Transcript
Ryan Rossillo (0:00)
Hey Priscilla listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify prime. Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.
Tom Cerutti (0:08)
In sports, winning takes more than talent. It takes strength, reliability and the drive to go the distance. Sound familiar? That's the same DNA you'll find in a Chevy Silverado. As capable and dependable as a winning team, Chevy Silverado shows up and gets the job done. It won't flinch when the pressure's on. It doesn't take plays off when it comes to trucks. Chevy Silverado is football guy approved. To learn more About Silverado, visit chevy.com.
Ryan Rossillo (0:45)
The Ryan Marcillo show, also on Netflix, is presented by DraftKings. On today's show, we'll go through all eight series, probably really seven of them, I don't want to lie to you. So some of the trends, the things I'm seeing, the storylines of each of them and then when teams are eliminated, we'll go a little deeper too. So they're going to plan on doing here the next couple of weeks. We've got Nate Tice for an hour on the NFL draft. Winners, losers, controversies, the quarterback class and a fun look ahead to 2027. It's not way too early. We are in 27 mock draft season and of course an alliance pick for you with the NBA that we're excited about and life advice. The NBA playoffs are in full swing and the intensity isn't letting up every every night delivers high stakes drama, clutch performances and unforgettable moments you'll be talking about for years. And with DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NBA, your winnings get a boost every single day all playoffs long. Playoff stars turn it up round by round and DraftKings turns it up with them with a profit boost available every single game day from the first round all the way to the finals. Bet player props bet live. From the opening tip to the final possession. Every bucket, every dime, every clutch takeover matters. And only DraftKings sportsbook keeps boosting you all the way through. All DraftKings customers can enjoy a profit boost every single day throughout the playoffs. Download the DraftKings sportsbook app now. Use the Code Ryan to claim your profit boost. That's Code Ryan to get a boost every day of the NBA playoffs in partnership with DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MERNET NEW YORK Call 877-8-HOPE-WOOD or text Hope and why Connecticut. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org on behalf of Boothill Casino in Kansas. Wager tax pass through may apply in Illinois, 21 and over in most states. Void in Ontario. Restrictions apply. One profit boost per customer per playoffs Bets only. Bet restrictions apply and vary when offered. Max bet and boost vary. Boost only applies to winnings and expires at the end of the last NBA game each day. See terms@sportsbook.draftkings.com promos8 series over the weekend 8 thoughts I'll go deeper on the ones that matter and have the better storylines. A little lighter on the stuff towards the end. We start with Minnesota up 3. 1 on Denver. Jokic's stats for the series 25, 15 and 8. Does it feel as good as those numbers look? Absolutely not. He's 39% from the floor, 18% from three. He's a career 52 38% split for his playoff career. He's also shooting seven threes a game, which is something he really doesn't want to do. He got smoked defensively in Game three. I'm not sure it was as bad defensively in Game four, but you could sit here and say, hey, even the great ones have their bad series, but the advanced stuff has fallen off a cliff for him through these four games. You know, it's crazy. Like I went back and looked at some of the clips again just to make sure it was real. Jokic in the regular season against Minnesota and against Rudy 36, 15 and 11, 65% from the floor, 51% from three and that's in four games against Rudy where he played 30 minutes a game in the regular season. It's usually a matchup he's excited about. I was looking for things. You know, I think Rudy picks him up a little bit more. He's definitely more aggressive before the catch and after the catch. He's really aggressive and it is in Jokic's head a little bit. There's just plays that you don't expect him to make. I mean, he's going to make mistakes because he has the ball in his hand so much. But even the turnover rate is a little beyond what you'd normally expect here. So that is a big part of this. I'm going to go over this stretch here in game four because you know Ant and DiVincenzo are out unfortunately now. Divincenzo out for a long time and Ant when he landed on his leg. If you're 30 years old, you may have to retire from the game the way he landed and hyper extended that. But he's not going to be back for this series. So there's a stretch where Murray hits a three to put Denver up 69, 65 at 6:25 left in the third quarter. Over the next 12 minutes and 50 seconds, the score goes to Minnesota, up 99, 87. All right, Murray hits another three, makes it 99, 90 in the fourth quarter. And I went back and looked at all the shots in between Murray's first three and then that second three that I just mentioned. Denver went one of 15 on field goal attempts. 19 of the 21 points were from the free throw line. Murray had a make in that stretch. The only make of those 15 shots where he was double teamed on the baseline. It was actually an incredible shot. And of those 15 shots, I'd say two were easy. Like two. We're like, hey, that's a good look. One was Hardaway bricking a three off of, I think an offensive rebound scramble. Or that was before he missed it. And then he ended up getting another one back and that one was contested. So it was a clean look, the first one, and then Jokic had like a pretty good look, but it was the end of the quarter and it was just kind of like a weird play and Jokic flicked it up and missed the three. So two easy shots, and I'm kind of being nice about one of them. That just speaks to Minnesota what they've been able to do when they crank up this defense. I don't know if the switch is because of them deciding to, like, respond because Ant and DiVincenzo have gone out. I think a big part of it is how much Minnesota clearly hates Denver. McDaniels is just relentless on him. Like there was a play where he just swallowed him up and it was the rare four on. Oh, fast break for a basketball team. Again, it was right at the half court line. Murray gets completely swallowed up. Everybody, everybody's pressuring them. And there's a dislike that Minnesota has in the way that they play defense against Denver right now through these four games. So if you look at Minnesota's story and try to figure them out, good luck. After the All Star break, they were 15 and 11. They were 21st on offense, 11th on defense. They were 23rd in rebounding percentage. They're the number two rebounding team in the playoffs right now. In 25 after the All Star break, they went 18 and 8. They were third on offense. It's basically the same team, 12th on defense. And in 24, they went 17 and 10 after the All Star break. And that was when they had that offense, you're like, I just don't know if this offense is going to be able to do enough for you to be able to carry them. And obviously they made it to the Western Conference finals and then kind of fell apart there. But their defense was third, so they could always bank on their defense after the All Star break this year at 15 and 11, you're like, what are you banking on? And Finch had a quote after game four, I'm going to paraphrase here, where he basically said, we were on these guys all regular season and cranked it up, you know, again after the All Star break. And they kept telling us, don't worry, we'll turn it on during the playoffs. And he goes then after game one, like, they lied to us. So we got on him even harder. And again the series completely flipped in that second quarter of game two. And now they go back to Denver without and Diva Chenza. You'd have to imagine Denver, you never thought Denver was going to lose this game and the series would be even. And then they get game five at home and it's like, oh, I remember when Minnesota showed that fight. And no, they stayed in this and continue to dominate this matchup even though they were missing DiVincenzo almost the entire game. And Ant didn't even play well. He was one of eight, I think in his 17 or 18 minutes. And and another thing that's really interesting about that third quarter run, Rudy wasn't playing. So the run was from the third quarter going deep into the fourth quarter, right as Minnesota pulls away in this game IO's absurd night where you're like, could the Bulls have built around IO and Usman Jang and just said, hey, we're good. So a lot of Bulls jokes over the weekend, but Minnesota was able to, even without DiVincenzo and Ant still put out a five man lineup that actually provided some spacing. It's IO, it's bones, it's Conley, it's Nas and it's Julius Randall. So you're still spread out all over the place, even though you're missing one of the top 10 best players in the world, an ant divincenza, whose number one thing is spacing. So Finch was wondering if this team would wake up and they have, and they're up 31 as they headed Denver. But we'll see, we'll see about game five and this, this whole thing, this whole feeling is going to, is going to be weird if Denver puts up like a huge performance. But I don't I don't know what to expect from them anymore other than I expected they would win Game 5. But the next three, San Antonio, Portland, spurs up 3 1. Game 3 in Game 4, I feel like closed out in very similar ways. Even though Wembanyama was not available for game three, they've had three different leading scores in their three wins. Game three was the Scoot Dylan Harper battle, where I can kind of understand it like, Dylan Harper's this big high profile guy. So much for worrying about that Rutger season, huh? Scoot was that big, high profile guy and a top pick as well. Scoot's feeling himself. He has that incredible game two performance. I still thought he was. He was pretty good in game three. But then it. It kind of got to Scoot a little bit. And Harper took that personally and he responded. 22 points in the second half, 27 for the game. And Harper's now the youngest player in NBA history to have 25 or more in a playoff game. And yes, I know Scoot sucked in game four. He was. He had a couple early misses, couple early mistakes. He had a turnover. There was a miscommunication on a cut. I don't know if the cut was a bad cut by him or, you know, just whenever anyone comes inside the three point line on a cut and the ball goes out of bounds, like, the passer just looks at the guy being like, what are you doing inside the three point line? Like, we don't do that anymore. I mean, it's hilarious how often this is happening where it's like a really good cut and the guy just throws it into the cameraman and it gets mad at the cutter. It's like you're never supposed to move or go inside there. So look, they actually kept scooting the game where it was bad enough where he was missing all of his shots. So you were like, all right, I wonder if they're going to just kind of move on from him. But they didn't want to. But look, he just kind of. He got so frustrated that I think he was. He was pressing and it kind of carried over the rest of the game. Again, not a major, major part of this. The fourth quarters are a major part. San Antonio is a plus 28.7 net rating in the fourth quarters. It's the second best in the playoffs. Number one is Toronto. We'll obviously get to that series. Something that I realized with San Antonio is that the Wembanyama sub patterns have almost nothing to do with what's happening in the game, they are so confident, and it's also part of managing him in the process that it just doesn't matter what's happening in the game. They never seem to want to turn to the bench and go, hey, man, hey, big guy. Go back in there and fix this thing. Because Portland was terrific in the first half and they have these massive shooting variances throughout a game because they're not a great three point shooting team, even though they have to take them in this series and they'll have a quarter where they're like, man, if they can keep this up. And it's like, well, they're not going to because they're just not necessarily that great of a shooting team as it played out over the regular season. But there was a stretch where in the first half they're down six. Denny's cooking, you know, I think Avdia and in general the team, but Avdia, because he has the ball so much and he's so good downhill. And I thought he was better at this in game four than any of the other games where Wembanyama was at least available in and out of the game, or even when Wembanyama went out with the concussion. I felt like Denny was finally like a little bit more like, hey, Cornet's in there. And I have to maximize every single possession that Cornet's in there defensively and attack. And that's definitely what happened. But look, the spurs get down 17 at the half. I think they were down 18 at one point. Wembanyama plays 16 minutes in the first half, he plays 17 minutes in the second half. And you could sit there and say, the spurs are just so confident about how the game is going to play out that they're never going to, like, rush him back in if they don't feel like they have to. At least maybe against Portland. You know, Portland's trying with Drew, Holiday and Kamara. Against Wembanyama, you have to do so much work early. You know, it's not even defending him when he has the ball. It's all of the work that you're doing before to try to find any way to fight him out of his position. And it's just a lot to ask. And I think Drew's been great. Like, I was really surprised the Celtics were able to get what they got in a trade for Drew, considering his age, considering it looked like he was declining. And on top of that, the most important factor, that his contract is so massive. And I think he's been great in this series, but it's just a ton to be asking him to be battling Wembanyama for as minutes, as many minutes as he has to. And there's just going to be a lot of plays where they get any kind of movement and then it's just a catch. They could probably go to Wembanyama more if they wanted to, to be honest with you. But Fox was great in this one. We've mentioned Castle and Harper. It just they have one of those three guys that can go for like 15 and a quarter and there's really not much that you can do. New York evens a series of Atlanta two apiece. This is going to sound like. This is going to sound obvious because like I wrote down, it feels like a bet between Jalen Brunson or Jalen Johnson figuring out. And clearly the better bet is Jalen Brunson figuring out because he's been here before. And Jalen Johnson's going through what we see from a lot of great players in the playoffs, where it's like your first time through, it's just. You're just not as comfortable. And then you have Dylan Harper. But Dylan Harper doesn't have to be the best player on the floor for the Spurs. He can be the fifth best player and the spurs can still win a playoff game in this case. Jalen Johnson is not reacting well to Josh Hart's defense. I thought there was a bit of a sign in game two in the second half or I thought he was figuring out a little bit, but he's not. I mean, the overall numbers for Brunson are 26, 2 1/2 and 5. The assists are down from his regular season stuff, which he's even been critical of himself with. He's 42 and 39% from the floor. So it looks a little bit better numbers wise and maybe it's felt like the way it's played out. And then Johnson on the other side of this, he's 42% but 29% from 3 and he's at 19, 7 and 5. His assist stuff is down. And I thought there was a really interesting number here from second Spectrum the guys on the Athletic had where so far Johnson has 13 passes from the paint in the entire series. Like they're going to play off of Dyson. They're going to ignore Dyson when he doesn't have the ball. I think Dyson's a nice player. He's really good at some things and he's a detriment to you offensively with other things. We've Already covered this before Alexander Walton. Walker's had a hard time being consistent, but I think the defense at least is there with he and Daniels against Brunson enough that they've stayed in it, at least on that side when the offense hasn't necessarily worked out for him. But every Hawks fan knows, like even with the great CJ moments in this series, like Jalen Johnson's the guy that has to get this going and Brunson's easily the better bet just based on the experience alone and the array of things that he can do offensively here. But Hart, it almost doesn't matter what Hart shoots from the floor because Hart is just being really physical with him. And it's a bit of a wake up call, I think, for Jalen Johnson here. And then in game four, you know, you have the Kaminga game that you would expect. I did not expect him to be as great as he was in games two and game three. We know my Kaminga feelings here, but that's how they were able to survive, you know, some of these games here. And Atlanta, who was fifth in pace in the NBA in the regular season, is 11 out of 16 teams here in the playoffs. So they've got to figure out a way to get it going. They've got to figure out a way for Jalen Johnson. When you're met physically, just meet it back like you can. If we know anything about this league the last few years, if you have the ball and you smash into everybody, you're going to get away with it the entire game. So he's going to have to step that up. Orlando's up to 1 on Detroit this series. If I wanted to make it really simple is if Dern has a bad game, Orlando's going to win because that's what's happened. I mean, it's not a rule. Clearly players, the second best player in this case can have a bad game and then a bunch of other different things happen. But that's what's happened in this series. Duran had eight points in each loss. He was 3 of 4 in Game 1. Where you're like, how do you only take four shots here? Well, he took more in Game 3, but he was only 3 of 10. This is the Wendell Carter experience, invisible in Game 2 and then outplaying Duran in Games 1 and 3. And that's what you have in the series here. Bain breaks out with 25 and Orlando, let me know how you felt. Magic Fans up 17 in the fourth to down 105, 104 under three minutes left, you're not winning that game. And then you have Franz the closer. Let's go over his two plays that basically close this one out before Paolo's miraculous bounce on that three. On the first play where Franz scored late in the game, they wanted Paulo. He gets double teamed on the left side. They swing it back to the top. Franz is working on Cade. They look like they want to set some kind of screen for him. Franz isn't sure if he wants to take Cade because it's all of that size. Duran's lurking behind him and Franz, it's not really even a play. He just settles into a nice pull up jumper 17, 18ft away and hits it. The second play was for Paolo again he's on the right side this time. He's trying to work Harris. Harris is holding up great defensively on Paolo and shockingly like Paolo normally in that spot would probably just go hoping to get free throws because he gets them all the time. And I thought for sure, I was like, well, I'll see how this goes. He's probably just going to drive at him. He didn't, didn't feel like he'd get. Harris swings it to the other side to Franz who hits a 3 of all people. And that's how you close this one out. Looking at Detroit's three point shooting in the fourth quarter, they have five three point makes in the entire series. Cade has two of them. So there are three non Cade Cunningham three point makes in the fourth quarter through three games in this series. So the spacing issue for Detroit always a factor and you'd expect that this, this feels like a long series here. You know, as much as we're talking about like Orlando being this incredibly talented team and this is playing out the way that it's supposed to, doesn't feel like a 18 series at all. But we know what Orlando is capable of offensively when it's really bad. And that's what you kind of have to bank on if you're Detroit is like, you know, you can slow these guys down. Like look what happened in game two. The defense would probably not waver all that much from this Detroit team. But the spacing. But there's just more guys that you feel like have a track record of making some shots from Orlando in the fourth quarter than you do for Detroit. Toronto, Cleveland evened up. Wow. All right. So as I mentioned before, San Antonio's fourth quarter dominance. Toronto has the best fourth quarter net rating here, which means conversely that Cleveland has the worst fourth quarter rating of any team in the playoffs. There's also a 20 point playoff fourth quarter advantage in the series as well for Toronto. And there's one where they lost, where they actually won the fourth quarter. So I mean, that's, that's an aggressive number. You'd think if you were up that much, you'd be like, did they sweep? No, we're a two apiece here. Because game four was an absolute rock fight. Just a brutal game. 38, 36 at the half was the lowest scoring, I think. I don't know if it was the lowest scoring or if it was that Neither team cracked 40 in the first half of the playoff game since 2015, it was Bulls, Bucks. So thanks for the broadcast for that. Note one interesting. Well, there's a couple interesting things, but looking at the defensive alignments, in the beginning of the game, they took Wade off of Brandon Ingram and I almost wondered if Cleveland was like, is this a waste of Dean Wade to put him on Ingram? Because, you know, the idea is that when you acquire Ingram and you think about the rest of this team, it's like, okay, because he went the number one option for a. Scoring wise, he's not even a number two option. He was six of 23 in this one. I mean, everybody, there's a lot of bad shooting numbers across the board. Don't worry, we'll get to Donovan Mitchell here in a second. But I was wondering if Cleveland was thinking, hey, we don't even need to use weight on this guy right now, so let's, let's not do that. And they put him on Scotty Barnes. So the first play of the third quarter rule, which we've talked about, that will tell you what they feel like they need more of that they did not get in the second half. And Cleveland doubled down on it. Guess who they went to? Our guy, Evan Mobley. The first play was Mobley against Purdle. The second play was for Mobley. And sometimes with this third quarter stuff or like, who's not engaged enough in the game, I can be a little frustrated and be like, why do you need to be babysat as an NBA player if you'd be like, hey, remind you? Like, yeah, but for the big guys. So let's give Mobley a bit of a pass, not too much of one because of the overall output from game four. But we know what the big. The bigs are dependent on the small. Sorry. The big guys are dependent on the small guys getting them the basketball. And sometimes you have to. This isn't so much about getting mobile Engaged. It's reminding the ball handlers like, hey, we should have an advantage against Pearl and Murray Boyles, who's a rookie. The problem is Murray Boyles is in absolute stud. They want to play him. He's the guy over Pearl, Pearl starting. But Boyle's playing more minutes in these games and in what, 27 minutes. It's just 15 and 10 for Boyle. And it's from so much, so much effort too. But if you're mobili, like, look, Purdle should not be able to guard you and you should also not be getting beasted by a rookie who's kind of undersized on top of everything else. So Mobley had what, eight points in this one? Jared Allen's first field goal make was at 7:30 of the third quarter. And I was thinking a little bit about the Cleveland issue of say they were bounced in the playoffs in the first round, which I still don't think is going to happen. But say they lose in the second round, then you're going to lead to this kind of off season thing of like, hey, is this too big thing? Which at times has exposed itself as a problem spacing wise for Cleveland. Is this something to actually move off and they stagger those two guys so much. They start and they close with them, but there's so many minutes where they're not playing together that I don't know that you can even point to that as the reason why Cleveland is struggling in a series that they should probably be up 3:1 in right. Mitchell is part of the issue here. He was 6:24 in game four. I'm not going to do a long hardened thing again and point to all these different plays. I would say though, there's something that caught my eye. It was 74 apiece, six minutes to go in the fourth quarter. And they run an action where Harden is actually in the corner, on the left corner on a Mitchell drive. So they keep both guys on the same side and Mitchell drives. Murray Boyles comes off the corner to help on the drive. Mitchell kicks it to Harden, he resets and he hits a three. And seeing that reminded me of all the other possessions where if Harden is not anywhere in the action that then he just takes the playoff. He's going to stand there 30ft away and just watch the whole thing because he's not going to cut, he's not going to set a screen. I mean, he's on the other side and there's times like, hey, you could probably just cut or something. You know, it's like Nope, not going to do that. I'm going to stand here for a little while. It might be worth experimenting more with, like, can we keep Harden in the play as an option so that he stays in the play? Because it worked out perfectly. They went up 3 on that one. Obviously, they lost the game because of Mitchell's overall shooting problems. And there's another thing, too, that I would say is at least worth. If you're not going to use the bigs, you're never going to post up any of these guys. If it's Purdle and Murray Boyles back there, don't you think you should be able to get some sort of momentum with Mitchell off of a screen or Harden coming downhill? That takes the lob away if you want to move the bigs out a little bit. But even if you move Allen out, nobody's going to go out and defend him. But you would think that maybe there's just something a little bit more simple with this, of just going, let's get our two guards just going here, high ball screen, and just go at the rim at these guys a little bit more. Because that. That rim protection, that's not as much as I've enjoyed Murray Boyles and what Toronto's been able to do here, you wouldn't think that that's something that you would be afraid of attacking. So just a thought. All right, Boston's up 3:1 on Philly and be back. I wasn't sure how it would go, and I'll be honest, it kind of went the way I thought it would because there was all this excitement about him coming back. You're like, could they have some great game at home, even the series up? And then Boston starts feeling all the pressure. Philly has zero pressure whatsoever. I knew he'd score points, and he deserves a ton of credit. Seventeen days after this appendectomy, to be back out there after surgery and being out there and playing. But I figured defensively it would mess him up a little bit because even in the regular season prior to this, there's just a lot there defensively where it just hasn't looked like he's been in shape enough to meet the demand, especially a playoff demand, especially with all the spacing from Boston, like, how is this going to look? So I don't want to be critical of embiid, knowing how hard it must have been to even come back and do any of this stuff. Defensively, it went about the way I thought it would go, but I'd say offensively it probably messed him up a little bit more too, because Maxi was reluctant. You know, MB did get it going early on. You knew that Kata was going to be in foul trouble. You figured between Garza, Vuch and Keda, they might use 15 of those 18 fouls. I think they used 11. Maxi even admitted, like, he's going to get going. Like, I'm writing it down going, like, where is he? Because George had it going. And then vj it appears defensively at least, with Embiid out there, Boston's just not going to worry about them all that much. And I talked about the drop coverage on that high ball screen and how Boston just did the same thing over and over again and got torched in Game two. It was the first thing I looked for in Game three. They completely changed it, I thought at least as far as them trying to meet the ball a little bit more, even though you're concerned about all that speed coming off of that screen. But it was very clear that it was something they had talked about being like, hey, we need to fix this. Within beat back now. I didn't really know what I was looking for. This was like, all right, well, this whole thing changes the biggest issue. Well, there's a lot of issues for Philly. They're not as good as Boston is, But Boston was a plus 21 in rebounds in game four. And right now Boston has the best rebounding percentage of any team in the playoffs, which again means that Philly has the worst. And when Peyton Pritchard scores 32 and it's not catch and shoot stuff, it is like cooking guys off the dribble. I mean, he made a bunch of threes, but it's all the other stuff too, that he is capable of doing. One of the best handles in the NBA. It covers up for Derrick White so far, struggling mightily 30% from the floor through four games. Couple quick thoughts as we close this out on the other two series. I'm not going to spend a lot of time being critical of LA losing after being up 30 because them being up 330 on Houston is incredible. I know Durant hasn't played in three of the four games, but you know, this is. I'm not going to spend time being critical of LeBron in game four because of how great he's been through the first three games. I just don't think that that would be fair. The timing since they lost the latest game last night is the most recent thing because the game 3 thing is still like the thing that almost should count for two Losses for Houston to be up, have the announcers be like, Houston's going to wrap this thing up. And then you just have stupid play after stupid play. LeBron with a great poke away play and read at the end there fouling smart when you know that's all that he wants to do on the three on the prior play. Just dumb play after dumb play from Houston to close that one out or not close it out in game three. So, yeah, credit them fighting back. Could have turned over. They faced an LA team that, speaking of turnovers, turned it over 23 times. They were 2 of 13 on threes through three quarters. So LA is turning the ball over like crazy and they can't shoot it. And it's a center matchup for LA that's gone their way. Like both the centers have been super productive in the way LA's running their offense because if they get these deep catches, especially if it's in a switch, it's just over. And Ayton's having a great night and then he decides to get thrown out of the game by throwing an elbow. That was a pretty cheap shot upgraded to a flag or two. But at that point, like, I don't know if LA was going to win this game because they had a bunch of other problems. Houston wants to bring the center out or they're going to hunt canard. When Bronnie James was in there, they were like, hey, buddy, get up here and learn mismatch. I had thought that based on stuff I saw in the regular season, LeBron might be somebody that teams in the playoffs would want to go at a little bit more. Knowing the regular season, they probably like the Reaves matchup better than going after LeBron. But the thing for Houston in this series is it doesn't really make a ton of sense because if they were going to have somebody attack LeBron, other than a men, you know, Jabari can't dribble and Tari can't really dribble. And you know, I know these guys last night for Houston had a really nice game and that's great. And I think there's a bigger issue here about the Durant thing of him not playing but then not being there for game three. Well, I guess we'll have more on the Kevin Durant thing depending on how this series closes out. Unless Houston's going to come back down from from 30 and we end with OKC and Phoenix. Yes, another door play. It's indefensible. I don't know what else to say about it. And really there's a positive when we do the obituaries on these teams. There's a positive here for Phoenix in that like nobody even expected you to be here, right? So if you think of the consensus thoughts about the Suns before the series, or, excuse me, before the season, probably the same as the series thoughts, at least you were in the playoffs playing some home playoff games, and if you get swept, you get swept. But it was actually a successful season considering what we thought of this team at the time. But just not enough manpower, even at full strength throughout the series, not enough manpower to match up with the best team in the NBA. Which leads to just a quick final thought here. If you look at how the west is shaping up and we're due for probably like 1 1/2 more significant injuries to star players. So who knows what's going to happen because it is just ridiculous what has gone on in these playoffs to the major injuries to the best players in this league. But OKC be going up against an LA team where it's kind of dot dot dot on who's available and then San Antonio against Minnesota without Ant and DiVincenzo. So it feels more than ever likely that we're going to get that Western Conference Finals matchup that we've wanted all regular season long. Tastytrade has a suite of probability tools so you can make smarter picks for your portfolio. You can trade stocks, options, futures and more all in one platform. Tastytrade offers low commissions including zero commission on stocks so you can keep more of what you earn. The platform is packed with trading features like backtesting, which lets you simulate your trading strategies using 10 plus years of data so you you can test your ideas about potential Cinderella stocks. Active traders can use features like Ladder Trading mode, one click Trading and smart order Tracking to manage their positions during crunch time. If you want to learn to trade or discover new strategies, tastytrade has dozens of educational courses you can access for free with your account. Get live stellar support from Tastytrade's Deep Bench of Experience Trade Desk reps during trading hours. Visit tastytrade.com Barstool today. Taste Trade Inc. Is a registered broker, dealer and member of FINRA, NFA and SIPC. The 2026 NFL Draft is in the books and we are thrilled to have Nate Tice joining us from Yahoo Sports. You can also check out his podcast which I listened to this morning. Football 301 going through and giving grades to all of these teams. I just want to start with a grade conversation. I Think. At one point being on the air, I was like, yeah, grades are stupid. And people keep saying it. And yeah, all right, how about this? We know it's stupid and now we're going to do it because it's like, are you aware of what we do here? You know, does anyone want content where it's like, sorry, no opinions on the draft until three years later? Because I don't want to say anything. Like, we all know all of us are going to be incredibly wrong about some of this stuff, but this is the job. So that's my little rant on the anti grade movement.