Jalen Williams's and Wemby’s Injuries, Game 3 Previews, and Mets Corner!

coming up on the Zack Lo show. It's Thursday. We have three huge games tonight, including two Pivotal Game Threes, Nick's Hawks and Thunder Wolves. We'll talk about those a little bit. And then Steve Jones Jr. is coming on to talk about all the stuff that happened last night and all of Friday's major games. Steve Jones Jr., you know him from Twitter, from the Dunker Spot, one of those guys where if you want to understand what happened in the game, you've got to follow him. You've got to follow his Twitter. Detroit Orlando, the Pistons even it up. What did they do? What are some counters for the magic in game three? Oklahoma City Phoenix, it looked like the headline was going to be, Whoa boy, J. Dubb is all the way back. How scary is this freaking team? And then in the third quarter, he pulled up with a hamstring issue. We'll talk about the implications of that for the Thunder. When do they actually need Jalen Williams back? How do they adjust without him? Phoenix, Devin Booker went at the officials. There were some shaky calls in game three. We'll talk about, or game two, we'll talk about whether they were right or wrong. And then Steve and I will get into Lakers, Rockets, Houston. Hello. The playoffs started and six are Celtics. Chase Serrano comes on to talk about Spurs, Blazers. His life is a Spurs fan, his relationship with his dad, Denny Avdia, Scoot Anderson, that whole series going back to Portland with or without Wemby in game three. We'll see. And then it's time. That's corner. Yeah, they won. Throw a goddamn parade. Met's Corner, all coming up on the Zach Lowe Show. The Zach Lowe Show is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA postseason is here and FanDuel knows the only thing better than watching your favorite team win is winning along with them. FanDuel is the best place to bet the teams, players and plays during their playoff run. Build the same game partly or try live betting and jump in after tip-off. And don't forget, with FanDuel, you get paid instantly when you win. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app now and play your game. Twenty-one over in select states, 18 and over in DC. Kentucky Royalsman gambling problem called one in hundred gambler called one 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. Welcome to the Zach Lowe Show, day six of the NBA playoffs. Three more big games tonight, including Pivotal. Game threes between the Wolves and Nuggets and Nicks and Hawks. Two fascinating series. Who you got in those two series, Steve Jones Jr. If you've made picks, did you make picks? I had Nicks and Six. Me too. What was the other one you said? Nuggets, Wolves. I had Nuggets and Seven. Okay, I had Nicks and Six. I still feel good despite the hilarity of the last game. I had Nuggets and Six. Still feel pretty good about the Nuggets and Six or Seven, but that's going to be a fun one tonight. As those resume, we'll see what adjustments come to bear. Let's talk about the games from last night first. Oklahoma City Phoenix looked very much like the headline of that game was going to be, whoa, Jalen Williams is like all the way back. He's spinning through double teams. He's roasting Osso Iguodara on switches. He's running in transition. His size on defense, you like feel it on the wing. His Phoenix is like, where is he? Is he going to rotate here? Is he going to rotate? Oh, we just turned the ball over again. And then the headline shifted to, uh-oh, Hamstring pulled up in the third quarter. He'll have an MRI today. We'll know today, tomorrow, whenever, what his status is. I would assume they treated this, it was the other Hamstring in the regular season, but they aired on the side of extreme caution in the regular season because they were the number one seed, the whole season, they didn't need to do anything. Up to 0 in this series, I would expect them to also air on the side of maybe less extreme caution, but I would expect, but I do expect them to miss sometime, just, you know, you have the luxury of it. Steve, when do they actually need Jalen Williams? Could they win the title without Jalen Williams? I mean, based on the success they had all year, you can make the argument that they could because they have the depth. They still have the line-up versatility. The defense is still strong. I think part of, I'm glad you mentioned it, the shame of the injury is you really felt the force that he played with on both ends of the floor and how he can elevate them, just a reminder of how good Jalen Williams is for the Socoma City Thunder Machine. So for me, I think to win a championship in this Western Conference, they will probably need him absolutely by the Conference Finals by the latest. I would agree. I would agree. Second round. I think next round, which we will talk about, even if it ends up being the Lakers with Luca and Reeves just say wildly optimistic, they're both 90% of themselves. I think they can beat the Lakers without J-Dub. That's how good they are. They have all, you know, maybe they have A.J. Mitchell, they have Kasein Wallace, they have Caruso will now play every game when she doesn't in the regular season. They went double big a little bit more right away last night after J-Dub got hurt. But the shame of it is not only was he playing well, a couple of things happened right before he got injured that I was like super excited to see. Number one, they ran an empty side pick and roll with him and Hartenstein on the right side of the floor that ended in a lob dunk for Hartenstein with Shay off the ball. And like that's one of the things that having A.J. Mitchell is a very good player. You can move Shay off the ball a little bit when they share the floor. J-Dub is bigger, which you actually really feel, I think, defensively when he's like the second biggest guy on the floor in their chat at the five or whoever at the five lineups. They're one big lineups. But he's also like this guy's an all NBA level ball handler and all NBA level secondary option. It just opens up more stuff for Shay. And they also finally, I've been waiting for this Steve Jones Jr. They trotted out Shay, Caruso, A.J. Mitchell, J-Dub and Shet, which is a five man lineup that played seven possessions in the regular season. And I'm like maybe they just don't want to try this out. Maybe it's too small. Maybe it's like they want Lou, they want Kason. They finally trotted it out. And I was like, yes, let's go. And then he got hurt right away. But I do think as great as they are, whoever gets to the conference finals, assuming Wemby is healthy and knock on wood, he will be after this concussion. Assuming the Nuggets, whoever gets through that side of the bracket is healthy. I just think those teams are so good that the margin from as great as Oklahoma City is to how their ceiling is nudged up with a six, eight monster like that, I do think they need them to get to the finals. No, I agree. Especially with staying in Tony's ability to poke at them defensively and then Denver, their ability to score on the other end. I think you need Jaylen Williams in his fourth, especially with how teams want to guard shade. You put Jaylen Williams one pass away, you're trying to help, it makes a huge difference. I don't know what to really say about this series. Oklahoma City is plus 25 per hundred possessions. The Sun's offense is drawing dead. The Sun's have turned the ball over on 21% of their possessions, which is you have no shot. The Thunder are just making them shoot a ton of contested pull up mid-range jumpers. Their threes are way down, their rim shots are way, way down, and only 19% of their shots have come at the basket. They just have no answer for the Thunder defense. So let's talk about the officiating, because that became a story last night. Devon Booker called out James, was it James Williams, I think, by name for having a crap game? Maybe it was James Capers. I can't remember which James it was, it was one of them. Let's see, we had a unnatural, most shooting motion offensive foul on Devon Booker. We had Devon Booker getting called for a technical, for kind of saving the ball in a scrum play that there was actually a foul call, but he saved it and it hit big J.L. Williams in the butt. He got called for a technical. And I understand the frustration. I'll just put it to you, do you understand the frustration? Did you think that was a officiating, shaking game? I mean, I never really think too much about the officials. That's my dad's fault. But I think for, if you're in the perspective of Devon Booker, yeah, they're really physical. They're hitting me, they're showing their hands. Every drive I'm getting hit, I'm kind of tired of it. I'm not getting the calls I need, I'm out of rhythm. I'd like to go home and get some calls. So I understand that portion of it as far as it goes. I think O.K.C.'s defense has been too overwhelming for me to say, hey, they are purely winning this because the calls are not being made. No one's going to say that. But I mean, I think if I'm Devon Booker, and this is the playoffs, we play a little bit of Game of Thrones here. Let's talk about the rest so we can change this so I can get some quick whistles, I can get rhythm, and we can have some fun when I go home. So I think that is more of the play. And it's not even something he usually does. This is like, what, the first time? That he's really just gone out like this to this degree? I like it. I just like, I respect him because he does not do this. Like, you know that there's going to be Dylan Brooks' chicanery in this series. And there was a lot last night, and it was delightful. First of all, Shay and Lou Dort with hall of fame level facial expressions in reaction to Dylan Brooks, just hall of fame. Shay's like, look at this guy over here. And there was a, I couldn't decide if he flipped the bird or not. It was like he's pointing, but in the act of pointing, the middle finger is elevated. I get that. Then he quickly switched to the thumb. They're like, oh, look at this guy. And then Lou Dort, when they got tangled up under the rim, gave it just a great like, like, whoa, okay. All right. But I hated the, first of all, I hate all reviews, but I hated the offensive foul on Booker where he went up into Caruso and they called it an unnatural shooting motion. Looked normal to me. And then like a few minutes after that, maybe it was even the possession after that, Shay isolated on Gillespie. Now Gillespie puts his left arm out to try to cut Shay off. And you know what's going to happen. There's a reason why guys defend Shay with their hands, behind their backs sometimes. And then Shay picks up his dribble, sticks the ball underneath Gillespie's arm, and raises it up and gets a foul call. It's a rip through. It's a, I guess a foul, but like it's a wildly unnatural shooting motion. Like it actually looks like if you watch the shooting motion, it looks like he's going to shoot a two-handed underhand shot up around Gillespie's arm. If not, if that's not an unnatural shooting motion, what is, and then Shet had the classic like, pump fake guy kind of bites on a little bit in the second half and I just like, barf into him and get a foul call. So I get the frustration and the technical was bullshit. Sorry, that was a bad technical. So you think the rest, they didn't have the best effort in that game. I didn't. I don't think it matters because Oklahoma City's defense is just so good. And you just watch these Booker, Green, whatever Gillespie picking rules. And here comes, you know, they bring the big guy up. Also comes up, Chet, I Heart, Big Jalen Williams, whoever it is, they're up pretty high to cut off the ball handler. Two shooters on the weak side, in comes the low man. As you pointed out on Twitter, they seem to like having Shay as the low man, the sons, even though Shay is just blocking shots at the rim, like fucking the Kenbe Matumbo in this series. And then, and then there's one other guy, and you really, this is where you really feel Jalen Williams size when he's the zone up guy between Shay's guy in the corner and the other shooter on the wing. The sons try to bring that shooter up toward the top of the arc to make that Jalen Williams defender defend the most space possible. And it just like doesn't even matter because the Thunder are so big and so fast, especially when they have J-Dub, the size factor, and so tenacious that you can see the ball handlers pause and second guess themselves. Like Booker had one you highlighted on Twitter where Iguodaro was like wide open under the rim, rolled to the rim, rolled behind the big guy defender. Booker rises up to shoot or pass or something 12 feet away. Looks like an easy dump off, but he sees this monster, 6'8", Jalen Williams, rotating down toward Iguodaro, kind of panics because he's coming real fast and he's big and tries to throw it against his momentum back outside and it gets picked off. And there was like three of those where Devon Booker went left on a pick and roll, got up, thought he had something, realized, I don't know what I have, I might have something, it's not what I thought I had and I might have that or other thing over there, but they're coming that way and through this pass against his momentum and it was stolen or went out of bounds and they're just under talented against his team. They don't have enough offensive firepower. I would be surprised if they won a game, but the defense is obviously a warning shot to the rest of the league. Like we have another year we can get to and we're already at it. They just, they closed windows so quick, as you said. And I think the biggest thing is like in theory, if you're Phoenix, Devon Booker should be able to get this coverage that should open this up and Oklahoma City is too versatile and they have too much nuance to have, to where their bakes can be at the level. They can mix in a switch. We can help on the weak side. You're thinking there's an advantage, it's gone. Next time we give you something different. So how many times have you seen Phoenix try to run a set, go off ball, try and get Booker off ball, try and get some jubilant handoffs, play through Oso. Oklahoma City denies their physical and you look, there's 14 on the clock and either Dylan Brooks Devon Booker, Jay McGree has the ball with a pause of, okay, guess I have to go find one. That's not ideal. They've just taken a lot of things off the offensive menu for the sons. Yeah, I mean, we can sit here and talk about like, maybe they'll start Royce O'Neill for some more shooting and he certainly loosened up the offense last night. Maybe Grayson Allen gets healthy, that would help. Maybe Mark Williams gets healthy, that would help. And I would be surprised no matter who plays, if they want a game in the series, no shame in that. The only thing that's gonna matter coming out of this series is Jalen Williams' health. And we'll learn about it more in the next 42 to 78 hours, whatever it is, or 48 to 72 hours. I don't know why I went with the other numbers. And, knock on wood, he's obviously had a brutal season of just one injury after another from the wrist, which he played through last year, to the right hamstring, to the left hamstring. And you just want, he's an all NBA player, you wanna see him healthy. He obviously had legendary games in the finals last year that they needed every bit of them against the Pacers. And as great as they are, and as sexy as a hot take, it might be to say, they don't even need them to win the championship. Yeah, there's a universe where they can win the title without him because they'd be favorites over someone coming out of the East and all that. I just find it hard to believe that they can get through at least the last two playoff rounds without him at that level of competition. Maybe they could, but I think their margin shrinks to a dangerous place. Okay, any other thoughts on this series or can we switch gears and leave the Suns in the desert? We can switch gears. Orlando, Detroit. Steve, if you like offense, you should probably watch a different series. In the regular season, the worst offense in the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets averaged 108 points per 100 possessions. Through two games in this slugfest, Detroit 101 points per 100 possessions, Orlando 98 points per 100 possessions. It's, they are 14th and 16th in offensive rating among the playoff teams with Phoenix sandwiched in between them. They are 15th and 16th among 16 playoff teams in three point percentage, so everybody is missing everything, but Detroit came out last night. They played a much cleaner defensive game. You could count the real mistakes on one hand after what I call the frazzled performance in game one. And they had some counters to Orlando's scheme of switching the K-Duron, go underneath and switch and try to take Duron out of the game. Duron didn't have, I thought Duron had another game. He looks really, really frazzled and sped up and forcing it on offense, but Detroit discovered some things about how to counter that. What did you see from the Pistons offense in terms of like, okay, we saw what Orlando did in game one. Here's what we're gonna come out and try to counter it in game two. Well, one, I thought Kay Cunningham set the tone early and Asar Thompson helped as far as just trying to get to a space where, okay, you had success mixing and switching and being at the level and dropping back. I'm gonna force your hand early. So I'm just gonna turn the corner and when no Carter Jr., you come with me, I'm in the paint. Asar, please try and do a health beat. Trees, please try and set a flare, I'll find you late. But also, hey, set this high screen for me. As soon as I see window Carter Jr. jump out, I'm just gonna give you a pocket pass. Get a roll, Jaylen Durin. Get a feel for something so we can get something. Here's Asar Thompson cutting from the corner. That was big. I think little things like working to just set a pin down for a big, whether it was Isaiah Stewart or Jaylen Durin to try and get Orlando's big on the move to where, okay, you may want to switch, but it's not as comfortable because you're running up to where I'm at. So I think he got go gone one early in that game. I think it was an adventure for Jaylen Durin. He couldn't quite get the drives going. I think he was thinking a lot, especially in that first half. I think he felt it. Like there was a possession about 130 mark in that second quarter. Jaylen Durin screens for Kate Cunningham, right? And Orlando switches Franz Wagner onto him. And Kate fires it right to Javante Green on the right wing. Cause he's thinking, okay, Jaylen Durin's gonna roll and seal, let's get you one big fella. And Jaylen Durin just buffered at the elbow. Oh, okay. And Kate's like, okay, give me the ball. And then he scores on window card junior. I think the big thing, if we're talking purely about Jaylen Durin in the third quarter was his ability to position himself to make sure that he got a roll. And so he did a good job of flipping the angle of his screens. And so typically if you're gonna set a screen, the defense is gonna just kind of slide and get themselves in a position where they can get under you. And then that way you can't roll, you're rolling into their body. He just kind of worked to position it where he could get a touch and then release. And that allowed him to get a roll. And so they went to these super high picking rolls and he set them flat. He's like, I'm actually not really hitting you. I'm just gonna touch you and get out of here. And so them being able to get him rolling, I thought was really important in that third quarter. The other thing was Kate Cunningham kind of looking at everyone on the Orlando Magic side saying, I think I can score on you. Paulo, let's dance. Franz, Desmond Bain, Jalen Sugg, let's go. And I think part of that is poking at the switching aspect where, okay, I don't want you to be as comfortable. I feel comfortable attacking and getting to my spots. And if I could cycle through these matchups, like it's not apples to apples, but the Miami Milwaukee series where Jimmy Butler just didn't care who was guarding him and said, it doesn't matter. And now you're searching for something. If you're Detroit, can we get Kate to position where, okay, maybe we get Duren rolling. We also have Kate playing at this high level. Does that make Orlando change what they want to do defensively and does that open things back up for us? Whatever playoff questions you have about Detroit. If we can get Duren rolling and we can get rotation from Orlando, we now at least have openings as opposed to just what game one was. Yeah, I don't want to exaggerate it. Like DePiston scored 99 points for 100 possessions last night. They had a bad offensive game, partly because they're turning it over like 20 times a game. And Duren is a big part of that. He's in his own head. You can see him being like, I got to do something. I haven't compromised the defense, but let me just drive it Wendell Carter Jr. and see what happens. And what's happening is Wendell Carter Jr. is just like, thanks, I'm going to take the ball and you're going to fall over and I'm going to dunk it on the other end. But to your point about like the switching, going under and switching, gum them up in game one. And last night I was waiting to see how they would adjust and adjustment number one is exactly what we said. Jalen Duren slipping so hard out of these picks, sometimes not even setting them, like not setting a screen at all, just like getting into the area where a pick were to happen, if it were to happen, would happen here. And then I'm out and Cade understanding that and delivering the pass early, like you can't switch. You don't have time to switch. And you saw Duren get a, he got one dunk out of it. He got flagrant fouled by Wendell Carter Jr. And then he hit a Sarr Thompson for two dunks on sort of the big to big kind of passing. You saw that. And then you saw, like you said, Cade being like, oh, okay, but I'm Cade Cunningham. You're going to switch Wendell Carter Jr. onto me. He can't guard me. I'm just going to go buy him. And yeah, there's going to be some traffic around the basket cause we play a lot of guys who are non shooters, but it's not traffic. I can't navigate because the biggest guy on the floor is the guy guarding me. And I'm going to get by that guy and like, what am I? I'm afraid of Palo Bancaro around the room. I'm afraid of Desmond Bain. No, I'm just going to go. And that, the other thing to your point was he started to hunt other guys. And the magic are not like a super huntable team. Like they have a lot of good defenders, but Cade Cunningham can do damage against Palo Bancaro 101. Cade Cunningham can beat Desmond Bain 101. He can post up Desmond Bain. And particularly if Bain is on Duncan Robinson, and I think last night was a reminder of how critical Duncan Robinson's shooting and movement is to their team. If Bain's on Duncan Robinson, by all means, start setting some Duncan Robinson screens for Cade Cunningham and start randomly flaring out here and there, slipping out of them, getting switches. And you even saw like, they've had Duncan Robinson and Durin set like really sort of random, I wouldn't even call them staggered screens. Just like they would just run up together like a big rugby scrum and set picks for Cade Cunningham and make the magic guess. Like what direction is Cade going to go? Wait, who's screening for who and where and why is it a back screen? Is it not? Where's Duncan Robinson going? Just sewing that kind of confusion. It's not, again, it was a bad offensive game, but when they defend like they did last night, they just need like an okay offensive game. And I thought they made some of the right adjustments. Now the question for you, put your coaching hat on Steve Jones Jr. is you just saw that as Orlando. Your offense is a whole other mess that we can talk about, but you saw what Detroit did against your defense. The counter came. What's your counter to the counter? If they haven't figured anything out, but if the Pistons have at least like found the right levers to pull against our go under and switch thing, which worked in game one, we're going to see those same levers again. What's our adjustment for game three? Well, that's what I was looking for in that third quarter because Detroit really got some casual roles. But if I'm Orlando, I'm thinking, okay, we do not want to give two on the ball and just purely give them the roles. We could go drop and just drop back and try and contain and say, hey, this is the shot you get. We dictate terms that way. Or we could kind of stick and just try and mix and okay, let's make sure we protect and have Jalen Durant slips and say, hey, you fight over, show some nuance and let's try and mix things up to where we're not going to get this automatically. And so I think for Orlando, it's more, they have to keep terms within what they've done in so far in game one, game two. They can't necessarily like Detroit as not great offensively as it was in totality. They can't let them feel unlocked. So I think it's, okay, maybe we just switch harder and maybe we show help earlier to take away the Jalen Durant role and we just kind of recreate it that way. It's where we got this switch. You don't necessarily have the role still and now we get you back to thinking a little bit. And so it could just be doubling down harder on that. But I don't know how much they want to just give Detroit traditional pick and roll coverage is overall. Yeah, I could see them going under on Cade and not switching, just like, we'll stay home. We'll still go under screens. And like, if you can beat us with jump shots, beat us with jump shots and maybe you will. I could see them like, if they switch, I could see them like sending a double team at Cade and just every once in a while, just throw them off rhythm and say, Hey, look, we're going to double you, get the ball out of your hands. And we're going to force you to make a bunch of interior passes because again, you're not going to have clean spacing on the floor. Someone's going to be in the dunker spot. Someone's going to be here. Just mix it up a little bit like that. What about Orlando's offense, which was good enough, certainly in game one and was a little bit of a mess last night. I think fell into some of their more static bad habits, bad shot selection. It's funny, like the magic talk a lot about how we can't let our offense dictate our defense. Like when we have a bad offensive game, sometimes our defense isn't good enough because players let their offense dictate their defense. I feel like sometimes the magic let their offense dictate their offense. Like if they start to go through a rut on offense, they don't dig out of it. They actually just fall back on their absolute worst habits offensively of just standing around, ice-soeing, not going at the right matchups, but how can they attack what was one of the three best defenses in the NBA this year? Well, I mean, I think you look at the way they looked at Duncan Robinson, especially Palo Bancaro. And he said, please come here repeatedly. Let's attack you. And let's use that as a matchup. And so I think it's more so, OK, let's use Palo as a screener. See if we can get Cade in action. See if we can get Duncan Robinson in action. I don't know how much of this is going to be a pure movement series for Orlando, just because of how they want to 2-degree control tempo in the half court and try to attack matchups, win matchups, and leverage the high confidence of their top four players against Detroit and keep this thing close. In the fourth quarter, you got to deal with us. So I'm thinking they'll probably attack matchups, try and get Palo the ball closest in the block, try and probably establish fronds. So I wouldn't be surprised if, hey, Cade, you're in action. Duncan Robinson, you're in action. Tobias Harris, you might be in action. We're going to try and poke at you guys in a way to where, OK. Because that first quarter, you felt Detroit's energy and effort when they were rotating, protecting drives, getting back out and rotating. And that second quarter, which wasn't the prettiest, you felt Orlando, while not really scoring, still having the confidence of, we know we can get a basket. And so that's where it's like, it's a mirror series, because they both need their defense to allow what they want to do offensively to make sense. But if I'm Orlando, we've got to find pressure points. Because when Palo has it going, gets to the line, Detroit may send a double. I think there was one. They didn't want to switch Duncan Robinson. And so Tobias stayed on them. Duncan was like, well, I'm going to double. And it opened up a three for Desmond Bain. So it's like, can you buy? One pass away. And it was actually, I think it was one where Palo did not have a switch. He just had Tobias Harris on him. And they rushed at him. Duncan Robinson doubled, as you said, from Bain. And I was like, why are you, like what the worst case scenario is Palo, Bankero takes an 18-foot fadeaway over the guide that you have assigned to guard Palo, Bankero. Just stay home. The Desmond Bain 3 is like a gift for them. Chill out on the help. But I agree with you, like Palo in the playoffs has 17 post touches. That's number one among all players. 1.8 points per possession, according to second spectrum tracking data out of those plays. And I just like, they're going to try to hide Duncan Robinson on Suggs or Anthony Black, who needs to do a little bit more in this series, or whoever is not Desmond Bain. But a lot of times he's stuck on Bain because Bain's guarding him a lot on the other end. On those possessions, you could not let that go to waste. Duncan Robinson is guarding your most dangerous shooter by a country mile. A guy who can catch and shoot off movement, an accomplished screen flare guy. Bring him into the action, have him set a cross screen for Bankero underneath there, and whatever it is, there aren't a lot of places to attack the Pistons. That's one. And maybe just more pick and rolls aimed at Durin because he can have some hiccups on defense. But these are just like, Orlando's just not a good offensive team. And it's just going to come down to turnovers, rebounding, free throws, all those kind of things. But I think this is going to be a series, a long series now. And I don't know how much of an attractive chest match it's going to be. But last night was, I thought, a good, the right kind of response from the Pistons on both ends of the floor. Not a spectacular one, although that 30 to 3 run was like, whoa, that is an avalanche. But I think we're set up for a fun series. I picked Detroit in five because I just thought they would come out like they were shot out of a cannon, anxious to end the home playoff losing streak. I just didn't know what to make of Orlando. But that game one performance was eye opening. I would switch my pick now to Detroit in seven. I think it's going to be a long series. Oh, seven. OK. I also will pick, I think we're having a confrontation in game three. I think we're having double technicals, a shoving match involving over under 4.5 players. Because Isaiah Stewart was doing Isaiah Stewart stuff last night, including challenging every shot at the rim and winning 80% of them. And then Palo got him. And if the game had been closer, I wonder what would have happened because you could tell Palo was like, shut up. I got you on that one. And Isaiah Stewart was like, I'll be here next time. You want to do it again? I'll be here next time. Something's happening in this series pretty soon. All right, you want to move on to the West? Yeah. Ah. This is probably the game I'm most excited about Friday. Oh. Rockets Lakers. OK. I thought Houston's, I thought Emao Doca's coaching performance in game two was borderline insane. I just did not understand anything the Rockets were doing on offense. Reed Shepard, Kevin Durant, and Alperin Shengun played four minutes together the entire game. That threesome is your only roadmap to functional NBA offense against a team who is missing its two best players, which should be shouted from the rooftops all the time. The Rockets are struggling against a team missing its two best players against a team that has had to have Luke Kinard score like 30 points a game to win these games. Those three guys playing four minutes together, Reed Shepard coming off the bench and playing 11 minutes. And he didn't play well. He didn't make shots. He was a little like a little frazzled himself. I just thought was like a coaching self-sabotage of the level that I have not seen in a long time. Their offense is so bad that there are so many possessions where like nothing happens until there's 14 on the shot clock. And then one thing happens. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't switch the match up in any favorable way for the Rockets. And then they act like 14 on the shot clock means we're done. Like we just can't do anything else. And Alperin Shengun or Amen Thompson is like, all right, I guess I'm just going to dribble from 20 feet out and pray that something happens. And they miss shots or Marcus Smart strips them. I just can't believe the lack of functionality in their offense. A lot of it just comes down to if Reed Shepard's going to play 11 minutes, they don't have any guards who can run a functional pick and roll. They don't have anybody but Durant to do it. And he had nine turnovers. He's 37 years old or whatever he is. They don't have enough. They play a bunch of lineups with two, even three guys who are complete zeros from three point range, including Shengun who has forgotten how to shoot threes. And so there's just like, even if the Lakers have to send help somewhere and they're junking up the series with switching and doubling Durant every time, they don't care because they can double Durant. Behind him are Clint Capella, Josh Shacoggi, and Ahman Thompson in a traffic jam that the Lakers can navigate. I just think you, I don't understand why, why is Reed Shepard on the team? Why did they draft him? Their only path to offense is that triangle of players and to play it four minutes in a game that you didn't necessarily have to win, but no one wants to be down to zero. It's kind of a crisis and you couldn't score at all. And you had no offense. So they're like, okay, someone just do, we'll do one thing. And then someone dribble 50 times and get to the rim. I just thought it was like unconscionably bad. No, I hear it. I mean, I think Houston was searching in that game too, throughout the game lineup wise, trying to find what they do. And I think they have to commit offensively to Reed Shepard. Searching? Searching was Reed Shepard playing hide and seek in the locker room. What are they searching for? He's sitting on the bench. Well, no, let's think about it, right? You go back to the start of the second half, they dinged Alper and Shingu and pick and roll pretty good. Get the Andre and roll and they find some skip passes. They go to switch, they switch and doubled. And so that's when Houston went small and said we're gonna switch everything. And that's when they really had the lineup where people were like, why are these people playing together? And he may tap the defense button. So searching has. Does he have any other buttons? Is that the only button? Is it like the button that Zach Alfinakis has on between two ferns, or it's just one button that you just tap over and over again? Like it's like, anyway, I'm sorry. I just was like watching the game in complete shock. Well, well, one, you gotta give a lot of credit to the Lakers defense for the timing on these double teams. Oh, they're quite great. As far as nailing this consistently, it's been incredible. And I think for Houston, tempo has been a concern all year long as far as getting to your stuff sooner, give yourself a little bit more room for error, get to a second action. And so I think there were pockets in the third quarter where they were able to get to something that resembled flow and they're gonna have to make quick decisions if Kevin Durant's gonna get a double to this level to where, okay, it may not be a perfect world, but you gotta drive some of these closeouts. It can't always be a three. You gotta make some shots, but drive a closeout. Get the ball back to Alper and Shingoon. There were moments where, okay, Kevin Durant gets doubled. The timing was excellent by the Lakers, but he advances it to Jabari Smith. Jabari tries to drive, gets to Shingoon, but now Shingoon is able to get to Kevin Durant and get a roll out of it. Use what the Lakers are doing against them to a degree because the reason they're switching and doubling is because they don't want Alper and Shingoon rolling. And so we don't want Kevin Durant to have the space. We don't want Alper and Shingoon to roll. So we're gonna place you in this box. They have to leverage that against them. And so I think using Armand Thompson as a screener, they did that once I could believe in the third quarter. The problem was LeBron sniffed it out so it didn't really matter. But hey, can you just use him as someone who can poke at the Lakers switching? I think the double-edged sword for the Rockets' offense is you don't have Alper and Shingoon going because the Lakers, especially a game one and game two, said, okay, we're gonna push your catches out. We're gonna show baseline help. It made it be a hard double. What are you gonna do about it? Is that gonna affect your aggression level? If it does, okay, we're not leaning on that. Now we over lean on Kevin Durant, trying to use him to screen for Shingoon, trying to use him off-ball and staggers and pin down to take 48 seconds, trying to use him in dribble handoffs. But they've gotta find a way to find the comfort and use the space to keep pressure on the Lakers' defense. Like there was a set they ran in that, I think it was the fourth quarter. Kevin Durant, pick and roll, got the switch, Mark the smart couldn't double, turn the corner finished. The problem is like the Lakers are comfortable and they adjust on the fly and they're willing, unlike many teams, like you put people in the corners, usually the defense stays flat, right? We saw it last year in the playoffs, they'll just come up to the elbow anyways and say, whatever, make this pass. And so now that you have the rhythm of what they've shown you, can you poke at it and make it a little bit untenable? I don't know. To your point, but there's a half point. They opened the second half with a functional basketball play, clearly a scripted one. Kevin Durant came off a Josh Akogi pin down on the left side of the floor. Why is that important? Because Luke Canard is guarding Josh Akogi and the Rockets cannot just sit there and let Luke Canard exist in this series without going at him. And they did that way too often, just let him exist without punishing him. Switch of Luke Canard on Kevin Durant. Great, that's a great accomplishment. That's what you want. Step one, Lakers double. Step two, Kevin Durant passes to Jabari Smith on the right wing. Step three, defense resets. This is the moment on so many Rockets possessions where everything just dies. And you know what happened on this possession? Jabari Smith went right back to Kevin Durant. Shengun flew up and set a second, a pick and roll for Kevin Durant. And the Lakers were like, oh, we got to defend another thing and they're moving it fast. And Shengun rolled to the rim. The help was not there. He kicked it to Jabari Smith, Jr. in the corner who missed a wide open three. Great process, didn't make the shot. And it's like, why can't we do that every time? And they have a vibe of like, I always remember year one of the LeBron heat when they were trying to figure out how to use Wade and LeBron and like first world problems. The delta between the stuff they would run out of timeouts and the stuff they would run in the flow of the game was so wide. Like they would run this sophisticated five man stuff out of timeouts and they do it once and then the game would be going on. And it was like, they didn't know how to do any of that in the flow of the game. The Rockets have that vibe to them. And I'm like, can we just bottle that? They had another possession where after a Lakers make, it was in the first quarter, I think. Ahmed Thompson ran, like ran sprint dribbled up the floor. I think a Kogi set a screen for him with 20 on the shot clock. I paused it. It was like 20 on the shot clock after a make. The Lakers were not back on defense. They were not set. They had nobody back at the rim. Thompson got ahead of steam against Canard and laid the ball in. It's like, oh, we're allowed to do that. We're allowed to like do something with 20 on the shot clock and go fast. It's like, yeah, do more. That's the only way you're gonna score. Cause the Lakers, to give them credit, super high IQ team, they have the Rockets on their heels cause they don't know what to expect defensively. And offensively, look, they're only scoring 113 points per hundred possessions, which is like average to below average. But given the talent on the floor, they are dictating the terms of the series offensively and getting pretty good shots across the board. I mentioned Paolo's post numbers. He's 17 post touches. LeBron is number two with 16 post touches and they're getting 1.4 points per possession according to second spectrum out of those post touches. And Akogi is the only guy on the team who can kind of not get bulldozed even if it's like a slow motion bulldoze, like just like six dribbles. If you give them six dribbles, Amin Thompson is gonna be under the basket. Tarysen is gonna be under the basket. And between that and Canard, and I have to give JJ credit, like people don't think the Lakers are a good shooting team. They actually have a pretty decent amount of shooting now. And they're getting stuff out of smart eighton pick and rolls and LeBron eighton pick and rolls. And the reason they're getting stuff out of it is on the strong side is Rui Hachimura and he's a good shooter. And on the weak side is Luke Canard setting some screening action with whoever is the fifth guy on the floor. That's just meant to distract the defense because it's Luke Canard and it's working. They're just totally glued up on both of those guys and eighton's getting dunks at the rim. Like the Lakers are running good stuff in this series, but this all comes down to if Houston just can't score at all, they're not gonna win this series. And if they lose this series in dispiriting fashion, I think the off season ramifications could be massive, but we can come back to that. Any final thoughts on what you're seeing X's and O's wise here? Well, I was gonna ask one question. Cause they tried to put Reed Shepard one pathway from Kevin Arant a few times in that game. Do you think Houston can have enough success to make you the Lakers dial it back? Is that the one for them? The doubles? No, because- The velocity of the doubles? I don't think so because I just think the Lakers are gonna survive with junk defenses anyway. Like whatever it is, they're just gonna keep just randomly switching, doubling. I don't think so. But to your point about Reed Shepard, it's like you run a Shepard, ShenGoon pick and roll, and you have a guy who knows how to compromise the defense, Kevin Durant on the weak side, now you've got something. Durant and Reed Shepard two man game together with ShenGoon lurking over here, now you've got something. It's gonna be threatening. I just don't know that the Lakers have any other response other than just continue to junk it up a little bit to their credit, they're doing it quite well. I just, I'm so frustrated because I understand Van Vliet has hurt. Dorian Finney Smith has been a zero. Steven Adams is a whole ingredient in your offense that's gone. By the way, I should have led with this. The Rockets are scoring 105 points per hundred possessions, which would have been dead last by a mile in the regular season. To have that number while rebounding 43% of your own misses. Like that's like a record setting level of offensive rebounding and your points for possession are still so bad is almost so bizarre that it's an accomplishment of some kind. But I'm just frustrated because if I, let's say they lose in six or five or something that's not like, we made a real strong comeback and got it to game seven and whatever. What have I learned about my team if I get to the off season and the rotation is the way that it's been in the first two games? The whole blessing in disguise, which I never bought for a second about Fred Van Vliet getting injured was, well, I'm gonna learn a lot about what I have in Reed Shepard and Ahmed Thompson. And that's gonna inform how I build my team going forward. Right now, I don't feel like Ahmed Thompson is not a point guard right now and that's fine. He's still very good for what he is. I haven't learned enough about Reed Shepard. I haven't learned anything useful about my team. And I'm gonna go into this off season, facing massive decisions about my coach, about Yanis, about whatever. And if I'm a team like Miami, and this all goes haywire for the Rockets, I might just poke around like, hey, you guys still want Durant? Cause like we can, we might be able to, like the ramifications are huge, but I just feel like I'm frustrated because I don't have as much information about my players as I should, based on the roster. Okay. That's it? Okay. So, so, so, so Rockets in six is what you're saying. I don't know. I picked Rockets. I mean, I just, I can't believe, I picked the Rockets to win the series. Obviously Durant missing game one was a little bit of a wild card. I just can't believe how bad they've looked against the Lakers team with no Luka and no Reeves. It's just, it's shocking to me. All right. Sixer Celtics. Let's wrap with that. Sixer's awesome win in game two in Boston. VJ and Tyrese Maxi, who I will not call them by their horrible nickname, were outstanding. A lot of it is just in game one, they shot four of 23 on threes the Sixers did. In game two, they shot 19 of 39 while the Celtics shot 13 of 50. But you were on this right from the beginning in game one, where people were shitting on Nick Nurse, people were shitting on the Sixers for looking over matched and ill prepared. And I was watching it and I was like, I think they've actually got some good ideas. And I said this, I think with Bill on Sunday, I think they've actually got some good ideas on how to exploit Boston's tendencies on defense. And those good ideas didn't work in game one. They worked in game two. I'm wondering if you can kind of explain in layman's terms, what Philly is doing and how they are leveraging Boston's habits on defense against them. Well, Boston was lights out in game one, as far as dictating terms to Philadelphia and saying, hey, we're gonna keep our big back. This is a team that's really good at collapsing and protecting the paint. One of my favorite things to watch, if you're trying to drive into Boston, you're gonna see jerseys just emerge and bodies in your way. But basically, Tyrese Maxi, here are your options. You will have space, we're gonna trust our defense to navigate this screen. So if you want to get the pull up, it's gonna be contested. If you wanna turn the corner into the space that you see, there will be a wing or a guard that meets you somewhere near or around the paint to protect the big so they can stay back. And then you have to make the decision on if you would like to kick the ball and they didn't make the shots in game one. And then if you would like to actually fully turn the corner, if you're able to at some point, there will be other bodies around you. So we're just gonna dictate, these are the shots you get, paint touch is gonna be tough, you're not gonna get pull ups. It worked really well, they were very active in game one. Game two, Philadelphia was like, well, what if we just make the shots? And Tyrese Maxi was just, I'm gonna make very quick decisions. So, okay, that's fantastic. Let's make sure we force this over so the navigation's not as strong. Let me get to a pull up. And this is great, the biggest back. If I'm gonna drive one on one and you wanna show this elbow help, I'm gonna get off of it real quick and we're gonna play out of it. If I'm Paul George, give me Peyton Prichard, Quentin Grimes, come one pass away, you wanna help? Kick. Like they were just very decisive. And so, DJ Edgecomb saying, oh, that's right, you are giving me space. Do you not know I like to snake pick and rolls and get to a mid-range pull up or from three? Like, they understood what shots were available and they knocked them down. And I think for Boston, the balancing act was okay, as a defense you wanna dictate terms. But sometimes the other team agrees. So now, do we lean in on what we know has been successful? Do we lean in on still trying to protect the paint? How do we balance that? I think they stuck with their guns because the Sixers have the formula as far as, okay, let's try and get Boston bought down late in the shot clock, let's be active and let's make shots and see what happens. They just kept doing that and Boston didn't necessarily have the offense or the defense of answers to kind of push them back into play. So, yeah. To be clear, if MB does not play this series, I still expect Boston to win in a short series. Like nothing that happened in game two changes my prognosis for the series. I just wanna give the Sixers credit because I think they positioned the puzzle pieces or the chess pieces in the right way. So just imagine this, like this very simple. They know how Boston is gonna play defense aggressively, as you said. So let's just imagine Tyrese Maxi and Boana run a pick and roll. They don't do it in the middle of the floor. They do it from the right side of the floor. They'll just say the right wing. And Tyrese is gonna go left, so he's going into the middle of the floor. The next shooter in line is not at the top of the arc. He's on the opposite wing. There is far apart. Tyrese and the next shooter are as far apart as basically possible for two guys to be sharing that space at the top of the arc. Everyone else is in the corners, on the dunk or spot, whatever. And the point of that is, when Tyrese gets into the middle, the Sixers know that guy guarding, let's say Grimes or Edgecomb on the other wing is coming in to the nail. He's gonna meet me at the nail. And what Boston likes to do is have that defender switch onto Tyrese Maxi and have Tyrese Maxi's defender zoom over and peel onto the shooter, the Grimes, Edgecomb spot on the other side of the floor. And what Philly is doing is saying, we're gonna make that switch impossible. It's too much distance for you to cover. And so you're not gonna be able to make that switch. And you're gonna have choices. You either don't help and Tyrese is gonna get into the lane, or you help like that. And we're gonna pass it to VJ Edgecomb before you can even come close to executing that switch. He's gonna get an open three, or he's gonna have a wide open alley to attack the rim. They also baited Boston, sometimes they'll switch it up and they'll have a shooter in the strong side corner and a guy in the dunk or spot in that corner. And Tyrese will go toward that corner, knowing that Boston likes to do that same thing, have that corner defender zoom over and take him, and then have Tyrese's defender peel out and take the corner guy. And they're getting ahead of that switch and getting open threes out of it. And Missoula talked after the game about, well, I think we over-helped a little bit. And I think you'll see Boston dial some of that stuff back, particularly from the corners. Like we're just not gonna make that switch from the strong side corner. And in the fourth quarter, when Philly won the game, Boston dialed back its coverages a little bit and basically said to Tyrese Maxi, we're not sending that third guy at you. We're gonna play you two on two. And Tyrese Maxi was like, cool, here's some like pull-up threes in your face. And then they did the next thing, which was, okay, he's making pull-up threes. We're gonna bring Kata up much higher to the level of the screen. And Tyrese Maxi was like, sweet, I'm just gonna blow by Nemi as Kata and get a layup. And so you saw scheme by scheme by scheme, Tyrese Maxi with some smart positioning from the Sixers beat the counter to the counter to the counter. And the Celtics, I think, are gonna mix it up and probably dial back the help a little bit and basically say, we don't think you can do that one, two, three more games in this series. Also, we didn't play a very good offensive game ourselves. We've got some buttons we can push. But I thought Philly did a nice job arranging the board to bait the Celtics into doing things the Celtics like to do and use it against them. That's the fun of the playoffs. One team is trying to take something away and we respond and poke right back at it. And so I think also just working to clear wings too and just be like, actually, there's actually not someone you can show help to. We're gonna just have this space and work with it. But I like seeing Boston establish themselves defensively and now have to find a way to dial back and just kind of contain Philadelphia. And to your point, I think early they'll just dial it down a little bit and say, make shots. We're not gonna hand you shots, make plays. And now if we need to, we can up the activity, we can up the rotations. But I like seeing a seed respond to what a team has done and saying, actually, we can make this something that's difficult for you to deal with. Yeah, I thought game two was really fun just because Philly made it a series and Philly is stressed Boston a little bit in a way that I wasn't sure they're gonna be able to do. They're like, oh, actually, no, we can hit you a little bit in one of your weak spots, not weak spots, but we know what you're gonna do. We'll land a body blow here and there and see how you respond. I didn't think the Celtics offense had a good game. I thought they were a little sticky. I love when Boston doesn't just give Tatum or Brown the ball, but gets them a head start, like run them off a down screen and they catch it on the move on the wing or they come off a pin down and catch it on the move with an advantage. I didn't see enough of that. I don't think they hunted Maxi aggressively enough, especially when he's on Sam House or like, that's your best shooter, man. Put him in more stuff. I just thought they played a little bit of a blah game other than, and obviously missed. They shot horribly from three. I just didn't think they ran kind of enough of their best stuff. And I was also surprised. I don't know if you were. I thought Shierman did not play enough. I thought Jordan Walsh and Shierman, but particularly Shierman because of the way he keeps the ball moving on offense. I thought he would have played more. I was a little surprised he didn't play very much. 11 minutes, I think. I think he's an important piece. I think it's interesting for Joe Mazzullo as far as trying to figure out which one of these energizer bunnies, as I like to call them. I've played in some of these series at times. I think Shierman could be the most effective because of his shooting. I love when they set a flare for Jason Tatum when he's trailing a play and let him get downhill and run pick and roll. Did this feel like a Boston Celtics stopped flowing and fell into bad habits type game or did it feel like we aren't necessarily creating the shots we need to? No, it was not quite fall into bad habits. It was just like, I've seen the Celtics play offensive games with Tatum and Brown back and press a lot of the right buttons and press multiple of them on the same possession. This felt like a B minus C plus, like just a little dull, a little predictable in a way that I thought they were, I mean, every team has these games every once in a while. I just think they're gonna be fine. I would expect them to, I picked them in five. I'd probably just even stick by that pick. I think they can win both games in Philly. But at least we have like a little bit of a series, but yeah, it's an interest. The Celtics play a very interesting style on both ends of the floor and very much, it's very much ingrained within them that the two ends of the floor are tied together and what we do on one end very much affects what we do on the other end. And people think of that a lot as like, well, that's why they have a low turnover style or that's why they don't take a ton of shots at the rim because they don't wanna compromise their defense. I think a lot of what they do, like I think one of the reasons they like this aggressive help and switching defense, I think, I've never asked Missoula about it. I think one of the reasons they like it is, it messes up all the matchups so that if they get a stop, all of a sudden because Jason Tatum has flashed from here to here and switched onto that guy, you've got the wrong guy close to Jason Tatum or you've got the wrong guy close to Peyton Pritchard. Like everything is scrambled up and all of a sudden they've got, they're running the other way with an advantage. I'd like to actually talk to them about that because they're just a very interesting team on both ends of the floor. No, that's a good point. It's a good point. And also I think their ability to take care of the ball, get back a transition, it's a tough matchup for Philly overall. But, well now you gotta be thinking about the cross-matching. That's an interesting concept because it's not an easy thing to kind of deal with. And I think we have, Boston and Masning really tapped into, hey, we're gonna put a wing on a big and just switch things. They just kind of kept it vanilla to a degree as far as we're gonna do a drop. So it's like, what do they have up their sleeve? That's true. Could you put, are we that worried about a Dembona? Why don't we put some Houser on him or somebody on him? And I know Bill has talked about playing Tate of its center. I personally think that Bill is a little too into that line-up for my taste, but they can certainly do it. But even just inverting the matchups, it risks some offensive rebounding. Like Drummond is a legitimately all-time great offensive rebounder. But I just, look, all I'm asking for in these kinds of series where there's a big, heavy favorite and the best player on the other team or the second best player, I guess, is injured. It's like, just get me to a game four where it's exciting. And we're there, no matter what happens in game three, especially if Philly wins game three, then game four is like, whoa, boy, exciting. But even if Boston resets to norms in game three, game four is kind of fun. That's all I want. Steve Jones Jr. won half of the Dunker spot with Nikias Duncan. If you want to know what happened in the game, not whose legacy is on the line or who choked or whatever, the Dunker spot is a great podcast for you. And Steve and Nikias, their Twitter, their highlight and plays, they're doing the Yeoman's work for you during the game to be like, oh, that's why they did that thing. Thank you for your time and your insight, sir. Thank you. The Zac Lowe Show is brought to you by FanDuel. NBA fans, this is your reminder to check in daily because every day during the playoffs, FanDuel is serving up a happy hour. We're talking special drops you won't want to miss from profit boost to bonus bets and more. And the best part, it's every single day, including today. 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The Men's Warehouse experts can help you find the right look while their onsite tailors guarantee your clothes have the right fit for your body. Men's Warehouse has over 600 locations nationwide. They are here and nearby when you're ready to love the way you look. All right, we have another series to discuss, Spurs Blazers 1-1 and look who it is. My old friend, Shae Serrano. What is going on? What's up, Zachariah? How the hell have you been? I've been all right multiple times. So many times I lost count best selling New York Times, best selling author Shae Serrano. Five times I looked all right. Five of them. Five of them things like Timmy. Like Timmy. As you say, same number of rings as your favorite team. Series took an unfortunate turn. We're recording this Thursday morning. We won't know about Victor Webinyama's availability for game three until I'm guessing, probably pretty close to the game or day of game. What can you do? The fall was a little scary. And this Blazers team, Shae is frisky. They defend really hard. Scoot Henderson was unbelievable in game two. And I would say if Wemby doesn't play game three, I think that's a toss up game. And I would pick Spurs to win the series, even if it goes to one Portland. But are you mentally prepared for like, we're down to one in game four in Portland? Wemby comes back. Like are you ready to feel the, or are you gonna be just like, as long as Wemby's back for game four, you're gonna be so confident that it's fine. No, I'm terrified. I was terrified going into the series. Going into the series, I had convinced myself that Scoot Henderson was the new Allen Iverson and that Denny was Dennis Rodman and Michael Jordan mixed together. Like that's the level of nervousness. I was already going in and then Wemby goes down and now I'm in a full on panic. We could be up three and up 45 points in the fourth quarter. I'm still, I'm terrified. This is why the playoffs are fun, you know? The two guys you mentioned were the lead stories, I think of game two. And Scoot, you know, Scoot came back about two weeks into his return this year. I did a, let's revisit the Brandon Miller, Scoot Henderson segment. Cause I was like, I think Scoot actually looks pretty good considering he just came back. He looked real good. His pull up shooting the other day was outrageous. He had no assists. I think that's actually like indicative of, with Denny being the point guard basically and with Drew Holiday out there as like another point guard, he's found this comfort zone where he actually doesn't have to do too much. The game is a little simpler for him. You don't see a lot of wild turnovers from him. He almost was able to play a more streamlined game. That helped him. Denny is just a monster getting to the rim. He's going after Fox on defense. I didn't love the way Fox closed the game for the Spurs once Wemby got hurt. That was a little rough, but what can one do? So we got a series and like, look, I'm pretty confident to Spurs win as long as Wimpy and Yama misses only one game. Shams reported last night, I don't know if you saw this, that he did some conditioning work yesterday, which means he's starting to clear the first hurdles of the concussion protocol. But you know, we'll see, you got to buckle up. Well, we were two and one against them in the season series without Wimpy. He didn't play in any of the games. Like so, like if I want to try to calm myself down, I can say we can beat these guys. We should beat these guys. But yeah, watching everything fall apart at the end of game two, we're up 13, 14 points with eight minutes left and you're like, all right, we're good, we're going to win this game. Wimpy can sit out the next two, just get totally fine, come back to San Antonio, maybe up three one, maybe tied two, two, we can beat them. But yeah, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, you know, it's crazy. I came for game two. I didn't start watching the game. I got home from, I'm coaching a high school basketball team for spring ball. And so we had a game that night. And I got home during halftime, turned the game on, got my little snacks ready. And then the third quarter started and I was like, why is Luke in there? And what the, like I had no idea. I turned my phone on. Oh my God, please God no. And then I saw the, I saw the, I'm a wreck right now, Zach. It was scary. And look, it was also shaping up to be a really interesting battle between the Blazers and Wimpy on both ends of the floor. So you know this, you watch every Spurs game. Some teams guard Wimpy with their centers, some teams guard him with the wing and try to hide their center on Steph Castle or Harrison Barnes or Kelden Johnson who's ever available. And the Blazers went right to that well immediately. Like Kamara, you're just going to get up under Wimpy. We're going to put Klingon over here on Castle, Dare Castle to shoot. Castle's like, oh cool. I'll just, I mean, he's not shooting efficiently, but he's had some threes. He has had some bulldozer drives into whoever in front of him. And it was just Wimpy's seen that before. They were ready for it. He knows all the counters to it from everything from Ronamoff pin downs from Devon Vasell, run, have him set pin downs for the best shooter on the team, Devon Vasell. Have whoever the center is guarding set pin downs for Wimpy to get that switch, get offensive rebounds, post stuff, all of it. They know how to do it. And it was so interesting to watch him figure it out again in real time under playoff physicality. And then Drew Holliday took the assignment and Drew's like, all about it. This is like the best thing that's ever happened to Drew Holliday. I get to guard this guy and just be Drew Holliday up under him being annoying. And on defense, before he went out, did you get a chance to go back and watch the first half? Yeah, yeah. So I'm looking at, I'm looking, watching the first half and I'm like, man, they're, they're putting Wimpy in a lot of pick and rolls. Like they're having more than usual, if it felt like to me, like they're bringing him in to the action. Cause it's this existential Wimpy debate of like, do we want to have him away from the ball where he's just this roving menace with a million foot wingspan? Or do we want to bring him into the action and try to loosen up the other parts of the floor? And I looked it up on the tracking data and it was on track to be the second most picks any team had put Wimpy on in a game this year before he went out. Like if you do it per possession, it's the second or third highest. So they were trying something new and now, now we just get to wait for, for game through, which is tomorrow. What's your, what are you gonna, are you gonna, who's gonna watch it with you? What's your good, what's gonna be your routine? I'm gonna watch it at the house. It's gonna be probably one of the twins will be home. If I had to guess and he'll probably wander down every so often, my youngest son will be there. But mainly during the playoffs, everybody is like, leave dad alone when the game, when the game is on, you know what I mean? So it's me and the dog that always watching the game together because she doesn't interrupt too much. But that's my, that's my thing. I'm just gonna be sitting locked in, in the living room. What I really wanted to talk to you about was your game one experience. So you've written a lot over the years about, at the ringer about going to games with your dad, going to Spurs games with your dad when you were a kid and watching your dad at those games, watching how he behaved, what those games meant to you as a kid. And then game one of their first playoff game in seven years, you and your dad got to sit courtside near the Spurs bench. Yeah, buddy. And I just wonder sort of, I mean, just what, what, what did that mean for you to be able to give him or share with him, not only a Spurs game, but from that, that vantage point and like, what, do you guys talk? What, how, how was the whole thing? The whole thing was really, really cool. And a little more emotional than I was anticipating. I knew we were going to have a good time. We always have a good time at the game. Doesn't matter where we're sitting. But there was a point where we literally, and like the Alamo dome set in the very last row of the, like, that stadium holds 70,000 people or whatever. We were in the top top. Like we were all the way from the very, very top now to the, to the very, very bottom. But it was just so, it was just so neat. We were, as you mentioned, catty corner to the Spurs bench. So all the guys are right there. We're right there during the lineups. But also Timmy was, Timmy's my favorite basketball player of all time. Reggie Miller was commentating the games. My second favorite basketball player of all time. David was there. Pop was there. Gervin was there. Sean Elliott was there. Like everywhere you looked, there was like, oh my God, I love this guy. This person means a ton to me. My dad at the games is a very mellow, sit there, drink his little Coke, clap his hand. Like a stoic old Mexican man. And I'm like just standing, I'm standing on my feet for 47 of the 48 minutes, just screaming out on the court. But it would be screaming and lead down high five. Like you're just doing all the things you do with your, with your dad. But I mean, you know this, cause you're a parent, you're a husband. You spent so much of your life as the husband, as the father. And very rarely do you get the chance to be like, oh, I'm the kid again in a situation. And going to the game, sitting there with him, he drove us there. I didn't have to worry about it. Like he did the parking, handed all of that. You just, you know, for, for, for two and a half hours, it felt like I was 14 years old. Again, just watching these superheroes play basketball, sitting next to the superhero who, who raised me. It was a really beautiful experience. Had he ever sat that close at a game? And was there any part of him that felt uncomfortable sitting that close at a game? He had never sat that close. I had never sat that close. He was a hundred percent comfortable. He said, we should, we should do this every game. Every single game. These should be, these should be our seats. I think, I think you're right, dad. So I took my dad. So you, so before we get there, you, one of the pieces you wrote for the ringer about watching games with your dad, you wrote about, what did you write about? You wrote about him like, I can't remember exactly what it was, which I should remember it, something like little things that he would say to you during the game. I don't even remember if it was about the game or about like, but there was one or two things that like stuck with you that I mean, the memory that I have is, you would be driving home and you'd pass a clock tower. Or, and you would be just amazed that, that you were awake at 10, 30 PM as little kid. But there was a couple of room, I can't remember, there are a couple of remarks your dad like said to you that just like embedded themselves in your brain, maybe about even the spurs or sports or something. And do you remember what those were? Yeah, I remember all of them. I've mentioned when we were driving home from this game, the clock you're referencing is this like a digital, like just one of those ones that's lit up in lights. And it's at the security service bank off of highway 90 in San Antonio. We had to drive past that to get home. And I told him when we were driving home, we live on the other side of town now, but I was like, dad, let's drive past security service so I could see the clock. I know exactly what you're talking about. But so the one that stands out the most to me is we were at a Spurs game. This is Hemisphere Arena. So we're in SBC Center now or ATT Center, whatever you want to call it. It was Alamedome was before that. And then before that was the Hemisphere Arena. This is pre-David Robinson. Like that's when I started going to the games. But we were at a game, the Spurs were getting blown out. At the time he was a bus driver for Via, which is the like Metro bus system here in San Antonio. And they would just give tickets away because nobody wanted to go to Spurs game because they were so terrible. So that's how we started going to the games. We were at a game, we're sitting up away high in the seats watching. And I don't remember who the players were. I don't remember what the teams were, but I know we were on offense. The ball got knocked back to the other side of the court. When the Spurs players was running after it, like as fast as he could, trying to catch it before without a balance. And then he just dove, like full body dove, right around the free throw line, trying to catch the ball before it rolled out of bounds. And he dives, the ball rose out of bounds, he doesn't get it, and everybody just starts clapping and cheering. And I didn't understand, he didn't do what he wanted to do. What's going on, dad? Why are they cheering for this guy who didn't accomplish a thing? And then he very, and like that very old, I guess at the time he was a young dad, but in that very dad way, he didn't even look at me. He just said, because he tried, son. And I was like, it just stuck with me forever. And I was like, oh, you just got to try. All you got to do is try. If you try, great, that's it. That's all you can control. That one is, that will be in my head forever. It's funny what you remember from these things. So baseball is my dad's sport. And the first game I ever went to was a Mets Pirates game in Pittsburgh, because my mom's family's from Pittsburgh. And I of course loved baseball. I didn't have a team at that point, but the Mets were the local team for me growing up. And I just, and I don't remember anything. I remember three River Stadium, ugly stadium, Astro turf, both teams are pretty good. It was like the mid-80s. The only thing I remember was Mookie Wilson led off for the Mets, top of the first. And they show all the stats on the screen. I'm six or seven years old. I don't really know like what these numbers mean. And he's batting over 300. And my dad just says to me, just, I must have asked like, what does all that mean? And he just said, wait, anything over 300 is good. And that's all, he's not going to explain like the ratio and how walks factor in and whatever. I just, but I remember vividly like Mookie Wilson's hitting over 300 and over 300 is good. And all these 40 plus years later, that's stuck in my head. And then I asked about your dad being comfortable or uncomfortable because last year I took my dad to a Mets Dodgers game at City Field. I took my dad, my wife and my daughter. I had won these tickets at a silent auction, like right behind home plate. And so you get like the VIP entry through the Delta Club and all this. And like Otani's right there, 10 feet in front of us in the on deck circle. And they're, you know, the Delta Club, all the free food you can eat. They're bringing my daughter ice cream bars and all this. My dad grew up on like a farm in New Hampshire. And he was wildly uncomfortable. He was like, I don't think this is how people should watch baseball games. Like this, he would have rather have gone into the upper deck. And he's like, I'm not sure I'm gonna bring you to this again. It was just so funny to watch him see it from that vantage point. Yeah, it's really anytime your dad or any parent is like out of where they're supposed to be or where they feel they're supposed to be. It's the most adorable thing. I do wonder with my own sons who, when they were born in Houston, we were living in Houston at the time. So we would go to two basketball games every year because the Spurs would come to town. So we would just go watch it. Whenever the Spurs and Rockets would play, we would go to that. And a memory that I always have of them as we went to the Spurs game, the game starts, Houston goes up like six zero at the start of the game. And it's whatever, you're watching the game. And then I look and one of the twins is crying. And I'm like, son, what's wrong? And he just said, you said we were good. We're not any good. He thought the game was over. We're down by six points. I do wonder what our kids are good. Is she going to remember the ice cream bars at the game with her dad? What sort of thing? She talks about the ice cream bars constantly. Every time we watch a game on television, she's like, remember how they brought those ice cream bars to our seats and we didn't even have to pay for them? I'm like, yes. She talks about, she fell in love with Francisco Lindor at that game. So she talks about him constantly. She's into it. And I actually wanted to, you talked about a multi-generational thing. And one of the, from your generation to your kids, you talked about how proud you were when your kids started to actually care about the game and pay attention to the game and not want to go play on the little like play areas that they have for kids during the game. And I've gone through similar things both with the Mets and when we were in Toronto for the holidays, my wife's family lives in Toronto. My wife's older sister is a seasoned ticket holder with the Raptors. And we bought two extra tickets for my daughter and her cousin who's about her same age. And they got to sit in their own seats like away from the adults. I was in the press section and it was like Raptors nuggets. My daughter doesn't care about the Raptors. And I could see them from where I was sitting and I was watching them to see like, are they gonna just be goofing around or not paying attention? And they were super into the game and the game ends with nuggets up by three. Brandon Agrum hits like an almost half court shot to tie the game and everyone's going crazy and send it into overtime, except the refs ruled that the shot is a little bit late. So we reconvene after the game. And I'm like, did you guys have fun? And I'm expecting to be like, it was so funny how the Jumbotron, the Raptor mascot did this thing. And my daughter was like, we thought that shot was good. We thought we were going to overtime. Like it was gonna go to overtime. Did they review it? Like was that the right call? Like that is. So you've had similar experiences, right? We're like, now they care. Yeah. Maybe my favorite one of once they really started being like into the game was, this was again in Houston. We've got a bunch of games here in San Antonio, but the Houston ones, they were so much younger, you know, six, seven, eight, nine years old, whatever. And we were at one Houston Spurs game and this is when Lamarcus was on the team and it was close game, close game. And then the Spurs pulled away at the end, like in the last minute or so, they go up by six or seven. The people around us, we're sitting in the, it's in Houston, we've got our Spurs gear on, we're in the middle of the enemy territory. And everybody's being cool. Like we were all talking trash with each other. Nobody's being disrespectful, right? Cause it's kids, everybody's chill. But the games go on, we go up, it's clear we're gonna win and they start getting up to leave. And so I just start telling everybody, have a safe drive home, like that doing that sort of thing. And then the twins started doing it too. They were like, can we, can we? And I say, yeah, yeah, you can. Cause they knew what they understood was going on at that point. And they're just be safe, have a safe drive home. Like, I don't know. That the little things like that are so much fun, man. You also talked about, and I wonder if you've actually talked about this directly with your dad. You wrote about how you must, you thought your dad must have felt a certain responsibility for, and hope that the Spurs would be good because he had foisted Spurs fandom on you. And now you obviously have to feel that with your kids. But have you ever talked about that with your dad? Like, did he actually, cause I have a story about this too, but just, cause I can very much relate to this. Like, I'm inheriting this fandom kind of not by choice. And I hope it works out. We talked about it a little after when they won their first title in 99, was the first time that we had any sort of him, I'm so glad that they won. I'm so glad that you got to experience this cause I never did. And I was a little nervous that you were gonna be 50 years old and never have this feeling. And so we talked briefly about it, but he's never been, I mean, if you know any old Mexican dudes, they just don't say anything that's not about like, how to change the oil on your car or whatever. You know what I mean? But what's your thing? So my dad is from New Hampshire, as I mentioned. So he's a Boston fan through and through a huge Red Sox fan. And so when I was a little kid, I started to like baseball. Baseball was the game in the 80s, right? And I wanted to, I was gonna just be a Red Sox fan cause that's what you do, you take your dad's fandom. And he actually took me aside when I was like six, seven years old and was basically like, I can't do that to you. It's just like, it's just too, I cannot voice that on you. I think you should pick a national league team. You can't, you're not allowed to pick the Yankees. Like it was explicit, like you cannot be a Yankees fan. And he was like, the national league team is the Mets. They're pretty good. Your mom is from Pittsburgh. So the pirates are pretty good. They're a national league team. How about one of those two teams? Then we went to that game and we decided whoever wins that game is gonna be my favorite team. They played for it. They played for your heart. They love and basketball you. Thank God the Mets won. And then 86 became a very awkward moment in our household cause I was a crazy die hard Mets fan. Like Darryl Strawberry was my favorite player. And it's obviously ends in like excruciating heartbreak for my dad. But now my daughter is a Mets fan because of me. And I don't know if you're following baseball. They just snapped a 12 game losing streak last night and are like a clown show and getting mocked all over the, I was like, the New Yorker mocked them. The New York Times wrote a story mocking them and just like sad sack Mets. And I'm like, what have I wrought now? And she's too young to really care. But I'm like, have I done the thing my dad didn't do to me, to my daughter? I'm concerned about it. The Mets are one of two baseball teams that I know about, but only because I follow Sean Finnessy. So I just catch all of the Mets. Like I found myself the other day reading Mets fix like a Mets themed newsletter. I subscribe to Mets fix. So yeah, I know about them and I know about the Dodgers cause of my buddy Peter Marietta is like a huge, huge Dodgers fan. But those are only two teams. I don't know anything else. By the way, another thing speaking of 99 that I could really relate to is that you wrote about the Spurs is they win the title and you remember your dad running out to the car. And just describe, just describe. Yeah, the Spurs ended up winning the championship and for whatever reason, he just ran outside and started honking the horn in his truck. Just blah, blah, blah. And everybody in the neighborhood was doing it. When we won game one, driving out of there, people were honking. It's like a thing in San Antonio, right? And yeah, I just, I never will forget the sound of the neighborhood. Just sort of, you realize everybody's watching the game. We're at the, you're at the home, you're watching it with your family, whatever game five. And just hearing all over the place and him running out to participate in this. Seeing your dad be excited about something is one of the like strangest things the first time it happens. You know what I mean? Like he would, like he ran, he didn't walk. He ran out of the house. He didn't hug us. We did it. He just ran out of the house, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the car is incredible. My dad quietly and literally silently wept and just silently wiped away tears when the Red Sox finally won the World Series in 2004. That was the extent of it. But the honking I could really relate to because I don't care about football at all, like not at all. One of the Giants Patriots Super Bowls that the Giants won recently, not I mean in the last 15 years recently, I was in New York City and watching it at a friend's house. And then my wife and I were walking back to our apartment and the streets were just over, like every bar was overflowing with people going crazy, honks, the horns were honking and all this. And I didn't care about it. I was like, this is so cool, like to be in New York for an event like this. And then flat forward four years ago, the opposite. This is like moving to the suburbs, just in one anecdote. Croatia beats Brazil in the World Cup in penalty kicks and like an epic comeback penalty kick win. My wife is from Croatia and we're going crazy in the house, running around the house, she's crying, we're screaming. She opens the door like thinking, there's gotta be some communal recognition of what just happened. And of course there's no Croatian people here. There's nothing, no one was watching the game. It's just like silence. And she comes back in the house and immediately calls the closest Croatian restaurant and makes a reservation for like 16 people. Cause we're just going to invite everybody to a place where they'll actually acknowledge. But that communal acknowledgement and celebration is like, so fun. And I was in San Antonio the year they clint, they won the 2014 title, which they clinch at home. And I have never seen a scene like that ever. And the arena is not like near downtown. So it's not as if you're going to walk out to bars and restaurants. Arnavitz, Kevin Arnavitz, our mutual friend drove us home from the game to our hotel. We literally could not get to our hotel. Every street was blocked off with police and crazy fans. People were hanging on like out of cars in the back of pickup trucks on top of cars. And we eventually just had to speed down a runway road, the wrong way down a one way street to get back to our, so we have to like type. We got pulled over, I think. If I remember, we got pulled over and Kevin had like explained to the cop, like we're just trying to get back to it. It was an absolutely crazy scene. San Antonio is crazy. Yeah, it's a beautiful basketball town. That was, that's my favorite championship we've ever won of the five. Because there's a small part of you that thought it was over. We weren't going to ever do it again with that core. Anyway, we had lost in 2013. And you're like, man, this is never going to happen again. And then, yeah, that gave five, oh, we didn't have a lunch by San Antonio. I remember freaking Mike Breen screaming when Manu hits the three with like three threes in a row. And yeah, when the Spurs are good, San Antonio is like just alive in a way that not a lot of places are. Because it's our only professional team. We don't have any, there's no football, there's no baseball. We've got a minor league stuff. But as far as like the professional, there's nothing competing with it. And so it's a basketball town, it's a military city, basketball city. And yeah, when it's leaving the arena, game one, just being in the arena before the start of game one, and you could feel like it had been years, oh my god, we're back, we're playing high stakes basketball. It just grabs a hold of everybody here. Even that non-basketball fan. My wife doesn't care about basketball at all, like not at all. And she took the kids to, there's this place called The Rock in San Antonio where they have like a giant screen and they like show games there. She was like there to watch the game with the kids. Cause like again, she could tell you two people who play in the NBA. But she was like, I want to, you just want to be a part of the, like it just grabs a hold of you. It's magical in sports does that. And now you're in it. Now let's just briefly turn to game three, Portland. You're going to another great basketball city in Portland where the fans are crazy. We don't know if Wendy's going to play. It's a home game. So presumably the owner of the Blazers will actually fund like the two-way players going to the game. Maybe the team photographer can get like an Uber ride paid for if he doesn't have a car from his house to the game. But put your coach's head on like, when be aside, like what, give me something you're watching for in this game or something about the Blazers that's getting under your skin. Like what do we got in there? What's in your vision? I do not like Denny at all. Like I do not like watching him play basketball. He's so good and he's so smart. And just the thing that he does where he gets the ball at a three point line and you're like, well, he's about to just crash into everybody and then make something happen. He does it every single time there's nothing you can do about it. I don't like, I don't like it at all. If I, if we're playing anybody else, I would love it. But I hate that. What I'm most excited to watch, what I'm like most curious to see. You touched on it briefly at the end of game two. You didn't like the way that De'Aaron Fox played the last like. I mean, I wouldn't say didn't like he missed a couple of shots when he was going to Denny. Denny had five fouls or going at the Klingon on the drop coverage. He missed a couple of shots. And then they were loading up to him. Like there was one where he turned the corner on like a handoff play and they just brought everybody in and forced him to kick it to the corner. And that's when Drew Holiday blocked a three in the corner. So like they were making it hard for him and he just missed shots. It wasn't like he was shying away from the moment or he choked. But in that moment that with Wemby out and Castle and Harper's their first go round, that's when you want like a 28 point Fox game. Yes, that's exactly right. So I'm I really want to see that. I really I feel like Wemby goes down. It's sort of hard to get your feet back under you in the moment. If you're if you're one of the first players there, I imagine. Right. So I'm anticipating they're going to come in here and both Castle and and Fox are going to be like, OK, we got to go win this game. It's got to be us us too. The other guys will follow whatever whatever we do. So I really want to see that happen. I think it's going to happen. We watched it a number of years ago with Derek White, the game in Denver. When he's like, I'm just going to go win this game. He like made the leap that night. I like I want to see that happen in the playoffs. Same with Devon Vasell. This is the first time in the playoffs. He's like he's our our like assassin player. But let me see you go do it on the road. Let me watch you go make it happen. I'm really interested in seeing what we do there. I really love Portland basketball games. I got to go to one. I happened to be in Portland for like a work thing and the Spurs were in town. And I was like, I'm going to watch the Spurs play. And it was the first I think it was the first game back after LaMarcus left Portland to go to San Andreas. So they were in the they were booing the hell out of that man. They do that cool thing where they pass the game ball down through the stands to the to the I've never seen that before. I just it's it's it's going to be a madhouse in there. And I'm a little bit nervous. I do think we're going to win, but I'm a little I'm a little bit nervous about it. But that's mainly what I'm watching for. I just want to see I just want to see I got I love Dylan Harper. Can I tell you my Dylan Harper theory? What's not to love about Dylan Harper? But yeah, of course, I've not gotten to tell anybody this on a podcast. You want to make this public? But I have this theory of like. If a father played an NBA and a son plays an NBA, the roles always get inverted. Whatever they were, the son becomes this other thing. So like you look at Michael Thompson, right? Oh, role player, great role player. Clay Thompson comes in superstar, right? Del Curry, role player, Steph Curry, superstar. LeBron James, superstar, Ronnie James, role player. If you're if I'm looking at Ron Harper and I'm like, we get a superstar version of Ron Harper, who Ron Harper was already a monster. But if we get a better version of Ron Harper, I've been very high on Dylan since the since the first the the Summer League game, our first summer league game he played against Cooper Flag. Everybody's like Cooper Flag, Cooper Flag, Cooper Flag. And he locked them up, locked them up. That's like, hell, yeah, this he's got the dog in him. I'm very excited about Dylan Harper. I really am. He's so steady and calm. I think I think it translates well to the road. I think we win the game. I think they're going to play great. Fingers crossed. Yeah, I mean, look, pre-injury, Ron, pre knee injury, Ron Harper was a monster. And Dylan Harper has a chance to be better than that. Defensively, that's been my favorite thing about him since I started watching his clips at Rutgers. Like that guy and you've seen them, they give they've given everybody a try on Denny, like the primary guy is Castle, but they'll switch a bunch of guys on him. I do wonder if in this game they'll play, they'll try. And Portland has some agency in this to try to play Denny and scoot a little bit more conservatively, like make them shoot jumpers, go under screens against them instead of giving them lanes to attack. But again, Portland can disguise things to make it harder to do that. And I'm glad you mentioned Vassil, like he has really amped up in the last month, the non shooting parts of his game. Defense, like he's getting he's flying in for these like really well, like contested defensive rebounds. He's got a couple shop blocks and deflections in game one. That guy is starting to put together all the elements of his game. So I'm interested to see sort of all of those things that should be a fun game. Three, I guess I guess the dogs got to get ready for. She's got to get ready. My beloved Penny is going to be on that recliner with me. I think that's the proper way to watch a big a big postseason game is either by yourself or with the fewest amount of people around you as possible. Because you don't I mean, if you're anything like me, you don't want people to see you like that. If it goes badly, like that side of me is not for anyone else to consume. We yeah, you need you need to watch a game with a person who is the same level of fan as you are when you get to this stage of the playoffs, because you're both going to be maniacs. You remember when when when Castle had a 40 point triple double in the against the Mavericks in the I was at that I was at that game. I went with our friend Kurt Goldsbury, right? Ah, Professor Goldsbury came down from Austin. He said, hey, I'm going to be at this game. You want to come? I got to take it for you. If you want to come, I'll meet you up there. Great. I'll be there. And Kirk, Kirk is Kirk. He gets great, great seats. So we were in one of those like open air boxes and I'm sitting there. Me and Kirk just sitting there chatting and then Manu comes and sits right in front of us and him and Kirk and Manu are buddies. And then R.C. Buford comes sits behind us. I was like sandwiched in between these two. Like, oh, my God, I watch the game with these guys. But I'm sitting there watching the game and I'm screaming my head off the whole time. Like, and I didn't realize like most of the people in the boxes were not doing that because I'm just watching the game go. And then at the at the third quarter, I get a tap on my shoulder and I turn around and it's R.C. And he's like, oh, you're you're a real fan. And I was like, oh, my I got am I not supposed to be my bad? No, no, it's great. It's great. It's what we love to see. See what's going on. But yeah, you got to watch a game with people who like react the way that you react to basketball. Otherwise, you look like a crazy person. I when you start telling that story, I know R.C. well enough to know he would have loved to see unhinged Shay. Yeah, he would not have ever been like, sir, this is this is a professional. All right, Shay Serrano, you know, I'm from everywhere. Good luck in game three to you and your family. Thanks for coming on and I will see you down the road, my friend. Are you at campaign's lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results. So we opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions. Cut the bull spend, see revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash lead terms and conditions apply later. Well, I thought a couple of weeks ago, let's just wait until they break the losing streak to do a Mets corner. And then the losing streak never ended. And we scheduled one because it was obviously an emergency. And then the Mets did a thing last night that they had not done in 12 games. They won a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins. Not surprisingly, they won three two because the only games they can win are three to something or two to something or one to something because God knows they're not going to score more than three runs in any game. They held on for dear life. They are now eight and 16. Sean, I just don't even know. I know where I want to start. But you have you have experienced more pain in the last 15 years than I have because I took a little gap, a gap. So I just yield the floor to you. How are you doing? If we had spoken two nights ago or yesterday, my voice would have been raised. I would have been ranting. I might have been crying. Today I feel weirdly, weirdly, okay. And that's baseball for you, you know, one win. One win. And all of a sudden the gear started turning in my head and thinking like, is there a way out of this? Is this, could this be okay? And this is the insidious nature of this sport and this team that has been bedeviling me for 40 years is even after probably, I think the most sustained awful stretch that I can remember. And I know that long losing streak in my lifetime, but this is, this was bad. I'm so glad I came back. I'm so glad. I feel like I've really 45 and 24. I didn't even bother doing the math for like, I wonder what their record is after 45 and 24, best record in baseball last year. Cause I just, it's right. I feel like I'm experiencing just the worst right away. So continue. I'm sorry. No, no, I mean, I think they have like a 400 winning percentage since that 45 and 24 stretch, which, um, where do you, where do you really want to start? I guess is the question. Like, do you want to speak specifically about the team and its failures? Do you want to speak about the manager and his future? Do you want to speak about the injuries? No, speak about David Stearns and his construction of the roster. Sure. Let's talk about that. Well, I want to start with, first of all, Soto came back and Lindor immediately got hurt and we're awaiting MI results on Lindor. Lindor, who, um, after 21 games was on pace for eight RBIs for the season. And then quadrupled his RBI total with one swing and had another one last night and seemed to be turning the corner. And of course, as soon as like Lindor, maybe have been alive, you got hurt. Soto came back immediately hit a long fly ball in the first inning to advance Bichette from second to third. And I was watching with my daughter. I was like, Oh, that's what it looks like for a guy to hit a ball hard and far. Like how hard, high and far. I forgot, forgot all about that. I want to start here. I'm 48 years old. I was an absolutely insane Mets fan, as people know, from my awareness till 2003 or 2004. And there were a lot of good times in that span. There's a world series. The late nineties were generally very good. The eighties and early nineties until the bottom fall out in 91 were okay. Obviously. The only thing that I'm asking for, living in Fairfield County, Connecticut, where it's like 75% Yankee fans. The only thing that I'm asking for is don't fucking embarrass me. Don't make me go around and have to get laughed at and pity. Now it's pity. Now it's like, Oh, you're really going through a tough time by all the fans of the evil empire. And right away, this is just everyone is clowning the Mets. So just a sample of things that I saw. The twins, the fucking twins tweet out like things that come in dozens, eggs and Mets losses. The New York Times runs an entire article about the curse of Mom Donnie meeting Mr. and Mrs. Met and makes a mistake in the article. And instead of having any journalist to integrity about the mistake, turns the correction into a joke at the Mexican spend saying, Oh, we messed up the day that they suffered their 11 game lost, lose whatever, 11 straight laws they were off. Even the Mets can't lose on an off day. You know what? New York Times, screw you, screw you. I'm a subscriber. I'm a games app subscriber. Yes, I am as well. Maybe I won't be. How about that? Yeah. ESP or the Associated Press ran a story for their first home game where they sent a reporter to go to the game and talk to fans and just about why are you at this game in this empty cold stadium? And one of the fans was like, yeah, I tried to get my wife to go and my kid to go. Nobody would come with me. So I just want to take it and came by myself and the stories accompanied by photos of guys in the paper bag, like where the saints in the 1980s. And this is even worse for me because tomorrow the Mets are hosting a group from my hometown, kids and parents from my hometown for something. I won't give it just a nice little fun thing. And so this has been known for months and there's like a hundred people from our school going to the game. I'm not going to go because there's three NBA playoff games that night. But it's all everyone's been talking about. Like, oh, we're going to go to the Mets game. We have a bunch of cheap seats. So this is just fresh in my community. Everyone's talking about the Mets. And then as gradually more and more people realize like, oh, we might go. They might be on a 14 game losing streak when we go. Are they're going to get booed? I've been prepping my daughter like they're going to get booed just be. And she and she's like, why they're trying their best. You want to tell us fans go up there and try to hit a baseball. So this is all I'm asking for is don't turn the Mets into the continuous walking punchline of my life. And this is what they are now. It's just humiliating. I don't want to be humiliated. Is that too much to ask? A plus rant. I couldn't have said it better myself. That was amazing. I didn't realize when you dubbed this segment Mets corner that it was meant to mirror the boy in the dunce cap in the classroom sitting in the corner. Like that's what we are. Is two freaking losers wearing a dunce cap, spending every afternoon or every evening in your case, checking in on what's going on with this pain cave, but everything you said is true. And, you know, nature reports a vacuum and nobody loves a loser. You know, like that's just these are just facts. The Mets are just losers, man. Like, I don't know what the heck is going on. I honestly thought going into the season that they were going to be good. The first Mets corner of the season, I was like, God, they're going to be really tough to pitch to. This lineup is going to be really interesting. Could I have been more wrong about anything in my entire life? The roster is a joke. Every night I can't imagine they're going to score more than three runs. It is astonishing how boring the team is. I, I, I, I, maybe it was false optimism in an effort to be more positive at the stage of my life. I really did think that something interesting was going to be happening this year and it's actually the opposite. And it's exactly what you're saying, which is it's embarrassment. It's a, it's a pathetic quality that it's not just Yankee fans. It's not just, um, you know, trolls online. It's like everyone is justified to mock whatever this is. All baseball fans, anybody who's aware of American sports is justified in making fun of what the team is doing. And there's rational, logical, analytical reasons why. But then there's also this other thing. There's this cosmic cloud. And I know many fans of many teams feel this way, right? Like if you're a Bengals fan, you feel like you're cursed. If you're a Browns fan, you feel like you're cursed. If you're, you know, a Sabres fan, you feel like you're cursed. There's a lot of franchises that have these negative feelings. The Vikings have never won a Super Bowl, for example. But the Mets man, they tend to make their awfulness operatic. And this has been an operatically bad stretch. Um, I mean, they have the highest payroll in baseball and they're eight and 16. That's, that's the number one reason why every fan of any team is justified in mocking them. That should be impossible to do. Um, before the season, your optimism, our optimism was not misplaced. They're over under was like 90, 90 and a half, 89 and a half, like solid playoff contender kind of number. I think the 91 wins. Keith Law predicted that they would make the world series and lose to the Mariners. And I understand all my rational baseball friends. I'm on a few text chains. First of all, one of the tech chains last night, a Cubs fan, Tim, who's been mentioned many times tech, there's three of us. It's a small chance to Mets fans and a Cubs fan texted us in the ninth, wake up your kids as in like, you got like, they might win, wake up your kids. Like even he's just, you know, like getting into it. Um, uh, I don't even know where I was going with that, but it's, it's, oh, the rash, like my rational, I have another text chain with two Mariners fans and some other people. They're like, you can't even look at the standings to Memorial Day. None of this matters. Um, the Mets will be fine. Like I did, they didn't even like register that something historically terrible was going on, partly because the Mariners are not having good season either. And I'm like, re, really? Cause it feels like the season is over. Um, and they're awful and none of them can hit and everyone who was an injury risk is already injured. And the bullpen has been a disaster again. Um, not again. I mean, like Diaz Diaz is not pitching well for the Dodgers, but airbender is bending nothing. Um, and airfliner. And now there's like no one has ever lost 12 games in early April and made the playoffs or something like that, or maybe it's at any point in the season. So yeah, forgive me if I feel like the season is over, especially if Lindor is now going to be injured. Senga, it's like they don't even count, no, if they can count on him anymore. We're two weeks at three weeks a month into the season. It's like, well, we're not sure about Peterson. Is he going to be in the rotation and we'll use an opener for him and Senga will have, we got to really get him right. And now they're starting to, who this guy, Christian Scott is starting today. We're already at this stage of the season where random dudes, we had a six man rotation with Manaya as the seventh guy. And now a random dude is starting a game. What's happening? Well, to Scott's credit, he was a high profile prospect three seasons ago. He got injured and got Tommy John and he has been working his way back from Tommy John three seasons ago. There was a feeling like this was the number three starter of the future. I'm still hopeful that that's what Christian Scott is. And what Christian Scott represents and what Nolan McClain represents, I think. Oh, thank God for Nolan McClain. Thank God. I agree. Thank God for him. Those, to me, that's, I think what the general manager of the team is banking on for the longterm health of this team. So we can talk about that at some point is like, what is this? How does this look in the longterm versus how much of pain are we going to endure this season? But this season. Nolan McClain, Clay Holmes and Freddie Peralta have been good. Like, Freddie's just, Freddie's been decent, decent. I would say he's been above average. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. I would say he has done more than enough to win all but one start he has made. Oh, my pity are starting pitch. I was watching, we were watching Clay Holmes last night. My daughter and I, I'm like, I taught her what run support means. Like, like, it would be nice to give him some run support. And she was like, well, what is it exactly? Does that mean I explained her? I was like, I feel bad for these guys. They throw out seven innings, one run loss, no decision. They'll never get any wins. None of these starters will get 10 wins the way this is going. Clay Holmes is quietly climbing that very long list of met starters who you genuinely believe in, where like every time he's on the bump, I'm like, I think, I think he's going to throw seven innings and give up one run today. And that's so strange because he's a converted reliever who's in his 30s, but he's got this incredible pitch mix. He's really fun to watch pitch. He's a real bulldog. Anyway, they've gotten good starting pitching from their one, two, three and their rotation. McLean, who, you know, has carried a perfect game into the sixth inning in two games already this season, looks like, like Jacob DeGramme. I mean, he looks like a dude who we're going to be pouring our heart and soul into for the next 10 years. God willing. So like that's the good, right? Those are the, those are the three good things that we have is those guys. Peterson and Senga, neither of those guys are part of the long-term future of this team. They, neither of them are probably going to end the season in the rotation. It's sad. Peterson was a first round pick. I've rooted hard for him over the years. All star last year. He was an all star last year. I thought that that was him coming around. You know, there's that adage about lefties kind of figuring it all out in their late 20s and then going on to have long careers, but he's really backslid. We'll see if he can be effective out of the bullpen, but the lineup makes me want to drink bleach, man. I, I, I can't believe how painful, how pathetic, how sad it is to watch these guys hit like the approach is baffling. Now we've got a whole new coaching staff aside from the general manager, new hitting coaches. This is a, it's not just that this team spends a lot of money in its payroll, which is publicly available. It's that they spend a lot of money across a lot of bands of the organization. The analytics teams and the coaching staffs have these very specific backgrounds. And one assumes they're supplying a tremendous amount of data and strategy to the players on a daily basis. And what I see is a lot of guys thinking first ball, fast ball, trying to get ahead early and try to get a hit early in the count. So it could with getting the pitch that they're looking for, which is a, you know, a codified baseball strategy right now, but that is leading to 100 million ground balls, the second base. I, I've, I can't believe how many ground balls this team hits. And I can't believe the lack of action to your point about Juan Soto hitting one long fly ball that was caught being the 12th, the most exciting thing that's happened to the team this year. It's, it's astonishing. And it's, it's really to a man other than Francisco Alvarez. Every single hitter this season, aside from Francisco Alvarez, when they're up at the plate, I'm like, this is going to be a put out at third base. And they're going to go down one, two, three, and there's going to be no strategy. Mendoza is going to take no chances. Like we're in a place where they just got it, like try to bump three times in a row. You know, try to do something differently. Bring back the, bring back the, even Alvarez. Not supposed to button 2026, but try something. Even Alvarez, just classic stat line for the Mets this season. Four home runs, five RBS, like awesome. Just none of this, every home runs a solo home run. I know. He hits the ball hard though. No, I want him to play every day because he mashes the ball. And we did like, I assume at some point these guys will play to their track records, right? Like Bichette is going to play better than they had double last night's scored the first run. Polanco's already injured. Robert's been all right. Simeon just, I mean, Nimo is has an 863 OPS right now. And that, like you can combine three guys in our lineup and not quite get to an 863 OPS. Pete has not been very good for the world. I was just one assumes he will come around. But yeah, you know, this is the other thing why everyone's justified to make fun of them because they have the highest payroll and baseball. So you're not allowed when you, you're paying one solo three quarters of a billion dollars and you have the highest payroll and baseball. It'd be like, yeah, but in three years we're really well set up. Like every look at all these, you can't know, you don't get to do that. And you let a franchise icon, all time, home run leader walk for nothing. You traded the longest tender player on the team, I think in Nimo, who I could take or leave, but at least like the guy was good for 20 to 25 home runs and hit the ball pretty hard and Diaz is not lighting it up. But you know, Devon Williams has been awful. But I want to go back to what you said before. So I remember we talked about this one, one of our earlier segments, like the Mets being a cosmic joke to me kind of caught me off guard because in my time as a diehard Mets fan, yeah, they had six straight sub 500 seasons from 91 to 96 or six, I think six. And there's like the Vince Coleman firework thing. Like there's some embarrassment in there. But I mean, every team other than the Yankees goes through troughs like that. And they weren't like horrible, horrible other than one or two of those years. I grew up, they were awesome and they won a World Series and they went deep into the playoffs in other years. Then in the mid nineties to late nineties, they got really good again. They made another World Series. And then I kind of, so I remember talking to you like, I don't like, why are they considered this joke of a franchise and you filled me in on some of the collapses of the Willy Randolph era and this and that. And now it's like, oh, now I get it. Now I'm living it. Now I'm now I'm getting my real taste of it. This is what it feels like for sure. I was trying to think back because, you know, the Phillies have been awful this season too, and they actually are now the owners of not just the basement in the National League East, but the, I think they now have the worst record in baseball and the worst run differential and was texting with Chris Ryan a bit and our friend Tracy, who's also a Cubs fan. And we were, I was wondering when was the last time the Mets and the Phillies were both bad? And this was a time when you were not following the team. I had forgotten that in 2017, the Mets and the Phillies combined to win, I believe 136 games. They won 66 and 70 games and they were at the bottom of the National League East. That's not that long ago. That's only nine years ago that the Mets won 70 games in the season and the Phillies were even worse. So it's not like this can't happen to big market clubs that spend money, but the Mets in 2017, when they were still under the Wilpons ownership, were not spending $380 million like this team. And if you look at the way the money has been allocated on this roster, it's scary, dude. Don't forget that Frankie Montas is making like $18 million this year. Don't forget that Luis Robert is making $20 million this year. Don't forget that Boba Shed is making $42 million this year. With a, he's got a player option, right? With a player option that I think elevates it to $50 million. I mean, if he plays like this, you can pin that one in right now. Like, of course I'm opting in. You know, I think that there is something kind of fascinating about the fact that there's only three guys under contract in 2028 and we can look down the road and we can say, oh, well, you know, Christian Scott will be in the rotation and Nolan McClain will be leading the team and Jonah Tong will be up by them too. And Jack Wendinger too, and we'll have this super rotation of 24 year olds. And hey, maybe Ryan Clifford will be up and by then Carson Benj will be an all star and we can kind of like game out what we, what I think David Stearns really wants and what I suggested to you over the winter, what I thought he was doing, but the short term moves to make the team competitive now while you've got all these guys and even the trade for Peralta, which featured two big prospects who I think are not off to the greatest starts in Milwaukee, but that was a heavy price to pay. All of that could look, it could go from looking really stupid to catastrophic very quickly. And then we're going to wake up one day and it's going to be 10 years and the Mets are going to have 191 season under Steve Cullen. I mean, the team has just not been successful under Cullen. They're like, we can't avoid this topic anymore. They had one 100 win season, which was the culmination of a group of players who were developed under a different ownership coming into their true primes. They're 26, 27, 28 year old seasons plus stepping out and spending big on a couple of pitchers like Max Scherzer, which was the big announcement that Cullen made in addition to acquiring Francisco Endor. So they had a hundred win season that year and collapsed mightily in the playoffs and embarrassingly since then 2024 was a lot of fun, but doesn't it feel flukish when you look back on it now? It's, it's amazing. I mean, 18 months ago, the Mets were in the national league champions of cheers. That's just like yesterday in sports terms. And also makes $25 million, by the way, just for the record, he's not, I'm not even in the rotation. I mean, he's barely in the bullpen. It brought the lack of an extension for him is interesting. We'll see what happens there. A lot has been written about that. Just to just some things 30th as of going into yesterday's game, 30th and not based percentage 30th in slugging percentage 30th in OPS Buster only had this piece out where he was talking on one of his tidbits about how teams were throwing more than the usual percentage of fastballs against the Mets, which was, I guess, like is considered almost disrespectful of your lineup. Like we can even dial up our fastball even more because you can't hit the straight thing or the seamer or whatever. It's just, it's, it's shocking. And I would actually, you brought up Steve Cullen rather than me say it. Would you like to talk about his Twitter account? Yeah, you should delete it. I'm, I don't, I don't understand. I do, I do understand his mentality because I'm very appreciative of him as an owner because I found the will ponds to be baffling as an ownership group and their cheapness. And I know that there were some specific reasons, especially in the 2010s, why they got even cheaper than they had been prior to that. But Steve Cullen has spent money every single year he has owned the team. He has thrown a ton of money into the organization. They've clearly improved the way that the farm system operates, the way that the departments beyond what happens on the field operate. It's going to city field is a lot of fun. You know, it's a great, it's a great ballpark. So all of those organizational things, I can laud them and appreciate them. His communication with the fan base leaves a lot to be desired. Scolding the fan base in the first 10 games of the year after the collapse of last season is nightmare PR. And I realize he's extraordinarily wealthy and there's probably no one who can speak to him about why this is a terrible idea. But from the free ticket sales, you know, the free ticket giveaway that he spoke about, and then the lack of people showing up for that and him scolding fans about that, followed by in the midst of the losing streak, the infamous green shoots tweet, which is, I thought was just a deplorable act of communication. Like I can't imagine a stupider thing happening to the Mets this year. And they were like five to six games into the losing streak by that point. And you sent it to me on, you texted it to me. I hadn't seen it. I mean, green shoots in a six game losing streak is for pick your small market rebuilding team. Exactly. Like it's not, it's not for this team. Exactly. That's not, New York sports fans are obnoxious and they're, they're, they're anxious and, and they're prone to anger, but they're not stupid. Like we're not stupid. We watch the team every night. I watch the team every night. Like they can't hit. We can tell this, this idea that like a long fly ball from Marcus Simeon is reason to be optimistic is embarrassing. Marcus Simeon is a 35 year old second baseman who has not slugged above 400 in three years. What are we talking about? Don't like, don't, don't, don't embarrass us is really what I want to say. Is Ronnie Mauricio, did he do something wrong to somebody? I feel like we brought him up. He had a game winning hit and I've never seen him again. He's in the minors and I see these updates like Ronnie Mauricio was three for four in triple A. I'm like, what feels like we might be able to use him for something. I think if Lindor goes down for a long period of time, they should just let Mauricio be the full time shortstop. Let Bichette play third base and stick him there because that's where they're going to need him and he's still developing as a third baseman. And I think they should just let Marius, they've never given Mauricio more than like a 10 or 15 game stretch to see if he's a player who can stick in the, in the league. And he's now presumably fully recovered from his injuries two seasons ago. And I'd like to see it. But you know, I also wanted Mark Vientos to get consistent playing time and he's getting it. You know what he's doing? Dumb shit. I, I don't know. I've been running through a stop sign last night, um, two nights ago, trying to get the force out at third base on a bun when he's not that elegant of fielder. He just, he's got brain lock in a couple of different ways. That's the other thing. Like the team is wildly on discipline. And that falls on the manager, man. They make a lot of mistakes. Oh, Ronnie, we just got an update. Uh, Ronnie Mauricio is on his way to Queens and will be recalled with Francis Corlund or likely headed to the IL. Okay. Great. There you go. I think that's your starting shortstop for the next three weeks. Whatever, whatever it is. Um, on the on discipline thing, I've been, uh, protective of our daughter on the stream of Lindor, like what, like, why did you not charge the ball? Uh, uh, of those sorts of mental errors. Uh, I've been, I've been, she was devastated to learn this morning that he got hurt. Uh, but I've been protecting her because those have been, those have been also, uh, that look, I mean, here's where I'll let out their eight and 16 is there a small part of my brain that's like, Hey, why not make history? If no team has ever lost 12 in a row, they've got all this talent. Why not? You know, uh, every impulse of my body, 90% of it wants to say the season is over. This is disgusting. And it probably is. There's always going to be the why not thing going on here and like give it a month. Right. If they haven't crawled within three games of 500, if they, if they don't start making up some ground, you don't have to go on a 12 game winning streak to metaphor the 12-year losing streak. You just have to do the opposite of the slow drip of what happened last year. If they don't do that in a month, then the season is over. It probably already is over, but look, I'm not, I'm not bailing. I'm here. I'm interested to see how Mauricio plays. I'm not going to give up hope. It's just, it's just so. Dispyriting because the season is so long and there are so many games and all you want is to have some stakes in the games and worse. It's already feels like, oh, okay. There's no loss. I have bailed on many a next season. I've bailed on the occasional jet season. I've never bailed on a MET season. I always stick it out. I'm always interested because the failure tends to inform what will happen in the off season and I'm, the METs have only had off seasons for the most part in the last 35 years to think about. And so this was an off season that I was so fascinated by. I was so interested to see. I knew the, the breakup of the core was going to happen and I was preparing myself for it and I wasn't surprised by it. It's a little hard to look at the Nemo thing. And I, when we did talk three weeks ago, I did say this Simeon trade might end up looking terrible and it does look terrible so far. Now also Brandon Nemo is injury prone and tends to break down over a season. If he finishes the year with a above an 850 OPS, I think automatically that trade is not a good deal, even though Nemo still has four more years and Simeon has two more years, you basically punted on a valuable season and you picked up a deeply declined player. But the one thing I just want to say really quickly, cause I think our instincts are to say, okay, well we lost Pete, we lost Nemo, we lost McNeil, we lost Diaz, and we replaced them with these guys, these guys and these guys. This is not a binary. The choice was not only Jorge Polanco or Peter Lanzo. Look in Chicago at Munitaka Murakami, who's playing third base and hitting the ball 480 feet every night. Munitaka Murakami went to the worst team in baseball or what was the worst team in baseball on a cheap deal. Where were the Mets on? Cause he strikes out too much, right? That was the thing he strikes out. They were like, how's that going to translate? But they were afraid he couldn't hit fastballs. They were afraid he couldn't hit American Major League fastballs. And you know who can't hit American Major League fastballs? Mets! I will conclude. It's, do you talk about the off season and failure in forming? I am, again, not knowing much about the mechanics of baseball in terms of front office machinations and trade deadlines. I'll learn all that. I did text you like, if this were the NBA, and I understand everyone good has a no trade clause on the Mets, I get it. If this were the NBA, there would already be rumors of like teams calling about Soto and teams calling the Mets. Is that just not a thing in baseball? Like, why would a team not try to, or why would the Mets not be like, hey, maybe it's time to pull the ripcord and trade this guy for like eight amazing prospects? Is that just not a thing that happens? The Soto thing is unusual because I think he has an opt out after five seasons. So he's in the second season with the team. And I believe you could get a ton for him, but not as much as you might think because of the size of his contract. And there's not very many teams that are willing to carry $75 million per year, whatever his annual salary is. Lindor, the time to trade Lindor was last off season. You know, that was the time. And I didn't want to do it. I wasn't advocating for it, but his value was incredibly high. And he has effectively, I think an eight or nine year contract left. And if you look at some of the contracts that were given out to players who are far less gifted or with a far weaker resume than Lindor, you could see people just picking up the remainder of his deal happily and trading prospects for it. Now, you know, he got off to another slow start. He broke his handmade bone and now he's got some sort of calf injury. And he's a 32 year old shortstop who is not in the prime of his career anymore. I love the guy. I love that he's brought to the team. I was baffled by his mistakes earlier this season, but I'm hopeful that it was just like he was going through something personal and it was leading to some brain farts. Like I have to hope that that's what it was because he's actually one of the savviest and smartest Mets I've seen in the last 20 years. So him doing those things was bizarre. Those two guys to me, obviously have the most value beyond the stud pitching. There, if they continue in this way and they're like 10 games under 500 in the middle of June, they should be selling everything they can. They should be selling off. They should be turning this team into a flea market, man. Well, everything's going great. Sean Fendasy, it's wonderful to see you. You know, Sean, from the big picture, of course, and associated other ringer appearances, he also just started a sub stack things we think, but do not say, which I'm going to subscribe to right after we get off this. I can't wait to read it. And maybe it will inspire me. Who knows? But you're a beautiful writer and it's nice to see the writing coming back. And we'll be convened at some point and maybe we'll, maybe we'll be just eight games under 500 still would be 500 between now and the next one. Who the hell knows? Zach, thank you very much. And let me tell you this. Let's go Mets. Yeah, let's go. Why not? What's the opposite? Let's go Mets. Luke Weaver said that after a game last night. Let's go Mets. Let's go. Let's go. Why not? Sean Fentasy, thank you, sir. Bye, Zach. All right, that's it for today's Zach Lowe show. Enjoy the games tonight. Enjoy the weekend. I will be back Sunday night with Bill to recap whatever madness happens in the NBA over the playoff weekend. Thank you to Steve Jones Jr. for his incomparable insight. Thank you to the great Chase Serrano for coming on and tell him some fun stories. Thanks, I guess, to Sean Fentasy for some Mets therapy. Thanks as always to Mike, Billy and Jonathan on production. And thanks to you all for listening to and or watching the Zach Lowe show. See you next week. 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