the shit out of dudes. And then depending on where you were on the LeBron defensive effort pendulum, him playing better over that stretch is a big part of it too. So I think we have to just kind of give LeBron the benefit of the doubt that he's going to be a lot more locked in because it's the playoffs and some of the stuff that he's, you know, the regular season cheating on defense is probably not something we're going to see all that much. But it still didn't make a ton of sense to me that that was the best over 21 games. Like they're the best defense. So on the season they're 17th. The on the season number is probably not as relevant. But after the All Star break, guess where the lakers are defensively? 17th again. So did we fall in love with the idea that they're capable of that and that's who they're going to be in this series against Minnesota, or is that just a fluky 21 game sample where it's like, well, they're not. They might be better, but they're not going to be that good. I don't know the answer, but I think I may know where I'm leaning with that one. They were splitting the regular season to two. Three of the games were before mid December, so not a lot to go on in that. I went to the Minnesota at LA game where Ant was ejected. The Lakers took 46 free throws. I'll be honest with you, I thought the Timberwolves were fouling the shit out of them. So, you know, it got out of hand. Ant splits against them four games, 40% from the four, 32% from three, and only three and a half field goal attempts per game. So they've done a really good job of containing him. So if I'm picking them, why is that happening? Look, there's two things that I think are really important here. Randall's effectiveness off of the double teams, where I think that you're going to see the Lakers more often than not. If you're using a screen with Anthony, you're just going to be seeing two defenders in his face the entire time like we saw throughout much of the regular season. So it's going to be up to Randall. It's also going to be, you know, you hope Jaden can just be baseline from three and not have disastrous nights. And speaking to Jada McDaniels, who we all love defensively, I had him on my all second team defense. Look, he's not going to be able to hold up physically against Luca. And we saw some of that last year in the playoffs and Luca in that series, 32, 10 and 8, 47 and 43% shooting splits on 11, three points attempts per game when he was with Dallas last year and they took out the Timberwolves. I also think there's a Rudy versus small conversation here. But look, even though there's going to be some moments, maybe even a night where it looks pretty bad for Rudy as he's getting worked maybe on a Luca switch or a LeBron switch, the Times, where is he going to close on? Rui Hachimura, who hasn't taken a ton of threes against Minnesota in the regular season, hasn't made any of them either. But does that change or they're like, we want you shooting that immediately. Sometimes you can be a little bit more tuned up when you're like, part of the game plan is we want you shooting those threes. So get more attempts up than you did in the regular season. Because look, that late February game when they played against each other, ruining only played 18 minutes in that game because he left. So look, I think Rudy's whenever those moments look bad and guys like me that haven't always loved him, you're not going to see for me, like, hey, you probably have to get him out of there. Because then the Nas Reed Randall combo against enormous players in Luca and LeBron driving, because you're going to see more drives for LeBron as the playoffs certainly matter more. And then Reeves in his craftiness of just getting himself free and getting a defender leaning one way. And it's not like an Iverson crossover, but that go right around the back thing, bring it back to the other side. He's just brilliant at it. So even in those moments where it looks like Rudy's a little lost and asked to do a ton, you just see even in a down Rudy year, defensively, teams when he's out, they're like, all right, it's go time. I have Minnesota in seven. Little zag there. Golden State, Houston. All right, so after the Amend Curry spotlight game against Curry where Curry went 1:10, I still think Butler should have taken more than seven shots if that's what they're going to do. Because it wasn't just Thompson. It was hard doubling. It was running Curry into a second defender. Even with the men staying on him primarily there. That's part of the thought process of which way I'm going to go with this. Because that part, if you're on the Golden State side of things, you're like, is that just going to happen? But I, you know, look, even with defensive matchups, like, hey, I like this option better. We all know these dudes are going to get their points. Then when I look at the Ed part of the Golden State matchup from the play in the other night, you know, Edie, you could get on his case for a bunch of things in that game, but you also have to give it to him that when he was in there, it changed the way Golden State thought about their attacks at the rim. And even more importantly, he was terrific on the boards. And over the course of a game like, that's just asking a lot of Draymond, even though they went with some loony minutes in there. And then Quinton Post, obviously hitting some shots as well. But Post, it's not like he's just in there to bang bodies all night long. I think more than anything, it's his spacing and hoping to pull his defender away. But they went with Ed On Butler, which burned him a little bit and in the first half and kind of got Butler going as he had a great night. So the reason I'm even bringing up any of that stuff from two nights ago is that Will Houston sacrifice offensive spacing to think over the course of seven games, the best chance for them to win is Shangoon playing his 30 plus minutes a night. And then even more from Adams is it feels like they've ramped up this option specifically for the playoffs. So they've played five games. Golden State has done a great job against the backcourt here for Houston. It's actually so terrible, these numbers for Green and Van Vliet that I don't even know that these are repeatable here again, but Green's 12 a game, 12 and a half a game against Golden State. In the five games, his shooting splits 32 and 25% from three. Van Vliet's even worse in his four games, nine a game, his shooting splits 22 overall, 22% from three. I, I think that's so bad. It's actually not repeatable here. Adams was out played 18 minutes out, 6 minutes, 17 minutes rebounding edge over the five games, you're like, well, will Houston be a little too big for Golden State? Over the five games, Houston's only a plus three in total rebounds. So Golden State held up enough with one game that they were really good. The other games were all pretty even. Then one game, Houston was plus 10. So I do wonder if this is about hoping there's a little Curry magic left. I'm certainly guilty of that. Cause I'm a huge step fan and just wanted to see a little bit more, just one more run which may be expiring in the second round of this. So that's probably, you know, being a little like, hey, this is what I want to see out of this. And then I think there's still some hesitation on me on what Houston's going to be like with that closing group and what they'll look like. I mean, the funny thing is, if you look at clutch wins, Cleveland has the most in the NBA with Houston, right? They both have 26 wins. Houston is 26 and 18. Golden State's third in wins at 25 and 20. Not outrageous to only be five games over.500 with somebody like Steph. But the net rating for both of these teams is like negative one point. So the record is not a reflection of maybe how they've played and how you felt about them at times. Golden State against good teams this year 500 or better in the expanded standings, 22 and 19. That's better than the Lakers. That's better than Denver. That's better than the Clippers. That's better than Minnesota. So that's in there a little bit. So it may just be that. Look, if Houston wins this series, they slow down. Curry Butler has a couple nights where he's just not as engaged as you need him to be, which is not normally the case for him in the playoffs. So maybe we shouldn't expect that and that Houston finds something they feel really good about closing with offensively. So I don't think it's crazy to pick Houston this one, but I'm going Golden State. The Warriors in six. Okay. Detroit at New York Pistons have won the last three. That April 10th game where Cade went off was terrific, but again, no Hart or OG Anunoby in that one. Brunson since his return. So post All Star break, let's do a little that. Detroit's 15 and 12, New York's 15 and 13 in those 28 games. Brunson's played in 12 of them. So Brunson's right back to his 25 a game. Knicks actually have had the slightly better defense than Detroit Post All Star it's pretty similar and Cade just was incredible in that April 10th game. But again, what do we really put into that other than we know Cade is really good and New York had two less perimeter options in dealing with him. His regular season numbers against the Knicks, he's been lighting these dudes up 35 and eight shooting splits 56 and 52%. I also like that Detroit has let him get engaged off the ball a little bit. I know it's the simplest thing, but sometimes when you're telling the defense, hey, I'm bringing the ball up to core and this is what the first thing is going to be. And you've already seen a middle middle a million times. Excuse me, just having somebody be like, hey, have Schroeder bring it up, have Cade come off of something and now this is how we want to get into our offense. It's so simple. But sometimes it is needed. And it's crazy to me how often teams are like, oh, I guess we're just going to get stuck doing this over and over and over again. Now having said that, when the ball ends up back with Cade, I worry about the second on ball creator. I think for any team that has any kind of playoff aspirations, I'm not talking about Detroit winning the east, but going up against a tough Knicks team here that is fully formed again, like, who's the second guy with the ball that I'm like, okay, when Cade gets bottled up, it's a bit like the Randall Minnesota thing. Like you really do. Randall with the ball closing out playoff games in a huge spot. Maybe, maybe. But Detroit, like, who is it? Because if you look at the drive chart for this, Cade clearly leads Detroit and drives for game 17 a game. Ivy was second. He's not around anymore. Dennis Schroeder, eight and a half. All right, well, that's not terrible because if you look at the Knicks chart, Brunson's 18 drives a game, Cats like at 8. So what's the difference, Ron? Well, the difference is Cat's also one of the best three point shooters in the entire league and has been his entire career. So even with those drives that I think are clunky, that seem to work more than I would ever expect them to, they also have bridges. So the numbers may not play it out here. You know, that og, if he knows what he's doing on the drive as opposed to freelancing, he's so powerful and he gets close to the rim. He's pretty good on some of that stuff. And I think Hart moves the ball right and even Miles, that second guy when Kate gets stuck, what is it? Is it a Beasley 3? There'll be a lot of that. But is there somebody on the ball that can create when things get really messy for Detroit? I don't think they're going to have enough with that. And that's why I am picking the Knicks in six. Anything else I missed? Oh, yeah. Orlando at Boston Sultan 5. I think we're good. And as I said at the top, you can't do the documentary on the playing game without spending a lot of time filming in Atlanta. Look, this is pretty clear that Miami has a standard that they were not going to go into that Chicago game. But that was an alarming, alarming effort from Chicago defensively, but levels to this. So as much as that was a pick them, Miami's now plus one in Atlanta. So it feels a bit like you're setting yourself up for being wrong for the wrong reasons and then going the other way and then being wrong all over again. Welcome to trying to figure this stuff out. Hero went off in that. So we were close to getting the 45 pointer. If the game had been closer, that guy hero might have had 50 in that game. So on the other side of things, Atlanta not super impressive in that Orlando matchup. So what do we have here we have Miami actually getting a point at Atlanta, which makes no sense based on the momentum and how both these teams looked the last time they played. So because it makes no sense, you almost want to go with Atlanta with the spot, but I'm just not going to. So we'll go Miami plus one or go Tyler Herro two or more made threes plus 116 the Ryan Rosilla podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA playing tournament gives some teams one last shot at making the playoffs, but FanDuel is giving all new customers a shot at $250 in bonus bets. Join FanDuel today. You'll get started with $250 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. From three pointers to steals to assist, FanDuel has so many ways to bet your favorite player Props. Plus after the game tips off, you can even combine live prop bets into a same game parlay. For a chance to win big. Just visit FanDuel.com Ryan R Y E N to get in on all the NBA playing tournament action. That's FanDuel.com Ryan for your shot at $250 in bonus bets. Make every moment more with FanDuel. Official sports betting partner of the NBA must be 21 and older in present in select states or 18 plus in present in D.C. first online real money wager only $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued is non withdrawable bonus bets which expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms@sportsbook.fanduel.com Gambling problem. Call 1-800- gambler or visit rg-help.com.