Transcript of Down Goes OKC! Spurs-Knicks is Here! What the Hell Just Happened? And What Does OKC Do Now? | With Zach Lowe New

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The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The Conference Finals finally is here. We are down to 4 teams. Think you know it'll go down? Take your shot with FanDuel. Get closer to the action. And as you know, I've been telling you for years, FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players, and plays during the NBA postseason. Build the same game parlay for a shot at a better payout, or try live betting and jump into the action after tip-off. Or just follow me and my picks, cuz every once in a while I'll put them on social. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app right now and play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Bill Simmons Podcast live on Netflix. Zach Lowe is here on a beautiful Saturday night. We just had an awesome, awesome Game 7. My favorite Game 7s are when it's not just a series at stake or maybe even the title at stake, but I feel like there's real big picture basketball shit going on, like era shit, legacy shit, changing of the guard type stuff.

And it just felt this way from the beginning. And, and eventually we'll remember it as the Luke Cornett chase-down game. That was it. It's the Cornett game. Lock it down. Biggest play of the game. Luke Cornett, much maligned the entire series. Now, where do you want to start? I mean, that was incredible.

I, I want to start with what you just said about, you know, Torrico punctuates the game. It's, it's Wemby's world now. And it's absolutely remarkable that the Spurs are already here. They're so young and I look, they've been a clear championship team for a while now. The experiencing didn't bother me. It didn't, it didn't, it didn't, you know, limit their chances to me. But when you see them all embracing after the game, all the young faces, they're so young, the joy they have and Wemby's crying and all this, it's like they're already here at the pinnacle and we are, What is it right now? May, 5, 4 months removed. I mean, it was really not until those December games, starting with the Vegas tournament, they played 3 times in like 10 days until San Antonio won those games. The story of the season was, is it gonna be 73 wins? Are they gonna be maybe the greatest regular season team of all time and have the greatest 2-year run of all time and start of a dynasty? And the Spurs eviscerated that in a 10-day span in December. Started this series with a remarkable win on the road and end it with a remarkable win on the road and go into the Finals with De'Aaron Fox looking healthier, Dylan Harper looking healthier, and Wemby at the top of the league.

And yet you use the phrase changing of the guard, Wemby's world. I already want the 2027 Western Conference Finals to start because there's gonna be a lot of talk about what is Oklahoma City gonna do in the wake of this crushing defeat, their title hopes dashed, this rising phenom that they and nobody else has an answer for. What I want in my basketball fan soul is run it all back. Jalen Williams, you were injured. We're running it back. Chet, we got a lot of Chet talk to do. Let's go into the summer, learn, go into like the Australian Outback like Dirk did when the Mavericks lost, whatever you want to do.

The Dirk to come, to come back stronger. Where did Dirk go? Yeah, the remote parts of Australia.

Yeah. And just, and just come back and say, You thought it was a changing of the guard. We're coming right back at you again with the same core group that we had tonight. I just, but these two teams going back and forth is awesome. And for the Spurs to be here is absolutely incredible.

Wow. You just chewed up a lot of storylines there.

Let's get, let, but there's, that was great.

It's awesome. Let's start here with the Spurs though. Young core teams that make the finals. This just basically only happens once a decade. '77 Blazers, '86 Rockets, '95 Magic, LeBron and the '07 Cavs, '15 Warriors, sort of. Curry's like 6 years in at that point. We had the '87 Mavs almost, the '93 Sonics almost. There's been some almost. This is like the youngest, craziest run. Even the '86 Rockets seemed more conceivable to me. Than this. And then they go down 3-2. I picked the Spurs before the series. I genuinely thought they could win after Game 5. I, I thought it was a wrap 'cause of, 'cause of Fox and because of, of Harper. They just didn't look right. Harper looked great in Game 6. We were texting before the game. Tell them what your prediction was before the game.

Well, I mean, about Fox, I said Fox was gonna have 15 points on 6 of 14 shooting. I thought he, I, I basically said he was gonna have a good game, not a great game. But you were worried that he was gonna have a, I was worried for the 0 for 11. Yeah.

Yeah.

Does that cataclysmic, like, is it already time to trade him game? And I was like, I, I liked the shots that he was getting in Game 6. And I was like, I think he's just gonna have a good, fine, productive game. Maybe had a big—

so what did he end up with?

He was, I think he ended up 12, 15 points on 6 of 12. He needed that. He needed to miss 2 more shots for me to get it exactly right.

All right, so here's what I jotted down from the everything we would want from a Game 7 standpoint. We had two fantastic teams.

Yes.

With two tremendous stars that I, I think played really well. And I wanna talk about SGA in a second, but both of those guys were awesome in that game for different reasons. And you had two fascinating career moments for those guys too. You have SGA, you talked about it with Goldsberry after the Game 6, like, eh, we're throwing his name around with some pretty legendary guys from the last 75, 80 years. It would kind of be nice if you had a better series. Could we ask for that? And he was lights out. And then you have Wemby going on the road, down 3-2 in a series, battling foul trouble. We get down the stretch. I didn't feel like NBC— I thought NBC did it. The crew did a good job today. It was the one time where I felt like they should have been losing their minds that Wemby got that 5th foul so fast because he got 4, then all of a sudden he had 5, and it was like, oh my God, there's 7 minutes left. Is he gonna foul out? What are they gonna do? Are they gonna take him out? So we had that, and then we had, uh, the Chet self-combusting piece, um, which we have to get into too.

But Zach, I thought this game had pieces. I had 3 series written down. The '81 Celtics-Sixers, which were the last time 2 awesome teams played in a Game 7 like this. They both had 62+ wins, same kind of chaotic rugby-type game. Bulls-Pacers. With OKC and the Bulls in '98, OKC in the Bulls spot of down 6, down 8, down 4, down 8 again, down 2, down 8. Just, just kind of trying to scrap back and getting into it. And yet the Bulls came back and won and, and, and OKC did not. And then the other one I had was the 2016 Golden State-OKC game, ironically. And that was in Golden State, but OKC, just the shots, they just couldn't get good shots. Like you even think about like all the offensive rebounds they had in the first half and then Wallace like saving them down the stretch. But the offense, the non-SGA offense was so hard for them. So explain it to us. What happened?

Well, I mean, Jalen Williams and AJ Mitchell are hurt. That, that's part of it. Yes. And you take those guys away and it's like, oh my God, we're real short on creators. And honestly, when SGA didn't come out at the end of the first quarter, did you think he might play all 48 minutes of the game? 'Cause I did.

Well, there was two panic things. One, he ended up, I think, 44 minutes. That was one. And the other was they came out to start the third quarter, they had Wallace out there and J-Will and Caruso, and it was like, oh, we're— Dagnold's doing this now. Like, he's, he's worried this game's gonna get away. So they, there was definitely like, he's calling timeouts. I felt like he was desperately trying to hold onto this game. They did some interesting sub stuff too with the centers, especially in the second half where I think they, he was kind of realizing maybe I can't rely on Chet and I'll start him in the third quarter, but I'm also gonna have Harden staying in as, as fast as I can if he is not there. But ultimately, Chet's why they lost. I, I don't want to do the Monday morning, you know, first take, just blame a guy. He didn't step up, send him to Siberia. But I voted for him, I think third team All-NBA. He was the number two defensive player in the, you know, of the year. And he didn't want to shoot. And it got to the point, Zach, where they were throwing him passes.

He wasn't even catching passes clean anymore. Like you, like he was as far in your head as you can get on a basketball court. Would you have sat him or would you have stuck with him?

I think without, I, I think if they had more options, they probably would've sat him and then they sat him late from McCain when it, when the, when it was almost too little too late. Yeah. I mean, there's just, first of all, SGA was everything you would ever want him to be in a game where I think there was some actual like career refining pressure on him after 6 series, like a scintillating game of shot making. He had the one annoying jump sideways into Devin Vassell who he got, but, but when you get a guy airborne, the benefit of the doubt is gonna go to you. When a guy bites at your pump fake so badly that he's flying in the air, you're probably gonna get the call.

I thought you couldn't go sideways on that though. I thought they took care of that rule.

You shouldn't. It's inconsistently officiated, but it doesn't matter. He played like an absolutely brilliant game. Wemby played a brilliant game. And here, here to, to me, the series the series changed in Game 4 when they stopped double-teaming Shay. And that was, I think you and I did a podcast after that game and I said that there's a little whiff of like when the, I didn't really make this comparison, but I just, it was the first thing that came into my head of when the Warriors in Game 4 of the Finals in 2015 went with the death lineup and started Iguodala. And you could, and you could sense like, oh, the terrain of this just changed in a way that is not going back into the tube. I thought not trapping SGA changed the whole series, made it his life difficult, made the Thunder's offense life difficult. And then I had a, I had, I talked with Golbert, I had a checklist for what does Oklahoma City need to win Game 7 even at home? Because the Spurs had been the better team through 6 games. And the checklist was, there were 3 things on the checklist.

They got 1, I said they needed 2. 1 was a good Shai game. They got a great Shai game. 2 was they're gonna need a really strong 3-point shooting performance from the role players. I'm not counting 12 of 35 as checking that box. I think that's like 34%. They needed better than that. They were like 29% before the end of the game. And then the third one was they're gonna need to force a lot of turnovers and get out in transition. And the Spurs again won the turnover battle tonight. That's been the story of the series since Game 2. So they only got 1 out of 3. And the check—

I would've thrown in offensive rebounds for there, which they were getting in the first half. And then it just flipped in the second half. San Antonio, 15, ended up with 15 offensive rebounds. They had 4 at halftime.

Well, and I'll tell you, Dylan Harper had 2, and both of them led to baskets. And, and then both of them were the result of Oklahoma City messed up a rotation at the top of the arc, and the guy from the corner had to panic rotate up at a shooter who was left open by mistake. And both times, I think it was Harper both times, The corner guy crashed and got huge rebounds. And let's— should we like Chet?

I just— let's do— let's do SGA and Wemby first and then we can talk about Chet. So to finish the SGA thing, that was one of my favorite games I've ever seen him play because I felt like, first of all, worst possible team for him to play, right? Where they have— I think it feels like 7 perimeter guys.

It's the worst possible team for everybody to play. Like, that's just— this is what this guy is now. He's the worst possible guy to play if you're an offense-first player.

But they also had a bunch of perimeter guys who seemed pretty comfortable at least trying to stay in front of him. They were trapping him really smartly and he was just solving it for 2 hours. And I didn't think he was doing a lot of the flop stuff. I thought everything he was doing was just like really smart scoring. He made a couple threes and it felt like, wow, if they win this game, this is gonna be— I know he won 2 MVPs in a row and he won the title last year, but this will be like the defining game that I'm not positive he's had yet. The first game you would point to. And then he just ran outta gas. And Reggie and Jamal, who I thought did a good job tonight, they noticed it right away. They, they noticed he started bailing on the passes and stuff, but that's about as well as he could play. Finished with 35. But as you said earlier, you don't have Mitchell now. Now McCain's taking up most of that Mitchell minutes and playing really well. But Jaylen Williams was, that was it. 'Cause Jaylen Williams would've allowed them to go bigger, smaller.

He would've been the second creator and they just, you could really feel it today. They didn't have that second guy.

Yeah. And you mentioned the big man stuff. I think what they concluded was, uh, and this, you could see them trending this way the whole series was, um, we cannot play another big man with Hardenstein because there's just not enough shooting and dynamism on the floor. But we do want to have as much size as possible because Wemby is just so dynamic at the rim. We need a second layer of rim protection. So we would like to play two bigs. The only two big combinations we have left that we have any faith in is Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren. And they just completely separated into those two in the second half. And part of that is like, if Chet's gonna be a zero, like Chet is a floor spacing, off the dribble attacking big man who can play with a traditional center. That's the whole point of him. And he, he ended up averaging like 10.5 points per game in the series and was completely invisible. The entire game. And you never want to read too much into one game, but when you play like that in this game, that matters a lot and is gonna have some lasting effects that he and the team are gonna have to get together and figure out, like, how do we not have that ever happen again?

Because that was just not an acceptable performance of a guy, from a guy of his caliber. And the whole series was leading to that. And it, this was the low point.

I got to see Mio a few times. Before Game 7, and I wrote down, 'cause I had a feeling we'd be talking about this, but Joe from Pennsylvania wrote, I have no dog in this fight, but if you're an OKC fan, would you be worried that Wemby is taking Chet's soul? He wrote this before Game 7. Ben Craven wrote, do you see any parallels between what Wemby is doing to Chet and what Jordan did to Drexler? Greg in Toronto wrote, is Chet vs. Wemby the best modern example of two generational unicorns where the mere existence of one completely robs the relevance of the other?

Whoa, man.

Chet deserves praise for not ordering a Tonya Harding level hit job on Wemby.

I mean, we don't know what's going on. We're not watching the postgame right now. This should all be happening now. There could be the Tonya Harding hit job could be in now.

Shane Stan, is he out of prison? So here's the thing. I don't see how this gets better. And it's going to open up over when Giannis— wow, we're talking about Giannis again. Giannis is going to go in the next 3 weeks. And it does make me think like OKC, who felt like their window was the most limitless window possible, and now all of a sudden they're like, holy shit, we couldn't even make two finals in a row with this unbelievable setup we had. Do you start thinking that? I just feel like Chet and Giannis, that's going to be mentioned for the next 72 hours. And it's not Presti style to do a trade like that, we should say.

So it's not. And I do think you have to zoom out a little bit and say minus 2 of our most important players, we took a team to Game 7 who is a great, great— like, these were 2 great, great basketball teams. Yes. It's not as if you can come away with the sort of like, we've just fallen hopelessly behind the rest of the league and like things have caught up to us. I, I think you would probably take the long view.

You blame the injuries.

I just think you take the long view. Like, we're not, we're not far away. We're gonna learn from this. That's what I said at the beginning. I want, I want a vengeance narrative to come. I want the Thunder to come together and say, no, no, it's still our time. It's still our time with this core. We just weren't up to it this time. We're gonna learn from it and get better next time. And about Shet, first of all, after this performance, how much more does Oklahoma City have to throw in to entice Milwaukee? And you have massive second apron issues for the Thunder. They can't aggregate contracts, so it's not that easy to do. They're gonna be the most, one of the most, if not the most expensive teams in the league ever.

We're talking about that later. Really quick.

But like, how much, how much, how enticing is that to Milwaukee, but it's not like Chet. So it's disturbing that they concluded Chet is offensively, like, can't play next to a center by the end of the series. It's just not working. He's not doing anything. He's not even looking at the rim on open three.

But how about why couldn't he have done what J-Will did? J-Will was the spacing center that Chet has been for his entire career. But what happened?

But not only that, like, so he just can't really play center at all in this matchup. You can't put him at the 5 as the only big man on the floor and have him screen and roll to the basket and just do the most basic center thing that Wemby's also awesome at, which is be giant and tall and screen and roll to the basket. You can't have him guard Wemby pretty much ever. Like you're that terrified of putting him at the 5 and having him guard Wemby in this series. It's just, right, there are just 1,000 red flags around Chet after this series that it's just, he's gonna have to dig deep and they're gonna have to dig deep. And cuz this, this rival is only going to get better. In the next 3 to 4 years.

Well, you're doing the Tim Connolly, I've now taken over Minnesota. How do I create the team to beat the team I just left? And if you're OKC now, that you're, you went from, we want to have this long window, we have these picks, we're going to try to figure out how to, how to navigate everything, build around these 3 guys, use all our draft picks to maybe move up, move around in drafts to now, like, How do we beat Wemby? You know, do you look at number 12? Do you— there's a Michigan center who's 7'3". Do you just like, do you try to trade up and get him? Do you try to trade, trade Chet for Giannis or Evan Mobley? Do you— I, I don't even know. And then the other question would be, should you even be panicking about Wemby? 'Cause nobody has a guy to guard Wemby. It's not like there are other teams in the league who are like, we, we have our Wemby stopper over here. There's not gonna be a Wemby stopper. They did the best job you're gonna do.

I think it's, I, for, for me, I think it's much more toward that second poll that you outlined is like, there is not going to be a silver bullet answer. In fact, I think if there is one, it's more shooting. I, I think you just, I think they were a shooter short in this series and it just made it easy for him to rove around and just patrol the paint and be on the baseline. And you know, they're like, Wallace had a good game for them tonight and is a decent shooter. McCain is an up and down 3-point shooter. I just think they were, Caruso teams are like, had a great series. What was he, 1 of 6 on 3s tonight? Almost dunked on Wemby. That was exciting. For about, for a second.

Hurt his wrist, it looked like.

I think if, if, I think if there is an answer, that's the answer. It's just we gotta get as much shooting as possible and have faith in our defense around it to, to round it out.

They, this was their issue last year and it didn't really rear its ugly head even though they did play in 2 7th games. But that was the always thing. You always would look at the 3s, the games that got blown out this series, they sucked from 3. There were moves they could have made. During this season with the, with all the picks and all the young players they have. You know, there were people sitting around like that. Like, who knows when Trey Murphy's gonna get traded?

That's the name. That was the name floating around my head as I was talking.

Yeah. And maybe that's a move they make. That's another thing is Trey Murphy, we assume he's probably gonna get traded over these next 3 weeks. I think Boston is a possibility. We thought whoever lost this matchup was a possibility. There's a couple other teams, but You know, you have 2, 3 weeks to trade for somebody like that. Well, we, we'll talk more OKC later. Let's, we'll take a quick break and we're gonna come back and we gotta talk about Wemby and just everything we saw in this series and what that might look like against the Knicks too. This episode is brought to you by Duluth Trading Company. Whether it's the 19th inning, the 12th quarter, or the 5th and a half shift overtime. Not going anywhere, which is why Duluth builds hardworking gear for folks who work their butts off. Their Surefire arsenal of work shirts are built for function and comfort, giving a big foam middle finger to all that is futile. And the new No Quit Utility Shirt is equipped with cooling and wicking tech— oh boy— to keep you comfortable, all while being tough enough to take down your most daunting tasks.

When it's marathon work session versus you, give no quits. Shop at a Duluth store near you or at duluthtrading.com. Victor Wembanyama, 22 years old. If you're gonna nitpick his performance in the playoffs, you might say protect the defensive boards a little better, um, maybe take your time on doubles. Try to figure out how to get closer to the basket. I don't know. That's all I got. He's fucking awesome. He's a maniac.

There are no nits. There's no picking. I'm not, I'm not doing, I mean, like everyone wants him closer to the basket all the time. And I think the people who scream that all the time, even though some of them are ex-players and I certainly am not, are underestimating how fatiguing it is to throw yourself at the basket. Over and over and over again when you're skinny and you do what he does on defense and just how hard it is to like the days of just throw the ball into the post and post up and back down have been over for like 25 years. And the reality is his games are like he broke through the other night and he made, took 9 threes I think. And his jumper was on again today. And he, when made that step back over Jaylen Williams on the left wing, I almost fell outta my goddamn chair. It's always gonna be a mix and that's okay. And he's, Defensively, there are just no words anymore for what this guy is doing. I mean, I, I said it with Goldsberry and I'm, I've wondered where this game ranks. 5 of Oklahoma City's 9 worst offensive games points per possession going into this game tonight were against, for the whole season, playoffs included, were against the Spurs.

Like it's just a weapon that no one has an answer to yet.

You know when you really noticed it, when he would come outta the game and SGA was like, When, when I let Murph out in the backyard, he just runs around. SJ was like, he's not out there. He, you could just see like the hopping and step. It's like, oh my God. Hey, look, that's what the rim looks like.

I, you led with it almost as a joke. I do think that Cornette block, if we're gonna talk about the Wemby on the bench minutes, I mean that was, if he finishes that fast break Hartenstein or passes it off to Wallace, 'cause it was kind of a 2-on-1, that makes it 97-93. Wemby's in foul trouble, crowd's going crazy. Instead it's a block and I can't remember who ends up scoring at the other end to make it 99-91. Just, it was a Castle, it was a Castle jumper that, yeah. And their, their transition defense the entire series was just balls to the wall. Oklahoma City just could not convert in transition as consistently because everything was contested. The rebounds were contested, like credit the Spurs. That's the kind of urgency it takes to beat a team like this 4 times. And like that Cornette, that Cornette block was, I maybe the moment of the entire game. I, I don't know, but it's up there.

Well, there were 2 moments when it felt like OKC was gonna make a run and that was one. So it's 97-92, 6:48 left. Wemby has to come out. And then there was that other one when it was, I don't, I'm gonna say it was like 2 minutes left. Wallace hit that second 3 and then San Antonio inbounded the ball. All this stuff's blending together and they just decided to run the, let's throw it to Wemby play.

Oh yeah. Dorr took it away.

Dorr took it and OKC just couldn't convert. But it felt like, oh my God, this would be the classic young team falling apart piece. But I listen, I really respect when somebody knows how to handle themselves with 5 fouls 'cause they brought him back a minute later. He came back with like over 5 minutes left and the announcers were talking about, and I agreed, like, I'm just going at him and trying to get that, that, uh, that 6th one. And there were a couple times it felt like they could have attacked him and, and they just didn't. So there were a couple things San Antonio did even in this game to try to, try to get him a little more open. A couple times they just put him in the corner and created space, basically left him on one side. And had him not really back down, but he was at least 18 feet where he can go toward the paint with his right hand. So maybe trying to think what stuff the Knicks will try to do against him. Now they, the Knicks have that Mitchell Robinson finger thing, I assume who's gonna play, but who knows.

They'll have Towns to throw at him who's a dumb foul waiting to happen all the time. Other than that, who are they gonna be able to, like OG would be the other one, I guess.

Anunoby guarded him quite a lot. I rewatched all the games this weekend to prep for—

Little Josh Hart maybe?

Uh, Josh didn't—

Second or no?

Josh didn't guard him much. Josh guarded Steph Castle. A lot. OG guarded him a lot, probably Towns and Anunoby and Robinson. And then there's like random guys who are in these games 'cause they're regular season games. Yeah. Like Huk Porti comes in and whatever. I think we'll see a little bit of, and, and that is where the Harrison Barnes swap out of the starting lineup for Champagny, who was absolutely nails. Wow. In this game tonight looms large because when the Knicks would play around like that and put Anunoby on Wemby Nyama, Harrison Barnes was the guy that they would be like, all right, Cat, just like stand in the corner with Harrison Barnes and that's safe for you. And that's not— that doesn't really exist anymore. But the Robinson, I just want to flag it now. I think he's a massive deal in this series because one of the other things I've come to believe watching Wemby is everyone searches for like, what's an answer? What's— is there an answer? Is there a player? And like I said, I don't think there is one. There's no individual player. I think shooting is an answer. And I do think an elite offensive rebounder, he's gonna, and that's it.

And lob catcher, someone that he's gotta think about, like if I try to block every shot and even I'm gonna miss some, am I gonna get, am I gonna get punished on the other end of it? Or is there a lob threat? And I think Mitchell Robinson, yeah, I mean obviously in the Vegas game he had like 1,000 offensive rebounds, right? I think that player type is a really important player type against the Spurs and like They then, if they don't have Mitchell Robinson full throttle, I think that's a bigger problem in this matchup than it would've been against the Thunder.

I wrote, anytime I watch a game like this, I always write down in the second quarter in bold the guys who I think I trust in the game. So for the Spurs, I had Wemby, Castle, Fox, Vassell, Harper, and Champagny. So it's 6 guys for them. And that was before the Keldon Johnson renaissance in the second half, right? They had 7 guys really show up in this game, not to mention Cornette, who had the biggest defensive play for OKC at that point.

By the way, I just want to point out, that's basically all 7 guys who played in the game. Every— the other 3 guys played 6 minutes, 3 minutes, and 3 minutes.

I felt great about all those guys. OKC, I had SGA, McCain, Caruso, and then I had Iheart? and JWill? And those were the only 5 guys I had for OKC. Now I didn't have Wallace down, and Wallace came on in the second. He didn't really play as much in the first half. And Wallace should have been on there. Maybe I forgot to write him down. But, but it was interesting. I didn't have Chet and I didn't have Keldon Johnson. And Keldon Johnson, who I thought really wasn't good this series, but then in the, in the second half, he had some big offensive rebounds. Hit a couple big threes that I, there were some, a couple no-no-yes threes and had the right kind of energy, right kind of energy. Whereas like from, from the OKC standpoint, like Dort was that guy for them last year. He would give them energy with defense, with, you know, just like kind of veteran stuff. And he just wasn't, I didn't feel like he was the same in this playoffs.

Look, I think it's not second guessing. I, I, I, I, and certainly I was not alone, said after game 6, like, I don't think you can start Dort and Holmgren and Hardenstein again in Game 7 because you're just getting boat raced at the beginning of every game.

Would you have started Harper and Baylor and Baylor-Scharman?

I, again, I've said after that game, I don't know, like we always say, chess, not checkers. I'm not sure what Mazzullo was playing. I think he was playing boggle that night and neither, neither chess nor checkers.

Had to have been some boggle.

I just couldn't believe he started that lineup again. To his credit, he pulled Dort real fast and put Caruso in and the damage was not as severe. As it could have been. But the, like, every time the Thunder got close, there were two times the Thunder took the lead, and when they took the lead, it felt like they had gotten to the top of the mountain and boy, what a relief. And just instantaneously the Spurs would go on like a 9-0 run to say like, no, no, we're gonna retake control of the game. The first one is at the end of the first half when they finished on a 7-0 run, right, right after the Thunder took the lead. And I think there was another time in the second half and just like, That's so impressive to take that punch, to have the crowd going like that, 4-point lead, 3-point lead, whatever it was, and just instantaneously like, oh, an 11-0 run just happened. And it's not just they're, they're ahead again, they're in control of the game again and they gotta fight back again from 7, 8, 9 down. It just like sensational responses by the Spurs.

Fox especially, I thought had a couple big boy moments right when the momentum felt like it was shifting against him and he had some old school Did he win Clutch Player of the Year? He might have.

I don't know.

Finished second. He was like—

He did. No, he did. I think it was the beam team year, which was the first year they had the award.

I don't have my Clutch Player of the Year by year thing framed yet, so I'm not able to look at it. But it was the old school. Fox ended with 15-5. He had 3 steals. And I thought he did an okay job anytime he was on SGA too. Like when, you know, I don't even really know who OKC was trying to switch SGA onto because it felt like every single guy was at least you know, passable with Wemby behind them. There wasn't like a, like a black hole type person. If we'd gone to the next series, it would've been Brunson.

It, it ends up not mattering because it doesn't matter of, of the guy that's, that's behind him, like you said.

Yeah. So Champagny hit 6 threes and it was interesting. They didn't close with Vassell. He was on the bench, I felt like for most of, most of the end because they were playing Harper, who we have to talk about. Listen, man, I, I've talked about it before. So have you. 20-year-old point guards doing this on this stage on the road is unheard of. This is, yeah, I'm trying not to use the word generational, but we're talking 1980 Magic Johnson at age 20 in the Finals. And we're talking Derrick Rose in that Bulls-Celtics playoff series. 20-year-old point guards are a mess. They're like, they're, they're like freshmen in high school. Just trying to remember what their locker combination is and just trying to survive the day and remember where the classrooms are. They're not supposed to be running the offense. He had that one when he— we backed down. I can't remember who it was. He backed him down, did the footwork thing and kind of stopped. I think traveled, but it felt like it might've been a travel, but somehow ended up pulling. But I just— we're going to have 15 years of that. I thought that was such an important game for him because now, you know, the Knicks, that atmosphere is gonna be even crazier.

It's the Finals, the spotlight's a little bigger, but I think they know with him, he seemed healthy to me too the last 2 games, which is the big thing. Yeah.

Bounce back. His bounce is back, his power around the rim is back.

And he, he tried to do that crazy dunk too.

Yeah.

In the 4th quarter, which was probably a mistake, but he was like, I'm going for it.

Fuck it.

Which was that whole team. Yeah.

I mean, they killed some clock before, but again, I, I was surprised that he just went for it, but I'm also not because he thinks he's gonna pull it off. And imagine if you do, you just, I think Chet Holmgren would've just broken into like 10,000 pieces and that would've been the end of him. And like, I don't know what you, I just don't know what would've happened.

Poor Chet. This is really gonna be, gonna be a tough one for him. So Harper, Castle, Fox together. This was the dream when you get Fox, when it's like, we'll have these 3 guys, sometimes we'll even be able to play them together. This will ease Harper into this, to Fox on a bigger stage, on a better team. Fox is in Sacramento and, and would you call them in our over-under pod the Hindenburg of the NBA?

I said they were, I said they were, they were heading for a Hindenburg-level season. By the way, we have a De'Aaron Fox, Mike Brown, uh, we got off the Hindenburg reunion coming up in the finals.

We have a reunion for them. But Fox gets out of there, um, the ringers, Rich Paul smartly puts him on Wemby's team, which was I think a good move. And, uh, and this couldn't have worked out better. I mean, he— you guess where else he could be? On Sacramento with Russell Westbrook and DeRozan, and, uh, waiting to see who they pick, who they're gonna— how they're gonna fuck up the 7th pick. So you have that. Castle was, you know, I thought he was incredible the whole series for his— he's 21, it's not like he's 10 years older than Harper. Uh, the defense, when he had the 4 fouls, I was nervous for them because it's like, I don't know if you can survive if he is out of the game that long. I don't know. What has he become? What is, what is Castle in 5 years for you? Who is he?

I mean, an all-star for sure. A multi-time all-star.

Who's the doppelganger? Who, like, who is it?

I mean, you have to think who's a big physical guard who, who gets by with brute force and passing creativity around it. And by that time is probably a more reliable jump shooter than he is now. Although he shot the 3 well in the playoffs. Like, I don't, I'm trying to even think of who, plays with the raw power and ferocity that he has. He plays with a hatred of the guy in front of him. Like, I just want to beat the shit out of you and go up right in your face.

Yeah, he was tired of Caruso after 7 games. I think he had enough of him. I don't know.

I don't know who he is. No one is coming to my mind as a great guard wing doppelgänger for him.

It's somebody that definitely belonged in a different era and decade. I think he would've been really happy in 2003 or 2004 being in like those Pacers-Pistons series. But yeah, I don't, I don't really know even who to compare him to.

So the, like a, like a meaner, is he taller than Dwyane Wade? Like a meaner, more aggressive, more like powerful Dwyane Wade? I don't know.

It's like a Dwyane Wade crossed with Alvin Robertson. I'm gonna go back to the '80s.

Sure.

Alvin Robertson. So anyway, you have that, you have this Cornette signing that they do that was really smart. They played the Celtics perfectly. And then Cornette, every time Wemby comes out, they lose the Cornette minutes. And at some point, I think I had a couple people in my life who like the Spurs who were like, what's up with this Cornette? What a stiff. I'm like, he's not a stiff. Cornette's, a good backup. This is just for whatever reason, can't get it going this series. And then finally was able to hold the fort a little tonight. But what's interesting about them going forward, they have the Wemby extension this summer regardless, but they could still kind of dabble and make this team better. I don't even know what you would do because you always want to base this stuff on who do we have in a Game 7 that we trust. And we just went through it. I, I have 7 guys I like.

Yeah, they have small windows to do small to medium things. The big things are over. I looked at it a little bit too, and I, I didn't think too deeply about it 'cause the series was still going on there. It's not nearly as like financially dire as what's about to hit the Thunder.

No. And well, and they, and they have the Carter Bryant piece too. Like if he emerges, Kelton Johnson expires next year, but if Carter Bryant becomes that perfect, like defensive, physical banger who can also hit threes and play next to Wemby, that's kind of what they need.

So, well, and the, the, the, the Keldon Johnson one is a big one because if they end up having to keep him at what a fair rate would be for a guy who just won 6th Man of the Year, it get— and they love him and maybe they will, but if they keep him, they're gonna— I think they should probably want to resign, extend or resign Champagny. They have a team option on him next year for nothing, for $3 million. They get pretty expensive if they keep everybody together, but again, they have windows now. And by the way, we should— we always do this thing where we We, the collective we, everybody points out when a team like the Rockets were the first team that we talked about like this. The Pistons have gotten a little flack for like, well, they had all these trade assets and they did nothing at the trade deadline and look how it came back to haunt them in the playoffs. The Spurs did nothing at the trade deadline and they have a lot of assets and everyone, I think, thought they were gonna do something at the trade deadline and they didn't and they're in the finals.

So sometimes it goes the other way too.

I was okay with them. Because I felt like it was probably a year ahead of schedule. They needed to taste their own blood in the playoffs. As it turned out, they didn't.

No, they just, they're drinking everybody else's blood.

But yeah, it's just like, let's take a year and see what we have because that's like what Sam Presti would've done, for instance. But as it turned out, it turned out to be an incredible move. And they have a bunch of picks too. Like they're gonna be able to have some maneuverability. So how many Knicks fans in your life were texting you over the last 48 hours asking you who they should be rooting for in this game?

Oh, just thousands.

Because I had every single Knicks fan I knew was like, what do you think? Who, who should I root for? And I'm like, if I'm you, I don't want to play Wemby in the finals. That's who I would root for.

So it's funny, I said this with Goldsberry, like, I just think you just have to say I don't care because the easy answer is like the, the answer they default to is the Spurs because, oh, we beat the Spurs. You know, twice and including in the Cup and like we looked pretty comfortable against them. We killed them at home in March and the Thunder, the Thunder. I'm like, I just don't, the Spurs have risen to the level where there's just no great answer here. They're both bad answers. But if Jalen Williams is hurt and AJ Mitchell is hurt, I think the Thunder might actually be the better answer because I don't want any, I don't want any part of these guys, but they're just, they're, they're just excited. And I honestly, like weirdly, a lot of them were, a lot of my Knicks fans, friends and acquaintances and people I run into were rooting for the Spurs regardless because they're just fascinated with Wemby and they have, a lot of people really just have bought into even casual fans that bought into like the flopping with Oklahoma City drives me crazy and I just don't like the way they play.

Like Knicks fans were, they're, they're just like, you know what, let's, let's have some fun with Wemby. It'll be, it'll be fun at the very least.

I am delighted that we don't have to talk about flopping anymore. Thank God. Thank God that's over for content. And the most fun possible series was Nick Spurs, even though the basketball historian side of me was like, man, OKC going through wars to try to win 2 straight titles, like that would be really meaningful. That would put them on this whole other, whole other level. But Nick Spurs is the most fun series. And if you're the league, Oh my God. This is like the, this is the all-time wet, the only other wet dream. If you're talking wet dream finals, it's this one. It's 2016 LeBron rematch against the 73-win Warriors coming off the Klay Thompson OKC game. It's the 2010 Lakers-Celtics rematch, right? Those are the 3 wet dream finals for the league. And this might be number 1. Honestly, outta everything we mentioned, because you have the revival of the Knicks, you have 53 years and generations of fans who've been waiting for this forever, and you have Wemby, your next guy, the guy who's ready to replace LeBron and Curry as, as the guy in the league already here. It's, it's like what we had in 2007, except the rest of his team is actually good when it was Spurs-Cavs.

And it's like LeBron's here. Yeah. But he's, playing with guys that have no chance against this Spurs team. This is different. Like, Wemby could actually win it. And I feel, I feel like we have some history with Wemby too now. And I think the Olympics was really important with that. We've, even though he's young and he hasn't been around and he missed half of last season, I still feel like I've seen him in some basketball games. Like, he doesn't feel like a shiny new car to me. He can't to you, right? We've been watching him for a few years now.

We've been talking about him as arguably the best player in the league for 5 months now. Like, he's here, he's been in big games. The, the international stuff was big and, uh, yeah. And this is, you know, um, another Finals without any of the sort of older generation players that have carried the league for a long time. And it's the first, I think, well, I mean, depending on what you, how you perceive of Shea or whatever, but obviously there is a guy like everyone, everyone is fascinated by Wembenyama. People who have watched 2 basketball games the entire year and kind of half watched them while drinking in the suite somewhere at MSG. Like, can't wait to watch this guy play on a big stage.

He did a thing today in the fourth quarter, man. It was, there were, it was like halfway through the fourth quarter, Dylan Harper, maybe even like 4 minutes left. Dylan Harper ended up with the ball and he kind of lost it around the foul line. And all of a sudden there's a fast break and the the— okay, so he had a 2-on-1 and they ended up throwing into the left corner to McCain, and Wemby was hustling back and he's on like the 3-point line, but somehow challenged the shot. And he did like that crazy Wemby, like Freddy Krueger movie does, and he almost blocked it. And if he had blocked it, that would've been the greatest block I've ever seen.

If he— if the— if I had had time, I would've gone back and slowed it down because he's running and you know he is gonna jump at it. And you're just thinking he's so big that he's just— Jared McCain is at least going to know that he's coming, but probably also think he can't actually get to it. But he's in my head a little bit like, did he actually almost like get it every round?

He almost had it. It seemed like he did from the camera.

And that's why Tariko on the call, God bless him, was like, oh, Wemby did that Cornett contest. And I'm like, oh, if only Luke Cornett could do a Cornett contest like that. That was, that was, That was not the Cornet contest. That was something altogether different. I get where you're going. He started from very far away, but that was not the Cornet contest.

FanDuel has the finals line for us. Okay.

You saw it? You looked at it?

I saw it. It was not what I would've guessed. I'll tell you what I would've guessed after, but what is your guess?

Spurs. Spurs. Very Spurs. Very slight favorites. Like what is the proper terminology? Like -110 or something like that.

Like minus, say like minus 125, minus 130 range as slight favorites. Yeah. Yeah. So I would've said Spurs minus 150 and it's Spurs minus 205. Ooh. 2 to 1 favorites. Very similar to the Boston-Dallas finals line. If you wanna do Spurs sweep, that's plus 730. If you wanna do Nixon 4, Nixon 5, that's 16 to 1 or 12 to 1. If you want to do the greatest night of basically everyone's life that we know from New York, Knicks win in 6, +480.

Look, if the Knicks win in 6, shut down New York City. I'm either sleeping in Madison Square Garden. Yeah.

Or you're not getting home.

I'm doing a live podcast from the street, just drinking with crazy people. And you may never see me again. Those are the only, those are the only two options.

Not sure we see really anybody again. I don't know what happens. I mean, that will be the highest priced basketball ticket of all time. It will be in the running for highest priced sports ticket of all time.

Don't you, if, if assuming we get it, let's assume we knock on wood that we have a Game 6 and maybe a Game 7 in these finals.

I'm, I'm supposed to go through, I can't go live after Game 2 cuz my son is graduating high school. Big moment. Last time I skipped a game for his graduation was the Curry game, uh, Curry game 4, Boston-Gold State, when he graduated the, which you have stated, 8th grade, which you have stated was probably good for your emotional health to not be at the game despite its historic significance. I felt like whatever I did, they were gonna lose, but I, I'm glad I didn't go. I missed the greatest game of Steph Curry's career, but my son obviously means more as he does for this high school graduation. But it's just, it almost guarantees game 2 is gonna be good.

I'm not saying I have those powers, but It's good for, it's good for Ben Simmons that he's, that he's stayed above NBA players that you don't really know in the Bill Simmons Love Power rankings, that he's sustained in the, in these, these intervening 4 years that he hasn't fallen off at all.

Teenage Ben Simmons and, and stayed ahead of the other Ben Simmons who is now a professional fisherman. That was another thing I was worried he was gonna be like, what if Ben Simmons had been Wembenyama, like been the biggest star in the league? Must've been the same name.

Did Inside the NBA work Ben Simmons into the Sixers Gone Fishing graphic? They must have, right? Like if, if, if they didn't, I like, what a missed opportunity. He could be on another boat just fishing randomly. Like not even, not even on the Sixers boat. He's just on a boat nearby.

Just, yeah, it's like in a, in a boat in the back. Yeah. You don't have to say your Finals pick, but are you leaning, I'll save it for your podcast, the Zach Lowe Show. A great podcast.

Yeah. We're going to record.

Are you leaning longer series or shorter?

Longer. Longer. I haven't, I haven't made up my mind on who I'm going to pick to win, but I will say I think the line, I would not favor the Spurs by as much as Vegas is favoring Spurs off the bat. I think this Knicks thing is real. Like, I think it's legit. I don't care what the level of competition is, like, to do this for this long and hit, and you just know, like, I know what my eyes saw, how they are playing. But the Mitchell Robinson thing is a big, a big X factor.

The other X factor is the, the Spurs probably just feel like they won the title even though they have another team waiting. But that was such a, to come back 3-2, to do that on the road, it's about as emotional of a just getting to the Finals game. I'm trying to think who would've had a more emotional, we just won the Conference Finals win in the recent history of the NBA. 'Cause more normally it's more veteran teams, right? I guess OKC beating San Antonio in 2012, but even that wasn't a Game 7.

Oh, but we're picking like winners, like they had to have won.

I'm just saying winning the conference finals, being that emotional to just win a conference finals. Miami beating Boston in 2012 was a good one. They were home.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's pretty rare to have like, I, I remember going back to the '90s cuz I wrote down, it's funny, I, I went through all the Game 7s and Conference Finals cuz, what was rare about the thing today, there was every time it's under 200 points. Like for, basically before 1993, every game has been under 200 points except for 2002 Lakers-Kings overtime was 106-102. So usually they're rock fights. And then for the most part, the home team's always won until recently. And that was the 5th one in a row that the road team has won, which is nuts. The home team's—

Conference finals, game 7.

Conference finals, game 7 specifically. But I'm looking at the list of most emotional ones. I guess LeBron beating Boston by himself in 2018 is up there. That was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. He played all 48. I know he'd won a couple titles already, but the emotion of just dragging that team that he had all the way, 3 series, that was pretty nuts.

That was the only emotional Eastern Conference triumph for that LeBron 2.0 in Cleveland. 'Cause the other ones, I'm not even sure that they were like, yeah, they realized what round they were in and someone was just told, well, no, you actually are in the finals now. You get to play the West team. You just beat all the East teams again.

'94 Knicks over Indiana was one. And then Barkley over Seattle in '93 was another one. And then the most famous one for me was the Celtics-Sixers one in '81 when everyone charged the court. And you know, that's still, I think, the greatest playoff series of all time.

The Stockton shot in Houston.

Oh, that's a great one.

That's a good one.

'97.

Yeah.

The Matt Maloney team. That's a really good one. But I wonder how much they have left in the tank. Wemby has never played this many minutes. For this kind of a stretch, they've been really, really, really careful with him. Almost like a pitcher not throwing more than like 5, 6 innings. But he, he was 40, 40 minutes or around there for about a month. So we'll see what happens. We'll see what they have left in the tank. Let's talk about what happens with OKC. Okay. I always like to play what do you do with you? So we talked about the safest thing to do is just be like, look man, we won the title last year. We had a big bullseye on us all year. It was the first time we became the villains. The flopping thing became a huge storyline constantly. People just didn't like us. That's always a weird thing to deal with for the first time. And then we had some bad luck in the playoffs. We went against a guy who's the best, the best player the league's had since LeBron and Curry from a ceiling standpoint, and a team that just took it from us.

And we were banged up and injured, and let's not overreact. That would be the, that would be the safe, smart move. I don't think they're going to do that.

Okay. What do you think they're going to do?

I think you have to start getting creative with some of these picks. Because the thing that they have is they can go $0.130, $0.140 on the dollar in a trade. And you're stockpiling all these picks. Now, they just changed with the lottery reform. Those picks might actually be even worth a little bit more than maybe they used to be, but I'm just not wasting this SGA window when he's this good. You know, when he's, this is 4 years in a row now where he's been one of the 1 to 4 best players in the league. And you just never know when that window's gonna end. So I would, I would try to get at least a little creative. What do they need? What's your, what's your all-time fixer? Just improve the Chet spot. What would be your move?

I mean, but how am I improving the Chet spot?

Giannis?

I, again, I have to agree. Like, it's, it's, anything's possible when you have as many picks as Thunder have.

But DeAndre Ayton?

The restrictions of the second— I'm not going to let that slide. Um, the restrictions of the second apron are real and like make it very hard for the Thunder to make trades because they can't aggregate salaries, they can't take back a dime more. Like, there's a lot of restrictions that just make this mechanically much—

I think, are they, are they over the second apron now or it's next year? They're not over it now. Uh, I don't know if they're over it now, but I don't think they're over it yet.

Next year, when the calendar flips to July 1st, they're going to fly over it.

Um, so next year, just so people know, SGA is $40, but then he goes to $60, $65, $70, $75. Chet and J Dub both start 5-year, $239 million deals. They have Mitchell, who they re-signed at $3, $3, and $3, the best contract in the league. They have Caruso at $19.5.

It's unbelievable, that contract.

They have team options for Hartenstein. Hartenstein, $29.

They're under the aprons now.

So they have team options for Hartenstein for $29, Dort for $18. They have to deal with Kayson Wallace, um, whether you want to extend him or not, get him on a good deal. And then they have Joe and Wiggins and J-Will making a combined $30 million next year, plus Topic and Sorber making $9.

Sorpre is just a forgotten man, just a little, another mid-first round pick sitting there waiting to contribute next year.

That they might, if they are really under the crunch, might have to use picks to try to get rid of. They have the 12th and 17th pick this year. They have a Clippers swap next year. They have a top 5 Denver first. They have a Dallas swap in '28. They have a Denver top 5 protected first in '29, and then they have their own first.

What do we do? To mark the moment when that Clippers swap is exercised and the Paul George trade ends?

Do we have a, is there, is it like when, like the last episode of Seinfeld? I was thinking the last episode, like, do you have like a clip show leading into the final episode and then a, a party after?

I was thinking like the last episode of The Sopranos. Like every podcast just goes blank. It's, it's, it's when they're, when they're talking about it and people think we're all dead.

I got a mailbag question wondering if they should raise to the banners Paul George and Kawhi because of all the, all the good stuff that, that trade brought them. Why not? Not the worst idea.

So, so, all right, so get creative. I mean, they can do a, they can, I think the, I think the number one need is shooting more than anything else. And I don't know where they get it, but I, but yeah, they can bundle a bunch of picks and move up in the draft. They can bundle picks and players and try to get like a low price player. And the Chet one is, Chet one's tricky. And did Jalen Williams, I mean, this was more or less a lost season for Jalen Williams, like almost an entire like lost season. And now they're going to jump up and make All-NBA level money next year. And that is a proven big three on a championship team. We just saw it last year, but it, it, we just didn't see enough of it this year in terms of availability. And like this, this game tonight, I just don't think we can talk enough about what just happened to Chet Holmgren in this game. Like, that was a disaster. And I'm just fascinated where he goes from here personally.

Well, and we've also seen a couple times in NBA history where a guy had such a bad playoffs, it followed him, right? It definitely affected Dirk for a couple years. There's no question. Hey, one of the famous Celtics examples was Antoine Walker. When Kenny Martin just destroyed him. And I honestly felt like Antoine Walker was never the same after that second net series. Like Kenny Martin just took his lunch. And then we mentioned Drexler earlier as another one where Drexler was the second best player in the league in '92. The next year, I don't even think he made an All-NBA team. Like between that and kind of being a backup on the Dream Team and getting his ass kicked by Jordan every day. Like he just wasn't the same after that. So the question is, do you start to worry that that could be Chet? And then if I'm another team in the league, do I feel like this is my opportunity to try to go get Chet?

And what is Chet like? What if, what am I getting in Chet? Because am I getting a guy who is this another, you know, it's hard for these big guys where it's like we, we are doing it with Mobley and Chet, like, oh, they have this well-rounded game. Like maybe this is the year they're gonna, they're gonna develop into a 24-point-a-game score and the perimeter game's gonna come along and it's just, it's hard. And are you ever getting that guy? Or is he going to be 19 a game, second best defensive player in the league, reasonable 3-point shooter? I mean, the, the total vanishing of his 3-point shot is astonishing. Inexplicable.

I thought it was like one of the best things about his game.

And it's the thing that like, yeah, okay, sure, it's hard for you as a big man to— a skinny big man to dribble against wings that are guarding you and get to your spot. You're not an overpowering ball handler who's going to back people down. But that's the thing that should never go away, no matter what, no matter what or where or however, you're going to get 5 open threes a game by spotting. And they, it just, they, he got, I think he averaged less than 2 attempts per game and was completely invisible in the biggest game of, of the year.

27% from 3 in this series before tonight. What did he shoot tonight? Was it like 1 for 2 or something? I mean, did he even take a 3?

He didn't shoot. 0 for 0. So you can just—

Wow. So he finished 27%. Really high.

It's not the percentage. How many did he take? He took 11 threes in 7 games.

He passed up a couple too tonight that Jamal and Reggie called him out for right away. Like, wow, he's got it. Yeah. Like they were about as harsh on him during the broadcast as you hear announcers. The only one who will really do that is Van Gundy. But they were over and over again like, where's Chet? What's going on here? Why isn't he—

Jamal Crawford straight up was like, hello, hello. Right. Kenrich Williams attempted as many threes in the series as Chet did.

But the other thing is, shouldn't he have— I like, if I had told you he's gonna do zero threes in a Game 7 or 10, what number would you have believed? I would've believed the 10. 'Cause it was like, oh, they're finally like, this is their strategy now to pull Wemby out. They went smaller with Chet at center and he's just gonna shoot threes. But he just, I, as I said earlier, when he wasn't catching passes clean anymore, that's when you know he, you're in your head. Like when the ball handling pass catch stuff goes sideways.

So as long as they are— is assuming we're both right that they're under the second apron for like the, the next month, like, so let's just, let's just do it then. Do you think Chet plus— you're gonna have to throw in someone else good. Do you think— let's— I'll just make up—

oh, throw in some of their extra picks.

No, let's just go Chet plus Kayson Wallace plus Sorber plus 3 unprotected firsts and 3 swaps, including some of my swaps from other teams for Giannis. Do you think that's a good idea?

I think that's way too much. I, I wouldn't have Wallace in it. I would have less picks and less swaps because who am I competing?

Of course you would like to do that. Did they?

I know, but who am I competing against? Who am I competing against with for Giannis? I'm competing against Miami who I can top any offer they have. And now Orlando, because they, we didn't talk about this, but they hired Sean Sweeney, the San Antonio bench coach who spent what, 5 years with Giannis, 4 years with Giannis in Milwaukee. And I think makes, not the first person to make this point, but I think that entered them into the Giannis chat for trades. There's no question. So it's like, is Paolo on the table for Giannis? Is that even a possible trade? I don't know. You might be competing against that too.

Sure. I mean, again, they traded all their picks for Desmond Bane, so I'm not sure how many sweeteners they can throw in there.

But if I'm the Bucks and I could get rid of Giannis and just start over and have Paolo as the centerpiece, I'm doing that.

But the thing about the Thunder's offer, offers, whatever you want to say, compared to the Heat or whoever you want to throw out there, it's like, at least if I'm Milwaukee, and I trade him to Miami or I trade him to Golden State or something like, at least I'm getting picks where I have some expectation that I can bet against that team being successful. And some of these picks might end up being pretty valuable. Even with the lottery rules changing, if I trade him to Oklahoma City, even if I like fleece Oklahoma City, they're just not— there's no world, reasonable world that I can project where those picks are gonna be any good. And I'm probably not getting any of my own picks back, which is another little side plot. I still kind of like the Jalen Brown to Portland, Giannis to Boston, a bonanza of picks including Milwaukee's own picks that Portland's have coming back and young players going back to Milwaukee. I kind of like that trade construction. I have no idea how interested anybody actually is in doing it, but I don't mind it.

I keep saying it. I don't think Boston's in on Giannis.

I mean, I've not, certainly not sensed any great urgency from them to break up their team.

I think the, the reason to trade Jalen would be to not want to have the two $70 million guys in two years, or $65 or whatever it is. So to just flip him into somebody else who then is going to want an extension. That's the other thing with Giannis. To me, it feels like a very un-okcy move. Like, if we, if we're really going to, like, we've been with Presti now for 20 years. Presti's a huge chemistry guy. He's a huge put personalities together, certain types, be patient. Like even like with that first OKC run when that was when you and I started working together and the Harden trade was a big trade for them 'cause they couldn't afford him even though I feel like they could have. But then you look at the next couple years, they remember they, how hesitant they were to do anything. And then that last year when they thought KD might be leaving, they said that was when they went over the tax and they made some, some big swing trades and did like the Dion Waiters and a whole bunch of weird trades that they did. I think for the most part he's pretty careful.

The one time, the Perkins-Jeff Green trade, which feels like it was 700 years ago now, is a little bit similar to this Chet situation, I think, where it was like Jeff Green, KD, Harden, Westbrook. Those were like their 4 guys. Oh, they'll never trade. And then all of a sudden he did it. He traded Jeff Green because he needed a center. And that would be like, so we know he could be cutthroat if he needs to be.

I mean, Chet is now an all-star and an all-NBA level player. This is just a completely different conversation. I mean, there was also the Ibaka trade, which was, you know, like when they got Oladipo.

Yeah, it's a bigger situation because you're going to get a better player back than Kendrick Perkins.

But the other thing is like Giannis plus J Dub plus Shay, like the financial— I'm not solving any financial issues with that kind of trade. In fact, I'm just, I'm getting even more expensive.

I don't see, I don't see them doing and messing with, you know, now you got the brothers there and it doesn't feel like an OKC move. I would say the move would be, hey, we should have won and Jaylen Williams got hurt and you talk yourself into that world and you don't do anything. But the question is, is Shaq gonna do the Dirk Australia? We don't see him again for 4 months. 'Cause he's gonna take a ton of shit all week.

I mean, and, and look, you, I don't love piling on, that was, Dumbfounding. Like the whole series was dumbfounding. He had a couple moments in games 5 and 6 where he seemed to like crash the offensive glass, had a couple nice takes against Vassell, whatever. This was a, just a dumbfounding game. And what, in a game where they, the, the need for anyone to produce offensively other than Shay was never more glaring than in this game. And he just didn't do anything.

Wow. 32 minutes. 1 for 2. Like, you almost looks like it's like the James Harden 2021 Brooklyn Game 7 box score when he was on one leg.

Well, and you're right.

Oh yeah, he was hurt, but Chet was healthy for this game.

And the last, the last 2 things I remember him doing on offense, yet, you know, he had that nice block on Dylan Harper, were dropping, dropping an entry pass. Now he recovered it, but it was, it took the, it took the, he like cut into the middle of the floor, Shay passed it to him and he dropped it and it disrupted the whole rhythm. And then he tried to drive on Victor and you could hear the broadcast gearing up like, here he goes, he's going to— and then he just like fell over and was— and like I couldn't even see him on the floor. And like, those are my last two memories of Chet Holmgren on offense.

Yeah, it's— it does have shades of that Jordan Drexler thing, but more like it's almost like a boxing thing where the— or like what happened with Ronda Rousey when she was just, you know, beating everybody, making everyone submit, and then all of a sudden she fought Holly Holm, got knocked out and like lost her mojo and like kind of never got it back. She ended up losing again.

And that's why what I'm rooting for is comeback for vengeance because the end of Ronda Rousey was not that fight. It was the next fight against Amanda Nunes when she was—

Oh, look at Zach talking UFC. This is so exciting.

When it was very clear that she was broken as a fighter, would never be repaired.

I want— this is amazing.

Let's dig out of it. Come back. Like, everyone should be fucking pissed off. Like, no, we're not ready to pass the torch. We want to go at that guy. We want to do it together. I'm going to learn from this experience. This was my low point. Like, I'm coming back next year. Jalen Williams got to be so frustrated that he just lost an entire season, lost an entire Western Conference Finals other than a few minutes here and there where he didn't do much, and just like go back at him next year.

Glad you brought that up. What happened to Jalen Williams? He played— I have it in my notes— he played last year, he played over 3,000 minutes, right? Regular season and playoffs. This year he played 1,000. I know, I know he got hurt. I'm asking you, how do we end up with him playing 1,000 minutes this year where it wasn't like a knee injury or torn MCL or like This is just like a hamstring injury that he just kept having for 8 months. Like, what the fuck? Well, it happens.

I mean, we— it happens. And obviously everyone is a lot more cognizant of like, if we, if we push this too far, real bad stuff can happen.

Now, hamstring, Achilles, it's not the same, but they didn't push it far at all. I, I mean, if anything, they pushed— they unpushed it because they were just hoping he could be healthy for basically 2 rounds and he couldn't even do that.

He had a wrist injury too that messed up his, uh, his, his, his like, uh, pattern in the middle of the season. But yeah, I mean, look, it just— he got hurt, and every time he played, he would get hurt, and he would feel it. I mean, it wasn't subtle. He would come off the court grabbing his left hamstring like something isn't right there, and it was causing pain and discomfort, and it wasn't getting any better. And look, he played 37 minutes in Game 1, and I thought he played quite well. And that game, you've talked about a lot, like took took, like, there was punishment from that game. Like, there was, there were lasting effects that both teams had to deal with and overcome from that.

Yeah.

From that crazy double overtime.

But maybe that was their tactical mistake, was unleashing him too much in that game. 'Cause that game, it's weird 'cause this wasn't a great series, but it had an all-time game 1 and a really good game 7. And then everything in the middle, we're never gonna remember.

I mean, and I think like we have short memories and you and I were arguing about this a little bit before the series where you said Chet's the second best player on the Thunder. I was like, all due respect, like, I think we're about to be reminded of what Jalen Williams is. And then he, we were, and then he was gone. Like, that guy's fucking awesome. That guy showed out in the finals last year in a 7-game finals. He's a 6'8 monster wing who can do everything. Like, he's, he's, and like, isn't this as a neutral fan what you want? Like, get the gang back together and take a shot at, like, isn't that more fun than panic trade for Giannis and all this stuff?

It's not gonna be back together though.

Well, the core gang, like the main part of the gang, like the side characters might change, but like the main part of the gang, that's more fun to me as a neutral fan than panic trade for Giannis. We get way older, so different, we disrupt. Don't we want continuity?

Panic trade for Giannis.

Don't we want continuity? Don't we want to watch great teams, the core of great teams, not the top 8 or top 9, but like the core of great teams. Don't we want them to stay together and grow together? Isn't that what we want as fans? Don't we want them to come back and try to avenge this? That's what I want.

Guy by the name of Magic Johnson. You might've heard from him or might've heard of him. 1984 finals sucked. Got the nickname Tragic Johnson. Guess what? He was fine. That would be what I told Chet. I'd press, he's gonna take him out. They'll go get an ice cream cone in downtown Oklahoma City and he'll be like, have you ever heard of the Magic Johnson story? '84 finals, rock bottom, came back. Ended up winning 3 MVPs and 3 titles. That could be us, Chet.

No, he, he'll bust the press. He will bust out an obscure '80s hip-hop song, rap song where he's like, the, the, you're gonna like the lyrics to this. This is gonna speak to you.

Yeah. Just think about this later. Can you be Joe Dumars for a second? New Orleans general manager. And I'll be, I don't, I need another phone.

I need another phone.

I don't like this. I'm Sam Presti calling you.

Hello.

Hey, Joe. Um, I've got—

I already threw the phone to Troy Weaver. I already just threw my phone. I'm scared. I threw my phone to Troy.

Troy, I have, uh, I have Lou Dort's expiring. I'm gonna pick that up, the team option. I could pick up the Hartenstein team option for 29. I've got Aaron Wiggins to offer you. I have the 12th pick in the draft and the 17th pick What else do I need to just get you to trade Trey Murphy to me?

Sorry, the phone went— the phone— our landlines are out. There was a power outage. We know. So no, like, give me the package again. Hartenstein, 12.

I'll give you 12 and 17. I will give you Hartenstein and Dort on expire— on expirings, and I'll take back Jordan Poole in the Murphy trade. I'll take back Jordan Poole's expiring.

You'll take back Jordan Poole. Now I'm paying attention.

I will. So you give me Poole and Murphy, I'll give you 12 and 17. I'll give you the Hartenstein expiring, Nadorit expiring. I'll take Jordan Poole for a year as an expiring contract.

So now I have 8 centers on my team that I gotta figure out how to play together. Okay. Yeah.

Also, instead of Hartenstein out, you can keep Jordan Poole, throw in Wiggins instead.

I need another pick or a swap that's actually good.

How about Topic? Have you seen him? Do you see him in garbage time? I have any interest?

No. I mean, for me, New Orleans, no. I like— I— he's fine. I need to see more of him. I need another pick or a swap.

What if Dumars says back, is AJ Mitchell on the table?

That's what I would— that's, that's what I would say back. $3 million a year. I'm interested. How badly do you want to win the title? You got a very brief— you got a window with these 3 guys. How badly you want to win the title, Sam?

AJ Mitchell, 12th, maybe 17th pick and a contract. Yeah, there's something there. That's the, to me, that's the move because I'm tired. If I'm them, I'm tired of not quite having enough 3-point shooting. You know what I mean? I do.

And that's a very intriguing, that's a very intriguing trade.

Also, I have to trade for him before somebody else does, like the Celtics.

And the thing everyone's around the league, I don't know Troy Weaver at all, but the thing everyone around the league talks to Troy Weaver talks to, him says is like he's always got a guy or two in the draft that he really, really wants that he just loves and he has to have. We saw it with Queen, and maybe if there's somebody in that range that 12 or 17 helps him get, maybe in, in a year where they, you know, traded their pick, obviously maybe he'd be amenable.

McCain, I thought I loved how he played in the playoffs. I'm on the record, when Philly drafted McCain, I went nuts. That was my favorite. I watched him in LA. I've just always liked him. I think he proved that he's a guy that could be out there for them in a real way. And I wonder, with S.J.A., Mitchell, and McCain, um, could you turn one of those last two pieces into something with Murphy? Would be interesting. Um, a couple things before we go, just a couple, couple mailbag questions tied, basically tied to, um, tied to what we just watched.

Okay.

Um, I had a whole thing on the pod the other day about If they had flopping penalties like they used to with flagrant fouls.

I saw this.

Ben from DC said, you missed the best part about your flopping point system, the leaderboard. They'd publish the leaderboard every week and it would be like shameful to be like the number one in flop points. It would just be good. So good one for that.

I love that. I mean, look, look, teams do that with their like hustle boards, right? And they track it in practice, charges taken, hustle this, hustle that. And like if you're at the bottom of the hustle board, just like, you know, there, your, your name's at the bottom there. There you go.

It's like being in the bottom in the, in the barrel speed one in baseball. Like Caleb Durbin for the Red Sox. He's like in the bottom 5% of barrel speed. I love all these stats when you know, when you know you're not doing great. Tyler in Portland, I had a whole thing about all the losers from the Knicks-Cavs series and he wanted to know why Tom Thibodeau wasn't one of the biggest losers out of how this has played out with the Knicks. And he said the second biggest loser were the 7 remaining Tib Stans. I just thought that was really mean.

You just want to, you want to throw a spotlight on his cruelty? Just let's platform his cruelty.

Do you feel like Tibbs was a loser for how this has turned out for the Knicks, or did circumstance make this a better circumstance and health make this a better situation this year for the Knicks? If Tibbs is the coach, are the Knicks in the finals?

I don't think so.

I don't think so either.

But I also don't think that he's a loser. In the situation. I'm sure it eats at his craw a little bit, or whatever the right terminology is, to see this happen. But I also— I'm sure he's happy for a lot of the people that are there that were with him. I'm sure it's an interesting emotional time for him, but I don't consider him a loser. I would flip it around and say, how about Mike Brown is a winner? He did a great job with the Knicks. He played the long game.

I like it.

He pushed all the right buttons. He was a good hire, even though he was like their 17th choice apparently for the job.

I like that. So Clark from Rockford, Illinois wants to know, did all the negative national discourse on OKC's flopping tweak how SGA played a little bit over the course of this series in a negative way?

I actually thought a little bit about that because they're so buttoned up of like, well, the noise doesn't affect us. We don't care about the noise. We don't care about the officials. We don't care about the media. We don't care what's being said. They must be aware on some level, like the— I think the tipping point for me was, what was it? Underdog Sports made the fake Operation game. Yeah. And then they got a cease and desist letter from Shane's attorneys or something like that. Right. It was like, okay, so I wonder if this just is this shrieking noise is in his head at all. But then he goes out and shows out like that in Game 7. And I think the real thing, the thing that really bothered him was Victor Wembanyama. I, I actually don't, I probably don't think the flopping thing bothered him.

Sam from Austin said, on the Zach Lowe Show— good podcast— after Game 6, Zach talked about how the Spurs play a one-man zone with Wemby roaming the paint while everyone else is locked up man-to-man. Goldsberry asked if Zach had coined that term and encouraged him to take credit for it. Um, Sam thinks it should be called the Unboxing One. I, I do feel like it should have a name, but I was thinking maybe it's like the Alien Box. Or the box and alien, something like that.

I'll workshop some stuff in my head. Yeah, now that I know there's a groundswell of interest, there's a groundswell.

People like the box and one. I, by the way, have always loved the box and one. I've always loved variations of it. It's the two things I've never understood with basketball are why don't more teams play box and one, and why don't more teams press? Like, if I was OKC, every time Fox was out, I would have pressed. Because I think he— Castle, I like. I don't think he's a point guard. I think he was dying to give up the ball. And I don't know why they didn't just go 94 feet with him and Kayson Wallace.

I'm just so charmed by this that you— I mean, we're, we're, we're almost 30 years into this and you're just not giving up the full-court press. You just— I love the full-court press. You're enamored with like, someone's got to do it. Someone's got to really make it part of their— I mean, the Pacers kind of came closest for you last year of doing it.

The Celtics were doing a little this year, but But I thought OKC Wallace was playing 22, 23 minutes a game. And I don't know if, if he's out there, I'm like, hey, when you're out there, you're, you're just going 94 feet with everybody. They couldn't really do with Caruso.

I'm just gonna say this. I mean, yeah, there, if you want to implement these kind of tactics that may or may not work, but that are certainly unconventional, I think you're gonna have to suck it up and try to get the GM job for the Sacramento Kings because your owner is the guy who suggested that his coach play 4-on-5 defense and cherry-pick. And it's like, if that's available, you can go to the owner and say, here, in the job interview, here are some crazy things I want to try. You're going to think I'm crazy, but these are going to work. He's the right audience. Maybe this is your destiny.

You can say through 12, we are going to press for 5 minutes a half.

Maxime Renaud is going to be a full-court press center for us. We're doing it.

Vivek is a gullible guy because Vlade Divac looked him in the eye and said, we already have De'Aaron Fox. Luka's a big market superstar. He's not gonna want to stay here. And Vivek's like, you're probably right. Let's take Marvin Bagley. I sign off. So if he signed off on Marvin Bagley over Luka, I think he would sign off on my press idea.

This is, and then you, but then that you, you have carte blanche. You're, what's working against you is you did not play for the Sacramento Kings in the early 2000s. That would've been a big leg up for you in this, in this race.

But Alas, I would've started smoking again too. I got a bunch of emails today. Are you a soccer guy or no?

I'm ready for the World Cup. I don't know. I watched the final.

Well, do you follow what happened today?

I saw the penalty kicks. That's all.

So PSG won for the second year in a row and I got a million emails about this, about how Mbappé, Mbappé, Mbappé. I always screwed up my speech dyslexia.

He doesn't play for them anymore.

No, but he left and they've won 2 titles in a row and people are wondering—

Ewing theory?

If they— it's gone further than that. It's like, A, is this the best Ewing theory ever? And B, should we just change the name? We're never changing the name, but I can't think of a better Ewing theory than this of going all in on a guy, the guy leaves, and then they immediately win 2 titles without him when he's considered to be one of the best players in the world.

His first name is—

I have to co-sign it.

His first name is Killian, right?

Killian Mbappé.

I feel like that gives us, gives you a lot of pun potential for like, you don't even have to name Killian Theory. You have kill sitting there in the first, in the first part of his name, but he plays for Real Madrid. I assume they're good. Yeah. And he's still very good. Like, you know, so how does that—

not as, not as good as you'd think. Okay. I had a mailbag thing about a single shot swinging a series, how few times that's actually happened. Most famously, Ray Allen. And Joshua M wanted to know why didn't I mention John Starks, his miss in Game 6 in 1994. And a couple of people have wondered about this. Why doesn't that get better PR as a do or die? We could have won the title if that went in. Listen, I watched a lot of basketball back then. There was no way that John Stark shot was going in. I never thought it was going in. And, and by the way, what it was hotly contested by Hakeem Olajuwon, one of the best 15 players of all time.

I think there's a finger, I think there's a fingernail on that shot.

And there might've been a fingernail on it, but I just don't think that shot was going in. I know it's like you could say, oh, if he had made that, it would've been, I just, so I don't know.

The interesting thing about that shot is they're down 2, I believe, the Knicks. So that's a shot. Yeah. They, they, they're playing for the win, but Ewing has always contended I was rolling to the rim wide open at the nail and John had a passing lane to me and he didn't make it. And Starks has always said, there was just so little time on the clock that I wasn't sure I had time to pass it. You would have time to gather it and shoot it. But Ewing, it has always said, if he had passed it to me, we're going to overtime. I'm making a little 8-footer, we're going to overtime.

Well, he did miss that little 8-footer the next year. Jack from Chicago wants to know if we could see with these new tanking rules, a spite tank. Of somebody who— somebody else has their pick. Like the Nets. And like, the Nets could be an example, right? The Rockets control the Nets' 2027 pick, and the Nets could be like, fuck it, we don't care if we're one of the worst 3 teams. We don't even have our pick. How about we really get you?

Yeah, we really get you.

Watch this, Rockets. And they just run— play 5 point guards for the last 10 games of this season, and it's like Silver's worst nightmare. I didn't think of that. Do you think of that variable?

Yeah, it's come up. I've seen people talk about it as one of the potential ripple effects of this sweeping change that is— everyone is still trying to grapple with, including what they've done to the second round, which I did not even realize was in the proposal until—

what that was like, they had a couple shots and just got drunk, and they were like, wait, did we change the second round last night too? I don't remember, I passed out.

We can do anything once they've gone for this. We can do anything. How about we make the second round of like We could do, we could do anything we want.

Do, because there's some drafts where if you have 16 and 31, it's almost better than having like 6, right? Those deeper drafts where after the top 5, you don't even re— you just want to like throw darts against the dartboard. Rob H had another one on this. Would this, this weird new rule lead to somebody trying to accumulate a bunch of picks in one draft? To have the most possibilities, basically stack a draft. Like when, when Houston and Brooklyn made that weird trade when, when Brooklyn wanted their picks back and they did. And could we see something like that where, I don't know, the Spurs have a 29 pick, but they have 3 28 picks and they're like, you know what, let's trade our 29 pick for another 28 pick and try to have 4 of these.

Sure. Why not? I don't know. I mean, no one knows yet, but yeah, that's not a bad theory. I like that.

It could be weird. Yeah. The biggest question I've gotten over and over again is why would I want to be the play-in 10, the 10 seed trying to win 2 play-in games so I can get destroyed by San Antonio next year? Why wouldn't I want to actually, could this lead to higher level tanking? Basically we're like, eh, I don't, I don't want to be the 10 seed.

I don't— I think— I mean, there's two directions that flows in, right? There's the team that's 12th and is 4 games out of the 10th seed. And do they go all out to try to get it? I could see that team currently already. I could see that team under any rule system you have, having some thoughts, having some thoughts about it. But the other—

being responsible.

The other one where I'm 8th and I'm like, I'd really like to be 11th. I just can't see a team. Doing that to its fans, especially since a lot of the teams in that spot are younger teams who really, I think, could use and value the experience. And like, look, we saw Orlando get in. We've seen play-in teams have real success and get to the Finals, and in, in Miami and Orlando took Detroit to 7.

Like, you know, counter: Golden State, do they give a shit about March and April after Jimmy Butler's injury if they have this new lottery system in place? I don't think they do. I think they're saying Curry's fine. You, you're sitting out. Don't try to come back. We're going for it next year. We just lost our second best player. And then you're just trying to get in that 4 to 10 range, I guess.

But like they have Steph Curry and they've always been honorable by having Steph Curry on their team, even this year. And they gave you, I think your, maybe your favorite moment of maybe top 5 moment for you of this NBA season was that Warriors Clippers.

Oh yeah. Playing top 3. Top 3, easily.

You were so delighted.

Leo from Indianapolis wants to know if Halliburton doesn't tear his Achilles in Game 7 and then they win the best Finals of all time, what do the rest of the decade look like for the Pacers? Would it have been a fluke or would it have just kept going? So no Halliburton injury and they win the title. They win the title, they lose Turner. Is it just like a one-year fluke, like Leicester City basically in the Premier League?

I don't think you lose Turner if you win the title.

You think they wanted to keep Turner at that price?

I think if Halliburton's healthy and you win the title, you're— yeah, I mean, I think that one of the reasons they punted on Turner was next year is a loss for us anyway, we might as well just save some money. Halliburton's hurt, he's out for the year.

It's an underrated what-if.

Um, I just think as a fan, I still and will forever feel just so robbed of what that—

because we could have even had what we had. Yeah, even what we had tonight. Could have been at that level. John, did you see Shea, by the way, said before this game today it was the biggest game of his career? I did. It said— I saw you played in a Finals Game 7. How was that not— you're not ever playing in a bigger game than that.

But I wonder if he just, in his memory now, that game, even like that game is so weird to look back on. Like, I wonder if he can even conjure what it felt like before Tyrese Halliburton tore his Achilles, if he can even bring himself back to what that what the stakes were. 'Cause then that injury happens and it's like, I just felt like I was in a haze for 3 hours and not even paying attention to the game. 'Cause you knew what was gonna happen.

I mean, that's almost a good one to end on, but I am gonna end on this.

Okay.

Mason from Seattle sent this before Game 7. I feel the exact same way about AI as I do about Wimby. He's a foreign unknown technology that's arrived to dominate our world for the future, and there's nothing any of us can do about it. I felt genuine dread after watching Game 1, the same dread I feel when I think about how AI is eventually gonna take my job in a year. That's pretty dark. Um, but I just want, the only reason I wanted to mention that email is that's how astonishing this postseason has been that we have. —seemingly normal people sending mailbag emails comparing Wemby to the most generation-changing technology we've created since the internet.

I wish I could remember who it was who summed it up. I don't even think that's a dark version of a thought pattern that I don't think is fringe. Fringe. I think it was Harrison Feigen, who's a Lakers blogger, but I might be miscrediting somebody. After Game 1, somebody tweeted, Wemby is the first player I've ever watched in my life where I thought maybe they might actually have to change the rules for this guy. And I think that, like, that tweet, like, got some traction because I do think you watch it and you're like, is this a Wilt thing where, like, fundamental things about the— no more offensive goaltending are going to have to change? Like, I— because when in his best games, where it just feels so hopeless to ever do anything near the basket. I think those thoughts could reasonably, like, creep into your mind.

I love how much he cares. I love how he reacted after the game. We'll see how he reacts if they actually win the Finals. But the mountain that they climbed and, you know, the more we're talking and think about it, Euro KC, you have that semi-magical year last year, but the Game 7 was pretty weird. With the Halliburton injury. Like, it was just a weird way to win the title, but you're taking any title you get. But now you think they start out the way they did this year, and it's like, holy shit, oh my God, what are we going to do? And now the oh my God, what are we going to do has just shifted to Wemby and away from OKC, which to me is the most— it's even more stunning than San Antonio being in the finals, that the what are we going to do has just shifted teams in real time.

And I think the other 28 teams are still like, what are we going to do about OKC when they get healthy? And they, they make whatever moves they're going to make. And I think that's the ultimate compliment is these two teams are going to be staring at each other one way or another. And they're the ultimate measuring stick. And I think that's why one of the reasons why, if you want to psychoanalyze it, why Shay would call that the biggest game of his career, why Wemby would weep after it, because they both have so much respect for the other team that they know what the challenge is.

Yeah. Well, there's 4 guys in this draft that levitate above everybody else. The order has been in great debate. There's a chance Peterson could get to 4. As crazy as that sounds, I know you've been doing some stealth YouTube stuff. How are we talking about the draft?

Where are you going with this?

Because I wonder, like, with Chicago at 4, would OKC, would that be the power move that we talked about earlier? Like, what, the what would they do move. Maybe they just go all in and try to get one of those four guys. If I'm a team, try to keep, keep their nucleus in place.

I've done my, I've done my just enough to be dangerous YouTubing of those four guys. Yeah. If I'm Chicago, I'm just not even picking up the calls. I mean, you got to really do some crazy ass stuff to make me just not be psyched to take whichever one of the four falls into my lap.

But that could be, that's the opportunity for OKC though, to be like, we're overwhelming you with stupid offer. But I'm not even—

no, I don't know.

You hear those stories about when people don't want to leave their house and somebody knocks on their door and is like, I want to buy your house. It's not for sale. Here's the offer. And like, whoa, I guess I'm moving.

I mean, that would be the overwhelming thing is like, I got— I— they have some Denver swaps, the Clippers pick, a Clippers swap, their own picks. Like, they could throw 10 first-round picks at me. If I add them all up, are they as valuable as one of these 4 guys?

What if I put Chet on the table?

I just want to start over, man. Just let me start over. I think Benny the Bull just wants to start over.

I think you've talked me into it for Chicago, but also for OKC. Okay. I think the move is— deep breath. That San Antonio team is awesome. That's going to be the team we battle for the rest of the decade. And I just—

I guess if you offer me 10 first-round picks and Chet Holmgren, I guess I just have to do it. I mean, I don't know. But then if you're Oklahoma City, you're out. That's it. You gave everything for— well, you know what the—

you know what the example is? It's when Kawhi wanted to play with Paul George, right? Ironically. And what did Presti do? He said, well, I don't want to trade Paul George. And they're like, what about— how— what would it take to trade him? He's like, 4 firsts, 3 swaps, and then you have to give me SGA. And they're like, well, we can't give you SGA. And he's like, well, that's what it would take. And he just kind of ground them down. Maybe that's what one of these teams in the top 4 would have to do. They also got to figure out what Wallace is worth is the other thing, which we didn't talk about. Because you, do you do an extension with him or roll the dice with him as heading toward a restricted? What's his price? Is he like in the $25 million range? Probably, right? Yeah, I think you're— $20 to $25.

If you're his agent, you're at the very least throwing around like, you know, Christian Brown, Jalen Suggs type.

No, you're, you're mailing the Christian Brown contract to them.

Well, no, I'm like, this guy's what Christian Brown got.

Yeah, our guy's better than this guy. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah. Oh, I'll leave you with this. Why does Denver have to trade anybody to sign Peyton Watson? Fuck off. You have Jokic on your team, dickheads. Pay everybody. Clip this out, Denver fans. Clip this out. Kroenke's got a kajillion dollars. Just pay Peyton Watson. And keep everyone else on your team cuz your owner's super rich.

How much did Arsenal make? What are we doing? Just, just for making the Champions League final? Isn't there, they must, that must make gargantuan amounts. Yeah, definitely.

Although they own Arsenal, right? Yeah. Joker was there supporting Arsenal. Yeah. With at least one of his brothers. All right, Zach Lowe, what's your podcast schedule this week?

I think, uh, we are going to record Monday night. Uh, so I'm going to San Antonio. For Game 1 of the Finals at least. And flying Monday, Tuesday, there's gonna be some interesting podcast stuff happening that the NBA is organizing that I don't know if I should really say anything, but now I've said something. But so I don't know what, how that's gonna work exactly. But so I'm gonna do a traditional episode where I just do a deep dive Finals preview. I've watched my film, I've got my notes, I'm ready to go. I'm gonna make my pick so I don't come out either Monday night or overnight into Tuesday morning like usual, and they'll have some fun in San Antonio. Hopefully see a great game and hopefully we get a great finals. And boy, the Knicks and the Spurs. Woo.

All right, so I'm gonna be, I'm coming back with my pod on Tuesday. We have tomorrow Rewatchables, which usually runs Monday night. We are running it tomorrow night cuz I'm not gonna have my podcast cuz we did this and we did 2001: A Space Odyssey and it's one of the best episodes we've ever done. Without spoiling what happens, I would highly encourage people to check this one out. Zach Lowe, I don't know when I'm gonna see you again, 'cause this Finals schedule is weird, but I'll see you after one of these games. Yeah, we'll figure it out. This is like, I'll see you after probably Game 3, but we'll talk about it this week. Safe travels in San Antonio.

You won't see me after Game 6 in New York City. That's the one thing I can guarantee. I don't know what's—

Well, I'm gonna say goodbye to you before Game 6 in New York City in case that's the last time. Thanks to, uh, Gahal and Eduardo and Chris and everybody else at The Ringer. And I will see you, uh, on this feed on Tuesday. Thanks. Must be 21+ and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope Is Here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 1-800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. For Louisiana, call 1-877-770-7867.