Friedell and Mares

The low post is presented by Amazon music. Did you know you could be listening to this episode of the low post ad free on Amazon music? And now the low post. Welcome to the low post podcast on a Friday morning. I just returned home from Boston, Massachusetts on an Amtrak Nick Friedel just got to Miami, Florida from Boston, Massachusetts. We're tired. We're cranky. We're punchy. But as Michael Scott would say, ooh, how the turntables wait a second. The Miami heat and the Boston Celtics. Oh baby, the Miami heats three oh lead feels like a distant memory now. It's bloody sock time in game six. The Celtics have roared back into the series. The heats three point shooting extravaganza has fallen back to earth. The Celtics all of a sudden look like the deeper and more talented team that they were the entire regular season. The team that I had the poor guys at ESPN stats and info comb through all of NBA history to confirm my suspicion that the Celtics are on paper, on paper by far the best candidate in NBA history to come back from a three oh deficit given their seating, the heat seating, the fact that they have home court advantage. All of it. Gabe Vincent's injury has taken the heat down below the critical mass of necessary rotation players, especially when they clearly have very little confidence left in Kevin Love and Cody Zeller. Both of them had their minutes reduced and or eliminated in the competitive portion of last night's shellacking in Boston. And now Mr. Friedel, now the Miami heat find themselves in a situation quite similar to the Boston Celtics found themselves in all 13 years ago against your Orlando Magic, the 2010 Orlando Magic who I thought were maybe the best team in the entire NBA dropped the first three games of the conference finals against the number four seated underdog Boston Celtics, came back and won the next two and forced a very pressurized underdog home game six to try to stave off history in Boston. That's one of the Shrek and Donkey games of the Nate Robinson, Big Baby Davis era, sorry to bring back memories. And that's what it's gonna be like in Miami tomorrow night because obviously the Celtics have been bad at home, but if they get this one in Miami, they're gonna be feeling great. They're already feeling great. You queue up the Johnny Damon Grand Slam clips, my cousin Derek Lowe throwing sliders and curveballs right by the Yankees in game seven and Yankee Stadium. F the Yankees by the way, just have to get that out of the way. Mr. Friedel, you're back in Miami, my friend. And if they don't win that or day night, Mr. Lowe, I think that is a wrap. I would never say 100% for sure because Jimmy could have a crazy Jimmy game, but I think it's important for us to start right there. Jimmy looked human for the first time in the postseason in game five in Boston, they really limited him. But as I've watched him in this series, he looks like he's tired. He really does look like all those minutes have caught up to him. So it is imperative for him now over the next 24 hours or so to recharge the batteries and do whatever he has to do to take a deep breath and pour everything that they've got into game six. I would expect him to play all 48 or really, really close to it and watch the heat just push all the chips in to try and finish this thing because Boston is playing with a different level of confidence. And when you are not getting those shots that Max Drew said and Duncan Robinson hit and you're playing without Gabe Vincent, his status for game six is still uncertain. And they're all those variables, it has to come down to Jimmy. And if Jimmy is not putting up 40 plus points and carrying that whole team down the stretch, this heat team is in big trouble. Well, the tell for me last night was that there were several possessions on which he got the Derek White switch that he has brutalized through the first couple of games of this series. And forget the ones where Derek White kind of stood him up and didn't go for his pump fakes. And Jimmy really didn't kind of mow him down other than one or two possessions. Like those are good defensive possessions. Derek White's gonna do that ever once in a while. He's gonna block his shot ever once in a while. I thought it was telling that on some of those possessions he kicked the ball out one pass away and didn't ask for a repost. I thought it was even more telling on some of those possessions when he got the switch that he didn't get the ball or ask for the ball at all. There was one where he got it in the first half I think in the second quarter. On the right wing they ran an action to get him that switch and he just sort of faded over to the baseline and the heat were like, oh, let's just kick it around. And Caleb Martin ended up going one on one and drawing a foul because Caleb Martin has become a combination of like Steph Curry and Michael Jordan in this series I think. But I thought that was very telling. And Jimmy has averaged 19 a game over the last three games. Now they didn't need him in game three so chalked that one up to that. And then he had 29 but a 29 that left you feeling a little wanting in game four. He missed a lot of bunnies in that game. And last night just didn't really get into the game. Then they sat him in the fourth quarter for most of the fourth quarter and said, yeah, we're done, we're gonna rest you for game six. And Bam, Bam was silent last night and has averaged 13 points a game in the last three games, 13 points. And I thought one of if not the biggest stories of the game last night was, and you can see this brewing at the end of game five was Boston has started to switch more and switch in lots of different places including Horford onto Butler and daring him like, we don't actually think you can beat Al Horford that badly and he did not last night and putting everybody but Derek White onto Bam on switches. And the heat looked caught off guard by that last night. They look like they did not have a plan for it. And by the way, credit Joe Missoula. Like we're sitting here talking about Boston making an adjustment they caught Eric Spolstra maybe a little on the back foot and they dumped it to Bam in the post. Bam post Bam had eight post touches last night according to seconds spectrum. That's his most of the playoffs. His second most in any game this season. Would you like to hear the points per possession numbers that he generated on those eight post touches Mr. Friedel? I feel like there's a big yikes coming here. It's a yikes 0.286. What is the position? Not so hot. And it's because the Celtics wings other than white are very strong and hard to move. It's because Bam is not a great back to the basket player and it's because for the first time in this series the Celtics started to show the heat bodies when they had a matchup that they liked the heat like so. And it's not necessarily a hard double team. It's just not standing in no man's land. It's not staying home. It's doing what the heat do, which is dig down a little bit, slide back, make you think zone up, get your hands out, get on your toes, get in between, be in no man's land kind of but be active in no man's land and make you think, make you uncertain, make you second guess. That's what the heat had been doing to Boston the whole series. That's what Boston did last night. It helped that Heywood highsmith played and they didn't guard him and he made threes. But I thought their defense was really, really good. And I think going into game six, item one for Miami other than Jimmy's just got to play a Jimmy game and BAM's got to play better is if those switches are coming and now you know they're probably going to come, what do you do to counter them? And I think that's going to be an interesting subplot. I think your spot on because when you watch that game and you were looking to see what BAM was going to give you every time they switch he just couldn't take advantage of what was coming. And Zach, if you're the heat and you have to get a certain level of performance from Jimmy and you have to get a certain level of performance from BAM and that is the baseline for point out so many of these wins in the postseason. We haven't even gotten that apart where it's like, okay, well is Robinson hitting shots or is true sitting shots or is Martin or Vincent's out there? Who is that other person who helps? But BAM just does not play that well in these last couple games. You know who it was not yesterday, Nick Friedell, Kyle Lowry. And who's awful and awful in that game. I'm a fan of Kyle Lowry's is a lot of basketball nerds are and talking to the heat people the day of the game and the day before the game once it was clear of instance availability was in jeopardy. There was a kind of a sense of this is kind of what we've been saving Kyle for a moment like this. This is the moment. Yeah. His minutes load this season because we made him a backup for legitimate reasons obviously has not been very high. He's been good for the most part in the playoffs better than he was in the regular season. They were ready I think to dial him up to 30, 35 minutes last night without Vincent and he just wasn't up to it. And he wasn't up to it right from the start. And I mentioned the Celtic switching. That's one thing they didn't switch. They dropped back against Kyle Lowry's pick and rolls and we're like we're going to chase you over the screen. We're going to make you hit long twos. We're going to make you make decisions in space. And he just made a bunch of bad decisions. He would jump to shoot and then decide I don't want to shoot. I'm going to do the Kyle Lowry thing where I do in the regular season which is pass up shots that I should take. Four turnovers and four points. Just I hate to say it like this but just a total no show in a game where they absolutely needed something from their point guards because that was a place where Boston was not as willing to switch or if they were that's where you need to kind of a jitterbug point guard to reject picks to fool the switch to split screens, to split two man games. If they switch or they try to blitz and that's what gave Vincent's been doing and Kyle wasn't able to do it. Zach in so many ways that game last night was over in about six or seven minutes. And it was a boring game honestly for a game of that magnitude. It was kind of like, is this going to get exciting at any point? And it didn't. But part of the reason it didn't is because Lowry came out in those first few possessions. He already had two turnovers and you're going, well, this isn't good. And to back up what you were saying, we got to shoot around yesterday morning. Spulser didn't want to reveal exactly who would start in Vincent's place. But everybody figured, all right, it's got to be Lowry. And he kept saying, this is our Hall of Fame quarterback. And to be able to put that guy in this lineup is exactly why he's here because he has the confidence of everybody having been through all these big moments before. He won the title in Toronto. You referenced all the years that he's played in big games. He's shown up. He's delivered. I mean, go back to that Nick series from a couple of weeks ago. He was really good. And he was hitting from the outside. Scoring points and also just doing all the annoying Kyle Lowry things, poking away rebounds, drawing charges, just like just all the boxing people out in a very annoying way. Just being annoying Kyle Lowry. And I mean that as affectionately as possible. And once they didn't have that, everything unraveled from that point. And what you realize at this point where the heat is, is it still within Lowry to have a big game sure? But the consistency that the heat and spoolster we're hoping to see is gone. You just don't know anymore tonight, which Lowry's going to show up. And that makes Vincent's absence even more. But, Zach, I'd add this point on. We started talking about BAM and the adjustments the Celtics made on him and how Spoolster's going to have to bounce back. What I thought was interesting in BAM's brief press conference last night was he sitting there going, it's very clear what the Celtics are doing now. They are getting the ball and running as fast as they can up the floor. And they're trying to knock down shots from the outside. And once that happens and they found a little bit of a rhythm here in the last couple of games, the heat are just going, oh, whoa, what do we do? Because they wanted to slow everything down and they wanted to defend and switch. And they caught a big break because Boston could not get it going from the outside. Well, now they have. And the depth that everybody had discussed before the series started is becoming even bigger than we imagined at this point right now. With the one exception to monitor of Malcolm Brogden, who did not play in the second half last night and has this elbow tendon thing reported first by Jared Weiss at the athletic. And you know, look, Boston has the perimeter depth to withstand that. I mean, that's an injury where that's a position rather where they can take a hit and survive, particularly against a team that's dealing with a ton of injuries already in Miami. Let's reset the series real fast. We know we're 3-2. The total score of the series is now Miami plus 9. Boston is plus 30 in the last two games. And they're still minus 9 for the series. Some of the key areas that you would think, particularly a Jimmy team, might win. Boston has 16 more free throw attempts for the series. That's big. They have 14 more offensive rebounds for the series. And they're ganging rebounding last night. And that's how you have to rebound. If you're going to switch and you're going to put wings on BAM, you've got to crash back on the glass. And I thought Tatum had a bunch of gritty box outs. Brown had a bunch of gritty box outs. Smart is always just hitting people. Their ganging rebounding was awesome. 14 more offensive rebounds in Miami for the series. Three fewer turnovers, including 12 fewer turnovers in the last two games. The turnover potential. And totally swung to Boston. Some of that is just Miami. I think feeling the weight of we don't have a lot of reliable creators right now, particularly with the Vincent out last night. And three-point shooting. Boston has taken 43 more threes in the series than Miami. They've only made four more. That's how bad they were shooting and how well Miami was shooting in the last two games. Miami's 17 to 55 on threes. So that's what, like, less than 3% and Boston 34 of 84. So they took almost 30 more threes combined in the last two games. And line up wise, Boston starters are now plus 22 in 50 minutes in the series. That has ultimately been the right call. Joe Missoula stuck with it. And I thought this was less of a double big series. And it looked like they were going to waver on that. And then he went back to the small ball lineup and stuck with it. And that's worked. The double big line ups they are playing, which are exclusively Grant Williams line ups. They're not playing the Rob out line ups. Took a turn for the positive in the last two games. And it just feels like they're obviously getting a rhythm. They found something with this switching on defense. And the other thing is Miami came out last night after Boston in game four had found something with its ball movement when Miami blitzed the pick and roll and put two on the ball. My Boston made a decision. We're going to bank on the pass. No one is going to force it. If we get two on the ball and Tatum, I thought was the leader of this for Boston in game four. You put two on the ball. I'm passing it out right away. I'm hitting the release valve right away. I'm hitting the corner guy Rob. I'm not forcing it. We're going to rely on the pass. We're going to rely on these connected sequences of pass, pass, pass. Sometimes they won't work because of Miami's awesome. Sometimes I'm going to need to go one on one when I got gave Vincent on me. We're going to do that. And I'm going to make shots over him. But we're going to rely on the pass. In Miami last night, watch the film a game for and said, we're going to do some stuff to try to take that simple read away from them. And it's stuff I talked about before the game. It was very simple. Number one, we're going to switch more. And number two, we're going to play a ton of zone. And they did play a ton of zone. And you know what? For the first time in this series, the Celtics lit it up in last night's game. 1.43 points per possession against the zone. And just really kind of effective, just methodical ways to get corner of threes, two on ones on the sideline, just a really purposeful performance by Boston. And now you just kind of don't know what Miami's defensive answer is going to be either. Well, and that's the scary part, Zach, because to the point about the extra pass and how Boston made it a focus to say, all right, we're going to just keep looking for that guy who's got to be open somewhere. Go back to the first quarter of that game. How many wide open threes were the Celtics getting? Specifically, Marcus Smart hit several huge momentum building, big threes early on. And you're looking at Miami's defensive mode. Uh oh, because not only were they getting beat to the punch in that regard by the Celtics decide, and all right, we're going to swing it and we're going to make sure somebody has that open look. Miami didn't have a defender anywhere near anybody. I mean, it was like, all right. When they did Boston still made shots like I think to that the Derek White three at the buzzer of the first quarter where Max Drewce was like in his jersey. Jalen Brown made a three in the second quarter against the zone where they had nothing gone. He was just like dribbling the ball. Oh, I got to shoot and made it. And that's the shot making thing. Like they just they made tough shots and they got a lot of good shots. And this goes back to the point that we've got a hammer home, which is it was so obvious before the series, you looked at both rosters and you went, okay, who's got more guys who can create and make something happen offensively. And it's the Celtics over and over again. And what we've seen in these last two games is a regression to the mean for the heat where if they're not shooting the absolute lights out, they cut a problem. So in many ways, everything has kind of evened out a little bit more, but I would tell you all this and add the context of while it feels like Boston, not only has all the momentum, but this building towards the biggest comeback that we've ever seen in the postseason. Being around that heat team and being in the locker room last night, it felt like, hey, everything's okay. Jimmy's walking up Zach to the podium and he's eating popcorn and he's going, we're gonna find a way to win on Saturday. We're going to make it happen. I saw him walking out. We said hello with his agent and his main kind of training guru walking out of the arena and that we kind of exchanged a joke about just nothing but not the series and everyone was all chuckles and chuckles and popcorn, chuckles and eating popcorn. Like he's certainly not going to evince any weakness. That's one thing for sure about Jimmy. No, and there was a reason why he's trying to exude the ultimate confidence because he knows that he sets the tone for everybody else in there. But I thought one of the most intriguing answers was from Spolster and he said in his experience, it doesn't really carry over from game to game. He's like forget the momentum. It doesn't really matter. Now I would tell you haven't watched enough of these series through time. I think that there is something to be said for a team to get hot and get rolling and starts feeling really good about itself. But this team, this Miami team, still right now thinks okay, well, we got drilled these last couple games. Forget about it. Going to game six, get Jimmy rolling. And Kevin Love was in there and he said, we expect Jimmy Butler to be Jimmy Butler on Saturday night. And if that's the case, especially early, you can knock down all this hype that's around Boston right now and you could just say, hey, we get the ball to Jimmy, he's going to create space for other guys. They're going to get the same looks they've gotten throughout the series. They just have to knock them down. But anybody who's thinking, oh no, Miami's lost these two games and the sky is falling. That is not what they were projecting after that game last. That's not. Well, a couple of things. You mentioned Kevin Love and I wrote this before game five. I said bringing Love off the bench might be too radical a move for a team that's up 3-1. But they've just got to get to Caleb Martin at the four more and earlier. And I think now with them having brought Love off the bench in the second half last night, depending on Gabe Vinson's health and whatever, I think it might just be time to start your best lineup and ride it as long as possible. Maybe it was past time. There's still plus 30 for the series in 73 minutes with Butler, Bam, and Martin on the floor who have been there three best players. It might just be time to start that series. But the big man, I mean, the big man rotation other than Bam is just in complete shambles right now. That you know now, Boston, the first five possessions of every game is just where's Kevin Love on Al Orford. We're hunting him down every time. All the way. Tatum got an and one when Kevin Love abandoned his dropper. It might have been just a straight dunk, I can't remember. And then the next time, same play. Tatum, Orford, pick and roll. Same thing. Orford's wide open for three. Tatum kicks it to him, trust the pass. They send the third guy up from the corner to like flash it out and Al swings it to jail in Brown 3. Okay, we can't play Kevin Love, they're picking on him. All right, Bam needs to rest. Let's bring in Cody Zeller. Oh no, they're going to go at Cody Zeller in the pick and roll every time with Rob Williams screening now. And Rob has been really cagey, Rob Williams. I see you disguising which direction you're going to set that screen until the very last second. And Cody Martin is just like picking the wrong door every time. Like just picking the wrong side. Just he's 10 feet out of the play. It's like he's just guessing randomly and guessing wrong every single time. And so, okay, we can't play Cody Zeller. What the hell are we going to do? They're like running out of big guys to play. Bam, and I bet Highsmith will get minutes in game six because he made shots and that's really what they need. But you know, you met like, I would pay and the stories will come out at some point. And I don't know what the stories are. I've heard a lot of different things. I don't know what's true, what's not true. I would have paid, I would pay good amount of money to get in a time machine and be in the Celtics locker room at half time of game three and after game three. Because not only have we not seen a team rally from 3-0 ever, not only have we not seen a team rally to get to game seven since 2003, the Blazers 20 years ago. By the way, Damon Stottemeyer was on that Blazers team was the Celtics assistant coach for until like February when he left for Georgia Tech. Damon Stottemeyer, if he were on the bench now, he'd be getting asked this question every game by a reporter. It's not only have we not seen that in 20 years, just the game seven. I just don't recall, I know Kevin Pelton found examples of teams going down 3-0 and losing in blowout fashion in game three and then coming back to win game four. There are blowout losses and there are blowout losses. And that loss in game three was as blatant and obvious as we give up, we're not playing together anymore, loss as you will see a good team have. And to come back from that and to come back this way and win two in a row this way and immediately snap back into togetherness is one of the rarest things that I can recall in the NBA. And the Celtics, you can sit here and say the Missoula thing and players, Gary Washburn had a tweet from the Boston Globe who knows this team as well as anyone about how Jalen Brown's biting his tongue on the podium about stuff that's gone wrong this year. There's stuff, there's stuff. That's why I would have paid a lot of money to be in that locker room when some of this stuff was probably aired. But it takes some strong backbone and culture to in a moment go from that to this. And by the way, I'm making red socks jokes like bloody sock and they're clearly are all saying, you know, don't let us get one like Kevin Moar said. Yeah, we had the idiot sign in there last night. I've been told by several reliable people that this is not a coincidence that they are game by game watching clips in the locker room or being showed clips in the locker room of what is it? Four days in October, I think it was a 30 for 30 about that series. So like now they'll watch the game six clips. Like it's not a coincidence that they are parroting this. And on the one sense, I don't know that you want to really like embrace being down three oh, but they've embraced it. And they're embracing the Boston thing. And look, I am not and was not a Red Sox fan ever. I was a die hard Mets fan growing up. I say this as affectionately as possible. If Boston, the city of Boston, and it's very passionate sports fans, get the first baseball three oh come back ever and the first basketball three oh come back ever, the level of Boston, Bostonness is going to drive the rest of the world absolutely crazy forever and ever. Like it's just gonna be, I don't even know what the right word for it because I will enjoy the theater of it, but it's, and by the way, you should like 19 years later, my dad grew up in Peter Bruno Hampshire, lifelong Red Sox fan. He told me as a young child, do not be a Red Sox fan, pick another team. It will just be pain if you're a Red Sox fan like me, but you can't pick the Yankees. You can't pick the Yankees pick a national league team. So I picked the Mets, they're my local team. And even so that 2004, I was working a night cops beat at a local paper then in Stanford, Connecticut. And I told my editors after they won that first game, I was like, not to be a bad worker bee guy, but I'm leaving early every goddamn night to watch like the last four innings of these games with my dad. It's still one of the fondest memories I have as a sports fan. And I'm not even a Red Sox fan and never was a Red Sox fan. So own it, but man, if it's another Boston team, oh my God. I just love that over the course of what you described, Zach, you use the word culture and it wasn't in reference to the heat. He culture's fine. You know, he culture is just, it's just steady and good and furious and all of that, but it's like, you don't worry about it fracturing really, right? Not post like Hassan Whiteside and Deanna Waiters in that era of heat culture. Well, for as great as the heat of been during this run, I think that the heat culture narrative is going to take a little bit of a hit if all of a sudden they are up 3-0 and they drop four straight games in the Eastern Conference finals. That being said, the interesting part about all of this, as I watch this series unfold and I see the last couple of months here, is I've never in all my years covering the league seen a team in Miami turn things around the way they did in this short of an amount of time. When I left that play in game against the Hawks, I was completely convinced, and that was what, six weeks ago now maybe, I was convinced Milwaukee was going to shred them. That looked like a team that was just about to break apart. Were you convinced they were going to beat the Bulls? Because I wasn't convinced they were going to beat the Bulls until there was like three. You're scarred from your years on the Bulls, suck me. The Bulls suck beat did me because all I thought before that game was, I don't care how close it is, Jimmy Butler is not losing a game that means something to the Chicago Bulls. And lo and behold, it wasn't just Jimmy Butler, remember, Max Drew set 31. What team gave up on Max Drew's? A little early, it looks like the Chicago Bulls, so he also remember. But Zach, that's the part to me is that we've got the heat that have turned things around. One more win, they go to the finals, it's an incredible story. You've got a Celtics team that in game three looked like it was completely done. You were going to have to make potentially another coaching change. And all these players you've got decisions on are Brown and Tatum, our core. Do we believe in these guys? If they can keep pushing this thing through and they can find a way to be the first team that comes all the way back from down to the three, it's another, I've never seen this before in this short of an amount of time. And it speaks to not only what the Red Sox did, but the belief that still existed even after game three in that locker room. And there are going to be the stories that pop out, but what was so impressive to me is you hit the second half of game four, Miami with one more push figured, all right, they're going to the finals, they're gonna get some time off and they're gonna play the Nuggets. And it didn't happen. And even if Miami goes in wins game six and they find a way through, they absolutely screwed themselves because they didn't allow for all that extra time to rest prior to the finals. You have added all the intensity of these last two games all the minutes. And now you're gonna walk into the finals against the Denver team that's been off for a week and a half. So in so many ways to me, I think Miami is in trouble, even if they get through this series because they put themselves at such a disadvantage the way they were unable to close the Celtics team that has belief now that didn't seem to exist a few days ago. No disrespect to the Heat. I mean, that not in the Richard Jefferson way that disrespect is going to follow me saying no disrespect. The Heat have had a playoff run for the ages to be admired. There's probably a better than 50-50 chance that it will continue beyond this just because they have the 3-2 lead. Denver's best case scenario, I think is the Heat sneaking out this series and having to really, really gut it out and play a ton of minutes. They keep home court advantage. The Celtics are just, they have a ceiling that's way higher than Miami's and it's inexplicable that they don't hit that ceiling for stretches of every single game. And God forbid, if we get down to game six and the Celtics are up by three with five minutes left, what in the hell is gonna happen? You just never know what their offense will. Jason Tate, I'm not touched the ball for five minutes. Well, they forget all the purposeful stuff they did last night. When it wasn't zone, when it wasn't zeller, when it wasn't love, it was as soon as Duncan Robinson comes into the game and they try to hide him on Grant Williams. Grant Williams, pin down for Jason Tate him. What are you gonna do? You gonna switch? You don't wanna switch. So you're gonna chase him around the screen. I'm gonna get open on the pop, I'm gonna drive, I'm gonna draw a foul. Or you're gonna leave me open for a three and I'm gonna make it. Max Strus, Jason Tate, I'm just made a decision. I'm ruining your life the entire game. Wherever you are, I'm finding you, I'm getting you switched on to me. And you can hang sometimes, but I can also make top shots over you. And sometimes you can't hang. And the other thing about switching that people forget sometimes is switching on defense, like Boston was, it crazies up the matchups. It mucks up the matchups. And they had two threes, I think, in the first quarter where they got them because Strus, I think, both times was stuck on Tatum once. And he'd remember he drove the corner and then smart replaced him and he flipped it back to smart for a corner three. And then he was stuck on jail in Brown once because the matchups are all nutty and you can't find your guy. And I do think the heat are gonna have to find counters to Boston switching. And this is like posting up BAM with Jimmy one pass away, which is what happened because they would run a Jimmy BAM pick and roll that's not going to work because they're gonna dig off Jimmy. And Spow is gonna get in the lab with his assistants and find spacing and cuts. And I think he found something on BAM running an inverted pick and roll as the ball handler. That seemed to catch them off guard. You got a dunk out of that. So the coaching chess match is gonna continue to be a really interesting. But I thought Boston was purposeful on offense, did not waste possessions, did not attack the wrong guy. And on defense, we've talked about the switching and the digging, but you go back and watch all the back screens that they run for their shooters, Miami, all the split cuts. Boston was on point. Sometimes that meant switching and the heat get creative and they go up as if they're gonna set a screen and then they slip out of it. Boston was on point. Nope, we're not switching that. We're gonna stick with you. They're chasing what they were on it last night. And when they're on it on both ends of the floor, they're just better. It doesn't matter where the games are, they're just better. And their problem is that they will go through six minute stretches where they just forget how to be on it. And I think the heat are gonna need them to suffer through that kind of stretch at some point in these next two games to win one of them. They have to. It has to be that way because the Celtics, when they are focused, are just a cut or two above this heat team. But Zach, what's fascinating about where the heat are potentially headed is that the reason there was no outward panic from Jimmy Butler, and this goes back the last few days, is because he said after that game four, but they didn't close it home. He said, we've been better all year when we've made things tougher on ourselves. But the issue is that they've run up against a team that is better in those situations than they are. What team has risen to the occasion repeatedly now when it looks like, oh, it's just about over. They have screwed up one too many times. Philly's got game six at home. If you get a solid performance, they're gonna win. And that didn't happen. And now the Celtics are 0-3. They're left for dead. Are they gonna have to fire Missoula? Is anybody paying attention to what he's saying? And they show up in the second half of game four and they win and they go home and absolutely dominate game five. So in so many different ways, the Celtics just do what they do better than what this he team does. So in my mind, you can go through any number of different scenarios heading into game six. If Miami wants to win, it needs the Jimmy Butler type game that we saw against the Bucks in that series a couple times and that we saw against the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals in game six. Last year, they need him to take over and dominate because the Celtics look finally like they found their focus and they know how to protect it. Now, can they disappear for a few minutes at various points? Absolutely. And to what you're saying, if Miami's gonna win, they're gonna have to, but Boston has found something that works for them. And I don't see that part of this changing in the short term with just how much confidence they're playing with right now. Some of it is shot making like Derek White six threes. Some of them were tough, some of them were open. You don't really make six threes all that often, but they have made shots and just briefly a couple of other things I want to give love to. Rob Williams has gotten steadier defensively as the series has gone on. And I thought his positional defense last night, particularly when guarding BAM, sometimes switching, sometimes not, was just rock solid. Met BAM on the other end of those pick and rolls and said, you're not gonna roll behind me for dunks. All right. And you can see that they're scared of BAM's dunks because they've actually conceded a couple of layups on the pick and roll because they're worried about the lob to BAM. Rob was rock solid and Tatum 11 assists. I've mentioned the passing and getting rid of the ball earlier. My favorite example from last night's game, I just want to shout it out because it's just a simple little thing. But every good team has possessions where you just pass for the sake of passing, for the sake of seeing what happens if you force the defense to do stuff, for the sake of making everyone feel like they're involved. So Tatum had the ball, it was I think 420 left in the third quarter. He's dribbling the ball on the left wing. Derek White's coming to set a pick for him, probably because Strucer Duncan Robinson is on him or somebody that Jason Tatum wants to beat up. And he sees on the right wing, the heat starting to like overload the paint off Horford and Jaelin Brown in the corner. And like BAM's way off Horford. I think there might have been some confusion. And Jason Tatum says, you know what? I'm a boarding plan A. I'm just going to slingshot this baby to Horford on the other side of the floor and see what happens. And what happened was both the heat defenders on that side of the floor, I think it was BAM and Haywood Highsmith, close out on Horford, which left Jaelin Brown, open in the corner, Horford hit Jaelin Brown. Jaelin Brown drove the baseline, hit Marcus Smart in the opposite corner. Marcus Smart swung a to Tatum all the way back around the horn to Jason Tatum. And Tatum got the ball up top, rotations and chaos, nobody's on him, drove and drew a foul. That's passing just to do it. It's passing just to keep it moving. And as much as you want to hunt mismatches, and there's a place for that, and as much as you got to figure out the zone, sometimes you got to do that and make the heat, make six rotations. And the Celtics have done that much better in the last two games, man. You got to get some sleep before game six, because I'm not going to be there, you're going to be there. Perhaps I will see you on Memorial Day back up here in the Northeast, but this has turned from, well, it was great theater of one kind after three games, the theater of the car crash and like, oh my God. Can't look away. And now it's, at some point it's going to happen. And even game seven, like I said, has happened in 20 years, and you can feel it. You can feel the tension, you can feel the history around the series. So enjoy Miami. Don't go clubbing on South Beach too late, because it's a big day tomorrow, Mr. Friedel. Don't go to any velvet rope places where you got to wait outside. You know, just take it easy down there, okay? I'm making one stop at Capitol Grill. Ooh! And that will do it for me on South Beach. There you go. But Zach, I'd bring us full circle in this sense. You were talking about the Celtics passing the pass. What is so evident in their games in the last two, they trust each other. And the trust that wasn't there at various points, especially in game three that just disappeared, is palpable again on the floor. When you're making those extra passes and you're seeing guys hit shots, it makes you wanna make the next pass and get the next guy involved. And that is why Boston is feeling so good about itself. And that's why it is gonna be very difficult for Miami to overcome the momentum that's been built up here recently. You know what Nick, I trust you. I would pass you the ball. I'd set a pin down screen for you if you had a mismatch. I trust you to keep the offense moving, all right? It's like we talked about a few weeks ago, buddy. You just want somebody to believe in you in life. And you need that belief. And you need somebody, and it was Jalen Brunson a few weeks ago. Seth Harper, Jalen Brunson was, he couldn't trust anybody else on that next team. And it really, it really stunted their growth as a group. But both of these teams left, Boston, Miami, they can trust each other. But that's all we all need in life. Somebody who believes in us. So I appreciate that. And I'd like to think that you got me the ball and the switch, I'd knock it down. You know, as you were saying all that, I was thinking about the word believe. This is how my... That last time, baby. I know sleep. Then I was thinking about Ted Lasso. Then I thought of the 69 Mets and you gotta believe in how they bring that slogan back every time the Mets are good. And you know what happened after that, Nick Friedel? I then thought of Armando Pinedita's blowing a save in Game 1 of the 2000 World Series and Timo Perez not running hard into home when the ball hit the top of the wall. And I'm angry now because I just, I'll never get over the 2000 World Series. Now my whole day is ruined. Nick Friedel, thank you, sir. Enjoy Miami. I seem to have a running theme on this show of pissing people off, Zach. Oh, I'm sorry it was you at the very end here. It's not your fault. My brain is broken. Armando Pinedita's and Timo Perez and Roger Clemens and the sawed off bat broke my brain forever and I will never get over it. Thank you, sir. I believe in you, buddy. It'll be okay. ♪ And now, boy, am I excited to welcome in our next guest. Just sitting in Denver like the nuggets. I mean, Yokech had time to go back to Serbia if you wanted to. That's how long the nuggets are gonna be off. The Denver Nuggets! For the first time in their NBA history, not in their franchise history, but in their NBA history are in the NBA Finals, fresh off a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers that had a close buddy of mine shout out to Scott and his son who I will not name running through the streets of Denver lifelong nuggets fan with brooms in their hands. Shout out, Scott. I miss you. I hope to see you soon. Adam Morris of DNVR Sports. How are you, sir? I'm doing great. This was a season of first, first time being the number one seed, first time getting a sweep, first time beating the Lakers in a playoff series, and of course, the first time in the NBA Finals. So a fitting season of first for the Nuggets. We have no exes and o's in strategy to talk about because we do not know who the Nuggets are going to play. So you can just luxuriate in a moment of unprecedented, almost triumph, not quite triumph yet because this team is built to win the title, obviously. I have not spent all that much time in Denver in my life. I know enough to know that there's the Broncos at everything else, and there's a huge gap between the Broncos and everyone else, but there's the Rockies, there's the Avalanche, and there's the Nuggets. I want you to take me through in your lifetime, where the Nuggets have ranked on that hierarchy, what this Finals run means for the city and the franchise, and whether and how you can feel their status in the city changing as they get this far, and they have this transformative franchise player who's going to go down as one of the greatest players in the history of the league. Man, it's kind of a long, I'm thinking of the long version of the short version here, Zach. If you go back to the 80s, you've got the Broncos who are king, but you got the Nuggets who are the second team, and it's a two sport town. Those are your two professional teams, and the Nuggets were very popular, sold out, there was enthusiasm for them. The 90s were a really, really bad era for the Nuggets. They had the 94, 1-8 upset, first 1-8 upset, that's like a little blip in what was otherwise an atrocious 10-year run for the Denver Nuggets that I think lost a lot of people, and in that decade, you pick up the Colorado Rockies, and you pick up the Colorado Avalanche who immediately win the Stanley Cup. So Denver goes from the Nuggets being a distant second, but an important second, to all the way down to fourth in a lot of ways, just because of how bad they were, how the city changed and how those other teams arrived. Avalanche win another Stanley Cup in 2001. They got two championships. The Broncos have two championships in the 90s. Which team are you paying attention to? Those are the teams that have the Hall of Famers. You get Carmelo Anthony, and there's a little bit of a run there. And then obviously at the end of that decade, things go dark again for a little while. So the Nuggets, yes, have had this up and down relationship with the city of Denver, but certainly have been a third or fourth figure in the sports scene for the last 20 years, if you said on aggregate. But yes, this last run with Nikole Yokich, who I think is gonna be on the Mount Rushmore, if not already on the Mount Rushmore of Denver sports athletes, this is a special air. So what's the round, what is the Mount Rushmore? Elway, he's the biggest lock. You have to, Elway is an absolute lock. Who's number two? I'll give you the candidates here. You have Terrell Davis, who's an MVP and one, two Super Bowls. Short window, but it was so high. You've got Patrick Waugh, who might be the greatest goalie in NHL history. I forgot about Patrick Waugh and his head movements. You've got Joe Sacket, who won two championships here, and it's just sort of a huge figure. So I think those four guys probably default to it. You could say Peyton Manning, another short run, and I just, personally, I wouldn't have him on there. And then you have Yokich. So those are the six guys that I think are vying for that title. And again, all of those guys have championships. Yokich is on the doorstep of one. He's the only one with two MVPs. I just think he's gonna wind up there when it's all said and done. So, let me just, he's on it already. My producer Dan is saying Todd Helton got host. I just don't know what to make of the Rockies and the thin air and Larry Walker. Dante Bishette, I just don't know what to make of it. And I haven't followed base so closely since those guys were on the Rockies. He's already on the Mount Rushmore. It's over. And I'm gonna make what maybe, look, I am not qualified to make this argument. I don't know John always career stats and where he ranks and who's the best quarterback in the football time and this and that. I find it hard to believe that if Yokich stays healthy, he will not be on par in basketball with however John Elway is regarded in football. And I know that football's number one in Denver. But, you know, look, there's been a lot of, there's been a lot of talk in the last 48 hours about media coverage of the Denver Nuggets or lack thereof in whether the Nuggets are a quote unquote interesting team. And I think anybody who knows me and has listened to my podcasts and I've said my stuff for the last six years know that I am a Nuggets from afar, just super efficient auto. But I can tell you like that's a, that question is a real question that is being considered at the highest levels of national television right now. And the sub question of that is, how do we make sure Yokich is not Tim Duncan 2.0 where he just never resonates among casual fans? And how can we get casual, not I hate the word casual, how can we get fans who are Lakers fans, Warriors fans, kids who are LaMello ball fans? Who is this, the Jersey I see most commonly around my neighborhood is a freaking horn, it's Jersey. How can we get them to watch these games and under, and fall in love with Yokich and as a basketball player. And there are a lot of ways into that, but to the Mount Rushmore point, one of the things I've been saying is, I think we need to just start like looking at his stats and projecting what his stats are gonna be, regular season, he's already at 12,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, 4,000 assists. Just project like six more healthy seasons and you're going to get into historic territory right away. His career playoff averages I believe are 27, 11 and seven on like 53% shooting, like not to be heretical, but like that's on par with pretty much anybody in overall impact that has ever played basketball. And so one way to sort of pitch like, here's how we should talk about Yokich is, if they win the title and he's a two-time MVP and he stays healthy for a decent amount of his rest of his career, he's going to be not only a Mount Rushmore figure in Denver, he's going to be, I mean, not on the four-person Mount Rushmore in the NBA, but in like that pantheon of 10, 12, 15 guys to ever play the game, that's what we're talking about. Statistically, I mean, it sounds crazy only because, you know, we always look at the playoff success and oftentimes in a player's career that comes later, it comes about now in their career when they start to win. He just turned 28 like three months ago. So this is about the time where it's like, okay, it's the schedule is, you're ready for it. So if he does that statistically, I think you're right. And here's, you asked like, how can we get people interested? I think the first step, there's a lot of things here, but the first step is to make sure we get the facts right, because I've heard a lot of conversation in the last two months about he's never had a good playoff run. He's never been. That conversation is so ridiculous that I actually actively ignore it. So you've actually, you've, I guess had to listen to it. So tell me where is this coming from? How is it possible that it exists? I don't understand. It's a lot of, a lot of, you know, mostly television talking heads, but influential television talking heads that are, well, he's never had a good playoff run this year. He's had nothing but good playoff runs. One of the few players who puts up great numbers, whose numbers have gone up in the playoffs, you know, the assists have gone down, but the scoring, the production, and then the big moments, he has a lot of big moments, including a game winner and a game seven over the defensive, the reigning defensive player of the year, you know, some monster triple doubles in a game seven. So he has some big time performances. He played 65 minutes in a playoff run. You're talking about Rudy Gobert and the bubble, by the way, for people who don't remember. And just wanted, and just had a game winner in a series against LeBron and Anthony Davis. And then I think you start to craft some of the narratives. So one thing you compared him to Tim Duncan and Tim Duncan, obviously a great player. I think if you just said, would you rather watch a Tim Duncan highlight reel or a Nikole Yokich highlight reel? It's not, to me, it's not comparable. Maybe it's a controversial statement, but I think Yokich, he has magic Johnson passing, like the passing reel is one of those ones where if you just watch the top 30 passes of his career, they're all, well, make your jaw drop. So the highlight reel, I think, is in a class that is worthy of, you know, hey, this is a guy worth watching. You never know what you're gonna get. And then of course, I think one of the things that have really popped for him in this playoffs is he's a really good tough shot maker in a unique way. We often think of tough shot as spinning, fall away, looks beautiful, Jordan with the leg out, you know, and holds it. Yokich has all of these game winners, tough shots, clutch buckets that look like mistakes. And if you see it once, you might think, my God, that's the luckiest thing, but Zach, you've watched him all this time. How many big shots does he have that look like, what was that? Well, I mean, JJ Redick said the words, some more shuffle on first take, I think. And I don't think enough people know what that is for him to say that on TV. And that's an issue in and of itself. But one of the other things I pitched is, if you let me do it, I would like to go in my bank of Yokich stuff as we get to the finals and do a TV segment that's here are five signature Nakola Yokich plays. Like the song more shuffle and probably four passes that he makes regularly. Now they're spectacular, so it's not like he's making them every possession, but here are things to look for. And here's why this guy's special, and maybe my favorite one, is one where he's just holding the ball 30 feet from the basket on the right wing, not looking at anything and just whips the ball to the opposite corner and I just laugh every time. And I think there is an appetite for that because in his way, and I also think you'd mention Magic Johnson, with a guy like Yokich who's a quiet personality, he's not quite, he's funny and he's entertaining in his own way, but he's not going out of his way to be on Instagram and have memes and engage with the media. And that's fine, that's his prerogative. I feel like the discussions about him on a national scale are always like a year behind where he actually is as a player and that's been other. So you hear sometimes like, well, you know, by the end of his career, he might be, like two or three years ago, it was like, he's in the running for best big man passer of all time. It's like, no, no, he already is, that's over. And now it's like, if he keeps this up, you might mention him toward the end and the same breath as Jason Kidd and Steve Nash and Magic Johnson, like, no, no, that's, that's for his, that's what he is already. He's already one of the best passers in NBA history, like that's what he is. When you break down it, when you, we go through skills, we talk about the passing and maybe the post-up or the size or this or that, but there's a couple other micro skills that when you point them out, you realize how impactful they are. One of them is he has suction cups on his hands and I don't know how, but he just grabs the ball in these weird like off rebounds or bad pat, but you give him a bad pass that you think there's no way he'll catch it and just somehow it sticks to his hand and he lays it up. And then he has the play, you talk about signature plays, this is a lame one, but again, you point it out, you start to notice. Because he doesn't jump very high, he rebounds so well sometimes by tapping the ball really quickly off of a rebound so that his second jump, he can grab it. So two players jump, he taps it quickly, comes down, goes back up and grabs the second one and then finishes it all, all quickly. And it's something that happens maybe every other game, he'll get a rebound and a put back just off of that, tapping it real quick. He's probably the best floater zone shooter we've ever seen. You know, I'm talking about all players, he has the best touch on those. So you start to break down these skills and you think, okay, not only is he the best passing big man, he might be the best floater zone shooter, he has arguably the best hands ever or at least the S tier, he's tied for best hands ever of any player from any position and then he's an elite post up player, great jump shooter and great screener and then reads the court in the S tier. So these got all of these skills that add up to say, if you're number one at four or five different things on a basketball court, you're probably an all time great. I wanna go back, I don't wanna crown Yokich prematurely. Although he's already clearly done that. I just like, what's the city like right now? Is it nuggets mania? Has he become, has he end Jamal Murray, who's been spectacular the whole playoffs in their two man game is as beautiful as basketball gets? Is it like you go to a bar and people are talking about the nuggets, is it you have friends who have never really been basketball fans who are like now asking you questions about the nugget? Like is all that happening right now? I've definitely heard from some people from high school that I haven't heard from for a long time. You know, just knowing I'm doing this and having it reached out, maybe follow on Facebook or this or that. So yeah, there's some of that, I will say, and then yes to just the conversation. You know, nuggets is not a thing you talk about at the checkout counter. It is a thing in the Bronco season, especially in their heyday, they've been bad for a while, but in their heyday where Sunday after a big win, wherever you would go to the gas station they're talking about, hey man, do you like that game? It's not quite to that levels, but I will say there's an interest, you see a lot more jerseys around. I think it could be more though. And one of the things is, I would love to see a little bit more billboards. I think the nuggets could do a little bit of this of like, hey paint the city blue, blue and gold for a little bit. So I think it can be more, but I'm curious to see what it looks like here in the next week. Yeah, whether you get the first two games, which means Miami wins the east or you get three, four, six, which means Boston wins the east, you're gonna feel like when the finals feels so much different than the conference finals, it's staggering. Like walking to the Celtics game yesterday in Boston versus walking to a Celtics game in the finals is when the weather is good, it's just a completely different level of scene. The world is gonna descend on Denver. The sports world is gonna descend on Denver and it's just different. It just feels way, way different. Then a conference finals game feels crowded, media wise, but it doesn't feel like crazy. It doesn't feel like you're just in a mob scene all the time and there's famous people all around. Like the finals feels like that. I don't know how many people know that listen to this podcast know this, but you took a whole crew with you. DnVR did you and Harrison Nguyen and a couple other guys to Serbia last summer and you filmed a bunch of YouTube episodes, you filmed a documentary about it that I haven't watched the whole thing of, I'm derelict in doing that because life is too busy but I'm gonna do it because I've been to Serbia and I go to the Balkans every summer. Like I want you to take me through, why did you do that? And you went to Sombore where Yokos is from and where Yokos has his horses and likes to go in the off season. Why did you do that in what did you get out of it? Just take us through that a little bit because that's a big undertaking. You have children, you have families, it's far away, it's expensive, it's not like you're gonna go there and get like a two hour sit down with Yokos just because you came to Sombore. But that's a cool cultural experience. I'm sure unlike anything you guys have ever done in your lives probably. Well, what you got out of it, we'd fill up the entire podcast with me talking about that but the idea to go, DnVR's a unique company. I'll say line item number one, it was fun, it's a fun idea and at DnVR we're lucky enough that we get the luxury to do that to say, hey man, this would be really interesting. We don't even know what we're gonna get from it but we just know we'll get something, we trust ourselves that we go there, something's gonna manifest itself and that'll be the story. But number two, we have a big following in Serbia. I mean, that is a basketball nation. It is a basketball nation. So we have a big following out there and hey, let's go meet some of our fans, let's go talk to them. Hey man, they're all gonna, but what time will the games be on there if they're 8.3? Like four, five, six, or four, or four. They will, if I could be in a bar in Belgrade and tip off of one of those games, it's going to be insane. Like it's not gonna be like people waking up and like I'll flip on the game on my living room. The bars are gonna be open and they're gonna be crowded for these finals games. And by the way, Zach, they've been doing this for 30 years. I mean, they first had their players arrive in the NBA in 1989 with Lottie Devots. So they've been doing this for a long time of, hey, that's the rhythm of it. Los Angeles was even an hour back so they would be up even an hour earlier. But, you know, so you have, so we wanted to go out there and meet our fans and then lastly, to learn a little bit more about Serbian culture and Serbian basketball history, which I knew there was a history, but I think like most people, you know, like, okay, there's some players that come from that region. I did not know, Zach, it's perhaps the basketball nation. I said yesterday on a show, US the basketball nation. And then the Soviet Union or Lithuania, and I think I said then Serbia, the hate mail I received for saying that. They say, no, no, no, no, no. We are at least number two. Don't like, don't put us below anybody else. And if you look at Yugoslavia as a whole, which of course, formerly comprised of all of those Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, of all those nations, they have a lot of gold medals. They have a lot of history that goes back 100 years, by the way, 1923 was when basketball was introduced to Serbia from an American Red Cross Worker. So we are on year 100 of basketball there, perhaps not coincidental, but they have this history and this infrastructure and this pride that they really purposely set out to make themselves into a basketball nation. And as a result, they had an incredible 20 year run of gold medals and international competition, including over the US multiple times. Spain and France both now have a say in the number two conversation currently because they just, the players change and they just keep making the finals and the semifinals of all the big European international tournaments. But you know, Serbia probably provided Yokic place, probably has the second best team on paper in the world. But so who did you meet there? Did you meet any Yokic family and friends? Did you see the horses? Did you see any of the horses? Did you get to ride in the harness with his horses? Did you get anything like that? Didn't get to ride in the harness, but I'll tell you this quick anecdote is that, you know, I wrote Nicola before, said, hey, we're going over, we're gonna go to Sombore. Is there anything off limits? Like I don't wanna judge, that's his private space. Is there anywhere off limits? And he said, no, but you won't find it. So I made that a challenge, like let's go find out. And as a result, you know, we did, we went to KK Joker, which is the basketball club in Sombore that he now owns, KK Joker and he operates. We got to go there where he grew up playing the game and met his former coaches, saw all of the infrastructure and all the cool things that he has going on there. We went to the horse stables, yes, to both the track, the hipodrome, and also to his stable where he received the MVP. We were escorted there by one of his personal friends. We went to his favorite restaurant and had his favorite meal, which by the way, these are stories that when you're here, you know, through the years, you accumulate these little details, but they don't make sense to you. What's his favorite meal? So it's called, he called it fish do, but it's called paprikash. So it's a, and I didn't know this. So you get that detail and you think, okay, well, I'll look that up when I go there. Apparently it is in Sombore, that's what it's known for. So he's an extremely locally proud person that Sombore is known for paprikash. And that's what we, you know, that's his favorite meal. But we got to have that in his favorite restaurant. So all of those things, like when we went to Sombore, we got the full red carpet rolled out for us. And then, you know, a bunch of other people, former basketball players, his agent, people at the Serbian basketball federation who really helped us through, walk through the history of, of basketball in Yugoslavia. So there was no shortage of people. I slept maybe four hours a day for eight days straight. And those were conversations that started at eight in the morning and ended at four in the morning and basically just repeated every single day. Did Yokchich flee when he knew you guys were coming? We see like, this is a great time for me to go see somewhere even more, somewhere more remote than Sombore because these are coming from America. I want no part of it. I mean, he sees us all year long. So I'm sure there was an element of that. But the thing that made the trip perfect, and I mean this when I say that trip was perfect and everything worked out unbelievably well, is that he was with the national team that week. So he wasn't actually around. Oh, that's right. But it culminated with, we spent one week there and it culminated that on the last day, he played against Janus and Team Greece, Team Serbia versus Janus and Team Greece in an important World Cup qualifying game. They needed that game to qualify for this year's World Cup and it took place in Belgrade, which I think Yokchich has only played in the last, since he came to the NBA. I think it's his second time playing in Belgrade. So for a lot of fans in Belgrade, that's the only time they get a chance to watch him play. So it was a huge game and it was an unbelievable game. I went through the sort of five year arc of this team a couple episodes ago. And I just, I want you as someone who follows it day to day on the ground there. Just the journey from Jamal Murray tearing his ACL until now. And obviously a lot of things change between then and now in terms of personnel, KCP, Bruce Brown, Jeff Green, all hand in glove fits for how the Nuggets want to play, tweaks to their defensive style, more variety in their defense, going small with Aaron Gordon at the five, which is something you and I talked about months and months ago. A lot of things have changed. Aaron Gordon was already there and I want to talk more about him later. But you know, you have these two seasons after his injury that are successful seasons. And there are MVP seasons for Yokchich. You win around one year, lose to the champs the next year in the first round. But did you as someone covering the team, did the fan base, were there thoughts during that period of like, yeah, this is cool, but it's empty. And did we miss it? Is this going to be it? Or was there always a faith that like, this is we're just waiting for this team to be fully formed again and it'll be there? I mean, when we called it purgatory. So I think that gives you a sense of what it felt like. It felt like, what is the story here? They're just, we're just waiting. We're all holding our breath. And I'll say this, you know, if we go back to timeline that you're talking about, you get Aaron Gordon, you've talked about this on your show numerous times, but you get Aaron Gordon and there was a seven or eight game run there where the Nuggets look like, oh, it's time. All right, this is what we've been waiting for. Let's go. And right then, Murray, you know, tears his ACL and it's all over. I will say when you ask about what was the value of that. So I think Nuggets fans, everybody knew that the Nuggets weren't winning a title until Murray came back and was 100%. Was that one year, was that two? Turned out it was two. But during that time, it wasn't inconsequential because I think two things happened. One, the chemistry between Yoko Chinaire and Gordon went through the roof by necessity. Aaron Gordon spent a whole season being the second best Nuggets. So you're going to develop a chemistry there that is paying dividends now. But more importantly, and they by the way, they get along really, really well on and off the floor. They are very tight. Personality wise, it's underrated how much we talk about basketball fit and, you know, how do these plays play each other? But personality fits important too. And a lot of personality fits on the Nuggets team. But the most important thing to come out of the last two years is, Nicola has always been a reluctant scorer. And he increased that even in his MVP season. Murray got hurt at the end of that. He won the MVP with Murray for most of that. But I think that going into that playoffs and then obviously spending the next season without Murray or Porter forced him to learn, I think, to be more comfortable being aggressive, to score a lot more. And so when those guys came back, he perfectly and seamlessly went back to being more of a distributor. The points went down a little bit, but we saw a 53-point game in this playoffs. We've seen some big scoring outputs. It's there now and he is so comfortable being a big game scorer. And just flipping the switch. That's one of the things about Nicola is it's not, I'll come in tonight, I have to be aggressive. Tomorrow I'll be, no, he just reads it. And if it's, oh, they're guarding me this way, 50 points. The Gordon trade is a visionary move by Tim Connolly. And oh my God, what I love to have Tim Connolly on this podcast right now, because this has to be such a combination of emotions swirling within him that he left this team, knowing what it might do to take a job in Minnesota, made a gigantic trade right away that hasn't worked. And now is watching this with, I'm sure, a combination of pride, longing, bittersweet, whatever. But it was a trade that was in the works for a long time, a player that they had looked at as a Jeremy Grant replacement and a better fit to Jeremy Grant on a lot of levels for a long time. And it was a trade that just felt immediately when it happened before Aaron Gordon set foot there as not only a trade that was like basketball destiny for the Nuggets, but basketball destiny for Aaron Gordon, who I had written about so many times in Orlando as just miscast by the fault of the magic and by his own ambitions, I think, of being like a ball dominant three and never kind of embracing really what he should be as a player, which is, I used to call it, his version of Dremon Green, not as good of a playmaker, not quite as good of a defender, but a decent playmaker and an excellent defender. And he found the guy to bring that out of him in Yokich and now with Murray, even more so because he doesn't have to score as much. And it's just as perfect as a fit could be. And you could argue like, oh, well, it's easy to fit around Yokich and Murray, two brilliant players. He's a perfect fit. And I felt in game four against the Lakers, there's a lot to process. There's the awe of LeBron putting up 40 and playing essentially the whole game with a foot injury. There's Anthony Davis disappearing and then coming back and scoring 10 in the fourth quarter. There's Denver being on the verge, on the verge, on the verge of history, Yokich and Murray finally getting there. And I found myself also gravitating toward Aaron Gordon, who the Lakers were ignoring and daring to shoot threes, putting Anthony Davis on him. And you could see some burblings on Nuggets Twitter of like, well, we gotta cut his minutes. We gotta get more shooting out there. And they did cut his minutes in game four. And my response to that in private conversations with the Nuggets, people that I just gossip with and others was, he's too good. He's too good and too essential to just all of a sudden, he's Jared Vanderbilt and we have to limit his minutes. In game four, he made his open threes. They used him as a facilitator. They used him as a screener on back screens, which was the adjustment. And it was like the fully formed Aaron Gordon game that they're going to need more of to win the title. I found myself thinking about him almost more than any other player in that game. I mean, he was, I'm glad you brought up that arc of it where game four, he comes back in. Because game three was the one you close with Jeff Green. Game four, he comes back. I'm sorry, I misspoke. I've got my games in whatever game. Yeah, game three, he was benched in the end kind of. But to close it out and be back on the court was, it was an interesting story arc to me as well. And you're right, he does all these things well. But in the playoffs, look, it's no shame to say great players sometimes get played off of the floor for matchups at this level. And it's not a shameful thing to me. It's, hey, this matchup and this, no, sometimes not even a matchup. It's just, hey, last three minutes, we need to be able to do this one thing. This lineup's rolling. This lineup's rolling. We're sticking with it. But you brought up the game for adjustments. And you never know how to credit these things. But after the game, Michael Malone called yokech, coach, yokech, right? He took over. And I know Malone well enough to know the offense in that series was great. The nuggets, I think, went to yokech on the court, 125 offensive ratings. So it's, I think there's a reluctance to say, hey, we need to focus on how to attack them when they're not guarding Aaron Gordon. In my opinion, I think the nuggets focused in on their defense and some of their other things. But the offense, for all the laughing about the Ruby adjustment, oh, that's gonna stop him. That actually is the best way to guard yokech. If you have a four big enough and smart enough to just kind of keep him, you know, make him work. And then you have a roaming five. That has been where teams have found some success. Again, if the bar is lower from 125 offensive rating, can we just get that down to 120? That's the best win. Manageal, man, you get it down to like, if we have a good offensive game, we can win. And so that's what the teams are trying to do. And it did stymie Denver and it's why Jeff Green closed in game three. But with Aaron Gordon, I really suspect that yokech was the one in game four saying like, no, we need to solve this problem now in the clutch offensively. And when you say using him as a screener, to me, that's the ultimate thing. Anthony Davis was dead tired and he wasn't gonna go out on the perimeter to contest his jumper. So either he's gonna hit four or five in the fourth, or you're gonna have to use him differently. And using him as the sort of flare screen setter on the weak side, knowing Anthony Davis isn't gonna provide any help on those actions, to me is the best way. They did that in game four with Aaron Gordon. And I'm hopeful that coach, yokech and coach Malone, I don't want to take it away. But coach, yokech has said, hey, this is what we need to do when and if teams do this. And if so, we're gonna really gain a rhythm at attacking it. And I've talked a lot about the Lakers. I did make a minimum on two days ago. So you can listen to that Lakers fans if you want about how competitive that sweep was and how this Lakers season was a success, regardless of how it ended. And every game in that series, it's a cliche to say every game tells a story. Every game in that series was a story. And kind of like a poetic one. So game one, LeBron misses the tying three. They play more cards than they think they're gonna play the Lakers to try to steal that game. Game two I've talked about is like, I watched that game and like, oh, that's a moment for the Nuggets. That's a prove it moment. Rallying from a deficit, getting on the verge of a 2.0 lead in a place that you've never gotten out of in the NBA. And then having it start to unravel a little bit late and gutting it out, even though it was starting to unravel. Game three, foul trouble, all that stuff. They find a way to win it on the road. And then game four, just nipping tuck the entire way. This team is not going away. We can't land a knockout punch and rediscovering Aaron Gordon and gutting it out and Aaron Gordon helping get the stop at the end of the game. By the way, no one talked about this. No, I've given up on the Nuggets get the ball back up to in a three and a half second differential between shot clock and game clock. I guess nobody will ever do the thing where you just run the whole shot clock down and launch a three and end the game. Like I'm screaming at Jamal Murray. Why are you shooting with like seven on the shot clock, man? Just stop, just heat it up. No one will, I guess no one will ever do it. Yeah, that's a funny detail. Magic Johnson had one by the way. I've seen a clip of it where he gets a steal and he throws the perfect pass all the way down court so it rolls slowly to the corner. And it wastes maybe seven seconds just rolling. And then the buzzer sounds before it goes out of bounds. So I think that's the greatest throw away pass I've ever seen. But to your point, here's one thing because I don't mind that these were all close games. They all could have gone either way. They were that close. One thing though I pushed back on because I think Denver dominated the series. And one reason is what would LeBron have had in game five? Because Anthony Davis didn't have anything in game three and four. And when going into the series, one of the things I said was, all right, the series is every other game. The Lakers, the Nuggets have the endurance. And I think the toughness edge in this one. And when I say toughness, what I just mean is they're younger and Yokoch and Murray are both so good when they're exhausted. They just are so good at pushing through it. It's why they've come back from two, three, one desert. It's one of the reasons they've come back from two, three, one deficits. And they've been so good in elimination games. They have an incredible ability to play through those moments. And that's how the series played out. Game one, Anthony Davis was a monster. Yokoch obviously outplayed him. That was an all-time performance. Game two, you saw him run out of steam. Games three and four, I think he had nothing left. And that was part of the design is, Yokoch is one of the most exhausting players to go up against. LeBron guarded him for a while, emptied the chamber. And I'm quite well too. And if there was a game five, I just would have taken Nuggets by 25 points. And if there was a game six, I would have taken them by 30 points. It just Denver, I think, wore them out and was gaining an edge even with the wins. If it went longer, I think they were just building towards something later in the series. So I almost started watching film of Nuggets Heat, previous matchups after the heat went up 3-0. And then I stopped myself, because if there's one thing I hate in life, it's wasted time, time that ends up wasted. And I stopped myself because I was like, you know what? I'm not gonna tempt the basketball gods with a comp, like I'm not gonna do two hours of this. And then the Celtics win in seven, and those two hours will have been lit on fire. I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait. So I haven't done any of it yet. And now I'm, goddamn, not doing any of it until that series is over, whoever it ends. Have you thought about matchups yet? I mean, we talked about the heat earlier and the fact that you obviously get home court in Denver, the Nuggets do it if the heat went. But have you thought about which team? Because I mean, have you just, have you thought about it yet? Well, let's start with the basics. One, you have home court advantage and the other, you don't, and Denver is incredibly good at home. So automatically you look at, there's a big difference there, but Miami, I've always thought this, Miami is the best matchup for Denver of all the good teams in the NBA. I think of every good team. That's the team that Denver has just had at least regular season dominance over. And it starts with, Bam Adabio is a phenomenal center against all but two or three players in the NBA. One of them and probably most important is Yogic. He's too big, he's too tall. And Bam, Yogic is really good against defenders that play the positional type defense and put a hand up, because he doesn't care if you force him this way or that way. If you're not blocking his shot, he's just shooting a comfortable jump hook. And Bam falls in that category. On top of that, then you look at Aaron Gordon, who's one of the sneaky, most important players, because if you can't guard him with size and physicality, then your defense is constantly having to collapse on the paint. Well, Aaron Gordon has a great size matchup in that series. So to me, Denver has dominated the heat for the last several years. And that matchup to me is one of the best ones. The Celtics is a tough one. They, I just said it takes two bigs to guard him. Al Horford with Robert Williams roaming is a really good, you know, on ball defender, very crafty and then help side shot blocker. That's really tough. And they have the perimeter defenders and Marcus Martin Jalen Brown to make things difficult on Murray. So to me, this is about as big of a gap between good and bad matchups for the Nuggets as you can get coming out of the East. Well, we'll see what happens. That's all the analysis I'm doing. I'm coming out of the East because I'm not doing any of it more, anymore of it. I will see you soon, one way or the, are you going to travel to all the games? I'm not sure yet how it'll happen. I really hope everybody comes to Denver. But if so, either way, you're going to, you've been saying for years now you're coming by the bar. I'm going to come. I'm going to check this next week. Oh, no, no, no. If I get to Denver, I'm coming to the bar and it'll, and I'm going to bring some friends to the bar too. Perfect. Look, I just think the series ended really fast. LeBron hinted at retirement. The East series has turned dramatic. I just wanted to take half an hour and just sort of talk about the Nuggets, even though we're going to have now two and a half more weeks to talk about the Nuggets once the finals get rolling. But your work covering this team in various outlets has been, I mean, foundational to my understanding of it in the nitty gritty and I think lots of fans and then transitioning to what you're doing now at the NVR has been really fun to watch. And I just, one way or another win-lose, enjoy the finals because like the world is coming to Denver now. I mean, that's what happens. And so you've done great work. Thank you for indulging me yet again on this podcast and I'm sure we'll do it again soon. Can't wait, Zach. Thanks so much. ♪