Mavs Talk With Mike Marshall

The VP of Content for The Dallas Mavericks Mike Marshall calls in to chat about their big road win against the Clippers in game 2.  

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Listening to the downbeat. I'm ninetyseven one the freak quick update on this
Baby Reindeer show on Netflix. Iforgot to mention, by the way,
it's a true story, and themain actor in it, the bartender guy
that I was telling you about,the guy that gets stalked, he actually
wrote the story about a personal experiencethat happened in his own life, all

(00:22):
right, but probably spiced it upquite a bit. Who knows, maybe
not one hundred percent of rotten tomatoes. You got me, you got me,
damn it. I'm in Baby Reindeeron Netflix. And one good thing
about it. I think it's sevenepisodes long or seven episode limited series,
and each episode is no more thanforty two minutes, right, So it's

(00:44):
a quickie. So he had apumped up guest joining us at about a
half an hour. It's my brotherCash. He and I were at the
spear at these fish shows. Iit won't be too much fish necessarily,
It's more just a sphere review.I think that's a far more broad topic
that people are probably curious about.But it's gonna be a fish talk too
in a little bit of Vegas.So Cash he'll be joining us here in

(01:06):
just a few minutes. I toldmake a job. He's making a coffee.
I don't know. He may jumpon with us because we have another
guest joining us right now. We'regonna talk Mavericks. We did at seven
o'clock. It's sports at seven.It's eight thirty now. And when you
can book a man this handsome,and you trick him into doing it on
a zoom link so you get tolook at him. He can't see us,
can't see he can't see how agedwe are, and we're not the

(01:30):
beefcakes that he remembers. He's dabbing, he's flexing his all. It is
Mike the machine, Marshall, theVP of content. I never know.
I must text you what's your titlenow? Or what is it again?
It doesn't matter, man, VPof content. That sounds like a corner

(01:51):
suite. No, there's no Idon't. I don't have a door at
all. Can I ask you aperson zero doors? Question Mike Marshall,
VP of Content for the MAVs thatfor some reason the last like three weeks
has been bothering me. Go forMike, does your car still the front
door? Does it still have thatclick when you open that. I'll tell

(02:12):
you. I'll tell you how thatsituation got resolved. A tree, a
tree in my driveway like lost agiant branch and fell on the hood.
Uh huh uh. And it didn'tlike, you know, impale the car
anything, but it was pretty gooddamage. And I was like, yeah,
that happened the same time, fixedboth the best, and they did.
I was like, doubleway at me, it works almost every time that
strategy sometimes like yeah, no itdidn't because they can see, especially if

(02:38):
it's like a dent and they seerust that's already developed on it that hadn't
been attended to in like two years. Yeah, this was a year apart
at least. And I was like, both both fixed. He had a
brand new Gee Patriot and he didsomething and I remember it was like the
loudest metallic clank whenever he opened hisdriver's door. Which needless that that happened

(03:04):
at Stinking Jake's Lake House. Theone time I've been out there, someone
like backed into the crease of mydoor and I just have to live with
this, and no one owned upto it at like one am. Inside
is yeah, and I'm just like, all right, guys, cool,
I guess I just live with thisburden for the rest of my existence.
But yeah, they got fixed.Thank you, that's the first thing,
clear up. And and also thankyou for a biting by my one and

(03:27):
only rule, which is, uh, don't put me in a room broadcast
uh scenario in general with Kevin Turnerever, No, yeah, we knew
your policy. You should see ourtext exchanges. It's like, dude,
you want to can you jump ontomorrow? I want to talk some abs
and he's like, KITCHI question mark. I'm like, yeah, Katy's here,
and then just no response. Butnow that Kat's gone, we get

(03:50):
him. He's like, what timeyou need? What multiple segments? May
do the whole show six am.It's crazy, Like, yeah, we're
reaching out the machine today and likeour text message conversations turned from green to
blue when Kevin's out of town.Yeah, it's crazy. Instantly, Well,
I made the mistake earlier reporting thatPenny Marshall was at the game last

(04:11):
night, and apparently she's been deadsince twenty eighteen. Look, it happens,
did you know that? I mean, I think in the spirit spirit.
So we got Penny's grandson, MikeMarshall, to join us in the
Mavericks. He loves it. Yeah, I played pretty low key, but
I'm worth a lot of money.He loves the Clippers. Not gonna lie

(04:31):
a lot of active money, nomoney. Mike has been one of the
bigger MAVs fans. I've known sinceI've lived here and knew all about him
long before you ever worked for theteam. So it's just a perfect little
mix that you are now on theinside with the Dallas Mavericks. And yeah,
anytime I can get you on andtalk a little hoops, we try
to take that opportunity, and wedid it earlier today. Man, But

(04:54):
I mean life is good, dude. That was a huge win last night.
I'll just start with the probably thebiggest talking point of the day.
I don't know if we've seen adefensive NBA game like that in a decade
or three decades. What are yourthoughts, man? Were you surprised that
that? I guess that game asa hole just looked the way it did.

(05:15):
Yeah, I mean you could tellpretty early on they were gonna let
them play a little bit. Theofficials in terms of physicality, guys diving
on the floor, doing the oldschool like separate the dribbler's body from the
basketball that you do and pickup,which usually starts fights. It's it was
weird. It was a weird tempo. No one was really settling in.

(05:36):
Everyone's out of the rhythm, andyou're like, okay, this is gonna
be this is gonna be a slobberymatch, Like they're just gonna like body
on body physicality for the entire game. And whoever withstands it and is like
still willing to play basketball the lastthree minutes is probably gonna win. And
luckily we got a couple good shotsin there. PJ knock down a quarner

(05:58):
three. Luca got out at theright time. Is always ready for that
moment. So our guys just stoodin there longer. It was just gonna
be, you know, eleven roundsand whoever's still standing and willing to play
like intense basketball because they were bothteams looked like they were about to tap
out. That's how physical it wasand how long they were. They were

(06:18):
banging on each other. And theonly one on the Clippers that seemed to
like still want that still be infor that was Paul George at the end,
and everybody else was kind of likewalking up, not really staying connected
defensively, and it just I didn'tseen a game like that in a long
time, especially from this team.That's not how we win. That's not
how we you know, went onthat whatever it was fourteen and one run

(06:39):
at one point. But to gointo a road environment in which a team
like that has all these stars,they're gonna dictate kind of the pace and
the way they want to play andsay, cool, I can play that
way too, and I'll beat youat it. And to split two road
games again a team in which Ithink they've thrown just about their best defensive

(07:03):
efforts at US twice in a row. That's awesome, man. That's that
shows you like they can they canwin any style, they can win anyway.
They've got the depth. I mean, the big guys aren't even playing
well yet, right, They're notin a rhythm at all. They've enjoyed
the series yet outside of Maxi,And so yeah, it's super encouraging,

(07:23):
man, because when you get intothose those wrestling matches and it's just okay,
you don't want to be the guywho loses that. You don't just
like when you go to overtime ordouble overtime, like that loss is more
than just one loss. To me, it feels like more than one loss.
Okay, machine for people that Mikeand I were talking about this earlier,
and I never really felt like thatgame was decided until it was,

(07:46):
like mathematically decided. It could havegone either way and it was a slugfest.
I don't know if either team canplay with that level of defensive intensity
for seven games, worst case scenario. What is it going to take to
get the MAVs to look like youmentioned, they haven't gotten into a real

(08:07):
rhythm yet, and we're so usedto seeing this team play with a lot
of perimeter ball movement, with alot of flow, aythm, a lot
of rhythm. The offense just lookskind of like it's it's like artful in
a way. We haven't seen thatyet. Do you see the Mavericks being
able to get into that kind ofrhythm? And what's it gonna take.
Is it gonna take the Clippers justthe inability to play max out balls out

(08:30):
defense for seven games? I don'tknow what what's it gonna take to look
like the back part of the regularseason. Yeah, I think that is
a big part of it. Islike, how long do they want to
play this way? How long dothe Clippers? You know, how much
you got, how willing are youto do this game after game? And
if they're not getting having success withit, you know, you start questioning
what's happening? But I really needto try this hard and defense the entire

(08:52):
game. But for us to mewhat it looks like, it's so weird.
Whenever the offense isn't working and everyone'slike, what the hell had just
happened on that play and everybody's likemoving, it's like whenever you're hitting,
you're like as a quarterback, you'rehitting like your fifth step back and like
the route's supposed to be there andthe guy's like already gone or not there
yet. That's what the every offensiveplay has looked like thus far. And

(09:15):
my theory on it is, Okay, you get into playoff basketball, everyone
starts playing a second faster, alittle bit harder. The physicality to get
around the screen is taking you asecond longer. You're not in the spot
you're supposed to be in and Lucacan almost do this stuff with his eyes
closed, but if you're not whereyou need to be and he's throwing that

(09:35):
pass without having a look at it, because that's the speedys to operator right
now, like everything is disjointed,and so I think Kai and Luca are
operating at like two time speed offensivelybecause they've done this before. They've played
in these kind of playoffs series,they played against this exact team prior,
and so they have experience of thetempo of Hey, I don't mean get

(09:58):
there whenever you want to get there, I mean get there now, like
get into the set now when Iwhen I'm crossing half court with the ball,
start the set. Don't wait forme to point at you or call
you out or call for the screen. It needs to happen. And so
they're operating at their own tempo,which I would consider like superstar elite veteran
tempo of having experience knowing how todo this. And then it seems like

(10:18):
Gafford's not at that tempo. Livelyis not at that tempo with the screens
the other guys besides, I thinkPJ is operating pretty well. He's caught
up to the speed of it.But I think it's just Gafford. You
can tell, man his head's spinning, and I think being home I think
getting a couple games of it andknowing like I'm if I'm moving now,
it's too late, and just knowinglike this team is going to try and

(10:41):
bully you around and they are notgoing to get calls, right, you
have to fight through it. You'renot going to get a call if someone
bodies you in the lane, Like, just fight through it and finish.
I think just that adjustment and everyonecatching up to the tempo of Luca and
Kai and the pass is going tobe there second quicker because it has to
be. Kai is going to pushball forward and try and get fast break
points because they have to. Theyhave to get cheap points somewhere because the

(11:05):
offense as a whole is not workingin a half court since, yeah,
they made some shots last night thatkind of pulled that thing out late,
some threes that weren't there in thefirst game, but as the whole,
the offense hasn't really worked. Andso it's gonna come down to do the
Clippers want to do this from multitudeof games? Do they want to put
forth this defensive effort they have thatin them, and then can the rest

(11:28):
of the MAVs offense say, like, you know, what we're operating at
double speed. Everybody, Just getthere. Just get where I am operating
right now in terms of movement andswinging the ball and making the pass before
I even see it, and we'llbe fine. How long that takes for
the bigs and the rest of theteam to adjust. You know, it
looked a little bit better last night. I mean, you can't look worse
than Game one, to be honest, That eight point second quarter was like,

(11:52):
that was the most painful basketball.Like it takes a lot for me
to like watch a basketball game andlike get anxiety and get like really really
upset about it. But that secondquarter, I was like, oh my
god, it look like we didn'tpractice. It was just a mess.
But I think that's it's getting yoursea legs, like in the in the
simplest form. So I expect beingat home will help that a lot.

(12:13):
I expect having two days off andbe able to watch, Like, hey,
if you're at this point, ifyou're setting the screen now you're late
and just going over film and seeinghow the Clippers are going to play them,
and then you know they're going totest the Clippers minerals with this.
They're gonna see how long they wantto play this kind of defense, in
this kind of game, and youknow they're veteran team. I don't expect
them to tap out. But aftergiving them their best punch last night defensively
and saying like now we're good,we're gonna take one on your home court

(12:37):
and go back and and try andtry and protect ours, Like I think
that's got to be super discouraging forfor TYLERU and and all those you know,
future Hall of famers on that team. I think they're shell shock the
Clippers, to be honest, especiallyat getting Kyrie back and being such a
badass defensive team and playing a prettygood defensive game and still losing. I
think they are they're they're they're lookinginto a mirror, are going uh oh?

(13:01):
Now? The other side of thatsame question, though I asked,
I expect the Clippers to maintain defensivepressure similar to what the maps we've seen
the last few days. The outlierseems to be can the MAVs keep it
up if they need to? Imean, if the Clippers do dictate,
this is the kind of series thisis gonna be. Honestly, I think
that's the best defense I've seen theMAVs ever play or you know this version
of the maps ever play. Yeah, and yes, the ceiling defensively for

(13:24):
Kyrie and Luca is higher than wesaw it in the regular season, and
we saw glimpses of it, butJesus they were on it. If this
series stays at this pace and it'sjust this slugfest, can the MAVs hang
Yeah, and well they be allright? Yeah, I think so.
I mean, you saw that.I don't know if it was came at

(13:46):
what point in the game. Ithink it was second or third quarter.
You saw Kyrie kind of flip theswitch defensively, yeah, because Harden kind
of pusted him off. Yeah,yeah, you guys, and they were
kyrief checking each other and we don'tsee that much. We talked about that
earlier, like, I look like, that's about as mad as Kyrie gets.
And you can't tell it on hisface, but he's you could tell
he was a little fouled up,which is nice. That is that is

(14:07):
him fuming, man. And fromthat moment on he was like, if
I see somebody put the ball onthe ground, I'm diving after it.
Yes, I'm separating you from theball. And he did it like six
times and was never called for afoul, and he was like, all
right, you want to play thisway, let's go. And I think
there is genuine dislike and genuine hatefor this Clippers team from our side,

(14:31):
from our players, Like I don'tthink they like each other at all.
There is a lot of history there. There's a lot of like fake tough
guy, bullying, physicality stuff thatthey do that I don't think anybody on
our side appreciates. And I don'twant it to get you know, overly
physical and people just flopping everywhere andit become a mess with a game.
But there were times last night whereI was like, this thing, you

(14:52):
don't want to do that. Youdo not want to get Luca emotionally and
physically invested in destroying you, becausehe will. He will win every time
when you get him emotionally invested beyondthe game of basketball into the realm of
like, I want to destroy you. I want to make you regret your

(15:13):
life right now, because he can. He can be a psychopath in a
game. I mean the previous serieswith the Clippers, he did that and
the supporting cast wasn't really good enoughto help him out, and it's dude,
you if you start getting picking fightswith him on a basketball court where
he has the ability and the teamaround him to compete on your level,

(15:37):
he is going to destroy you.There are so many stories. I mean,
you can read the Grant Williams practicestory from earlier in the season where
Grant wanted to d him up andhe made a point of scoring every single
point the rest of the game andjust crushing him. And I would not
recommend that. I would not recommendthose guys getting overly physical. I mean,

(16:00):
and you if you can lip read, you can see what he said
after he hit that last three.If you go online and find that was
there an M and then let's let'sgo. I was trying. It looked
like it was a m F andthen a a H in there, and
he was just yelling, dude,like he was so happy to beat those
guys, like you don't want todo that to him? You want them

(16:25):
to do that to him because Ilove it. Yeah, but I liked
I like the response. I feellike something I felt like someone was percolate.
And yesterday between Irving and Harden andthen right at the end, Westbrook
and Luca had a little bitty thing, and you know, it probably won't
come down to swinging, but Iwould expect, probably in Game three for
the for there to be a littlebreaking up, fake fight type thing.
I wouldn't be surprised at all.Yeah, some of the air has to

(16:47):
get out of the balloon at somepoint because you can't just keep filling the
thing up, yeah, just addinghot air into it. So one of
these games is gonna be a blowout. Everyone's gonna kind of like settle down
and it's gonna be like, well, they were better tonight. Let's get
back to like the tactical part ofit. But right now it just seems
like, hey, you want anarm wrestle, Like, let's let's have
some beers and arm wrestle right nowand just see who's the bigger man.
That's kind of the basketball it's beingplayed. It's pretty awesome. Honestly,

(17:11):
I did not expect that. Andthen you know, the first win of
the season, when not scoring onehundred points was awesome to see. You
don't peg the MAVs is like,okay, let's let's go tough one out.
Necessarily, that's not our roster howwe like to play. But yeah,
man, if they want to makeit, you know, a macho
contest like where about that? We'reready for that. You saw Kai flip

(17:33):
the switch last night, and thatwas if you pissed that guy off and
he's willing to like start throwing hisbody around defensively. And there's the thing
is like it's a tone that getsset early in the game if you can
get away with that and played playto the game that's called boys, play
to the game that's called Is thereany more or is there any better sense
of security? Blanket? And justgood vibes going into a fourth quarter knowing

(18:00):
that you've got Kyrie Irving on yourteam, not just because it's his best
quarter historically as a player in theNBA, but just the free throw aspect
of it too. Mikey brought thatup earlier. You just feel like if
you're in a close game in thefourth quarter, whether you're up or down
by three to five or six,you just kind of feel like your chances

(18:22):
are really good if he's on thefloor. And you saw it again last
night, man, and he justmakes everybody around him better. He's such
a unique player and that everyone knows. The highlights the artful nature of his
game, how pretty he can makeit look, filling up the filter the

(18:45):
stat sheet for years and years andyears. The thing I didn't really quite
have an appreciation for is when it'swinning time, when it's got to have
it time, the grit that hehas, man, he is not going
to lose. Like I didn't knowhe was like a competitive psycho late in
games. But yeah, when youlook over there and you're like, Okay,

(19:07):
he's gonna bring the ball up,and then the other psycho path on
the other side that wants to beatyou by fifty and make you sorry you've
ever existed, is just was justwaiting over there to get the ball right
and to me, for for Kai, in these types of games, at
least in this series, it doesn'tmatter to me what he does the first
three quarters, right, It justit just doesn't matter, because I know
he can drop eighteen on your headin the force and make it all better

(19:30):
and put the game out of reach. And it's just I didn't have an
appreciation for that. But I don'tknow if that's a new thing with him.
I don't know if that's you know, some of his maturity, his
evolution of where he wants to applyhimself in a game. But it's it's
definitely a conscious thing, right becauseyou can see it. He just he
just flips it and it's it's winningtime. It's I'm disciplined enough, I

(19:55):
have enough energy left, I haveenough stamina, even during Ramadan when he
wasn't eating, like some of thosefourth quarters were insane, just thinking about
that, and he's just Yeah,he's phenomenal, dude, And there's so
many layers to his game that youknow, I didn't really get to see
the year one had in that halfseason and even earlier on this season,
whenever they're trying to figure out howthey fit in together, and just when

(20:15):
you can look over there and yougo, Okay, I've got the best
ball handler that's ever lived and aguy that has turned in turned himself into
an energizer, bunny, a finisherin the fourth quarter when no one else
has legs Like, that's so coolto have, man, that's so cool
to have in your corner and soreassuring that everyone else can just play their
game. And what other dude Iwanted to touch on. I don't know
how much time we have, butMAXI played his ass off last night Yeah,

(20:38):
that was awesome, dude. Forwe've been trying to find a different
big man that can play in theplayoffs and bring more than Maxi Kliba for
like five seasons now, and thenwe get into a playoff series and you're
rolling along and you're like, oh, Maxi is our best big man again.
Yeah, it's insane. Like hiseffort was incredible, he was awesome.

(21:03):
He knocked down some big shots.He he you know, stood up
to Zubats and it's just crazy towatch the guy's evolution of his career and
where he is now and what hebrings in a playoff series and how valuable
he is and what kind of lineupconnector intensively. He's so good, but
he seems reluctant to fire it maybe, but then he's making He had two
out of three last night. Jesus, that's all you need if you want
big ones too. Threes man andthen the offensive rebound late in the game,

(21:27):
which kind of was you know,if that wasn't the ceiling moment of
it, it definitely was one ofthem. Yeah, his playoff Maxi is
is pretty fun. Yeah, dude, he's he's he's so good and he's
just he's he's perfect for playoffs scenariosbecause he can stretch. He can play
five out and he can stretch,and he sets good picks and he can

(21:47):
defend almost anybody. And he's beenworking really hard and not getting bodied by
Zubats and getting to getting the ballsthat are loose, and I, you
know, I just think that's hesaved that game for us. Like you
can look at the statue, youcan go like, okay, look he
made a three pge made it three. But getting to the looise balls,
getting rebounds, like not letting Zoubotsgo off in the fourth quarter, and
just willing to do anything to winfor a guy that hasn't had a great

(22:11):
season, hasn't really shot it well, has looked kind of hesits since for
him to get those I think that'sthat's so cool man. I love that
we've got like thirty seconds any I'vebeen saying it before the series started.
I thought they're gonna win the series. I was just in Vegas. I
got money on him and win theWest. I have money on him at
sixteen one to win the title.I don't want to get way ahead of
things, but am I nuts thatthe MAVs could be the danger man in

(22:32):
the NBA over the next month.Oh, there's no doubt about it.
If you get if you vanquished thisthis demon that's been haunting you for like
five years of the LA Clippers,and get past that group of superstars and
the way that these games are playingin which it's turning into super physical,
super macho. Have to win abunch of different ways. And you roll
into that second round series against OKC, that's an inexperienced team that might not

(22:55):
know what you're about to hit themwith. It feels like Golden State a
couple of years ago, whenever theyplayed us and we were just rising,
and then we were like, ohno, that's a different brand of basketball
they're bringing. I I would bevery afraid to play the Mavericks and they
haven't even played well yet my firsttwo games. Marshall, is this young
man's name? Thanks Mike. Nextweek we may go Kati another day off
and we'll have you back on You'resimple one. Alright, a cash go

(23:21):
love you boys. I say helloto my time to talk. No,
all right, thanks. We wereat the damn sphere this weekend. We
will review this insane billion dollar contraptionand the band Fish playing in it.
We'll have a little fun with mybrother Cash Sirroy that is, next writer

(23:42):
or not. He havn't won theFreak