May 28, 2025 • 40 mins
Jason and Mike tell you what Rick Carlisle coaching against Tom Thibodeau has in common with Bill Belichick dominating the AFC East. More details on the WNBA investigation. And LeBron James is likely to opt-in to his $52.6M player option!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to The Jason Smith Show with Mike
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Speaker 2 (00:23):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Greetings, Welcome in side final hour tonight the Jason Smith
Show with my bas friend Mike Harmon. Get those fours up.
We got more big stuff on Lebron big WNBA story
coming up in about twenty minutes, but the next funeral
is the topic of the hour.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Right now, go New York, Go New York.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Go.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, pretty soon they'll be gone. You'll be right, they'll
be gone.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
He jumped on your wagon, he did, he did that.
Noh helped carry you.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
And guide you past the Celtics.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
And as soon as you cleared that hurdle, like it
was a level of a video game, he jumped off
and went the other rene.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Done done, done, done, dun dundune. Now, first I want
to tell you I'm gonna say bad things about Tom Thibodeau,
and then it's I'm gonna say then it's gonna change,
but I'm gonna say bad things about him, but it's
gonna turn out okay for him, not so much for
somebody else.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It turns out okay for him.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah. Yeah, It's like, did you watch a new episode
of Welcome to Wrexham. They had the whole Disney funny.
They had the whole episode. They did the whole episode
and it was hosted by Ryan Reynolds and Rob mcalanney,
where they did it like a Disney movie where here's,
you know, the part of the beginning in the beginning
when one of the parents dies and they show something
bad happening to Wrexham, and then then it gets really worse,
but then the whole thing like a Disney episode, a
(01:45):
Disney movie. Uh, this is kind of the same, the
same kind of thing. The pay Look, it's over for
the Knicks. That's why I only got somewhat excited after
winning Game three, because what did I tell you? The
last couple of nights, they bought themselves another couple of days. Right,
they win Game three, they bought themselves a chance to
get back in the series and instead three to one,
(02:06):
and nobody comes back from three to one, certainly not
this next team that is not nearly defensively capable of
stopping this Pacers team. So the thing, the thing that
sticks out to me, right you want to talk about
TIBs and this and this series, is that it's amazing
to see him being out coached by Rick Carlisle to
this extent. And it kind of reminds me of when
(02:30):
Bill Belichick was running rough shot over the AFC East
for all those years before he started the Bill Belichick
that stunkin didn't know what he was doing in his
drafting guys from Division three and as their first draft pick.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Yeah, but he was smarter than everybody else. When he
promoted Matt Patricia and made him the OC.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Mac Jones was a guy that was on a decent
trajectory and they said, here, we're gonna really screw this
kid over.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
You know, Mac Jones.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I think Mac Jones is the guy that just, hey,
I just happened to play in the most talented offensive
team in the history of college football. Because everybody NFL
superstar his first year, pretty good, what'd you do?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You shuffled everything else what'd you do third year?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Hey, let's let's make it even more difficult and see
how much talent he can take away and see how
much you can do.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
But what Belichick used to do that would used to
be infuriating is that he was such a good coat.
This is why he's the best coach I've seen, despite
Spygate and everything else, is that when I would watch
him coach against the other AFC teams and they'd played
twice a year, and the first game, the Patriots game
plan would be something where it was good enough to
(03:37):
win playing one way, right, Like, here's a game where hey,
what did Tom Brady do? All he did was throw
short and Wes Welker had thirteen catches for you know,
eighty seven yards, but you know he was moving the chains.
Gronkowski had a big day. It was middle of the field,
middle of the field. The Patriots dominated middle of the field. Okay,
So then for the rematch eight, you know, seven, eight
(03:58):
weeks later, all right, hey, this is how they killed
us that first time. This is what we're gonna do.
And then what does Belichick do? No, Now they're gonna
run the football, and Steven Ridley would have a big day,
or Corey Dlon would have a big day and Brady would.
Brady only threw for one hundred and seventy five yards
and one touchdown. We still lost twenty three to ten.
Like what happened? Oh, because Corey Dyllon had this game
(04:18):
we ran for one hundred and ten yards, or Stephen
Ridley had had twenty three carries for one hundred and
fifteen yards. Like this is what Belichick would do, is that, Okay,
we beat you that way last time. Now you're chasing us, right,
you're chasing us because you think we're gonna do this.
This is what we're gonna do. And that's what it's
like watching Carlisle and and TIBs in this because clearly
Game one the miracle come back by the Pacers. The
(04:39):
Pacers knew, hey, we can free up Nie Smith and
he can he can be the guy keeps you to
stay hot. And the Knicks had no answer defensively, right,
TIBs is not able to adjust.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Okay, but they come back with that.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And now the knicksk okay going into game two, how
do we combat this and they came out with it.
We have to make sure that Halliburton's not a guy
that takes over like he did. And you heard the
Knicks talk about things they needed to do. What are
the Pacers doing? Game two, Pascal Siakam eleven points to
start the game. Game of his life. Again, I keep
going back.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
He was like.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Peak KD with the shots he was making in this game,
mid range jumpers, off the glass, threes, he was doing
everything dominant, one on one. The Knicks were not ready
for them. They were chasing the Pacers that entire game.
Game three, the Knicks find a way right come back
in the fourth quarter, Pacers blow a big lead, and
I like, like the Knicks played great that Again, that
game made absolutely no sense. Now you get to game four,
(05:28):
where okay, the Knicks are going, okay, it's what we
need to do. And what happened tonight The Pacers kept
running screens, They kept running into open shots the entire night.
The Knicks looked awful defensively, whether it was Brunson chasing
losing their spot. How many times did you see the
Pacers have open threes? And they have five guys on
the floor that can take threes and hit them right.
(05:50):
It's not like they have only a couple. They got
five guys that can hit them right. We talked to
Rick Buker. This is the this is what the Pacers
like to do. This, this is what Rikarlo likes to
have a bunch of guys interchangeable, can do different things
on the court at once. The Knicks spent the entire
night tonight bamboozled defensively. There were no adjustments to make,
there was nothing to try to figure things out. There
was no way to slow Halliburton down. The Pacers did
(06:12):
whatever they wanted to. They played at their own pace.
And I mean it if if they made five difficult
shots night. By that, I mean where it wasn't just
shots they missed. They were forced into a difficult shot
by the Knicks defensively, and they made them. I think
that's a lot. I don't think they had five difficult
shots they were forced into tonight. It was basically the
Knick saying, maybe they'll miss, and y'all, well, kay, well,
(06:34):
they still had fifty three percent of their shots from
the floor, right. That's why I was never confident the
Knicks could win this game tonight, because the Pacers just
kept coming down and doing whatever they wanted to. They're
one on one matchups were terrific. They got the one
on one matchups they wanted, they got open shots, It
didn't matter. The Pacers just did whatever they wanted to tonight.
And I'm watching Tom Thibodeaux just walk around with his
(06:55):
with his arms folded. I'm going, where is any sort
of come batting against this? Where is any sort of plan?
The Knicks look bamboozled and they look mentally defeated. Where
they're looking at each other going, you're supposed to pick
that guy up, You're supposed to pick this up?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Was I supposed to go?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Here?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Are they communicating like I didn't see Brunson and it
no be communicating like?
Speaker 5 (07:14):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Really difficult effort to watch. But this is what Rick
Carlyle has done. He has been able to every game, go,
you think we're gonna do this, We're gonna give you
a little bit of a different wrinkle. Maybe it's Pascal
Siakam out of the gate. Maybe it's the screens that
you're gonna have trouble. Maybe it's now we're gonna get
back to picking up Brunson and make him dribble all
ninety four feet and force him into bad, bleeping turnovers
where he has a couple every single game that just
turned out to be killers. Like Rick Carlyle is completely
(07:37):
coaching circles around TIBs. Now. Granted, does TIBs have the
defensive team that he used to have that you want
to have, No, but still there's been no adjustments. There's
been no game planning because the Knicks can play physical.
We saw them out physical the Celtics. There's been none
of that. There's been no adjustment. It's been Rick carl
just going around going, ah, whatever you can do, TIBs,
what two three steps ahead of you? Man?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
I'm like Leo and catch me if you can't, except
at the very end. But I'm like, love thehead? Are
you the entire way?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Tom Hanks?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Oh, but you had the opportunity Game three where everybody
started to fight back on TIB's behalf, saying, look, sham
it McBride, these guys gave you big minutes and rallied. Okay,
they came and got one right chokes on you was
the back of the fish rap there the New York
Post and everybody got excited for a moment. But to
(08:23):
your point, you've got a lot of standing around and
watching when Jalen Brunson goes into turbo mode and when
he hits that's great. You guys had your knicks had
an eleven rebound advantage. They won the offensive glass thirteen
to eight, but seventeen turnover for several of which were
and I don't know how Burnson only has three. I
(08:44):
want to check the tapes, but remember several sequences where
he goes to drive and you get the second man
coming over to pick his pocket, and nobody's calling out
that help is coming.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Right man man, it's like man, man on, you're gone,
you know, like that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
You're setting a screen.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Just a lot of standing around and defensively, No, their
feet don't move right. How many open looks from the
corners do you see that extra bit of ball movement?
And I know the one that's the dagger is the
obie top and at the top of the key, because
that's the the biggest injustice. I'll take the dunk, I'll
take the put back, I'll take the big offensive rebound
to reset the shot clock. That guy's stepping out and
(09:24):
hitting a dagger three on you in the final minutes,
like wow, nothing else can go could possibly go right
for us here. But Josh Hart was terrible again, right,
and he talked about it like you rebounded.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
He had a great run at the end of game three.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
That was it, right, He had a couple of minutes,
and then today was right back to He had a
double double. Great, but he had seven turnovers and most
of them were all right, we're gonna force the ball in, right,
it's the youth soccer, youth basketball of I'm going to
dribble into a crowd of people and hope that the
shot gets through. And in this case for Josh Hart
(10:01):
was all right, well, two of our guys are down there. Yeah,
they might have brought two of their defenders, but damn it,
we're gonna get to the ball or it's gonna pinball
around and we're gonna end up with an extra possession.
And so you're struggling, and you get a game like this,
this kind of pace, you're destined to lose.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Right. They did a lot of things right.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
He got to the foul line a lot, took care
of business there, didn't miss a ton. I think they
missed six for the game. So you have thirty plus
attempts and Bronson finishes with thirty one, but you had
a lot of stagnant defensive possessions. Every loose ball seemed
to find the arms of a waiting Pacers player. And
(10:41):
then Haliburton set the tone early with that monster first quarter,
and he could do no wrong right in terms of
distributing the ball. There's no active hands, there's no muddying
things up to where you're gaining and regaining an advantage
down in those possessions, they all ended up with shots.
Pacers win the fat break points twenty two to nine.
(11:02):
At one point is twenty two to two, so I
guess they closed the gap with a couple of big
runouts late. But just all of that to say, you
can't play at that pace against this squad and think
you're gonna win because those legs are gonna be tired
for the minutes. You can't steal with your bench, you.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Know, And and the other part of it is this, right,
So you think I'm gonna say TIBs is gonna get
fired after the season. It's been really bad. But there's
gonna be a bigger culprit or a bigger move than
the Knicks moving on to a new coach, because that
could be a year away, but I'll tell you he's
just signed an extension. Yeah, like through twenty eight, twenty
(11:39):
nine or something. Look, even though Tibbs is someone who
he's lost his identity as a defensive coach, Like like
when you bring you it's like when the when the
when Syracuse had Dino Babers is their head coach because
he brings in this great offensive system. We run a
play every eight seconds, We're gonna go fast by the
end of his run there, they weren't doing it. And
I'm like, why is even the head coach if we're
not doing why? Why? What is specialty is? Why is
(12:00):
he still the coach? But that's the point, right, if
you're gonna build a squad for this guy, shouldn't there
be another defensive stuff for two in the mixt You know,
a guy that.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
You can steal fifteen minutes from comes on the bench.
It's not offensively inept, but able to steal minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, but this is still Tibbs's team, it's still his it.
But but how if we're not if we don't have
that defensive identity? More like, what are we doing? But
I'll tell you what the what the other bigger change
is gonna be is that in the off season, Carl
Anthony Towns plus is going to get dealt as the
Knicks retool the roster to get better defensively, little more offense.
(12:36):
And look, maybe it's Giannis right, maybe it's Jiannis want
to play in New York happen, but they need a
better mix and they need to get better defensively. And
Karl Anthony Towns is fit has been okay, it's not
quite been to the extent you expected it to be
like you expect to be. Hey, he and Jalen Brunson
won two man good luck stopping one without the other,
(12:59):
and it seemed like that's the way it was gonna
be for Karl Anthony Towns.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But as the.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Season went on, he'd have a lot of games where boy,
he just didn't seem like he really fit in the flow.
It's been somewhat of an odd configuration. And clearly now
you see this NIX team again. I haven't seen a
team in the Eastern Conference Finals with more wrong with
it than the Knicks. But they're gonna make a move
and Karl Anthony Towns clearly is a guy that's going
to have a lot of interest. They'll be able to
(13:23):
move him for a piece they need, a couple of
pieces they need. But that's gonna be the big change.
Maybe it's Karl Anthony Towns and Unobi, Maybe it's Karl
Anthony Towns in heart, Maybe it's Karl Anthony Towns and Bridges.
Something is going to happen that's going to make this
Knicks team a little bit better defensively and a little
bit more of a pacers type team where you have
more players on the floor offensively that can all do
(13:46):
the same things like you could. And that's why Karl
Anthony Towns is the victim of He's a guy that
could bring the most, that is the most expendable, but
also his fit is still somewhat odd with the team.
It's still not quite what you thought it would be.
So this'll probably be a one and done year for
him and the Knicks will move on and it will
be a couple of different players in big positions. Next,
were you taking a shot at Cat's fitness while you
(14:08):
were at it? No, it's not running up and down
the floor like no, No, I think he's fine. I
don't look at him and go boy, the guy's exhausted.
I mean you look at some of the circus hoops
he made, you know, on offense tonight. Then look at
the times he got beat, you know, defensively, like he's
not i mean, look four points of the first three
quarters of Game three and then twenty in the fourth quarter.
(14:29):
It's like, okay, so is that worth it? Like to
have a Karl Anthony Town so that can give you
twenty in the fourth, but you're losing and you need
every one of them because he's so bad the first
three quarters, like he's not quite been what they thought
he was going to be, and knowing they need to
make a change, he's gonna be the guy that's gonna
headline a deal for Giannis or somebody else is gonna happen.
And when he's out of position, he picks up the
(14:49):
early silly following two foul tonight and he's on the
bench for the last eight minutes of the first quarter.
I mean, that's how it's gonna Tim's is gonna get
a reprieve and Karl Anthony Town is gonna be on
a new team, and the Nick Levannist all apologies, Yeah,
exit out by a Fresca exit Swollen Dome, Jason Smith
and Mike Harmon live from the Fox Sports Radio studios.
(15:12):
You can stream this show in all of our Fox
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(15:34):
head rip the knob off. Coming up next, a fifty
one million dollar NBA story to get to, plus more
on the biggest basketball story of the last week, Jason
and Mike Fox.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Fox Sports Radio. The Jason Smith Show with My That's
friend Mike Harmon.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Eclectic.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
We get back into the Knicks and the Pacers coming
up in a few minutes, but do we have to Well,
there's a bad deal. The Knicks died tonight stock come
on already dead. But we've got a story on Lebron
James coming up in a few minutes, really fun one.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
But what the one where he's dancing when he's supposed
to have a ripped up knee.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
No no, no, no no.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
The story where like I could be an NBA insider.
But a little bit more on that. The WNBA story
that we talked about, big story today. The WNBA investigating
the claims that something racial was shouted at Angel Reese
during the season opening game between the Sky and the
Fever a few days ago. They spent a whole week investigating.
(16:55):
They talked to people at the game, they they did
video and audio review, and they could not find any
evidence that someone said something. And we talked about it
last hour. Look, this is a story that you know,
like I said, WNBA has to make sure that they
can handle success, and they have not shown me they
can because they let social media run an investigation or
(17:17):
start something that looked that was just a bad headline
for the w over the course of the last week.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
But how many people do you have working that that event,
including the team, lot of people and not a single person,
nobody anything.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And this is why This is why the W needs
to be able to handle success. This story gets out
and nobody heard anything. This is where the W has
to say, we'll look into it, don't worry about it.
But the Sky put out a statement. There's no place,
of course, there's no place for this in the game.
It's ridiculous. If you found them, obviously you kick those
people out for the rest of their lives. It don't
get to come to games. But the Sky puts out
(17:54):
a statement, and the Fever puts out a statement, and
the WNBA puts out a statement. Now it seems like, oh,
we have racist fans, right, racist fans are back out,
and the whole week has been racist fans? What are
they saying? And now it was nothing where the W
gotta take And instead this was social media, because there's
all about social media that thought they heard something being said,
whether it was made up, whether it was something that
was misheard, whether it was just somebody saying they felt
(18:17):
bad because Angel Reese got.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Fouled and so they didn't like the fact they were losing.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Whatever it was, they couldn't find evidence of this, and
there's lots of big time things were on along racial lines.
We need to talk about we need to get into
but you gotta you gotta make sure that that you're
focusing your efforts on stuff that's out there, right, And
this is where the WNBA should have said, let's look
into it, because there's no reason why let's back. If
this is bad, we're gonna tell you. We're gonna tell you,
(18:41):
We're gonna tell this this is what we found out right,
we looked into it after what happened last year. There
were you know, threats and stuff made that looked like
some Fever fans were saying on social media against Angel Rees, Hey,
we gotta look in it, and it's got to look
into this.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But this is the story that.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The W needed to be able to control, and they
didn't because social media said something and they went off,
oh now we gotta we gotta go over the top
of it, and it was a bad week of publicity.
The other part of this story is that if I'm
the W or not, if I'm the W, if I'm
a manager or an agent or a PR person and
I work for Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Cheryl Reeve, Cheryl Swoops,
(19:20):
Cheryl Ladd because she was my favorite, Charlie actually Cheryl
Tigues on the cover of Sports Jackie Cheryl, former head
coach Texas A and m Cheryl Burke.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Dancer Cheryl Hines. I mean there's lots of Cheryl's.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I say this, Okay to my client, I would say, okay,
I know this is a really big thing, but you guys,
you guys have to just back off what's happening. You
can't continue to be petulant, right because eventually it's gonna
come back on you and you're gonna look bad. Because
(19:55):
if you can, it's it's almost like the NBA player
that is a great player, but boy, if he flops
too much complains about calls, you lose some respect for him, right,
Like you know everybody's loose with Luca whining and complaining
for as many calls. Yokich is kind of getting to
that point. You don't want that, right, You don't want that.
You want you, I would say, I want you as
my client to be someone who achieves everything they want
(20:18):
to And when all this petulant stuff is going on,
this is outside of the race of this is this
is all of the Hey, here's rivalries, and here's who
doesn't like who, and here's who doesn't like this, And
I'm fostering this and fostering this. Stay away from the
petty stuff and the small stuff, because it's just gonna
make you look bad. The more the more things that
go out where it seems like players hate each other
(20:39):
and and it's a personal issue, and it's a jealousy issue.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
This is good.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
You're gonna look bad. You're gonna be the one that
looks bad. People listen to you right away and they go, oh,
wait a minute, that's a good point. But if this
is what keeps coming up eventually fans and the media,
and they're gonna turn their turn, turn turn away from
you to go I don't really care what you have
to say, because I've been hearing the same argument over
the course of the last couple of years that what
the jealousy and the and the pettiness like, that's what's
(21:05):
gotta go away. And that's what I would tell my
client and say, stop doing this because you're you're you're
not You're not going to help yourself because eventually it's
gonna turn on you. If you're the one that continues
to person be the big be a bigger person, play basketball.
If it's a rivalry on the court. If things happen
on the court that go for this is what everybody wants.
Everybody wants to talk about this. The w is a
(21:26):
league that people want to talk about and they want
to have fun with because it's getting so popular and
there's so many stars. Yes, Caitlin Clark is the biggest,
but there's so many other huge stars that people love
talking about. We love talking about Kelsey Plumb and Asia Wilson.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
And and and it.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And it doesn't matter whether it's Paige Becker's coming into
the league. It doesn't matter if it's a Lee at Boston,
it's still it's still fun. Let's make sure that that's
the narrative that we push forth and not just Hey,
it seems like there's a bunch of players who aren't
thrilled with the other with with the other players, and
it's not about an on court rivalry. It seems personal
because people to say, you know what, I don't have
(22:01):
time for that anymore.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Well, I mean, we could run with it in for
a while. And it seems to work in the music business.
It seems to work in entertainment. Did you keep doing
your music out? I mean did I What did I
have today? I mean I had Audrey McDonald against Patty Loopon.
I mean that's been going on at Broadway for years,
all of those things, right, so you can have beef.
And that's why I'm a Patty LuPone guy. Oh, y'all
kick your ass said she's not my friend anymore. You
(22:25):
know what you did?
Speaker 3 (22:26):
You gotta explain to gen X and who Patty Lapone is. Okay,
you can't. You can't just throw that out. Is that
the person who pushed Marcone's face?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's what's the mom on lifetoes on with Smitrovich all
those years ago?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
I mean Broadway legend.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I'm throwing out a Broadway rivalry that people are just
throwing down over the point.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
And I do a tongue in cheek because that's the
repertoire we have. Right, We're at the world in with
a great, big hug. We're not narrow casting. We're broadcasting
here and somewhere someone's laughing their ass off that I
got that in even if it's just you and it
made the show. But the point being, you can run
with it for a while, right, What you what I
(23:09):
can have if I'm the pr advisor to the Star
is the I can't have the no comment. You gotta
have something prepped, right. You know you're gonna be asked
about player X y Z. They have a big game
and you're gonna run through. And obviously with more dollars,
it's like anything, right, if there's money to be made,
more people are paying attention, more people keep coming in,
(23:32):
so they may not have all the backstory. So it's
not it's the old NBC line, right when they show
you the reruns in may Hey, if you missed it
in the fall, it's new to you. Yeah, so you
can run with it to a degree, but clearly, if
it now becomes all other lines of questioning, communication and
(23:53):
flow gets cut off because you're going back to the
well on something that happened a year ago, back to
college days, back to the opening game.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Because I mean, there's gonna be points to where.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
It's your main And I think if you're in the
NBA or w NBA at any point, you should expect
at some point while you're sitting at the dais there
is going to be a question about Angel Reese and
or Caitlin Clark, even it's got nothing to do with
your team, the upcoming schedule of the game you just played,
(24:26):
it's gonna be there because it moves the needle.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
And see what I did the social media.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
I mean it's clips, it's reels, it's Instagram, it's TikTok,
it's all of that, and it helps further the cause
of the league. Whatever and pettiness you get, you can
run with it for a while. How long that gestation
period is, I don't know. I don't think we're at
it yet where it's super saturated. To me, it's a
all right basketball play, move on. But the fun rhetoric
(24:56):
between the players is all fine and good. What happened
with this investment negation? We said it when we came
on air Monday. It's like, you have forty eight hours.
You didn't find a single person that came running to
a security guard or nobody from the sideline that ran
to this. That kind of stuff you need to figure
out how to be better about. But the rest of it,
hey man, pettiness moves the needle in a lot of circles.
(25:17):
To watch a political show, it works. Exit out bout
a fresco x at swollen Dome. Time now to find
out what's trending for men whose favorite show was Petty
Coat Junction Woo.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
What he was growing up? It's Steve a saga.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
She was the original Evita, was she?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Note? That is sure you are correct about? Yes, that's right.
So you have Patty Lapone's back. You're a Patty. You're
a Patty.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
She was in a Witness. She was Harrison Ford's sister
and witness.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
That's Ryan, So I guess. So a lot of the
beef comes down to you. They were playing two shows
playing next to each other, and the one uh not
loopone starred.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
What got too loud?
Speaker 4 (25:55):
So she complained about it and filed a grievance two
Old nine yard, to.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
Which McDonald probably said, I'm sorry. I have my five
Tony Awards in my.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Ears last Yeah, exactly, Okay.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
NBA Eastern Conference Finals, Indiana up three games to one
after beating New York won thirty to one, twenty one
triple double for Tyrese Haliburton, including fifteen assists, no turnovers.
West Finals Game five is Wednesday in OKC Thunder leading
three games to one over Minnesota. The NBA Finals start
June fifth. Five WNBA games tonight. Paige Beckers in Connecticut
(26:28):
had twenty one points. Dallas beat Connecticut a battle of
OH and four teams. New York four and O whip
Golden State Minnesota's five and OH after downing Seattle, Atlanta
one at LA and Phoenix is now four and one
after beating winless Chicago ninety four eighty nine Chicago's oho
and four, but Angel Rees did have thirteen points fifteen rebounds. Tonight,
(26:49):
the Edmonton Oilers are up three games to one in
the NHL's West Final. They were tied one to one
with Dallas tonight mid second period. Four won the finals,
so Edmonton in the last three games outscore him thirteen
to two. The East Final continues Wednesday. Florida leeds Carolina
three games to one. A couple of huge comebacks in
the late ball games in the major leagues. Pittsburgh was
(27:10):
down six nothing going to the sixth nine six Pirates
win at Arizona. In fact, the Pirates record when trailing
after seven innings had been ozho to twenty nine until tonight.
San Diego trailed six nothing in the first inning to Miami,
but still beat the Marlins eight to six. Seattle nine
to one winners against Washington, Cal Raley of the MSH
(27:31):
his eighteenth and nineteenth home runs and the Yankees were
up three nothing in the nine three to two the
final of the Angels, Carlos rode On seven and three
got the win. Houston's Hunter Browns seven and three after
whipping the A's eleven to one. Houston hit four home runs.
Jose al Tuve went four for four with two long balls.
Texas with two runs bottom of the eighth one two
(27:52):
nothing over Toronto, but Rangers starter Nathan Valdi left after
two innings due to triceps fatigue. Pete Crow Armstrong with
his forty ninth RBI of the season, and for the Cubs,
Seya Suzuki with his fiftieth RBI. Cubs eventually with two
runs bottom of the eleventh, beat Colorado four to three.
The Rockies record is now nine and forty six and
(28:13):
they have lost every series they have played this season.
Oh n eighteen in series.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
You sure that wasn't the Knicks?
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Not quite that bad?
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Cincinnati's La de la Cruz with two solo homers in
a seven to win at Kansas City the Royals. Bobby
wit Junior did steal his twentieth base Milwaukee on a
Grand Slam in the tenth by Christian Yelich beat Boston
five to one after Eraalda. Chapman had blown the save
bottom of the ninth, the lost to Liam Hendrix of
the Red Sox. The Mets have won their fourth.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
In a row.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
Six to four was Tonight's final over the White Sox.
Pete Alonzo a two run homer in the first. The
Mets at home are twenty one and six. Philadelphia with
another win two nothing over Atlanta Ranger Suarez four and
oh beat Spencer Streider, oh and three. Bryce Harper left
hit by a pitch on his right elbow. X ray
were negative, but Philly's won twenty two of twenty eight.
(29:03):
There's still a game and a half up on the Mets.
In the NL East Road wins for Saint Louis and
Minnesota and for the Dodgers, who won nine to five
at Cleveland show Hey Otani with his twentieth homery of
the year that leads the majors.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That good.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
That is good Detroit three to one over.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Twenty home runs, twenty one RBI for this year.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Touch you're gonna say nineteen. He forgot to touch third
on that one big home.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Run by the way, for the Guardians, Jose Ramirez, now
a twenty game hit streak.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Big to you, all right?
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That is twenty home runs in thirty five RBIs for show.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So he's no Rob Deer, No, no, no, no, no, no,
just wait wait till o Tani finishes with sixty home
runs and eighty eight RBIs this year. It's going to
be fantastic. Now, look, look, just just really quick about
the Knicks and the Pacers. One more thing for you.
Got to get to that big lebron story coming up
in a few minutes. But like one thing I was
outside of, you know, the failures of kat and and
(29:55):
Tim's being out coached. You know, the two biggest plays
of this game. Okay, the two biggest when I look
at this game and go, boy, the Knicks lose and
the Pacers were able to have a you know, Halliburton
has the night of his life. Obi Topping three. Obie
Toppings three was, of course is Obie topp and who
makes that shot?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Pychologically damning right there, But no question, the.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Two biggest plays in this game. I go back the
end of the first half. The Knicks have a one
point lead with just over a minute left to go,
and I turned to Rob Parker, who was in a
commercial break, and he said, I go, all right, the
only thing the Knicks have to do here don't turn
this into a five point halftime deficit. And what happened.
The Knicks were down five at half time. They went
from a point up because they missed a couple of
shots and a bad turnover, and they were down five at.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Half robing the game.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, he's watching it with me for a few minutes, absolutely,
And so I think he bet a lot of money
on that game. I think he had a lot in
that game. I think he bet turnovers in the final minute.
So okay, they go to halftime and they come out
and it's a five point lead, and the first two
possessions for the Knicks in the second half, the Pacers
score off the jump to make it a seven point game.
Jalen Brunson has an awful turnover that leads to a
(31:00):
Siakam slam dunk, so now it's a nine point lead,
and then a bad pass, really bad pass by mckel
bridges eventually for a turnover. Eventually the Pacers get another bucket.
They're up eleven, and that's it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
The Knicks.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
We're chasing that nine to eleven point lead the rest
of the game. So yes, you can say, okay, here's
a big These are two plays beginning of the second half.
But this game took it from a five point game
to a nine plus point game, and the Knicks never
got that back.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
They got to within.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Six a couple of times, but they will never able
to get into a one possession game, or get back
and forth or take the lead like once the they
open up with two of the worst turnovers. I mean,
these are awful turnovers by Brunston and Bridges, awful, and
the Pacers said, thank you very much, and now we
have a healthy, near double digit lead, and they maintain
that the rest of the game. Those are the two
(31:49):
biggest plays of the game. You come out of the
gate after giving away the end of the last minute
of the of the first half, you give away that
one point lead, and now you're down five six point
swing and sixty second and now in another sixty seconds
it's another five or six points. Like that was the
biggest two.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Plays of this especially with the amount that you had
to battle back, right you'd already come back from a
ten point deficit to get you back to Evan. You'd
seen they were going to be able to do whatever
they wanted to do offensively. First quarter was really I mean,
that's a get your popcorn out, whether you eat a
Tom Cruise style or not, that you just sit and
(32:26):
enjoy it because you're seeing good, crisp offense on both sides.
But you know you can't sustain that pace, so at
some point you're gonna need to make a stop. You're
not gonna be able to throw the ball around. And
they were careless right seventeen turnovers on the night. We
talk about heart, we talk about a couple of the
big bruns and errors that you start getting into the
(32:47):
one tens and beyond, you're destined to lose because you're
not gonna have enough down the stretch for that defensive
rotation to combat those open looks. And the ov Topping
was the cherry on the side.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Of course topping former Nick Obi top.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Not a dunk, the pacer, a rebound anything.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
The Pacers, what their wish list is coming true this
entire series against the Pacers against the Knicks. What do
you got, Frostburg, what's popping? I don't know, Frostburg, What's
popping Obi topping, Then are you gonna say? Pop's Halliburton?
He's popping coming up to VP. It looks like Lebron
James is coming back to the Lakers next year, but
(33:27):
for how long?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
The answer is going to surprise you.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
That's next, Jason to Mike Fox.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific. Goes on top, it's topping for.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Thanks Dan Van.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yep, the Jason Smith Show is my best friend, Mike Harmon,
Sorry pal, Yes, the next funeral we had it tonight, uh.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Earlier today.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Big bombshell, but something that falls under the category of
well stuff that we could have told you, you know,
a month ago. But now this is breaking news. According
to Shampsherania, Lebron James will opt in to his fifty
one million dollar player option and stay with the Lakers
next season.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Wait again, I know, I know, I got.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
This is something that's really completely out of the blue.
I don't I'm taking aback, I no idea.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
I can't believe that. I can't believe fifty one million.
I mean, come on, when he could get that anyplace? Else,
except he can't. Of course he's going to opt in.
Nobody he's getting that is going work for a broadcast. No,
he's not even getting that. Look, of course he's going
to opt in. He's making fifty one million next year.
And he's not quote Lebron James anymore where everybody will
(34:58):
fall over themselves to go get him. He's got value
to other teams. But clearly teams are saying, Wow, the
Lakers have really just not advanced with him, and now
they're building around Luca And that's a big sign saying
we're not building around Lebron anymore, even though Lebron clearly
has at least two three more really good years left.
He's not Lebron anymore. No one's gonna go crazy to
(35:19):
get him, to the tune of, hey, we'll give you
more than fifty one million dollars for next year, and well,
I'll tell you where he's gonna go. But but fifty
one million for next year, and he's not gonna take less,
because that's not Lebron. He's not one of those I'll
take less money to build a competitive team. No, he's
got to make fifty one million dollars for next year.
Of course he's coming back to the Lakers. And for
(35:40):
the Lakers, it's a smart choice because they only had
a couple of months to work together him and Luca,
and Luca's you know, now spending time getting into shape allegedly,
and they want to see, let's see what happens next year.
But the fun part of this report was Shamsterrani is saying, Hey,
of course there's gonna be conversations with Lebron and the Lakers.
He wants to make sure the Lakers stay competitive. So
now you know where Sean's is getting his information from,
(36:02):
because that's not the conversation at all, Right, that's Lebret's
Lebron wanting to put that, Hey, I want to make
sure the Lakers are saying we're staying compet They just
pulled a big trade for Luca, who's gonna be the
guy for the next eight plus years on the team.
They're building around him. And we've told you they're pushing
Lebron out. Lebron is now at arms length with the team.
He's not running the team like he used to with
(36:24):
Rich Paul and Anthony Davis.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
They're moving on.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And I'll tell you what the real conversation is gonna
be Lebron's gonna say, we want Lebron, don't worry about that.
We're gonna worry about this year. And if we get
to the Western Conference Finals and we're showing growth, yeah
let's talk about a contract. But if we don't get there,
it's another first round exit, or we don't feel like
we're we're getting forward, then good luck, thank you for everything,
(36:49):
and we're gonna take that fifty one million dollars a
year and spend it elsewhere around Luca to bring in
players that are gonna help make him better because he's
our guy now, right, you want, they'll go get the center.
I'm sure in the offseason that everybody says, oh, if
the Lakers just had a center now, they'd still be playing,
right exactly. But Luca does need a rim runner. He
needs that, and I understand that. But if they don't
(37:10):
win next year, Lebron's gone. Lebron's not coming back. They're
not coming back to Lakers are the fifty one million
dollars to have another early round playoff exit.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So it's either.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Western Conference Finals or Lebron is finishing with the Calves.
Like I've said, from the beginning. He will finish his career.
Maybe he's playing with Bryce at some point. But the
Cavaliers a team that, hey, look what they need. They
need somebody to take the pressure off the Look at
all the wins they had this year and they fall short,
losing to the Pacers in the last round of the playoffs.
Another year, that's where Lebron will finish. Right, I'm gonna
(37:39):
go home one more time and all will be forgiven
because he could be the missing piece and someone who's
gonna take the attention away from the other from the
young guys who needs some time to grow.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Into their roles.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
He will finish with the Calves and it will be
the only other place he goes he's done what he's
wanted to do in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
He finishes with Cleveland. Yeah, obviously, I make the media joke.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
You know what his uh company lost a year year ago, right,
was like a thirty to thirty five million Yeah, no thing.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
So no, he's why he's fifty one million this.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Yeah, no, exactly, So he's plus fifteen million overall?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah as well.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I mean, you can write a bunch of that stuff off,
but when it comes down to it, for the fifty
one million and the opportunity look for the Lakers has
been a good business move, right, You've made more than that.
But you get into he's been very aggressive in his
comments in the media and that distance is there, right,
talking about Luca and his future. That's not my business, right,
(38:35):
I'm not recruiting. You should be noted Shan's agency is
part of Clutch Sports, the people he's with, so it
is the direct line.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Again, so you know you hear oh, but Lebron wants
to make sure the Lakers talk about you did that
just sounds stupid. Of course they've traded for Luca, they
come on, No, Lebron wants them to fail miserably and
go flailing into the good night.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Come on now, I mean that that's just silliness. That
that is the the extra one line. It's like, you
know what, if I'm editing this, I'm taking that line
out because it just makes us sound dumb, yeah, or.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
It makes it sound like you know where you're getting
your information from, like I know, okay, I'm getting this
from Lebron because that's not the conversation at all, Right, Lebron, Really,
Lebron is not front He went from running the team
to now they're kind of on the end. They're pushing away,
they're moving away from the lebron era. And you can
hear him even the way he talks about it's like,
well they can do this. They're doing like he seems
(39:30):
like he's on the aspice.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
But do you just look at the distance. And I'm
sure within those those offices Jeanie Buss, Jaymore, Polenka and everybody.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Else, Lakers owner Jaymore, we we have control of this right.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
This guy's not running this squad. We brought in Luca
and now we figure out the next iteration of things.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Telling you he's gonna one more year and unless it's
the Western Conference finals, it's I'm just a kid from
Adams and I'm gonna finish where I started there, I left,
I came back, and now this is where I'm gonna
fish that exilum to sick how it's gonna go. Now,
we're gonna have kd or Giannis or or or Sabonis
in a year or it'll be fine. It'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Can we draft Patrick Ewing?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Yeah, okay, I'm okay with that. Another cold envelope that'll work.
You might have a run in.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Him exit hout about a Fresco exit swollen dome for Mike.
I'm Jason, coming up next to my buddy Ben Mallor
this is fuck
Thanks for listening to The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmon podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weeknight
ten pm to two am Eastern seven to eleven pm
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your local station for
The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon at Foxsports Radio
dot com, or stream us live every night on the
iHeartRadio app by searching FSR ever give.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Greetings, Welcome in side final hour tonight the Jason Smith
Show with my bas friend Mike Harmon. Get those fours up.
We got more big stuff on Lebron big WNBA story
coming up in about twenty minutes, but the next funeral
is the topic of the hour.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Right now, go New York, Go New York.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Go.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Well, pretty soon they'll be gone. You'll be right, they'll
be gone.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
He jumped on your wagon, he did, he did that.
Noh helped carry you.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
And guide you past the Celtics.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
And as soon as you cleared that hurdle, like it
was a level of a video game, he jumped off
and went the other rene.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Done done, done, done, dun dundune. Now, first I want
to tell you I'm gonna say bad things about Tom Thibodeau,
and then it's I'm gonna say then it's gonna change,
but I'm gonna say bad things about him, but it's
gonna turn out okay for him, not so much for
somebody else.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It turns out okay for him.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah. Yeah, It's like, did you watch a new episode
of Welcome to Wrexham. They had the whole Disney funny.
They had the whole episode. They did the whole episode
and it was hosted by Ryan Reynolds and Rob mcalanney,
where they did it like a Disney movie where here's,
you know, the part of the beginning in the beginning
when one of the parents dies and they show something
bad happening to Wrexham, and then then it gets really worse,
but then the whole thing like a Disney episode, a
(01:45):
Disney movie. Uh, this is kind of the same, the
same kind of thing. The pay Look, it's over for
the Knicks. That's why I only got somewhat excited after
winning Game three, because what did I tell you? The
last couple of nights, they bought themselves another couple of days. Right,
they win Game three, they bought themselves a chance to
get back in the series and instead three to one,
(02:06):
and nobody comes back from three to one, certainly not
this next team that is not nearly defensively capable of
stopping this Pacers team. So the thing, the thing that
sticks out to me, right you want to talk about
TIBs and this and this series, is that it's amazing
to see him being out coached by Rick Carlisle to
this extent. And it kind of reminds me of when
(02:30):
Bill Belichick was running rough shot over the AFC East
for all those years before he started the Bill Belichick
that stunkin didn't know what he was doing in his
drafting guys from Division three and as their first draft pick.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Yeah, but he was smarter than everybody else. When he
promoted Matt Patricia and made him the OC.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Mac Jones was a guy that was on a decent
trajectory and they said, here, we're gonna really screw this
kid over.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
You know, Mac Jones.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I think Mac Jones is the guy that just, hey,
I just happened to play in the most talented offensive
team in the history of college football. Because everybody NFL
superstar his first year, pretty good, what'd you do?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
You shuffled everything else what'd you do third year?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Hey, let's let's make it even more difficult and see
how much talent he can take away and see how
much you can do.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
But what Belichick used to do that would used to
be infuriating is that he was such a good coat.
This is why he's the best coach I've seen, despite
Spygate and everything else, is that when I would watch
him coach against the other AFC teams and they'd played
twice a year, and the first game, the Patriots game
plan would be something where it was good enough to
(03:37):
win playing one way, right, Like, here's a game where hey,
what did Tom Brady do? All he did was throw
short and Wes Welker had thirteen catches for you know,
eighty seven yards, but you know he was moving the chains.
Gronkowski had a big day. It was middle of the field,
middle of the field. The Patriots dominated middle of the field. Okay,
So then for the rematch eight, you know, seven, eight
(03:58):
weeks later, all right, hey, this is how they killed
us that first time. This is what we're gonna do.
And then what does Belichick do? No, Now they're gonna
run the football, and Steven Ridley would have a big day,
or Corey Dlon would have a big day and Brady would.
Brady only threw for one hundred and seventy five yards
and one touchdown. We still lost twenty three to ten.
Like what happened? Oh, because Corey Dyllon had this game
(04:18):
we ran for one hundred and ten yards, or Stephen
Ridley had had twenty three carries for one hundred and
fifteen yards. Like this is what Belichick would do, is that, Okay,
we beat you that way last time. Now you're chasing us, right,
you're chasing us because you think we're gonna do this.
This is what we're gonna do. And that's what it's
like watching Carlisle and and TIBs in this because clearly
Game one the miracle come back by the Pacers. The
(04:39):
Pacers knew, hey, we can free up Nie Smith and
he can he can be the guy keeps you to
stay hot. And the Knicks had no answer defensively, right,
TIBs is not able to adjust.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Okay, but they come back with that.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And now the knicksk okay going into game two, how
do we combat this and they came out with it.
We have to make sure that Halliburton's not a guy
that takes over like he did. And you heard the
Knicks talk about things they needed to do. What are
the Pacers doing? Game two, Pascal Siakam eleven points to
start the game. Game of his life. Again, I keep
going back.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
He was like.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Peak KD with the shots he was making in this game,
mid range jumpers, off the glass, threes, he was doing
everything dominant, one on one. The Knicks were not ready
for them. They were chasing the Pacers that entire game.
Game three, the Knicks find a way right come back
in the fourth quarter, Pacers blow a big lead, and
I like, like the Knicks played great that Again, that
game made absolutely no sense. Now you get to game four,
(05:28):
where okay, the Knicks are going, okay, it's what we
need to do. And what happened tonight The Pacers kept
running screens, They kept running into open shots the entire night.
The Knicks looked awful defensively, whether it was Brunson chasing
losing their spot. How many times did you see the
Pacers have open threes? And they have five guys on
the floor that can take threes and hit them right.
(05:50):
It's not like they have only a couple. They got
five guys that can hit them right. We talked to
Rick Buker. This is the this is what the Pacers
like to do. This, this is what Rikarlo likes to
have a bunch of guys interchangeable, can do different things
on the court at once. The Knicks spent the entire
night tonight bamboozled defensively. There were no adjustments to make,
there was nothing to try to figure things out. There
was no way to slow Halliburton down. The Pacers did
(06:12):
whatever they wanted to. They played at their own pace.
And I mean it if if they made five difficult
shots night. By that, I mean where it wasn't just
shots they missed. They were forced into a difficult shot
by the Knicks defensively, and they made them. I think
that's a lot. I don't think they had five difficult
shots they were forced into tonight. It was basically the
Knick saying, maybe they'll miss, and y'all, well, kay, well,
(06:34):
they still had fifty three percent of their shots from
the floor, right. That's why I was never confident the
Knicks could win this game tonight, because the Pacers just
kept coming down and doing whatever they wanted to. They're
one on one matchups were terrific. They got the one
on one matchups they wanted, they got open shots, It
didn't matter. The Pacers just did whatever they wanted to tonight.
And I'm watching Tom Thibodeaux just walk around with his
(06:55):
with his arms folded. I'm going, where is any sort
of come batting against this? Where is any sort of plan?
The Knicks look bamboozled and they look mentally defeated. Where
they're looking at each other going, you're supposed to pick
that guy up, You're supposed to pick this up?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Was I supposed to go?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Here?
Speaker 3 (07:09):
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Are they communicating like I didn't see Brunson and it
no be communicating like?
Speaker 5 (07:14):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Really difficult effort to watch. But this is what Rick
Carlyle has done. He has been able to every game, go,
you think we're gonna do this, We're gonna give you
a little bit of a different wrinkle. Maybe it's Pascal
Siakam out of the gate. Maybe it's the screens that
you're gonna have trouble. Maybe it's now we're gonna get
back to picking up Brunson and make him dribble all
ninety four feet and force him into bad, bleeping turnovers
where he has a couple every single game that just
turned out to be killers. Like Rick Carlyle is completely
(07:37):
coaching circles around TIBs. Now. Granted, does TIBs have the
defensive team that he used to have that you want
to have, No, but still there's been no adjustments. There's
been no game planning because the Knicks can play physical.
We saw them out physical the Celtics. There's been none
of that. There's been no adjustment. It's been Rick carl
just going around going, ah, whatever you can do, TIBs,
what two three steps ahead of you? Man?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
I'm like Leo and catch me if you can't, except
at the very end. But I'm like, love thehead? Are
you the entire way?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Tom Hanks?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Oh, but you had the opportunity Game three where everybody
started to fight back on TIB's behalf, saying, look, sham
it McBride, these guys gave you big minutes and rallied. Okay,
they came and got one right chokes on you was
the back of the fish rap there the New York
Post and everybody got excited for a moment. But to
(08:23):
your point, you've got a lot of standing around and
watching when Jalen Brunson goes into turbo mode and when
he hits that's great. You guys had your knicks had
an eleven rebound advantage. They won the offensive glass thirteen
to eight, but seventeen turnover for several of which were
and I don't know how Burnson only has three. I
(08:44):
want to check the tapes, but remember several sequences where
he goes to drive and you get the second man
coming over to pick his pocket, and nobody's calling out
that help is coming.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Right man man, it's like man, man on, you're gone,
you know, like that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
You're setting a screen.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Just a lot of standing around and defensively, No, their
feet don't move right. How many open looks from the
corners do you see that extra bit of ball movement?
And I know the one that's the dagger is the
obie top and at the top of the key, because
that's the the biggest injustice. I'll take the dunk, I'll
take the put back, I'll take the big offensive rebound
to reset the shot clock. That guy's stepping out and
(09:24):
hitting a dagger three on you in the final minutes,
like wow, nothing else can go could possibly go right
for us here. But Josh Hart was terrible again, right,
and he talked about it like you rebounded.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
He had a great run at the end of game three.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
That was it, right, He had a couple of minutes,
and then today was right back to He had a
double double. Great, but he had seven turnovers and most
of them were all right, we're gonna force the ball in, right,
it's the youth soccer, youth basketball of I'm going to
dribble into a crowd of people and hope that the
shot gets through. And in this case for Josh Hart
(10:01):
was all right, well, two of our guys are down there. Yeah,
they might have brought two of their defenders, but damn it,
we're gonna get to the ball or it's gonna pinball
around and we're gonna end up with an extra possession.
And so you're struggling, and you get a game like this,
this kind of pace, you're destined to lose.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Right. They did a lot of things right.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
He got to the foul line a lot, took care
of business there, didn't miss a ton. I think they
missed six for the game. So you have thirty plus
attempts and Bronson finishes with thirty one, but you had
a lot of stagnant defensive possessions. Every loose ball seemed
to find the arms of a waiting Pacers player. And
(10:41):
then Haliburton set the tone early with that monster first quarter,
and he could do no wrong right in terms of
distributing the ball. There's no active hands, there's no muddying
things up to where you're gaining and regaining an advantage
down in those possessions, they all ended up with shots.
Pacers win the fat break points twenty two to nine.
(11:02):
At one point is twenty two to two, so I
guess they closed the gap with a couple of big
runouts late. But just all of that to say, you
can't play at that pace against this squad and think
you're gonna win because those legs are gonna be tired
for the minutes. You can't steal with your bench, you.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Know, And and the other part of it is this, right,
So you think I'm gonna say TIBs is gonna get
fired after the season. It's been really bad. But there's
gonna be a bigger culprit or a bigger move than
the Knicks moving on to a new coach, because that
could be a year away, but I'll tell you he's
just signed an extension. Yeah, like through twenty eight, twenty
(11:39):
nine or something. Look, even though Tibbs is someone who
he's lost his identity as a defensive coach, Like like
when you bring you it's like when the when the
when Syracuse had Dino Babers is their head coach because
he brings in this great offensive system. We run a
play every eight seconds, We're gonna go fast by the
end of his run there, they weren't doing it. And
I'm like, why is even the head coach if we're
not doing why? Why? What is specialty is? Why is
(12:00):
he still the coach? But that's the point, right, if
you're gonna build a squad for this guy, shouldn't there
be another defensive stuff for two in the mixt You know,
a guy that.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
You can steal fifteen minutes from comes on the bench.
It's not offensively inept, but able to steal minutes.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, but this is still Tibbs's team, it's still his it.
But but how if we're not if we don't have
that defensive identity? More like, what are we doing? But
I'll tell you what the what the other bigger change
is gonna be is that in the off season, Carl
Anthony Towns plus is going to get dealt as the
Knicks retool the roster to get better defensively, little more offense.
(12:36):
And look, maybe it's Giannis right, maybe it's Jiannis want
to play in New York happen, but they need a
better mix and they need to get better defensively. And
Karl Anthony Towns is fit has been okay, it's not
quite been to the extent you expected it to be
like you expect to be. Hey, he and Jalen Brunson
won two man good luck stopping one without the other,
(12:59):
and it seemed like that's the way it was gonna
be for Karl Anthony Towns.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
But as the.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Season went on, he'd have a lot of games where boy,
he just didn't seem like he really fit in the flow.
It's been somewhat of an odd configuration. And clearly now
you see this NIX team again. I haven't seen a
team in the Eastern Conference Finals with more wrong with
it than the Knicks. But they're gonna make a move
and Karl Anthony Towns clearly is a guy that's going
to have a lot of interest. They'll be able to
(13:23):
move him for a piece they need, a couple of
pieces they need. But that's gonna be the big change.
Maybe it's Karl Anthony Towns and Unobi, Maybe it's Karl
Anthony Towns in heart, Maybe it's Karl Anthony Towns and Bridges.
Something is going to happen that's going to make this
Knicks team a little bit better defensively and a little
bit more of a pacers type team where you have
more players on the floor offensively that can all do
(13:46):
the same things like you could. And that's why Karl
Anthony Towns is the victim of He's a guy that
could bring the most, that is the most expendable, but
also his fit is still somewhat odd with the team.
It's still not quite what you thought it would be.
So this'll probably be a one and done year for
him and the Knicks will move on and it will
be a couple of different players in big positions. Next,
were you taking a shot at Cat's fitness while you
(14:08):
were at it? No, it's not running up and down
the floor like no, No, I think he's fine. I
don't look at him and go boy, the guy's exhausted.
I mean you look at some of the circus hoops
he made, you know, on offense tonight. Then look at
the times he got beat, you know, defensively, like he's
not i mean, look four points of the first three
quarters of Game three and then twenty in the fourth quarter.
(14:29):
It's like, okay, so is that worth it? Like to
have a Karl Anthony Town so that can give you
twenty in the fourth, but you're losing and you need
every one of them because he's so bad the first
three quarters, like he's not quite been what they thought
he was going to be, and knowing they need to
make a change, he's gonna be the guy that's gonna
headline a deal for Giannis or somebody else is gonna happen.
And when he's out of position, he picks up the
(14:49):
early silly following two foul tonight and he's on the
bench for the last eight minutes of the first quarter.
I mean, that's how it's gonna Tim's is gonna get
a reprieve and Karl Anthony Town is gonna be on
a new team, and the Nick Levannist all apologies, Yeah,
exit out by a Fresca exit Swollen Dome, Jason Smith
and Mike Harmon live from the Fox Sports Radio studios.
(15:12):
You can stream this show in all of our Fox
Sports Radio shows live twenty four to seven in the
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at the top of your screen, so lock it in
(15:34):
head rip the knob off. Coming up next, a fifty
one million dollar NBA story to get to, plus more
on the biggest basketball story of the last week, Jason
and Mike Fox.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Fox Sports Radio. The Jason Smith Show with My That's
friend Mike Harmon.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Eclectic.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
We get back into the Knicks and the Pacers coming
up in a few minutes, but do we have to Well,
there's a bad deal. The Knicks died tonight stock come
on already dead. But we've got a story on Lebron
James coming up in a few minutes, really fun one.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
But what the one where he's dancing when he's supposed
to have a ripped up knee.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
No no, no, no no.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
The story where like I could be an NBA insider.
But a little bit more on that. The WNBA story
that we talked about, big story today. The WNBA investigating
the claims that something racial was shouted at Angel Reese
during the season opening game between the Sky and the
Fever a few days ago. They spent a whole week investigating.
(16:55):
They talked to people at the game, they they did
video and audio review, and they could not find any
evidence that someone said something. And we talked about it
last hour. Look, this is a story that you know,
like I said, WNBA has to make sure that they
can handle success, and they have not shown me they
can because they let social media run an investigation or
(17:17):
start something that looked that was just a bad headline
for the w over the course of the last week.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
But how many people do you have working that that event,
including the team, lot of people and not a single person,
nobody anything.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And this is why This is why the W needs
to be able to handle success. This story gets out
and nobody heard anything. This is where the W has
to say, we'll look into it, don't worry about it.
But the Sky put out a statement. There's no place,
of course, there's no place for this in the game.
It's ridiculous. If you found them, obviously you kick those
people out for the rest of their lives. It don't
get to come to games. But the Sky puts out
(17:54):
a statement, and the Fever puts out a statement, and
the WNBA puts out a statement. Now it seems like, oh,
we have racist fans, right, racist fans are back out,
and the whole week has been racist fans? What are
they saying? And now it was nothing where the W
gotta take And instead this was social media, because there's
all about social media that thought they heard something being said,
whether it was made up, whether it was something that
was misheard, whether it was just somebody saying they felt
(18:17):
bad because Angel Reese got.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Fouled and so they didn't like the fact they were losing.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Whatever it was, they couldn't find evidence of this, and
there's lots of big time things were on along racial lines.
We need to talk about we need to get into
but you gotta you gotta make sure that that you're
focusing your efforts on stuff that's out there, right, And
this is where the WNBA should have said, let's look
into it, because there's no reason why let's back. If
this is bad, we're gonna tell you. We're gonna tell you,
(18:41):
We're gonna tell this this is what we found out right,
we looked into it after what happened last year. There
were you know, threats and stuff made that looked like
some Fever fans were saying on social media against Angel Rees, Hey,
we gotta look in it, and it's got to look
into this.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
But this is the story that.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The W needed to be able to control, and they
didn't because social media said something and they went off,
oh now we gotta we gotta go over the top
of it, and it was a bad week of publicity.
The other part of this story is that if I'm
the W or not, if I'm the W, if I'm
a manager or an agent or a PR person and
I work for Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Cheryl Reeve, Cheryl Swoops,
(19:20):
Cheryl Ladd because she was my favorite, Charlie actually Cheryl
Tigues on the cover of Sports Jackie Cheryl, former head
coach Texas A and m Cheryl Burke.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Dancer Cheryl Hines. I mean there's lots of Cheryl's.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I say this, Okay to my client, I would say, okay,
I know this is a really big thing, but you guys,
you guys have to just back off what's happening. You
can't continue to be petulant, right because eventually it's gonna
come back on you and you're gonna look bad. Because
(19:55):
if you can, it's it's almost like the NBA player
that is a great player, but boy, if he flops
too much complains about calls, you lose some respect for him, right,
Like you know everybody's loose with Luca whining and complaining
for as many calls. Yokich is kind of getting to
that point. You don't want that, right, You don't want that.
You want you, I would say, I want you as
my client to be someone who achieves everything they want
(20:18):
to And when all this petulant stuff is going on,
this is outside of the race of this is this
is all of the Hey, here's rivalries, and here's who
doesn't like who, and here's who doesn't like this, And
I'm fostering this and fostering this. Stay away from the
petty stuff and the small stuff, because it's just gonna
make you look bad. The more the more things that
go out where it seems like players hate each other
(20:39):
and and it's a personal issue, and it's a jealousy issue.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
This is good.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
You're gonna look bad. You're gonna be the one that
looks bad. People listen to you right away and they go, oh,
wait a minute, that's a good point. But if this
is what keeps coming up eventually fans and the media,
and they're gonna turn their turn, turn turn away from
you to go I don't really care what you have
to say, because I've been hearing the same argument over
the course of the last couple of years that what
the jealousy and the and the pettiness like, that's what's
(21:05):
gotta go away. And that's what I would tell my
client and say, stop doing this because you're you're you're
not You're not going to help yourself because eventually it's
gonna turn on you. If you're the one that continues
to person be the big be a bigger person, play basketball.
If it's a rivalry on the court. If things happen
on the court that go for this is what everybody wants.
Everybody wants to talk about this. The w is a
(21:26):
league that people want to talk about and they want
to have fun with because it's getting so popular and
there's so many stars. Yes, Caitlin Clark is the biggest,
but there's so many other huge stars that people love
talking about. We love talking about Kelsey Plumb and Asia Wilson.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
And and and it.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And it doesn't matter whether it's Paige Becker's coming into
the league. It doesn't matter if it's a Lee at Boston,
it's still it's still fun. Let's make sure that that's
the narrative that we push forth and not just Hey,
it seems like there's a bunch of players who aren't
thrilled with the other with with the other players, and
it's not about an on court rivalry. It seems personal
because people to say, you know what, I don't have
(22:01):
time for that anymore.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Well, I mean, we could run with it in for
a while. And it seems to work in the music business.
It seems to work in entertainment. Did you keep doing
your music out? I mean did I What did I
have today? I mean I had Audrey McDonald against Patty Loopon.
I mean that's been going on at Broadway for years,
all of those things, right, so you can have beef.
And that's why I'm a Patty LuPone guy. Oh, y'all
kick your ass said she's not my friend anymore. You
(22:25):
know what you did?
Speaker 3 (22:26):
You gotta explain to gen X and who Patty Lapone is. Okay,
you can't. You can't just throw that out. Is that
the person who pushed Marcone's face?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's what's the mom on lifetoes on with Smitrovich all
those years ago?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
I mean Broadway legend.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I'm throwing out a Broadway rivalry that people are just
throwing down over the point.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
And I do a tongue in cheek because that's the
repertoire we have. Right, We're at the world in with
a great, big hug. We're not narrow casting. We're broadcasting
here and somewhere someone's laughing their ass off that I
got that in even if it's just you and it
made the show. But the point being, you can run
with it for a while, right, What you what I
(23:09):
can have if I'm the pr advisor to the Star
is the I can't have the no comment. You gotta
have something prepped, right. You know you're gonna be asked
about player X y Z. They have a big game
and you're gonna run through. And obviously with more dollars,
it's like anything, right, if there's money to be made,
more people are paying attention, more people keep coming in,
(23:32):
so they may not have all the backstory. So it's
not it's the old NBC line, right when they show
you the reruns in may Hey, if you missed it
in the fall, it's new to you. Yeah, so you
can run with it to a degree, but clearly, if
it now becomes all other lines of questioning, communication and
(23:53):
flow gets cut off because you're going back to the
well on something that happened a year ago, back to
college days, back to the opening game.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Because I mean, there's gonna be points to where.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
It's your main And I think if you're in the
NBA or w NBA at any point, you should expect
at some point while you're sitting at the dais there
is going to be a question about Angel Reese and
or Caitlin Clark, even it's got nothing to do with
your team, the upcoming schedule of the game you just played,
(24:26):
it's gonna be there because it moves the needle.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
And see what I did the social media.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
I mean it's clips, it's reels, it's Instagram, it's TikTok,
it's all of that, and it helps further the cause
of the league. Whatever and pettiness you get, you can
run with it for a while. How long that gestation
period is, I don't know. I don't think we're at
it yet where it's super saturated. To me, it's a
all right basketball play, move on. But the fun rhetoric
(24:56):
between the players is all fine and good. What happened
with this investment negation? We said it when we came
on air Monday. It's like, you have forty eight hours.
You didn't find a single person that came running to
a security guard or nobody from the sideline that ran
to this. That kind of stuff you need to figure
out how to be better about. But the rest of it,
hey man, pettiness moves the needle in a lot of circles.
(25:17):
To watch a political show, it works. Exit out bout
a fresco x at swollen Dome. Time now to find
out what's trending for men whose favorite show was Petty
Coat Junction Woo.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
What he was growing up? It's Steve a saga.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
She was the original Evita, was she?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Note? That is sure you are correct about? Yes, that's right.
So you have Patty Lapone's back. You're a Patty. You're
a Patty.
Speaker 5 (25:39):
She was in a Witness. She was Harrison Ford's sister
and witness.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
That's Ryan, So I guess. So a lot of the
beef comes down to you. They were playing two shows
playing next to each other, and the one uh not
loopone starred.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
What got too loud?
Speaker 4 (25:55):
So she complained about it and filed a grievance two
Old nine yard, to.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
Which McDonald probably said, I'm sorry. I have my five
Tony Awards in my.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Ears last Yeah, exactly, Okay.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
NBA Eastern Conference Finals, Indiana up three games to one
after beating New York won thirty to one, twenty one
triple double for Tyrese Haliburton, including fifteen assists, no turnovers.
West Finals Game five is Wednesday in OKC Thunder leading
three games to one over Minnesota. The NBA Finals start
June fifth. Five WNBA games tonight. Paige Beckers in Connecticut
(26:28):
had twenty one points. Dallas beat Connecticut a battle of
OH and four teams. New York four and O whip
Golden State Minnesota's five and OH after downing Seattle, Atlanta
one at LA and Phoenix is now four and one
after beating winless Chicago ninety four eighty nine Chicago's oho
and four, but Angel Rees did have thirteen points fifteen rebounds. Tonight,
(26:49):
the Edmonton Oilers are up three games to one in
the NHL's West Final. They were tied one to one
with Dallas tonight mid second period. Four won the finals,
so Edmonton in the last three games outscore him thirteen
to two. The East Final continues Wednesday. Florida leeds Carolina
three games to one. A couple of huge comebacks in
the late ball games in the major leagues. Pittsburgh was
(27:10):
down six nothing going to the sixth nine six Pirates
win at Arizona. In fact, the Pirates record when trailing
after seven innings had been ozho to twenty nine until tonight.
San Diego trailed six nothing in the first inning to Miami,
but still beat the Marlins eight to six. Seattle nine
to one winners against Washington, Cal Raley of the MSH
(27:31):
his eighteenth and nineteenth home runs and the Yankees were
up three nothing in the nine three to two the
final of the Angels, Carlos rode On seven and three
got the win. Houston's Hunter Browns seven and three after
whipping the A's eleven to one. Houston hit four home runs.
Jose al Tuve went four for four with two long balls.
Texas with two runs bottom of the eighth one two
(27:52):
nothing over Toronto, but Rangers starter Nathan Valdi left after
two innings due to triceps fatigue. Pete Crow Armstrong with
his forty ninth RBI of the season, and for the Cubs,
Seya Suzuki with his fiftieth RBI. Cubs eventually with two
runs bottom of the eleventh, beat Colorado four to three.
The Rockies record is now nine and forty six and
(28:13):
they have lost every series they have played this season.
Oh n eighteen in series.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
You sure that wasn't the Knicks?
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Not quite that bad?
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Cincinnati's La de la Cruz with two solo homers in
a seven to win at Kansas City the Royals. Bobby
wit Junior did steal his twentieth base Milwaukee on a
Grand Slam in the tenth by Christian Yelich beat Boston
five to one after Eraalda. Chapman had blown the save
bottom of the ninth, the lost to Liam Hendrix of
the Red Sox. The Mets have won their fourth.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
In a row.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
Six to four was Tonight's final over the White Sox.
Pete Alonzo a two run homer in the first. The
Mets at home are twenty one and six. Philadelphia with
another win two nothing over Atlanta Ranger Suarez four and
oh beat Spencer Streider, oh and three. Bryce Harper left
hit by a pitch on his right elbow. X ray
were negative, but Philly's won twenty two of twenty eight.
(29:03):
There's still a game and a half up on the Mets.
In the NL East Road wins for Saint Louis and
Minnesota and for the Dodgers, who won nine to five
at Cleveland show Hey Otani with his twentieth homery of
the year that leads the majors.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That good.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
That is good Detroit three to one over.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Twenty home runs, twenty one RBI for this year.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Touch you're gonna say nineteen. He forgot to touch third
on that one big home.
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Run by the way, for the Guardians, Jose Ramirez, now
a twenty game hit streak.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Big to you, all right?
Speaker 3 (29:31):
That is twenty home runs in thirty five RBIs for show.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So he's no Rob Deer, No, no, no, no, no, no,
just wait wait till o Tani finishes with sixty home
runs and eighty eight RBIs this year. It's going to
be fantastic. Now, look, look, just just really quick about
the Knicks and the Pacers. One more thing for you.
Got to get to that big lebron story coming up
in a few minutes. But like one thing I was
outside of, you know, the failures of kat and and
(29:55):
Tim's being out coached. You know, the two biggest plays
of this game. Okay, the two biggest when I look
at this game and go, boy, the Knicks lose and
the Pacers were able to have a you know, Halliburton
has the night of his life. Obi Topping three. Obie
Toppings three was, of course is Obie topp and who
makes that shot?
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Pychologically damning right there, But no question, the.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Two biggest plays in this game. I go back the
end of the first half. The Knicks have a one
point lead with just over a minute left to go,
and I turned to Rob Parker, who was in a
commercial break, and he said, I go, all right, the
only thing the Knicks have to do here don't turn
this into a five point halftime deficit. And what happened.
The Knicks were down five at half time. They went
from a point up because they missed a couple of
shots and a bad turnover, and they were down five at.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Half robing the game.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah, he's watching it with me for a few minutes, absolutely,
And so I think he bet a lot of money
on that game. I think he had a lot in
that game. I think he bet turnovers in the final minute.
So okay, they go to halftime and they come out
and it's a five point lead, and the first two
possessions for the Knicks in the second half, the Pacers
score off the jump to make it a seven point game.
Jalen Brunson has an awful turnover that leads to a
(31:00):
Siakam slam dunk, so now it's a nine point lead,
and then a bad pass, really bad pass by mckel
bridges eventually for a turnover. Eventually the Pacers get another bucket.
They're up eleven, and that's it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
The Knicks.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
We're chasing that nine to eleven point lead the rest
of the game. So yes, you can say, okay, here's
a big These are two plays beginning of the second half.
But this game took it from a five point game
to a nine plus point game, and the Knicks never
got that back.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
They got to within.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Six a couple of times, but they will never able
to get into a one possession game, or get back
and forth or take the lead like once the they
open up with two of the worst turnovers. I mean,
these are awful turnovers by Brunston and Bridges, awful, and
the Pacers said, thank you very much, and now we
have a healthy, near double digit lead, and they maintain
that the rest of the game. Those are the two
(31:49):
biggest plays of the game. You come out of the
gate after giving away the end of the last minute
of the of the first half, you give away that
one point lead, and now you're down five six point
swing and sixty second and now in another sixty seconds
it's another five or six points. Like that was the
biggest two.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
Plays of this especially with the amount that you had
to battle back, right you'd already come back from a
ten point deficit to get you back to Evan. You'd
seen they were going to be able to do whatever
they wanted to do offensively. First quarter was really I mean,
that's a get your popcorn out, whether you eat a
Tom Cruise style or not, that you just sit and
(32:26):
enjoy it because you're seeing good, crisp offense on both sides.
But you know you can't sustain that pace, so at
some point you're gonna need to make a stop. You're
not gonna be able to throw the ball around. And
they were careless right seventeen turnovers on the night. We
talk about heart, we talk about a couple of the
big bruns and errors that you start getting into the
(32:47):
one tens and beyond, you're destined to lose because you're
not gonna have enough down the stretch for that defensive
rotation to combat those open looks. And the ov Topping
was the cherry on the side.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Of course topping former Nick Obi top.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Not a dunk, the pacer, a rebound anything.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
The Pacers, what their wish list is coming true this
entire series against the Pacers against the Knicks. What do
you got, Frostburg, what's popping? I don't know, Frostburg, What's
popping Obi topping, Then are you gonna say? Pop's Halliburton?
He's popping coming up to VP. It looks like Lebron
James is coming back to the Lakers next year, but
(33:27):
for how long?
Speaker 3 (33:28):
The answer is going to surprise you.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
That's next, Jason to Mike Fox.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific. Goes on top, it's topping for.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Thanks Dan Van.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yep, the Jason Smith Show is my best friend, Mike Harmon,
Sorry pal, Yes, the next funeral we had it tonight, uh.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Earlier today.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Big bombshell, but something that falls under the category of
well stuff that we could have told you, you know,
a month ago. But now this is breaking news. According
to Shampsherania, Lebron James will opt in to his fifty
one million dollar player option and stay with the Lakers
next season.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Wait again, I know, I know, I got.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
This is something that's really completely out of the blue.
I don't I'm taking aback, I no idea.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
I can't believe that. I can't believe fifty one million.
I mean, come on, when he could get that anyplace? Else,
except he can't. Of course he's going to opt in.
Nobody he's getting that is going work for a broadcast. No,
he's not even getting that. Look, of course he's going
to opt in. He's making fifty one million next year.
And he's not quote Lebron James anymore where everybody will
(34:58):
fall over themselves to go get him. He's got value
to other teams. But clearly teams are saying, Wow, the
Lakers have really just not advanced with him, and now
they're building around Luca And that's a big sign saying
we're not building around Lebron anymore, even though Lebron clearly
has at least two three more really good years left.
He's not Lebron anymore. No one's gonna go crazy to
(35:19):
get him, to the tune of, hey, we'll give you
more than fifty one million dollars for next year, and well,
I'll tell you where he's gonna go. But but fifty
one million for next year, and he's not gonna take less,
because that's not Lebron. He's not one of those I'll
take less money to build a competitive team. No, he's
got to make fifty one million dollars for next year.
Of course he's coming back to the Lakers. And for
(35:40):
the Lakers, it's a smart choice because they only had
a couple of months to work together him and Luca,
and Luca's you know, now spending time getting into shape allegedly,
and they want to see, let's see what happens next year.
But the fun part of this report was Shamsterrani is saying, Hey,
of course there's gonna be conversations with Lebron and the Lakers.
He wants to make sure the Lakers stay competitive. So
now you know where Sean's is getting his information from,
(36:02):
because that's not the conversation at all, Right, that's Lebret's
Lebron wanting to put that, Hey, I want to make
sure the Lakers are saying we're staying compet They just
pulled a big trade for Luca, who's gonna be the
guy for the next eight plus years on the team.
They're building around him. And we've told you they're pushing
Lebron out. Lebron is now at arms length with the team.
He's not running the team like he used to with
(36:24):
Rich Paul and Anthony Davis.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
They're moving on.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And I'll tell you what the real conversation is gonna
be Lebron's gonna say, we want Lebron, don't worry about that.
We're gonna worry about this year. And if we get
to the Western Conference Finals and we're showing growth, yeah
let's talk about a contract. But if we don't get there,
it's another first round exit, or we don't feel like
we're we're getting forward, then good luck, thank you for everything,
(36:49):
and we're gonna take that fifty one million dollars a
year and spend it elsewhere around Luca to bring in
players that are gonna help make him better because he's
our guy now, right, you want, they'll go get the center.
I'm sure in the offseason that everybody says, oh, if
the Lakers just had a center now, they'd still be playing,
right exactly. But Luca does need a rim runner. He
needs that, and I understand that. But if they don't
(37:10):
win next year, Lebron's gone. Lebron's not coming back. They're
not coming back to Lakers are the fifty one million
dollars to have another early round playoff exit.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So it's either.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Western Conference Finals or Lebron is finishing with the Calves.
Like I've said, from the beginning. He will finish his career.
Maybe he's playing with Bryce at some point. But the
Cavaliers a team that, hey, look what they need. They
need somebody to take the pressure off the Look at
all the wins they had this year and they fall short,
losing to the Pacers in the last round of the playoffs.
Another year, that's where Lebron will finish. Right, I'm gonna
(37:39):
go home one more time and all will be forgiven
because he could be the missing piece and someone who's
gonna take the attention away from the other from the
young guys who needs some time to grow.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Into their roles.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
He will finish with the Calves and it will be
the only other place he goes he's done what he's
wanted to do in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
He finishes with Cleveland. Yeah, obviously, I make the media joke.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
You know what his uh company lost a year year ago, right,
was like a thirty to thirty five million Yeah, no thing.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
So no, he's why he's fifty one million this.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Yeah, no, exactly, So he's plus fifteen million overall?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah as well.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I mean, you can write a bunch of that stuff off,
but when it comes down to it, for the fifty
one million and the opportunity look for the Lakers has
been a good business move, right, You've made more than that.
But you get into he's been very aggressive in his
comments in the media and that distance is there, right,
talking about Luca and his future. That's not my business, right,
(38:35):
I'm not recruiting. You should be noted Shan's agency is
part of Clutch Sports, the people he's with, so it
is the direct line.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Again, so you know you hear oh, but Lebron wants
to make sure the Lakers talk about you did that
just sounds stupid. Of course they've traded for Luca, they
come on, No, Lebron wants them to fail miserably and
go flailing into the good night.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Come on now, I mean that that's just silliness. That
that is the the extra one line. It's like, you
know what, if I'm editing this, I'm taking that line
out because it just makes us sound dumb, yeah, or.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
It makes it sound like you know where you're getting
your information from, like I know, okay, I'm getting this
from Lebron because that's not the conversation at all, Right, Lebron, Really,
Lebron is not front He went from running the team
to now they're kind of on the end. They're pushing away,
they're moving away from the lebron era. And you can
hear him even the way he talks about it's like,
well they can do this. They're doing like he seems
(39:30):
like he's on the aspice.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
But do you just look at the distance. And I'm
sure within those those offices Jeanie Buss, Jaymore, Polenka and everybody.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Else, Lakers owner Jaymore, we we have control of this right.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
This guy's not running this squad. We brought in Luca
and now we figure out the next iteration of things.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Telling you he's gonna one more year and unless it's
the Western Conference finals, it's I'm just a kid from
Adams and I'm gonna finish where I started there, I left,
I came back, and now this is where I'm gonna
fish that exilum to sick how it's gonna go. Now,
we're gonna have kd or Giannis or or or Sabonis
in a year or it'll be fine. It'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Can we draft Patrick Ewing?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (40:10):
Yeah, okay, I'm okay with that. Another cold envelope that'll work.
You might have a run in.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Him exit hout about a Fresco exit swollen dome for Mike.
I'm Jason, coming up next to my buddy Ben Mallor
this is fuck
Hosts And Creators
Jason Smith
Mike Harmon
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