Miami Upsets Boston & Bob Myers Exit

I'm Israel Gutierrez. I'm hosting a new podcast called Four Years of Heat. It takes you to Miami from 2010 to 2014 with LeBron James, Chris Bosch and Dwayne Wade, set the NBA ablaze. You know, having an opportunity to team up with the best trio to ever play the game of basketball. We'll take you inside those four monumental years with behind-the-scenes access and insight about one of the greatest teams ever assembled. Four years of heat on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. In a new series from the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio, this is the Fighty Pups. We're going out on the ice with the most violent hockey team ever. That was Gorilla warfare at the highest. Were they heroes or villains? You decide. I don't know what to say and I don't want to get shot. Welcome to the jungle. Listen to the Fighty Pups on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest tag team in history is back. And we're ready to make our grand entrance in season three of wrestling with Freddie. That's right, Freddie. We're bringing the heat with exclusive interviews, highlights and all the in-ring drama from the world of pro wrestling. Not only are we talking wrestling, but we'll be unleashing those fan favorite side quests. So strap up your boots, put on those headsets, and get ready for more episodes from your podcast wrestling tag team James on wrestling with Freddie. Listen to wrestling with Freddie on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to another episode of the crossover podcast time. We're on our knee joint today by my good friend, Sports Illustrated Senior Writer, New York Times best-selling author of the book, Blood in the Garden, Chris Herring, Chris. How are you, brother? I'm good, and I guess off-air I asked you, how are you doing? And you just laughed because what a absurd question given how we know how you're feeling. But I don't know, just to be polite, I'll ask a second time. How are you, Rohan? Chris, I know you don't watch, necessarily the same movies and television I do. I don't assume that you've seen the movie Avengers Infinity War. There's a scene at the end of that movie where the villain, I guess you could say, is walking around a farm, and he just sits contentedly on his porch as the sun sets as he has completed his mission. That's how I feel today. That is how I feel today. The world is a little brighter, the flowers smell a little bit more like flowers. Things taste better. That's how I feel today. Chris Herring, not because the Miami Heat became only the second eight seat ever to make the NBA finals. You really rocked with that succession ending, that's what it was. Not because Eric Spolisteros cemented his place as one of, if not the greatest coach in NBA history. Not because Jimmy Butler continues to be one of the greatest web forms of our time. But because we do not have to live in a world in which the Boston Celtics came back from a three-o deficit, because we never would have heard the end of it for the rest of our lives. They would have been playing the Derek White shot in montages for the next 50 years. We would have had to hear all about Celtics history, we would have had to hear all about Red R back, we would have had to hear all kinds of garbage for the next 50 years. The Miami Heat saved us from that. Chris, they saved us from the Boston Media Mafia meeting together in a back room to decide more awards for the next few seasons. So instead we get to hear, and it's no knock, because one way or the other, I was prepared to hear one side of it or the other, but the flip side of it is having a team with way less institutional history, basically all tied to Pat Riley about culture and grit and toughness, which we saw all of it in the series. So it's not to say it's false, but it's like we get to hear that and get to hear about how underappreciated Spowe is, and he has been, again, I'm not disputing any of this, we get to hear about Jimmy and how, I'm a Chicago person just from the standpoint of that's where I've lived, I don't care, randomized or anything like that, but multiple franchises have had an opportunity to lock him up and appreciate him the way it deserves to be. And, you know, and text messages that Jimmy sent to Coco Gough, and to everything else, like we get to hear all of it, and we get to hear about Udonas Haslam and his greatness. And you do not, you put some respect on three time chances. I have literally put some respect on every single person's name that I've mentioned. I'm not taking anything away, I'm just saying that you're so deep in the bag that, like, yes, we would have heard the boss's stuff, and I think that you were allergic to hearing the boss's stuff because you were a Miami person, but... No, no, no, no, no. Everyone, the only team we don't hear it from is Denver because they've never done this before. And mainly when they've done it, because they've never done it before. So it's like, the only fan bases we're not going to hear, Bragg and Osha's behavior from are the ones that haven't had enough to brag about. No, no, no, no. This isn't part of what it is. This isn't about bragging. First of all, what you called, quote unquote, institutional history with the Celtics, I called ancient history, okay? Because in the last 35 years, since the Miami Heat have been in existence, the Celtics have won a whopping one championship, okay? You know how many of their championship highlights are in black and white? So I don't want to hear about institutional history, okay? What have you done since the NBA actually turned into the NBA? I'm not that impressed. Second of all, that's not that. That's what I'm saying. I'm not taking that from them. I'm just saying that we're going to hear, and it's not, I don't even want to call it, hey, geography, because we're two in the middle of it. But it's, I mean, it's like you're going to hear full-throwed appreciation of either franchise. Had the Celtics won yesterday, we would have gotten a lot of that. And it would have been somewhat deserved, because they would have come back from 3-0, you know, but now, I don't know, it just doesn't have to be completely binary, is all I'm saying. No matter how it played out, the Heat had a lot to be proud of. Spolstra deserves every platitude and every single honor accolade he's going to get. He already has gotten plenty, but I still feel like there are people that didn't fully appreciate him. Jimmy, the same is true of shout out to Caleb Martin, like in all seriousness. Someone that maybe we weren't going to hear those things about, but that man is going to get paid at some point, and he's going to deserve every penny he gets, if only for this season and only for this playoff run. But yeah, there's a lot of that on any time you have franchises that really dislike each other as much as I would imagine those two do. Maybe some of it was taken away with any age left, but I feel like there's still plenty of... There's a rivalry that's a really great one at this point. For sure. I think we could say that. We're going to get to the game. I'll just end our little opening conversation by saying I'm very glad that our overrepresented in the media, Boston friends, will not be able to write the narrative about this series. Chris, we need to get to on this show today. We're going to preview the finals a little bit. We've got to talk about Bob Myers, leaving the Golden State Warriors at some point. But let's start with Heat Celtics Game 7. Listen, I was at Game 6 and that was the most shocking basketball game I've seen in my entire life. I don't think I'll go the rest of my life seeing a game end in the manner that Game 6 did. And after the game, walking around the arena, everyone was shell shocked. From the fans to the media, everyone was clearly needing to process what had happened. And I thought it was interesting. Eric Spolster, you know, kind of ran up to the podium after the game and said, we want to tip off Game 7 right now. We look at that's how we tamped up. We are to play. And you know that. Super important. Yeah. You know, I'm sure on some level he's trying to keep a brave face for his guys, Jimmy Butler, same thing. He said, I just need to play better and we'll win. If I play better, we're not even in this position. You know, I think part of it is their leadership styles. They don't want to show any weakness. But I think that clearly carried through because Chris, I'm shocked by how that Game 7 went out. Played out. I can come up here and say all these things about heat, culture, playoff, Jimmy, Spowe, blah, blah, blah. I thought the Celtics were going to win running away. I thought the Celtics were going to win running away in Game 7. I'm shocked by that outcome. Where do you even want to begin with this game? Because it was fascinating on so many levels. I mean, we can start there if you want to because I, as we talk about all this stuff, and even in the, you know, the Game 7, look ahead that I wrote before it took place, obviously. I harped on that point you just raised of how, and also this probably speaks to the way certain people are wired. Jimmy, Spowe, it would be really easy to just be painfully honest and brutally honest about how heart-wrenching a loss like that is. At home, an opportunity to go to the finals is an eight-seed in a series that you were dying to finish because you were up three-o. We all were shell-shocked. So imagine what that feeling is when you work for that team, when you play for that team. You know, the announcers, and I know you were there, but I imagine you saw the clips of it afterwards. The announcers thought that the shot was late. Derek White shot was late. And so only after they watched it again, they were like, oh, wow, that counts. This series is still going on. There were people in the stands. Obviously, you were there. You know this. That thought that the game had ended. People exiled. When smart shot rimmed out, you could feel it. You can feel an energy. It was like, oh, and then it was no. And I imagine the heat did the same thing, which is part of how Derek White got the shot off. And nobody really blocked out effectively. White got the tip. But even on the other side of the rim, Jason Tatum was prepared to do the same thing. So it literally, you know, maybe more than any other moment I can think of in sports history that I can remember off the top of my head at least. Even more so than the Derek Fisher play, which was a fundamentally different play. This was something where it's like, you have to play the full 48, not 47, 59.1. You have to play 59.9. You got to play the whole 48 minutes. And if you even lit up for a tenth of a second, you can get beat. So taking all of that into account, and just the wrenching nature of that, the Celtics had so much momentum from that standpoint. I also wonder if to some extent, the Celtics were emotionally spent in some ways. Because Derek White was damn near into years during the walkoff post-game press conference. Interview, I guess I would call it, not a press conference. And the interviewer kept alluding to the fact that he looked glassy-eyed. So just to get to that point, we see it all the time in games where teams work their way back from a 15 point deficit in the game. And then they just don't have enough gas to get over the finish line. So I think it was really, really telling in some ways that the first play of the game, Jason Tatum, Rolls is ankle, and does not look right. It's not an excuse. I don't have a reason to excuse it, because I don't have a rooting interest here. I don't care. But obviously he didn't look right. You could see him wincing. He clearly is coming out if that's a regular season game. I mean, there's no question in my mind. Yeah. And how often in regular season games, do we see people hurt themselves on the first play? I mean, it's part of the reason why I think even for the heat and we saw with Gabe Vincent, why you so desperately wanted to finish the series because anything can happen. That could have happened to Butler, and the series completely shifts after that. So Miami had every interest in ending the series as quickly as they could if they could have done it in game four they would have done that. So I mean, that shifted the tenor of it right off the bat. You're then watching Tatum closely just to see like, does he have it to give? And when he does it, frankly, then it's like, okay, what can Jalen Brown give us? And Jalen Brown was horrible handling the ball, even more so than he normally is. The most turnovers he's ever committed. And it was a game where, you know, the Celtics per a second straight game after watching them for two consecutive games shoot really well from outside. They just did not have it from outside again. When you take that, you take the fact that Tatum is not himself and Brown is fumbling the ball around and the heat are making their shots and not afraid of the moment, which I think, you know, to go full circle goes all the way back to Spowe and Jimmy and those moments where it would be so easy to just say we're really, really flustered here. This is a lot. We're going on the road. It's scary. I would probably say that because I'd be honest. And I feel like Spowe, if you watch his press conference multiple times, which I did, or at least his response when he first got to the podium, he sounds a little shell shocked initially and then channels it differently, midstream and saying like, if we could get out there right now, and he repeats himself, you could see him trying to will his team over the line just to give them that hope. Jimmy does the same thing when he does his press conference. And that's energy that like when I think about that and I think about some of the stuff that Pat Riley has said over the years or the way that Michael Jordan talked in his documentary, these guys are wired differently and you sometimes need someone to be that way, which will be an interesting challenge for the nuggets if they get in a tight series with the heat. Because we now see that the heat are wired a certain way through their leadership and maybe beyond that. The nuggets have been tested over the years from an emotional standpoint and we've watched Yokech lose his composure. We've watched the team lose their composure and make it or break it, you know, make or break moments and the playoffs, not when they've been this complete and this talented, but we've seen it. And so it'll be interesting like, I don't think any team wants a tight series with the heat. I don't think that the nuggets who have more talent and more of a complete roster want to test that either, despite the fact that they're favorite, despite the fact that they have, at this point I think the guy that you probably even, I have to acknowledge is probably the best player in the world at this moment and is playing like it. We saw so much about the tenor of what this team is. They know who they are. I'll readily admit that Tyler Hero coming back in the middle of this final series can potentially change stuff too. For better, potentially, also potentially for worse is someone that needs to get his rhythm back is someone that is not really a great defender. I mean, that's putting it mildly. So we'll see, but we saw so much about the heat's character even in the moments immediately after game six, which made us all think for a moment, they might be able to do this. Like, I might not be able to do it, you might not, but they might be able to and they did it and they deserve so much credit, all the narratives and all the heat culture stuff stripped away, just that moment and the importance of that moment and the fact that they were speaking to their own team more than they were speaking to the media in that moment and I think that they knocked it out of the park. It's very cool and I just have the utmost respect for Spulstra, even though he has become an expert at dodging questions and kind of reshaping them into saying what he wants to say. I think there are a few people like him in professional sports. He, I'll never forget the time he told me that he got too focused on winning and not focused enough on coaching, making that distinction is very rare, very rare to, you know, we hear all the time about people, they have a high IQ, do they also have a high EQ? Can, did the Spulstra talk about emotional stability? I don't, I don't know if there's anyone who has it more than him. I thought Brian Winhorse made a good point on Sports Center after the game last night. He said Spulstra is the most disciplined guy in the NBA. He's like Spul probably still weighs the same he did when he was a college point guard. He is so meticulous and his attention to detail is just incredible. And I thought, you know, getting into the game specifically last night, I mean, obviously Tatum's injury kind of clouded it for the Celtics. Something that I thought was, I'd been waiting for the heat to do it. Obviously they'd have success playing their own defense for stretches of the series. But there are times when they, you know, they played this line up with Martin Vincent Butler, Struse and Bam. Struse has done a fantastic job defensively. Over the course of the last two playoffs, he'll get beat. But not to the point where, you know, we talk about someone like Tyler Hero. Like Jalen Brown and Jason Taylor passed off the Struse switch multiple times in the series. He got stopped multiple times. He created turnovers multiple times. He was not someone who they could just attack over and over again like Kevin Lover, Cody Zeller. And last night it felt like Miami was kind of finally like, okay, we're done messing around. We're switching everything. And that's why you have someone like Bam at a buy, right? I think there's one guy in the NBA. Literally, I think there's one guy in the NBA. Bam can't guard effectively. It happens to be the player they're playing in the next round. Nicoli Oakage. But it felt like they were finally switching everything, finding success offensively. I mean, I'm selfish. I wrote about Caleb Martin yesterday. It's funny. I told Caleb Martin before game three. I was like, I think you're at worst the third best player on this team. And I think you should be starting. And he just kind of laughed. But blown behold, he's starting in game six and seven. And it feels like every time the Celtics are going on a run, Caleb Martin hits a pull up to. Caleb Martin hits a big three. I mean, he outplayed Jalen Brown in this series. There's really no way to say that. Yeah, that baseball jumper yesterday, where he came from the other side of the round. Right, turned around. What is going on? I mean, he just, the confidence that he played with, that he's been playing with. It's not just this series, it's not just yesterday's game, obviously. He's been playing that way for a minute. I mean, the heat have obviously been shorthanded. He's been really good all season. As you pointed out, you know, potentially being the third best guy on the team. Which I think is why so many of us are saying, obviously there's a huge opportunity for a payday there. But it's not like, it's not going to end up being like some random overpay. He looks like he, the sort of, the way he's been playing lately, looks like he's ready for a bigger role. And if he's potentially good enough to be a number two on like a decent team, he's essentially taken some of what you were asking hero to do. Maybe he's not completely initiating possessions. But the stuff that he's able to do, even just off the dribble when guys are expecting him to pull up or to catch and shoot, is some of the stuff that hero started with in his career. And quite frankly, flourished with in his career. But I mean, the ability to step up in that moment when you are missing your number two score essentially is just so massive in a series where you're playing against a great defense, at least a defense that should be great. And so you can't say enough about him and just how big he's been in the series. Also, you know, not something that I'm normally going to say is a let me go ahead and say it. Duncan Robinson had moments in this series. We're talking about Duncan Robinson, man. Again, game six. He got a couple stops on Jalen Brown. In game 70, he blocked a Jalen Brown three. I'm so happy for Duncan Robinson because people were saying, oh, he can't shoot outside the bubble. He stopped trying once he got his contract for him. He was out of the rotation this season. He's an out of the rotation. The only reason he got back in is because Tyler Hero got hurt in the first round. I don't think he was planning to use him in the playoffs. And there he is playing huge minutes in this series. It was a huge plus for the heat in this series. And showed not only that he's more than a shooter, all the different ways he could impact winning in the playoffs, the back cuts, his two-man game with Bam out of bio, his passing improved. You mentioned the defense. He had some really high profile defensive moments in this series. And especially after the game six he had, I was worried Duncan Robinson was going to be remembered from missing those two shots late in game six, those two open threes, when the team's not even in the game without him. He made the same number of field goals as Jimmy Butler in game six. He earned his redemption in game seven. We haven't talked much about Jimmy. I think at 27, 28, 7 and 6 with three steals. And that's like, you kind of just take those kind of stat lines for granted now from great players. Yeah. But hitting the pull up threes, just maintaining a control of the game. I thought Jimmy was a fantastic man. Shout it to the heat. We're obviously going to talk quite a bit about them. We're going to talk a little about the finals in a second. But real quick, before we do, I wrote about this for SI today, and I'm curious to your opinion. I feel like some people are already saying the Celtics need to break it up. They need to blow it up. Maybe fire the coach. You can't give Jalen Brown the Supermax extension. You mentioned the things Pat Riley has said over the years. I'm sure you remember well, Chris. The speech he gave in 2014, when the heat lost to this first. And he said, you have to have the guts. He's like team stay together. Listen, that speech is infamous. It didn't work. LeBron didn't return. Right. I think he's right. And I think it applies to where the Celtics are right now. The reason this loss hurts for the Celtics because the expectations are high. And the reason the expectations are high is because Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown have been ahead of schedule their entire careers. Since Jason Tatum entered the lead, the Bucks have made the conference finals twice and they've lost in the first round twice. Celtics have made the conference finals four times. They made the finals once. Their second and playoff wins since 2019. I don't know why you'd break a team up like this. They're going to get more bites at the Apple. Tatum and Brown probably aren't even in the prime of their careers yet. This is an unequivocal loss. Like this is bad. You were the number 2C going to 8C. The rival, the team that you beat last year. They should not have lost the series. But to me, the idea of breaking them up, even when you take into account, you know, CBA concerns, whatever, I think that's crazy. I mean, look, I've seen a lot of different stuff over the last, what has it been since they lost, not 24 hours, but, you know, people comparing even just Jordan and Pippin as far as how much success did they have at this age had they had by this point in their career. And essentially, they had not started winning their titles yet when you look at the age that Tatum and Brown are. And so, the idea that you leave them together, even after the losses to the pistons repeatedly, you have to watch them grow. You have to go through that pain of what it is to get to the mountaintop. It's very rare that teams just get there and do it. It basically doesn't happen for the most part. I think the difference here, and one more thing I'll add in that column of, like, leave them together, is Joe Missoula had a couple days before media day, you know, that he was told that he was going to get the job. I was thrown into an unprecedented, and listen, I regret because we kind of, I personally kind of killed him a little bit on one of the podcasts we did recently. And maybe I'm being a little bit hers under the moment, the fact that they pushed it to a game seven. But when you look at their totality of his season, taking over what he did and leading to the team of the conference finals, that's pretty successful. But anyway, continue. I mean, that, how many wins did they end up with this year? Whatever it was, 50-something, like, mid-50s, high-50s, whatever it was. They get all those wins. They finish as a top five team on both sides of the ball. Where their flaws absolutely, like, dude needs to just call timeouts more quickly. I don't think that it's as simple as saying, like, we only made this many threes. There are times where that's not the answer every single time. Even if it is the answer, maybe part of the answer, in addition to that, is also the idea that there need to be go-tos and fixes that. Can't believe I'm agreeing with Charles Barkley this often, but, like, there needs to be a plan B sometimes, of what else you're doing. And maybe it's Derek White, like we saw yesterday, that, like, you need to have some stuff going toward the basket that isn't just Jalen Brown putting his head down and trying to figure out how to avoid a turnover. You need to have a little bit more to that. It's part of why you got Malcolm Brockton, by the way. So, who has heard? I would imagine it. Right. I imagine there's going to be some changes. I don't know what they're going to be. I don't think it should be Jalen Brown, not being in a Celtic uniform. That's also Jalen Brown's decision. It's not just the Celtics. We could have a conversation about whether he would actually take the deal. It's a lot to turn down that much money. We are talking about money that, unless I'm mistaken, we're talking about closer to 300 million than we are 200. It's a lot of money that we're talking about for somebody like that over the course of the next five, six years, whatever. He's made it very clear that there are aspects that he was not happy with with regards to Boston. If you want to talk about the fan base, if you want to talk about the lack of trust that he had from the standpoint of how badly he's actually wanted there. I also applaud him for taking accountability for how poorly he played yesterday. Like, he's a very interesting individual. He's someone that I trusted the work. I think it's going to be there to continue to improve and not just rely on the fact that I'm in my prime. I'm going to get better naturally. I think that about him. That said, I'm also surprised he's taking this long for his ball handling to significantly, significantly improved to where this is a problem. So what I'll say is that to me, the natural fit here, the natural fix here is to give Missoula more time in a full-off season to actually prepare for this job to prepare to be back where they are, and then exceed where they've gotten. It's to give him more experience on his bench and more front-of-the-bench type guys, which they weren't able to get this year, and which they also had a brain drain from that standpoint. If Stautamire leaving, he may you doke, obviously not. Will Hardy. Will Hardy taking the job with the jazz. This is all stuff that I imagine Brad Stevens will help him with and coach him through and put out the money to go get guys from that standpoint. Now, that said, I would imagine that after this sort of failure to a team that was not as talented, I would also imagine that you might see some personnel shifts, whether it is smart. I don't think it'll be brown, but if brown makes a decision not to come back, then obviously it would be brown. What else is getting fixed? Altered. I'm not sure. I've got a lot of talent on this team where they could make a decision to go and a lot of different directions to try to get... I wouldn't even think it's depth. I would just think it's a better fitting piece, somehow, of maybe even a little bit more ball handling, even though it seems like they have a lot of that. So we'll see. There were times, fundamentally, where Al Hoerford really didn't show up the way we would expect him to. He's an older guy. He's a very good player, but he's an older guy. We have the whole Grant Williams question hovering, too, of whether you're going to bring him back, and whether some of his challenges this year were contract-related, even though he's still shot, damn near 40% and is a good defender. So we're going to see a lot of things like that are possibilities to really be altered here. Some might be really big picture. I don't think Joe Missoula should not be back. I think that would be very weird, particularly when you consider that he has the connection and he was handpicked by Brett Stevens to replace Eme Udoca when all this stuff happened on a very, very short schedule without time to really prep for a lot of this. I think he's allowed to be different from Eme Udoca. That's fine, but if the ways in which he's different hinder the team, and they do the same thing next year with a talent disparity where they have that much more talent than the team they're playing, then maybe he isn't back. But I don't think he would make sense to... I don't know what people were expecting. Like, ultimately, if they lost, and they very easily could have lost game seven last year, he had Jimmy made the three. So the fact that they lose this year in a game seven where they were down 3-0, I think you could have had the conversation about whether he should have gone if they got swept. They didn't. They took it to seven. And then lost in a game seven when Jason Tatum rolled his ankle in the first playing the game. Like, to me, that doesn't spell fire the coach. I'm not in a rush to do that if I'm Brett Stevens or with Grills Becker, what have you? So I expect that he'll be back, but I imagine that there will be at least one significant change to their rotation, whether it's smart, whether it's brown, and the idea that they're getting the signal that he doesn't want to come back, and they try to figure something out elsewhere, whether it's a sign-in trade or anything else. But it's a very interesting question. It's a team that should be in this conversation for years to come one way or the other, no matter what they choose to do. But everybody's got to come back with a little bit more. Tatum, I've seen this critique for a while. I was like, I don't know if that's what it is, but the more I see it, the more I think I agree. There are times where he looks like he's got an advantage and wants to get too cute with the ball, and just dribbles too much. Instead of firing away, I'm not sure what that is, a symptom of or why that happens. This is a team that when they're really humming, they're moving the ball and they make quick decisions. Tatum, of course, we know, we can take guys one-on-one. He doesn't have to, and there's times where it's like he's so determined to do that and so determined to kind of have it look a certain way aesthetically almost. And it's like, just go out and ball, just go play. Especially when you got the floor spread the way you do. You're making it more complicated for yourself to let guys load up on you the more you do the one-on-one stuff. We'll see what happens. I'm very curious to see it because this is a team that when it's all said and done, if they were to finish with two or three championships, it would be surprising because they've got that much talent. They've got guys that are in the prime of their career or that they should be entering that. So, you know, it's a matter then finding the exact combination they need, figuring out whether Missoula is the guy and the next two, three years should start to spell some of that out. Absolutely. I just, you mentioned that they should be here for a long time and I get that Brown has a decision to make. I'm just saying, if I'm the Celtics to make this simple, I offer him the Super Max. I'd be shocked if he turned it down and I think as long as you obtain him in Brown, you're in position to compete for a championship every year. Yes, obviously they should make some rotation changes. They've got to add, the players got to get better. Everyone has to be better, right? But that's what losses do. They motivate you. They am at a bio. Came back a different player this year because they lost to the Celtics last year. Eric Spulstra changed how the heat play offensively because they lost to the Celtics last year. This is to me part of the natural progression for teams. I think Boston, as long as they obtain him in Brown, are going to be in a position to compete, even with their flaws and even if we've seen their flaws, hurt them on the highest level. They're only at the highest level because of those two guys and how great they are. I think it would be very short-sighted to break them up because of this series or because they lost to Steph Curry in the finals. Guess what? So did LeBron James in multiple times. I mean, the one thing that I think is fair, I don't think it's totally off to at least take a deep breath before you hand over this money to Jalen Brown. It's not a talent question. It's more a question of this is going to eat up so much of our cap that we're going to, and if we don't win in the next year or two for whatever reason, if it's injuries, whatever else, I mean, I imagine you could trade that into something else, but it's just you're going to kind of lock down your roster and that's it. That's who you have at that point. It's just so much money and so much cap allocation to two people when you have other guys that make real money and will make real money over the next few years, that I think you have to be cognizant of it. I don't think it's like an automatic. Absolutely. We want them back. There's no questions asked. I understand thinking it through. It's the same reason I understood them thinking through and potentially weighing the possibly potentially trading Jalen Brown for Kevin Durant of like, who would you rather pay that kind of money to? And it's a fair question. I understand that Durant is always probably going to be a little bit banged up, nicked up. So I get it, but it's just a question of like, how much more do you see Brown progressing? And are there potentially better fits? Can Tatum handle more of a workload if it means that somebody else can handle the ball better and take care of the ball better? And I don't think there's an immediate answer and obvious answer to that question. The easiest thing to do would be to sign them and figure the rest of it out later, even at that money. Yes. The best thing would be like if he agrees to take a little bit less than that, which I don't imagine he would do. I could be off. Right. I don't imagine it's taking discounts. If he's already saying that he doesn't trust you. I mean, I, you know, I'll just say that I think, you know, looming over all this right is, you and I don't know how the CBA is going to play out over the next few years. If it's in fact normal for teams to be super two-guy top heavy, that just remains to be seen. I'd rather have the problem of paying two guys that have proven they can get me to the finals and conference finals almost every year than, you know, taking a chance on the number three pick or whatever the case may be. By the way, I'm not, I'm not moved by that. Yeah. Like, let me be really clear on that. Like, that's not what I would want to move him for. Like, to me, I don't even know who, who you'd be getting back, uh, pick-wise. Like, it's not, for me, it's not about picks as much as it's about what sort of ready-made talent do we have right now that just they've been in the wrong situation and, you know, and I remember this was a sexy conversation piece last year of like the Dame situation and, you know, could you do that? Okay, we could have that conversation if that's what it was going to be, but I don't imagine that that's what Portland saw. I think Portland would like want to trade the pick and hope that that's enough. Right. Jalen Brown at this point is probably closer to being moved for the number one pick in this draft and the number three. In my opinion, and I don't think that this first would do it. Number one, but number two, I think that he, like, if you're having a super max conversation with someone at that money, it's not for the number three pick, which likely will pan out and be a really good player, but we don't even know that. Uh, so I don't think you're moving him for that. Certainly when you're on the doorstep of the NBA Finals for a second straight here. But, uh, it'll be fascinating to see it play out. We already know the knocks that will come from the fan base and everybody else. If number one, he's been somewhat disgruntled about a situation there. And two, if he gets back to the stage and performs this way a third time, uh, in terms of the turnovers and everything else. Or if he just, if the team continues to falter and they do find themselves in a situation where they're essentially capped out and can't really improve the team many other ways than trading him, that's going to happen if this comes up again. But again, to your point, wouldn't you rather take the, let's just get there and then figure it out. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I just also don't think there's anything wrong with considering the options. I would do it quietly, uh, so that Jalen Brown's not in my face, you know, about like, oh, we always trying to trade me for Katie. But I do think that it's worth considering like, looking at it closely. That's all. I don't know what that means or what it leads to. You're just, you're just a guy on a podcast asking questions. That's it. I'm also hedging a little bit. But I think let's look. I think that there, it would be blasphemy to say, you have to break them up. I think we can all agree on that. I agree with your column from the standpoint of, this is still a young core. At least these two guys, but even the core generally is very, very young. You shouldn't be looking to do it. I think that you should at least have it in the back of your mind like, if he doesn't want to come back, what are our contingencies? And if he does want to come back, are we completely committed to doing it exactly this way at the Supermax? I think that those are fair questions to ask and to think about. That's all I'm saying. Listen, as someone who thinks they should bring them back, am I going to write Jalen Brown fake trades? You better believe it. Am I going to make them, am I going to make them extra annoying just for our buddy Michael the Pod Pena? Did you get that? You did right. You took a wall, man. You're guaranteed. Am I going to trade Jalen Brown for Michael Pena's favorite player, Tray Young? 1,000%. Pena and I made a truce during this series. And I told him thank God we made a truce. Sorry. I know. That was just like some stuff that Nakaez Duncan would have said. That's so true. That's all Pena after game six. I said thank God we made a truce because I would have been saying insane stuff when the heat went up 3-0. And obviously I was terrified after game six. So we've been very civil to each other and that will continue until I write my Jalen Brown fake trades column. In which case, my goal is to make Pena and the Boston Medium Mafia as angry as possible. Oh gosh. It's hilarious outcome. I'm Israel Gutierrez. I'm hosting a new podcast called Four Years of Heat. It takes you to Miami from 2010 to 2014. Will LeBron James, Chris Bosch and Dwayne Wade, set the NBA of the ways. You know, having an opportunity to team up with the best trio to ever play the game of basketball was amazing. We're going to give you stories you've never heard before. Inside those four monumental years with behind-the-scenes access and insight about one of the greatest teams ever assembled. We knew what was going on. The look on LeBron's face. I got this. Come revisit. A time NBA fans will never forget. With exclusive newly recorded interviews with Ray Allen, Dan Levittard, Rachel Nichols, and many more. Is that ball left my fingers? It just felt like it floated. That's the best. I'm Claire Crofton. And in my new podcast, The Fighty Pups. We're going out on the ice with the most violent hockey team ever. That was Gorilla Warfare. At its highest. The Dambry Trashers wanted to win at any cost. They kicked out! They kicked out! I've been one breaking loose here in Strascher Cap. I've been three-boned in his body. Literally throwing him like a rag doll. Going bananas! Here at the Dambry Ice Arena! They can't restrain him right now! So are they heroes or villains? You decide. I don't know what to say. And I don't want to get shot. There's the FBI side. There's my side. And somewhere in the middle is the truth. Listen to The Fighty Pups. Watch Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You and I are going to have a problem. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Welcome to the jungle. Hey there, wrestling fans. This is Freddie Prens Jr. And I'm excited to announce that Wrestling with Freddie is coming back for season three. Joining me once again is my awesome co-host, Jeff Dye. Together, we'll be highlighting the best matches of the week, giving you our expert opinions on the biggest fused and storylines and discussing all the latest developments in the world of pro wrestling. We're also bringing back our fan favorite, sod quests, and adding some more fun stuff along the way. And of course, we'll be joined by some amazing guests. So whether you're a long time fan or just getting into wrestling, we have you covered. So be sure to tune in every week, hit that subscribe button, and take that walk down the aisle with us for all the action and excitement in wrestling with Freddie. We can't wait to hear from you this season. Listen to Wrestling with Freddie, as part of the Michael Tudor podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to the NBA Finals briefly, only because I think we'll have more time to really dive into this series later. I know a lot of people are all redoing their heat and it gets film dives. I was not. I wanted this series to end. But now I have very little time to do so. Let me just ask you this one question I think this is going to be the crux of the series. And why I think Denver is going to win and why I'm picking the nuggets in five. If you were the Miami Heat, how would you guard the Joker Jamal two-man game? Oh. Can I just say it's going to be really interesting to watch them try to do it with his own? I mean, it's going to be really interesting just because first of all, just from the standpoint of what a zone does. And I understand the heat, their zone morphs and shifts and changes. They move BAM around and it's different. They can play it higher up so that threes are not an automatic part of the equation for whatever team you're playing against. That said, the ability, it still creates a challenging question from the standpoint that just like you can move BAM around, you can move Yokeuch around too. Yup. He's playing in so many different spots and I've always thought this, and I've been trying to put numbers to it and haven't been able to do it yet, which is why I haven't written on it directly. But it absolutely feels like the longer Yokeuch has the ball as a passer, the more screwed you are defensive. Because he's just using, he's biting his time to find somebody whether it's through a cut, help, and the idea that somebody pops open because you've helped off someone and Yokeuch is fundamentally calculating that. I mean, he literally is like, you've ever seen Terminator and robots and stuff like that where you see the inside of their brain and all the imagery that they see and it's like they've got a target, their eyes are targets basically, and they're zeroing in on someone. Yokeuch does that. You've seen those heat maps that they put on the screen sometimes of like the likelihood of a shot going in. Yokeuch has that in his head, and it's like, that's the way he plays the game. So from that standpoint, I really don't know what this defensive attack is going to look like in guarding those two. I couldn't imagine, I wouldn't be surprised if in Game 1, given the layoff that the nuggets have had and the fact that Miami has been playing as frequently as they have. If for a while, they have the nuggets looking out of sync. That won't surprise me. That's a kind of normal Game 1 thing anyway. I will be really afraid on a lot of different levels if the layoff did nothing to the nuggets, and they just look like they're humming. Because at that point, if they do that within Miami playing zone and playing a defensive and tripped teams up, certainly the Celtics, we saw it all series, we saw it every fourth quarter basically in those close games. If we see that and the nuggets look comfortable with it, look, I love Eric Spulstra as much as anybody who's not you basically. But I worry a little bit for Miami if it just looks easy for the nuggets right off the bat. I mean, nobody has had seemingly put any four players around him and he will still give you an incredible offense. And like, Yokech is comfortable playing at the free throw line. Something the zone does is it, like teams miss good looks because they're getting shots out of rhythm. They're getting shots in way they're not used to getting shots. The nuggets like to play that free-flowing style. They like to play chaotic. They like to play loose. Yokech at the free throw line. First of all, it's a shot he's comfortable taking. He'll take it over and over again if you really give it to him. Like, you might, you might not get as many Yokech post-ups if you play zone. But that's what makes him so good is there's so many ways for him to hurt you. And I thought in game seven, I mentioned this at the top. The heat's defense looked the best it looked all series I thought to get away with switching Jamal Murray and Yokech with Jimmy and Bam. But first of all, Bam already struggles with Yokech. As much respect as we all have for Jimmy Butler. Yokech will post him up and win that matchup the vast majority of the time. And beyond that, if you're asking Jimmy Butler to guard Jamal Murray, that's going to affect him offensively. You know the heat like to put guys like Gabe Vincent I just think Yokech is such a matchup problem for every team. But especially this heat team, I don't know how they begin to guard those two guys. And they don't have the you know the Lakers had the size where they could get away with putting Davis on Gordon and doubling. And I do think that's a worthwhile strategy even though Michael Malone was kind of making fun of it after the Ruyachimura game. They don't have someone who they could get away with on Yokech and let Bam go. You don't have to take the chance at least occasionally of letting somebody else beat you. Which we watched other teams try that by the way. I mean, literally we would watch teams kind of oscillate between okay, we're going to go after Yokech. Then Murray goes for 37. Okay, we're going to take away all the other options. Then Yokech has a, you know, what was it a couple rounds ago? I'd try to let Yokech go for 50. I know that sounds insane. But number one, he doesn't, he doesn't seem to really want to. I think he could be tiring for him because I just think if you let Jamal get going from three, if you let their shooters get going. Everybody else beat you if you do that. Right. And so I think that's an option for them. I also wonder if doubling takes some of the heat off of them, I really don't want those two getting so worn down trying to contain Murray and Yokech one-on-one. I don't want that. Certainly in switch situations where it's Jimmy trying to do it against Yokech every other play. You're asking too much of Jimmy certainly before a hero is back. And even once he is back, you're just putting too much on his plate against the team that I don't think they're going to give Jimmy fits defensively but they're good enough defensively to make him work. So I, you know, I'm not sure how I want to start the series but obviously at some point, you're going to have to try to just take a deep breath when Yokech kicks out to open guys. Right. You're going to have to force Bruce Brown and as much as it sucks, KCP and, you know, from time to time, Murray, Porter obviously is a big one just because the guy is one of the best shooters he's ever seen. Although I don't think he's quite thought of that way yet. We know that. You know, he just is. He hasn't played long enough to really be considered that way but he's statistically one of the best shooters we've ever seen. So certainly when he's open, so you're going to have to try to live and die with that a little bit. You're probably going to lose at least one game maybe two over the course of the series of watching that happen. But just the methodical style that Yokech plays with, even if he does score, he's normally not going to go right away like he's going to grind the possession down, trying to find a past first before he does it himself. And if you force him to, he'll do it and he can still beat you that way, he will beat you that way. But if you're the, you don't want this to be a quick up and down game certainly in Denver. So you're better off letting him grind you down by taking seven or eight seconds to score after he decides, fine, y'all are going to make me do this myself fine. I would rather play that game. I think where they could get in trouble is if they really struggle offensively and they're just missing shots left and right, guess what? That allows Yokech to speed the game up too because he can just take it and go himself and find guys down the floor or, you know, whatever. So you have to be very careful. My priority in game one of this series is to slow this thing down on Miami for 12 different reasons but not the least of which is the fact that we watched the nuggets run the Lakers up and down and the first two games of that series and it's like it doesn't work. A little on the altitude issue that is going to really wear Miami down. They played more lately and so that is going to have an impact on them. Maybe it will on Denver a little bit too but they're used to playing there. So it's different. So that's priority number one of just trying to keep the game. Like you're the underdog here. I don't mean to say play like it but like treat this like, you know, shout out to Mark Brockton. Treat this like Virginia where like you're going to almost assume the position of the lesser team at least in this first game as the underdog as a team that is a little bit tired and banged up slow this game down try to take it to a situation where you're Miami you know the clutch situation is better than anybody because you've basically played and more games like this than anybody bring it to the last few minutes of the game and try to hope that Jimmy or Bam could take you home. If I to guess, I think Jimmy will start on Aaron Gordon. That allows him to roam, get in the passing lanes. You know, Struse on, Michael Ported Jr. probably Caleb Martin on KCP or Jamal Murray gave Vincent on the other. That's how I assume Miami will start. I'll just say for Miami's offense they have had success against drop coverage. I think the Celtics can do a good job flattening them out when they switch. If the Celt, if the Nuggets switch Jimmy will find either MPJ or Jamal and I think he'll have success. If they drop Caleb Martin gave Vincent, especially Gabe Vincent who was fantastic against Boston when they drop their bigs either getting to the rim pulling up for three. You know, suppose said we need assertiveness looking at the rim. He has to be the same guy. He has to be the same guy he was in the Celtics series. If he has even a slight drop off he can score anywhere near enough to give with the Nuggets. So he's going to have to be able to attack. Caleb Martin is going to have to be able to attack. I do think that he, who had some good offensive games against the Celtics will be able to find the kind of offense they're comfortable with. The same way they did against the Bucks. The same way they did against the Nix at times. Because of just the way Denver plays. The thing is, can they do it consistently and at a high level enough to keep what Denver's offense? I'm not sure. I'm picking Nuggets in five. What's your pick, Harry? I really hate picking against Miami just after we watched them bully everybody to waste. I did pick them to beat the Celtics for what it's worth the only one. I mean, I picked the Celtics themselves. I picked the Celtics in seven initially just out of respect for Miami. Do I think the Nuggets are better than the Celtics? Yeah. So I mean, I'll take the Nuggets in six. I know there will be people, and I haven't heard you doing this so shout out to you, but I know there will be people that are saying, like, oh, hero comes back mid-series. It's a new day once that happens. I just think that for someone that has been out of the mix for a while, of course, you welcome his scoring if he has it and if he looks himself, I just wonder that he, you know, worry that he gets lost defensively against the team that you can't afford to do that with. Like the Nuggets are just so in sync. And so the idea of throwing someone in that is out of sync with this Miami group. I mean, this will sound blasphemous. I don't fully believe it, but if I'm going full like radio Chris today, give me Duncan Robinson in the way he's been playing defensively and the fact that he's offensively sometimes really has it going. Almost give me him in rhythm then like Tyler Hero out of rhythm out of sync against this Denver team. Just because Denver, again, they play like a tron or a zord or a robot led by, you know, like led by their two-time MVP robot that is going to pick you apart and has the potential to do that. And I worry that the ability to do that just increases even more when you are throwing in a guy that I imagine you're going to want to play him long minutes. It's, you know, it was not a devastating leg injury. It was his hand. So you're going to have him out there trying to use the shooting in quite a bit to try to give you enough offense to keep pace with the team that can really score. So I just like the nuggets here. Obviously, I'm eager to see it. I really was not chomping at the bit to do a preview about the series. One, because like you said, there wasn't much time to do it with the way this shook out. But two, I feel like we'll have a slightly better image of what whether Miami can stay really competitive in this series after the first game or two. If they look competitive on the road in Denver and granted, I guess to some extent, the Lakers did too. There were moments where they looked like they almost got blown off the floor but they did make it competitive by the end of each game one and game two. They also got swept. So it could be a situation like that. But I'm very curious to see whether this is even a competitive series. I want to give Miami the benefit of the doubt that they'll do that. But I also wouldn't be surprised if the nuggets make quick work of them. But I'm going to out of respect. I'll give the nuggets, say nuggets and six. Yeah, it'll be very interesting. I'm excited to see it play out. But, you know, I would be very happy for these teams to win the finals. I love watching both of them play. I'm Israel Gutierrez. I'm hosting a new podcast called Four Years of Heat. It takes you to Miami from 2010 to 2014, with LeBron James, Chris Bosch and Dwayne Wade, set the NBA ablaze. You know, having an opportunity to team up with the best trio to ever play the game, a basketball was amazing. We're going to give you stories you've never heard before. About a team you only thought you knew. We'll take you inside those four monumental years with behind-the-scenes access and insight about one of the greatest teams ever assembled. We knew what was on the line. The look on LeBron's face. I got this. I got this. Come revisit. A time NBA fans will never forget. With exclusive newly recorded interviews with Ray Allen, Dan LeBotard, Rachel Nichols, and many more. Is that ball left my fingers? It just felt like it floated. Four years of heat on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Claire Crofton. And in my new podcast, The Fighting Pups. We're going out on the ice with the most violent hockey team ever. That was guerrilla warfare at its highest. The Dambry Trashers wanted to win at any cost. They kicked out. They kicked out. I've done one breaking loose here in Treasure Cap. You wanted to break every bone in his body. Literally throwing him like a rag doll. What I've been at is here at the Dambry Ice Arena. They can't restrain him right now. So are they heroes or villains? You decide. I don't know what to say, and I don't want to get shot. There's the FBI side. There's my side. And somewhere in the middle is the truth. Listen to The Fighting Pups. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You and I are going to have a problem. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Welcome to the jungle. It's been a week. It's been a week. It's been a week. It's been a week. It's been a week. It's been a week. It's been a week. It's been a week. And adding some more fun stuff along the way. And of course, we'll be joined by some amazing guests. So whether you're a long time fan Or just getting into wrestling, we have you covered. So be sure to tune in every week. Hit that subscribe button. And take that walk down the aisle with us for all of the action Warriors, it feels really targeted at gold and state and they're losing kind of the architect of it. Not only someone who made, generally, pretty good decisions of building out this roster, but clearly had the trust of Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, and Draymond Greene. Draymond saying he wanted to see what happened with Bob Myers before making decisions. On his future, you know, not normally is an executive's decision. This big of a deal, this feels like a big deal. What do you kind of make of this? Do you have any kind of expectations for how this plays out now? Yeah. I mean, it just, first of all, the guy is fantastic at his job. It doesn't mean that he did the job perfectly or that the organization did the job perfectly. We can all point to the fact that they tried and gambled quite a bit on the idea of trying to to track this title run, title window of saying, you know, maybe we can, you know, Steph Clay, Draymond, and then have the next generation of like pool, I mean, obviously pool is kind of the guy that bridged the tour that they saw as bridging the tour, but pool, coming up, wise men, and look, that didn't work. That hasn't worked. They already have gotten off of wise men's steel and traded him for not even, what did they get a couple of second rounders and I care for wise men? Gary D in the second. You're right. So they, but they did that and even in that case, they didn't get him back fully healthy. So I mean, it was just a weird, they could have just signed it. And that was probably why they even concluded the trade and finalized the trade was like, this is too embarrassing to bring him back in this situation. So I mean, it was a weird, I mean, to get off of a guy that was the number two pick and also to think about who else they could have gotten with that pick, it didn't play right. And everything went right. But also, you can't talk about Bob Myers and focus on the stuff that went wrong. So much went right here, bringing in Steve Kerr, quite frankly, and doing that when they did it, giving him the latitude to change things the way he did, discovering Dremond and exactly what he was and unlocking that, the staff, the maturation of staff. Not trading for Thomson, not trading for Thomson for Kevin Love. So some of the moves they didn't make deserve so much credit, keeping the team together, turning D-Low into Wiggins. I mean, that might have been the biggest part of it, right? After the Katie stuff navigating them in and out of that, a book could be written just about Bob to be quite honest with you. He's been that good. So again, I don't want to over focus or over harp on anything that he did wrong. He also has earned every right to do what he wants to do for these next few years, or if he wants to join another team and kind of take the highest offer, whatever he wants to do. It sounds like he had an opportunity to take an ownership stake here and decided not to. So all the respect in the world for him, it obviously raises a big question now of whoever replaces him, which it sounds like it's going to be internal with the way that's done. What do they think and how do they think of Dremond, who was up, or could be up, but I imagine it's going to be up this year, looking for maybe not a bigger payday, but one that has years to it, that is going to be longer, bigger, longer money, all things considered. You're going to have to figure out your situation with Clay at some point of what realistically do you see of like how much does he have left? He has moments where he is just a firecracker. He's got other moments where he seems to hinder you. That doesn't even get to the question of what about Jordan Poole, who really was not, I mean, to put it mildly was not really good at all. He regressed. He regressed. He pressed really bad, he regressed. He is just a sieve defensively, a lot of the time. He does not always have the best timing when it comes to shot selection. He does not have the highest IQ. And it's really easy to overlook some of the flaws that he has when you're winning championships. It's not when you look like you might be able to win one and don't. They could have won one this year. I think that the Wiggins absence for as long as it was was really hurt them. I think the road stuff hurt them, the fact that they were on the fence about what direction they wanted to take and that they thought that they could win with a young bench hurt them. So again, there were flaws at a certain point with the way that they played this, with the way that Myers played this. I think that's okay. I think it's a gamble. It could have, you know, we would have been talking about how great they were in the world. Can I take ownership and play the role in that as well? Light years ahead. Yeah. Like, you have to acknowledge that, but that's not like the first thing you say about the guy in the job he did. He was incredible. He'll end up somewhere eventually, you know, we, I'm looking at our text messages. We have people on our staff that have a pretty firm sense of like what we'll have with him eventually. He's great at what he does. He deserves a ton of credit. It becomes very interesting now to watch what happens with the Warriors and the next couple years. It would have been anyway. It becomes more interesting now because I feel like with Bob Myers in charge, you could bet on the fact that he was going to gamble with the core guys, even if it meant someone was going to take a little bit less or the deal was going to look a little bit different. He felt like he was going to go down guns blazing with those guys. I still think that that's more likely than not, but you don't know that until you know who's in charge and maybe it becomes someone that, you know, was really offended by the Dremont punch on Jordan pool. I think everybody was, but maybe they were more offended than Bob Myers was and maybe he doesn't come back. Maybe it's someone that in Bolden's Jordan pool even more. We don't know yet, but it's going to be fascinating to watch. I mean, it really is one of the greatest dynasties we've ever seen and shout out to Bob Myers. He's done a fantastic job. He deserves every opportunity that comes this way, whether it's now or whether it's two years from now, what have you? I am so fascinated to see what happens with Dremont and Green now because I think Bob Myers is someone who's played conflict mediator with him. There are so many things that go into just simply making trades and signing people. I think it was telling that Dremont's been saying my decisions are going to be tied to Bob to an extent. I don't think that means just because Bob Myers is leaving, Dremont is leaving, but the Warriors are a bit of a crossroads here, Chris, because I wrote, I thought Bob Myers was coming back. I really thought he would come back. I thought still have Steph. They still have Steph. The league is good, but it's, no team is so far above the Warriors that it didn't feel like, it felt to me like they could be back in the finals next year if they make the right move or two. As long as you have Steph, like, and the fact that he's walking away from it, I don't know if he knows he's thinking of something in the CBA that he's nervous about. Maybe it is just ownership, didn't give him the right contract. I don't know what it is. Maybe he thinks there's more money out there for him somewhere else. I have no idea. I'm just speculating. Can I say this? But from the standpoint of like, I don't fundamentally care. I've said this repeatedly. I'm not a fan of any team necessarily. I don't care who wins, who loses. I'm not that into it anymore from that standpoint. I haven't been for a long, long time. As a basketball observer, to me, the most fascinating matchup would have been in the West to watch Denver and the Warriors. I mean, obviously, I wanted to see that again. I wanted to see Denver beat that matchup. Yes, yes. Exactly. So it's like, again, no knock on the like, this is not me hating on that. I didn't care. I wanted to see the most fascinating, tactically. Stylistically, I think it would have been interesting because it's like so many. We also would have had an opportunity to fact check in real time like, Yokech was fine and really, really good. Yes. And Dremont told you as much when they played the Warriors last year. So what does it look like at full strength? The Warriors, I feel like they would have had a handful trying to defend Yokech again. Certainly, with the full complement of the talent around him that he didn't have last year, it would have been interesting to watch. The Nuggets would have been a one seed. Would they have been favored? We don't know. We won't know. But now we have the possibility, the likelihood, just from an odd standpoint, the Nuggets will likely win the title. And then it allows you to look at that in a new way of, you know, I don't know if next year we'll see the heat and the Nuggets open, you know, the calendar will probably more likely be the Warriors and the Nuggets, if I had to guess, more likely than not. And if that's the case, you know, like, what does that look like going into next season? All of a sudden we've gotten used to seeing Dremont trying to guard Yokech, who is that? If it's not Dremont, like, there's so many questions to ask, but I really wish we had been able to see those two teams play each other at full strength this season. Again, it wasn't like a preference of me preferring to see them do it. But obviously just a bit of fascinating stylistic, just a stylistic, you know, we just, I think we all, after last year's series, wanted to see how Denver would guard the Warriors and how the Warriors would guard the Nuggets. Exactly. That's what it comes down to. Exactly. So now we run the, run the risk of seeing this team like essentially in a new era, if they're doing it without Dremont, it's a completely different team. Not just X's and O's, but temperament. Yeah. Leadership from that standpoint, fire. Does it make the team easier? Do they have more cohesion in some ways because he's not there? That's possible. We really don't know, because we've only known this iteration of this team with those three guys. Shout out to Looney. He's incredibly important. Shout out to Poole, who even if he wasn't good this season, was still really important. Good and bad. Not to Wiggins, because we know how important he was. There were people making an argument he should have been finals MVP. We know he's important. We saw how important he was when he missed all that time this season. So we know all that, but we haven't ever seen them achieve something significant without those three guys there. We haven't seen them win a championship without those three guys. So it's a huge decision. And again, Dremont has told you himself, and we just know that Bob Myers, the mediation role that he's played with this organization time and again, whether it was the Katie stuff, whether it was the pool thing, whether it's just the contract talk and everything else, we know that Bob Myers was integral to that. We know he had a good relationship and a respectful, respected relationship with Dremont. So if that fundamentally changes that, we're looking at a completely new era for this team, which maybe is necessary. We don't know yet, but we can assume that Bob Myers would have played a role in trying to bring him back somehow, even if it was at less money or whatever else. Dremont might have had more of a willingness to hear that out from him, like someone else. He would have more trust in Bob Myers saying things to him more likely than other people, even if they're internal, not as a knock on those new guys, but as a test to into his relationship with Bob. I'll say this. I think we'll get one more year of Steph Klanjray, but I don't think I'm like coming up with some crazy take here, but I think there's a very good chance. We end up looking back on this decision as kind of the beginning of the end of Steph Klanjray as a trio and how this team reconfigures around Steph moving forward. Chris, that's going to do it for today's just jam packed episode of the pod. I'm so excited, man. I just want to say personally, growing up in South Florida, I remember from 2010 to 2014, every year Miami was the center of the basketball world and how much I loved reading everyone's work. Been my dream to cover an NBA finals in Miami in the state I grew up and I'm so excited. I'm so excited for the finals. I'm excited to see what I got to do. It's been from that standpoint. It's very clear. I appreciate that, man. I really do. I just hope it's fun. I hope we get another great series. I'm excited to get to cover them alongside you. That will do it for today's episode. Thank you so much to everyone for listening in. Thank you to our, we don't shout out enough as we should. Our incredible producer, Shelby Royston, shout out to shelves and we will talk to you guys after game one of the NBA finals. I'm Israel Gutierrez. I'm hosting a new podcast called Four Years of Heat. It takes you to Miami from 2010 to 2014, where LeBron James, Chris Bosch and Dwayne Wade set the NBA ablaze. You know, having an opportunity to team up with the best trio to ever play the game of basketball will take you inside those four monumental years with behind the scenes access and insight about one of the greatest teams ever assembled. Four years of heat on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In a new series from the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio, this is the Fighty Pups. We're going out on the ice with the most violent hockey team ever. That was guerrilla warfare at the highest. Were they heroes or villains? You decide. I don't know what to say and I don't want to get shot. Welcome to the jungle. Listen to the Fighty Pups on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest tag team in history is back and we're ready to make our grand entrance in season three of wrestling with Freddie. That's right, Freddie. We're bringing the heat with exclusive interviews, highlights and all the in-ring drama from the world of pro wrestling. Not only are we talking wrestling, but we'll be unleashing those fan favorite side quests. Wrap up your boots, put on those headsets and get ready for more episodes from your podcast wrestling tag team, J.I.P's on wrestling with Freddie. Listen to wrestling with Freddie on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.