Jason Martin previews the NBA Finals, talks Inside the NBA Farewell, & MORE!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
What's happening. My name is Jason Martin. We are live
broadcasting from the Fox Sports Radio studios. Feels like a
throwback for me. This is the old time slot. There
was something called the Jason Martin Show back in the day,
years and years ago before I joined up with my
pal Aaron Torres for the slot that just finished with

(00:25):
him at Olden Polonies holding it down and crushing it tonight.
But Bernie Fratto is out this week, getting some respite,
getting some rest. Hope he is well, hope his family
is well. He'll be back next week. And so they
called me back in and said, hey, why don't you
move a little bit later. We understand you're in the
Central time zone, but look sleep just can't be a

(00:47):
priority for you. You have two daughters anyway, And so here
I am over the next four hours. I'm not going
to use the Bernie Frido cliches. I can't do it.
It's sacker sanc that he will talk about sports being
the greatest tree show. And I can't remember all of them.
They're just Bernie Fratto witticisms. But what I can talk
to you about is the Eastern Conference Finals. What I

(01:10):
can talk to you about is the National Football League.
What I can talk to you about is the WNBA.
I said that softly because I'm pretty sure the league
doesn't exist at present without Caitlin Clark playing. But we'll
get to all of those things, and we'll have Mark Medina,
our good friend and NBA analysts joining me in the
next segment. We're gonna talk twenty solid minutes of hoops

(01:31):
with him breaking down everything from these two conference finals,
the finals itself, and also some of the other issues
involving the association. Maybe not even bring up Lebron James
at all during that talk. We'll see, but the NBA
draft kind of coming up in Giannie's future, and all
sorts of things like that. There's just a ton to
get into with mar Medina. But we will start with

(01:51):
the Eastern Conference Finals where the Knicks are now done
and the Pacers are in the NBA Finals one to
oh eight. So the Knicks played with them for a half.
It really was. I heard Barkley say at halftime, look,
they've got them where they want them right now, meaning
the Knicks. They were only down four. It was fifty
eight to fifty four, and it did feel like the

(02:12):
Pacers were playing well, but the Knicks were right there
with them, and even though they were down three games
to two, all the pressure was on Indy. And the
reason why is because no one thinks you're up three
to one. You obviously get get beat pretty badly in
New York in game five. Then you have it on

(02:33):
your home floor to close it out. You can't do it,
and then you're gonna have to go back to their building,
to Madison Square Garden in a game seven, and you know,
pick your teeth off the ground and get back out
there and somehow win that game and not have your
heart basically choking you out because it's so deep in
your throat at that point in time. It just that's

(02:55):
not what you want. So all the pressures on them
they have to close it out. They should close it out.
They're favored to close it out. It's in their building.
But they're the Indiana Pacers. So you're still seeing a
lot of columns being written to a boy, the Knicks
aren't done yet, because that's what they're supposed to say.
But the third and fourth quarter belonged to the Indiana Pacers,

(03:16):
and it was here that we saw the difference in
the series. These games that the Pacers won they won
because they were able to close the deal. And that's
generally the case in sports. You can play a great
forty minutes, but if the last eight or trash, you're
probably still going to go home. You saw what happened
in Game one, seventeen point lead, the Knicks lost it.

(03:38):
They were up nine in the final minute. The Knicks
lost on a crazy bounce, one of the most ridiculous
bounces I've ever seen on that jump shot from Tyreese
Halliburton to send it to overtime, or maybe none of
this happens. I'll ask Marbadina that question in the next segment.
I'll say, look, if the Knicks win Game one, are
the Knicks in the NBA Finals? Did the entire series

(03:58):
come down to that? When they stole that game on
the road, when the Indiana Pacers stole that game on
the road, and then of course what they did in
Game two afterwards, but Game one was the critical one.
Did that change everything for this series? Or were we
headed for this anyway? I'll be curious to get his
answer to that question. About twenty minutes or so, fifteen

(04:19):
minutes or so from right now, but all the pressure
was on Indiana, and then the third and fourth quarter
they were just too much. When they needed to make threes,
they made threes, Unlike the Knicks, who shot barely sixty
five percent from the free throw line. The Pacers went
sixteen of nineteen from the strike. The Knicks shot seven

(04:40):
more free throws in this game than the Pacers did,
but they only made one more. They were six seventeen
to twenty six from the line. They shot twenty eight
percent from three nine to thirty two. Almost everything that
they faced was difficult throughout this game. And then for
the Pacer they shoot fifty four percent from the field,

(05:02):
fifty one percent from three seventeen to thirty three. They
were unconscious from three in this game, and you're just
flat out gonna get beat when that happens. And then defensively,
they played great defense, and the Knicks, I'm still waiting
to see them play defense in this game, but unfortunately
for them, their season is over, so there's no more

(05:23):
time to play defense. They did have Mitchell Robinson rebounding
like an absolute madman, like a cyborg out there doing
all the dirty work for them in this game. But
the Pacers go ahead and win this thing, and they
win it going away like it's a seventeen point win
that really wasn't even that close. If you watched the
second half, it was like it felt like this was

(05:43):
going to get tighter, because the Pacers went up twelve
a couple of different times. They even went up fifteen
once and then you saw a couple of substitutions made
by Thibodeau and you come back out and you look
up and the Knicks have cut it back to eight
in almost no time. So they went from they had
like a nine to zero run over about a minute
and a half span, and they kept on doing it.

(06:04):
So every time it felt like the Pacers were about
to just run away with it, the Knicks would pull
him back tighter, and that portended interesting things for the
fourth quarter of the game. But then when you got
to the fourth quarter, it just felt like there was
no gas left in the Knicks tank. They were flooring
the accelerator, but there was nothing there. If they weren't

(06:26):
on a downhill, that car was gonna cruise to a stop.
And I'm not just talking about Karl Anthony Town's lethargic
defense or I wouldn't even call that defense lethargic, like
foot shuffling, And I'm talking about when he should have
been running up the court and I know he was
a little bit banged up, but he was out there,
so he's still responsible for playing defense and he just

(06:47):
kind of wasn't there for you. But to the Pacers.
Pacers are fifty to thirty two during the regular season.
I don't think anybody took them seriously entering the playoffs.
Pretty much nobody, I would say, throughout this series, the
discourse has had almost nothing to do with how good
the Pacers are, and instead what I am now going

(07:09):
to term nontent. I've never heard this before. Somebody else
may have this thing. I'm not gonna copyright it. Somebody
can steal it for free. But instead of saying nonsense content,
I'm just gonna say nontent because that's what this is.
Nontent about whether or not this weird discussion as to
whether or not Tyrese Haliburton is a superstar. That is

(07:32):
what we were getting over and over. It seemed like
on TV all throughout this series. Is Tyrese Haliburton a
star or is he a superstar. Is he a good player?
Is he a really good player? Is he a great player?
But is he a superstar? Like? My goodness, man. Meanwhile,
the Pacers advanced to the NBA Finals with a four

(07:55):
to two win over the New York Knicks. I don't
know why this was. Look, Tyres had twenty one in
the final game. He's pretty quiet early. Pascal Siakam, I
think he got five of the nine votes and Haliburton
got four. In the conference finals MVP voting. There were
a couple of games where Siakam went absolutely off game two,

(08:16):
and then here in this game they needed every point
that he scored early because some of the other guys,
especially Haliburton, didn't really wake up until the second half.
But once Haliburton woke up, boy did he wake up.
And of course he had his usual you know, thirteen
to go with the twenty one. I'm gonna talk to
him it. We'll talk to Madina about Tyrese Aliburton. But
some of this stuff, it's just like, gosh, every show

(08:40):
seems to have too much time to fill, Like there
are so many shows that you watch. You're like, man,
this would be okay if it was a twenty minute show,
like this could be a thirty minute sitcom with commercial breaks,
but you had to extend it to an hour, didn't you. Like,
this is the Netflix series that really doesn't have twelve
episodes of content, so there's a couple of filler episodes

(09:00):
you can completely skip. Like you remember the Stranger Things
episode where Eleven went like into Chicago or wherever it
was the city to like try to find herself and
find some of the other people that were like her.
It was this weird whatever it was, was one of
the worst episodes of television I've seen in a very
long time, and virtually every Stranger Things fan will agree

(09:21):
with it really bad. So you get these filler episodes
all the time on Netflix because they really have like
a five or six episode show that they're trying to
stretch to create more and more content, more and more
hours to try and capture your eyeballs. I feel that
way about almost every show in sports radio and in
sports television. It's like they have about an hour too much,

(09:44):
but they're still trying to stretch it out, and so
they've got to find something to talk about. So instead
of breaking down the game from like a really objective standpoint,
it becomes content, It becomes is Tyrese Haliburton a superstar
over and over again for the sole purpose of hopefully
attracting Tyreese Halliburton's attention so he might say something about it,

(10:04):
which can then generate more nontent for the next couple
of days. Kind of drifting off of that, like dani
Ka Patrick drifting off an actual good auto racer. There's
more to talk about than this, But nobody talked about
the Pacers. I don't think anybody wanted to talk about

(10:25):
him because nobody had watched them enough to understand that, wow,
this is actually a pretty good basketball team. And oh,
by the way, they were good last year in the playoffs,
and Tyreese Halliburton was good a year ago, and he
went through a shooting slump in the fall and had
some mental issues where he had to admit, you know,
I have some depression right now, had to kind of

(10:48):
get himself right get over it, and he did in
a big way. And he looks like he's having an
absolute blast right now. But no one talked about the
Pacers during the season because there's no headlines there. But
now you have no choice because they're in the NBA Finals.
It's not the Boston Celtics, it's not the New York Knicks,

(11:11):
it's not the Philadelphia seventy six ers, it's not the
Miami Heat. It's the Indiana Pacers for the second time
in franchise history. The other time, of course, was the
Reggie Miller team that lost four to two to Shacks Lakers,
Shaq and Kobe's Lakers. Will this one go longer than six?
Will it go shorter than six? Still to come, We'll

(11:32):
be able to discuss that in a lot more detail.
But the Knicks lost this thing. With their starters on
the bench. I saw some Knicks fans were upset, saying,
you can't give up in a playoff game. I don't
care if you're down twenty with two minutes left. Well,
they were down twenty basically with two minutes left, and
it was over, and Thibbs just kind of waved the

(11:53):
white flag and said, Okay, we're just gonna tip our cap.
We're not coming back from this. And I don't have
a problem with it. Like I didn't see that, Like
I was stunned. It's just okay, this is over. We
all know this is over. Why are we laboring this point.
They blew the Knicks out in the third and fourth quarter.
They blew them out of the gym, and so Tibbs
pulled Brunson and pulled Towns, pulled these guys out. Let's

(12:17):
not make them go any harder. We'll worry about this
next year. The Pacers were the better basketball team if
you look at it. I don't have the stats directly
in front of me. Maybe I can find them during
the break. I saw them earlier this week, the number
of combined minutes played by the starters for the Knicks
and the Pacers entering you know, I think it was

(12:37):
about Game four, Game five. I saw this stat come out,
and the Knicks had played like a thousand more combined
minutes than had the Pacers. They were worn out, and
they weren't as deep, and their bench was not utilized
nearly as well. Their minutes were not managed nearly as
well by Thibodeau as by Rick Carlisle, who is still

(13:00):
be the most underrated figure in all of the NBA
right now. A coach that just flat out gets it
done and seems to understand because there's a player's mentality
in Rick Carlisle. He's We need to talk more about
Rick Carlile, and we'll do that when we have Mark
Medina here on the other side of this break. Mark
medeena of course NBA analyst who's on weekly with Bernie,

(13:23):
especially this time of year. I've got so many things
that I want to get into with him about both
the Eastern and the Western Conference finals, as well as
previewing the NBA Finals and what's the future of Jannisance
at Takumpo and what are we about to see, what
kind of deal making, what kind of free agency, and
what kind of fixes are out there for these teams

(13:44):
that seem like they were on the cusp of making
the NBA Finals. What are going to be sitting and
watching thunder Pacers just like the rest of us starting
on Thursday. So Mark Medina will join me next. I'm
Jason Martin. I'm in for Bernie Frado and this is
Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsportsradio dot
com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to listen live.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, they get it. During the break, I said, look,
just in case anybody's curious, it's not like a lot
of other things, but nineties alternative. Look. I went to
middle school, high school in the nineties. There was a
time when I didn't feel old when I said that
that that time is not now, but little third eye

(14:37):
blind bringing us back, curious to see what what we
bring out of the vault over the next haenful of
hours is. My name is Jason Martin. I'm in for
where the great Bernie Ferrato. I'm in Nashville, Tennessee, not
in Vegas, but uh hey, there's a race here today,
so and it's Nashville, so I'm in a pretty good spot.
But right now we are going to do something Bernie

(14:57):
always does. We're gonna chat with our good frien and
NBA insider Mark Medina. Mark Medina, our NBA insider sports Kida.
He's been everywhere joining us right now. I don't know
if I'm supposed to call you magic Mark or not.
A song, but I don't know if that's what we're
I don't know if we're supposed to roll with that

(15:18):
or not. Mark, But how are you, brother?

Speaker 4 (15:20):
Well, Jason, I usually just roll with whatever Bernie says.
But I don't think anyone's ever referred to me as
magic Mark.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Okay, I guess I just did it. But I can
pull it back if need be, Like I can, I
can take that back into the garage.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
Sure, whatever you want. I'm a guest adapt all.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Right, So I'll keep it simple at first. Then we
can jump into into more detail. But your thoughts, now
that not really about the NBA Finals, but your thoughts
on the Eastern Conference Finals, now that it has come
to a close and the Pacers have put out the Knicks.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Well, I think when I look at it up close,
I'm not surprised that the Indiana Posters closed out against
the New York next tonight because they not want to
have a Game seven in Madison Square Garden where anything
could happen. You know, the Knicks are scrappy, resilient team.
But I'm also not surprised because the Pacers just have
more depth. Tyres Halliburn, when he plays aggressively, is a

(16:13):
much better player than anyone else on the floor. And
Pascal Siakam earned that MVP. But from a big picture, Lens,
I didn't see any of this coming. I think going
in this season, I thought it was going to be
a coin flip between the Cleveland Covaliers and Boston Celtics.
You can make a case for either one, whoever is
most healthiest relatively speaking, would probably wind up winning it.

(16:35):
But obviously that didn't happen. And as obviously as once
those dominoes fell with Cleveland Boston with both of them
having injuries, both of them under achieving that playing to
their expectation, I doult the Eastern Conference landscape was very
wide open, so you know, when you look at the Pacers,
a lot of external circumstances had to go into play

(16:56):
for this to happen. But to their credit, they had
the best passing point guard in the NBA with Tyris Alberton.
They're very well coached with Ricarl Wile, who was a
veteran coach. He's been around, and they have a really
good team that plays they could pay, has a lot
of depth and enjoy being around each other. So, uh,
you know, should be interesting finals.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Do you feel like New York was maybe overhyped because
they were New York? I mean, Brunson's awesome, we know this,
but like when you really look at the rest of
that lineup, Like I read multiple articles saying they had
the best starting five in the NBA, and I was
just like, on what planet? Like what universe is that
in the case, like Brunson is an amazing player with

(17:38):
a caveat which I'll ask you about in a second.
But do you feel like the Knicks maybe were given
too much credit entering this series because of who they
are more so than what they were going to do
on the floor.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
Yes, I know they're given more credit because it's New York, It's,
you know, the BD capital of the world. The Knicks
hadn't stepped the finals since the ninety they have didn't
won a championship since the seventies. But I think they
also were given the edge because they do have a
better starting lineup now, I think that there are caveats,
as you mentioned that McHale Bridge is great wing defender,

(18:13):
but you know, showed up in the playoffs, had some
ups and downs in the regular season. Karl Anthony Towns
perfect fit from a pick and roll perspective with Jalen Brunson,
but isn't always the greatest on defense. And they are
a great starting lineup partly because they play a lot
of minutes and they don't have much of a bench.

(18:34):
But I do think to their credit. Jalen Brunson deserves
to be known as the most clutch player of the league.
He's a star player. I do think Tom Thibodeau, you know,
he gets a lot of flack for how much he
plays the starter sevy minutes and not make enough adjustments.
I think he made the best of his circumstances. And

(18:54):
I think that they're always They've always been resilient. They
may not always play pretty, but they're always competitive. They
always stay after it, and I think the fact that
it went six games is a product of the resiliency
because you know, after losing the first two games, he thought, okay,
Pacers would wind up maybe even sweeping this or having
a gentleman sweep. But the next got back end of this,

(19:16):
partly because they've always been a scrapper team.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
So you talk about Brunson and I agree. I mean,
he deserves all his flowers. Now I'm going to try
and pick him apart, because apparently that's what we do
in sports, knock him down exactly right. Now that we've
had more time to watch Brunson over this last couple
of years, there's something I hadn't really paid as much
attention to until this series, and maybe it was more
exclusive to this series, but that dude is on the

(19:41):
ball a lot, Like he is dribbling the basketball way
more than I thought in terms of there were multiple
possessions tonight, especially in that second half where he seemed
allergic to passing the ball, like he was gonna find
a way to get a shot off. Whether or not
it was an awful look or was some kind of
a desperation play, It's like, it's not even that he
didn't trust guys. It's just like he was so driven

(20:03):
to keep the ball into his hands. And I look
at it and I'm just like, is that the adjustment
he needs to make in the offseason is playing a
little bit more off the ball.

Speaker 4 (20:14):
Yeah, he can certainly improve playing off the ball. But
I will counter with this, I don't think that he's
doing any of these things for selfish reasons. I think one,
he obviously has confidence in his shot. He's a clutch
player for a reason. He and his trainer, Dave Williams,
you know, I talked to him a few weeks ago.
They have drills set up for and the clock situations
as well as he carries out the broom. You know,

(20:37):
pretending he's Victor woman Yama and saying what it's like
to have to shoot over a tall player. So that's
point number one. Point number two, I think the Knicks
by design play at a slower pace because they don't
have the horses to play at a fast face like
the Pacers do. So what he's doing is he's trying
to probe for angles. He's trying to probe to find
the open man. I think the fact that he and

(20:58):
kar Anthony Town's have been a great fit fit from
a two man game backs it up. But I think
to your broader point, yeah, he can be even more
effective player by not always have the ball in his hands,
know how to you know, do the stuff Curry route
where you're always moving at all times to get yourself
open when you don't have the ball in your hands.
But I think the good thing is is he's not

(21:18):
ball dominant because he's being selfish or trying to pat
his numbers looking for stats. I think that he truly
is trying to play the best way within the team
structure they have and the pace they're trying to play,
and the teammates he has. But I think, you know,
Indiana really offered to start contrast to everything I just
mentioned that Tyris alburn pass FIRSUS point guard. They have

(21:42):
a lot more depth, They're a lot younger, they can
play up and down, and you know, there's a reason
that once they created turnovers, game was over. Whether the
next are playing at a slow down pace or we're
trying to match them in trackment.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
NBA insider Mark Medina joining us here on Fox Sports. Halliburton. Okay,
so this was the dumbest discourse of the week and
over and over again, especially by millionaire talking heads on television.
This this drove me insane. Mark, is Tyrese Haliburton a superstar?

(22:17):
Became like the talking point of the week, and it
was debated hotly on both sides. This is just nonsense
to me, dude is a superstar, Like there's I think
that there are degrees of superstar, but I think it's
Do you think it's crazy that that's even a talking
point at this stage? Like, yes, I understand he's not
Lebron James, I get it, but Tyre's Halliburton has to

(22:40):
be a superstar.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
Yeah. Well I'm not surprised because that's how the discourse is.
I think also you know a lot of people have
been milking that Athletic anonymous player's poll that's that he's overrated,
And you know, I don't think anything of it's made up,
but it was a very small sample size, and my
hunch is at all of it came out of fruition
with professional jealousy because he got deep in the playoffs

(23:05):
last year, he was on the Olympics, didn't really play much.
You know, he's very boisterous when it comes to his celebrations.
The other thing is I don't think he's overrated, but
he has been inconsistent at times simply as a score
and people around him, including his train and Drew Handling,
they're always in his ear about you got to be

(23:26):
more aggressive. Sometimes the most selfish thing you can do
is be unselfish. But to then say, Okay, he's not
a superstar, he's not an All Star player, he's overrated, ridiculous.
He's been on All Star Games for a reason, He's
been on the Olympics for a reason. He only had
d MP's last year. Because you're, you know, putting Steve
Current a situation where a he wasn't forty one hundred

(23:47):
percent and b you know you're having to think, Okay,
who do you replace when you have a team full
of established veterans like Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and Lebron James.
You're riding with them. So yeah, he has shown he
right now in the last two years, best passing point
guard in the NBA. He's very good at those pocket passes,

(24:09):
those jump passes, the two man game with him in
Pascal Siakam, I know that Siakam, he's kind of a
plug and play player because he's an All Star caliber
player that won a championship with the Raptors. He didn't
need the ball in his hands a lot. He's very
good at cutting. But it's also testament to Tyres Halbert
and knowing where to find him instantly. And so yeah,

(24:30):
it is a dumb talking point, but you know what,
it's easy for us to knock it down because there's
so many things you can rattle off that make him
such a great player. Doesn't mean he's a finished product.
He's had some games in this playoff series where you know,
he didn't score enough and wasn't aggressive enough, wasn't adapting
to New York's double teams. But he has pretty good

(24:50):
bounce back track record, and you know, overall the worst
case scenarios that game, He's just one hell of a passer.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Did this series basically come down the game one? I
heard Barkley suggests this on the broadcast last night, that
look at the Knicks, don't blow that seventeen point lead.
Maybe we're having a completely different conversation tonight on this program.
Did it? Is it that simple? I mean, obviously nothing
else would have been identical after that fact, That's not
how history works. But blowing that lead in that manner,

(25:21):
having that bounce go against them on the Halliburton shot,
and then losing in overtime to all those threes like
that had to take a ton of starts out of
them because they played a ton of minutes in that
game only to lose on their home floor.

Speaker 4 (25:35):
Yeah, I disagree with Charles Barklay Reggie mellern. Well, if
they play the game, they know, But that kind of
contradicts what a lot of you know, people, both players
and media members say with playoff series that assuming no
major injuries, each game has its own identity and there's
not necessarily carryover because it's the best the seven game series.
You know, I think with the Knicks. Obviously it foreshadowed

(25:58):
some trends that the Pacers are really great in clutch time,
you got to take care of the ball, and that
no lead is too unsafe, and those became things that
explain future losses. But I don't want to say that
the series is over after game one because a the
Knicks are a resilient team. They always competed every win,

(26:19):
every loss. They were able to win games in the series,
and you know they lost other games in the series
for similar reasons, but they had the opportunity right in
front of their hands. So it definitely for the Pacers,
I think set the tone and foreshadow what this could
be in a series. But I don't buy again, barring

(26:40):
a star player getting hurt first game of the series,
to say that game one is what the side of
the series, because yeah, I mean, I guess technically you
fast forward six games later, the Pacers won, advanced to
the finals, the Knicks won the first game, it would
have been a game seven. But you know, I don't
think that because the Pacers won Game one automatically, man, yeah,

(27:02):
Nick had no way of gaining out of this, and
there it was inevitable that they are going to lose.
They had a lot of opportunities through wins and losses,
to you know, salvage this, and they put up a
good fight, but it came down execution and most of
the time they weren't able to do that.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
So we'll talk about the finals in just a second,
but one guy that will not be playing in the
NBA Finals is Anthony Edwards. A lot of people talking
about Anthony Edwards right now, just like they were last year.
But last year, last year, it was all about how
he was the next Michael Jordan, and now it seems
to be right, yeah, right, exactly. My take is this,

(27:37):
And by the way, everybody's been talking about Anthony Edwards,
and I'm going to do it now or two. I'm
gonna spend an entire segment talking about Anthony Edwards. So
I'm not excluding myself from this discussion. But I feel
like Anthony Edwards is more KD than he is Steph.
And what I mean by that is he's a baller.
He's a dude that wants to hoop, but I don't
know that he really has any interest in leading. I
don't know if that that side of the maturity of game.

(28:00):
I don't know that that's what he wants. Maybe it is,
but right now, he's just a really good basketball player.
But I think that's kind of where it stops, and
that's the thing that kind of feels like it's still
missing in his game. Where do you think Anthony Edwards
is right now?

Speaker 4 (28:15):
I think in the middle. I think that he is
not above scrutiny just because he's young, and you know,
people throw the cliches out. Oh, sometimes you have to
go through failure to then bounce back in the playoffs.
I mean, look, when you lay single digit eggs in
the playoffs, he got to be better. There's no excuses
for that. Now, I think that he has improved as
a leader. Part of that is maturity. Part of that

(28:38):
is just the makeup of the team, carl An Hayne
Towns getting traded, there was a leadership acum. Part of
it was. I think, to Anthony Edwards' credit was that
the first few years in the league, he had told me,
even his second year of the league, that he didn't
feel comfortable being a leader on a team full of
veterans when he hasn't done much. So I think talking
to people in the organization They liked that the reluctance

(29:01):
came from a good place, that he didn't want to
act like he knew all the answers. He wanted a
further the veterans. He's gotten more comfortable with being vocal.
You know. Nasree was telling me earlier in the season
that after win against the Clippers in November, he said, hey,
to these are the guys in the locker room. He said, Hey,
if I'm not doing something, hold me accountable, because I
can't hold you accountable if you don't hold me accountable.

(29:24):
So he's gotten the respect there. But I think that's
a much different conversation on is he the face of
the league moving forward? Because to be the face of
the league moving forward, you got to have an automatic
all Star caliber game every single night, whether it's fishing
or not because of swarming defenses, you still got to produce.
He hasn't done that enough. I think he also has

(29:46):
to be willing to take out responsibility, and he's been
on record saying he doesn't want to be a face
in the league, like to what you said about Kevin Durant.
He has that embodiment that hey, he wants to just
hoop clock in clock out and go home. He doesn't
want to do all the other stuff. Now, he does have,
you know, a very positive personality. Guys like being around him.
I think from a leadership standpoint. They like that he

(30:08):
would point the finger when he have a bad game.
He would often you know, praise his teammates you know,
for good games, and also stand up for them with criticism.
But that doesn't mean he's facing the league. If I
had to nominate someone right now, I think shake Glis
Alexander is a much better ambassador for that. I would
he actually even say Jalen Brunson is. And it's not
because you know, oh, he's a championship caliber player. He

(30:31):
doesn't want a championship yet, but I just think he's
more mostly mature, established at this point to be that guy.
So what does this mean moving forward? He definitely has
the potential to do that because again he's young, but
he has a lot of work to do. And you know, again,
I'm not going to just cut him slack and say, oh, yeah,
he's entitled to have playoff failure because he's young. He

(30:52):
had some inexcusable games and he's got to be better.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So so Mark, you mentioned Brunson at SGA. So apparently
you think that d NB face should be a foulbator.
That's that's what I'm getting from That's what I'm getting
from your from your thought on that. So I'm a
Thunder fan, So I'm elated right now because my guys
are back in the NBA Finals after a long drought
and some down years. And I love what you're saying
about SGA, But I do question what's the storyline of

(31:19):
this final is going to be? What's going to be
talked about more the quality of the Thunder as a
team perhaps or the like unwatchability of the fouling that
goes on around Shay Gildes Alexander.

Speaker 4 (31:35):
Yeah, I think it's probably going to be the latter
because it's more interesting to talk about. I'm sure it's
also going to be talked about that. Oh, these are
two small market teams. There's not a lot of playoff bus.
You know, the NBA wants all this parody, but what
if no one's watching. We'll see what the ratings are.
I think in the last year the ratings have relatively improved.
But as it pertains to the Thunder and Shay Gilders Alexander. Yes,

(31:56):
he deserves some Oscar nominations for how he's self called,
but I don't think it's the same level severity as
I've seen James Harden do, where you know, he's flailing
at the foul line, he's jumping into other people's landing
areas and then gain upset when they're in his landing area.
I think with Shay Goges Alexandria, there might be some

(32:18):
embellished contact, but I think that the majority of his
free throws are more earned than fabricated. He's using angles well,
he gets to the rim. Usually when you get to
the rim, you're drawing actual contact than when you're hoisting
up threes. And you know, he's just a great crafty
playmaker that knows how to score. And while his bread

(32:38):
and butter is getting to the rim for easy hoops.
He's reduced some of his weaknesses. He's improved to a three
point shooter. He's a good meat range shot. He's never
going to, you know, win any comparisons as the next
John Stockton or Steve Nash, but he has improved as
a playmaker. Even though he's an isolation heavy player, he

(33:00):
has a lot of good depth around him. Joe Williams
getting all started, not because he's become a more consistent scorer.
His pick and roll game with Isaiah Hartenstein and chet
Holmger are great. Talking with Isaiah earlier this season, he said,
one of the things that makes Shay such a great
pick and roll partner is he knows how to read
those angles and you know, so he doesn't have to
do it for him. So he's a real ston of

(33:22):
the game. He knows how to play well. He masters
the intricacies, and one of the intricacies is knowing how
drawn fell. So what I'm getting at Jason is that
he does use that, but it's one of many tools
in his toolbox. It's not a one trick pony. And
so I think, you know him gained that label that
he's this freezer mercenary I think is a bit strong,

(33:43):
but that's what it's all about in the playoffs, and
you know the media environment that we're in.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Hey man, Paul Pierce was a free throw mercenary too,
like a lot of them.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
So we got her in this playoff series. He will
not come out with a wheelchairs.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
So thirty seconds then we gotta go. But go ahead
and predict it. How is it gonna go? Is Are
the Thunder gonna win this thing in three or are
they just gonna have to play the four games? Based
on everything I'm seeing, they're like a minus seven to
fifty favorite entering the entering the finals, which terrifies me
as a Thunder fan. But but how do you see
it going?

Speaker 4 (34:17):
Well, thirty seconds, I can keep it pretty sure. Yeah,
the Thunder's gonna win. They're gonna win five games. Only
reason I think the Pacers will get one game is
the Thunder one want their guard down. The Pacers will
go all out in the game three to avoid a sweep.
But I think as much as the Pacers have been
great with Hyres Haliburton's play, their depth and pace, Thunder
a whole another level. Sga got MVP for a reason.

(34:38):
Best scorer in the league. They have a lot of
great depth. Their defense is the best in the league,
so many wings that create turnovers, great offense. The series
will be fun to watch because of Thunder are such
a great dominant team, But it's not gonna be competitive.
I think Spurs Nets in two thousand and three, Spurs
Cavs in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Appreciate you, Mark, You're the best brother.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
Have a good right back at you. He's a joint.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
That is Mark Madena. I think that's Mark g Underscore
Medina on x Be sure to check out Fox Sports
Radio YouTube channel ton of great videos from everybody on FSR.
On YouTube, you'll see a whole bunch of video highlights
from all the shows. Be sure to subscribe while you're
there so you always have instant access to our Fox
Sports Radio videos on YouTube. Coming up next, live from

(35:23):
the Fox Sports Radio Studios, saying goodbye to a legend TNT.
That's next FSR. Okay, wasn't expecting the verb, but we'll
take it. Weirdly enough, Almost every time I pick like
a nineties alternative ride on Peloton, some reason this pops

(35:45):
up way more than I would like, just because this
isn't really what I'm This one's not really gonna, you know,
bring up the the output number all that much. But
I'm digging it in this role. So you never know
how good you've got it until it's gone. Except in
this case, I think we knew exactly what we had
for the last thirty six years. Thirty six years Turner

(36:08):
had the NBA TBS, TNT, and last night was the
final broadcast as the Eastern Conference Finals comes to an end.
Of course, ABC and ESPN don't have the NBA Finals,
and so this was kind of the sendoff for Turner.
It was the sendoff for Inside the NBA because of
everything that we know about. We've talked about on all

(36:29):
the shows, I'm sure over the course of the last season.
But you know, these guys are still going to be
working together in the same studio with much of the
same crew, but it's going to air on a different network.
And that's how Ernie Johnson actually said it on the broadcast.
But is it going to be the same We're going

(36:49):
to talk more later on in the show about that
because our own Rob Parker had an interesting take on it.
We'll play the audio for you a little later on
in the show. But gave them freedom, Turner gave them
the freedom to make it what it was. And one
of the reasons why is because they had the room
to be themselves, but they also had the room to breathe.

(37:12):
I think two of the biggest problems for ESPN's coverage
is first off, I mean the guys that they have
doing it, the people that they have doing their studio show,
they're not as good because it's just not quite as natural.
But they're also and some of that's their fault, but
a lot of it is out of their control because
the breaks are so frequent and the time that they

(37:32):
actually have to analyze is so short they have to
get to another commercial break, so everybody's comment feels rushed.
It's like you have fifteen seconds say as many words
as you can, and that fifteen seconds end it with
equip and then the next guy will pick it up.
There's nothing natural about it. So the NBA on TNT
it always felt relaxed. Yes, you still had the same

(37:56):
kind of time overall between the half and the star
of the third quarter, but it was used differently. Everything flowed,
it was never in a rush. It felt more conversational,
even though they were still trying to get across things.
But there was clearly not just bullet point agendas that

(38:16):
needed to be gotten to. It's just we're gonna let
Shaq and Kenny, and before Shack was even there, we're
gonna let Kenny and we're gonna let Charles analyze and
break this game down the way that they want to. Yes,
We'll have a couple of things that will do regularly,
but a lot of it is just gonna be letting
them talk. And that's the kind of thing you just
don't get. You just don't and that's why it's not

(38:37):
gonna be touched again. But I actually want to point
out one other thing that happened. It wasn't on the
inside broadcast, and that was what Reggie Miller said to
Kevin Harlan on the floor. I thought Alley of the
Force was great in what she said as well, But
what Reggie Miller said to Kevin Harlan was one of
the most genuine, just kindest, greatest tributes I've ever heard

(39:01):
in some kind of a scenario like that, because he
talked about being next to Kevin for so many years
and working with him, watching how good he was. And
Kevin Harland is just incredible and has been. He's you
can't find anybody better. He and I and Eagle are
the top of the list. But Reggie talking about just
what he learned from Kevin Harland, and so he was

(39:22):
saying all this and Kevin Harlan was getting a little
emotional listening to it, and Reggie was getting emotional and
then Reggie said, and you made me a better father
because I watched how how you were a dad O
losing Turner and losing television. I don't even care the
fact that Reggie said that to Kevin Harlan. That is

(39:42):
the greatest accomplishment of Kevin Harlan's entire career, that Reggie
saw him and said, I want to be a better
father because of how he is as a dad. When
we come back, we'll reset the Eastern Conference Finals and more.
You're listening to sports, we'll reset and talk again about

(40:02):
the Eastern Conference Finals. Here in just a moment, I
am Jason Martin. We are live broadcasting from the Fox
Sports Radio studios in for Bernie Frato tonight as he
is taking a well deserved week off, hopefully resting well,
Hopefully his family is doing well. Look forward to hearing
him back next week. Knicks are out, Pacers are ins,

(40:27):
gond Be Pacers, Thunder in the NBA Finals. Mark Medena,
our NBA expert, joined us in hour one and said,
thunder in five. I'll give you my official prediction at
the very end of the program, just a little under
three hours from right now. I did ask Madina I
asked him if brunts and dribbles too much, and he said,

(40:48):
you know, I don't think it's out of selfish reasons,
but he didn't exactly deny it either, and I agree
with him, by the way, I don't think it's a
selfish thing from Jalen Brunson. I don't think it's not
trusting other people. I just think that's kind of a
weiry fine himself right now. But I do think that
if he watches the tape and watches the film and
wants to find room for improvement going into next year,
I think his off ball performance is going to be

(41:11):
the thing that maybe can help him out a little
because he's so ball dominant, not ball hog necessarily. But
there were a couple of possessions, especially in that second half,
where Brunsa just didn't pass. I mean he held the
ball for seventeen eighteen seconds just trying to make something happen.
And maybe he was trying to pass the ball, but

(41:33):
he also I think he was just singularly focused, like
I have to be the one to shoot right now,
I've got to do all of these things well. He
ended up not having a particularly good game, and he
may have been exhausted. He's played a ton of minutes,
obviously for a team that is not particularly deep. He
played thirty four in this game, but he was eight
of eighteen from the field, only had nineteen points. You're
going to have to get more from him than that.

(41:54):
I mean, og Ananobi was their leading scorer for the Knicks.
He had twenty four in this game, and he really
was on the mark except from three, but nobody wearing
a Knicks jersey was good from three. They were nine
to thirty two in the ballgame, not even thirty percent, uh,
and then their opponents were over fifty percent from beyond
the arc. Not to mention, the Knicks couldn't shoot a

(42:16):
free throw to save their life. So they get beat
by seventeen one twenty five to one aweight. We'll see
what the Knicks bring back next year? Will they bring
back Tom Thibodeau. Many more things to talk about as
it relates to the NBA Finals, but also just this series,
which was very entertaining, especially early. But a lot of
these games were just super competitive, super physical, but there

(42:38):
was a lot of respect between these two teams. In
the end, I predicted with Aaron Torres, I told him.
I said, here's my wild prediction of this series. Somebody's
gonna get suspended because this thing's can get out of control.
There's going to be a fight or something like that
during this series. Didn't happen a lot of professional basketball.
There were some hard fowls. Josh Hart took one to
the face. I think it was from Siaka. It wasn't

(43:00):
anything dirty, it was just it was at Seahockem actually,
but it it looked rough, but it was not intentionally
designed hit him in the face. I think he was
going for the ball. There's just a lot of hard
playoff fouls, some really hard nosed basketball played, but some
really dramatic games that were played. But ultimately, the team
that knew how to close is a team that's still playing,

(43:22):
that goes for game one, it goes for Game three,
and it certainly goes for Game six because this was
a four point game. To happen in the second half
is just like the Knicks had nothing left. But really
the Pacers took it out of them. And anytime that
the Pacers could run, if they could just pick up
the pace of the game. And I'm not trying to
make a pun there, but if they were able to run,

(43:43):
get out and run, get on the fast break, get turnovers,
which the Knicks had seventeen turnovers in this game, and
the Pacers made them pay for all of them. But
they could run the Knicks off the floor because they're
just so much more athletic when it came down to it,
and they wanted to lay faster. When the pace slowed
down and was more of a half court game, that's

(44:04):
where the Knicks held more of an advantage because that's
not where the Pacers are at their best. But in
this game the next game, everything they wanted, and the
Pacers seemed to have the answer for a number of
passing lanes that they were able to take that thing
the other way, I get uncontested layups or easy shots there,
So to be them in the thunder Thunder or a

(44:25):
minus seven to fifty favorite. I think the Pacers number
I saw was plus five fifty or five twenty five.
So that series will start on Thursday. But I want
to lead. Actually I said this, I wanted to reset there,
but I wanted to lead this segment with the WNBA.

(44:46):
That has to sound strange to you, because I'm not
sure people realize that that league still exists. Caitlin Clark
got injured, and pretty much the minute that happened, the
WNBA was not talked about at all, well outside of
one story which was also Kitlin Clark adjacent, which we'll
talk about here in just a moment. But ESPN's not

(45:08):
even pushing it on, pushing it on their website, which
they were doing relentlessly for the first couple of weeks
of the season. For all this talk of the WNBA
being a league on the rise and how it's not
about one player, the minute that one player got injured,
nobody cared, like and I mean nobody cared. And we

(45:31):
saw Kaitlyn Clark at the Pacers Knicks game in Game six,
and like there was like, oh yeah, women, women played basketball.
I forgot about that. There's Kaitlyn Clark, She's celebrating threes
for the Pacers in that game in the first half.
Watching in stands of course, if she's gonna miss four
games or whatever it is with this injury. The only

(45:53):
WNBA story that I have seen outside of that one
that we'll be talking about here in second is that
Page Becker's the rookie phenom from Connecticut who's you know,
just trying to kind of get her feet wet. Any
WNBA being placed in concussion protocol. I saw that in
like a list of sports headlines. I was like, oh, well,
that's no good. But that's really it. But the only

(46:16):
other story of the week was Yes, it was that
one where the WNBA came out put out a statement
reviewing they could not corroborate or find any evidence of
the racial slurs that were allegedly being hurled at Angel
Reese in Indiana from Fever fans. The reason they didn't
find any evidence of that is that it's kind of

(46:37):
impossible to find evidence when none exists. I'm taking this
to the river. I'm calling your bluff. The reason you
didn't find evidence is because there was no evidence to find.
So we've had apologies from media personalities who jumped a gun.

(46:57):
We got this like, oh my bad, sorry, I guess
I guess that wasn't a thing. We've had that popping
out here after fans have been vilified, and even the
Indiana Fever weirdly in their statement after the WNBA finals
or the WNBA statement came out saying, yo, you know,
we don't tolerate this kind of behavior either and all,

(47:18):
like there's no reason for them to even say anything
at that point, Like, really, there's no reason for them
to say anything other than, yeah, maybe don't vilify the
fans with no evidence just because you want something to
be true. And that's the point here. What's truly sad
about this story. And I don't think that this is
any kind of a controversial opinion to have. If you

(47:42):
watch the way this was covered, if you watch the
way this was written about, the way it was talked
about on TV, on websites, on podcasts, on radio programs,
everywhere sports discourse takes place, there is no real other
conclusion to have other than that the WNBA, not everybody,

(48:06):
but a lot of the players and certainly all the
interested parties, the WNBA and certainly the media desperately wanted
this to be true. They wanted to find that evidence,
not to get to the bottom of the story, but
to have an excuse for their own bigotry. That sounds controversial,

(48:32):
but it really isn't. The racism kind of seems like
it was on the other side, and it feels like
it's kind of been on the other side for a
while now. We had the Britney Griner story and what
she said. We've had Cheryl Swoops on podcasts saying some

(48:54):
strange stuff, especially how she's kind of gone after Caitlin
Clarkson's college. We've had all of this stuff happening, and
yet this story when that Angel Reaes may have had
racial slurs hurled at her, everybody ran with this like
it was true when there was no evidence of it

(49:15):
at all. And the only reason you do that is
because you're almost trying to wiell it into existence, or
you're so biased or so blind that you just assume
it's true. It has to be true, right, I mean,
that's the only explanation, except that most of the time,
the vast majority of the time, it isn't true. And

(49:37):
it's definitely not true in that league. But I found
that incredibly sad that watching how it was discussed, how
it was all framed, and even the apologies after the fact,
it wasn't like they were apologizing for any kind of

(50:01):
a good reason, and they were almost doing it with
their hand behind their back, with the fingers crossed, like yeah,
we're saying this, we don't mean it, we just feel
like we have to say it. Unfortunately this proved not
to be true. Unfortunately we couldn't find evidence of this
because we really really wanted it to be there. And

(50:23):
the other reason why you could say the WNBA might
have wanted it to be there is because they are attempting, basically,
it seems like now, to prop up their entire league
on racial animus between insert player here and Caitlyn Clark,
particularly Angel Reese, but there have been other people in
that role over the last season and a half. This

(50:47):
is not good, folks, It's just not I said last
week on in my usual spot with Aaron Torres, and
I called others to do the same. I said, We're
just not going to do this anymore. The WNBA doesn't
want us to watch, We're just not gonna watch. If
they if they're players, if the people that should be

(51:08):
excited about the opportunity to let Caitlin Clark be a
star and all of them rise because people are paying
more attention now. So maybe if we're totally behind this
and there's a positive feeling behind it, then maybe there
are is a chance for a couple more ships to
rise here. But they've done everything but that last year,

(51:33):
seventeen percent of all flagrant fouls called in the WNBA,
Caitlin Clark was the recipient of those fouls. She was
the victim. Seventeen percent, that's almost a fifth of them
were to Kaitlin Clark. Everybody had a snid comment behind
her back. She had to earn the respect of like
Diana Tarassi and Super Bird. I think maybe they came

(51:53):
around at some point. She had college coaches going afterward
when she was at Iowa. We know what all this
is about. But even if that weren't as big a
deal as it is, they've just done everything possible to
tell you that they don't want their lead to succeed
if she's the reason. And so it's really easy then

(52:15):
for me to say to a league that I've never
really cared whether or not they existed or not, that
in my world they don't have to anymore. The reason
I am saying this tonight is because I think it
is important to say that this league that tried to
claim that it's it's far more than one player and

(52:38):
angel Rees saying people are here to see me too,
and they're gonna and that's true, and you're gonna know
that don't know, they're really not they're they're really really not.
You have one unicorn, and instead of featuring that unicorn,
you've done everything you can to take it to the
equivalent of the unicorn glue factory. And if you are

(53:04):
that just simple minded, narrow minded, that you would rather
your league not be what it could be because of
who the star is, then I'm cool watching it burn, honestly,
because you set the fire yourself. We've never needed a

(53:27):
women's professional basketball league. We don't need any sports quite frank,
we don't. Let's be real. It's all entertainment. But the
reason that sports exists is because there are fans. The
reason sports exists is because we do get excited about
all this. We watch the equivalent of our superheroes, people
doing things that we can't do. That's why we watch sports.

(53:50):
We marvel at it. We love the competition, all those
kinds of things. But especially with a WNBA, that's never
really been any kind of a rating thing to even discuss.
Caitlyn Clark gave them a shot, and they've just squandered
it over and over and over again. And now what
they've decided to do is, at least somebody has decided

(54:11):
we're going to try to internally turn this thing into
Jerry Springer. We're gonna appeal to the bottom of the
sea of discourse. I just there's better things that I
can do with my time, folks. I think there's better
things that you can do with your time. They have

(54:33):
They are dangerously close to just putting themselves out to pasture,
just putting their league out to pasture. They've never turned
a profit, and you have to start wondering, if you're
the NBA propping them up, is it worth? Is it
juice worth to squeeze anymore? They have a meal ticket
right now. And if you didn't know that, look at

(54:55):
the interest level and even just a conversation at all
on sports we sites that have tried to prop it up.
Look at there. They're not even talking about it. Things
aren't going to get better unless they stop this. I
don't know if they're capable. For the best pregame show

(55:19):
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(55:40):
Sunday morning. That's right here on Fox Sports Radio and
the iHeart Radio app. Speaking of Fox Sports Radio, coming
up next live from the Fox Sports Radio studios. What
I promised in hour one with Mark Medina a conversation
about who exactly Anthony Edwards is and who he can

(56:01):
be in the future. We'll talk about that next, Tim,
Jason Martin, and this is Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 3 (56:08):
the nation. Catch all of our shows at foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Twenty seven point six points a game. That was the
average for Anthony Edwards this past season. That was up
from twenty five point nine a year ago, twenty four
point six the year before that. He's gotten better every year.
He went from nineteen point we went from nineteen to
twenty one to twenty four to twenty five to twenty seven.

(56:45):
Career average of twenty four. Ant Man is a beast,
that much we know. Welcome back to Fox Sports Radio.
I'm Jason Martin, and for Bernie Fratto, hope he's having
a great weekend off. Andy Edwards is a great basketball player.
But this is all becoming really interesting, this conversation surrounding

(57:08):
a man because of what was said about him last year,
how he started being covered, especially during the playoffs, but
even before the postseason started last year, how he was
being talked about. There were a lot of people that
make a lot more money than me, that talk about
sports for a living, that were comparing him to Michael Jordan.

(57:31):
The amount of people it was utterly insane. So I
watched a video on YouTube a day or so ago
about this very topic, and a lot of these things
were just cut and clipped on so I could see it.
So I can give you some of these examples. Steven A. Smith,
talking about Anthony Edwards last year, said that you reminded

(57:53):
him of Jordan in Game one of the ninety two finals,
Michael Wilbon multiple times. He even used his middle name,
Michael Jeffrey Jordan, which some people do a lot. Kendrick Perkins,
who gets paid to talk about basketball that's a thing
that's real, still gets a paycheck to say what he

(58:14):
says on TV said that Anthony Edwards reminded him of
the nineteen eighty eight Michael Jordan. Incidentally, he also said
Kawhi Leonard was the next Jordan. Now that John Moran's
future was quote Jordan esque, unquote. Mike Conley, his teammate
in Minnesota veteran in the league, said Verry Jordan esk

(58:35):
what he was seeing from Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards was
really good. I gave you a stat line right, twenty
seven point six three points. His three point percentage actually
went up this year to just about forty shot thirty
nine point five percent from three, and he was taking
almost four more a game. He went from six point
seven a year ago to ten point three this year.

(58:58):
I felt like he was taking to threes. I've heard
that from a lot of people, but I mean, his
percentage went up and he was taken more. So I
don't know they're gonna have that many qualms. I still
want to see him take it to the rack more often.
If I'm if, I'm a Teebles fan because of his
explosiveness and what he's able to do, and I think
his mid range game is pretty solid too. But what
Anthony Edwards has said over this year or so, is

(59:21):
I don't want to be in the face of the NBA.
That was what he said when asked after a game
in the locker room. What he says to those who
suggest and have said that he's shooting too many threes?
Anthony Edwards said, bleep them. Can't use that on terrestrial radio.

(59:42):
What he said, dude is an amazing player. I don't
think there's anybody out there that's going to doubt that.
But my question tonight is whether or not he's a
leader or is that something he aspires to be Does
he want to be one? So Mark Madeen actually talked
about that with me in the first hour and what

(01:00:03):
he said was, you know, as he's talked to Aunt
over this last couple of years, Anthony Edwards didn't feel
comfortable kind of assuming any kind of a leadership role
when he was so much younger than other guys on
the team. And look, I get that, I really do.
It is hard being younger than someone and still leading them.
I've had that responsibility at different times in my life.

(01:00:25):
I probably will have it again, although I'm getting older now,
so there are younger people than me that have led
me and it can be a bit of a challenge.
It can be a little awkward. You can just kind
of feel like, I don't know if I really have
the clout and what have I done to accomplish this.
But if you're Anthony Edwards and you're being talked about

(01:00:46):
the way Anthony Edwards is being talked about, and sports
is just a completely different universe. There's a lot of
veterans who are much older than Patrick Mahomes, but we
know who the leader of that team is. Right. There
are some teams that are veteran led, and every good
team I think has a good veteran cores of guys
that can be enforcers or just guys that really do

(01:01:09):
just sort of help keep things under control. But most
of the time the stud is the younger guy, which, yes,
it can create friction, but on this team, there was
no question Anthony Edwards was the best player this year
and last year when Karl Anthony Towns was there and
now when Julius Randall was there. Both those guys are good,

(01:01:30):
but they're not Anthony Edwards. I think we know that
the hierarchy has to be based on that, I would think,
so my question then becomes is he an engine. Is
Anthony Edwards the engine that can carry a team to
the trophy? Is that what he is today? I think
the answer is no. Is that what he could be?

(01:01:51):
I mean hypothetically, if we're living in a universe, yes,
but I haven't seen any sign to that, and there's
nothing that tells me that's what he is going to
become right now. Right now, what I can tell you
incontrovertibly about Anthony Edwards is he's an incredible basketball player.
He's a great hooper. And that's why I would never

(01:02:15):
use Jordan, even though like he's built a little bit
like Jordan. The way he plays, the way he shoots
and stuff. If you put side by side, you'll see
some Jordan moves. I heard Dan Patrick and his guys
saying this earlier this week, and I've said the same thing.
The only guy that I've ever seen that just actually
I saw him just like he reminds me of Jordan,
just in the way he moves, the way he shoots.

(01:02:36):
Everything about him is Kobe. I think he's the guy
that came the closest. And look, Kobe's legacy is we
don't amo to discuss what an incredible talent. He was
everything around him right. But Anthony Edwards reminds me a
lot more Kevin Durant than he does Michael Jordan. I'm
not talking about their game, I'm talking about their mentality.

(01:02:59):
So I'm a fund as I mentioned earlier, So I'm
excited about the finals. But I also remember the Durant years.
I remember Durant and Westbrook and Hardened and Ibaka and
those squads, and Durant was the assassin, but Westbrook was
the fuel. Westbrook was the guy that had the ball

(01:03:21):
in his hands and seemed to be the one that
was taking on that kind of a role like they
were playing based on his energy. Durant was just out
there dominating on the floor. So I feel like Anthony
Edwards is more akin to Kevin Durant. Let's go more contemporary.
He's more like Kevin Durant than he is Steph Curry.

(01:03:42):
Kevin Durant was never a leader. I don't think on
any team he's ever played on in Oklahoma City. I
would argue that it was probably more Russ who was
the one that wanted that leadership role or that captain role.
Kevin Durant just wanted to go out and score forty
every night. He was ice coal and he was definitely

(01:04:02):
a better basketball player Kevin Durant and Golden State. Steph
was the leader of that team. It was Steph's team.
Kevin Durant might have been the best player, but Steph
was the leader of that team. As an overall basketball player.
Durant's the best player on every team he's ever played on,
I think. But there is more too, legacy and all

(01:04:23):
of those things than just what you were on the floor.
Anthony Edwards on the basketball court is better than just
about everyone in the league. I don't think there's a question,
but there's still something that feels like it's missing and
how he's approaching the game and when he says, you know,
I didn't struggle after he has a subpar performance in
the Western Conference finals, but I want him after the

(01:04:46):
fact to care a little more. And I will say,
like after they were eliminated, he said, I'm gonna work
really hard in the all season. And I've heard that before.
Yannis said that after they got beat one year and
he went home and he did, and I'm hoping that's
exactly what Anthony Edwards is going to go If I'm
a t Wolves fan or just as a fan of
the league. I do hope that Anthony Edwards is going
to go home and he's going to come back with

(01:05:06):
that killer instinct. That's the only thing that like he does.
He seems to be a really nice guy, seems to
be have a great personality. You heard Medina say last
hour that his team loves being around him. He's a
guy that that people like being around. So that's good.
So he's a great player who also can bring people in.
He doesn't push them away. He's somebody that could lead.

(01:05:30):
But that's what he has to learn. And I don't
know that You go home and you work on your jumper,
you take a bunch of threes, you do a lot
of work in the gym. That's not going to make
you a better leader. That's that's gonna maybe improve your basketball,
but you're already all world there. I want to see
it more consistently. I don't want to see an eight

(01:05:51):
point output but most but like, the leadership stuff is
just going to be It's gonna be a mental thing.
And I don't know. I don't know what unlocks that,
and I don't know if that's just a quality. If
that's a quality you develop or if that is something
you've either got it you don't. Madina said to me,

(01:06:11):
you know he feels like this this year he did
take steps forward as a leader. Okay, that's right now.
I just see an incredible hooper. What I want to see.
I don't want to see a better jumper. I want
to see a killer instinct. I want to see wins
and losses where it really affects him and where I
can tell it affects him. There's something about this era

(01:06:35):
of sports where the wins and losses and so many
of these team sports just don't seem to have the
sting that they once did. On either side, the highs
aren't as high and the lows aren't as low. It's
hard to say that when you see the Pacers do
what they did on Saturday night and the celebration that
they had afterwards, and the Thunder making the finals, and certainly,

(01:06:56):
you know, the Eagles winning the Super Bowl and all this,
I understand that this is not like one hundred percent
always going to be true. But at the same time,
I just kind of there's still a little bit too
much like camaraderie between opposing forces in these leagues, and
it's like nobody seems to take this as seriously as

(01:07:17):
I want him to. Some I say, nobody, you understand
that I'm speaking that way knowing that there are guys
that I feel like Brunton cares a lot. After the
game tonight, they in the press conference, he just flat
out says, it stinks that we lost. It stinks, put
everything into it lost. Only one team's gonna be really
happy at the end of this, and now we know

(01:07:37):
it's gonna be one of two. It's either gonna be
the Oklahoma City Thunder or it's gonna be the Indiana Pacers.
But again, like Anthony Edwards, right now, I think he's
just more interested in being a dominant basketball player. I
need to see something else. I need to see that
something extra. I need to see that quality where not
only do guys want to be around him, but guys

(01:07:57):
are galvanized by being around him, not just made better
being around him, but made into Warriors being around him.
There's something about being around a superstar that has that
quality where you just know, because that guy's on your team,
you can win no matter what. He's going to be

(01:08:18):
there for you and you can't give him that yet
because of a couple of dud performances in the playoffs.
Not like you're gonna expect every night to be forty
point nine, but Anthony Edwards can't afford to have an
eight point night. The team can't win without him having
at least twenty, and that's if everybody else is firing

(01:08:39):
on all cylinders, and usually that's not going to be
the case. So I don't know. I still think it's
a question, but I think the idea that the Michael
Jordan stuff's got to go. And it's not just because
he hasn't won a championship yet. It's just because the
thing that Jordan had as somebody that watched his entire

(01:09:01):
pro career who's old enough and lucky enough to remember
at least some of it. Going up in age, some
of my memory is not what it used to be.
But there was just you knew when you watched Jordan
there was no one else. There wasn't There were great
players all across the league, and then there was one

(01:09:21):
guy where it's just like he's on a completely different planet.
He may be in a completely different galaxy like that,
this dude is not human everybody else is a basketball player,
and then there's Michael Jordan at his best. Lebron James
didn't even sniff that. As great as I think Lebron is,

(01:09:42):
he didn't even sniff that. With all due respect to
those who think that somehow he belongs to that conversation,
he doesn't. But no one does. And the idea that
we continue to try and crown the next Jordan, we're
not going to find another one, and it makes it
I think it's put a lot of pressure on Anthony
Edwards because the way he was talked about last year,
this year is a disappointment. Even though his points per

(01:10:05):
game went up, his three point percentage went up, his
three points attempted went up, he went from making two
a game to making four a game. His field goal
percentage dropped off just a hair, but it's like two tenths,
so not all that big of a deal there. But
this is a dude that's averaging almost twenty eight points
a game to go with fire rebounds, five assists. He's

(01:10:30):
given you, He's given you so much, but because of
how he was talked about last year, he's not gonna
be able to live up to that. Almost no one
is so I watched that and I see these numbers,
and I see his improvement as a basketball player, but
he's not Jordan, and so now when I watch him,

(01:10:50):
I'm just kind of like, yeah, that did him no favors.
And it's not just Anthony Edwards and it's not just
Michael Jordan. We've got to stop doing this about contemporary
athletes and athletes of the past because it sets a
standard that they never asked to follow. He sits down
for an interview and Malika Andrews says, they're all comparing

(01:11:14):
you to Michael Jordan, and he has this He looks
away from the camera and he smiles almost like, please
don't do this to me. And he's right, and I'm
not gonna do it because it's not a fair comparison.
It's not fair to him. It's certainly not fair to
Jordan either. And now it gets even more interesting because
Jordan's gonna come back on NBC and do media for

(01:11:37):
the first time in his career, and so now if
anybody's gonna be compared to Jordan, he's actually gonna have
to potentially have to address it, which I'm fascinated to see.
I'll say that. But man like, is Jordan gonna sit
down with Anthony Edwards and say, do you think you're
the next me? I'm here to tell you he's not.

(01:11:57):
Even if he ends up being one of the five
best players to ever lived, he's not going to be Jordan.
Jordan was just completely and holy unique. So you look
at all this, and you look at what was put
on his shoulders this year. I am really really intrigued
to see what Anthony Edwards comes back with next season

(01:12:21):
because Oklahoma City is going nowhere. Some of these other
teams are going to make some moves and they're going
to be right there in the thick of it, and
Minnesota's going to have to be consistent, and that means
that Anthony Edwards is going to have to be consistent,
night after night after night having those kind of performances,
and he's not going to be able to have a
couple of games that he had in the playoffs. I

(01:12:43):
think next year is a huge turning point for him
because he went from being the anointed to the wed
anointed him too fast, and so now we've gone from
one extreme, probably are now under representing how good he is.
So now we're going to find out probably next year
what he acts is because he's going to fall somewhere
between those two extremes. That is going to be really

(01:13:07):
interesting to follow, and I bet we're going to talk
a lot about it. Coming up next live from the
Fox Sports Radio studios. This finals matchup Indiana versus Oklahoma City.
The NBA can't be happy with this. We'll talk about
that next. I'm Jason Martin. This is Fox Sports Radio.

(01:13:30):
The answer to the question, Jason, have you ever seen
The Spin Doctors live? Is yes, many many years ago.
Saw The Spin Doctors and the Gin Blossoms and Cracker
on a triple bill in Charlotte, North Carolina. Many years ago.

(01:13:52):
I'm talking before the turn of the century, so at
the time that was a very hip show. Hit. Might
be the most uncool thing I've ever said. Anyway, speaking
of uncool, NBA probably not thrilled with this finals matchup. Yes,

(01:14:14):
they embrace parody, and I'll tell you that there is
a silver lining in that, But Indi Una versus Oklahoma City,
this is the worst possible outcome for a league desperately
trying to salvage a pretty pitiful regular season on television,
even if it's an on court classic look Pacers Thunder.

(01:14:36):
I'm jacked up. Why I'm a Thunder fan, so obviously
I have a dog in to fight, and I have
a lot of I have some friends that are Pacers fans.
I'm in Nashville. I've grown up in this part of
the country. Went to school at Western Kentucky, which is
just a few hours away from Indianapolis, not even half
a day's drive, like, not very far at all. Many

(01:14:58):
of us have been to Pacers game to see others.
I saw Blake Griffin actually play against the Pacers many
years ago. So I got some friends that are super
excited about this, and it's been fun watching the Pacers
during this playoff run especially, But Indy versus OKAC has
the national interest level of what can I compare it

(01:15:22):
to Indy versus OKAC? That really, that's an old disease
an Zari Joe, that's a reproduction of it. Because I
can't come up with a worse example. That's how bad
it is. From a ratings perspective. The basketball may be amazing,
but on paper this has got to be near the
bottom of the list for Adam Silver. But again, they're

(01:15:46):
embracing parody so teams that are not in New York, Boston, La, Philly, Houston.
It does give small market fans something to hope for
in the future. And we had this a few years
ago with Milwaukee and Phoenix being in the finals against
one another. So, like you think about college football right now,
the haves are getting richer while the have nots are

(01:16:08):
basically going to be left out. And as you see
these potential expansion plans and what's being discussed amidst the
Big Ten particularly but Greg Sankie and the SEC as well,
if you don't have the bank account, you're not going
to have a shot, right the have nots are the

(01:16:28):
grave is being dug deeper right now. The emphasis is
really on your team is not going to have a chance.
So this does give you hope. The more teams that
you see make it to the finals, especially from small markets,
then the more other small markets start to think their

(01:16:49):
day could come. So it's a dud on paper right like,
just purely on paper. Indian Okac, we're not even looking
at the roster, so I'm looking at the talent. We're
not looking at Halibert and Siakam, not looking at Sga
and Williams and Holmgren. And there's a lot to like
about this series just from a basketball perspective. We're still

(01:17:09):
gonna have from a pure business and ratings standpoint, right,
it doesn't have Boston versus La. It doesn't have Chicago,
it doesn't have that. It's two small markets. I mean. Famously,
Indianapolis has been called what it's been called knap City.
And the reason why it was called nap City or
Naptown is because when you came there to play a

(01:17:31):
game or to cover a game, you would go to
the hotel and take a nap before the game because
there was nothing else to do in Indianapolis beforehand. And
then after you just went right back to the hotel
and went to sleep because the same thing I just said,
there's nothing to do in Indianapolis. It's actually a pretty
cool town. But that was just the knock on it, right,
because if you're a New York sports writer going to Indianapolis,

(01:17:54):
it's going to feel like there's nothing there. And oka see,
it's a very very small market. Great fans, great building,
great franchise, unbelievable executive in Sam Presty Been. I love
the fact that they've been as competitive as they've been,
and it's been so much easier to be a fan.

(01:18:15):
Even with the lean years, I still believed in the
organization and you see some of these moves. It took
some time, but boy are they paying off at this point.
But if you're the NBA and you have just dealt
with an All Star Game debacle, a regular season where
week after week you were being out drawn by things
you had no business being out drawn by, you are

(01:18:35):
having a solid playoffs. These playoffs have been a lot
of fun to watch, and I think the numbers have
been up a little bit too. But then you come
to the end of it, and what do you have.
You don't have Steph you don't have Lebron, you don't
have big time markets. You've got SGA who, hopefully the
world is going to come to love and come to
watch and appreciate and understand just how good the now

(01:18:58):
reigning MVP of the league is. And you're gonna get
to watch the fight and the heart and the depth
and the exquisite coaching of Rick Carlisle's Indiana Pacers team,
and you're gonna see We'll see how long a series goes.
I'll predict it at the end of the program. You
hope that that's gonna happen. But if you're the NBA,
this is the worst time for this because getting casual

(01:19:22):
eyeballs on this is gonna be really, really difficult. The
casual fans gonna yawn right past Indiana v OKC. But
for Adam Silver, I mean that fan's pretty much been
doing that with your league since you took it over.
So maybe it's not as bad as we think. When

(01:19:42):
we come back into Fox Sports Radio Studios, Eastern Conference
Finals and Joe Flacco.

Speaker 1 (01:19:50):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
Radio, what's happening? I am Jason Martin And for the
great Bernie Ferrado, he'll be back next week. Hope you say.
Having a wonderful weekend. Hope you are as well. We
are live in the Fox Sports Radio studios. If you
miss any part of the program, hey look at this
four hours or any other show for that matter. Shortly
after we're done, the podcast goes up. If you miss

(01:20:16):
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That really helps us out again, just search Fox Sports
Radio wherever you get your cast. You'll see today's show
posted just after we get off the air. Knicks are out,

(01:20:37):
Pacers are in. They went it by seventeen, and look,
it was a four point game of to happen. The
Knicks really had played well in the first half of
the game, but the boy in the third and fourth,
the Pacers shot them out of the building. They defended
them out of the building, and they ran them out
of the building. Nicks wanted to slow down the pace.

(01:20:58):
They wanted to do that throughout this They weren't going
to be able to keep up with Indiana from that standpoint,
and the Pacers were really able to step in front
of some passing lanes. They four seventeen turnovers in the game,
scored a ton of points and a lot of them
easy buckets off of those turnovers, and as a result,

(01:21:19):
they'll be the opponents of the Western Conference champion Oklahoma
City Thunder in the NBA Finals, and that starts on Thursday.
So we've talked a lot about that game, of course,
but one thing we have not talked about. I mentioned
what I call nontent, which is just nonsense content. Tyrese

(01:21:42):
Halibert is the superstar? First of all, I think the
question itself is dumb, so let's purely spend an hour
on it on TV or on radio or whatever else
discussing it. I think it's interesting only because he does
some things that don't necessarily show up on the stat
sheet all the time. And he's not a guy that's
gonna go get you forty every single night, but he's

(01:22:02):
a guy that's gonna score generally when he has to,
a little inconsistent here and there. But you look at
everything else he does, the way he passes the ball,
the way he affects the game, the way you have
to game plan for him. I think it's a preposterous
like you're splitting hairs if you're like, is he a
star or is he a superstar? There is a guy, though,
that is not a superstar, and that's Karl Anthony Towns,

(01:22:27):
and that really is not how it should have been
coming out of Kentucky and what he projected to be
when he got to Minnesota. And from a talent standpoint,
he gives you everything you want, at least on the
offensive side of the ball. But his problem is the

(01:22:49):
same as many uber talented guys who don't ascend to
that level and its dependability. Is he a guy that
you can rely on when you absolutely have to have him? Now,
he had twenty two in this game, right, in this
Club Zoc game, he had more than Jayleen Brunson. Only
og Nanobi had more. He had twenty four. But let's

(01:23:12):
look at let's look past that. There are times in
this series where Karl Anthony Towns could not shoot his
way out of a out of an open barn. And
defensively he's just not very good. He doesn't put forth
much effort there, whether he's banged up or not. He

(01:23:34):
doesn't run very hard. Defensively, he's slow, he's a little lethargic,
he's a little clumsy, I think, on the defensive side
of the ball. If he is not scoring, if he
is not engaged and actually scoring the basketball offensively, he's
almost worse than having almost anybody else out there because
of what he's not going to be able to do

(01:23:54):
for you defensively. And so we've now seen this with
two teams. Minnesota failed to get to the finals with
him alongside Anthony Edwards, and now New York fails to
get the finals with him next to Jalen Brunson, even
as good as he is on the pick and roll,
and even as well as he can compliment Joeen Brunson,

(01:24:16):
is he a guy that you can go to the
finals with and win a championship with as your number two?
I think the answer is no. He has every opportunity
to prove me wrong going forward. But I don't think
that he plays up to his size consistently enough. He
settles for three still way too much when you see

(01:24:37):
him going downhill and really going straight at it. I mean,
there were a couple of moments where he got to
the spot before the defender could for Indiana in this game,
and so there was not going to be a charge,
and he had an opportunity for an and one didn't
shoot free throws well at all. In a game that
you had to shoot free throws well in you couldn't

(01:24:58):
lead points on the board. There's just too many times
he goes absent, like you can't find him, he's lumbering
up the court. And yeah, were there were a couple
of times this postseason where he's been banged up, right,
But if he's out there, then he's still gonna be
expected to do this or someone else should be in
there because somebody had to fill that role. But the

(01:25:21):
problem for him is and the problem for the Knicks
and the problem for the t Wolves last year is
just there's there's times when he's gonna come up really
small for you, and on a team like the Knicks
that just turned out to be all right, well, then
Brunson better go get fifty or we're gonna lose. Even
in this game, right, Brunson only had nineteen. He was
he was wiped out, and they really defended him well

(01:25:44):
in this game. After the Great Game, he had him five,
like they weren't gonna let him have it in six.
So Carlisle had his defensive set up and they just
made Brunson's life incredibly tough. But then you look at
Towns had twenty two and Anonobe had twenty four and
they got by nearly twenty points. So what does that
tell you? It tells you that not only can you

(01:26:05):
not have an off night if you're jailing Brunson, but
but Karl Anthony Towns has got to be there for you,
and he's just not enough. I think that's a fatal
flaw for this next team. I don't know what they're
gonna do about it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't
have Karl Anthony Towns on your team. I'm saying you've
got to have somebody else, and it can't be Mikhale Bridges,

(01:26:26):
who's another Look, he's a defensive first guy, and that's great,
but you're paying him way too much money to just
not be able to give you anything offensively, at least
not much. There are times when maybe he goes off,
but he's just never gonna be a particularly strong scorer
for you. And then you're looking at what while you're
looking at Josh Hart. Another guy's not gonna get you
a ton of points. He's gonna do a lot of

(01:26:47):
good things that you want in terms of rebounding and
playing playing defense and doing well in the middle, but
he's not a particularly strong offensive threat. I think that
the Knicks were just more flawed than maybe we thought.
And you know, I do think that along with that
is this desire for the Knicks to be good and

(01:27:07):
the fact that they had a marketable superstar in Jayeen
Brunson well deserved by the way. I think they may
have gotten too much credit going into this series. I
think everybody over gave them more respect than they should have. Innyan.
It was a better team, and we should have known
that before they ever started playing. Yes, the Knicks were
the three seed. Yes the Knicks blew a seventeen point

(01:27:31):
lead in Game one, but the Pacers also had to
shoot their way into that overtime and then win in
that overtime. So yes, the Knicks failed, but the Pacers
also were there to take every advantage of the holes
that were created. And then you saw the rest of

(01:27:53):
the series. They were just better. The Pacers were just better.
They were deeper, they were more consistent when it mattered
most in those last five minutes of the half, the
last five minutes of each game, And so they win
this thing in six and you look next year, it's
just like, man, did the nixt blow a real chance here? Well,
I guess that depends on whether or not you think

(01:28:14):
Oklahoma City is a Jugger or not, which most seem to.
So whoever was gonna win here where they just gonna
walk in and get dominated by the Thunder, We'll know
when a couple of weeks whether or not that's true.
I'm a thunderfan, so I am hesitant to say anything
like that, because that's just a recipe to get your
team beaten. I'm way too superstitious for my own good.

(01:28:37):
But I just when I look at Karl Anthony Towns,
I see you've got to have somebody else that's a
star alongside your money maker for that to work. He
can kind of be a two, but there's got to
be another two. So really he can be like a
two b or a two way, but there's got to
be somebody else. And I don't think that Bridges is
quite that guy. I just don't think the Knicks had enough. Ultimately,

(01:29:01):
it may cost the Bodeau's job because of how many
minutes he played the starters, and you saw Mitchell Robinson
what he was able to do, just a blue collar
guy that he is out there the way you play defensive,
way he rebounded the ball, block shots. He seemed to
be everywhere they needed him to be in Game six.
And maybe if he's healthy, they're able to do more
with him next year. But they're gonna have to address

(01:29:24):
this Carl Anthony Towons problem because too often you just
don't find him. And while nobody ever assumed he was
gonna be a lockdown defender in the league. That's not
really his m O, right, he was more of an
offensive big guy. He's a liability defensively, like he's not
even passable defensively, healthy or not. And if he's not healthy,

(01:29:49):
than man, they're abusing and taking advantage of him. And
that's exactly what the Pacers did in Game six, and
it's what they did throughout much of this series. That's
probably the biggest reason really. I mean, you can talk
about Siakam the way he played at thirty four in
this game, and he was awesome. He's great. He deserved
what he got. He deserved to be named Eastern Conference

(01:30:11):
Finals MVP. He got five of the votes, I think,
and Haliburton got four. I think you would have gotten
it right either way. But I mean, you really look
at it, and it's just kind of like it's the
failure of the Knicks just as much as the team
build and chemistry and depth of the Pacers. It's the

(01:30:34):
way that the Knicks just couldn't make the right plays
in the final couple of minutes and they didn't have
somebody else other than Brunson that they could really trust
on the offensive end. That's why he took that big
three in that game three at the end that they lost.
That's the one right, Like you look at that one,

(01:30:56):
for example, and you think to yourself, why is he
taking that shot? I understand he's an offensive first player,
but he was five feet behind the three point line
early in the shot clock, like he probably thought, well,
I'm probably not gonna get a better look and neither
is anybody else. I'm the only one that could probably
make this shot, so I'd better take it. And he
wasn't full. It wasn't a horrible shot in terms of

(01:31:18):
like how badly he missed, But you look at it,
it's just like, if there's anybody else, then maybe you
give it a bit more time. But I and that's
why as much dribbling at as much on the ball
offense as we continually saw from Jayleen Brunson in this series.
And I do think that's something they're gonna have to

(01:31:39):
look at. And jal Wen's probably gonna look at that
and say, yeah, I need to probably be off the
ball more. But who was going to be the option?
Because if Karl Anthony Towns isn't red hot, then he's
ice cold. He's not usually average he's either heat checked
Karl Anthony Towns, or put them on the bench and

(01:32:01):
let's put Mitchell Robinson in the game. Karl Anthony Towns.
That's a problem. Your number two can't be that hot
in that cold. They've got to run somewhere in the middle,
right that or there. The boom or bust potential is
too big, The volatility is too big in a sport
where the margin of the margin for error is too small.

(01:32:23):
To win four games, you got to have somebody that
you really know exactly what you're gonna get from them
night after night. And that's never gonna be your role players.
The reason why it's so hard to come back from
three to one down, and why it never gets done
and all these things is because the role players show
up at home. What did you see from the Pacers
in game six? Look at the way they shot threes.
They were fifty one percent from three in this game.

(01:32:46):
I think it was seventeen of thirty three. I don't
have it directly in front of me right now, seventeen
of thirty three or somewhere in that vicinity from three.
Those role players made everything. They made stuff from the corners,
they made stuff from the ye they made stuff from
the top, like everything they took. And then you look
at the next nine of thirty two. What do your
role players do on the road? They miss It's just

(01:33:09):
more comfortable at home. There's something about how it feels
on your feet, right. Every floor is a little bit different.
I just know this lighting. I know this lighting because
I've been in it so many times. The glare on
the floor, I'm used to it. The way the building smells,
the way the air blows in the building, even like
how the wind might hit my face when I'm on

(01:33:30):
the floor, something like that, Like there's just a familiarity there.
Sleeping in the hotel room is never the same as
sleeping in your own bed. That's why you often say, Man,
if I could just bring my house on vacation, or
at least my bed, I would sleep better. It's just
not the same on the road. The stars have got

(01:33:51):
to perform everywhere. Karl Anthony towns. He can't count on
him to do it at home or a way. That's
why I think he's more of a two B kind
of player. You've got to have a two A. The
Knicks don't have a two A, and as a result,
they won two games in this series instead of four,
and they're done playing basketball for this year. When we

(01:34:13):
come back, we're going to talk about football. We haven't
done that to this point in this show, but we've
got a lot here, some things that I really do
want to discuss. Even though there's not gonna be any
games in football played on Sunday. The best pregame show
every weekend is Fox Sports Radio is Countdown presented by

(01:34:33):
bet MGM. Every Saturday, every Sunday morning, noon Eastern. That's
six to nine Pacific, all the biggest games, Perfect countdown
to get you set. That's Countdown presented by bet MGM.
That's every Saturday and Sunday morning, right here on Fox
Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app. So, Jason, what football
are we going to be talking about? Joe Flacco? Mentor

(01:34:56):
or not a mentor? He answered the question. I think
he's exactly right. I'll tell you why next on Fox
Sports Radio.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live.

Speaker 2 (01:35:18):
Welcome back Fox Sports Radio. I'm Jason Martin. I'm in Nashville, Tennessee.
Wherever you are, I hope you're doing well. Hope your
weekend has gone well. We're in June, folks, almost halfway
through the year. You don't realize how fast time moves
until you get married and have kids. I'm convinced of
that because time didn't seem to pass this quickly. I

(01:35:40):
look up in September, I will have been married to
my beautiful wife Abby six years. My daughter is now four.
My youngest is fourteen months, and she's standing, and we
are really close to seeing her walk and her third
tooth pop through this morning and life starts to fly.

(01:36:02):
It really really does. So I hope that yours. I
hope you're paying attention to it and you're not letting it.
I don't want to go full Fares Mueller on you here,
but just every once in a while, slow down and
take inventory of your life. It's a really important thing
to do, and hopefully you will find and see the
blessings that are there and understand just how much you have,

(01:36:29):
even if sometimes you can't feel it, and even if
you're going through a really difficult time right now, and
I don't know if you are but if you're going
through a challenging season or something like that, there's still
some things. There's still a lot on the horizon for you,
and there's still a lot that's come before that's given
you whatever chance you find yourself in right now. So

(01:36:49):
just know that. But yeah, look up and it's twenty
twenty five and halfway through the year. So I said,
we're going to talk about football. I want to talk
about Joe Flacco because Joe Flacco was out to question
earlier this week and it generated all sorts of conversations,
all the random hot takes that you can think of,
how dare this man say this? Or some version of

(01:37:11):
that generally, But what he was asked about is something
that a lot of aging quarterbacks and he's forty now,
a lot of aging quarterbacks in the NFL or aging
players in sports are asked. It's kind of a question
with a no win situation. We're gonna play the audio.
Here's what Joe Flacco, at least part of what Joe
Flacco said when he was asked about mentoring. Because this

(01:37:34):
is a weird, stacked quarterback room full of young guys.
You got Kenny Pickett, but then you've got doing Gabriel
and you've got Shide or Sanders. So Joe Flacco being
the veteran guy, dude, it's got a Super Bowl ring,
you know all of those things. Can you be a
mentor will you be? Is that your focus is being

(01:37:55):
a mentor to these guys. Here's what Joe Flacco said.

Speaker 5 (01:37:58):
It's a good question debates somebody into answering and either,
and no matter how they answer, it kind of makes
the guy that's answering it look bad. If I say
I don't want to be a mentor, I look bad.
If I say I do want to be a mentor,
then I look like an idiot that doesn't care about
being good and playing football. So it's one of those
questions that no matter what I say, you guys can
write what you want to write about it. And there's
a lot of questions like that. That's why you end

(01:38:20):
up having to try to avoid them. I tend to
try to be honest, and I've said I'm not a mentor.
I play football and in a quarterback room. There's a
lot of times already, there's been already a ton of
times where there's learning experiences and I have a lot
of experience, and I can talk on things and hopefully
they listen, but it's not necessarily like my job to
make sure they listen to me. And you know, hey,

(01:38:41):
like hopefully you have a really good relationship with the
guys that are in the room, and you naturally want
to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:38:49):
He would go on to say, the thing is, because
of what I just said, you're acting like I wouldn't
want to be a mentor. Once again, it's not really
about that. It's just not the main focus. I see
myself as a guy that can play in this league.
So if your main focus was just like, hey, but
I'm gonna get you ready, you're just not taking care
of business. The best way to be a mentor, honestly

(01:39:10):
is showing people how you go to work, and like
I said, hope that they pick up on that stuff,
but not necessarily force them to pick up on the
things that you do. That's what Joe Flacco said in totality,
Not only do I not have a problem with the
way Joe Flacco answered this question and what he had

(01:39:31):
to say, Joe Flacco is exactly right. I don't understand
why this would be problematic. How do you mentor? Yes,
there are different ways that you can mentor. Yes, you
can say I'm going to be your mentor. The new

(01:39:54):
Karate Kid came out this week. You can be you know,
mister Miyagi type of mentor, can be Morpheus to Neo,
you can be someone like that. You can be Obi
Wan to Luke Skywalker. But there's another way to mentor,
and arguably it's more effective. Aaron Rodgers has said many

(01:40:20):
times that he wasn't mentored by Brett Farv, but what
he learned he learned by watching how Brett Farv went
about his business. How did he play, how did he study,
how did he prepare? How did he carry himself? All
those kinds of things he picked up those things, he
absorbed him like a sponge, and of course he put
his own spin on them. Flacco was saying, I'm just

(01:40:46):
gonna go about my job and the other guys can
see it. How do I live? How do I work?
How do I study? How do I talk around this team?
Around an NFL locker room? How do I carry myself?
That's the equivalent of sitting under the learning tree. What
is Joe Flacco paid to do right now? He's paid

(01:41:07):
to play football. This question like he said, it's a
no win question. He's forty. Ben Roethlisberger has been asked
this question before had a kind of similar answer. I'm
right here in Nashville. I remember this very same like.
It became a mild controversy when Ryan Tannehill was asked
whether or not he was going to mentor Malik Willis,

(01:41:30):
and he answered very similar to what Joe Flacco said here.
I don't think it was quite as eloquent. I think
Flacco's answer is excellent because he's not saying I don't
care about these guys. He's saying he said, this is
the quote he said, it's not necessarily my job to
make sure they listen to me. I have a lot
of experience and I can talk on things and hopefully
they listen. And then he said, hopefully you have a

(01:41:54):
really good relationship with the guys that are in the room,
and you naturally want to do that. When he says
you naturally want to do that, I think he's referring
to those young guys in the room that you naturally
want to listen to what the veteran might be saying.
What he's trying to impart folks, that's apprenticeship. That's exactly
the way it should be. If should do and justin Gabriel,

(01:42:16):
and yes, even can he pickett if they're watching Joe
Flacco and they begin to pick up on some of
that stuff and emulate him in the things that they
see him succeed through doing, if they lean on his
experience and learn from him and listen to how he
talks about tape, even if he's not saying, now, guys,
you listen to me here, because this is how you

(01:42:37):
want to break this down. Like, yeah, you can do that,
but you can also just trust them or at least say, look,
it's up to them. It's not up to meet to
mentor them. It's up to them to pay attention to me.
It's up to them to follow my example. So some
of you know this, some of you do not. But

(01:43:00):
I'm now a pastor, and so I'll be preaching in
seven hours from right now, and I'll tell you one
of the well not one of the ultimate example of
this is Jesus in the New Testament. Very few times
if you read scripture, almost never do you see here
is how you would do this, and you would step

(01:43:22):
by step and all this that's not how he trained
the disciples. He didn't train them. He discipled these men
that he chose, and he did it by they just
went with him about his life. When he would go
to villages and he would do the things that he
did in scripture, performing miracles, the way he talked to people,
all of those kinds of things. They were just there,

(01:43:46):
and then at some point he would turn around and say,
now go back through the villages. We just went through
this time. I'm not going to go with you. But
generally speaking, what they learned from him, they picked up
by following him, by walking with him, by seeing him,
by observing him, and by taking of that what they will.

(01:44:07):
And that's what Joe Flacco is saying here. This is
not controversial. And I heard and saw like Chris Canty
flew off the handle about this and said, how ridiculous
is this? And he used to be my teammate. What
are we talking about. He's not holding these guys back.
He's doing his job, and he's saying this without saying it.
He's saying, just watch me and you're gonna learn what

(01:44:29):
you need to know. He's not closing his door to them.
I'm sure if they ask him a question, He's going
to answer the question. But what he's not gonna do
is baby these guys. He isn't there to prepare them.
He's there to do his job, period. And along with that,
he's going to be open when they seek out his guidance.

(01:44:51):
He even said, look, there's already been experiences where I
can share some wisdom, and so I do that, but
it's not my job to like force them to listen
to what I have to say. It's not my job
to force them to do what I tell them to do.
Along with that, let them observe how he goes about
his business. And then he said, like I said that

(01:45:14):
at the end of that quote, the best way to
be a mentor, he said, is showing people how you
go to work and hope that they pick up on
that stuff, but not necessarily force them to pick up
on the things that you do. Could you can talk
to someone until they're blue in the face, but if
they don't want what you if they're not ready to
accept whatever that responsibility is, it does not matter. They

(01:45:39):
have to be coachable, they have to be teachable, they
have to be available, they have to be dependable, but
they have to be responsible like, yes, you can train
someone with a checklist, or you can let them be
around you as you do the things that they're going
to be expected to do. Wasn't just not wrong. I

(01:46:03):
think he is exactly right, exactly right. And from him,
I go to a quarterback that man, I love his optimism,
but I got to tell you he's probably going to
be wrong. He's probably going to be wrong. And that
is Justin Fields, a guy I like a lot, guy
like coming out of college, just watching him play, He's

(01:46:25):
he can be must see TV kind of stuff. So
on Thursday, Justin Fields was talking about what he thinks
he can be going forward with the Jets. I think
we have that audio. Here's here's what Justin Fields, the
New New York Jets quarterback, had to say.

Speaker 6 (01:46:46):
I think I can be great, you know, and that's
been to go for me my whole life, my whole career.
So like I said, you know, I think this guy's
a limit, you know, for this team, for this offense.
But we do have a long way to go. Like
I said, our offense and defense are news. So guys,
are you know, really tuned in and locked in and
trying to get everything down? But I think you know
once we do. I think this guy's are limited. I mean,

(01:47:06):
we have, you know, all the guys you need, We
have all the talent, So it's really just going to
come down to disciplinection, execution when the game's come.

Speaker 2 (01:47:16):
I think I can be great. I think the sky
is the limit with the Jets. So I want you
to stop and consider history.

Speaker 7 (01:47:26):
The word great, very rarely throughout history appears in a
sentence alongside the word Jets in sports conversations, unless the
great is actually describing whoever the Jets played that week.

Speaker 2 (01:47:47):
Now, yet there was a Nameth. You had some decent
success with Rex Ryan's Jets teams there for a couple
of years, right, and so Aaron Rodgers was great, but
not as a Jet. The greatness of Aaron Rodgers you
were talking about came in Green Bay. So justin fields, okay, awful,

(01:48:09):
all time awful situation in Chicago quarterbacking a horrendously coached team,
horrendously run the organization awful, just brutal. And then he
goes to Pittsburgh and he becomes basically a gadget player
for the Steelers. Comes in a couple of different times,

(01:48:30):
and if you need a first down. He might be
a guy that can run for you. And look, to
his credit, didn't play with the giant ego and all
those things. Just did what they asked him to do.
You gotta appreciate that about him because that had to
take some humility on his part because think about what
he was at Ohio State and what it's been for
him in the NFL. So now he steps into the

(01:48:51):
New York Jets organization. Two, let's just call him not
particularly ideal spots. Okay, brand new head coach and Aaron Clynn,
brand new staff and yeah, that would ordinarily make you
feel good. But how many brand new coaches and brand
new staffs and the New York Jets have. This is

(01:49:12):
the Jets we're talking about, Sorry, Jason Smith. This is
where good players go and disappear. This is where Hall
of Famers Aaron Rodgers went and disappeared. He might be
in Pittsburgh, but he also might be in the witness
protection program. I'm not sure at this point. Now, Look,

(01:49:34):
what Fields was saying is what you got to say.
I understand that, right, Like he's not gonna say, yeah,
we're probably gonna be a two win team, Like he's
not gonna do that. He's gonna say optimistic stuff. He's
and he needs to be confident. I get all that.
And he said, look, there's a lot of work that
we have to do to get there. But then he said,
the ceiling is awfully high. The sky is the limit.
And I'm just like, boy, I can tell you that

(01:49:58):
you have a you have it all. The only way
you can go is up, bro, Like, it can only
get better, right, it can't get much worse. The sky
is way away from you right now. If you were
able to touch the sky, then you have gone a
tremendous distance. But to say, I think I can be

(01:50:23):
great with the Jets, man, put that on your mirror
in your bathroom. Put that like, take some scotch tape
and tape it to the front of your microwave. Put
it on your stove. Put it underneath your rear view mirror.
Replace objects in the side mirror are closer than they

(01:50:45):
appear with I think I can be great. Because you're
going to need to tell yourself that on a week
to week basis once the season starts, because even though
there's some good football players on the Jets roster, woah, boy,
you have a lot of history and a lot of
even recent history to overcome. Yes, you can only you

(01:51:11):
can only get better from here, from where the Jets
found themselves. But the optimism is strong with this one.
Folks like this is you gotta will this thing into existence.
You know what the other thing you got Tom Brady
remember the uh Tampa Bay. He sent his guys all
the text that stores out there. Tom Brady sent texts

(01:51:32):
to his entire team the week of the Super Bowl
against Kansas City and said, hey, we're gonna win this game.
And because it was Tom Brady, they believed it. Justin
Fields needs to send this like on a loop every
ten minutes to every member of the Jets team. I
think we can be great. I think we can be great,
like because it's gonna take that level of repetition, like
spelling be national champion, repetition, repetition for people to actually

(01:51:58):
believe that in that building, like there's sometimes you tell
yourself a lie enough, you might you start to believe it.
You tell a story enough all that, that's how you
memorize stuff. You got to ingrain this into the souls
of your teammates with the Jets, because the first time
they go out there and they put that Jets uniform on.
The only thing that they are going to think about,
especially if they've never played with the Jets before, is

(01:52:21):
every time they watch them on television and saw stuff
like Sam Darnold seeing ghosts. The history is not on
their side. The odds are not in the fava. Terrible
accent by me, but I wasn't hired for that role.
I'm not rooting against Justin Fields. Like I said, I'm

(01:52:41):
a fan and I know that this is the kind
of thing that you have to say, but this is wishcasting.
The Jets are not going to be good this year.
I'm curious to see what Aaron Glenn does in year one,
but he's a first time head coach and there's still
a lot of things that the Yets don't have, even

(01:53:01):
if the draft went fairly well for them. So we
just talked quarterbacks, We talked Flacco, and we talked Fields.
When we come back another quarterback. In fact, Justin Fields
was a former Chicago quarterback. What did the current Chicago
quarterback have to say about whether he really wanted to
be there or not. That's next. I'm Jason Martin, this

(01:53:22):
is Fox Sports. Radio, finishing up the third hour in
for Bernie Ferroudo. My name is Jason Martin. I'm glad
to be here, blessed to be here with you this morning,
rocking out to Smells like Teen Spirit. Still one of
the uh one of the mistakes was never getting to

(01:53:45):
catch them when Kurt was still with us. Definitely something
I loved in high school, to say the least. Never
got it, never happened, and like many right, we didn't realize.
You never realize how few apportunities you have to do
certain things right. The biggest regret for me is not

(01:54:05):
getting to see Tom Petty live, one of my all
time favorites. And I had a chance the year before
he died, and it was I was just, well, he'll
come again next year, because he was coming pretty regularly.
Heartbreakers were doing their greatest hits and it was just like,
I'm going to catch them. I'll catch them, but I
can probably wait and go next year. And then he passed.

(01:54:25):
So take advantage when you get the chance to do stuff.
That's what I'm saying here. Caleb Williams number one draft
pick of the Chicago Bears. Seth Wickerchamp's book has the
story of how they did not want to be Bears,
meaning the Williams family. Caleb did not want to go,

(01:54:46):
His dad really didn't want him to go, and so
Kayleb Williams this week came out and said, I want
it known I wanted to be here. So no, you
really didn't. I mean, that's the truth. You didn't. You
didn't have a choice. And so and he said in
this statement right or this, He just stood up and

(01:55:06):
he wanted to comment on this, and he said, look,
I visited and then I left stronger about the organization.
And I believe that to an extent, Like you go
there and you understand the futility that they have had,
and you think, how awesome would it be if I'm
the difference for this franchise. It's been since eighty five

(01:55:28):
since they've won a title. If I only played one
other super Bowl since then in the rain, the Rex
Grossman Bowl won by Peyton Manning. I mean, think about
the fame that would come with that. If Caleb was
able to do that for the Bears. He'd be a
legend if he could do that. So I believe that
you go there and you think about that, especially if

(01:55:48):
you have confidence in your abilities. And Caleb has been
told for years and years and years that he was
the wonder Kent, right, So I believe that you go
there and you see that. And he even admitted in
this same statement, he's like, yeah. So we talked, meaning

(01:56:09):
his his advisors and certainly his family. We talked about
the history the Bears and just how they haven't been
able to develop franchise quarterbacks and all of that kind
of stuff. We talked about that maybe you know what's
the best place for my career and all this, but
what's important is I wanted to be here. So he
admitted that they had the conversation, and we know how

(01:56:31):
the conversation went. Man, that's not a good place to go,
at least it hasn't been yet. Maybe you're going to
be different, son. So I believe all of what he
was saying in terms of he went there and he
thought about what a cool thing it would be if
he was able to be part of it right, to
turn it around. What I don't believe is that he
wanted to be a Bear. What he saw value in

(01:56:54):
was being the unicorn that could fix it. But that
doesn't mean I wanted to be here. He's saying it
because he's there. You don't say, now, yeah I didn't
want to be here. You certainly don't say I don't
want to be here, But you don't even say, yeah,
I really didn't want to be here. But that's you know,

(01:57:18):
it is what it is that that's not something anyone
is going to say.

Speaker 4 (01:57:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:57:25):
He can't change where he is. And then this Wickersham
book and these stories have come out and it's just
causing some off season drama. And now we're getting real
close to the season and camp and everything else. In
the preseason, it's just drama he didn't really need. But
I don't blame him. By the way you think about it,
what is that where you would want to be necessarily?

(01:57:45):
Probably not? And I don't blame him for what he's
saying here kind of trying to sort of soften it
and say, yeah, but the important thing is by the
time I was drafted, I really did want to be here.
That's exactly what he should say. So he didn't completely
disown his thoughts. He said that after he visited he
wanted to be a reason for the turnaround, and I'm

(01:58:06):
cool with that, but I want it known though he
did not want to be a Chicago Bear. And I'm
not just trying to come down on Caleb here because
he didn't want to be a Chicago Bear, just like
Jim Kelly didn't want to be a Buffalo Bill. I
made this point a couple of weeks ago on My
regular show with Aaron Torres. Jim Kelly famously did not
want to play in the cold weather. The last place

(01:58:27):
he wanted to go was Buffalo. He was upset when
he was drafted there, and now he's one of the
most beloved figures ever to step foot in that city,
and he was welcomed even though that story was out
there and Bill's fans knew it. Like after he retired,
he was just like, I'm so thankful that you embraced me,
even after I was a knucklehead about this, even after

(01:58:50):
I was overly honest and I was scared about it
and I didn't want to be in cold weather. I'm
not a cold weather guy. But you embraced me. And
I'm so glad that this organization wrapped at me. What
I'm saying is it ended really well for Jim Kelly,
and whether or not I'd buy that, Caleb Williams wanted
to be a Chicago Bear or not is almost irrelevant

(01:59:12):
because it really worked out for Jim Kelly, and I
also think that it might work out pretty well for
Caleb Williams in Chicago as well. Final Hour the show
is coming up. Eastern Conference Finals are a wrap, NBA
Finals are coming and the end of Turner. I want
to talk about the end of TNT NBA coverage when

(01:59:34):
we come back on Fox.

Speaker 1 (01:59:38):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio Radio.

Speaker 2 (01:59:41):
Welcome in. I am Jason Martin. What's happening. Hope you're well.
Hope your Sunday is beginning, blessed, Hope it ends blessed.
We are live in the Fox Sports Radio studios. Pacers Thunder,
that's your NBA Finals. I'm gonna talk more about the
Eastern Conference Finals and the Knicks. Just the Knicks just

(02:00:03):
finally just didn't have anything left. The Pacers out lasted them,
They out quicked them, they out hustled them, they certainly
out defended them. They actually lost the battle on the boards,
largely thanks to Mitchell Robinson who was just an absolute
monster on the glass. But the Pacers were able to
speed it up when they had to forced a lot

(02:00:23):
of turnovers, scored a lot off those turnovers. I actually
saw like points off turnovers in this series, with something
preposterous like one forty to forty or something like that.
That's not quite right, but it's in the vicinity of right.
It was almost one hundred more for Indiana, and the
Knicks had played a vast majority more minutes than the

(02:00:47):
Pacers in terms of their starters, so they were worn out.
They were worn down. They weren't a team that wanted
to play fast in the first place. The Pacers knew
that Rick Carlisle came in there with that mantra and
you came in that third and fourth quarter especially, and
they just they have way too much for them. First
half when exactly how you would want, really if you
were the Knicks. It was a four point game. You

(02:01:09):
kept it very close, it was tied several times, had
some lead changes there. I think the Pacers blew it
up to six at one point, and then you cut
it down and it's fifty eight to fifty four at
a half. All the pressure is on Indiana because the
last the last place they want to find themselves on
Monday was going to be Madison Square. Garden, and if

(02:01:33):
you blew what they had prior to get to that point,
the chances of them somehow winning game seven in that
rate at that building, all that that was not going
to be very good. So they had to get it
done here and all the Knicks had to do was
just go out and play, and the Knicks just man.

(02:01:54):
The defensive effort wasn't there. Brunson had a very difficult night.
Just everywhere he tried to go, there was somebody in
his face, if not multiple people. Didn't end up scoring twenty.
I think he had nineteen in the game, and he
was frustrated. You could see it. He was He kept dribbling,

(02:02:14):
he was trying to find lanes, he was trying to
find anything. Couldn't do it. Towns had twenty two. But
Towns was absolutely non existent on the defensive side of
the ball. And he does that a lot, but in
this case, like he just he was like guys just
blow past him for wide open layups and at his
size to just not be a force at all that way,

(02:02:38):
if he's not giving you offense, he's basically you can't
have him on the floor at all. And he was
hurt a few games ago and he was hurt in
the last series a little bit, so he probably wouldn't
feeling his best, but man, he was out there, so
he needed to give you more than he did in
this case, and he looked on the other sides. Yakham
had thirty one. Seakham's named You were Eastern Finals MVP.

(02:03:01):
I think he got one more vote than Halliburton did.
Haliburton had twenty one. In the game. A lot of
them came late. He was not like he wasn't really
looking for his offense early. He was definitely looking to
pass first, which is more his style. He's just an
incredible passer at the point guard spot, and his energy
level was big time, but he was getting other guys involved.

(02:03:22):
The leaders scorer for the Knicks was og Onnobi and
he had twenty four. He played pretty well, even though
he couldn't shoot well from three. I think he was
two of seven from beyond the arc. But I mean
the Knicks as a team were not thirty percent from
the three point line. So you look at that, and
then you look at the Pacers at fifty plus percent
seventeen to thirty three. I believe it was. That tells

(02:03:45):
you a lot as just sixty five percent from the
line for the Knicks. Either way, the Pacers were the
better team in the series. They probably wouldn't have won
it if it went seven, so they had to make
sure it didn't, and it did not. They win the
game by seventeen. It was closer than that for a while.
But this result really does tell the story of the

(02:04:06):
way the second half played, and that's been the story
of the whole series. Is the Pacers were better when
it mattered most. Even if the Knicks played arguably better
basketball in a lot of the first halves or even
the first three quarters of games in this series, it
doesn't matter when you can't finish, it doesn't. The movie
is no good at the ending stinks. I would much

(02:04:29):
rather half the movie be bad. But when it ramps up,
it really ramps up, and it has an awesome conclusion
than the opposite. And the same thing is always going
to be true of your sports teams. Why are games
that are really good for a half and then turn
into laughers are never regarded as classics, but games that

(02:04:51):
three quarters are boring as all get out, and then
the fourth quarter turns into this riveting back and forth
deal this is an instant classic. We're gonna have to
replay it tomorrow. Like and I usually I'll come on
the radio or I'll come on and I'll say, you know,
that wasn't a great game. It was just a great finish.
But everything's determined by how it ends, right. It just

(02:05:14):
is like think about the Orlando Magic the year that
they were in the finals. This is the Shack Penny
Orlando team the year they were in the finals against
the Houston Rockets, when Jordan was playing baseball. The Magic
had to lead. They had it at home. Nick Anderson

(02:05:35):
goes to the free throw line. Many of you know
this story if you're old enough, misses the two free throws.
They found him again, he misses two more so he
misses four free throws. Kenny Smith hits a three pointer.
Sense it to overtime. The air is sucked out of
the building. The Rockets win game one and they end
up sweeping the Magic. It's about how you finished. They

(02:05:58):
played great, did the Magic early in that game, and
then it collapsed. And honestly, Nick Anderson never recovered from it.
He was never the same player after that night, but
you were. But history is written by the victors. It's
not written by the guys that were in charge for

(02:06:19):
the first half of the war. They're not around to
write the history at the end. So it was about
who finished. It's always about who finishes, and the Pacers finished.
It's that simple. Also finished is coverage of the NBA
on TND on Turner Networks. After thirty six years, they

(02:06:41):
signed off for the final time. I mentioned the first
hour of the show if you missed any part of
the show though, by the way, podcast that's when Bernie's here,
when I'm in for him, and certainly all the other shows.
Just wherever you get your podcasts, search us and you
can hear. But I said to the end of the
first hour, the tribute that Reggie Miller had for Kevin
Harlan was special, saying that he made him a better

(02:07:03):
dad by watching how Kevin was with his children. That is,
I want somebody to say that about me. I don't
care what they say about what I am on the
radio or any almost anything else. I want them to
say I wanted to be a better husband, I wanted
to be a better father because of just observing how

(02:07:26):
you did, how you were with your wife and children
and that's what he said. But the inside guys, you know,
they did their their send off, and both Shaq and
Kinney dropped that f bombs and Barkley set his piece,
and Ernie Johnson, as I expected, got more emotional because
he's been with Turner for so long. It's unthinkable that

(02:07:46):
he wouldn't be with them as a matter of fact.
But you know, he made the point, a lot of
these people either have found jobs or they're gonna be
with us. Our staff's gonna be with us, We're still
gonna be in the studio. It's still gonna be the
same guys, same ideas, just going to be airing on
a different network. I don't know if that's gonna be
true or not, because they're going to a major corporation here.

(02:08:11):
But our own Rob Parker on The Odd Couple had
his own take on this, and I wanted to comment
on this because I think there's something to this. It's
certainly worth discussion. So here's what Rob had to say
earlier this week on The Odd Couple.

Speaker 8 (02:08:28):
Inside the NBA is moving to ESPN. Supposedly the same
people ran it or whatever, we're going to do it,
and they're just kind of like selling the the raperty
right of it. But all the same cast members, they're
all gonna be back and all that kind of stuff.
But it's an But it's gonna be air on ESPN,
And I know a lot of.

Speaker 2 (02:08:46):
People rejoiced and were happy. It was a mistake.

Speaker 1 (02:08:50):
Inside the NBA.

Speaker 8 (02:08:52):
Coming back on ESPN next year is a mistake, a
colossal mistake.

Speaker 1 (02:08:59):
It ain't work.

Speaker 8 (02:09:01):
It ain't gonna feel the same, it ain't gonna be
the same.

Speaker 2 (02:09:05):
TNT was a unique situation.

Speaker 8 (02:09:07):
They didn't have all that other sports properties and Charles
ripping on this and that, and there were no other
shows or personalities that they had to worry about. Ask
Pat McAfee, who was on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (02:09:20):
During his day. I come over to ESPN.

Speaker 1 (02:09:22):
He's on the air.

Speaker 8 (02:09:23):
Calling out bosses by name. He's a rat this and that.
Oh no, Pat mcvey's his own entity. He doesn't really,
nobody's their own entity when they were on a network.

Speaker 2 (02:09:35):
Nobody. I don't care.

Speaker 8 (02:09:37):
Somebody upstairs is gonna be like I don't want to
hear that, or is.

Speaker 2 (02:09:40):
That stop that?

Speaker 8 (02:09:42):
Yes, they'll tell you have your autonomy right. It don't
work like that inside the NBA.

Speaker 2 (02:09:50):
Going to ESPN as like.

Speaker 8 (02:09:53):
American Idol leaving Fox and going to ABC.

Speaker 2 (02:09:58):
Have you watched since it don't feel the same. So
that was what Rob Parker said on The Odd Couple
about Inside the NBA. He said, they should have just
ended it because it's not going to be the same.
No matter how much they want to tell you it's
going to be the same, it's never going to be
the same. I think there is something to that. I
don't know that I fully agree with that take, but

(02:10:22):
I do think it isn't going to feel exactly the same.
Now if they're in the exact same studio, everything looks
almost the same. Is that maybe the sponsorships maybe as
a maybe the name changes slightly or who knows. But
they're all sitting in the same seats, the desk looks
the same, most of the staff's the same, which means
a camera work's still going to be the same all
that kind of stuff. Can they pull it off? I

(02:10:42):
think they can. But I also think there is something
to walking away icons. Not that their legacy gets tarnished
if they continue. But if Jordan had never gone to Washington,
going to Washington did nothing for him, It didn't hurt

(02:11:02):
him In my opinion, I think only grifters would argue
that it should hurt his the way you see him.
But it is very hard to just walk away when
you've still got it. But something has changed. I'm a
Broncos fan. I know you're saying he's a Thunder fan.

(02:11:23):
He's a Broncos fan. Look I am what I am.
I lived in a place where there were no pro
sports team, so I picked teams based on things, and
when I was a kid, I became a Broncos fan
because like the Colors. I love John Elway. That simple
John Elway walked away after two Super Bowls. He's one
of the only guys that ever was able to do that.

(02:11:45):
I worked in pro wrestling for many years. I don't
know how many pro wrestlers had quote retirement un quote
matches and then came back and had careers after it
because they couldn't stay away. Tom Brady famously unretired, came
back played before he finally bung it up. I think
finally he could probably still come back. You never know,
it's very hard to walk away. It's very hard to

(02:12:07):
do it, especially when you're at the top of your
game and somebody's willing to compensate you or it's just
who you are. So I'm not surprised that they're not
ending it. But what Rob Parker said, Bill Simmons actually
also said. Bill Simmons said they should just walk away.
The end of NBA on TNT should be the inside finale,

(02:12:30):
That should be it. They should not go do this
anywhere else. So like this was a moment in time,
This was a capsule of history that was special and unique,
and we're not even going to attempt to keep it going.
This was Turner was us, We were Turner, I said
in the first hour. The thing that made Inside the
NBA special to me, One of the things is the

(02:12:51):
fact that Turner gave them the space to do what
they did, stayed out of the way a lot of
the time, but also gave them time to show their
personalities and to never feel rushed. The great thing about
Inside the NBA, for years and years, long before Shack
even got there, was that that show had time. Didn't matter,

(02:13:14):
like whatever was going to air afterwards was going to
air afterwards. But they did not have fifteen minutes they
had to get to this. They had their time, they
had their moments, they were able to talk, they were
able to actually have lengthy discussions, which in the era
that we now live in, those clips, those seven to
eight minute clips of them breaking down something in detail

(02:13:36):
or having some kind of a disagreement, end up with
millions of views within hours when they put those up
on YouTube. You never get that from ESPN stuff from
their coverage of games, from their pregame or postgame, because
they're not even given time even if they were good.
And that's subjective, right, I don't need to drag anybody,

(02:13:56):
but they're not even given the breathing room to do that.
So what I want to know and where I think
Rob really does have a point. It's definitely not going
to feel the same if they have to break seventeen
more times to get to this sponsor or that sponsor,
or this thing or that thing that they never had
to do with Turner. If they don't have the space

(02:14:18):
and those lengthy times where they can really just let
it go, then it is not at all going to
feel the same. And we're going to say, man, this
is not what it was at its best, or even
some people thought they peaked years ago. Whatever. I would
watch it until until it stopped, even the years that

(02:14:40):
I couldn't watch much basketball because of the time or
whatever's happened in my life, I dvard inside the NBA.
That's the whole reason why I was glad the NBA
Network existed. They had some other good documentaries and stuff.
But the thing that I could not live without, the
thing absolutely I couldn't live without, was the stuff Turner
was most associated with, and mainly it was inside the NBA.

(02:15:01):
They would run it all night long, and I could
just record one of the morning shows and make sure
I got it all, even if there was an overlap
or whatever was going on, and what I tried to
record on the DVR. Because the game ran long, I
could always make sure I had that. That made the
NBA worthwhile a cable network. Just having access to that,
and then Open Court and some of the other stuff

(02:15:21):
they did with those guys was phenomenal. But ESPN never
gives their guys the breathing room they have. It's like
Steven A, here's ten seconds, Kendrick Parkins, here's ten seconds,
probably ten two long for you. Malika Andrews, here's five seconds.
Like nobody had time when Jay, when Rose was there,
had no time when he's gone on Turner. Guess what
he's got time, he's better, He's able to actually be
himself a lot more. You see his personality instead of automaton. One.

(02:15:44):
Here's your take. You got twelve seconds. We got to
get to this trailer for Marvel's fantastic four First Steps.
That's the thing they can't do. If they do that
with Inside the NBA, then Rob Parker's going to turn
out to be exactly right. And look, Rob worked at ESPN,
so he knows those at least to some degree, what
they are walking into. I do think and hope that

(02:16:05):
they have this autonomy that what Ernie said is going
to turn out to be exactly right, because a sanitized,
rushed version of this show is not going to work,
and we're all going to be sad. And I'm just
sad that it's not on Turner anymore, because that felt
like not a relic. It felt like an antique in

(02:16:29):
the best possible way, like the one you want to
go in the shop and you want to display, because
you just don't get much like that anymore. It was
and probably will always be the greatest studio show in
the history of sports broadcasting, and I hope that we're
not saying that in the past tense, but got to
say I'm at least fearful that Rob Parker is one

(02:16:49):
hundred percent right. One thing I know is not going
to be true is that this team is not going
to win every game this season, even though they're favored
to do so. I'll tell you who it is and
why when we come back. I'm Jason Martin. This is
Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 3 (02:17:06):
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to
listen live.

Speaker 2 (02:17:18):
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do this NFL team
like that. But you can stream this show all of
our Fox Sports Radio shows live twenty four to seven
in the new and improved iHeartRadio app. Just search Fox
Sports Radio in the app, you can stream us live.
One of the newest features in the app, you can
now select Fox Sports Radio as one of your presets,

(02:17:40):
just like the ones on your radio dial if you
still got one of those. If you don't, perhaps you're
old enough to at least remember such, but be sure
preset Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app. It will
always pop up the top of your screen. I'm Jason
Martin and for Bernie Frado here this morning. Usually you
hear me with Aaron Torres right before Bernie Farrado. So

(02:18:02):
I'm up a little later than usual earlier considering I'm
in Nashville, Tennessee. So we're approaching four thirty am. So
I said I had to do this NFL team like this,
and one team is favored in every game this season,
one team in the NFL. That team would be the

(02:18:24):
Buffalo Bills. CBS others have said they're the most likely
team to win the Super Bowl. They have the best
odds to that. I just gotta tell you, you're gonna
need to wake me up in January, because yeah, they'll
be right there. Of course they will. They always are.

(02:18:47):
So I need you to tell me what's going to change.
I mean, not a thing that they do during the
regular season. Nothing. I don't care how dominant they look
over those seventeen games. They can win every one of them.
By thirty. They can prove this right right. They're favorite
in every game they win, they cover whatever you want

(02:19:08):
to say. None of that means jack squat. It doesn't
mean Diddley until the playoffs. Not with this team. And
I'm not talking about the wildcard round. I'm not even
talking about the divisional round. Nothing matters surrounding the Buffalo
Bills until at least the conference championship game, if not

(02:19:30):
reaching the super Bowl. That's the bar we're now at
with them. No excuses left, well except the fact that
they're still going to roll Sean McDermott out as head coach,
so they could still potentially try to rest back on that.
And look, this is not on Josh Allen. I'm not
of that chorus that somehow Josh Allen is to blame.
Even though in the game that they lost in the playoffs,

(02:19:55):
it wasn't his best day. He was a little bit
erratic early, maybe a little maybe a few nerves because
they had put so much into that game, but he
was also excellent in the second half. He was right there,
and they let him down. I think more so. But
you can barely ask a guy to do more than

(02:20:15):
what Josh Allen does for the Bills. This is not
me slamming him saying he can't win the big one.
Da da da da da. But this team, this Buffalo
Bills team, until they actually win something that matters. I
do not want to hear about how great they are,
because I have heard it for half a decade now.

(02:20:38):
Every year. They're the best team in the league. They're
the most dangerous team in the league. They're the ones
that you don't want to face. They're the ones that
are best poised. They're the ones that are ready for
the super Bowl. They're going to be thrown the Chiefs.
They're gonna beat this, They're going to do this. All
I've seen is Chiefs, Chiefs, Chiefs, Bengals. You don't they
haven't made it. The last time the Bills made the

(02:21:00):
Super Bowl, the late Marv Levy was the coach. Josh
Allen probably didn't even know what the Bills were at
that point. It's been a long long time for this team.
I don't want to hear about how great they are.
I don't want. I don't care. You can say that

(02:21:21):
they are favored to win every game, and I'm not
necessarily even disagreeing with you. I'm just saying I don't care.
I don't care if they go seventeen to oh, if
they falter again in the playoffs. How many times are
we going to buy a ticket to this same movie.
They may continue to make sequels, but boy, they have

(02:21:43):
not updated the storyline. The plot is still identical to
what he used to be. I can't listen to this anymore.
They're dominance during the regular season. I don't care. I
don't care what Josh Allen's stats are. I don't care
how many touchdowns or why receiver have I don't care

(02:22:04):
about any of it. I don't care how well James
Cook is running the football. I don't care about how
good the defense seems to look. None of it, None
of it. There are teams where it's put up or
shut up. And even though the Bills aren't out there
touting themselves, everyone else touting them needs to cease doing

(02:22:25):
so until they win in the playoffs, because we are
approaching that territory where it's just never going to happen
for this group. There are a lot of great teams
and never won championships. This Bills team's been good for
a long time, really good for a long time, even
elite for a long time. But that eliteis hadn't even
taken them to play in a super Bowl. As great

(02:22:45):
as that quarterback is, and he is going to walk
into Canton deservedly, so the accolades about him are all legit.
Likable guy too. It doesn't matter though, Like you can
favor them all you want. They can have the best
odds to win the Super Bowl. They got to do.
They're going to exercise a lot of demons in fact
to do it. Oh yeah, and by the way, that

(02:23:07):
goes for YouTube Baltimore. The same stuff I just said
about the Bills applies to the Ravens and their guy
who's gonna waltz right into the Hall of Fame and
deserves all the accolades and also seems to be a
great dude in Lamar Jackson. These are two teams and
only one of them can actually pull this off because

(02:23:28):
one of them has to lose. But those are two
teams where it just does not compute what they do
in the regular season. All the stats, all the wins,
all the eye popping plays, all the jaw droppers, all
of that stuff. That's all fine and well. That is

(02:23:49):
window dressing. That is an appetizer. Give me the protein,
like fill our stomach with something more. You gotta finish.
We talked about it about that in the first segment
when it came to the Pacers when they had to finish.

(02:24:09):
They finished. The Knicks choked away a seventeen point lead
in Game one, blew a nine point lead in the
last minute. They seem to have no answers when they
needed them most in the tight games. That was the
same story for Minnesota against Oklahoma City, or at least

(02:24:30):
the ones that had a chance late. If you can't finish,
it doesn't matter what you do early. That applies everywhere,
applies in racing, applies in golf. I mean, they've been
a lot of guys that have had big time leads
at Augusta have let that thing fall in the final

(02:24:52):
five to six holes. Remember Speth and McElroy, both Greg
Norman multiple times this has happened. They're not remembered for
the right stuff, man, they are remembered for well, the
obvious stuff. Right. Luckily, now Rory has that green jacket.

(02:25:13):
Speith has one too. But it's how you finish and
the bills for them to finish well, they've got to
at least make a Super Bowl this year. That's got
to be the bare minimum, the absolute minimum for the Ravens.
They got to make a Super Bowl this year. That's
got to be the just absolute low end. You go

(02:25:35):
and lose the Super Bowl, there's no real shame in that, right,
because you're going to be matching up with the best
on the other side too. But you've got to get
the job done in January. Two Hall of Famers at quarterback.
You can put the odds wherever you want. The Ravens
have been I think the athletics said that they're mock.
Austin Macker whatever said that the Ravens should win the

(02:25:57):
Super Bowl this year based on his numbers, whatever that means.
But before I can give credence to any of this,
they're actually gonna have to do something they should be
able to and that part of it's right, right, So
they're favored in every game, and like, I understand why
you would favor them. They should be able to do it.
But it still hasn't happened yet. So what exactly changes

(02:26:19):
that this season? What are the big roster overalls, what's
the difference, what's different exactly between now and then? So
I just look at that story. I'm just like, man,
this is gonna get tiresome. When in November we're told
that we're watching the un crowned champions so far in
the Bills and the Ravens, and then we get to
January and they lose to the Chiefs, or they lose

(02:26:40):
to the Chargers, or they lose to Cincinnati, or they
lose to my Denver Broncos or the Texans or whatever
it is. Like, those are two teams that can't afford
any of those things to happen. Bill's finally got to
beat the Chiefs. Baltimore's got to find its way to
a Super Bowl. Lamar and Josh Allen, they both are
gonna have that knock until it changes. Only one of

(02:27:02):
them can change it. This year, it's a possibility neither
one do, and history would tell you neither one is
going to, not based on their inefficiency, but just it
just hadn't worked out. So I think I really might
take away. I'm frustrated by the fact that there's a

(02:27:22):
lot of people telling you what's gonna happen that are
not saying yeah. But so I guess I'm the water
on that. If your Bills in a Ravens fan and
I'm just like, just call me in January. I'm not
saying that you're not good enough to do it. I'm
just saying, you're gonna have to actually do it, Like
you don't win on paper on June the first. We'll

(02:27:44):
talk January thirty first, and by then we'll at least
know what the super Bowl matchup is, and then we
can have that conversation. Elections are won on election day.
They're not one a month before when a primary happened,
or when after the convention when you get your bump,
like things happen, right, There's always the surprises. There's those

(02:28:06):
November surprises or October surprises. Gotta get it done. The
Indy five hundred did huge numbers for Fox, biggest number
since two thousand and eight. I think it was somewhere
around eight million. But it did have me thinking of something,
right because like all the IndyCar races, I think around
Fox this year and hopefully they're gonna be able to

(02:28:29):
build on this momentum. Right, But the Indy five hundreds
is a little different. It's kind of like WrestleMania. Like
you're not a wrestling fan, but you know what wrestle
Mania is. You're not a golf fan, but you know
what the Masters is and you tune in. Not really
a tennis fan, but you don't miss Wimbledon. Well that's
kind of a sort of NY five hundred, like how
many indie car drivers do you know? And how many
indie races do you watch? Outside of the Indy five hundred?

(02:28:53):
Every sport in America though, It got me thinking about this, though,
Every sport in America right now seems to have a
serious problem to fix, apart from the NFL. So I've
just made the decision I wanted to get into F one.
So this year I've started paying attention. I've watched the
last three races. I bought F one twenty five on
my PS five and I'm having a good time with that.
I'm learning things, I'm reading and researching when I have

(02:29:15):
some time to kind of learn how the sport works
and understand its history a little more. And I'm getting
into it. I'm enjoying it, but it also has a flaw.
First off, last week at Monaco. As usual, Monico is
just basically a procession. There's almost no room, especially with
these larger F one cars as they've grown bigger through
the years. There's no places to overtake, there's no places

(02:29:38):
to pass, and so everything that happens in qualifying, nothing
changes when you get to Sunday. The top four is
still the top four. But what also? F one has
a problem. Oscar Piastre has the poll today in the
Spanish Grand Prix and he's going to win because the
McLaren cars are the best cars out there. Max Verstappen's
a great racer, but the Red Bull car is not

(02:30:00):
as strong as the tech that is in these McLaren cars.
And so the top two guys in the points standings
going towards the championship or who Well, it's Oscar Piatrice
and Piastre and Lando Norris, both teammates for McLaren NHL
second year in a row, their playoffs and their Stanley

(02:30:21):
Cup matchup. I mean, does anybody outside of those markets care?
And they can't get anybody to generate The Sport's still
a lot of fun to watch. It's not like it's
become less fun. It's just that's a fatal flaw, and
I'm not sure how you're supposed to fix it, just
like I'm not exactly sure what you do about F one.
I do think you probably should make the car smaller
so you have more chances for things to happen NBA.

(02:30:44):
We talked about the All Star Game, we talked about
the regular season, how woefood is seemingly with all the
low management issues and various things surrounding that league WNBA.
If they don't have Kaitlin Clark, they don't have a
league MLB they attracting younger fans. Are some of these
disparities between big and small markets starting to really rage?

(02:31:07):
Like does everybody have a chance or are we looking
at Dodger Jenkees again? Are we looking at some of
these teams that are spending a ton of money on
payroll and we're not gonna see a lot of this
other stuff anymore. Every sport's got this. Golf is still
looking for the next tiger Woods. Tennis, Nadal is basically done,
Djokovic is soon to be done, Federer's already done, Murray's

(02:31:27):
already done. The Williams sisters are gone. Carlos Akaurez, he's
a really nice player, but I don't think that name
has reached the message yet. And the women it's not
the same. Like every sport, even college football, is dealing
with this, like the haves and the have nots and
all of the things. The expansion and what's gonna happen,
and everything being about money, to where when you watch

(02:31:49):
college football you can almost smell money and you can't
even trick yourself into believing it's about anything else. Maybe
it never was right. The NFL is the lone exception.
Every sport seems to have a massive issue to fix,
except the NFL, unless we want to talk about officiating
and things like that, but that's splitting airs. The NFL.

(02:32:09):
It's the only one in America that I couldn't have
this talk about. We could have done this for an hour,
So good for the Indy five hundred. I'm hoping this
is a good sign going forward. I'm hoping that that
race last week in the interest level, people tune in
to watch the next one, to watch Detroit, to watch
what's coming up next for them. Little skeptical, but I'm

(02:32:31):
hopeful we're gonna come back. We got one more segment
to go. I've teased at the entire show, I will
predict the NBA Finals, and I'll predict what the most
important thing happening on Thursday, June fifth is. Hint, it's
not Game one of the NBA Finals. I'll tell you
what it is next. I'm Jason Martin. This is Fox
Sports Radio. Good Sunday morning to you, finishing up four

(02:32:52):
hours here on Fox Sports Radio. My name is Jason Martin.
In for Bernie Fratto tonight. Usually I'm before Bernie Tag
Team and with Aaron Torres on Fox Sports Saturday. We're
doing Fox Sports Sunday here. I hope it's gonna be
a good one for you, better than probably the Sunday
for the Knicks. Season's over there. Jaymen Brown says, quote

(02:33:14):
it sucks. That's how he felt about the loss. There's
a rough night. Pacers were the better team, proved it
throughout the course of the series, and the Knicks are
gonna have to go back to the drawing board and
see what they can tweak and what they can fix
now we get to the NBA Finals, Thunder and Pacers. Look,

(02:33:35):
I'm a Thunder fan. I'll say it. I've said it
a couple times during the course of this show. If
you listen to me on Saturdays, if you listened to
me for years, and then you know that I have
been for a long time. Of course, but I'm not
gonna come at this from a bias perspective. In fact,
I hesitate to say it at all because I have
a lot of respect for Indiana, and I have a

(02:33:58):
ton of respect for Carlisle on the way he prepares
that team. They're gonna be ready, and they're gonna try
and make this thing physical. I just don't think they
got enough, not in this case, not against SCA and
Chet and Jamal and these guys. Like I just don't
see it this year. But I kind of feel like

(02:34:19):
Indiana won its title when they beat the Knicks, like
that's their rival. It was a lot of emotion in
that series. They want it at home, Reggie called the game.
It was the last broadcast on TNT for basketball, Like
it almost feels like they want it. But there's still
a series to play after that, and it's against the

(02:34:40):
best team in the league, the best defense in the league,
the reigning MVP of the league. Indian is not gonna
show up not prepared. They're not gonna show up lack
a day's ago. They're just out manned an out gunned
in this one. So I've got the Thunder winning their

(02:35:01):
first NBA championship in five. I wanted to say six,
but I really just think matchup wise in the way
this plays out, just the energy expended in that PACER's
next series, the emotion of that series as well. I

(02:35:21):
just feel like Oklahoma City is gonna come in there.
They'll get They'll give them one, right, I don't think
it will be a sweep. I think Indiana, Indiana will
get one, might even get game one. I heard some
an I was saying, that's the easiest one to get,
and that's, you know, you can catch somebody off guard.
I don't know that. I think they'll get game one.
They're gonna get one, though. I don't think it will
be a sweep, and I don't think that these games

(02:35:42):
are gonna be just total blowouts either. But this Okahoma
City team is a monster right now. They do everything
well and they are led by a just beast in
shake Gilge just Alexander. So the final start Thursday, June

(02:36:03):
the fifth, perfect timing for the NBA. They're gonna own
the news cycle that day. They're gonna own the news
cycle all weekend long. There's nothing else in pop culture,
nothing else in entertainment that's going to be able to
take them away. There there's no NFL, so it's not
a Christmas situation. There's no even not even a giant
movie Mission Impossible has been out a couple of weeks.

(02:36:25):
Lelo and Stitch Remake if you like that sort of thing,
has been out for a couple of weeks. You know,
I don't think the ball Arena is going to be
knocking you off the list or anything like that, but
so you should be rolling, right. I mean, that's what
I would say if the Nintendo Switched to wasn't launching

(02:36:47):
on that same day. Worldwide, the biggest newsmaker on Night
one of the NBA Finals is going to be Nintendo,
and it's going to be the talk of the world
for the entire week in the following week. It's not
just the NFL that can take Christmas from you, it
is also Nintendo that can take another one of your holidays.

(02:37:09):
And while we're at it, actually Nintendo might just dominate
Christmas as well. It's probably gonna be the item this Christmas.
Luckily we can have both. Right, I'm gonna pick up
my Switch too, and I'll have that thing set up
and I'll probably be I don't know if I'll be
playing one of the games from the original Switch or
if I'll be rolling with one of the new titles

(02:37:30):
while the NBA Finals are on. It's my squad and
it's also my game system. So hopefully there'll be others
out there like that, right, And I'll bet you Nintendo
will even have switch ads during the game. But the
thing that will be talked about most it's probably unless
there's something of a bad variety that happens in that game.

(02:37:51):
I don't think anything's not going to switch off the
front page when it comes to the entertainment side. So
the NBA just sometimes you just you get lucky and
sometimes you're the NBA. NFL said we Christmas is now ours.
We're gonna take it. Now, the NBA starts its NBA Finals,
and I think it's gonna be knocked off the front
page of the entertainment section. Luckily, there's also a sports

(02:38:13):
section in most newspapers, so they'll still get top billing there.
But I do have thunder in five. I thought this
playoffs as a whole has been good. There's been some
good series here, There's been a lot of energy. There's
been some disappointment too, right, not just for the teams
that lost, but especially like for Cleveland to come out
there and lay that egg in the first round. Just

(02:38:37):
unfortunate for them, and you hope that they're able to
bounce back from that because that could set you back
a little bit, kind of leave you shell shocked, and
then again it becomes foolskull next year if they do
it again, are they gonna say, well, it doesn't matter.
And it might not, but the thunder Pacers series beginning
on Thursday. Pacers earned what they got against the Knicks

(02:38:59):
and Cyonara to the NBA on TNT. I hope Rob
Parker's wrong, I do, but I fear that he might
be right. I'll be watching next year either way to
see what happens. Appreciate Bernie having me in. Bernie, We'll
see you next week, buddy, and we'll lead you in
like we usually do. Enjoy your Sunday. I'm Jason Martin.
This is Fox Sports Radio.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Jason Martin previews the NBA Finals, talks Inside the NBA Farewell, & MORE!